The effect of machinery
development in thus throwing on the labour-market a large quantity of
women and children competitors is one of those serious questions which
will occupy our attention in a later chapter. It is here sufficient to
remember that it was this effect which led to a general recognition of
the fact that machinery and the factory system could not be trusted to
an unfettered system of _laissez faire_. The Factory Acts, and the whole
body of legislative enactments, interfering with "freedom of contract"
between employer and employed, resulted from the fact that machinery
enabled women and children to be employed in many branches of productive
work from which their physical weakness precluded them before.
Sec. 6. Summary of Effects of Machinery on the Condition of the Poor.--To
sum up with any degree of precision the net advantages and disadvantages
of the growth of machinery upon the working classes is impossible. If we
look not merely at the growth of money incomes, but at the character of
those products which have been most cheapened by the introduction of
machinery, we shall incline to the opinion that the net gain in wealth-
producing power due to machinery has not been equally shared by all
classes in the community.[17]
The capitalist classes, so far as they can be properly severed from the
rest of the community, have gained most, as was inevitable in a change
which increased the part played by capital in production.
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