education for the judgment. No doubt a good deal of the less responsible
work connected with machinery is of this order. Moreover, there are
certain other influences to be taken into account which affect the net
resuit of the growth of machinery upon the condition of the workers. The
physical and moral evils connected with the close confinement of large
bodies of workers, especially in the case of young persons, within the
narrow unwholesome limits of the factory or mill, though considerably
mitigated by the operation of factory legislation, are still no light
offset against the advantages which have been mentioned. The weakly,
ill-formed bodies, the unhealthy lives lived by the factory-workers in
our great manufacturing centres are facts which have an intimate
connection with the growth of machinery. But though our agricultural
population, in spite of their poverty and hard work, live longer and
enjoy better physical health than our town-workers, there are few who
would deny that the town-workers are both better educated and more
intelligent. This intelligence must in a large measure be attributed to
the influences of machinery, and of those social conditions which
machinery has assisted to establish. This intelligence must be reckoned
as an adequate offset against the formal specialization of machine-
labour, and must be regarded as an emancipative influence, giving to its
possessor a larger choice in the forms of employment. So far as a man's
labour-power consists in the mere knowledge how to tend a particular
piece of machinery he may appear to be more "enslaved" with each
specialization of machinery; but so far as his labour-power consists in
the practice of discretion and intelligence, these are qualities which
render him more free.

Moreover, as regards the specialization of machinery, there is one point
to be noticed which modifies to some considerable extent the effects of
subdivision upon labour. On the one hand, the tendency to split up the