and maintaining art schools. Private munificence has done something, as in the Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry of Philadelphia; individual States have founded such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the Technological Institute of Massachusetts; but the fact remains that, as a whole, the movement does not succeed. Consequently American goods do not so readily find a market as those which are produced by more highly trained workmen. Possibly this is just one of those cases in which the federal system is at a disadvantage. A strong central government can give a unity and a strength to a technical education, and can direct it with a breadth of view and a conception of high aims which a local government frequently lacks. Be this as it may, it is not to his artistic knowledge that the American owes his high wages. In science it is far otherwise. Science is supreme in American production, and the Americans have outrun us all in its application. They were the first to utilise electricity, not merely in the developement of telegraphy and the kindred arts, but as a powerful ally in manufacture. In the welding of metals, for instance, it now plays an important part. It has reduced the price of aluminium from 21. to 2s. a lb., and the metal has now, in consequence, passed into common use; it enters into the fabric of the bicycle, it is made into shoes for the horses of Russian cavalry, it is embodied in the enigmatical figure which crowns the Shaftesbury Memorial. In iron and steel, the use of highly developed machinery, which is no more than the application of science, has revolutionised production. The new drop-hammer has brought down the price of American ploughs to less than 1., and in the making of all sorts of agricultural implements it is calculated that 600 men can now produce as much as 2,145 a few years ago. Where a single workman could make three dozen pairs of sleeve-links in a day, a boy can now make 9,000. The manufacture of pins still holds its own as an object lesson;' but whereas Adam Smith notes with astonishment and admiration ten men turning out 48,000 pins a day, the modern American manufacturer finds no difficulty in supplying 7,500,000 in the same time, as the result of the labour of five pairs of hands. Compare this with the state of things at the time of the War of Independence, when imported pins sold for 7s. 6d. a dozen, and when, to encourage home industry, the Government offered 50l, for the best twenty-five dozen of pins, made in America, equal to those imported from England! The important point to

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notice here is that the tendency of increasing improvement in machinery to cheapen production is not at the cost of wages. Far from it. Most of our readers are probably familiar with that triumph of delicate, exact machinery, a Waterbury watch. At a recent exhibition the representative of the company took fifty watches to pieces, distributed the various parts in heaps, and then put together a working watch out of parts selected at random by the bystanders from the various heaps. Yet the Waterbury watch made by the workman earning on the average 458. a week can be sold cheaper than those made in the Black Forest by workmen who earn but 8s. or 9s. The explanation of the paradox is to be found in the developement of machinery and its substitution for human effort. Thanks to it, the American turns out 150 watches whilst his European rival is making 40, and at the Waltham Factory they are produced at the rate of 600 a day, or exactly one a minute. Nor is the supply of labour working at low wages by any means an advantage to an industry. The weaving of wool in Ireland, by reason of the abundance of labour, earning very low wages, ought to defy competition; but it is stagnant, if not actually disappearing. This is largely due to a want of enterprise and inventiveness in the use of machines, few mills being thoroughly equipped, and large quantities of cloth being still woven upon hand-looms throughout the country. To put the matter shortly, the value of modern labour turns almost wholly on its equipment, whether this be the skill and knowledge of the labourer himself, or the mechanical appliances on which he relies to aid him in his work.

But improved machinery stands to high wages in a twofold relation; it is at once cause and effect. The better the machine with which a man works, the more productive is his labour, and the more valuable consequently to his employer. On the other hand, the higher the wages paid, the greater is the inducement to the employer to use more and more productive machinery, and so reduce his expenses. Not only is the labour employed in connexion with improved machinery more highly paid, as we have seen, than any other, but the increased cost of it is a powerful stimulus to further improvement. Thus a strike among the boot and shoe makers of Massachusetts, a few years back, resulted in the invention of a machine which reduced the numbers employed in the operation of 'lasting' by 80 per cent. And in this connexion we notice a curious paradox, viz. that machinery should not be made to last too long. In times of

depression it is the firms which use old-fashioned machinery which are the first to suffer-as, for instance, visiting Oldham in 1886, Mr. Schoenhof found that the cottonspinners were making no profits at all, whereas at Rochdale a newly built mill, fitted with all the latest and best inventions, was doing well; the reason being that not only was the expense of working less, but waste had been greatly diminished. Such improvements are often resisted, or at least viewed with little favour, by the workmen themselves, who see in these improvements a means of superseding their own labour. But they have not grasped the key to the situation, and have not understood how closely their own earnings are bound up with their equipment. On the Continent such conservatism is far stronger. It is a matter of pride to the manufacturer that his machinery outlasts that in use here; but, so far from being an advantage to him, the fact really handicaps him in competition with his English rivals. And such conservatism is possible only when a large supply of workmen is available at low wages, for if new machinery is to be employed a higher stamp of workman is needed. In the industry of silk-throwing, for instance, there is a remarkable difference between England and America in this respect, for the wages paid in America are far higher than with us, and yet the cost is far less. We give the explanation in Mr. Schoenhof's own words :

'I stated in my report that one mill in America had lately exchanged old machinery for new, by which change the speed had been increased from 5,000 to 7,500 revolutions a minute. When my report was published in England, a silk-throwster who read it told me that, if they ran machinery at such speed in their mills, all their girls would run away, as they had not the nerve-power to stand such a rate of speed. Later on, I found mills in America that ran their machinery at 10,000 revolutions a minute, and one which ran at 12,000 or even 13,000 revolutions. Of course, to keep in time, all others have to follow the same rate of improvement.'

