In cases like the above we must, of course, bear in mind that a diminution in employment in the several manufacturing processes directly and indirectly engaged in forwarding an industry, is not of itself conclusive evidence that the machinery has brought about a net displacement of labour. If the output is increased the employment in the extractive, the transport, and the various distributing processes may compensate the reduction in making goods and machinery.

Sec. 2. The industrial history of a country like England can furnish no sufficient data for a conclusive general judgment of the case. The enormous expansion of production induced by the application of machinery in certain branches of textile industry during the first half of this century indisputably led to an increased demand for English labour in trades directly or indirectly connected with textile production. But, in the first place, this cannot be regarded as a normal result of a fall of prices due to textile machinery, but is largely attributable to an expansion in the area of consumption—the acquisition of vast new markets—in which greater efficiency and cheapness of transport played the most considerable part. Secondly, assuming that the more pressing needs of the vast body of consumers are already satisfied by machine-made textile goods, we are not at liberty to conjecture that any further cheapening of goods, owing to improved machinery, will have a correspondent effect on consumption and the demand for labour. If England had been a self-contained country, manufacturing only for her own market, the result of machinery applied to textile industries would without doubt have been a considerable net displacement of textile labour, making every allowance for growth of population and increased home consumption. The expansion of English production under the rapid development of machinery in the nineteenth century cannot therefore be taken as a right measure of the normal effects of the application of machinery.

What direct evidence we have of the effect of machinery upon demand for labour is very significant. Mr. Charles Booth, in his Occupations of the People, presents an analysis of the census returns, showing the proportion of the population engaged in various employments at decennial points from 1841 to 1881. To these may be added such statistics of the 1891 census as the present condition of their presentation allows us to relate to the former censuses.[177] If we turn to manufactures, upon which, together with transport, machinery exercises the most direct influence, we find that the aggregate of manufactures shows a considerable increase in demand for labour up to 1861—that is, in the period when English wares still kept the lead they had obtained in the world market—but that since 1861 there is a positive decline in the proportion of the English population employed in manufactures. The percentages up to 1881 run as follows:—

1841[178] 27.1 per cent. 1851 32.7 " 1861 33.0 " 1871 31.6 " 1881 30.7 "

If we take the staple manufactures, employing the largest number of workers, we shall find that for the most part they show a rising demand for labour up to 1861, a stationary or falling demand when compared with the population after that date. The foundational industries—machinery and tools, shipbuilding, metal working—whose demand for labour during the period 1841-61 increased by leaps and bounds, still show in the aggregate an increased proportion of employment, largely due to the rise since 1861 of a large export trade in machinery. But while the machine-making industries continue to grow faster than the population in the employment they give, increasing from 209,353 in 1881 to 262,910 in 1891, and shipbuilding also gives a proportionate increase, it is noteworthy that the steel and iron trades, which up to 1871 grew far faster than the population, began to show signs of decline. In 1881 the number of steel and iron workers was 361,343, in 1891 it had increased to 380,193, a growth of only 5.3 per cent. as compared with a growth of population amounting to 11.7 per cent., and a growth of the number of occupied persons amounting to 15.3 per cent.

Fuel, gas, chemicals, and other general subsidiary trades show a steady advance in proportionate employment. The textile and dyeing industries, on the other hand, showing an increased proportion of employment up to 1851, by which time the weaving industry was taken over by machinery, present a continuous and startling decline in the proportion of employment since that date. A considerably smaller proportion of the employed classes are now engaged in these trades than in 1841. The dressmaking industries give the same result—a continuous decline in proportion of employment since 1851, though in this case the 1891 figures indicate a slight recovery. The following are the percentages:—

Textile and Dyeing. Dress. 1841 9.1 7.8 1851 11.1 10.3 1861 10.2 9.8 1871 9.3 8.5 1881 8.2 8.1 1891 7.6 8.3

The failure of demand for labour to keep pace in its growth with the growth of population in the main branches of the spinning and weaving industries is emphasised by Mr. Ellison. Comparing 1850 with 1878, he says:—"In spinning-mills there is an increase of about 189 per cent. in spindles, but only 63 per cent. in hands employed; and in weaving mills an increase of 360 per cent. in looms, but only 253 per cent. in operatives. This, of course, shows that the machinery has become more and more automatic or self-regulating, thus requiring the attendance of a relatively smaller number of workers."[179] When the subsidiary branches of textile industry are added the results point still more conclusively in the same direction.

No. of Spindles. No. of Looms. No. of Operatives. 1850 20,977,817 249,627 330,924 1878 44,206,690 514,911 482,903

More recent statistics show that the relative diminution of employment in textile industries traceable since 1851, became a positive diminution after 1871, though the statistics of 1891 indicate a certain recovery.

1841 618,509[180] 1851 603,800 1861 934,500 1871 970,000 1881 962,000 1891 1,016,100[181]

The significance of these figures in relation to the demand for labour receives further emphasis when the large and rapid displacement of male by female labour is taken into account. In the dress trades it may be observed that the absolute increase which every census, save that of 1871, discloses, is absorbed by the tailoring and millinery branches, where machinery plays a relatively unimportant part, and that in the boot and shoe trade, where there has been a greatly increased application of machinery, there has been not only a proportionate but an absolute fall-off of employment in the twenty years following 1861, though the 1891 census again brings up the absolute numbers of the boot and shoe trade to a little above the level of 1851.[182]

The branches of manufacture which show a large increase in the proportion of employment they give in 1891 as compared with 1861 are machinery and tools, printing and bookbinding, wood furniture and carriages, fuel, gas, chemicals, and unspecified trades (chiefly connected with machinery). Machinery and tools alone, among the larger manufactures, yield a large proportionate increase of employment, amounting, according to the Census Report, to 27.7 per cent. between 1881 and 1891, though dealers are included in this estimate as well as makers.

From these facts two conclusions may be drawn regarding the direct effects of machinery. First, so far as the aggregate of manufactures is concerned, the net result of the increased use of machinery has not been to offer an increased demand for labour in these industries commensurate with the growth of the working population. Second, an increased proportion of the manufacturing population is employed either in those branches of the large industries where machinery is least used, or in the smaller manufactures which are either subsidiary to the large industries, or are engaged in providing miscellaneous comforts and luxuries.

Sec. 3. When we turn from manufactures to other employments, we perceive that while mining and building employ an increasing proportion of the working classes since 1851, agriculture offers a rapidly diminishing employment, descending from 20.9 per cent. in 1851 to 11.5 per cent. in 1881, and 9.9 in 1891.[183]

It is, however, to the transport trades, to the distributing or "dealing" trades, and to industrial service that we must look for the notable increase of employment. All of these departments have grown far faster than the population since 1841.

Transport. Dealing. Industrial Service. 1841 2.1 5.3 5.4 1851 4.1 6.5 4.5 1861 4.6 7.1 4.0 1871 4.9 7.8 6.0 1881 5.6 7.8 6.7

The statistics of 1891 still further emphasise this movement. The transport services show an enormous rise upon 1881, yielding a proportionate employment of 7.4 per cent. The dealing classes show likewise a great increase. Merchants and agents increase from 285,138 to 363,037, dealers in money are about 30 per cent. more numerous, while insurance employs more than double the number employed in 1881, and six times the number of 1871. Taking drapers and mercers as indicative of the dealing class in a staple trade, we find an increase from 82,362 to 107,018, or 29.9 per cent. The numbers of those employed in thirteen representative retail trades have increased between 1881 and 1891 by not less than 27.9 per cent.



When we look at these figures there can be no doubt that one indirect result of the increased production due to the application of machinery has been increased employment in the distributing and transport industries. This increased employment in transport is by no means confined to the new services of steam locomotion by land and sea. The earlier apprehensions that railways would destroy road traffic is not justified by experience. Though employment on railways has of course grown very fast, road traffic has increased almost in the same ratio.

