Nor since the day of the caveman has man’s efficiency for food-getting and shelter-getting diminished.  It has increased a thousandfold.  Since the day of the caveman, matter has been mastered.  The secrets of matter have been discovered.  Its laws have been formulated.  Wonderful artifices have been made, and marvellous inventions, all tending to increase tremendously man’s natural efficiency of in every food-getting, shelter-getting exertion, in farming, mining, manufacturing, transportation, and communication.

From the caveman to the hand-workers of three generations ago, the increase in efficiency for food- and shelter-getting has been very great.  But in this day, by machinery, the efficiency of the hand-worker of three generations ago has in turn been increased many times.  Formerly it required 200 hours of human labour to place 100 tons of ore on a railroad car.  To-day, aided by machinery, but two hours of human labour is required to do the same task.  The United States Bureau of Labour is responsible for the following table, showing the comparatively recent increase in man’s food- and shelter-getting efficiency: 

Machine Hand
Hours Hours
Barley (100 bushels) 9 211 Corn (50 bushels shelled, stalks, husks and
blades cut into fodder) 34 228
Oats (160 bushels) 28 265 Wheat (50 bushels) 7 160 Loading ore (loading 100 tons iron ore on cars) 2 200 Unloading coal (transferring 200 tons from
canal-boats to bins 400 feet distant) 20 240
Pitchforks (50 pitchforks, 12-inch tines) 12 200 Plough (one landside plough, oak beams and
handles) 3 118

According to the same authority, under the best conditions for organization in farming, labour can produce 20 bushels of wheat for 66 cents, or 1 bushel for 3.5 cents.  This was done on a bonanza farm of 10,000 acres in California, and was the average cost of the whole product of the farm.  Mr. Carroll D. Wright says that to-day 4,500,000 men, aided by machinery, turn out a product that would require the labour of 40,000,000 men if produced by hand.  Professor Herzog, of Austria, says that 5,000,000 people with the machinery of to-day, employed at socially useful labour, would be able to supply a population of 20,000,000 people with all the necessaries and small luxuries of life by working 1.5 hours per day.

This being so, matter being mastered, man’s efficiency for food- and shelter-getting being increased a thousandfold over the efficiency of the caveman, then why is it that millions of modern men live more miserably than lived the caveman?  This is the question the revolutionist asks, and he asks it of the managing class, the capitalist class.  The capitalist class does not answer it.  The capitalist class cannot answer it.