living have been greatly reduced in most
industries. There have been mental and moral gains, also. It requires
mental application to handle machinery. An uneducated immigrant may
soon learn to handle a simple machine, but the complicated machinery
that the better-paid workmen tend requires intelligence, care, and
sobriety. The age of machinery has brought with it emancipation from
slavery, indenture, and imprisonment for debt, and has made possible
a new status for the worker and his children. The laborer in America
is a citizen with a vote and a right to his own opinion equal to that
of his employer; he has time and money enough to buy and read the
newspaper; and he is encouraged and helped to educate his children and
to prepare them for a place in the sun that is ampler than his own.

READING REFERENCES

CHEYNEY: _Industrial and Social History of England_, pages
199-239.

NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 206-212, 256-266.

HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 143-156.

ADAMS AND SUMNER: _Labor Problems_, pages 3-15.

BOGART: _Economic History of the United States_, pages 130-169,
356-399.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM

192. =What It Means.=--The industrial problem as a whole is a problem
of adjusting the relations of employer and employee to each other and
to the rapidly changing age in the midst of which industry exists. It
is a problem that cannot be solved in a moment, for it has grown out
of previous conditions and relationships. It must be considered in its
causes, its alignments, the difficulties of each party, the efforts at
solution, and the principles and theories that are being worked out
for the settlement of the problem.

193. =Conflict Between Industrial Groups.=--The industrial problem is
not entirely an economic problem, but it is such primarily. The
function of employer and employee is to produce material goods that
have value for exchange. Both enter into the economic relation for
what they can get out of it in material gain. Selfish desire tends to
overcome any consideration of each other's needs or of their mutual
interests. There is a continual conflict between the wage-earner who
wants to make a living and the employer who wants to make money, and
neither stops long to consider the welfare of society as a whole when
any specific issue arises. The conflict between individuals has
developed into a class problem in which the organized forces