in the work of expensive machinery means a heavy loss to the capitalist.
Thus the larger the part played by expensive machinery, the stronger the
personal motive in the individual capitalist to give full regular
employment to his workmen. It is the competition of other machinery over
which he has no control that operates as the immediate cause of
instability of work. Thus the growth of machinery has a double and
conflicting influence upon regularity of employment; it punishes capital
more severely for each irregularity or stoppage, while at the same time
it makes such fluctuations more violent.

§ 3. Displacement of Labour.--But the result of machinery which has
drawn most attention is the displacement of labour. In every branch of
productive work, agriculture as well as manufacture, the conflict
between manual skill and machine skill has been waged incessantly during
the last century. Step by step all along the line the machine has ousted
the skilled manual worker, either rendering his office superfluous, or
retaining him to play the part of servant to the new machine. A good
deal of thoughtless rhetoric has been consumed upon the subject of this
new serfdom of the worker to machinery. There is no reason in the nature
of things why the work of attendance on machinery should not be more
dignified, more pleasant, and more remunerative to the working-man than
the work it displaces. To shift on to the shoulders of brute nature the
most difficult and exhausting kinds of work has been in large measure
the actual effect of machinery. There is also every reason to believe
that the large body of workers whose work consists in the regular
attendance on and manipulation of machinery have shared largely in the
results of the increased production which machinery has brought about.
The present "aristocracy of labour" is the direct creation of the
machine. But our concern lies chiefly with the weaker portion of the
working-classes. How does the constant advance of labour-saving