Workers , I have pointed out , .sx " value wages for what they will buy , and if no leisure is provided for buying desired objects or enjoying their possession , or if no facilities for pleasure are afforded by the locality in which they live and work , or again , if every effort of the worker to raise his standard of life by buying a piano or indulging in some other luxury produces an outcry among the employing class , then employers cannot expect the wages they pay to offer any great incentive to the workers .sx " The standard of living adopted or aimed at is , in fact , of supreme importance as an incentive .sx There are some who set themselves merely a fixed conventional standard .sx In their case an increase of hourly rates of pay will merely result in fewer hours being worked , and an increase of rates of pay per piece merely in fewer pieces being made .sx Increases in wage will actually be the opposite of an incentive .sx And this case does not appear exceptional in England .sx Conservatism and conventionality of this sort obviously sets up a serious obstacle to the rational development of industry for obtaining increased production per head .sx It can only be overcome by tempting the labourer with new goods and services that he can buy .sx Industries connected with housing are those that have expanded most since the war , and it is probable that if additional housing accommodation were provided for the working classes , many of the goods in joint demand with houses such as furniture , carpets , heating apparatus , gramophones , would continue to expand .sx Hence the importance of a liberal housing policy .sx Without room into which to place his furniture and otherdurable belongings , the worker can only see additional consumption on food and clothes as the consequences of earning more and this , to him if not to her , is not particularly exciting .sx There remains consumption on amusement and holidays , and though these services have certainly expanded to the workers' demands the possibility of other trans-pecuniary objectives would undoubtedly stimulate him further out of his conventional rut and , particularly if additional leisure were provided by reducing hours of labour , create a new stimulus for efficient work .sx 3 .sx Incentives and Conducives to Work .sx The combined analysis of economists and industrial psychologists draws attention to various forms of incentive non-pecuniary , pecuniary and trans-pecuniary , that may affect the efficiency of labour .sx Output may fall in quantity and quality and economy , and accidents , lost time and labour turnover may increase because the labourer is not paid enough , does not like his work or his social and physical surroundings , or does not realize how he can spend additional wages .sx But these possibilities that can be shown to be probabilities by the statistical correlation of degrees of incentive with variation in output and the other indices of efficiency , are usually not sufficiently explained .sx In the social sciences , unable to resort to laboratory experiment , statistical correlation of overt events is seldom sufficient proof of cause and effect and we must therefore go deeper into the precise process whereby efficiency is stimulated .sx I say stimulated advisedly because the word incentive gives somewhat too narrow a view of the .sx possible process of efficiency-making or efficiency-marring as the case may be .sx Incentive suggests inducing and encouraging people to work harder , adding to their willingness to work ; but efficiency requires also that they should be able , should be given the capacity , to work harder .sx The English language is extraordinarily deficient in a word to express this process of enabling greater efficiency .sx Sir Josiah Stamp draws a distinction between incentive and what he calls " enlarged scope " .sx He points out that " if conditions are made wider , or easier , the same unaltered incentive may serve to achieve larger results , and no increase in that incentive is required " , and instances a fall in the rate of interest which stimulates business in the sense that it gives additional scope for the existing degree of enterprise to make profits .sx In the case of labour the word ` nutritive ' presents this notion applied to one sort of scope-giver or capacity-giver but only one sort ; and I am compelled to fall back on the rather vague word ` conducive ' .sx To conduce may then be conveniently contrasted with to induce .sx In order to increase efficiency , a factor such as wages must both induce and conduce efficiency .sx A steeply graded piece-rate , for instance , which trebled the wage every time the wage-earner doubled his output would tend to induce high output .sx But if , even at his maximum possible output , the wage-earner received less than sufficient to nourish him when it was spent , that wage-system would fail to be conducive to efficiency , since the worker would grow physically weaker day by day and then , presumably , die .sx Thus there are pecuniary ( and trans-pecuniary ) incentives or inducements and pecuniary ( and trans-pecuniary ) conducives .sx Moreover , in the labourer's case where he cannot alter the conditions under which he works , there are also important non-pecuniary conducives .sx The labourer becomes capable of producing efficiently only partly by means of the food and the clothing and housing on which his wage is spent .sx His efficiency also depends on the conditions he has to accept at his place of work .sx Long hours of work , lack of ventilation , etc. , have been statistically shown to decrease output and increase accidents and lost time , and they have been interpreted as doing so by engendering ` fatigue ' defined specifically as a ` lowered capacity ' .sx Such conditions are obstacles to rational organization not through any lack of incentive but because they fail to conduce to efficiency .sx 4 .sx Attractives and Conducives to Mobility .sx Increase ( or decrease ) in the efficiency of labour has been dealt with hitherto as though it were merely a question of incentives or conducives to a given number of persons , already working , to work more efficiently .sx And that is usually as far as industrial psychology carries its analysis .sx But economics , when considering over the long period possible sources of the supply of labour to perform work adequately must also take into account additions or subtractions to the supply due to changes in the number of