The piece-system lifts the labor instantly from this plane to one where the motive of self-interest conspicuously enters. A man is insured from the first of at least the wage of day’s labor; his own industry and deftness are then the factors in determining his earnings up to a certain limit. For I soon found that a hand was not free to employ his utmost skill when he became an expert. There seemed to be a tacit agreement in each department of the factory as to what should constitute the maximum of day’s labor. Below that a man might fall if he chose, but beyond it he was not at liberty to go. And the reason was very obvious. Even a few men in continually passing, by any considerable margin, the accepted daily average would inevitably produce the result of a cut in the _pro rata_ price until wages were down again to the accustomed level. The system gives a man an incentive to work and to develop his skill, but, in its practical operation, it holds him rigorously to the level of mediocre attainment. Barry incidentally pointed this out to me with striking clearness one day while we were carting tongues. Two of the varnishers were missing from the paint-shop when we went up for our first loads. Barry remarked on their absence, with the comment that they were certain to be on hand at half-past nine o’clock. It appears that if an employee misses the open factory-gate in the early morning by ever so little, he may not enter then until the end of two hours and a half, which marks the close of the first quarter of the day’s work. True to Barry’s prediction, we presently found both varnishers at their places, and when, in the late afternoon, he asked them, with the frankness of working-people in such matters, as to how much they had done, he again found himself verified, since each had achieved the prescribed amount, and so had earned full pay. They had simply worked at a greater speed than usual; and they might, so far as the time was concerned, have accomplished this every day, except that a man would soon gain a bad name by being habitually late, and his promptness at seven o’clock would be quickly insured by a cut in the rate paid for his form of labor. It was a very limited view of the factory as a whole that I could get from the post of an unskilled worker in one of its departments, but what growing familiarity was possible served to increase the sense of wonder at the possibilities of such highly organized methods of production.