The Effects of Machinery on the Condition of the Working-Classes.
§ 1. Centralizing-Influence of Machinery.--In seeking to understand the
nature and causes of the poverty of the lower working-classes, it is
impossible to avoid some discussion of the influence of machinery. For
the rapid and continuous growth of machinery is at once the outward
visible sign and the material agent of the great revolution which has
changed the whole face of the industrial world during the last century.
With the detailed history of this vast change we are not concerned, but
only with its effects on the industrial condition of the poor in the
present day.
Those who have studied in books of history the industrial and
educational condition of the mass of the working populace at the
beginning of this century, or have read such novels as _Shirley_, _Mary
Barton_, and _Alton Locke_, will not be surprised at the mingled
mistrust and hatred with which the working-classes regarded each new
introduction of machinery into the manufacturing arts. These people,
having only a short life to live, naturally took a short-sighted view of
the case; having a specialized form of skill as their only means of
getting bread, they did not greet with joy the triumphs of inventive
skill which robbed this skill of its market value. Even the more
educated champions of the interests of working-classes have often viewed
with grave suspicion the rapid substitution of machinery for hand-labour
in the industrial arts. The enormous increase of wealth-producing power
given by the new machinery can scarcely be realized. It is reckoned that
fifty men with modern machinery could do all the cotton-spinning of the
whole of Lancashire a century ago. Mr. Leone Levi has calculated that to
make by hand all the yarn spun in England in one year by the use of the
self-acting mule, would take 100,000,000 men. The instruments which work
this wonderful change are called "labour-saving" machinery. From this
title it may be deemed that their first object, or at any rate their
chief effect, would be to lighten labour. It seems at first sight
therefore strange to find so reasonable a writer as John Stuart Mill
declaring, "It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made
have lightened the day's toil of any human being." Yet if we confine our
attention to the direct effects of machinery, we shall acknowledge that
Mill's doubt is, upon the whole, a well founded one.
According to the evidence of existing poverty adduced in the last
chapter, it would appear that the lowest classes of workers have not
shared to any considerable degree the enormous gain of wealth-producing
power bestowed by machinery. It is not our object here to discuss the
right of the poorer workers to profit by inventions due to others, but
merely to indicate the effects which the growth of machinery actually
produce in this economic condition. Let us examine the industrial
effects of the growth of machinery, so as to understand how they affect
the social and economic welfare of the working-classes.
§ 2. Class Separation of Employer and Workmen.--The first effect of
machinery is to give a new and powerful impulse to the centralizing
tendency in industry. "Civilization is economy of power, and English
power is coal," said the materialistic Baron Liebig. Coal as a generator
of steam-power demands that manufactures shall be conducted on a large
scale in particular localities. Before the day of large, expensive
steam-driven machinery, manufacture was done in scattered houses by
workers who were the owners of their simple tools, and often of the
material on which they worked; or in small workshops, where a master
worked with a few journeymen and apprentices. Machinery changed all
this. It drove the workers into large factories, and obliged them to
live in concentrated masses near their work. They no longer owned the
material in which their labour was stored, or the tools with which they
worked; they had to use the material belonging to their employer; the
machinery which made their tools valueless was also the property of the
capitalist employer. Instead of selling the products of their capital
and labour to merchants or consumers, they were compelled to sell their
labour-power to the employer as the only means of earning a livelihood.
Again, the social relations between the wealthy employer and his "hands"
were quite different from those intimate personal relations which had
subsisted between the small master and his assistants. The very size of
the factory made such a social change inevitable, the personal relation
which marked medieval industry was no longer possible. Machinery then
did two things. On the one hand, it destroyed the position of the
workman as a self-sufficing industrial unit, and made him dependent on a
capitalist for employment and the means of supporting life. On the other
hand, it weakened the sense of responsibility in the employer towards
his workmen in proportion as the dependence of the latter became more
absolute.
