882 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 
share of the necessary energy engaged in production amounts to 
66°67. It is true the capitalist receives relatively a larger 
individual share of the capitalist’s own machine production ; but it 
is impossible for the capitalist to personally absorb more than 
about three times the amount of the average breadwinner. The 
remainder must perforce go to improve the reward and condition 
of the ordinary breadwinner. The higher the percentage of 
energy contributed by the capitalist’s machines involves of neces- 
sity a corresponding reward to the ordinary breadwinner, while 
the proportion going to the rich capitalist must by a like necessity 
remain almost stationary in comparison. 
It cannot be too strongly asserted, therefore, that the greater 
reward of the labourer in relation to the increasing command, 
which, during the last century, man has obtained over the forces 
of Nature, steam, electricity, and improvements, in labour-saving 
machinery, multiplying man’s muscular power in the production, 
transport, and manufacture of necessaries and satisfactions, three 
to four and in some cases many hundredfold. In proportion as 
these auxiliaries have increased in the production of any one 
necessary product, the amount of physical human labour engaged 
in its production has decreased individually,* and to the liberation 
of labour formerly necessary to produce the barest essentials of 
life are we indebted for the vast category of new comforts and 
satisfactions, the attainment of which was utterly impossible to 
the mass of human beings when the production of food alone— 
the great primary industry—absorbed nearly the whole force of 
man’s muscular efforts and his time. This is the true reason why 
there are relatively fewer labourers engaged on the land in England 
at the present time than there were formerly ; for I have else- 
where clearly demonstrated that 5-35 hands per 100 acres produce 
more than it was possible for half as many more fifty years ago, and 
more than double their number could produce a 100 years ago. 
This is the reason, too, why one agricultural hand in America can 
produce as much as three average hands in Europe; and this 
reason also, combined with cheapened transport, accounts for the 
decreasing acreage in crops in England, for the greater economy 
in the production of cereals in America has gradually forced down 
the price of wheat from 56s. 8d. per quarter in 1873, to 29s. 9d. in 
1889, or a reduction in the price of food equal to 47°51 per cent. 
in seventeen years. Therefore, the greater number of hands 
placed upon the land to produce a definite and necessary quantity — 
of food products, the greater is the amount of useless or wasteful 
and unproductive labour. At the present moment it is the most — 
uncivilised and most miserable populations which relatively employ 
_ * Within the wonderful reign of our Gracious Queen Victoria the days labour-time, per se, 
in England has been reduced about 25 per cent., while the wages of labour has, on the 
average, increased by 50 per cent. 
