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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which has been suggested by M. Laveleye, editor of the "Moniteur 

 des Interets Materiels," at Brussels, that the industrial activity of the 

 greater part of this century has been devoted to equipping fully the 

 civilized countries of the world with economic tools, and that the work 

 of the future, in this same sphere, must be necessarily that of repair 

 and replacements rather than of new constructions. But a more im- 

 portant inference from this same idea, and one that fully harmonizes 

 with and rationally explains the phenomena of the existing situation 

 is, that the equipment having at last been made ready, the work of 

 using it for production has in turn begun, and has been prosecuted so 

 efficiently, that the world has within recent years, and for the first 

 time, become saturated, as it were, under existing conditions for use 

 and consumption, with the results of these modern improvements. 

 Again, although the great natural labor-saving agencies had been 

 recognized and brought into use many years prior to 1870, their pow- 

 ers were long kept, as it were, in abeyance ; because it required time 

 for the instrumentalities or methods by which the world's work of 

 production and distribution was carried on to adjust themselves to 

 new conditions ; and until this was accomplished, an almost infinite 

 number and variety of inventions which genius had produced for facili- 

 tating and accelerating industrial evolution were matters of promise, 

 rather than of consummation. But with the extension of popular edu- 

 cation and the rapid diffusion of intelligence, all new achievements in 

 science and art have been brought in recent years so much more rap- 

 idly "within the sphere of the every-day activity of the people" as 

 the noted German inventor, Dr. "Werner Siemens, has expressed it 

 " that stages of development, which ages ago required centuries for 

 their consummation, and which at the beginning of our times required 

 decades, now complete themselves in years, and not unfrequently pre- 

 sent themselves at once in a state of completeness." 



An influence which has been more potent in recent years than ever 

 before in stimulating the invention and use of labor-saving machinery, 

 and one which should not be overlooked in reasoning upon this sub- 

 ject, has been undoubtedly the increasing frequency of strikes and 

 industrial revolts on the part of the large proportion of the population 

 of all civilized countries engaged in the so-called mechanical occupa- 

 tions, which actions in turn on the part of such classes have been cer- 

 tainly largely prompted by the changes in the conditions of produc- 

 tion resulting from prior labor-saving inventions and discoveries. As 

 the London "Engineer" has already pointed out (see page 291, article 

 No. 1), the remedy that at once suggests itself to every employer 

 of labor on the occasion of such trouble with his employes is "to 

 use a tool wherever it is possible instead of a man." A significant 

 illustration of the quickness with with employers carry out this sug- 

 gestion, is afforded by the well-authenticated fact that the strike 

 among the boot and shoe factories of one county in the State of Mas- 



