| 174.7| 218.9| 297.9| 310.5| 25.3 | 36.1 | 4.2 |
+------------------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+

Cotton small wares are included in the totals for 1880 and 1890, but
excluded from those for 1900 and 1905. We must observe further that
"capital" is a vague term. Recent events in the United States afford a
valuable empirical indication of the effect that improved machinery
actually has upon wages. The new automatic looms caused a saving of
labour per unit of product which recalled the complete subversion at the
industrial revolution of the proportions in which the several factors in
production were organized. Displacement of labour and falling wages
might not unreasonably have been looked for temporarily, but wages stuck
at their old level or rose. The rise was caused by numerous converging
forces which brought their united weight to bear. First, prices so fell
as the result of the new machinery that the increased volume of
commodities which the market could absorb more than counterbalanced, it
would seem, the labour-saving of the new machinery, the cotton industry
being taken as a whole. It must be remembered that to increase the
output from the subsidiary processes where labour had not been saved
more hands had to be drafted in. Thus, a contraction of the body of
weavers was accompanied by an expansion of the body of cotton
operatives. Again weavers' wages were naturally raised in a special
degree because automatic machinery called for quick, trustworthy and
intelligent hands, endowed with versatility, especially in the days when
the machinery was still in the semi-experimental stage. The American
employer tries to save in labour but not to save in wages, if a
generalization may be ventured. The good workman gets high pay, but he
is kept at tasks requiring his powers and is not suffered to waste his
time doing the work of unskilled and boy labour. There is, certainly, in
the American labour problem no serious grievance on the question of
wages. If there is any abuse it consists in excessively fierce work. Mr.
T. M. Young, who visited the American cotton districts in 1904 with an
informal commission of Lancashire spinners and manufacturers, did not
think that the cause of the high wages--allowance being made for the
purchasing power of money, they are above those of England, though
cotton operatives in England are well paid relatively--was the
superio