Railways. Roads. 1841 .03 .7 1851 .3 .9 1861 .5 1.1 1871 .8 1.2 1881 1.2 1.5 1891 1.4 2.8

The census returns for the United States show clearly that carts and horses have not been displaced by railways, or, more strictly speaking, that railways have made more cartage work than they have taken away. In 1850 the manufacture of carriages and waggons employed 15,590 men, in 1870 it employed 54,928. During the same period of railway growth the number of horses in the country increased from 4,336,717 to 7,145,370. In fact, while the population grew 66 per cent., the number of carriage and cart makers, in spite of the increased use of labour-saving machinery in their manufacture, grew more than 200 per cent.

It must, however, be clearly recognised that the direct effect of machinery upon the transport industries also is to cause a diminished proportionate employment of labour. A comparison of the two chief branches of steam locomotion will bring this home.

Machinery occupies a very different place in the railway from that which it occupies in steam transport by sea. The engine only indirectly determines and regulates the work of the majority of railway men. Most of them are not tenders of machinery. Engine-driver, stoker, and guard are alone in close direct association with the machine. To them must be added those engaged in construction and repair within the workshops. Pointsmen and certain station officials come next in proximity to the machine; shunters and porters are also "tending" machinery, though their work is more directly dominated by general business considerations. But are we to say that the army of platelayers, navvies, etc., engaged along the line is serving machinery instead of using tools?[184] The work of ticket clerks and collectors is only governed by the locomotive in a very indirect way. Though the steam-engine is the central factor in railway work, the bulk of the labour is skilled or unskilled work in remote relation to the machine. This explains why the growth of the railway industry, after the chief work of construction has been done, is not attended by a diminishing proportion of employment. On the contrary, we find that railway employment increases faster than mileage and railway capital. The following statistics of railways in the United Kingdom illustrate this fact:—

Year. Mileage. Capital (paid up). Operatives. 1851 ... ... 25,200 1861 10,865 L362,327,338 53,400 1871 15,376 L552,661,551 84,900 1881 18,175 L745,528,162 139,500 1891 20,191 L919,425,121 186,700

But when we turn to the shipping trade, where a much larger proportion of workers is directly concerned with the tending and direction of machinery, and trace the effect upon employment of the application of steam, the result is very different.

Sailing Vessels Steamers Men on Men on (Tonnage). (Tonnage). Sailing-ships. Steam-ships. 1850 3,396,359 168,474 142,730 8,700 1860 4,204,360 454,327 145,487 26,105 1870 4,577,855 1,112,934 147,207 48,755 1880 3,851,045 2,723,488 108,668 84,304 1890 2,907,405 5,037,666 84,008 129,366[185]

If we take the period 1870-90, during which there is an absolute shrinkage of sailing tonnage, we find that this shrinkage is accompanied by a less than corresponding diminution of employment. On the other hand, the tonnage of steamships in this period increased more than fourfold, but brought with it an increase of employment which is less than threefold.



French statistics during the last half century indicate the same general movement so far as employment is concerned, though the movement is less regular.

There is the same decline in the proportion of those engaged in agriculture, though less rapid than in England, the same shrinkage of the proportion engaged in manufacture, and generally in "making" industries, and the same notable expansion of the "dealing" classes. A rapid growth of the professional and public services is common to England and France. The following percentages mark these movements in France:—[186]

1856. 1861. 1866. 1872. 1876. 1881. 1886. Agricultural classes 52.9 53.2 51.5 52.5 53.0 50.0 47.8 Industrial 29.1 27.4 28.8 24.1 25.9 25.6 25.2 Commercial 4.5 3.9 4.0 8.4 10.7 10.5 11.5[187] Professional, } public service, } persons living } 9.1 9.2 9.5 11.1 10.3 10.2 11.1 on their incomes }

These facts and figures seem to support the following conclusions:—

(1) That along with the increased application of machinery to the textile and other staple manufactures there has been in these industries a decrease of employment relative to the growth of the working population.

(2) That in the transport industries the increase of employment is in inverse proportion to the introduction of machinery into the several branches as a dominating factor.

(3) That the considerable diminution of agricultural employment is not compensated by any proportionate increase of manufacturing employment, but that the displaced agricultural labour finds employment in such branches of the transport and distributive trade as are less subject to machinery.

In the rough estimate of the effect of machinery upon employment, its influence upon English agriculture has been left untouched by reason of the inherent complexity of the forces which are operative. But it must not be forgotten that by far the most important factor in the decline of English agricultural employment is the transport machinery which has brought the produce of distant countries into direct competition with English agricultural produce.

So far, therefore, as the statistics of employments present a just register of the influence of machinery upon demand for labour, we are driven to conclude that the net influence of machinery is to diminish employment so far as those industries are concerned into which machinery directly enters, and to increase the demand in those industries which machinery affects but slightly or indirectly. If this is true of England, which, having the start in the development of the factory system, has to a larger extent than any other country specialised in the arts of manufacture, it is probable that the net effect of machinery upon the demand for labour throughout the industrial world has been to throw a larger proportion of the population into industries where machinery does not directly enter. This general conclusion, however, for want of exact statistical inquiries conducted upon a single basis, can only be accepted as probable.

Sec. 4. (2) Effects of Machinery upon the Regularity of Employment.—The influence of machinery upon regularity of employment has a twofold significance. It has a direct bearing upon the measurement of demand for labour, which must take into account not only the number of persons employed, but the quantity of employment given to each. It has also a wider general effect upon the moral and industrial condition of the workers, and through this upon the efficiency of labour, which is attracting increased attention among students of industrial questions. The former consideration alone concerns us here. We have to distinguish—(a) the effects of the introduction of machinery as a disturbant of regularity of labour; (b) the normal effects of machine-production upon regularity of labour.

(a) The direct and first effect of the introduction of machinery is, as we have seen, to displace labour. The machinery causes a certain quantity of unemployment, apart from the consideration of its ultimate effect on the number of persons to whom employment is given. Professor Shield Nicholson finds two laws or tendencies which operate in reducing this disturbing influence of machinery. He holds (1) that a radical change made in the methods of production will be gradually and continuously adopted; (2) that these radical changes—these discontinuous leaps—tend to give place to advances by small increments of invention.[188]

History certainly shows that the fuller application of great inventions has been slow, though Professor Nicholson somewhat over-estimates the mobility of labour and its ability to provide against impending changes. The story of the introduction of the power-loom discloses terrible sufferings among the hand-weavers of certain districts, in spite of the gradual manner in which the change was effected. The fact that along with the growth of the power-loom the number of hand-looms was long maintained, is evidence of the immobility of the hand-weavers, who kept up an irregular and ill-paid work through ignorance and incapacity to adapt themselves to changed circumstances.[189] In most of the cases where great distress has been caused, the directly operative influence has not been introduction of machinery, but sudden change of fashion. This was the case with the crinoline-hoop makers of Yorkshire, the straw-plaiters of Bedfordshire, Bucks, Herts, and Essex.[190] The suddenly-executed freaks of protective tariffs seem likely to be a fruitful source of disturbance. So far as the displacement has been due to new applications of machinery, it is no doubt generally correct to say that sufficient warning is given to enable workers to check the further flow of labour into such industries, and to divert it into other industries which are growing in accordance with the new methods of production, though much suffering is inflicted upon the labour which is already specialised in the older method of industry.

Moreover, the changes which are taking place in certain machine industries favour the increasing adaptability of labour. Many machine processes are either common to many industries, or are so narrowly distinguished that a fairly intelligent workman accustomed to one can soon learn another. If it is true that "the general ability, which is easily transferable from one trade to another, is every year rising in importance relatively to that manual skill and technical knowledge which are specialised in one branch of industry,"[191] we have a progressive force which tends to minimise the amount of unemployment due to new applications of specific machinery.

