| Year of production | Article produced | Different operations performed | Different workmen employed | Time worked. | Labor Cost | |
| Hours | Minutes | |||||
| 1829-30 | Wheat (hand) | 8 | 4 | 61 | 5 | $3.55 |
| 1895-96 | Wheat (machine) | 5 | 6 | 3 | 19 | .66 |
| 1859 | Boots (hand) | 83 | 2 | 1436 | 40 | 408.50 |
| 1895 | Boots (machine) | 122 | 113 | 154 | 5 | 35.40 |
| 1850 | Carpet (hand) | 15 | 18 | 4047 | 30 | 20.24 |
| 1895 | Carpet (machine) | 41 | 81 | 509 | 1 | .29 |
| 1891 | Loading ore (hand) | 1 | 1 | 200 | 0 | 40.00 |
| 1896 | Loading ore (machine) | 3 | 10 | 2 | 51 | .55 |
| Year of production | Article produced | Different operations performed | Different workmen employed |
| 1829-30 | Wheat (hand) | 8 | 4 |
| 1895-96 | Wheat (machine) | 5 | 6 |
| 1859 | Boots (hand) | 83 | 2 |
| 1895 | Boots (machine) | 122 | 113 |
| 1850 | Carpet (hand) | 15 | 18 |
| 1895 | Carpet (machine) | 41 | 81 |
| 1891 | Loading ore (hand) | 1 | 1 |
| 1896 | Loading ore (machine) | 3 | 10 |
| Year of production | Article produced | Time worked. | Labor Cost | |
| Hours | Minutes | |||
| 1829-30 | Wheat (hand) | 61 | 5 | $ 3.55 |
| 1895-96 | Wheat (machine) | 3 | 19 | .66 |
| 1859 | Boots (hand) | 1436 | 40 | 408.50 |
| 1895 | Boots (machine) | 154 | 5 | 35.40 |
| 1850 | Carpet (hand) | 4047 | 30 | 20.24 |
| 1895 | Carpet (machine) | 509 | 1 | .29 |
| 1891 | Loading ore (hand) | 200 | 0 | 40.00 |
| 1896 | Loading ore (machine) | 2 | 51 | .55 |
These cases, chosen at random, all show an increase in the number of different men employed, and an immense saving in time and in labor cost. Nothing is indicated however as to the total amount of employment. Optimistic writers like Carroll D. Wright claim that if machinery has displaced labor in one direction it has created more employment for them in others. He shows for instance[29] that the per capita consumption of cotton in this country in 1830 was 5.9 lbs., while in 1890 it was 19 lbs., and gives similar figures for iron and steel, and railroad traffic. It will be noticed that all of his examples are chosen from industries in which the demand is elastic. Mr. J. A. Hobson, a more careful and conservative writer, draws less optimistic conclusions from a study of Great Britain. He says: “First, so far as the aggregate of manufactures is concerned, the net result of the increased use of machinery has not been to offer an increased demand for labor in those industries commensurate with the growth of the working population. Second, an increased proportion of the manufacturing population is employed either in those branches of the large industries where machinery is least used, or in the smaller manufactures which are either subsidiary to the large industries, or are engaged in providing miscellaneous comforts and luxuries.”[30] It must be said, however, in modification of Mr. Hobson’s inferences, that it may be accounted as a social gain if the demand for manufactured commodities can be met by the labor of a
smaller proportion of the population, since the energies of the rest are then set free for professional or artistic or similar pursuits. A study of the census reports of Great Britain seems to show that this is what has happened in that country.
The amount of labor is not the only factor to be considered; the regularity of employment, as we saw in the last section, is of hardly less importance. “Another danger of an entirely opposite kind,” says Professor Nicholson[31] , “lurks in this immense power of machinery, which is continually showing its reality and remedies for which will, it is to be feared, be the fruit of long years of tentative adaptation to the new environment. What all sensible workingmen desire, what the advocates of the trade unions say is their chief object, is to get a “steady sufficient wage,” but it has been proved inductively that great fluctuations in price occur in those commodities which require for their production a large proportion of fixed capital. These fluctuations in price are accompanied by corresponding fluctuations in wages and irregularity of employment. But fluctuations in wages and discontinuities in employment are two of the greatest evils which can befall the laboring classes.” We have already seen how modern capitalistic methods of production may lead to over-production and to a crisis. We now see how machine methods may cause unemployment or irregular employment. The men displaced directly by new machinery, those thrown out of work by industrial depression resulting from over-production in machine industries, and finally those irregularly employed in the new occupations supplying luxuries—all of these may fairly attribute their suffering in large measure to machine methods.
“The second great charge made against the factory system is that it displaces a higher grade of labor by a lower
grade; sometimes substituting the work of women and children for that of men; sometimes substituting work under conditions physically or morally unhealthful, for work under healthful conditions; sometimes substituting specialized and mechanical work for diversified occupation which contributes to general intelligence.” The point as to the labor of women and children has already been discussed. The charge that factory labor is physically unhealthful may in general be denied. Mr. Wright, in an elaborate defense of the factory system in the Tenth Census, concluded that the conditions of work in the modern factory are much more conducive to good health than those under the preceding domestic system, while morally they are far superior. The qualities demanded by the machine production of the modern factory are punctuality, steadiness, reliability, and sobriety, and it therefore makes against intemperance and immorality. So far as these exist in factory towns, they are the result of town life rather than of manufacturing. It must, however, be said that while the factory system is not inherently unhealthful, the high pressure at which operatives of steam-driven machinery are compelled to work, particularly in this country, may and often does wear him out prematurely. This again is partially offset by a shortening of the hours of labor.
The final charge against the factory system is monotony of work. Many writers, from Adam Smith down, take the view that it is more stupefying to make a small part of an article, say the sixty-fourth part of a shoe, than to make the whole article. Professor Marshall, who has considered the subject carefully[32] , concludes that while it takes away manual skill, it substitutes higher or more intellectual forms of skill. “The more delicate the machine’s power the greater is the judgment and carefulness which is called for from those who see after it.” But after all
there is less danger from monotony of work than from monotony of life, and the cure for this would seem to be in an increase of machinery rather than in its abolition.