The most that can be said in answer to the foregoing argument is that there are mitigating circumstances which have been overlooked. In the first place. industrial changes are not abrupt: they are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. They do not affect large bodies of workmen at once. Invention proceeds by slow movements. and the introduction of improved processes is not :Mi throughout an industry. Furthermore. the division of labor which prevails when ma chinery is employed reduces processes to com paratively simple elements and creates analogous rrocesse: in branches of production which are apparently widely dissimilar. This facilitates in a high degree the passage from one employment to another. All of these things do not remove the evils for the individual of industrial changes. but they mitigate their severity.
Much more serious is the charge that ma chinery the laborer. and makes him a mere part of the mechanism. It is charged that the monotony of the operations deadens the in tellect. while the =tress and strain of the labor which must keep lame with the machinery impairs the body and weakens vitality. The early his tory of manufacturing in England seemed to bear out these assertions, and the well-authenticated pictures of the misery and suffering in the manu facturing districts lend a sombre color to the history of the first half of the nineteenth century. But factory legislation has done much to remove the evils complained of, and there is no convinc ing evidence of permanent deterioration.
Akin to this objection to machinery is the claim that in doing away with the old handi crafts, art in industry was abolished. The old artisan was the master of a series of operations which culminated in the finished product. The modern workman knows but a part of the work and the old skill has passed away. The artisan, it is said, has been degraded into a mere laborer. But the assertion is too general. While opera tions changed there was still room for the better craftsman. lle rose to the work of superintend
ence, becoming the foreman or overseer of the new system. The poorer craftsmen undoubtedly sank to the position of workmen, but to lose a poor carpenter and obtain a good hand in a planing mill is probably no loss to the community at large. Moreover, as the gap between skilled and unskilled labor was no longer as wide as of old, there has probably been an uplifting of the general character of labor performed. As to the artistic side of production, it may have seemed at one tinta that machinery was eliminating this factor, but in view of recent developments this cannot lie stated as a present tendency. With the perfection of machinery and the widespread use of manufactured products the artistic element has reasserted itself, and it is probable that artis tic forms are more widely diffused in common life than they ever were before. Finally, it is to be borne in mind that the lowering in prices which results from the introduction of machin ery frequently means an increase in the real wages of the laborers not immediately affected by the change. The simultaneous introduction of machinery in all of the principal industries might conceivably lower wages, estimated in money, while leaving unchanged the quantity of commodi ties which the laborer can command. What is of supreme importance, however, is the fact that the increased productivity of industry creates a fund of wealth out of which higher wages for shorter hours may eventually be obtained. How ever disastrous mechanical inventions may be for particular workmen, it can hardly be doubted that it will be through such inventions that the laboring class will eventually he relieved from the worst conditions of the present day.
Consult: Reports of the United States De part»lent of Labor; Wright, The Industrial Evo lution of the United States (New York, 18951 ; Nicholson, The Influence of Machinery upon Wages (new ed., London, 1S92).