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.
§ 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.
§ 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.