The facts presented by Mr. Brassey(178) very fully illustrate this principle. Although French workmen in their ship-yards receive less wages for the same kind of work than the English workmen in English yards, yet it costs less per ton to build ships in England than in France. The same correspondence between high wages and efficient work was found to be true of railway construction in different parts of the world. With different character, varying amounts of industrial energy, varying intelligence, and endurance, different people do not have the same efficiency of labor. It is ascertained that inefficiency is, as a rule, accompanied by low wages. Even though wages paid for ordinary labor in constructing railways were in India only from nine to twelve cents a day, and in England from seventy-five to eighty-seven cents a day, yet it cost as much to build a mile of railway in India as in England. The English laborer gave a full equivalent for his higher wages. Moreover, while an English weaver tends from two to three times as many looms as his Russian competitor, the workman in the United States, it is said, will tend even more than the Englishman. In American sailing-vessels, also, a less number of sailors, relatively to the tonnage, is required than in English sailing-ships. Mr. Brassey, besides, came to the conclusion that the working power, or efficiency, of ordinary English laborers was to the French as five to three. (2.) The other cause which renders wages and the cost of labor no real criteria of one another is the varying costliness of the articles which the laborer consumes. If these are cheap, wages, in the sense which is of importance to the laborer, may be high, and yet the cost of labor may be low; if dear, the laborer may be wretchedly off, though his labor may cost much to the capitalist. This last is the condition of a country over-peopled in relation to its land; in which, food being dear, the poorness of the laborer’s real reward does not prevent labor from costing much to the purchaser, and low wages and low profits coexist. The opposite case is exemplified in the United States of America. The laborer there enjoys a greater abundance of comforts than in any other country of the world, except some of the newest colonies; but owing to the cheap price at which these comforts can be obtained (combined with the great efficiency of the labor), the cost of labor to the capitalist is considerably lower than in Europe. It must be so, since the rate of profit is higher; as indicated by the rate of interest, which is six per cent at New York when it is three or three and a quarter per cent in London.