labourers .sx And , just as industrial conditions may act as incentives or conducives to work harder so they may also act as ` attractives ' and as ` mobilizers ' or ` directives ' to make men more willing and more capable of entering certain occupations rather than others .sx Economists from Adam Smith onward have given a good deal of attention to the physical and psycho-logical circumstances that give an advantage to one occupation over another in this respect .sx Marshall has crystallized this analysis in the notion of net advantages .sx " Every occupation involves other disadvantages besides the fatigue of the work required in it , and every occupation offers other advantages besides the receipt of money wages .sx The true reward which an occupation offers to labour has to be calculated by deducting the money value of all its disadvantages from that of all its advantages ; and we may describe this true reward as the net advantages of the occupation .sx " Thus one of the advantages to be thrown into the balance to calculate the true reward would be , to quote Adam Smith , the " agreeableness " of the employments themselves .sx Disadvantages would , to quote Marshall again , include labour carried on " with unwelcome associates " or " occupying time that is wanted for pastime or for social or intellectual pursuits " , and to the sum of the disadvantages economists have applied the term the Real Cost of an occupation .sx Conditions likely to attract or repel labour may be both pecuniary and non-pecuniary .sx Clearly , differences in wages between one occupation and another are of first importance , and three of the five principle circumstances which as far as Adam Smith was able to observe " make up for a small pecuniarygain in some employments and counterbalance a great one in others " are in essence pecuniary too " the easiness or cheapness or the difficulty and expense of learning them " ; " the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them " ; and " the probability or improbability of success in them " .sx But many non-pecuniary conditions may also exercise attraction or repulsion and , as with incentives , too much importance has been attached to the characteristics of the work itself ; too little to the social relations involved .sx Insufficient attention has been paid , for instance , to the fascination that respectability and sociability appear to offer to the average man or woman .sx It is highly respectable to keep hands clean and to be able to wear a stiff collar and trim clothes throughout one's work .sx A clerk or a sales-assistant can , according to sex , wear the black coat or the art-silk frock that manual labourers have to reserve for Sundays , while actually at work .sx Hence in spite of the additional time and money spent in education and the monotonous and sedentary nature of the work , there is no lack of applicants for these gentlemanly and lady-like distributive and clerical occupations .sx But the attractive power of sociability is perhaps still greater and has almost escaped notice altogether .sx Large-scale organization , though it has reduced the incentive of equality , fraternity and personal contact of employer and employee , has enormously increased sociability as between employees .sx In a large factory men and women can find plenty of fellow-workers of their own age with the same interests and outlook , and though some of these associates may prove unwelcome , as Marshall somewhat gloomily suggests , yet the more they are together , obviously the greater chance of finding congenial company .sx Working girls .sx in particular appear to find in the large factory a release from the isolation , the conventional restraints and the petty irritations of home and family life .sx " Possibly " , as I have suggested elsewhere , " about 10 per cent of occupied women and girls offer themselves for employment merely to avoid the tedium of home , helping mother sweep , wash dishes and darn clothes , etc. " I attribute the low wages at which women are employed partially to this relative attractiveness of the large factory .sx Certainly the comparatively high real earnings , inclusive of board and lodging , that must be paid to domestic servants in small households , can be attributed to the unattractiveness of an existence isolated from working companions .sx Domestic service in fact being dirty work requiring a working uniform is unattractive on the score of respectability as well as sociability .sx The sociability of working with other girls and seeing plenty of customers seems entirely to outbalance any attraction in personal contact with one's employer .sx There has been a veritable flight from the home to the teashop , and the ` Nippy ' waitress seems to be more contented in her working life than ever was Mary Jane , the domestic .sx Yet the Nippy is not particularly in personal contact with her multiple-shop owning employers while Mary Jane is in contact with her mistress .sx Too much so apparently .sx This desire for sociability , though it has facilitated the acceptance of large-scale organization by labour , presents obstacles when the desire to stay , not necessarily in the home but at least in the home town among friends and relations , is opposed to the more efficient redistribution of labour ; and it may presentobstacles too , to the demand that investment in mechanical and chemical processes makes for continuous operation and the working of shifts .sx The desire for companionship applies to hours of recreation no less than hours of work , and friends , particularly young persons of opposite sex , will want to be on the same shift and have the same spare hours .sx Though it seems logical that all retail shops should not be closed in a town on the very same afternoon , so that the consumer may get his wants somewhere , yet his total exclusion is in fact the practice .sx I can see no reason for this illogical state of affairs except that shop-assistants want their weekly half-day all on the same day .sx The abandonment of the Russian plan for an uninterrupted working week which was consciously adopted to make possible the " maximum utilization of capital equipment " , may have partly been due to the same reason .sx Owing to this unwillingness for even comparative isolation , industries or occupations demanding the .sx working of shifts or the working of unusual schedules may suffer in their attractiveness and be .sx unable to obtain the supplies of labour required .sx