preserve the institutions they think threatened, they will stop at nothing. We simply ask is it unreasonable to predict that strikes will be one-only one-of the factors in bringing on the revolution?

CHAPTER VIII.

MACHINERY.

Its Development; Its Place in the Economic World-Its Relation to Labor and Capital and the Part

It Will Act In the Future.

The introduction of labor-saving machinery into modern industry has been productive of both good and evil. Like fire, it is both a good and a bad agent. If controlled judiciously it is a blessing; if employed promiscously and recklessly, it may produce great havoc. It is in the latter way that machinery has been introduced-planlessly, and without any regard to its general and ultimate effect. This blindness and its result we will consider.

How remarkable that such a powerful and good agent can become so perverted. How terrible to think of possible great blessings turned into great plagues. Think of the immense wealth that might be produced; and that might add to the comforts, joy and happiness of the race.

And yet there are many men who would gladly see machinery abolished, and hand labor instituted once more. This, of course, will be attributed to ignorance and preju

dice, and to a view that is so narrow that it has not taken in the whole problem. It will be said they never weigh the good against the bad that results from the use of labor-saving machinery. Maybe they don't. And yet can they be blamed? They get all of the bad and very little of the good. Into their lives have come more of the bitterness and disappointments than the blessings and helps incidental to the employment of machinery. Their share has been reduced wages, uncertainty of work, loss of position, and worry, with a small per cent of the good things that go with it.

A brief review of the many labor-saving devices adopted becomes in order. So many have been added daily of recent years that we scarcely notice them. There are too many to pay attention to them all.

Kay's fly-shuttle (1739),

During the last half of the eighteenth century there began a remarkable change in the methods of producing wealth which is still going on. This change was ushered in by a series of inventions. Hargreaves' spinning jenny (1764), Arkwright's water frame (1769), Watt's steam engine, invented in 1769 and applied to the manufacture of cotton sixteen years later, Crompton's mule (1779), Cartwright's power loom (1789), and Whitney's cotton gin (1793).

Since that time invention has followed invention with astonishing rapidity. The railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph and the telephone have come, and now to the power of steam is being added that of electricity. The

story of the introduction of modern machinery is too long to trace in detail here. The first effect on the hand workers who were supplanted by machines was disastrous in the extreme. Later effects are little better.

Not long since in Pennsylvania, within the brief space of six hours and four minutes a number of sheep were shorn, and the wool put through all the processes of manufacture necessary to turn it into a suit of clothes.

A test was also made with shoes. A steer was killed, the hide tanned, turned into leather and made into shoes all in twenty-four hours.

In an interview recently, a St. Louis shoe manufacturer stated for the Shoe and Leather Gazette that by the aid of new turn machines his concern can produce about 400 pairs of shoes a day; one operator doing the work formerly requiring eighteen skilled mechanics.

The new glass bottle blowing machine is pronounced a success by the trade. One of the Standard Oil Company's manufacturing concerns uses 10,000,000 bottles a year, and the president of the company says the machine-made bottle is entirely satisfactory. A lamp chimney machine is being operated in Birmingham, England, and a plant is being built in Toledo, O., to manufacture chimneys by machinery exclusively. "With one unskilled man or boy to work it this machine does the labor of four skilled men by the old process," says a writer who describes its workings.

A new electrical riveting machine, to be used in the

erection of large buildings, etc., and that can insert 1200 rivets in ten hours; a needle-making machine that revolutionizes the industry by destroying hand production and turning out 260 needles per minute; and a new sterotyping process that operates automatically and displaces many skilled workers, are new labor-saving devices announced as entering the market.

The printing business is undergoing changes daily. The linotype is fast taking the place of type-setters. But that is not all. Inside of a year a new automatic type-setting machine will be on the market that will sell for $2,000. It will be run by electricity and set whole words at a single touch. A new web press will also be on the market soon which will print newspapers faster than they can be counted and is much simpler in construction than the presses now in use.

The following is from St. Louis Labor:

"A basket machine has recently been invented which will completely revolutionize the basket making industry and throw thousands of workers out of employment. The machine was invented by Mergenthaler, the inventor of the linotype, and is almost as wonderful in its make-up.

"About fifty of the machines are in operation in various parts of the country, making grape baskets, berry baskets and fruit baskets of a strength and quality never approached by hand work, and with speed and ease which makes these machines wonderful to all who watch their work. Fancy a single machine that will turn out com