Russia, and Russia is also the country in which industry employs fewest workmen. Thus, far from diminishing employment, machinery actually increases the number of workmen. The explanation of this may be stated as follows.

A great proprietor maintains on his estate a hundred workmen who labour for him. He invents sundry machines, which enable him to save one-half of the manual labour, so that for the future fifty men are sufficient to do all his work. Will he then leave the other fifty, whose labour is no longer necessary, unemployed, and cast into the sea, as useless, the food with which they were nourished? Certainly not. He will continue to support them, and will employ them to do him fresh services. The same number of workmen will be employed, but more commodities will be produced, and more wants satisfied.

Take another case: the proprietor may content himself with the old amount of produce, and reduce by a half the number of hours he requires his hundred retainers to work. If he does this, the machines will have created additional leisure, instead of additional products. If all his rational wants were already satisfied, the second course will be the wiser; if this was not so, it is the first that will prevail. A country, viewed as one great consumer, is in exactly the position of this proprietor.

What happens is really this. Machinery shortens labour, and saves hand-work. The economy of handwork lowers the prices of all fabrics, and with the

fall in price of these articles, the consumers have money available, with which they purchase other commodities. Workmen, whom the new machinery has temporarily thrown out of employment, are again taken on to make the articles which are the objects of the new demand. Since the employment of workmen remains the same, while the means of subsistence does not diminish, there will be no reduction of wages. On the contrary, the working classes will be benefited, since with the same wages they will be able to purchase a greater amount of the commodities whose prices have been lowered by the use of machinery.

§ 5. How Machinery may compel Workmen to change their Occupation.

If consumers employ the money which machinery enables them to save, in purchasing a greater amount of the goods thus cheapened, all the workmen may continue to work at this industry, employed in producing greater quantities to meet the increased demand. In this case the only difference will be that wants will be more largely satisfied.

If, however, the consumers prefer to purchase new products, workmen will be obliged to take to new industries. Often they will only be able to do this slowly and with difficulty; sometimes they will be unable to do it at all, will suffer, perhaps even succumb. They will have to endure a crisis. This crisis will be of greater severity, if the new industry

is situated in another province, and worse still if it is transferred to another country. As soon, however, as it is passed, the same number of workmen will be employed, only there will have been a displacement which will leave more workmen in one place and fewer in another. A crisis of this sort was suffered in Flanders, when spinning machines broke the spindle in the hands of the country spinning women, and summoned a new class of workwomen to the factories at Ghent.

In these instances, happily of rare occurrence, it is the duty of employers of labour and of public bodies to come to the aid of the dispossessed workmen by instructing them, by facilitating their migration, and even by giving them actual help, as was done in Flanders in 1847. The new machinery benefits society at large, it is, therefore, intolerable that the workman, who is not responsible for the modifications introduced into industry, should be made their victim. Since he is deprived of his livelihood in the interests of the public good, he has a right, should he need it, to an indemnity, and the machinery which has increased production, affords the means of paying it.

§ 6. How Machinery increases the Employment of Workmen.

Thanks to machinery, the earth produces more, new sources of wealth are being discovered, and works are multiplying on every side. In this way

more workmen are employed, and at the same time there are more commodities to satisfy their hunger, their need of clothing, and their other wants. The number is incalculable of the workmen employed in industries which machinery has created, such as railroads, post offices, telegraphs, steamships, mines, great manufactories, and the construction of machines themselves. Printing employs twenty times more workmen than there were ever copyists transcribing manuscripts. Transport, again, demands the services of a hundred times the number of people it used to employ when people and produce grew up side by side.

J. S. Mill has remarked with profound sadness, that it is doubtful if hitherto all the machines that have been invented have decreased the sum of human labour by a single hour. Far from the hours of labour being decreased, far more men work at present and work for a longer time. Formerly the night brought sleep to all, and the Sabbath, rest. Now numbers are kept at work all night, on railroads, on ships, in the depths of coal mines, in blast furnaces, in sugar refineries, at offices, and even in the laboratory or library of the student, everywhere in fact where industrial process may not be interrupted, and the activity of modern life forbids delay. Man is harassed and consumed by these indefatigable iron slaves which he commands, but which he has also to serve, and whose activity "doth make the night jointlabourer to the day."

H

The immediate remedy for this excess of toil is to preserve with all possible scrupulousness, at least one day out of the seven to be spent in complete rest by those who are incessantly occupied with daily toil. Hereafter, when all rational wants are satisfied, machines will be required to cease the incessant increase of productions, and create more leisure for that true life, which, as the Greeks so well understood, is the life of the soul.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN EQUILIBRIUM BETWEEN PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION.

WHEN SO many and such powerful machines are seen at work on every side, the question arises as to how this enormous and ever-increasing quantity of products will find purchasers and consumers. Will not the lack of an outlet some day produce a glut?

Economists reply that a general glut is impossible, since it is a fundamental principle that "products exchange for products," and thus if everybody who may wish to exchange offers twice as much as heretofore, the exchange will be effected exactly the same, the equation will be maintained, and the sole difference will be that every one will give and receive