Significance of the Small Industries. 357 
to-day the most powerful wealth-producing agent with 
which we have to deal. 
Machine power is, economically considered, neither more 
nor less than an enormous massing of labouring power, or 
vasi capability of moving matter, for the production of 
wealth ; in comparison with which the agency of the whole 
human race is of unimportant magnitude. Labouring 
humanity is rapidly becoming the intelligent supervisor 
of the moving force, instead of the moving agent itself. 
Machine power even now vastly transcends all the human 
power of the whole earth; it drives the master machine- 
tools and the highly developed technical machinery which 
repeats a thousandfold the isolated performances of man. 
It is also most highly influential on those who live in the 
most civilized countries. 
In regard to this we learn from statistics that, for the 
work produced by every single labouring man, there is at 
present more than one hundred times the amount produced 
by machine power; so that all economic activity is gov- 
erned by this agency. 
This matter has been put in a most striking form by 
Prof. Riedler of Berlin, by giving to machine power an- 
thropomorphism ; say in the form of Chinamen, who are 
supposed set to work in gangs of one hundred against each 
one of us to produce commodities. We have only to say, 
towards the estimation of the result, that our imaginary 
Chinamen are far more modest and unpretending than real 
ones; that they require no homes, only workshops to live 
in; that they feed on coal; never strike; have no personal 
necessities ; and that, when no longer capable of service, 
they are either repaired or simply broken in pieces. 
This mode of viewing the matter makes the enormous 
influence of this agency more apparent; and no one will 
venture to doubt, that the sooner we begin to regulate this 
vast and remorseless power the better it will be,—the more 
so as statistics show that 80 per cent. of all the mechanical 
power in the world has arisen within the last quarter of a 
century. 
