Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 12.djvu/703

* MACHINE GTJN. 623 MACHINERY. (Annapolis. ISlili i ; UraS, Ordnance and Gunnery (New York, 1900) ; Arms and Explosives (monthly, London). MACHINERY, Economic Effects of. The extension ol machinery in modern production ha3 given rise to a controversy as to its economic significance. The opposing attitudes may be said to spring from a ditference in the point of view, those who defend machinery looking upon it chiefly from the standpoint of production, ■while the opposing party emphasizes its effects in distribution. From the viewpoint of production the economic ideal is the maximum production of goods for the satisfaction of human wants. The machine enhances production by saving labor, but the real significance of labor-saving is that with like quantities of human labor far greater re- sults can be olitained by the use of machinery than without it. The emphasis which has been laid in the discussion upon labor-saving rather than upon increased production has seemed to give a point of vantage to the opponent of machinery, who asks why mankind is benefited when labor, upon which the majority rely for their subsistence, is saved. It should, therefore, be understood that increased production is al- ways involved in labor-saving when the benefits of labor-saving are discussed. How Machinery has multiplied the productive power of labor is a story that has been fre- quently told. For an exhaustive treatment of this aspect of the subject, the reader may be referred to the Thirteenth Annual Report (1898) of the United States Department of Labor on Hand and ilachine Labor, in which no less than 672 examples of labor-saving by the use of machinery are set forth. A study of this report will correct any misapprehension that this growth has been sudden. In many cases the data for hand and machine labor are almost contem- poraneous, while in others the data for hand labor refer to very much earlier periods. An examination of the detailed tables will show that in the manufacture of like products, in some establishments, certain operations are performed by hand which are performed by machinery in others. It will show also just what operations in the aggregate process of bringing the goods to a completion have been afTected by mechanical improvements and what remain for manual labor. (."■ountries bound by tradition and custom are slow to accept improvements, and even among the more advanced nations there is great inertia to be overcome. Xowhere has the utilization of perfected processes and mechanical appliances of all kinds been mgre rapid than in the L'nited States. Elsewhere plants are only slowly recon- structed to meet the technical improvements, largely because of the considerable investment of capital in the older processes. But in the United States the spur of necessity has been greater be- cause of the constant expansion of industry and the competition of new plants with old. which has forced the latter to keep up to the mark in their technical processes. A relative scarcity of labor as compared not alone with the industrial but also the agricultural possiliilitics of the United States has been a powerful spur to labor- saving. In the period which gave its stamp to our economic development labor was the most costly element in the production of goods, and to the economizing of this element every effort was bent. Thus far our attention has been directed to machinery and its application as a factor in the production of wealth. There is another side to the question, namely, its effects upon the laboring classes. The contention against machinery has been that it throws men out of employment, that it degrades labor and destroys all artistic ele- ments of production. The introduction of labor- saving machinery almost inevitably throws men out of work, the machine taking their places. The persons thus displaced must, as a rule, seek em- plo_Tnent elsewhere. It is possible that such an impetus will be given to the industry that there will be room for the employment of all who were previously at work, but this is not probable in the first instance. It is not likely that there will be an immediate expansion of the demand for the product commensurate with the increa.sed facili- ties of production, without reducing the labor force. In the long run the industry will gener- ally develop so as to afford even wider opportuni- ties for emplojTiient than before. But the process takes time, and meanwhile the laborer must either starve or find employment elsewhere, iloreover it is by no means certain that when the enhanced demand for labor occurs in the employ- ment from which machinery had driven the work- man, the same kind of labor as that which has been displaced will be needed. The skill which the laborer has acquired in his calling may no longer be in demand, and he ma3' have to apply himself to something else for which he is less fitted and in which he can render service of an inferior grade only. That these changes in indus- try involve great h!irdships for individuals cannot be denied. It is vain to point out that the de- mand for labor in general is probably not dimin- ished, that industries increase, and that new in- dustries are created by inventions and machinery. It was of little consequence to the weaver who was thrown out of employment by the power loom, that the workshops in which the machinery was manufactured had an increased demand for machinists. Little as we can doubt that an in- dustrial community eventually adjusts itself to such changes, just as little can we doubt that they press hard upon the individuals who are immediately affected by them. The most that can be said in answer to the foregoing argument is that there are mitigating circmnstanees which have been overlooked. In the first place, industrial changes are not abrupt : they are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. They do not affect large bodies of workmen at once. Invention proceeds by slow movements, and the introduction of improved processes is not sim- ultaneous throughout an industry. Furthermore, the division of labor which prevails when ma- chinery is employed reduces processes to com- paratively simple elements and creates analogous processes in branches of production which are apparently widely dissimilar. This facilitates in a high degree the passage from one employment to anofher. ^All of these things do not remove the evils for the individual of industrial changes, but they mitigate their severity. Much more serious is the charge that ma- chinery degrades the laborer, and makes him a mere part of the mechanism. It is charged that the monotony of the operations deadens the in- tellect, while the stress and strain of the labor