516 Mr TOZER, on THE EFFECT OF MACHINERY 



If we assume that a capitalist will employ machinery or labour 

 as the one or the other will procure for him the highest rate of profit, 

 then the employment of machinery will always increase the wealth of 

 the community. Not only is the capitalist unable to secure his own 

 advantage at the expense of any other class, he cannot even prevent 

 a general participation in the benefit. 



The operation on the labourer is to abstract a fund which has been 

 or would have been annually employed in the payment of wages, and 

 annually renewed by the produce due to his exertions, and to supply 

 a new fund, by increasing the wealth of the community, a portion 

 of which will in general be paid as wages; this portion is at first 

 smaller than the fund abstracted, but it increases without any assign- 

 able limit, the rapidity of increase depending on the proportion in 

 which the new fund is divided between the labourer and the other 

 classes of society. Speaking with reference to the formula, the rapidity 

 of increase depends on the values of the arbitrary quantities m, vh, nh, k, 

 and these values can be assigned with greater or less exactness, as our 

 statistical knowledge connected with the particular case is more or less 

 accurate. 



