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88 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
time, constitute only a part of the whole employment
for labour, and that by a natural law labour in each
employment finds its level, the increase of the return
arising from an invention in a particular employment
resulting in a gain, not to the particular labourers con-
cerned, but to the whole community of labourers. That
the gain may be general, it is, in fact, essential that
labourers generally should gain as consumers rather
than as producers, which implies that in a given em-
ployment wages should increase, not in proport~n to
the increased productiveness of that employmeht by
itself, but in proportion to the increased productiveness
of labour generally. Hence, it may well be that while
the productive power of machines may enormously in-
crease, yet the general increase of productive power
may be much less than would at first be thought, owing
to the comparatively small proportion of labourers after
all who use machinery of great capacity largely in their
employments. Looking at the number of domestic
servants, of clerks, of professional men and women, of
unskilled labourers of every kind, of skilled labourers,
such as painters, who do not use machines, I should
doubt very much whether one-fourth of the labourers.
even in a society like that of England, the most manu-
facturing in the world, use machinery of "great capacity
in their employments. I t is easily to be accounted for,
therefore, why in a given employment there should be
a great increase of production without a corresponding
increase of remuneration to those engaged in that parti-
cular employment. The gain has to be diffused through
society, and the increase of production generally is not
so great, and not nearly so great, as in a few special
cases.
Another observation must be made. There may be
a considerable im provemen t in the quality of prod uction
in employments of a non-mechanical kind, which it is
difficult or even impossible to note by quantities, but
where the labour competes with all other labour for re-
muneration. Where the increased remu"neration should