d are too intelligent to contend
against such cheapening of production, as they know the result has been
beneficial to mankind; but many of them think it is a hardship and
injustice which deserves more attention that those whose skilled labour
is often superseded by machinery, should have to bear all the loss and
poverty through their means to earn a living being taken away from them.
If there is a real vested interest in existence which entitles to
compensation in some form when it is interfered with, it is that of a
skilled producer in his trade; for that skill has not only given him a
living, but has added to the wealth and prosperity of the
community."[14] The quantity of labour displaced by machinery and
seeking new employment, forms a large section of the margin of
unemployed, and will form an important factor in the problem of poverty.

Sec. 4. Effect of Machinery upon the Character of Labour. Next, what is the
general effect of machinery upon the character of the work done? The
economic gain attending all division of labour is of course based on the
improved quality and quantity of work obtained by confining each worker
to a narrow range of activity. If no great inventions in machinery took
place, we might therefore expect a constant narrowing of the activity of
each worker, which would make his work constantly more simple, and more
monotonous, and himself more and more dependent on the regular co-
operation of an increasing number of other persons over whom he had no
direct control. Without the growth of modern machinery, mere subdivision
of labour would constantly make for the slavery and the intellectual
degradation of labour. Independently of the mighty and ever-new
applications of mechanical forces, this process of subdivision or
specialization would take place, though at a slower pace. How far does
machinery degrade, demoralize, dementalize the worker?

The constantly growing specialization of machinery is the most striking
industrial phenomenon of modern times. Since the worker is more and more
the attendant of machinery, does not this mean a corresponding
specialization of the worker? It would seem so at first sight, yet if we
look closer it becomes less obvious. So far as mere manual activity is
concerned, it seems probable that the general effect of machinery has
been both to narrow the range of that activity, and to take over that
dexterity which consisted in the incessant repetition of a single
unif