who do not themselves tend it, shall not be used in such a
way as to increase the physical strain of those who do tend it. "There
is a temptation," as Mr. Cunningham says, "to treat the machine as the
main element in production, and to make it the measure of what a man
ought to do, instead of regarding the man as the first consideration,
and the machine as the instrument which helps him; the machine may be
made the primary consideration, and the man may be treated as a mere
slave who tends it."[209]

Sec. 4. Now to come to the question of "monotony." Is the net tendency of
machinery to make labour more monotonous or less, to educate the
worker or to brutalise him? Does labour become more intellectual under
the machine? Professor Marshall, who has thoughtfully discussed this
question, inclines in favour of machinery. It takes away manual skill,
but it substitutes higher or more intellectual forms of skill.[210]
"The more delicate the machine's power the greater is the judgment and
carefulness which is called for from those who see after it."[211]
Since machinery is daily becoming more and more delicate, it would
follow that the tending of machinery would become more and more
intellectual. The judgment of Mr. Cooke Taylor, in the conclusion of
his admirable work, _The Modern Factory System_, is the same. "If man
were merely an intellectual animal, even only a moral and intellectual
one, it could scarcely be denied, it seems to us, that the results of
the factory system have been thus far elevating."[212] Mr. Taylor
indeed admits of the operative population that "they have deteriorated
artistically; but art is a matter of faculty, of perception, of
aptitude, rather than of intellect." This strange severance of Art
from Intellect and Morals, especially when we bear in mind that Life
itself is the finest and most valuable of Arts, will scarcely commend
itself to deeper students of economic movements. The fuller
significance of this admission will appear when the widest aspect of
the subject is discussed in our final chapter.

The question of the net intellectual effects of machinery is not one
which admits of positive answer. It would be open to one to admit with
Mr. Taylor that the operatives were growing more intellectual, and
that their contact with machinery exercises certain educative
influences, but to deny that the direct results of machinery upon the
workers were favourable to a wide cultivation of intellectual pow