How many experienced framebuilders are making the same money as an experienced plumber? Very few, and that's not right. What's happening is that people are subsidizing their frames by charging very little just to get work. A factory like Waterford really doesn't care if they have highly skilled people because they can get people that do a good enough job and pay them less. But there are a significant number of customers that are willing to pay for the knowledge that every operation was done by someone that wasn't just waiting for the end of the day. You probably can't afford to run a factory with people that care about what they are doing. Some people might theorize that a guy from rural Wisconsin that wouldn't ride a bike down to get a pack of smokes can do just as good a job as someone that has a passion for framebuilding, but that was not my experience. The guys I worked with that were just building bikes because it was a job either did good work or not depending on the state of their hangover. There were a couple of guys that always did good work, but you might not get a bike built by them.