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GROSS AND NET GAIN OF RISING WAGES 91
ing of machines, the very employments where there is
apparently the greatest increase of production and the
least proportionate increase of the remuneration of
labour. The strain upon the nervous system, through
the combined monotony of the employment and the
constant vigilance required, are no doubt very often
most severe, and are perhaps felt the more because the
present generation is comparatively untrained. But the
Increased severity of toil, without proportionate re-
muneration, might be admitted in those special employ-
ments without altering the fact that remuneration has
increased generally. What seems to have happened in
these cases is, that the development of society imposes
a heavy burden on a special class, involving rapid change
in the quality of its labour, to which it is hardly equal,
but that the improvement in quality is part of the
general improvement in society. The nervous power
to stand monotony and supply the necessary vigilance
and other moral qualities necessary for the supervision
of machines may exist in greater abundance in the next
generation, along with a continued improvement in the
quality of labour in non-mechanical employments.
It will, perhaps, be urged that the workman does
not get a proportionate remuneratiori because the
capitalist obtains for himself the increased product-
the socialist argument. But the facts are all against
this explanation. One of the most remarkable facts of
recent years is the general decline in the return to
capital. Capitalists from year to year have been willing
to invest for a smaller and smaller return. \Ve must
assume, then, that if they have gained at all it has only
been by the immense cheapening of commodities, and
labour has gained more than in proportion. This would
appear to be the case: only the labourers who have
gained, as we have seen, are not specially those who
are occupied about machines. The gain is generally
diffused, and is received by labourers generally in pro-
portion to the relative values of their work. Apparently
the greatest gain has been among the higher artisan