Professor Nicholson's second law is, however, more speculative and less reliable in its action. It seems to imply some absolute limit to the number of great inventions. Radical changes are no doubt generally followed by smaller increments of invention; but we can have no guarantee that new radical changes quite as important as the earlier ones may not occur in the future. There are no assignable limits to the progress of mechanical invention, or to the rate at which that progress may be effected. If certain preliminary difficulties in the general application of electricity as a motor can be overcome, there is every reason to believe that, with the improved means of rapidly communicating knowledge we possess, our factory system may be reorganised and labour displaced far more rapidly than in the case of steam, and at a rate which might greatly exceed the capacity of labour to adjust itself to the new industrial conditions. At any rate we are not at liberty to take for granted that the mobility of labour must always keep pace with the application of new and labour-disturbing inventions. Since we are not able to assume that the market will be extended pari passu with the betterment in methods of production, it is evident that improvements in machinery must be reckoned as a normal cause of insecurity of employment. The loss of employment may be only "temporary," but as the life of a working man is also temporary, such loss may as a disturbing factor in the working life have a considerable importance.

Sec. 5. (b) Whether machinery, apart from the changes due to its introduction, favours regularity or irregularity of employment, is a question to which a tolerably definite answer can be given. The structure of the individual factory, with its ever-growing quantity of expensive machinery, would seem at first sight to furnish a direct guarantee of regular employment, based upon the self-interest of the capitalist. Some of the "sweating" trades of London are said to be maintained by the economy which can be effected by employers who use no expensive plant or machinery, and who are able readily to increase or diminish the number of their employees so as to keep pace with the demands of some "season" trade, such as fur-pulling or artificial flowers. When the employer has charge of enormous quantities of fixed capital, his individual interest is strongly in favour of full and regular employment of labour. On this account, then, machinery would seem to favour regularity of employment. On the other hand, Professor Nicholson has ample evidence in support of his statement that "great fluctuations in price occur in those commodities which require for their production a large proportion of fixed capital. These fluctuations in prices are accompanied by corresponding fluctuations in wages and irregularity of employment."[192] In a word, while it is the interest of each producer of machine-made goods to give regular employment, some wider industrial force compels him to irregularity. What is this force? It is uncontrolled machinery. In the several units of machine-production, the individual factories or mills, we have admirable order and accurate adjustment of parts; in the aggregate of machine-production we have no organisation, but a chaos of haphazard speculation. "Industry has not yet adapted itself to the changes in the environment produced by machinery." That is all.

Under a monetary system of commerce, though commodities still exchange for commodities, it is an essential condition of that exchange that those who possess purchasing power shall be willing to use a sufficient proportion of it to demand consumptive goods. Otherwise the production of productive goods is stimulated unduly while the demand for consumptive goods is checked,—the condition which the business man rightly regards as over-supply of the material forms of capital. When production was slower, markets[193] narrower, credit less developed, there was less danger of this big miscalculation, and the corrective forces of industry were more speedily effective. But modern machinery has enormously expanded the size of markets, the scale of competition, the complexity of demand, and production is no longer for a small, local, present demand, but for a large, world, future demand. Hence machinery is the direct material cause of these great fluctuations which bring, as their most evil consequence, irregularity of wages and employment.

How far does this tend to right itself? Professor Nicholson believes that time will compel a better adjustment between machinery and its environment.

"The enormous development of steam communication and the spread of the telegraph over the whole globe have caused modern industry to develop from a gigantic star-fish, any of whose members might be destroyed without affecting the rest, into a mega zoon which is convulsed in agony by a slight injury in one part. A depression of trade is now felt as keenly in America and even in our colonies as it is here. Still, in the process of time, with the increase of organisation and decrease of unsound speculation, this extension of the market must lead to greater stability of prices; but at present the disturbing forces often outweigh altogether the supposed principal elements."[194]

The organisation of capital under the pressure of these forces is doubtless proceeding, and such organisation, when it has proceeded far enough, will indisputably lead to a decrease of unsound speculation. But these steps in organisation have been taken precisely in those industries which employ large quantities of fixed capital, and the admitted fact that severe fluctuations still take place in these industries is proof that the steadying influences of such organisation have not yet had time to assert themselves to much purpose. The competition of larger and larger masses of organised capital seems to induce heavier speculation and larger fluctuations. Not until a whole species of capital is organised into some form or degree of "combination" is the steadying influence of organisation able to predominate.

Sec. 6. But there is also another force which, in England at any rate, under the increased application of machinery, makes for an increase rather than a diminution of speculative production. It has been seen that the proportion of workers engaged in producing comforts and luxuries is growing, while the proportion of those producing the prime necessaries of life is declining. How far the operation of the law of diminishing returns will allow this tendency to proceed we cannot here discuss. But statistics show that this is the present tendency both in England and in the United States. Now the demand for comforts and luxuries is essentially more irregular and less amenable to commercial calculation than the demand for necessaries. The greatest economies of machine-production are found in industries where the demand is largest, steadiest, and most calculable. Hence the effect of machinery is to drive ever and ever larger numbers of workers from the less to the more unsteady employments. Moreover, there is a marked tendency for the demand for luxuries to become more irregular and less amenable to calculation, and a corresponding irregularity is imposed upon the trades engaged in producing them. Twenty years ago it was possible for Coventry ribbon-weavers to "make to stock" during the winter months, for though silk ribbons may always be classed as a luxury, certain patterns commanded a tolerably steady sale year after year. Now the fluctuations of fashion are much sharper and more frequent, and a far larger proportion of the consumers of ribbons are affected by fashion-changes. Hence it has become more and more difficult to forecast the market, less and less is made to stock, more and more to order, and orders are given at shorter and shorter notice. So looms and weavers kept idle during a large part of the year are driven into fevered activity of manufacture for short irregular periods. The same applies to many other season and fashion trades. The irregularity of demand prevents these trades from reaping the full advantages of the economies of machinery, though the partial application of machinery and power facilitates the execution of orders at short notice. Hence the increased proportion of the community's income spent on luxuries requires an increased proportion of the labour of the community to be expended in their production. This signifies a drifting of labour from the more steady forms of employment to those which are less steady and whose unsteadiness is constantly increasing. A larger proportion of town workers is constantly passing into trades connected with preparing and preserving animal and vegetable substances, to such industries as the hat and bonnet, confectionery, bookbinding, trades affected by weather, holiday and season trades, or those in which changes in taste and fashion are largely operative.

Thus it appears there are three modes in which modern capitalist methods of production cause temporary unemployment. (1) Continual increments of labour-saving machinery displace a number of workers, compelling them to remain wholly or partially unemployed, until they have "adjusted" themselves to the new economic conditions. (2) Miscalculation and temporary over-production, to which machine industries with a wide unstable market are particularly prone, bring about periodic deep depressions of "trade," temporarily throwing out of work large bodies of skilled and unskilled labour. (3) Economies of machine-production in the staple industries drive an increasing proportion of labour with trades which are engaged in supplying commodities, the demand for which is more irregular, and in which therefore the fluctuations in demand for labour must be greater.

Most economists, still deeply imbued with a belief in the admirable order and economy of "the play of economic forces," appear to regard all unemployment not assignable to individual vice or incapacity as the natural and necessary effect of the process of adjustment by which industrial progress is achieved, ignoring altogether the two latter classes of consideration. There is, however, reason to believe that in an average year a far larger number of the "unemployed" at any given time owe their unemployment to a temporary depression of the trade in which they are engaged, than to the fluctuations brought about by organic changes in the economic structure of the trade.

The size and importance of the "unemployment" due primarily to trade depressions is very imperfectly appreciated. The following statistics of the condition of the skilled labour market in the period 1886-92, based upon the reports of twenty-two trades unions, have an important bearing on this point:—

Year. Percentage out of work. 1886 10.1 per cent.[195] 1887 8.6 " 1888 4.4 " 1889 1.8 " 1890 2.6 " 1891 4.45 " 1892 7.33 " 1893 7.9[196] "

When it is remembered that these figures apply only to the well-organised trades unions, which, as a rule, comprise the best and most highly-skilled workers in the several trades, who are less likely than others to be thrown out in a "slack time," that the building and season trades are not included in the estimate, and that women's industries, notoriously more irregular than men's, are altogether ignored, it will be evident that these statistics very inadequately represent the proportion of unemployment for the aggregate of the working classes at the several periods. The Report on Principal and Minor Textile Trades deducts 10 per cent. from the normal wages to represent unemployment, though the year 1885, to which the figures refer, is spoken of as "fairly representative of a normal year."[197]

The injury inflicted upon the wages, working efficiency, and character of the working classes by irregular employment is, however, very inadequately represented by figures indicating the average of "unemployment" during a long period. In the first place, in such an estimate no allowance is made for the "short time," often worked for months together by large bodies of operatives. Secondly, in measuring the evil of "unemployment," we must look rather to the maximum than to the mean condition. If a man is liable to have his food supply cut off for a month at a time, no estimate showing that on the average he has more than enough to eat and drink will fairly represent the danger to which he is exposed. If once in every ten years we find that some 10 per cent. of the skilled workers, and a far larger percentage of unskilled workers, are out of employment for months together, these figures measure the economic malady of "unemployment," which is in no sense compensated by the full or excessive labour of periods of better trade.

