829] Machinery and Labor 31 



the same name as was borne by. his predecessor ; as, for 

 example, men who operate a steam threshing machine 

 are called threshers, though they may never have seen 

 a flail and are almost as little fitted for operating a flail 

 and winnowing apparatus as the old time threshers 

 would be to operate the new machine. The old occu- 

 pation is gone. What we now have is a new occupa- 

 tion passing under the old name. And a new class of 

 workmen (machinists,) are in charge. 



It is only when we speak of labor as a quantity or of 

 laborers in mass that we can presume to say there has 

 been no displacement of labor by machinery ; and yet 

 there may be, in this sense also, a displacement of 

 labor. The displacement may be absolute, as where the 

 labor force in any line of work is decreased, or it may be 

 only relative, as where the rate of increase in the num- 

 ber of laborers employed falls below the rate of in- 

 crease of laborers employed in industries generally. 



THE ABSOLUTE DISPLACEMENT 



For the agricultural industry considered as a whole, 

 New England furnishes an instance of the absolute dis- 

 placement of labor. In 1880, the population, ten years 

 of age and over, engaged in agriculture, numbered 304,- 

 679 ; but in 1900, the number was only 287, 829.* 

 This decrease was not due to a decadence of agri- 

 culture in those states, for the value of the New 

 England agricultural products was more than fifty per 

 cent greater in 1900 than in 1880. J It must have 

 been due to the introduction of machinery as indicated 



'See page 101. 



2 The value of New England agricultural product, as reported in 

 1880, was $103,343,566 ; in 1900 it was 1169,523,435. Twelfth Census : 

 Agriculture I, page 703. 



