So far, therefore, as the statistics of employments present a just register of the influence of machinery upon demand for labour, we are driven to conclude that the net influence of machinery is to diminish employment so far as those industries are concerned into which machinery directly enters, and to increase the demand in those industries which machinery affects but slightly or indirectly. If this is true of England, which, having the start in the development of the factory system, has to a larger extent than any other country specialised in the arts of manufacture, it is probable that the net effect of machinery upon the demand for labour throughout the industrial world has been to throw a larger proportion of the population into industries where machinery does not directly enter. This general conclusion, however, for want of exact statistical inquiries conducted upon a single basis, can only be accepted as probable.
§ 4. (2) _Effects of Machinery upon the Regularity of Employment._--The influence of machinery upon regularity of employment has a twofold significance. It has a direct bearing upon the measurement of demand for labour, which must take into account not only the number of persons employed, but the quantity of employment given to each. It has also a wider general effect upon the moral and industrial condition of the workers, and through this upon the efficiency of labour, which is attracting increased attention among students of industrial questions. The former consideration alone concerns us here. We have to distinguish--(_a_) the effects of the introduction of machinery as a disturbant of regularity of labour; (_b_) the normal effects of machine-production upon regularity of labour.
(_a_) The direct and first effect of the introduction of machinery is, as we have seen, to displace labour. The machinery causes a certain quantity of unemployment, apart from the consideration of its ultimate effect on the number of persons to whom employment is given. Professor Shield Nicholson finds two laws or tendencies which operate in reducing this disturbing influence of machinery. He holds (1) that a radical change made in the methods of production will be gradually and continuously adopted; (2) that these radical changes--these discontinuous leaps--tend to give place to advances by small increments of invention.[188]