86 1] Machinery and Labor 63 



workman, machinery opens the way to profit and ad- 

 vancement. But to the unskilled workman, it is as a 

 sealed, or unintelligible, book. He does not under- 

 stand it ; and the hopelessness of competing with one 

 who does understand it, only intensifies his conscious- 

 ness of inferiority and increases the burden of his 

 struggle for existence. 1 Having, ordinarily, neither 

 machinery nor the capacity for using it, he is practically 

 shut out from all chance of participating in its benefits. 

 His wages, of necessity, are limited by the standard of 

 his efficiency. It is inevitable, therefore, that the un- 

 skilled laborer should, relatively, at any rate, sink ever 

 lower and lower in the scale of industrial society. 



That we have been experiencing a transition period, 

 not only with respect to the agricultural industry 2 but, 

 also, with respect to all other industries, seems almost 

 self-evident. I do not believe that the transition period \ 

 is passed, nor do I believe that it ever will be safely and 

 finally passed, until the State, in the interest of the 

 general welfare, and in its capacity of agent for the 

 whole social body, shall have provided for and required, 

 as now so all but universally provided for and required, 

 in the more purely intellectual field, that every child 

 shall be taught, at least, the rudiments of industrial art. 



1 "Under conditions where the laborer can offer no resistance and 

 the so-called iron law of wages operates to keep him down to the life 

 line, machinery only adds uncertainty to his other woes. He is, as it 

 were, cut out of civilization. Whenever he presses upward and 

 secures a larger share of an ever enlarging product, machinery be- 

 comes an uplifting force." Henry White : " The Problem of Ma- 

 chinery," in American Federationist : , Vol. X, p. 86. 



1 "The introduction of improved agricultural implements and ma- 

 chinery during the latter half of the nineteenth century was a 

 development of such importance as to amount to an industrial revolu- 

 tion in agriculture." Report of the Industrial Commission (1901), 

 Vol. X, p. xiv. 



