The exponents of scientific management have not discovered a law of wages; they have simply elaborated a method of wage payment. Mr. G. D. H. Cole has expressed that well. "Clearly, although scientific management methods may reduce the possible margin or error in determining piece-work prices, they cannot altogether remove it, and even if the time that ought to be taken for a job is clearly established a further complication confronts us. All the time-study in the world cannot show how much ought to be paid for a job. It can only show at most the length of time a job ought to take. That is to say, it cannot determine what is to be the standard of living or of remuneration of the workers.... This, indeed, is only another way of saying that Scientific Management has only devised a further method of payment under the wage system."[17] The exponents of these theories fell into the error of believing they have unveiled a law of wages because they grasped one important truth. That truth is that where the productivity of labor is high, where labor is efficient, there is a greater chance, all other circumstances being the same, of securing high wages than when the reverse is the case. Or as the matter has been put in one of the reports of the U. S. Industrial Commission (1912-16) "A close causal relationship exists between productive efficiency and _possible_ wages. Greater efficiency and output makes _possible_ higher wages in general and better conditions of employment and labor."[18] (Italics mine). That the scientific management doctrine of wages consists of nothing more than a method of wage payment is clearly established by its failure to substantiate in practice its claims of furnishing a scientific and equitable method of fixing wage rates. On that point the same Industrial Commission reports that "In analyzing the wage fixing problem in connection with scientific management two matters are considered; one--the "base-rate" sometimes called the day wage, which constitutes for any group of wage earners the minimum earnings or indicates the general wage level for that group, and two--added "efficiency payments" which are supposed to represent special additional rewards for special adjustments. The investigators sought in vain for any scientific methods devised or employed by scientific management for the determination of the base-rate, either as a matter of justice between the conflicting claims of capital and labor, or between the relative claims of individual and occupational groups."[19] As a method of wage payment, of course, the method of scientific management must be judged by its good and bad effects like other methods of wage payment. That, however, is not a task which need detain us.