With each step in the growth of the factory system the workman became
more dependent, and the employer more irresponsible. Thus we note the
first industrial effect of machinery in the formation of two definite
industrial classes--the dependent workman, and the irresponsible
employer. The term "irresponsible" is not designed to convey any moral
stigma. The industrial employer can no more be blamed for being
irresponsible than the workman for being dependent. The terms merely
express the nature of the schism which naturally followed the triumph of
machinery. Prophets like Carlyle and Ruskin, slighting the economic
causes of the change, clamoured for "Captains of Industry," employers
who should realize a moral responsibility, and reviving a dead feudalism
should assume unasked the protectorate of their employés. The whole army
of theoretic and practical reformers might indeed be divided into two
classes, according as they seek to impose responsibility on employers,
or to establish a larger independence in the employed. But this is not
the place to discuss methods of reform. It is sufficient to note the
testimony borne by all alike to the disintegrating influence of
machinery.
Again, the growth of machinery makes industry more intricate.
Manufacturers no longer produce for a small known market, the
fluctuations of which are slight, and easily calculable. The element of
speculation enters into manufacture at every pore--size of market,
competitors, and price are all unknown. Machinery works at random like
the blind giant it is. Every improvement in communication, and each
application of labour-saving invention adds to the delicacy and
difficulty of trade calculations. Hence in the productive force of
machinery we see the material cause of the violent oscillations, the
quiver of which never has time to pass out of modern trade. The periodic
over-production and subsequent depression are thus closely related to
machinery. It is the result upon the workman of these fluctuations that
alone concerns us.
The effect of machinery upon the regularity of employment is both a
difficult and a serious subject. Its precise importance cannot be
measured. Before the era of machinery there often arose from other
reasons, especially war or failure of crops, fluctuations which worked
most disastrously on the English labourer. But in modern times we must
look to more distinctively industrial causes for an explanation of
unsteadiness of employment, and here the close competition of steam-
driven machinery plays the leading part.
It must not, however, be supposed that machinery is essentially related
to unsteadiness of work. The contrary is obviously the case. Cheap tools
can be kept idle without great loss to their owner, but every stoppage
in the work of expensive machinery means a heavy loss to the capitalist.
Thus the larger the part played by expensive machinery, the stronger the
personal motive in the individual capitalist to give full regular
employment to his workmen. It is the competition of other machinery over
which he has no control that operates as the immediate cause of
instability of work. Thus the growth of machinery has a double and
conflicting influence upon regularity of employment; it punishes capital
more severely for each irregularity or stoppage, while at the same time
it makes such fluctuations more violent.
§ 3. Displacement of Labour.--But the result of machinery which has
drawn most attention is the displacement of labour. In every branch of
productive work, agriculture as well as manufacture, the conflict
between manual skill and machine skill has been waged incessantly during
the last century. Step by step all along the line the machine has ousted
the skilled manual worker, either rendering his office superfluous, or
retaining him to play the part of servant to the new machine. A good
deal of thoughtless rhetoric has been consumed upon the subject of this
new serfdom of the worker to machinery. There is no reason in the nature
of things why the work of attendance on machinery should not be more
dignified, more pleasant, and more remunerative to the working-man than
the work it displaces. To shift on to the shoulders of brute nature the
most difficult and exhausting kinds of work has been in large measure
the actual effect of machinery. There is also every reason to believe
that the large body of workers whose work consists in the regular
attendance on and manipulation of machinery have shared largely in the
results of the increased production which machinery has brought about.
The present "aristocracy of labour" is the direct creation of the
machine. But our concern lies chiefly with the weaker portion of the
working-classes. How does the constant advance of labour-saving
machinery affect these? What is the effect of machinery upon the demand
for labour? In answering these questions we have to carefully
distinguish the ultimate effect upon the labour-market as a whole, and
the immediate effect upon certain portions of the labour-supply.
It is generally urged that machinery employs as many men as it
displaces. This has in fact been the earlier effect of the introduction
of machinery into the great staple industries of the country. The first
effect of mechanical production in the spinning and weaving industries
was to displace the hand-worker. But the enormous increase in demand for
textile wares caused by the fall of price, has provided work for more
hands than were employed before, especially when we bear in mind the
subsidiary work in construction of machinery, and enlarged mechanism of
conveyance and distribution. Taking a purely historical view of the
question, one would say that the labour displaced by machinery found
employment in other occupations, directly or indirectly, due to the
machinery itself. Provided the aggregate volume of commerce grows at a
corresponding pace with the labour-saving power of new machinery, the
classes dependent on the use of their labour have nothing in the long
run to fear.