Sec. 7. Our reasoning from the ascertained tendencies of machine-production points to the conclusion that, having regard to the two prime constituents in demand for labour, the number of those employed, and the regularity of employment, machinery does not, under present conditions, generally favour an increased steady demand for labour. It tends to drive an increased proportion of labour in three directions.

(1) To the invention, construction, and maintenance of machinery to make machines, the labour of machine-making being continually displaced by machines, and being thus driven to the production of machines more remote from the machines directly engaged in producing consumptive goods. The labour thus engaged must be in an ever-diminishing proportion to a given quantity of consumption. Nothing but a great increase in the quantity of consumption, or the opening of new varieties of consumption, can maintain or increase the demand for labour in these machine-making industries.

(2) To continual specialisation, subdivision, and refinement in the arts of distribution. The multiplication of merchants, agents, retailers, which, in spite of forces making for centralisation in distributive work, is so marked a feature in the English industry of the last forty years, is a natural result of the influence of machinery, in setting free from "making" processes an increased proportion of labour.

(3) To the supply of new forms of wealth, which are either (a) wholly non-material—i.e., intellectual, artistic, or other personal services; (b) partly non-material—e.g., works of art or skill, whose value consists chiefly in the embodiment of individual taste or spontaneous energy, or (c) too irregular or not sufficiently extended in demand to admit the application of machinery. The learned professions, art, science, and literature, and those branches of labour engaged in producing luxuries and luxurious services furnish a constantly increasing employment, though the supply of labour is so notoriously in excess of the demand in all such employments that a large percentage of unemployment is chronic.

So long then as a community grows in numbers, so long as individuals desire to satisfy more fully their present wants and continue to develop new wants, forming a higher or more intricate standard of consumption, there is no evidence to justify the conclusion that machinery has the effect of causing a net diminution in demand for labour, though it tends to diminish the proportion of employment in the "manufacturing" industries; but there is strong reason to believe that it tends to make employment more unstable, more precarious of tenure, and more fluctuating in market value.

FOOTNOTES:

[174] Against this we may set the possibility of a fall in the rate of interest at which manufacturers may be able to borrow capital in order to set up improved machinery. Where an economy can be effected in this direction, the displacement of labour due to the introduction of machinery may not be so large—i.e., it will pay a manufacturer to introduce a new machine which only "saves" a small amount of money, if he can effect the change at a cheap rate of borrowing. (Cf. Marshall, Principles of Economics, 2nd edit., pp. 569, 570.)

[175] Leone Levi, Work and Pay, p. 28.

[176] Statement by Mr. Shaftoe, President of the Trades Union Congress, 1888; cf. Carroll D. Wright, Report on Industrial Depressions, Washington, 1886, pp. 80-90.

[177] The merging of retail dealers with the "making" classes, the classification of merchants with those engaged in transport industries, and certain departures from precedent in the mode of classification, render a full use of the 1891 figures impossible at present.

[178] In the years 1831-41 there was an enormous increase of the factory population. Between 1835 and 1839, according to Porter, the increase amounted to 68,263, or a rise of 19.2 per cent. (Progress of the Nation, p. 78.)

[179] T. Ellison, Cotton Trade of Great Britain, p. 74.

[180] Only 349,452, or 56.8 per cent. in factories. (Porter, p. 78.)

[181] This increase since 1881 is chiefly explained by the feverish expansion and over-production of the cotton industry. The census return for 1891 is reduced to correspond with the earlier estimates in Booth's Occupations of the People.

[182] The 1851 census gives 235,447, that of 1891 gives 240,000 (with an estimated deduction for clog and patten-makers).

[183] The enormous fall between the census of 1861 and 1871 is partly attributable to changes in classification. (1) Female relatives of farmers, included in 1861, were excluded in later censuses; (2) certain changes were made in the treatment of "retired" persons.

[184] The "steam-navvy" is, however, making digging a machine industry. Thirteen men with a machine-navvy can do the work of between 60 and 70 human navvies.

[185] The aggregate effect of the change upon employment of seamen is traced by the following figures, in which the tonnage of sailing and steam vessels is massed together:—

Tonnage. Men. 1850 3,564,833 151,430 1860 4,658,687 171,592 1870 5,690,789 195,962 1880 6,574,513 192,972 1890 7,945,071 213,374

[186] M.S. Levasseur, La Population Francaise. Paris, 1889.

[187] From 1876 the transport services, which in 1886 amounted to 2.8 per cent. of the income-receiving population, were included under commercial. Taking this into consideration, a comparison of the industrial and the commercial population of 1866 and 1886 shows that while the former falls from 28.8 to 25.2, the latter rises from 4.0 to 8.7.

[188] J.S. Nicholson, Effects of Machinery on Wages, p. 33.

[189] Babbage, Economy of Manufactures, p. 230.

[190] Cf. Thorold Rogers, Political Economy (1869), pp. 78, 79.

[191] Marshall, Principles of Economics, p. 607; cf. Cunningham, Uses and Abuses of Money, p. 59. See, however, infra Chap. ix.

[192] Effects of Machinery on Wages, p. 66.

[193] An increase in the space-area of a market may, however, in some cases make a trade more steady, especially in the case of an article of luxury subject to local fluctuations of fashion, etc. A narrow silk market for England meant fluctuating employment and low skill. An open market gave improved skill and stability, for though silk is still the most unsteady of the textile industries, it is far less fluctuating than was the case in the eighteenth century. (Cf. Porter, p. 225.)

[194] Op. cit., p. 117.

[195] Board of Trade Journal, November 1892.

[196] For twenty-six societies.

[197] Page xii.



CHAPTER IX.

MACHINERY AND THE QUALITY OF LABOUR.

Sec. 1. Kinds of Labour which Machinery supersedes. Sec. 2. Influence of Machine-evolution upon intensity of physical work. Sec. 3. Machinery and the length of the working day. Sec. 4. The Education of Working with Machinery. Sec. 5. The levelling tendency of Machinery—The subordination of individual capacity in work.

Sec. 1. In considering the influence of Machinery upon the quality of labour—i.e., skill, duration, intensity, intellectuality, etc., we have first to face two questions—What are the qualities in which machinery surpasses human labour? What are the kinds of work in which machinery displaces man? Now, since the whole of industrial work consists in moving matter, the advantage of machinery must consist in the production and disposition of motive power. The general economies of machinery were found to be two[198]—(1) The increased quantity of motive force it can apply to industry; (2) greater exactitude in the regular application of motive force (a) in time—the exact repetition of the same acts at regulated intervals, or greater evenness in continuity, (b) in place—exact repetition of the same movements in space.[199] All the advantages imputed to machinery in the economy of human time, the utilisation of waste material, the display of concentrated force or the delicacy of manipulation, are derivable from these two general economies. Hence it follows that wherever the efficiency of labour power depends chiefly upon the output of muscular force in motive power, or precision in the regulation of muscular force, machinery will tend to displace human labour. Assuming, therefore, that displaced labour finds other employment, it will be transferred to work where machinery has not the same advantage over human labour—that is to say, to work where the muscular strain or the need for regularity of movement is less. At first sight it will thus seem to follow that every displacement of labour by machinery will bring an elevation in the quality of labour, that is, will increase the proportion of labour in employments which tax the muscles less and are less monotonous. This is in the main the conclusion towards which Professor Marshall inclines.[200]

So far as each several industry is concerned, it has been shown that the introduction of machinery signifies a net reduction of employment, unless the development of trade is largely extended by the fall of price due to the diminution in expenses of production. It cannot be assumed as a matter of course that the labour displaced by the introduction of automatic folders in printing will be employed in less automatic work connected with printing. It may be diverted from muscular monotony in printing to the less muscular monotony of providing some new species of luxury, the demand for which is not yet sufficiently large or regular to justify the application of labour-saving machinery. But even assuming that the whole or a large part of the displaced labour is engaged in work which is proved to have been less muscular or less automatic by the fact that it is not yet undertaken by machinery, it does not necessarily follow that there is a diminution in the aggregate of physical energy given out, or in the total "monotony" of labour.

