ty of
machinery enables certain work to be done which man alone could not do
or could do less perfectly. The work of the printing machine could not
be achieved by man. Machinery has improved the texture and quality of
certain woollen goods;[62] recent improvements in milling result in
improved quality of flour and so on. Machinery can also do work which
is too fine or delicate for human fingers, or which would require
abnormal skill if executed by hand. Economy of time, which Babbage[63]
accounts a separate economy, is rightly included in the economies just
named. The greater rapidity with which certain manufacturing
processes--_e.g._, dyeing--can be achieved arises from the superior
concentration and continuity of force possible under machinery. All
advantages arising from rapid transport are assignable to the same
causes.

The continuity and regularity of machine work are also reflected in
certain economies of measurement. The faculty of self-registering,
which belongs potentially to all machinery, and which is more utilised
every day, performs several services which may be summed up by saying
that they enable us to know exactly what is going on. When to
self-registration is applied the faculty of self-regulation, within
certain limits a new economy of force and knowledge is added. But
machinery can also register and regulate the expenditure of human
power. Babbage well says:--"One of the most singular advantages we
derive from machinery is in the check which it affords against the
inattention, the idleness, or the knavery of human agents."[64] This
control of the machine over man has certain results which belong to
another aspect of machine economy.[65]

These are the sources of all the improvements of economies imputed to
machine-production. All improvements in machinery, as applied to
industrial arts, take therefore one of the following forms:--

(1) Re-arrangement or improvement of machinery so as to utilise more
fully the productive power of nature or man. Improvements enabling one
man to tend more spindles, or enabling the same engine at the same
boiler-pressure to turn more wheels, belong to this order of
improvement.

(2) Economies in the source of power. These will fall under four
heads--

1. Substitution of cheaper for dearer kinds of human power.
Displacement of men's labour by women's or children's.

2. Substitution of mechanical power for human power. Most
great improvemen