THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



AUGUST, 1887. 



THE ECONOMIC DISTURBANCES SINCE 1873. 



By Hon. DAVID A. WELLS, LL. D. 

 II. 



WHEN the historian of the future writes the history of the nine- 

 teenth century he will doubtless assign to the period embraced 

 by the life of the generation terminating in 1885, a place of impor- 

 tance, considered in its relations to the interests of humanity, second 

 to but very few, and perhaps to none, of the many similar epochs of 

 time in any of the centuries that have preceded it ; inasmuch as all 

 economists who have specially studied this matter are substantially 

 agreed that, within the period named, man in general has attained to 

 such a greater control over the forces of Nature, and has so compassed 

 their use, that he has been able to do far more work in a given time, 

 obtain a much larger product, " measured by quantity in ratio to a 

 given amount of labor," and reduce the effort necessary to insure a 

 comfortable subsistence in a far greater measure, than it was possible 

 for him to accomplish twenty or thirty years anterior to the time of 

 the present writing. In the absence of sufficiently complete data, it is 

 not easy, and perhaps not possible, to estimate accurately, and spe- 

 cificallv state the average saving in time and labor in the world's 

 work of production and distribution that has been thus achieved. In 

 a few departments of industrial effort the saving in both of these fac- 

 tors has certainly amounted to seventy or eighty per cent ; in not a 

 few to more than fifty per cent.* Mr. Edward Atkinson, who has 



* According to the United States Bureau of Labor (report for 1886), the gain in the 

 power of production in some of the leading industries of the United States " during the 

 past fifteen or twenty years," as measured by the " displacement of the muscular labor " 

 formerly employed to effect a given result (i. e., amount of product), has been as follows : 

 In the manufacture of agricultural implements, from 50 to 70 per cent ; in the manu- 

 facture of shoes, 80 per cent ; in the manufacture of carriages, 65 per cent ; m the 

 vol. xxxi. 28 



