Lord Justice Bramwell has written an elaborate letter to Mr.
Henry Crompton exposing the fallacy of the idea that dimin- ished production would increase wages. And of oourse be finds it a very easy fallacy to expose. But does any one hold that this would really be the case. As we uuderstand the more rational advocates of diminished production, what they suppose is—not that it will increase wages,—on the contrary, they have, in many cases, consented to a diminution of wages on condition of dimin- ished production,—but that it will permit overstocked markets to be worked. off gradually without disastrous loss, and so render it easier to alter the distribution of fixed and floating capital between different productive employments, so as to adapt that distribution better than it has recently been adapted to the changing proportions of different species of demand. That is a process which may exert a very good ultimate influence on the rate of wages, though its immediate operation can only be to diminish simultaneously heavy stocks and the quantity of misapplied labour.
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