582 THE POPULAR SCIUjVCIJ MONTHLY. 



be done with the low-priced machine, he (the emplo3-er) found it ne- 

 cessary to go abroad and look for one of better condition, and for such 

 a one high wages must be given." 



A remarkable exhibit made in the annual reports of the Illinois 

 Central Railroad, showing the cost of the locomotive service for each 

 year for the past thirty years, is also especially worthy of attention in 

 connection with this subject. From this it appears that the cost per 

 mile run has fallen from 26*52 cents in 1857 to 13-93 cents in 1886 ; a 

 reduction which has been effected wholly by inventions and improve- 

 ments in machinery. But a further point of greater interest is, that 

 during this same period the wages of the engineers and firemen have 

 risen from 4'51 cents to 5*52 cents per mile run ; or, in other words, 

 the engineers and firemen on the Illinois Central, who in 1857 received 

 17 per cent of the entire cost of its locomotive service, received in 

 1886 nearly 40 per cent (39-6) of the total cost. 



The introduction of machinery in many branches of industry — and 

 more especially in agriculture — while increasing, perhaps, the monot- 

 ony of employment, has also greatly lightened the severity of toil, 

 and in not a few instances has done away with certain forms of labor 

 which were unquestionably brutalizing and degrading, or physically 

 injurious.* 



Another paradox which should not be overlooked in this discussion 

 is, that those countries in which labor-saving machinery has been most 

 extensively adopted, and where it might naturally be inferred that 

 population through the displacement and economizing of labor would 

 diminish, or at least not increase, are the very ones in which popula- 

 tion has at the same time increased most rapidly. 



Taking all the machinery-using countries into account, the num- 

 ber of persons who have been displaced during recent years by new 

 and more effective methods of production and distribution, and have 

 thereby been deprived of occupation and have suffered, does not ap- 

 pear to have been so great as is popularly supposed ; a conclusion 

 that finds support in the fact that, notwithstanding trade generally 

 throughout the world has been notably depressed since 1S73, through 

 a continued decline in prices, reduction of profits, and depi'eciation of 

 property, the volume of trade — or the number of things produced, 

 moved, sold, and consumed — on which the majority of those who are 

 the recipients of wages and salaries depend for occupation, has all 

 this time continually increased, and in the aggregate has probably 

 been little if any less than it would have been if the times had been 



* Mowing, reaping', raking machinery, winnowing, shelling, and wcigluug machines, 

 hay-tedder3, horse-forks, wheel-harrows, improved plows, better cultivators, and so on 

 through almost the entire list of farm-tools, have combined to make the change in farm- 

 work almost a revolution ; and those only who have spent years in farming by old meth- 

 ods can fully realize the extent to which the seventy of toil has been lightened to the 

 farmer by the introduction and use of machinery. 



