machinery affect these? What is the effect of machinery upon the demand
for labour? In answering these questions we have to carefully
distinguish the ultimate effect upon the labour-market as a whole, and
the immediate effect upon certain portions of the labour-supply.

It is generally urged that machinery employs as many men as it
displaces. This has in fact been the earlier effect of the introduction
of machinery into the great staple industries of the country. The first
effect of mechanical production in the spinning and weaving industries
was to displace the hand-worker. But the enormous increase in demand for
textile wares caused by the fall of price, has provided work for more
hands than were employed before, especially when we bear in mind the
subsidiary work in construction of machinery, and enlarged mechanism of
conveyance and distribution. Taking a purely historical view of the
question, one would say that the labour displaced by machinery found
employment in other occupations, directly or indirectly, due to the
machinery itself. Provided the aggregate volume of commerce grows at a
corresponding pace with the labour-saving power of new machinery, the
classes dependent on the use of their labour have nothing in the long
run to fear.

A machine is invented which will enable one man to make as many boots as
four men made formerly, displacing the labour of three men. If the
cheapening of boots thus brought about doubles the sale of boots, one of
the three "displaced" men can find employment at the machine. If it
takes the labour of one man to keep up the production of the new
machinery, and another to assist in the distribution of the increased
boot-supply, it will be evident that the aggregate of labour has not
suffered. It is, however, clear that this exactly balanced effect by no
means necessarily happens. The expansion of consumption of commodities