One direct result of the application of an increased proportion of labour power to the kinds of work which are less "muscular" and less "automatic" in character will be a tendency towards greater division of labour and more specialisation in these employments. Now the economic advantages of increased specialisation can only be obtained by increased automatic action. Thus the routine or automatic character, which constituted the monotony of the work in which machinery displaced these workers, will now be imparted to the higher grades of labour in which they are employed, and these in their turn will be advanced towards a condition which will render them open to a new invasion of machinery.

Since the number of productive processes falling under machinery is thus continually increased, it will be seen that we are not entitled to assume that every displacement of labour by machinery will increase the proportion of labour engaged in lighter and more interesting forms of non-mechanical labour.

Sec. 2. Nor is it shown that the growth of machine-production tends to diminish the total physical strain upon the worker, though it greatly lessens the output of purely muscular activity. As regards those workers who pass from ordinary manual work to the tending of machinery, there is a good deal of evidence to show that, in the typical machine industries, their new work taxes their physical vigour quite as severely as the old work. Professor Shield Nicholson quotes the following striking statement from the Cotton Factory Times:—"It is quite a common occurrence to hear young men who are on the best side of thirty years of age declare they are so worked up with the long mules, coarse counts, quick speeds, and inferior material, that they are fit for nothing at night, only going to bed and taking as much rest as circumstances will allow. There are few people who will credit such statements; nevertheless they are true, and can be verified any day in the great majority of the mills in the spinning districts."

Schulze-Gaevernitz shows that the tendency in modern cotton-spinning and weaving, especially in England, has been both to increase the number of spindles and looms which an operative is called upon to tend, and to increase the speed of spinning. "A worker tends to-day more than twice or nearly three times as much machinery as his father did; the number of machines in use has increased more than five-fold since that time, while the workers have not quite doubled their numbers."[201] With regard to speed, "since the beginning of the seventies the speed of the spinning machines alone has increased about 15 per cent."[202]

We are not, however, at liberty to infer from Schulze-Gaevernitz's statement regarding the increased number of spindles and looms an operative tends, that an intensification of labour correspondent with this increase of machinery has taken place, nor can the increased output per operative be imputed chiefly to improved skill or energy of the operative. Much of the labour-saving character of recent improvements, especially in the carding, spinning, and intermediate processes, has reduced to an automatic state work which formerly taxed the energy of the operative, who has thereby been enabled to tend more machinery and to quicken the speed without a net increase of working energy.

In the carding, slubbing, intermediate, roving, and spinning machinery there is in every case an increase in the amount of machinery tended. But carding machinery has been revolutionised within the last few years; the drawing frame has been made to stop automatically when there is a fault, thus relieving the tender of a certain amount of supervision; in the slubbing, intermediate, and roving frames certain detailed improvements have been effected, as is also the case in the spinning mules and sizing machines.

To some extent the increased quantity of spindles, etc., and increased speed may be regarded as set off by relief due to these improvements. Moreover, though there has no doubt been some general speeding up, any exact measurement is hardly possible, for the speed of machinery is very often regulated by the amount of work each process is made to do; for example, if a roving frame makes a coarse hank, the speed of the spindles does not require to be so great as when the hank is finer; in that case the mule draws out the sliver to a greater extent than when the roving is finer, or, in other words, the mule in one case does the work of the roving frame to a certain extent.

The general opinion seems to be that in the spinning mills, roughly speaking, 75 per cent. of the increased output per operative may be imputed to improved machinery, 25 per cent. to increased intensity of labour in regard to quantity of spindles or "speeding up."

In the weaving processes more specific measurement is possible, though even there much depends upon the quality of yarn that is used. Here a reduction in the working day is followed by an increase in speed without any labour-saving improvements. Previous to the Factory legislation of 1878, the speed of looms was generally from 170 to 190 picks per minute during the ten hours' day. In the course of about two years after the reduction of hours (6 per cent.) the general speed had become 190 to 200 picks, without change in machinery or raw material, a growth which must have proportionately increased the intensity of the work of weaving. A deterioration in the quality of the raw material used for producing cotton cloth is also commonly assigned as a fact involving more care on the part of the weaver, and increased danger and disagreeability of work owing to the heavy sizing and steaming it has brought into vogue. It is not easy to argue much respecting increased intensity of labour from the increased average of looms attended, for, as was recently admitted in evidence before the Labour Commission, everything depends upon the class of looms and of goods they are manufacturing. "It is quite as easy to drive five looms of some classes as two of others."[203] But the prevalence of the "driving" system, by which the overlookers are paid a bonus on the product of the looms under their charge, has admittedly induced, as it was obviously designed to do, an increased intensity of labour.

Summing up the evidence, we are able to conclude that the shortening of working hours and the improvements in machinery has been attended by an increased effort per unit of labour time. In the words of an expert, "the change to those actually engaged in practical work is to lessen the amount of hard manual work of one class, but to increase their responsibility, owing to being placed in charge of more machinery, and that of a more expensive kind; while the work of the more lowly skilled will be intensified, owing to increased production, and that from an inferior raw material. I mean that to the operative the improvements in machinery have been neutralised by the inferior quality of raw material used, and I think it is fair to assume that their work has been intensified at least in proportion to the increase of spindles, etc."

The direct evidence drawn from this most highly-evolved machine industry seems to justify the general opinion expressed by Professor Nicholson, "It is clear that the use of machines, though apparently labour-saving, often leads to an increase in the quantity of labour, negatively, by not developing the mind, positively by doing harm to the body."[204]

Sec. 3. When any muscular or other physical effort is required it is pretty evident that an increased duration or a greater continuity in the slighter effort may tax the body quite as severely as the less frequent or constant application of a much greater bodily force. There can be no question but that in a competitive industrial society there exists a tendency to compensate for any saving of hard muscular, or other physical effort afforded by the intervention of machinery in two ways: first, by "forcing the pace"—i.e., compelling the worker to attend more machines or to work more rapidly, thus increasing the strain, if not upon the muscles, then upon the nerves; secondly, by extending the hours of labour. A lighter form of labour spread over an increased period of time, or an increased number of minor muscular exertions substituted for a smaller number of heavier exertions within the same period of time, may of course amount to an increased tax upon the vital energy. It is not disputed that a general result of the factory system has been to increase the average length of the working day, if we take under our survey the whole area of machine-production in modern industrial communities. This is only in part attributable to the fact that workers can be induced to sell the same daily output of physical energy as before, while in many cases a longer time is required for its expenditure. Another influence of equal potency is the economy of machinery effected by working longer hours. It is the combined operation of these two forces that has lengthened the average working day. Certain subsidiary influences, however, also deserve notice, especially the introduction of cheap illuminants. Before the cheap provision of gas, the working time was generally limited by daylight. Not until the first decade of this century was gas introduced into cotton-mills, and another generation elapsed before it passed in general use in manufactories and retail shops.[205] Now a portion of nature's rest has been annexed to the working day. There are, of course, powerful social forces making for a curtailment of the working day, and these forces are in many industries powerfully though indirectly aided by machinery. Perhaps it would be right to say that machinery develops two antagonistic tendencies as regards the length of the working day. Its most direct economic influence favours an extension of the working hours, for machinery untired, wasting power by idleness, favours continuous work. But when the growing pace and complexity of highly-organised machinery taxes human energy with increasing severity, and compresses an increased human effort within a given time, a certain net advantage in limiting the working day for an individual begins to emerge, and it becomes increasingly advantageous to work the machinery for shorter hours, or, where possible, to apply "shifts" of workers.[206]

