Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/674

656 by itself, but in proportion to the increased productiveness of labor generally. Hence, it may well be that while the productive power of machines may enormously increase, yet the general increase of productive power may be much less than would at first be thought, owing to the comparatively small proportion of laborers, after all, who use machinery of great capacity largely in their employments. Looking at the number of domestic servants, of clerks, of professional men and women, of unskilled laborers of every kind, of skilled laborers, such as painters, who do not use machines, I should doubt very much whether one fourth of the laborers, even in a society like that of England, the most manufacturing in the world, use machinery of great capacity in their employments. It is easily to be accounted for, therefore, why in a given employment there should be a great increase of production without a corresponding increase of remuneration to those engaged in that particular employment. The gain has to be diffused through society, and the increase of production generally is not so great, and not nearly so great, as in a few special cases.

Another observation must be made. There may be a considerable improvement in the quality of production in employments of a non-mechanical kind, which it is difficult or even impossible to note by quantities, but where the labor competes with all other labor for remuneration. Where the increased remuneration should go to, when machines improve, is not thus so easy to determine a priori.

It is also obvious that even in an advancing community the remuneration of certain kinds of laborers, whose numbers continue disproportionate, may either not increase at all, or increase very little, the whole gain from increased productiveness being for the benefit of the laborers whose own labor improves in quality, apart from the fact that it is employed on more productive machines. Strictly speaking, unless there is a rise in the scale of living, accompanied by an improvement in quality all round, there is no reason why, in modern times, a man who can only drive a spade into the ground, or wheel a barrow, or carry bricks up a ladder, should receive any higher reward than similar laborers in former ages. The fact that such laborers are little better off is not inconsistent with the fact that workmen generally receive a larger reward than in any former period.

The way is thus cleared for answering the question as to whether the remuneration of labor has increased generally in proportion to the increased severity of labor.

It can not be denied, first of all, that there is a great increase of the productiveness of labor itself, as well as a great increase of the absolute amount of remuneration. This is admitted on all