Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/502

486, and in this way has cheapened production by rendering of value the intermittent labor of whole families as it could be spared, and when it could be easiest applied. In this respect the sewing-machine has been the reverse of the former handloom. The machine-workers have prospered because they could take the new invention into their houses without diminishing its force. The handloomers were superseded because the steam-shuttle could not be made a domestic implement. 2. The eminent suitability of female labor to the sewing-machine has secured a class of workers who have had the strongest motives to apply whatever skill and industry they possessed to increase their piece-work wages by the extent and efficiency of production. It may be added, indeed, that the great results which have been obtained are among the most cogent illustrations which can be found of the magical influence of payment by results, that is to say, of payment by the piece; for, happily, no other mode of payment has been possible for sewing-machine labor.

The lesson of the whole of this gratifying and hopeful history is, as we said at the outset, that the methods of most efficient production are those which necessarily contain within themselves the methods of most effectual and beneficial distribution: in other words, if we understand and apply thoroughly and truly the conditions which most cheaply, rapidly, and constantly produce wealth, we also, and as a necessary and pari passu consequence, understand and apply the conditions which insure the distribution of that wealth among all the parties concerned in the most just and beneficial manner. So far, philosophers and philanthropists have spent their energies in the wrong direction. They have sought for artificial means of what they considered more equal distribution of the products of industry, failing to see that in the circumstances and conditions which render industry on the largest scale most productive there are native and inherent forces which link together production and distribution at every step.—The Economist.