ustry contained in such
works as Babbage's _Economy of Manufactures_ and Ure's _Philosophy of
Manufactures_, or more recently in Professor Schulze-Gaevernitz's
careful study of the cotton industry. By using the term "evolution" I
have designed to mark the study as one of a subject-matter in process
of organic change, and I have sought to trace in it some of those
large movements which are characteristic of all natural growth.

The sub-title, _A Study of Machine-Production_, indicates a further
narrowing of the investigation. Selecting the operation of modern
machinery and motors for special attention, I have sought to enforce a
clearer recognition of organic unity, by dwelling upon the more
material aspects of industrial change which mark off the last century
and a half from all former industrial epochs. The position of central
importance thus assigned to machinery as a factor in industrial
evolution may be--to some extent must be--deceptive, but in bringing
scientific analysis to bear upon phenomena so complex and so
imperfectly explored, it is essential to select some single clearly
appreciable standpoint, even at the risk of failing to present the
full complexity of forces in their just but bewildering interaction.

In tracing through the Business, the Trade, and the Industrial
Organism the chief structural and functional changes which accompany
machine-development, I have not attempted to follow out the numerous
branches of social investigation which diverge from the main line of
inquiry. Two studies, however, of "the competitive system" in its
modern working are presented; one examining the process of
restriction, by which competition of capitals gives way to different
forms of combination; the other tracing in periodic Trade Depressions
the natural outcome of unrestricted competition in private capitalist
production.

In some final chapters I have sought to indicate the chief bearings of
the changes of industrial structure upon a few of the deeper issues of
social life, in particular upon the problem of the Industrial Town,
and the position of woman as an industrial competitor.

A portion of Chapters VIII., IX., and X. have already appeared in the
_Contemporary Review_ and in the _Political Science Quarterly Review_,
and I am indebted to the courtesy of the editors for permission to use
them.

I have also to acknowledge most gratefully the valuable assistance
rendered by Dr. William Smart of Glasgow Universi