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made profitable by low wages makes no real progress in productivity, whereas profits secured as the result of improved methods of production involve an increase of wealth and of attendant welfare.

It may, however, be said that labour in this country, as elsewhere, often offers an obstinate resistance to such improvements of technique and administration as are here suggested.

The difficulty on the part of labour arises from those conditions of distribution which, as we have seen, are responsible for restrictions of the market. Labour fears improvements because it fears that they signify displacement of workers and wage-cuts. Some employers in their greed for gain have sought to secure for themselves the profits of both economies—improved economies of production and lower wages. But these fears of improved productivity on the part of labour are scouted by most intelligent leaders. The modern labour policy is to encourage improvements in production and administration and to insist that a due proportion of the gains of these reforms shall come to the wage-earner. This more enlightened attitude is well expressed in the following statement from a document issued in 1919 by the American Federation of Labour:

The question of increased productivity is not a question of putting upon the toilers a more severe strain; it is a question of vast fundamental changes in the management of industry, a question of the elimination of outworn policies; a question of the introduction of the very best in machinery and methods of management.