But in the present stage of machine-development the economy of the shorter working day is only obtainable in a few trades and in a few countries; the general tendency is still in the direction of an extended working day.[207] The full significance of this is not confined to the fact that a larger proportion of the worker's time is consumed in the growing monotony of production. The curtailment of his time for consumption, and a consequent lessening of the subjective value of his consumables, must be set off against such increase in real wages or purchasing power as may have come to him from the increased productive power of machinery. The value of a shorter working day consists not merely in the diminution of the burden of toil it brings, but also in the fact that increased consumption time enables the workers to get a fuller use of his purchased consumables, and to enjoy various kinds of "free wealth" from which he was precluded under a longer working day.[208] So far as machinery has converted handicraftsmen into machine-tenders, it is extremely doubtful whether it has lessened the strain upon their energies, though we should hesitate to give an explicit endorsement to Mill's somewhat rhetorical verdict. "It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being." At any rate we have as yet no security that machinery, owned by individuals who do not themselves tend it, shall not be used in such a way as to increase the physical strain of those who do tend it. "There is a temptation," as Mr. Cunningham says, "to treat the machine as the main element in production, and to make it the measure of what a man ought to do, instead of regarding the man as the first consideration, and the machine as the instrument which helps him; the machine may be made the primary consideration, and the man may be treated as a mere slave who tends it."[209]

Sec. 4. Now to come to the question of "monotony." Is the net tendency of machinery to make labour more monotonous or less, to educate the worker or to brutalise him? Does labour become more intellectual under the machine? Professor Marshall, who has thoughtfully discussed this question, inclines in favour of machinery. It takes away manual skill, but it substitutes higher or more intellectual forms of skill.[210] "The more delicate the machine's power the greater is the judgment and carefulness which is called for from those who see after it."[211] Since machinery is daily becoming more and more delicate, it would follow that the tending of machinery would become more and more intellectual. The judgment of Mr. Cooke Taylor, in the conclusion of his admirable work, The Modern Factory System, is the same. "If man were merely an intellectual animal, even only a moral and intellectual one, it could scarcely be denied, it seems to us, that the results of the factory system have been thus far elevating."[212] Mr. Taylor indeed admits of the operative population that "they have deteriorated artistically; but art is a matter of faculty, of perception, of aptitude, rather than of intellect." This strange severance of Art from Intellect and Morals, especially when we bear in mind that Life itself is the finest and most valuable of Arts, will scarcely commend itself to deeper students of economic movements. The fuller significance of this admission will appear when the widest aspect of the subject is discussed in our final chapter.

The question of the net intellectual effects of machinery is not one which admits of positive answer. It would be open to one to admit with Mr. Taylor that the operatives were growing more intellectual, and that their contact with machinery exercises certain educative influences, but to deny that the direct results of machinery upon the workers were favourable to a wide cultivation of intellectual powers, as compared with various forms of freer and less specialised manual labour. The intellectualisation of the town operatives (assuming the process to be taking place) may be attributable to the thousand and one other influences of town life rather than to machinery, save indirectly so far as the modern industrial centre is itself the creation of machinery.[213] It is not, I think, possible at present to offer any clear or definite judgment. But the following distinctions seem to have some weight in forming our opinion.

The growth of machinery has acted as an enormous stimulus to the study of natural laws. A larger and larger proportion of human effort is absorbed in processes of invention, in the manipulation of commerce on an increasing scale of magnitude and complexity, and in such management of machinery and men as requires and educates high intellectual faculties of observation, judgment, and speculative imagination. Of that portion of workers who may be said, within limits, to control machinery, there can be no question that the total effect of machinery has been highly educative.

The growing size, power, speed, complexity of machinery, undoubtedly makes the work of this class of workers "more intellectual." Some measure of these educative influences even extends to the "hand" who tends some minute portion of the machinery, so far as the proper performance of his task requires him to understand other processes than those to which his labour is directly and exclusively applied.

So likewise consideration must be taken of the skilled work of making and repairing machinery. The engineers' shop and other workshops are becoming every year a more and more important factor in the equipment of a factory or mill. But though "breakdowns" are essentially erratic and must always afford scope for ingenuity in their repair, even in the engineers' shop there is the same tendency for machinery to undertake all work of repair which can be brought under routine. So the skilled work in making and repairing machinery is continually being reduced to a minimum, and cannot be regarded, as Professor Nicholson is disposed to regard it, as a factor of growing importance in connection with machine-production. The more machinery is used, the more skilled work of making and repairing will be required, it might seem. But the rapidity with which machinery is invading these very functions turns the scale in the opposite direction, at any rate so far as the making of machinery is concerned. Statistics relating to the number of those engaged in making machinery and tools show that the proportion they bear to the whole working population is an increasing one; but the rate of this increase is by no means proportionate to the rate of increase in the use of machinery. While the percentage of those engaged in making machinery and tools rises from 1.7 in 1861 to 1.8 in 1871 and 1.9 in 1881, 2.0 in 1891, the approximate increase of steam-power applied to fixed machinery and locomotives shows a much more rapid rise,—from 2,100,000 horse-power in 1860 to 3,040,000 in 1870 and 5,200,000 in 1880.[214] Moreover, an increased proportion of machinery production is for export trade, so that a large quantity of the labour employed in those industries is not required to sustain the supply of machinery used in English work. In repairs of machinery, the economy effected by the system of interchangeable parts is one of growing magnitude, and tends likewise to minimise the skilled labour of repair.[215]

Finally, it should be borne in mind that in several large industries where machinery fills a prominent place, the bulk of the labour is not directly governed by the machine. This fact has already received attention in relation to railway workers. The character of the machine certainly impresses itself upon these in different degrees, but in most cases there is a large amount of detailed freedom of action and scope for individual skill and activity.

Though the quality of intelligence and skill applied to the invention, application, and management of machinery is constantly increasing, practical authorities are almost unanimous in admitting that the proportion which this skilled work bears to the aggregate of labour in machine industry is constantly diminishing. Now, setting on one side this small proportion of intelligent labour, what are we to say of the labour of him who, under the minute subdivision enforced by machinery, is obliged to spend his working life in tending some small portion of a single machine, the whole result of which is continually to push some single commodity a single step along the journey from raw material to consumptive goods?

The factory is organised with military precision, the individual's work is definitely fixed for him; he has nothing to say as to the plan of his work or its final completion or its ultimate use. "The constant employment on one sixty-fourth part of a shoe not only offers no encouragement to mental activity, but dulls by its monotony the brains of the employee to such an extent that the power to think and reason is almost lost."[216]

The work of a machine-tender, it is urged, calls for "judgment and carefulness." So did his manual labour before the machine took it over. His "judgment and carefulness" are now confined within narrower limits than before. The responsibility of the worker is greater, precisely because his work is narrowed down so as to be related to and dependent on a number of other operatives in other parts of the same machine with whom he has no direct personal concern. Such realised responsibility is an element in education, moral and intellectual. But this gain is the direct result of the minute subdivision, and must therefore be regarded as purchased by a narrowing of interest and a growing monotony of work. It is questionable whether the vast majority of machine workers get any considerable education, from the fact that the machine in conjunction with which they work represents a huge embodiment of the delicate skill and invention of many thousands of active minds, though some value may be attached to the contention that "the mere exhibition of the skill displayed and the magnitude of the operations performed in factories can scarcely fail of some educational effect."[217] The absence of any true apprenticeship in modern factories prevents the detailed worker from understanding the method and true bearing even of those processes which are closely linked to that in which he is engaged. The ordinary machine-tender, save in a very few instances, e.g., watchmaking, has no general understanding of the work of a whole department. Present conditions do not enable the "tender" to get out of machinery the educational influence he might get. Professor Nicholson expresses himself dubiously upon the educational value of the machine. "Machinery of itself does not tend to develop the mind as the sea and mountains do, but still it does not necessarily involve deterioration of general mental ability."[218] Dr. Arlidge expresses a more decided opinion. "Generally speaking, it may be asserted of machinery that it calls for little or no brain exertion on the part of those connected with its operations; it arouses no interest, and has nothing in it to quicken or brighten the intelligence, though it may sharpen the sight and stimulate muscular activity in some one limited direction."[219]

