4H 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



advance of the last thirty years has been lit- 

 tle short of revolutionary. Science applied 

 to field and farm, mill and factory, ship and 

 railroad, has enormously increased the effi- 

 ciency of labor. Hence the remarkable rise 

 in wages, and the correlative fact of the fall 

 of prices which makes a dollar exchange- 

 able for more food and clothing than ever. 

 Although the fortunes of men have been 

 steadily improving, heightened sensibility, 

 progress in social ambition, all that goes to 

 raise the standard of living, have kept 

 pace with the increase of popular luxury 

 and refinement. Then, too, the blessings of 

 industrial evolution, though general, have not 

 been universal ; and in considering its inci- 

 dental pains and penalties Mr. Wells is both 

 candid and sympathetic. He notes how 

 handicraft skill is rendered valueless as ma- 

 chinery supersedes trade after trade. Old- 

 time shoemakers now only get cobbling to 

 do, and the tinsmith who once made all the 

 paraphernalia of the kitchen is to-day no 

 more than a tinker. Minute subdivision of 

 labor reduces an operative to a mere tooth on 

 a wheel ; disrupted from it by an untoward 

 accident of trade, he is of little more worth 

 than a bit of scrap-metal. In manufactures 

 and commerce modern exigencies demand a 

 discipline which almost completely effaces in- 

 dividuality : both employers and workmen are 

 subordinated as parts of a vast and complex 

 enginery. In undergoing the painful and 

 costly readjustments enforced by new econo- 

 mies, capital and labor have been partners 

 in distress, and labor has not suffered more 

 than capital. The increase in the average 

 man's wealth has been partly at the expense 

 of certain unfortunate classes of capitalists. 

 While one set of farmers are being enriched 

 by the rise in the value of Dakota lands, 

 another set in France and England are be- 

 ing impoverished by the cheapness of Dako- 

 ta wheat. The Suez Canal, in shortening 

 the route between Europe and the East, ef- 

 fected a saving in freights greatly to the ad- 

 vantage of consumers of tea, silk, cotton, and 

 spices : it also threw into idleness a vast 

 fleet of ships adapted to the voyage around 

 the Cape of Good Hope, and ruined a lengthy 

 chain of interests vested in things as they 

 were. The discovery of excellent coal and 

 iron-ore near together in Alabama cheapens 

 iron, but it extinguishes furnaces in the 



Northern States built at enormous outlay, 

 and leads to the abandonment of large found- 

 ry properties in New York and New England. 

 Every new machine and process, while it en- 

 riches the community, entails loss on indi- 

 viduals for expensive plant which must go 

 to the scrap-heap. 



While Fortune in the economic world has 

 in the main been prodigal of her gifts, those 

 upon whom her lash has fallen very natu- 

 rally demean themselves differently from 

 those upon whom she has smiled. While 

 the cultivation of inconspicuousness on the 

 part of millionaires is far from uncommon, 

 those who have seen their possessions melt 

 away in the discarding of old machinery, old 

 methods, and old routes, make loud com- 

 plaint. Of equal loudness is the alarm vent- 

 ed by those who have reason to fear loss 

 through the supersedure of their property 

 as Science marches on. This complaint and 

 this alarm have been so sustained as to cre- 

 ate an exaggerated impression of the evils 

 economic progress brings in its train. Left 

 to themselves, economic forces would merge 

 the world into a single competitive field, the 

 markets of which would be supplied only 

 from the sources where capital and labor 

 could work to most advantage. The redis- 

 tribution of populations and employments 

 which this would entail is a price a majority 

 of civilized nations refuse to pay : its inci- 

 dental loss and misery impi'ess their imagina- 

 tion too deeply. Yet the choice is between 

 this shunned evil and a greater. Vastly more 

 is lost by declining to enjoy the gifts new 

 knowledge stands ready to confer, in de- 

 clining the harvests labor can reap when free 

 to sow and till where natural conditions 

 most favor it. Nothing in Mr. Wells's book 

 is more impressive than the picture he draws 

 of European nations severally striving by 

 force of law to overcome some defect in soil, 

 climate, position, or skill. France, for ex- 

 ample, excludes American wheat as far as 

 she can by a high duty. Does she not there- 

 by injure the population of bread - eaters 

 more than she eases the lot of a few wheat- 

 growers ? The vanity of attempts to jug- 

 gle with inexorable Nature has imperiled 

 interests higher than those of wealth ; these 

 attempts have checked the good-will which 

 was springing up as trade united interna- 

 tional interests and foreigners were ceasing 



