434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



made this matter a special study, considers one third as the minimum 

 average that can be accepted for the period above specified.* Other 

 authorities are inclined to assign a considerably higher average. The 

 deductions of Mr. William Fowler, Fellow of University College, 

 London, are to the effect that the saving of labor since 1850 in the 

 production of any given article amounts to forty per cent ; f and the 

 British Royal Commission (minority report, 1886) characterizes the 

 amount of labor required to accomplish a given amount of production 

 and trausport at the present time as " incomparably less " than was 

 requisite forty years ago, and as "being constantly reduced." 



But be this as it may, out of such results as are definitely known 

 and accepted have come tremendous industrial and social disturbances, 

 the extent and effect of which and more especially of the disturb- 

 ances which have culminated, as it were, in later years it is not easy 

 to appreciate without the presentation and consideration of certain 

 typical and specific examples. To a selection of such examples, out of 

 a large number that are available, attention is accordingly next in- 

 vited. 



Let us go back, in the first instance, to the year 1869, when an 

 event occurred which was probably productive of more immediate and 

 serious economic industrial, commercial, and financial changes than 

 any other event of this century, a period of extensive war excepted. 

 That was the opening of the Suez Canal. Before that time, and since 

 the discovery by Vasco da Gama, in 1498, of the route to India by 

 the Cape of Good Hope, all the trade of the Western hemisphere 

 with the Indies and the East toiled slowly and uncertainly around the 

 Cape, at an expenditure in time of from six to eight months for the 



manufacture of machines and machinery, 40 per cent ; in the silk-manufacture, 50 per 

 cent, and so on. 



* In a print-cloth factory in New England, in which the conditions of production 

 were analyzed by Mr. Atkinson, the product per hand was found by him to have advanced 

 from 26,531 yards, representing 3,382 hours' work in 1871, to 32,391 yards, representing 

 2,695 hours' work in 1884 an increase of 22 per cent in product, and a decrease of 20 

 per cent in hours of labor. Converted into cloth of their own product, the wages of the 

 operatives in this same mill would have yielded them 6,205 yards in 1871, as compared 

 with 9,737 yards in 18S4 an increase of 56j% per cent. During the same period of 

 years the prices of beef, pork, flour, oats, butter, lard, cheese, and wool in the United 

 States declined more than 25 per cent. 



A like investigation by the same authority of an iron-furnace in Pennsylvania showed 

 that, comparing the results of the five years from 1860 to 1864 with the five years from 

 1875 to 1879, the product per hand advanced from 776 tons to 1,219 tons; that the 

 gross value of the product remained about the same ; that the number of hands was 

 reduced from 76 to 71 ; and that consumers gained a benefit of reduction in price from 

 $27.95 per ton to $19.08. 



f " Wages have greatly increased, but the cost of doing a given amount of work has 

 greatly decreased, so that five men can now do the work which would have demanded 

 the labor of eight men in 1850. If this be correct, the saving of labor is 40 per cent 

 in producing any given article." Appreciation of Gold, William Fowler, Fellow of Uni- 

 versity College, London, 1886. 



