similar gains from engines, looms, furnaces, steamships, railroads,
telegraphs, etc. Yet there are persons within the great social
organism to whom the benefit _from one special improvement_ may be
small and the cost great. There are none who are not better off
because of _all improvements_ past and present.

_The General Demand for Labor not Lessened._--It is a matter of common
experience that new machines are labor displacers. At its introduction
an economical device often forces some men to seek new occupations,
but it never reduces the general demand for labor. As progress closes
one field of employment it opens others, and it has come about that
after a century and a quarter of brilliant invention and of rapid and
general substitution of machine work for hand work, there is no larger
proportion of the laboring population in idleness now than there was
at the beginning of the period.

_A Voluntary Reduction of Toil Desirable and Probable._--A full study
of the effects of technical progress will show that there is never a
reduction of the general field for employment in consequence of it.
There is an increase of pay, and this causes a certain unwillingness
to work for as many hours as men formerly worked; and there is also a
change in the nature of the operations that labor performs, which
tends in the direction of more comfort and less painful toil. For the
famous statement of J. S. Mill that "It is questionable if all the
mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any
human being" we may safely substitute, "It is the natural tendency of
useful inventions to lighten the toil of workers and to give them,
withal, a greater reward for their work." Mechanical progress is the
largest single ground for hope for the future of laboring humanity,
and by its effects, direct and indirect, it has already insured a
great alleviation of toil, with an increase in its rewards. It has
helped to counteract the world crowding that for a century has gone on
and the diminishing returns from agriculture which the crowding
entails. Inventions may make disturbances, and their better effects
may be temporarily and locally counteracted; but a society where
competition rules is sure to secure the benefits in the end and does,
in fact, secure them in greater and greater measure as the years go
by. Such are some of the theses which research will justify.

_Facts concerning Disturbances incidental to Progress._--We have f