may call for more workers than were employed before the new machinery came in, but men needing a different training, and some of the former workmen may be thrown out of em ployment. The introduction of the linotype and monotype is said to have displaced a large number of hand type-setters, but to have increased the amount of printing. As the ma chines are expensive and can not be worked properly by men not highly expert, men past thirty-five years of age have not been allowed to learn their § 6. Loss to the less efficient workers. The least efficient men in any trade suffer most from the introduction of ma chinery. The new method crowds hardest the man at the margin of employment. The more skilled workman can, at his more rapid pace, still earn a living wage in competition with a machine, or can move into some other occupation. It often happens that they are advanced to be foremen or man agers, and gain greatly by the change. The less skilled, un able to adapt themselves, can but drop out entirely, innocent victims of an economic change, sacrifices to the cause of in 2 These sudden changes in machinery also cause losses in many cases to the owners of the existing equipment. Every considerable improvement brings unfortunate results to some while it means gains to others. At every moment in a progressive society, some agents are being thrown out of use by improvements in tools and machinery. The machinery in flour-mills has been almost completely changed, parts of it repeatedly, while steam rollers have been substituted for the old millstones and many old mills have been abandoned. A change in the process of making paper threw out of use much machinery that was only in part saved by its removal and adaptation to the making of coarser grades of paper. Many minor inventions in the iron industry, still more the invention of the Bessemer process, threw out of use great numbers of the old appliances. Such illustrations can be in definitely multiplied.
Similarly changes in the sources of power are shifting the location of many industries and causing the rise of some and the fall of other valuable agents. Water-power, because of its uncertainty, has been replaced in many places by steam-power, and in many 'Axes steam-power in turn has been rivaled by water-power since the improvements in the generation and transmission of electricity.
dustrial progress. Happily such pathetic incidents are rela tively not numerous. Most machinery is introduced in com mercial centers when demand for the products is increasing, and there is no need to discharge men; it gradually spreads to other factories in such a way that most men can adapt themselves to the change.
Since recorded history began there have been recurring periods of unemployment. Greece and Rome often had the problem. But it is helpful in getting some perspective in judging the effects of machinery, to note that in proportion to the number of the population the unemployed were probably more numerous in the reign of Queen Elizabeth than they are to-day, and the general level of income was much lower.
§ 7. Effect of machinery in different industries. Every new machine or process compels some readjustment of em ployment, the number in some industries increasing, in others diminishing. If extreme examples are taken, it may be made to appear either that an increase or that a decrease of em ployment results from machinery. Labor-saving machines may be roughly divided into three classes: those that create more employment in the particular industry than they take away; those that leave employment unchanged; those that reduce the amount of employment. To allow for changes in population these classes may be expressed as percentages of the whole population, (1) those labor-saving machines that call for a larger percentage of workers than before in the particular industry, (2) the same percentage, (3) a smaller percentage. The superficial appearance of "saving of labor" is greater than the reality in every industry where the new machines are more elaborate and costly than the former tools or machines. Labor is required to get out the material for the new machines, to make, repair and maintain them, and to supply them with power. But of course they would not be "labor-saving" if the labor thus required in new ways were equal to that released by the new process.
The chief changes of employment result from the shift of demand for products. The demand for different products is
more or less elastic. Industries grade off from those that are capable of developing a great demand for labor to those at the other extreme that are capable of a very slight increase, as a result of a lowering of the price. There is hardly any assignable limit to the consumption of textiles, provided their price falls; the demand for dress alone is indefinitely ex pansible. Queen Elizabeth, who had a different dress for every day in the year, has many potential imitators. It is a striking fact, in view of the prominent part labor-saving machines had in the textile industries, that there were more handlooms in use in England in 1850 than fifty years before, tho in the meantime power-looms had displaced the handlooms in all the great factories. There was still room for variety of patterns and processes. There is a constant increase rela tively, as well as absolutely, in the number employed in trans portation, as each census shows; there are more railroad em ployees relative to the population than there were stage-driv ers and teamsters before the day of railroads. The proportion of people now engaged in printing books and papers is larger by far than in the days when all the books of the world were written by the old monks in their cloisters. The proportion of workers in agriculture, on the other hand, is less than it formerly was. In part this is a change in appearance only, for the farmer once made a large part of his tools which are now made by workers employed in manufactures, yet who in a very real way are aiding in agriculture. In part the change is, however, the effect of the use of machinery and other im provements in agricultural processes. The amount of raw food products required for each hundred persons is quite in elastic. As it becomes possible to expend more for food, the change is made in quality and in variety rather than in quan tity. The greater part of the saving in the cost of food is, however, expended in other products, and the labor saved in agriculture finds employment in supplying new desires. In other cases, also, new industries are made possible as machines liberate energy from the production of the more necessary goods. At each census it is necessary to change the schedule of occupations, because men have adopted callings unknown before. The desires of men are variable and indefinitely ex pansible, and as the products of machines increase and the prices fall, income is expended in other directions. Between 1890 and 1910 the proportion of the population engaged in art, music, travel, social festivities, etc., in America has in creased as is indicated in the following: § 8. Beneficial effect of machinery upon wages. Now let us look at the fundamental theory in the problem. The intro duction of machinery has taken place along with changes in other dynamic forces, some of them doubtless in themselves "tending" to raise, others to lower, the level of real wages. Our question may take this form: What is the effect, given a stationary population, on a fixed area, with other resources unchanged ? To an unchanging population come better, more efficient machines. It is as if the land became richer, the materials easier to get, the workers stronger and swifter. It is a richer economic environment. The owners of machines, competing for the sale of machine uses, have more to offer to each laborer. It is the converse of the decreasing returns when population grows and decreasing returns result; here the material equipment grows and increasing returns result. The application of labor stops at the higher uses or services of agents and is not forced to the lower. The more perfect the economic environment, the higher the incomes even of those who own no part of the machinery. A part of this benefit may appear in the form of higher money wages re ceived, a part in the form of the lower prices of things bought. Real wages are the essential thing. As a consumer the laborer shares with every other member of society in the benefits of improved machinery. The benefits resulting from great abundance are diffused, and as goods are brought from the high, or scarcity, end of the scale of value down toward the level of free goods, everybody in the long run gains by the abundance and cheapness.