re was
a machine that with a girl had done the work of twelve men for nearly
ten years, and the owner of that machine was under the impression that
these twelve men would be employed making another machine, while four
and a half days of each of these men was sufficient to make another
machine that was capable of displacing other twelve men."

In cases like the above we must, of course, bear in mind that a
diminution in employment in the several manufacturing processes
directly and indirectly engaged in forwarding an industry, is not of
itself conclusive evidence that the machinery has brought about a net
displacement of labour. If the output is increased the employment in
the extractive, the transport, and the various distributing processes
may compensate the reduction in making goods and machinery.

Sec. 2. The industrial history of a country like England can furnish no
sufficient data for a conclusive general judgment of the case. The
enormous expansion of production induced by the application of
machinery in certain branches of textile industry during the first
half of this century indisputably led to an increased demand for
English labour in trades directly or indirectly connected with textile
production. But, in the first place, this cannot be regarded as a
normal result of a fall of prices due to textile machinery, but is
largely attributable to an expansion in the area of consumption--the
acquisition of vast new markets--in which greater efficiency and
cheapness of transport played the most considerable part. Secondly,
assuming that the more pressing needs of the vast body of consumers
are already satisfied by machine-made textile goods, we are not at
liberty to conjecture that any further cheapening of goods, owing to
improved machinery, will have a correspondent effect on consumption
and the demand for labour. If England had been a self-contained
country, manufacturing only for her own market, the result of
machinery applied to textile industries would without doubt have been
a considerable net displacement of textile labour, making every
allowance for growth of population and increased home consumption. The
expansion of English production under the rapid development of
machinery in the nineteenth century cannot therefore be taken as a
right measure of the normal effects of the application of machinery.

What direct evidence we have of the effect of machinery upon demand
for labour is very significant. Mr. C