oss as compared with his Share of a Social
Gain._--The test question in cases like these is whether the man is
helped or harmed by the general effect of improvements, including not
only the one which has caused him to change his occupation, but all
others which have taken place since he began working. To this question
there can be but one answer: in the course of a lifetime the balance
is in favor of progress _even in the case of the average victim of the
movement_, and it is overwhelmingly so in the case of others. What a
man sacrifices when he is transferred from one machine to another is
usually more than offset in a term of years by what he gains in
consequence of the general increase in the producing power of labor.
At the time of the displacement he suffers, but by its constant
increase in wealth and productivity society more than atones for the
injury. The goods that emerge from the mills are multiplied; the share
falling to labor, as that share is determined by the test of final
productivity, grows steadily larger; and the men who have never served
a long apprenticeship at anything, but have learned their present
trades quickly and can learn new ones as quickly, are producing and
getting far more than they could possibly get under a regime of
skilled manual labor or of inferior machinery, and far more also than
their successors will get hereafter if, by any calamity, mechanical
inventions shall cease to be introduced and other product multipliers
shall be barred from the field. The hope of working humanity lies
mainly in the continuance of the changes which give it a forever
enlarging command over nature. Some classes might live comfortably
without this, but for the worker it affords the main ground of hope
for increasing comfort and a coming time of general abundance.

CHAPTER XVIII

CAPITAL AS AFFECTED BY CHANGES OF METHOD

_Labor Saving and Capital Concentrating._--There is a common
impression that whatever saves labor usually requires an increase of
capital in the industry where the economy is secured, and this
impression is justified by the experience of the century following the
invention of the steam engine and the early textile machinery. Hand
spinning and weaving require small amounts of fixed capital, while the
mills in which spinning and weaving are done by steam or water power
require a great deal. Fortunately in any long period this capital
comes as abundantly as it is needed from the pro