Science in Public Affairs 



which have advanced furthest in modern industrial 

 methods clearly proves that, after a certain point of 

 development is attained, the great staple industries 

 employ a diminishing proportion of the occupied 

 population, an increasing proportion engaging in 

 those minor industrial arts, or in commercial and 

 professional pursuits where mechanical conditions 

 do not prevail. This is of course an inevitable 

 result of the labour-saving character of machinery. 

 In the case of Great Britain the enormous expan- 

 sion of her foreign commerce, due to her early 

 supremacy in the new manufacturing arts, post- 

 poned the operation of this tendency : for several 

 generations the new machine-industries offered 

 employment, not only to increasing numbers, but 

 to an increasing proportion of the aggregate of 

 workers. In the case of Germany and Holland 

 and certain other continental nations the great 

 expansion of the home market which followed 

 the earlier falls of prices, due to the adoption of 

 machine manufactures, retarded the fall of employ- 

 ment. But the records of recent censuses in all 

 these countries indicate that the staple manufactur- 

 ing industries are following agriculture, though at 

 a slower pace, in the diminishing proportion of 

 employment they are affording. 1 Though no fully 

 conclusive statistical evidence is available for the 

 entire volume of machine-industries in manufacture, 

 there is strong reason to believe that a smaller 



1 For statistical evidence upon this fact see a chapter by 

 the present writer in " The Evolution of Modern Capitalism " 

 (Walter Scott & Co.). 