A machine is invented which will enable one man to make as many boots as
four men made formerly, displacing the labour of three men. If the
cheapening of boots thus brought about doubles the sale of boots, one of
the three "displaced" men can find employment at the machine. If it
takes the labour of one man to keep up the production of the new
machinery, and another to assist in the distribution of the increased
boot-supply, it will be evident that the aggregate of labour has not
suffered. It is, however, clear that this exactly balanced effect by no
means necessarily happens. The expansion of consumption of commodities
produced by machinery is not necessarily such as to provide employment
for the displaced labour in the same trade or its subsidiary trades. The
result of the introduction of machinery may be a displacement of human
by mechanical labour, so far as the entire trade is concerned. The
bearing of this tendency is of great significance. Analysis of recent
census returns shows that not only is agriculture rapidly declining in
the amount of employment it affords, but that the same tendency occurs
in the staple processes of manufacture: either there is an absolute
decline in employment, as in the textile and dress trades, or the rate
of increase is considerably slower than that of the occupied class as a
whole, indicating a relative decline of importance. This tendency is
greatest where machinery is most highly developed--that is to say,
machinery has kept out of these industries a number of workers who in
the ordinary condition of affairs would have been required to assist in
turning out the increased supply. The recent increase of population has
been shut out of the staple industries. They are not therefore compelled
to be idle. Employment for these has been found chiefly in satisfying
new wants. But industries engaged in supplying new wants, i.e. new
comforts or new luxuries, are obviously less steady than those engaged
in supplying the prime necessaries of ordinary life.
Thus while it may be true that the ultimate effect of the introduction
of machinery is not to diminish the demand for labour, it would seem to
operate in driving a larger and larger proportion of labour to find
employment in those industries which from their nature furnish a less
steady employment. Again, though the demand for labour may in the long
run always keep pace with the growth of machinery, it is obvious that
the workers whose skill loses its value by the introduction of machinery
must always be injured. The process of displacement in particular trades
has been responsible for a large amount of actual hardship and suffering
among the working-classes.
It is little comfort to the hand-worker, driven out to seek unskilled
labour by the competition of new machinery, that the world will be a
gainer in the long run. "The short run, if the expression may be used,
is often quite long enough to make the difference between a happy and a
miserable life."[13] Philosophers may reckon this evil as a part of the
inevitable price of progress, but it is none the less deplorable for
that. Society as a whole gains largely by each step; a small number of
those who can least afford to lose, are the only losers.
The following quotation from an address given at the Industrial
Remuneration Congress in 1886, puts the case with admirable
clearness--"The citizens of England are too intelligent to contend
against such cheapening of production, as they know the result has been
beneficial to mankind; but many of them think it is a hardship and
injustice which deserves more attention that those whose skilled labour
is often superseded by machinery, should have to bear all the loss and
poverty through their means to earn a living being taken away from them.
If there is a real vested interest in existence which entitles to
compensation in some form when it is interfered with, it is that of a
skilled producer in his trade; for that skill has not only given him a
living, but has added to the wealth and prosperity of the
community."[14] The quantity of labour displaced by machinery and
seeking new employment, forms a large section of the margin of
unemployed, and will form an important factor in the problem of poverty.
§ 4. Effect of Machinery upon the Character of Labour. Next, what is the
general effect of machinery upon the character of the work done? The
economic gain attending all division of labour is of course based on the
improved quality and quantity of work obtained by confining each worker
to a narrow range of activity. If no great inventions in machinery took
place, we might therefore expect a constant narrowing of the activity of
each worker, which would make his work constantly more simple, and more
monotonous, and himself more and more dependent on the regular co-
operation of an increasing number of other persons over whom he had no
direct control. Without the growth of modern machinery, mere subdivision
of labour would constantly make for the slavery and the intellectual
degradation of labour. Independently of the mighty and ever-new
applications of mechanical forces, this process of subdivision or
specialization would take place, though at a slower pace. How far does
machinery degrade, demoralize, dementalize the worker?
