"In carpet weaving fifty years ago the workman drove the shuttle with the hand, and produced from forty-five to fifty yards per week, for which he was paid from 9d. to 1s. per yard, while at the present day a girl attending a steam loom can produce sixty yards a day, and does not cost her employer 1-1/2d. per yard for her labour. That girl with her loom is now doing the work of eight men. The question is, How are these men employed now? In a clothier's establishment, seeing a girl at work at a sewing machine, he asked the employer how many men's labour that machine saved him. He said it saved him twelve men's labour. Then he asked, 'What would those twelve men be doing now?' 'Oh,' he said, 'they will be much better employed than if they had been with me, perhaps at some new industry.' He asked, 'What new industry?' But the employer could not point out any except photography; at last he said they would probably have found employment in making sewing machines. Shortly afterwards he was asked to visit the American Singer Sewing Machine Factory, near Glasgow. He got this clothier to accompany him, and when going over the works they came upon the very same kind of machines as the clothier had in his establishment. Then he put the question to the manager, 'How long would it take a man to make one of these machines?' He said he could not tell, as no man made a machine; they had a more expeditious way of doing it than that—there would be upwards of thirty men employed in the making of one machine; but he said 'if they were to make this particular kind of machine, they would turn out one for every four and a half days' work of each man in their employment.' Now, there was a machine that with a girl had done the work of twelve men for nearly ten years, and the owner of that machine was under the impression that these twelve men would be employed making another machine, while four and a half days of each of these men was sufficient to make another machine that was capable of displacing other twelve men."
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.
§ 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 | 11.2 | 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 |