ers,
as compared with various forms of freer and less specialised manual
labour. The intellectualisation of the town operatives (assuming the
process to be taking place) may be attributable to the thousand and
one other influences of town life rather than to machinery, save
indirectly so far as the modern industrial centre is itself the
creation of machinery.[213] It is not, I think, possible at present to
offer any clear or definite judgment. But the following distinctions
seem to have some weight in forming our opinion.

The growth of machinery has acted as an enormous stimulus to the study
of natural laws. A larger and larger proportion of human effort is
absorbed in processes of invention, in the manipulation of commerce on
an increasing scale of magnitude and complexity, and in such
management of machinery and men as requires and educates high
intellectual faculties of observation, judgment, and speculative
imagination. Of that portion of workers who may be said, within
limits, to control machinery, there can be no question that the total
effect of machinery has been highly educative.

The growing size, power, speed, complexity of machinery, undoubtedly
makes the work of this class of workers "more intellectual." Some
measure of these educative influences even extends to the "hand" who
tends some minute portion of the machinery, so far as the proper
performance of his task requires him to understand other processes
than those to which his labour is directly and exclusively applied.

So likewise consideration must be taken of the skilled work of making
and repairing machinery. The engineers' shop and other workshops are
becoming every year a more and more important factor in the equipment
of a factory or mill. But though "breakdowns" are essentially erratic
and must always afford scope for ingenuity in their repair, even in
the engineers' shop there is the same tendency for machinery to
undertake all work of repair which can be brought under routine. So
the skilled work in making and repairing machinery is continually
being reduced to a minimum, and cannot be regarded, as Professor
Nicholson is disposed to regard it, as a factor of growing importance
in connection with machine-production. The more machinery is used, the
more skilled work of making and repairing will be required, it might
seem. But the rapidity with which machinery is invading these very
functions turns the scale in the opposite direction, at any