The work of machine-tending is never of course absolutely automatic or without spontaneity and skill. To a certain limited extent the "tender" of machinery rules as well as serves the machine; in seeing that his portion of the machine works in accurate adjustment to the rest, the qualities of care, judgment, and responsibility are evolved. For a customary skill of wrist and eye which speedily hardens into an instinct, is often substituted a series of adjustments requiring accurate quantitative measurement and conscious reference to exact standards. In such industries as those of watchmaking the factory worker, though upon the average his work requires less manual dexterity than the handworker in the older method, may get more intellectual exercise in the course of his work. But though economists have paid much attention to this industry, in considering the character of machine-tending it is not an average example for a comparison of machine labour and hand labour; for the extreme delicacy of many of the operations even under machinery, the responsibility attaching to the manipulation of expensive material, and the minute adjustment of the numerous small parts, enable the worker in a watch factory to get more interest and more mental training out of his work than falls to the ordinary worker in a textile or metal factory. Wherever the material is of a very delicate nature and the processes involve some close study of the individual qualities of each piece of material, as is the case with the more valuable metals, with some forms of pottery, with silk or lace, elements of thought and skill survive and may be even fostered under machine industry. A great part of modern inventiveness, however, is engaged in devising automatic checks and indicators for the sake of dispensing with detailed human skill and reducing the spontaneous or thoughtful elements of tending machinery to a minimum. When this minimum is reached the highly-paid skilled workman gives place to the low-skilled woman or child, and eventually the process passes over entirely into the hands of machinery. So long, however, as human labour continues to co-operate with machinery, certain elements of thought and spontaneity adhere to it. These must be taken into account in any estimate of the net educative influence of machinery. But though these mental qualities must not be overlooked, exaggerated importance should not be attached to them. The layman is often apt to esteem too highly the nature of skilled specialist work. A locomotive superintendent of a railway was recently questioned as to the quality of engine-driving. "After twenty years' experience he declared emphatically that the very best engine-drivers were those who were most mechanical and unintelligent in their work, who cared least about the internal mechanism of the engine."[220] Yet engine-driving is far less mechanical and monotonous than ordinary tending of machinery.

So far as the man follows the machine and has his work determined for him by mechanical necessity, the educative pressure of the latter force must be predominant. Machinery, like everything else, can only teach what it practises. Order, exactitude, persistence, conformity to unbending law,—these are the lessons which must emanate from the machine. They have an important place as elements in the formation of intellectual and moral character. But of themselves they contribute a one-sided and very imperfect education. Machinery can exactly reproduce; it can, therefore, teach the lesson of exact reproduction, an education of quantitative measurements. The defect of machinery, from the educative point of view, is its absolute conservatism. The law of machinery is a law of statical order, that everything conforms to a pattern, that present actions precisely resemble past and future actions. Now the law of human life is dynamic, requiring order not as valuable in itself, but as the condition of progress. The law of human life is that no experience, no thought or feeling is an exact copy of any other. Therefore, if you confine a man to expending his energy in trying to conform exactly to the movements of a machine, you teach him to abrogate the very principle of life. Variety is of the essence of life, and machinery is the enemy of variety. This is no argument against the educative uses of machinery, but only against the exaggeration of these uses. If a workman expend a reasonable portion of his energy in following the movements of a machine, he may gain a considerable educational value; but he must also have both time and energy left to cultivate the spontaneous and progressive arts of life.

Sec. 5. It is often urged that the tendency of machinery is not merely to render monotonous the activity of the individual worker, but to reduce the individual differences in workers. This criticism finds expression in the saying: "All men are equal before the machine." So far as machinery actually shifts upon natural forces work which otherwise would tax the muscular energy, it undoubtedly tends to put upon a level workers of different muscular capacity. Moreover, by taking over work which requires great precision of movement, there is a sense in which it is true that machinery tends to reduce the workers to a common level of skill, or even of un-skill.

"Whenever a process requires peculiar dexterity and steadiness of hand, it is withdrawn as soon as possible from the cunning workman, who is prone to irregularities of many kinds, and it is placed in charge of a peculiar mechanism, so self-regulating that a child can superintend it."[221]

That this is not true of the most highly-skilled or qualitative work must be conceded, but it applies with great force to the bulk of lower-skilled labour. By the aid of machinery—i.e., of the condensed embodiment of the inventor's skill, the clumsy or weak worker is rendered capable of assisting the nicest movements on a closer equality with the more skilled worker. Of course piece-work, as practised in textile and hardware industries, shows that the most complete machinery has not nearly abolished the individual differences between one worker and another. But assuming that the difference in recorded piece wages accurately represents difference in skill or capacity of work—which is not quite the case—it seems evident that there is less variation in capacity among machine-workers than among workers engaged in employments where the work is more muscular, or is conducted by human skill with simpler implements. The difference in productive capacity between an English and a Hindoo navvy is considerably greater than the difference between a Lancashire mill operative and an operative in an equally well-equipped and organised Bombay mill.

But this is by no means all that is signified by the "equality of workers before the machine." It is the adaptability of the machine to the weaker muscles and intelligence of women and children that is perhaps the most important factor. The machine in its development tends to give less and less prominence to muscle and high individual skill in the mass of workers, more and more to certain qualities of body and mind which not only differ less widely in different men, but in which women and children are more nearly on a level with men. It is of course true that considerable differences of individual skill and effort survive in the typical machine industry. "Machine-weaving, for instance, simple as it seems, is divided into higher and lower grades, and most of those who work in the lower grades have not the stuff in them that is required for weaving with several colours."[222] But the general effect of machinery is to lessen rather than to increase individual differences of efficiency. The tendency of machine industry to displace male by female labour is placed beyond all question by the statistics of occupations in England, which show since 1851 a regular and considerable rise in the proportion of women to men workers in most branches of manufacture. Legal restrictions, and in the more civilised communities, the growth of a healthy public opinion, prevent the economic force from being operative to the same degree so far as children are concerned.

Those very qualities of narrowly restricted care and judgment, detailed attention, regularity and patience, which we see to be characteristic of machine work, are common human qualities in the sense that they are within the capacity of all, and that even in the degree of their development and practice there is less difference between the highly-trained adult mechanic and the raw "half-timer" than in the development and practice of such powers as machinery has superseded. It must be recognised that machinery does exercise a certain equalising influence by assigning a larger and larger relative importance to those faculties which are specific as compared with those which are individual.[223] "General ability" is coming to play a more important part in industry than specialised ability,[3] and though considerable differences may exist in the "general ability" of individuals, the differences will be smaller than in specialised abilities.[224]

The net influence of machinery upon the quality of labour, then, is found to differ widely according to the relation which subsists between the worker and the machine. Its educative influence, intellectual and moral, upon those concerned with the invention, management, and direction of machine industry, and upon all whose work is about machinery, but who are not detailed machine-tenders, is of a distinctly elevating character. Its effect, however, upon machine-tenders in cases where, by the duration of the working day or the intensity of the physical effort, it exhausts the productive energy of the worker, is to depress vitality and lower him in the scale of humanity by an excessive habit of conformity to the automatic movements of a non-human motor. This human injury is not adequately compensated by the education in routine and regularity which it confers, or by the slight understanding of the large co-operative purposes and methods of machine industry which his position enables him to acquire.

FOOTNOTES:

[198] Cf. supra, chap. iii. Sec. 2.

