estioned, the growth of machinery has been clearly
attended by an improved standard of material comfort among the
machine-workers, taking the objective measurement of comfort.

Whatever allowance may be made for the effects of increased intensity
of labour, and the indirect influences of machinery, the bulk of
evidence clearly indicates that machine-tenders are better fed,
clothed, and housed than the hand-workers whose place they take, and
that every increase in the efficiency and complexity of machinery is
attended by a rise in real wages. The best machinery requires for its
economical use a fair standard of living among the workers who
co-operate with it, and with the further development of machinery in
each industry we may anticipate a further rise of this standard,
though we are not entitled to assume that this natural and necessary
progress of comfort among machine-workers has no fixed limit, and that
it is equally applicable to all industries and all countries.

It might, therefore, appear that as one industry after another fell
under machine-production, the tendency of machine-development must
necessarily make for a general elevation of the standard of comfort
among the working classes. It may very well be the case that the net
influence of machinery is in this direction. But it must not be
forgotten that the increased spread of machine-production does not
appear to engage a larger proportion of the working population in
machine-tending. Indeed, if we may judge by the recent history of the
most highly-evolved textile industries, we are entitled to expect
that, when machinery has got firm hold of all those industries which
lend themselves easily to routine production, the proportion of the
whole working population engaged directly in machine-tending will
continually decrease, a larger and larger proportion being occupied in
those parts of the transport and distributing industries which do not
lend themselves conveniently to machinery, and in personal services.
If this is so, we cannot look upon the evolution of machinery, with
its demand for intenser and more efficient labour, as an adequate
guarantee of a necessary improvement in the standard of comfort of the
working classes as a whole. To put the matter shortly, we have no
evidence to show that a rise in the standard of material comfort of
shopmen, writing clerks, school-teachers, 'busmen, agents,
warehousemen, dockers, policemen, sandwich-men, and other clas