values to diminish with every improvement in
tools, machinery, economy of materials and saving of time, as the world
gains wisdom in applying labor to the meeting of material wants. With
every discovery of more perfect power or better use of natural forces,
like electricity, or easier ways of handling raw materials, as in
developing aluminum from crude clay, the value of the product quickly
diminishes.

A familiar illustration is found in the manufacture of steel. The
so-called Bessemer process, introduced some thirty years ago, reduced the
actual labor of making steel from iron by more than one-half. Improved
furnaces and greatly enlarged operations have reduced still further the
labor involved, until now steel often takes the place of iron, and the
value of all such products is greatly diminished. This is easily
illustrated by comparison of prices during a series of years, as shown in
chart No. 14. That this reduction in price is not the result of poorly
paid labor, but of better returns for labor expended, is evident to any
one investigating the tendency of wages or of living among wage-earners,
or of the general improvement in welfare of communities where these
labor-saving methods are applied. Any hardship connected with these
diminished values falls chiefly upon the laborers who fail to adjust their
work to the improved method. But even they gain for the diminished value
of their product a larger return on the whole through exchanges than the
higher values had brought them before.

[Chart.]

Chart IV. Comparison of the numbers of live stock with increases in
population and mileage of railroad, 1860-1898.

CHART NO. 4

_Numbers of live stock compared with increase of population and mileage of
railroad, 1860 to 1898, in the United States_

_Explanation._--This chart exhibits to the eyes a comparative increase of
(1) population, (2) sheep, (3) hogs, (4) railroad mileage, (5) beef
cattle, (6) cows, (7) horses, (8) mules. The figures followed in making
this chart are taken from the best estimates available, chiefly from the
reports of the United States Department of Agriculture. It shows that
railroad mileage has increased faster than the population, with some
slight exceptions, and its fluctuations mark quite distinctly the periods
of financial speculation and distress. The great fluctuations in the line
of sheep raising may be seen to have some correspondence