The constantly growing specialization of machinery is the most striking
industrial phenomenon of modern times. Since the worker is more and more
the attendant of machinery, does not this mean a corresponding
specialization of the worker? It would seem so at first sight, yet if we
look closer it becomes less obvious. So far as mere manual activity is
concerned, it seems probable that the general effect of machinery has
been both to narrow the range of that activity, and to take over that
dexterity which consisted in the incessant repetition of a single
uniform process. Very delicately specialized manipulation is precisely
the work it pays best to do by machinery, so that, as Professor Marshall
says, "machinery can make uniform actions more accurately and
effectively than man can; and most of the work which was done by those
who were specially skilful with the fingers a few generations ago, is
now done by machinery."[15] He illustrates from the wood and metal
industries, where the process is constantly going on.
"The chief difficulty to be overcome is that of getting the machinery to
hold the material firmly in exactly the position in which the machine-
tool can be brought to bear on it in the right way, and without wasting
meanwhile too much time in taking grip of it. But this can generally be
contrived when it is worth while to spend some labour and expense on it;
and then the whole operations can often be controlled by a worker, who,
sitting before the machine, takes with the left hand a piece of wood or
metal from a heap, and puts it in a socket, while with the right he
draws down a lever, or in some other way sets the machine-tool at work,
and finally with his left hand throws on to another heap the material
which has been cut, or punched, or drilled, or planed exactly after a
given pattern."
Professor Marshall summarizes the tendency in the following words--"We
are thus led to a general rule, the action of which is more prominent in
some branches of manufacture than others, but which applies to all. It
is, that any manufacturing operation that can be reduced to uniformity,
so that the same thing has to be done over and over again in the same
way, is sure to be taken over sooner or later by machinery. There may be
delays and difficulties; but if the work to be done by it is on a
sufficient scale, money and inventive power will be spent without stint
on the task till it is achieved. There still remains the responsibility
for seeing that the machinery is in good order and working smoothly; but
even this task is often made light of by the introduction of an
automatic movement which brings the machine to a stop the instant
anything goes wrong."[16]
Since the economy of production constantly induces machinery to take
over all work capable of being reduced to routine, it would seem to
follow by a logical necessity that the work left for the human worker
was that which was less capable of being subjected to close uniformity;
that is work requiring discretion and intelligence to be applied to each
separate action. Although the process described by Professor Marshall
assigns a constantly diminishing proportion of each productive work to
the effort of man, of that portion which remains for him to do a
constantly increasing proportion will be work of judgment and specific
calculation applied to particular cases. And this is the conclusion
which Professor Marshall himself asserts--
"Since machinery does not encroach much upon that manual work which
requires judgment, while the management of machinery does require
judgment, there is a much greater demand now than formerly for
intelligence and resource. Those qualities which enable men to decide
rightly and quickly in new and difficult cases, are the common property
of the better class of workmen in almost every trade, and a person who
has acquired them in one trade can easily transfer them to another."
If this is true, it signifies that the formal specialization of the
worker, which comes from his attendance on a more and more specialized
piece of machinery, does not really narrow and degrade his industrial
life, but supplies a certain education of the judgment and intelligence
which has a general value that more than compensates the apparent
specialization of manual functions. The very fact that the worker's
services are still required is a proof that his work is less automatic
(i.e. more intelligent) than that of the most delicate machinery in use;
and since the work which requires less intelligence is continually being
taken over by machinery, the work which remains would seem to require a
constantly higher average of intelligence. It is, of course, true that
there are certain kinds of work which can never be done by machinery,
because they require a little care and a little judgment, while that
care and judgment is so slight as to supply no real food for thought, or
education for the judgment. No doubt a good deal of the less responsible
work connected with machinery is of this order. Moreover, there are
certain other influences to be taken into account which affect the net
resuit of the growth of machinery upon the condition of the workers. The
physical and moral evils connected with the close confinement of large
bodies of workers, especially in the case of young persons, within the
narrow unwholesome limits of the factory or mill, though considerably
mitigated by the operation of factory legislation, are still no light
offset against the advantages which have been mentioned. The weakly,
ill-formed bodies, the unhealthy lives lived by the factory-workers in
our great manufacturing centres are facts which have an intimate
connection with the growth of machinery. But though our agricultural
population, in spite of their poverty and hard work, live longer and
enjoy better physical health than our town-workers, there are few who
would deny that the town-workers are both better educated and more
intelligent. This intelligence must in a large measure be attributed to
the influences of machinery, and of those social conditions which
machinery has assisted to establish. This intelligence must be reckoned
as an adequate offset against the formal specialization of machine-
labour, and must be regarded as an emancipative influence, giving to its
possessor a larger choice in the forms of employment. So far as a man's
labour-power consists in the mere knowledge how to tend a particular
piece of machinery he may appear to be more "enslaved" with each
specialization of machinery; but so far as his labour-power consists in
the practice of discretion and intelligence, these are qualities which
render him more free.
