rformed by this
crudest order of labor, skill and intelligence can be applied to
it with such economic results as to compensate for the difference
in wage. The reason for this is that the last fifty years have seen
a substitution of labor-saving machines for muscle. Such machines
displace hundreds of raw laborers. Not only do they initially cost
large sums, but they require large expenditure for power and up-keep.
These fixed charges against the machine demand that it shall be
worked at its maximum. For interest, power, and up-keep go on in
any event, and the saving on crude labor displaced is not so great
but that it quickly disappears if the machine is run under its
capacity. To get its greatest efficiency, a high degree of skill
and intelligence is required. Nor are skill and intelligence alone
applicable to labor-saving devices themselves, because drilling and
blasting rock and executing other works underground are matters
in which experience and judgment in the individual workman count
to the highest degree.

How far skill affects production costs has had a thorough demonstration
in West Australia. For a time after the opening of those mines
only a small proportion of experienced men were obtainable. During
this period the rock broken per man employed underground did not
exceed the rate of 300 tons a year. In the large mines it has now,
after some eight years, attained 600 to 700 tons.

How far intelligence is a factor indispensable to skill can be well
illustrated by a comparison of the results obtained from working
labor of a low mental order, such as Asiatics and negroes, with those
achieved by American or Australian miners. In a general way, it may
be stated with confidence that the white miners above mentioned
can, under the same physical conditions, and with from five to ten
times the wage, produce the same economic result,--that is, an
equal or lower cost per unit of production. Much observation and
experience in working Asiatics and negroes as well as Americans
and Australians in mines, leads the writer to the conclusion that,
averaging actual results, one white man equals from two to three
of the colored races, even in the simplest forms of mine work such
as shoveling or tramming. In the most highly skilled branches,
such as mechanics, the average ratio is as one to seven, or in
extreme cases even eleven. The question is not entirely a comparison
of bare efficiency individually; it is one of the sum tot