[199] Karl Marx ranks the chief economies of machinery under two heads—(1) Machinery supersedes the skill of men working with tools. "The machine, which is the starting-point of the industrial revolution, supersedes the workman, who handles a single tool, by a mechanism operating with a number of similar tools, and set in motion by a single motive power, whatever the form of that power may be." (2) Machinery supersedes the strength of man. "Increase in the size of a machine, and in the number of its working tools, calls for a more massive mechanism to drive it; and this mechanism requires, in order to overcome its resistance, a mightier moving power than that of man." (Capital, vol. ii. pp. 370, 371.)

[200] Principles of Economics, 2nd edit., pp. 314, 322.

[201] Der Grossbetrieb, p. 120.

[202] Ibid., p. 117.

[203] Evidence given by Mr. T. Birtwistle.

[204] Op. cit., p. 82. Babbage, in laying stress on one of the "advantages" of machinery, makes an ingenuous admission of this "forcing" power. "One of the most singular advantages we derive from machinery is the check it affords against the inattention, the idleness, or the knavery of human agents." (Economy of Machinery, p. 39; cf. also Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures, p. 30.)

[205] Porter, Progress of the Nation, p. 590.

[206] Cf. Schulze-Gaevernitz, p. 115.

[207] For a fuller treatment of this subject, see the next chapter.

[208] Cf. Patten, The Theory of Dynamic Economics, chap. xi.

[209] Uses and Abuses of Money, p. 111.

[210] Principles, p. 315.

[211] Ibid., p. 316.

[212] Page 435.

[213] A similar difficulty in distinguishing town influences from specific trade influences confronted Dr. Arlidge in his investigation into diseases of employments. "It is a most difficult problem to solve, especially in the case of an industrial town population, how far the diseases met with are town-made and how far trade-made; the former almost always predominates." (Diseases of Occupation, p. 33.)

[214] Mulhall, Dictionary of Statistics, p. 545.

[215] Cf. Marshall, Principles of Economics, vol. i. p. 315.

[216] D.A. Wells, Contemporary Review, 1889, p. 392.

[217] Taylor, Modern Factory System, p. 435.

[218] Cf. the comparison of conditions of town and country labour in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Bk. I., chap. x., part 2.

[219] Diseases of Occupations, pp. 25, 26.

[220] The Social Horizon, p. 22.

[221] Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures, chap. i. p. 19.

[222] Marshall, Principles of Economics, p. 265.

[223] Cf. chap. x.

[224] Cf. Marshall, p. 265.



CHAPTER X.

THE ECONOMY OF HIGH WAGES.

Sec. 1. The Economy of Low Wages. Sec. 2. Modifications of the Early Doctrine—Sir T. Brassey's Evidence from Heavy Manual Work. Sec. 3. Wages, Hours, and Product in Machine-industry. Sec. 4. A General Application of the Economy of High Wages and Short Hours inadmissible. Sec. 5. Mutual Determination of Conditions of Employment and Productivity. Sec. 6. Compressibility of Labour and Intensification of Effort. Sec. 7. Effective Consumption dependent upon Spare Energy of the Worker. Sec. 8. Growth of Machinery in relation to Standard of Comfort. Sec. 9. Economy of High Wages dependent upon Consumption.

Sec. 1. The theory of a "natural" rate of wages fixed at the bare subsistence-point which was first clearly formulated in the writings of Quesnay and the so-called "physiocratic" school was little more than a rough generalisation of the facts of labour in France. But these facts, summed up in the phrase, "Il ne gagne que sa vie," and elevated to the position of a natural law, implied the general belief that a higher rate of wage would not result in a correspondent increase of the product of labour, that it would not pay an employer to give wages above the point of bare sustenance and reproduction. This dogma of the economy of cheap labour, taught in a slightly modified form by many of the leading English economists of the first half of the nineteenth century, has dominated the thought and indirectly influenced the practice of the business world. It is true that Adam Smith in a well-known passage had given powerful utterance to a different view of the relation between work and wages:—"The liberal reward of labour as it encourages the propagation so it encourages the industry of the common people. The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives."[225] But the teaching of Ricardo, and the writers who most closely followed him in his conception of the industrial system, leaned heavily in favour of low wages as the sound basis of industrial progress.

The doctrine of the economy of low wages in England scarcely needed the formal support of the scientific economist. It was already strongly implanted in the mind of the eighteenth century "business man," who moralised upon the excesses resulting from high wages much in the tone of the business man of to-day. It would be scarcely possible to parody the following line of reflection:—

"The poor in the manufacturing counties will never work any more time in general than is necessary just to live and support their weekly debauches. Upon the whole we may fairly aver that a reduction of wages in the woollen manufactures would be a national blessing and advantage and no real injury to the poor. By this means we might keep our trade, uphold our rents, and reform the people into the bargain." (Smith's Memoirs of Wool, vol. ii. p. 308.)

Compare with this Arthur Young's frequent suggestion that rents should be raised in order to improve farming.[226] So Dr. Ure, half a century later, notwithstanding that his main argument is for the "economy of high wages," both on the ground that it evokes the best quality of work and because it keeps the workman contented, is unable to avoid flatly contradicting himself as follows:—

"High wages, instead of leading to thankfulness of temper and improvement of mind, have, in too many cases, cherished pride and supplied funds for supporting refractory spirits in strikes wantonly inflicted upon one set of mill-owners after another throughout the several districts of Lancashire for the purpose of degrading them into a state of servitude." (Philosophy of Manufactures, p. 366.)

So again (p. 298):—"In fact, it was their high wages which enabled them to maintain a stipendary committee in affluence, and to pamper themselves into nervous ailments by a diet too rich and exciting for their indoor occupation."

The experiments of Robert Owen in raising wages and shortening hours in his New Lanark mills failed utterly to convince his fellow-manufacturers that a high standard of comfort among the workers would bring a correspondent rise in working efficiency.

The history of the early factory system, under which rapid fortunes were built out of the excessive toil of children and low-skilled adult workers paid at rates which were, in many instances, far below true "subsistence wages," furnished to the commercial mind a convincing argument in favour of "cheap labour," and set political economy for half a century at war with the rising sentiments of humanity.[227] Even now, the fear frequently expressed in the New World regarding the "competition of cheap labour" attests a strong survival of this theory, which held it to be the first principle of "good business" to pay as low wages as possible.

Sec. 2. The trend of more recent thought has been in the direction of a progressive modification of the doctrine of the "economy of low wages." The common maxim that "if you want a thing well done you must expect to pay for it" implies some general belief in a certain correspondence of work and wages. The clearer formulation of this idea has been in large measure the work of economic thinkers who have set themselves to the close study of comparative statistics. The work in which Mr. Brassey, the great railway contractor, was engaged gave him an opportunity of making accurate comparison of the work and wages of workmen of various nationalities, and his son, Sir Thomas Brassey, collected and published a number of facts bearing upon the subject which, as regards certain kinds of work, established a new relation between work and wages. He found that English navvies employed upon the Grand Trunk Railway in Canada, and receiving from 5s. to 6s. a day, did a greater amount of work for the money than French-Canadians paid at 3s. 6d. a day; that it was more profitable to employ Englishmen at 3s. to 3s. 6d. upon making Irish railways than Irishmen at 1s. 6d. to 1s. 8d.; that "in India, although the cost of dark labour ranges from 4-1/2d. to 6d. a day, mile for mile the cost of railway work is about the same as in England;" that in quarry work, "in which Frenchmen, Irishmen, and Englishmen were employed side by side, the Frenchman received three, the Irishman four, and the Englishman six francs a day. At those different rates the Englishman was found to be the most advantageous workman of the three." Extending his inquiries to the building trades, to mining, and to various departments of manufactures, he found a general consensus of opinion among employers and other men of practical experience making for a similar conclusion. In France, Germany, and Belgium, where wages and the standard of living were considerably lower than in England, the cost of turning out a given product was not less, but greater. In the United States and in a few trades of Holland, where the standard of comfort was as high or higher than in the corresponding English industries, more or better work was done. In short, the efficiency of labour was found to vary with tolerable accuracy in accordance with the standard of comfort or real wages.