Moreover, as regards the specialization of machinery, there is one point
to be noticed which modifies to some considerable extent the effects of
subdivision upon labour. On the one hand, the tendency to split up the
manufacture of a commodity into several distinct branches, often
undertaken in different localities and with wholly different machinery,
prevents the skilled worker in one branch from passing into another, and
thus limits his practical freedom as an industrial worker. On the other
hand, this has its compensating advantage in the tendency of different
trades to adopt analogous kinds of machinery and similar processes.
Thus, while a machinist engaged in a screw manufactory is so specialized
that he cannot easily pass from one process to another process in the
screw trade, he will find himself able to obtain employment in other
hardware manufactures which employ the same or similar processes.
§ 5. Are all Men equal before the Machine?--It is sometimes said that
"all men become equal before the machine." This is only true in the
sense that there are certain large classes of machine-work which require
in the worker such attention, care, endurance, and skill as are within
the power of most persons possessed of ordinary capacities of mind and
body. In such forms of machine-work it is sometimes possible for women
and children to compete with men, and even to take their places by their
ability to offer their work at a cheaper price. The effect of machinery
development in thus throwing on the labour-market a large quantity of
women and children competitors is one of those serious questions which
will occupy our attention in a later chapter. It is here sufficient to
remember that it was this effect which led to a general recognition of
the fact that machinery and the factory system could not be trusted to
an unfettered system of _laissez faire_. The Factory Acts, and the whole
body of legislative enactments, interfering with "freedom of contract"
between employer and employed, resulted from the fact that machinery
enabled women and children to be employed in many branches of productive
work from which their physical weakness precluded them before.
§ 6. Summary of Effects of Machinery on the Condition of the Poor.--To
sum up with any degree of precision the net advantages and disadvantages
of the growth of machinery upon the working classes is impossible. If we
look not merely at the growth of money incomes, but at the character of
those products which have been most cheapened by the introduction of
machinery, we shall incline to the opinion that the net gain in wealth-
producing power due to machinery has not been equally shared by all
classes in the community.[17]
The capitalist classes, so far as they can be properly severed from the
rest of the community, have gained most, as was inevitable in a change
which increased the part played by capital in production. A short-timed
monopoly of the abnormal profits of each new invention, and an enormous
expansion of the field of investment for capital must be set against the
gradual fall in the interest paid for the use of each piece of capital.
But as the advantage of each new invention has by the competition of
machinery-owners been passed on to the consumer, all other classes of
the community have gained in proportion to their consumption of
machinery-produced commodities. As machinery plays a smaller part in the
production of necessaries of life than in the production of comforts and
luxuries, it will be evident that each class gain as consumers in
proportion to its income. The poorest classes, whose consumption of
machine-productions is smallest, gain least. It cannot, however, be
said, that there is any class of regular workers who, as consumers, have
been injured by machinery. All have gained. The skilled workmen, the
aristocracy of labour, have, as has been shown, gained very
considerably. Even the poor classes of regular unskilled workmen have
raised their standard of comfort.
It is in its bearing on the industrial condition of the very poor, and
those who are unable to get regular work at decent wages, that the
influence of machinery is most questionable. Violent trade fluctuations,
and a continuous displacement of hand-labour by new mechanical
inventions, keep in perpetual existence a large margin of unemployed or
half-employed, who form the most hopeless and degraded section of the
city poor, and furnish a body of reckless, starving competitors for
work, who keep down the standard of wages and of life for the lower
grades of regular workers affected by this competition.