592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



production by machinery, are being gradually and to a large extent 

 counteracted. Ko one can doubt that this is the tendency in the 

 United States equally as in England, and it finds one striking illus- 

 tration in the large number of new products that are demanded, 

 and in the number of occupations that have been greatly enlarged 

 or absolutely created in recent years, in consequence of the change 

 in popular taste, conjoined with popular ability, to incur greater ex- 

 pense in the matter of house-building and house-decoration. Ten or 

 fifteen years ago the amount of fine outside work in building construc- 

 tions — in brick, terra-cotta, stone, and metal — and on interiors, in the 

 •way of painting, paper-hangings, wall-coverings with other materials, 

 fine wood-work, carving, furnitui*e-making, carpet-weaving, draperies 

 for doors and windows, stained glass and mirrors, and improved and 

 elaborate sanitary heating and ventilating apparatus, was but a very 

 small fraction of what is now required. Nothing, furthermore, is more 

 certain than that all these departments of industry are to continue 

 progressively enlarging ; for all achievements in this direction increase 

 taste and culture, and these in turn create new and enlarged spheres 

 for industrial occupation. 



How these same influences exert themselves for the extension of 

 the intercommunication of intelligence, with the attendant increased 

 demand for service and materials which represent opportunities for 

 labor, is exemplified in the following postal statistics, the result of 

 recent German investigation : Thus, for the year 1865 it is estimated 

 that the inhabitants of the Avorld exchanged about 2,300,000,000 let- 

 ters ; in 1873, the aggregate was 3,300,000,000 ; in 1885, including 

 postal-cards, it was 6,257,000,000; in 1886, 6,920,000,000, with a 

 larger ratio of increase in the transmission of printed matter, patterns, 

 and other articles ; the whole business giving employment to about 

 500,000 persons, for more than one half of which number there was 

 probably no requirement for service under conditions existing in 1873. 

 And to this aggregate should be added the increased number required 

 to meet the greater requirements for the machinery and service of 

 larger transportation, and vastly larger consumption of all the material 

 and service incident to correspondence. The experience of the postal 

 service of the United States also shows that, at all those points where 

 a free delivery of letters has been established, the postal revenues have 

 quickly and greatly augmented — another illustration that every in- 

 creased and cheapened facility for use or consumption brings with it 

 greater demands for service or production. 



In view, then, of the undoubted tendency, as abundance or wealth 

 increases, for labor to transfer itself, in no small proportions, from 

 lower to higher grades — from the production of the great staples to oc- 

 cupations that minister to comfort andculture, rather than to subsistence 

 — how impolitic, from the standpoint of labor's interests, seems to be 

 the imposition of high taxes (as in the United States) on the impor- 



