great distress.

But more people now find work in making the materials of our clothes than in that time; and they are better paid, while the supply of clothes to each of us is greater.

17. In a few cases there can be no proportional increase in consumption, and therefore improvement does reduce the amount of employment. Thus the reaping machine has made it possible to get the harvest cut with far less labor than when the hand-sickle or even the cradle was employed. And while it has made it possible for more people to get all the bread they want, it has not enabled the rest of us to eat more bread than we did. In this case the laboring classes profit chiefly as consumers, the cost of food being reduced. Yet the cheapening of flour has opened some new uses for it and extended others, as in paste to make paper boxes.

18. Attending to machinery such as looms in a factory is very monotonous work, more monotonous indeed than any work was before the general introduction of machinery. It also is the least educative work. In farm work and in housework the mind is kept active by the frequent change of interest. In the factory the mind stagnates, unless the workman or workwoman has time for reading and for study after hours.

19. Formerly the factories were run from twelve to fourteen hours every day, and even boys and girls had to work for those long hours. Such a life was dreadful for young people; and one of those who endured it as a boy, tells of his thrusting his hand in among the cog-wheels of the machinery in order to secure a holiday. He declares that the pain of the hurt was as nothing to the joy of his release for a time from his work.

20. Of late our States have stopped this by limiting the hours of labor in mines and factories to ten a day for grown men, and a still smaller number for women and children.

Our workingmen generally think the law should go further, and should limit the working-day to eight hours, as has been done in some of the Australian colonies. This probably will be effected, either by law, as in the reduction to ten hours, or by a general refusal of the working classes to work longer each day, as they did in Australia. Nor need the change cause any general reduction of wages or diminution of profits. Part at least of the loss of time will be made up in many trades by the greater efficiency of the workman. In other cases there may be a slight rise in the price of the product, or at least no such reduction in price as otherwise would have followed improvement in methods, until the change is well over.

21. More radical changes are demanded by some people, who denounce the wages-system itself as a bad one. The Socialists declare that it exposes the workman to excessive "social risk." He may be thrown out of employment, or his wages forced down to near the starvation level by hard times. He may be unfitted to work by illness or old age; or he may die and leave his wife and young children dependent on charity. To correct this evil they demand that the State shall take possession of the instruments of production, shall become the only employers of labor, and shall add the profits of production to wages.

22. To avert this social revolution several improvements upon the present system have been suggested. The first is the compulsory insurance of workmen. In Germany the working people are divided by law into two classes, viz., those who do, and those who do not, receive more than a specified rate of wages. Those who do are compelled to pay regularly a small contribution to a public fund. The employers of those who do not are compelled to make this payment for them. To these contributions the State makes a considerable addition.

Out of this fund support is furnished

to those who cannot obtain employment, to those who are disabled from work, and to the widows and orphans of workmen who have died. Something like this has been established by several of our great railroad companies for the benefit of their workmen of all grades.

23. As business is usually managed, the workingmen get no share in the profits, that is, no compensation for the risk. they take in giving their time to learning one particular kind of work, and in taking their chances of finding employment in it. In some industries, however, there is a sliding-scale, by which wages are adjusted to the price of the article the men are making. Thus when nails rise in price, the wages of the nail-makers rise also, and fall when the price falls. Such sliding-scales generally have an upper and a lower limit on them, and wages cannot rise above the upper, or fall below the lower, whatever be the rise or fall of prices. This seems quite fair to the workingmen, and they generally are willing to have the upper line drawn pretty low, if at the same time the lower line is put pretty high. Yet these lines are really bad arrangements for the workingman. When prices fall, the workman is safe only to the point where employment ceases, and then he finds no safeguard against getting no wages at all. In good times, on the other hand, he does not profit fully by high prices.

24. A better arrangement is profit-sharing. This sets apart a share of the profits of the establishment for division among the workingmen. Sometimes this is done by giving each a share of stock. In others it is agreed that all the profits above a certain percentage shall be divided either partly or entirely among the workmen. This naturally tends to give them a more direct interest in their work, to secure a feeling among them which discourages shirking and waste, and to bring them within the number of those who receive profit in return for their risk.

Profit-sharing has been found to fail, however, when hard times have lasted year after year, and there have been no profits to divide. In such cases the workman is too apt to suspect that the books are not fairly kept, and that there would be a dividend for him if they were.

25. Much less practicable is the plan called co-operation, in which the workmen become their own employers, and own the factories themselves. It is found to be not so hard for them to acquire the ownership by careful and prolonged saving, as it is to manage it wisely when they have got it. They cannot secure the business experience, and they fear to give the scope to enterprise, which are necessary to success. Co-operation of this kind has had but few successes, and those mostly in such businesses as the making of flour-barrels, where not much judgment has to be exercised, and the demand is steady. The workingman in fact cannot get on without the class who direct the big operations of industry.

26. Labor and capital are partners in every act of production. The workshop succeeds the isolated laborer, and the factory the workshop, to the general benefit; but the change of social relations in the last case leads to friction. There is no natural law for the division of the joint-product between wages and profits, and the workman has increased his share by combination. There is a law of distribution by which wages tend to rise, while profits do not. The improvements which effect this sometimes inflict temporary hardship on the working classes, but permanently benefit them. these make labor more monotonous and less educative, the reduction of the length of the working day is reasonable. Not so reasonable is the proposal to abolish the capitalist class, whether made by Socialists or Co-operators; but Compulsory Insurance of workingmen and Profit-sharing would be improvements of the wages system.

As

CHAPTER V.

Money and its Uses.

1. WHEN every separate group or family was self-supporting, there were few or no exchanges between such groups. In the course of time those groups which were more favorably situated than others- as being, for instance, on the seashore, where they had access to supplies of salt and of fish - began to trade with those who had less or none of these. At first this trade was simply an exchange or barter of one commodity for another. But as trade developed, cases occurred in which two groups, or later two persons, had each something to sell, but did not either of them want what the other had. This led to an agreement upon some third article which everybody wanted, and which therefore could be used to make a purchase from any one. At first cattle filled this place; then the skins of cattle, or even those of wild beasts (peltries). This was the beginning of money.

2. As primitive man loves to adorn himself, the metals which are best suited to this became objects of universal desire at a very early period. They were Silver and Gold; and as they represented a large value in a small bulk, they were more convenient than any other article that had been used. At first they were paid out by weight, as Abraham did when he bought the cave of Macpelah from the Hittites of Hebron. This was formerly the oldest purchase and payment of which we had any record; but the explorations at Babylon have supplied still older.

3. The Egyptians seem to have made the use of Silver easier by casting the quantity of it which represented the