AND ON THE CONTINENT.

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and more automatical until, at length, the human hand lias nothingto do except put in materials at certain periods of time and totake away the results when they are ready ” (p. 167).

But if thus the demands which the older system of division oflabour required from the hand-skill of men become less, the per-fection of machinery requires other essentials from the operatives.“Thefinerthe accomplishments of the machine become,the greaterthe understanding and the more the care which is demanded fromthose who look after it. Let us think, for instance, of that beauti-ful machine which on one side feeds itself with steel -wire, and givesforth, on the other, fine screws of remarkable finish. It displaceda. large number of workers who had reached a high stage of skilledhand proficiency, but who led a sedentary life, straining their eyeswith the microscope, and who found at their work little room forany ability except the mere regulation of their fingers. But themachine is complicated and expensive, and the person who' attendsto it must have reasoning power and a lively sense of responsi-bility, which form a good share of character-discipline, and which,although more frequent than formerly, is still sufficiently scarce tocommand a high payment.” This instance may certainly show inan unusual degree the influence of the machine on labour, hutthe same is the case everywhere, in a less degree, wherevermachinery replaces hand-labour.

It is certain that if industrial progress depends at the presentday on the machine, therewith is the necessity formed for a gradualraising of the standard of living of the working classes. We canherewith justify the apparently paradoxical assertion that theextent of the standard of living of the working classes is a measur-ing scale of the industrial power of a nation, because it at the sametime shows the degree of technical progress. But in the field ofsocial, as in general of organic occurrences, everything is actionand re-action. The possession of high standing and capable labouris action, so on the other side an essential for the application anddevelopment of technical inventions and therewith the foundationfor the building-up of the great industrial power position of anation.

Not the countries which employ the lowest-paid hand-labour, butthose which use the best and most machinery, prove themselves atthe present day the strongest in the industrial contests of nations.

K