A short-timed
monopoly of the abnormal profits of each new invention, and an enormous
expansion of the field of investment for capital must be set against the
gradual fall in the interest paid for the use of each piece of capital.
But as the advantage of each new invention has by the competition of
machinery-owners been passed on to the consumer, all other classes of
the community have gained in proportion to their consumption of
machinery-produced commodities. As machinery plays a smaller part in the
production of necessaries of life than in the production of comforts and
luxuries, it will be evident that each class gain as consumers in
proportion to its income. The poorest classes, whose consumption of
machine-productions is smallest, gain least. It cannot, however, be
said, that there is any class of regular workers who, as consumers, have
been injured by machinery. All have gained. The skilled workmen, the
aristocracy of labour, have, as has been shown, gained very
considerably. Even the poor classes of regular unskilled workmen have
raised their standard of comfort.
It is in its bearing on the industrial condition of the very poor, and
those who are unable to get regular work at decent wages, that the
influence of machinery is most questionable. Violent trade fluctuations,
and a continuous displacement of hand-labour by new mechanical
inventions, keep in perpetual existence a large margin of unemployed or
half-employed, who form the most hopeless and degraded section of the
city poor, and furnish a body of reckless, starving competitors for
work, who keep down the standard of wages and of life for the lower
grades of regular workers affected by this competition.
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