s of great significance. Analysis of recent
census returns shows that not only is agriculture rapidly declining in
the amount of employment it affords, but that the same tendency occurs
in the staple processes of manufacture: either there is an absolute
decline in employment, as in the textile and dress trades, or the rate
of increase is considerably slower than that of the occupied class as a
whole, indicating a relative decline of importance. This tendency is
greatest where machinery is most highly developed--that is to say,
machinery has kept out of these industries a number of workers who in
the ordinary condition of affairs would have been required to assist in
turning out the increased supply. The recent increase of population has
been shut out of the staple industries. They are not therefore compelled
to be idle. Employment for these has been found chiefly in satisfying
new wants. But industries engaged in supplying new wants, i.e. new
comforts or new luxuries, are obviously less steady than those engaged
in supplying the prime necessaries of ordinary life.

Thus while it may be true that the ultimate effect of the introduction
of machinery is not to diminish the demand for labour, it would seem to
operate in driving a larger and larger proportion of labour to find
employment in those industries which from their nature furnish a less
steady employment. Again, though the demand for labour may in the long
run always keep pace with the growth of machinery, it is obvious that
the workers whose skill loses its value by the introduction of machinery
must always be injured. The process of displacement in particular trades
has been responsible for a large amount of actual hardship and suffering
among the working-classes.

It is little comfort to the hand-worker, driven out to seek unskilled
labour by the competition of new machinery, that the world will be a
gainer in the long run. "The short run, if the expression may be used,
is often quite long enough to make the difference between a happy and a
miserable life."[13] Philosophers may reckon this evil as a part of the
inevitable price of progress, but it is none the less deplorable for
that. Society as a whole gains largely by each step; a small number of
those who can least afford to lose, are the only losers.

The following quotation from an address given at the Industrial
Remuneration Congress in 1886, puts the case with admirable
clearness--"The citizens of Englan