Sec. 5.  Are all Men equal before the Machine?—­It is sometimes said that “all men become equal before the machine.”  This is only true in the sense that there are certain large classes of machine-work which require in the worker such attention, care, endurance, and skill as are within the power of most persons possessed of ordinary capacities of mind and body.  In such forms of machine-work it is sometimes possible for women and children to compete with men, and even to take their places by their ability to offer their work at a cheaper price.  The effect of machinery development in thus throwing on the labour-market a large quantity of women and children competitors is one of those serious questions which will occupy our attention in a later chapter.  It is here sufficient to remember that it was this effect which led to a general recognition of the fact that machinery and the factory system could not be trusted to an unfettered system of laissez faire.  The Factory Acts, and the whole body of legislative enactments, interfering with “freedom of contract” between employer and employed, resulted from the fact that machinery enabled women and children to be employed in many branches of productive work from which their physical weakness precluded them before.

Sec. 6.  Summary of Effects of Machinery on the Condition of the Poor.—­To sum up with any degree of precision the net advantages and disadvantages of the growth of machinery upon the working classes is impossible.  If we look not merely at the growth of money incomes, but at the character of those products which have been most cheapened by the introduction of machinery, we shall incline to the opinion that the net gain in wealth-producing power due to machinery has not been equally shared by all classes in the community.[17]

The capitalist classes, so far as they can be properly severed from the rest of the community, have gained most, as was inevitable in a change which increased the part played by capital in production.  A short-timed monopoly of the abnormal profits of each new invention, and an enormous expansion of the field of investment for capital must be set against the gradual fall in the interest paid for the use of each piece of capital.  But as the advantage of each new invention has by the competition of machinery-owners been passed on to the consumer, all other classes of the community have gained in proportion to their consumption of machinery-produced commodities.  As machinery plays a smaller part in the production of necessaries of life than in the production of comforts and luxuries, it will be evident that each class gain as consumers in proportion to its income.  The poorest classes, whose consumption of machine-productions is smallest, gain least.  It cannot, however, be said, that there is any class of regular workers who, as consumers, have been injured by machinery.  All have gained.  The skilled workmen, the aristocracy of labour, have, as has been shown, gained very considerably.  Even the poor classes of regular unskilled workmen have raised their standard of comfort.