Now the growth of nerve-power necessary for work at such tremendous pressure is possible only when the conditions of life are favourable-in short, when wages are high. The question may perhaps be asked at this point whether improvement is infinite. The answer is not easy, nor can we say how near we have come to the limit, if limit there be. Improvements in machinery are partly the result of increased power, partly of greater simplification and specialisation. In many industries probably this last has

been carried as far as is possible, but in others-e.g. weaving— there is still room for further developement.

A painful illustration of the truth of much of the foregoing is seen in the position of the so-called domestic industries at the present day. They represent an early stage in the history of production, but they often survive long after the occasion for them is past and they have ceased to serve any good purpose. The reason for their tenacity of life lies in the fact that they offer an apparent advantage in the low wages which those employed in them are paid, and the small amount of fixed capital required. In many parts of Ireland, for instance, we see industries still existing as they were a century ago, when the division of labour was almost unknown. Agriculture was then, as now, the main source of livelihood, and the inhabitants of a small district were self-sufficing,' as Aristotle would have phrased it, building their own houses and making their own clothes. The growing wish to live better grafted on to agriculture the various industries for which the Irish became famous. Whilst the men migrated from time to time in search of additional employment, the women made use of their natural and inherited abilities to make goods for sale and so increase the family income. Hence the fine needlework, the embroidery, the linen-weaving in which they were once so extensively employed. In the same way lace-making took root in Buckinghamshire and the neighbouring counties; kid-glove-making, fine sewing, and the various feminine arts among the peasant women of France and Germany, woodcarving in the Black Forest, toy-making in all its various branches in Thuringia. The fact that these manufactures, in the literal sense, were bye-products and not the whole source of income in so many cases, depressed the condition of those engaged in them, whilst the abundance of workers, their ignorance and weakness in competition, combined to force wages down to starvation point. A painful contrast was often set up between the fineness of the work and the misery of the worker. It was no uncommon thing to see the makers of the most beautiful lace huddled together over their midday meal of potatoes, served, for want of a dish, in the bottom of a chair. The physical and moral condition of those engaged in such industries was too often pitiable to behold, and only a misguided sentiment can regret their extinction. At the present day their revival is often urged and sometimes attempted, on the strength of idyllic and fanciful pictures, but not by those who are familiar with the

deplorable misery which accompanied them. Their time is gone by; they served a purpose, and that purpose exists no longer: they have been crushed by competition, the competition of labourers who enjoy a higher standard of living and a larger measure of happiness.

At first sight many of these conclusions seem to lose their validity in face of the fact that certain industries conducted on a small scale, and on the domestic system, persistently hold their own against competition, even when their rivals are assisted by the best machinery and the most efficient labour. In Lyons, for example, silks are made which are without equal in the market, yet the industry is commonly practised on handlooms, and in small workshops, whilst the earnings of the labourers are very low. So, too, English print goods have a practical monopoly of the market, and all the attempts of American manufacturers to oust them have hitherto failed. The explanation seems to lie in a variety of circumstances. At Lyons there is a wealth of inherited capacity which is brought to bear on manufacture. The Lyons workman throws more feeling into his work than does the American, his handloom admits of a slighter and cheaper material than can be used on a power-loom, the scale and character of his work make a close personal superintendence possible, and in the case of fine goods this means a greater taste and finish. It is quality against quantity and low price. In England, on the other hand, the advantage lies in variety. An English manufacturer is producing mainly for the foreign market, and therefore he is constantly endeavouring to satisfy a great variety of tastes. He is ready at a moment's notice to print off the colour or pattern which is in demand, and no small part of his capital is locked up in consequence. The American manufacturer specialises to a far greater extent; he confines his energies to one particular product, with the result that, whilst he reduces his expenses to a minimum, his wares are monotonous, and he fails to secure the same amount of custom. In England, too, and in France, and in all countries, it may be said, in which industries have been long established, there is a wealth of tradition, an atmosphere, so to speak, which secures a high standard of taste, and at the same time a greater individuality both in the workman and his product.

'Our colourings,' says Mr. Schoenhof, 'show a certain crudeness against the English, which makes them somewhat hard to the eye. Theirs have more softness and pleasing depth. Skill in colour-making there is more or less a matter of rule of thumb. Art schools and technical