§ 2. In opulent countries, the extension of machinery not detrimental but beneficial to Laborers.
From the same principles we are now able to arrive at a final conclusion respecting the effects which machinery, and generally the sinking of capital for a productive purpose, produce upon the immediate and ultimate interests of the laboring-class. The characteristic property of this class of industrial improvements is the conversion of circulating capital into fixed: and it was shown in the first book303that, in a country where capital accumulates slowly, the introduction of machinery, permanent improvements of land, and the like, might be, for the time, extremely injurious; since the capital so employed might be directly taken from the [pg 513] wages fund, the subsistence of the people and the employment for labor curtailed, and the gross annual produce of the country actually diminished. But in a country of great annual savings and low profits no such effects need be apprehended. It merely draws off at one orifice what was already flowing out at another; or, if not, the greater vacant space left in the reservoir does but cause a greater quantity to flow in. Accordingly, in spite of the mischievous derangements of the money market which have been occasioned by the great sums in process of being sunk in railways, I can not agree with those who apprehend any mischief, from this source, to the productive resources of the country. Not on the absurd ground (which to any one acquainted with the elements of the subject needs no confutation) that railway expenditure is a mere transfer of capital from hand to hand, by which nothing is lost or destroyed. This is true of what is spent in the purchase of the land; a portion too of what is paid to agents, counsels, engineers, and surveyors, is saved by those who receive it, and becomes capital again: but what is laid out in the bona fide construction of the railway itself is lost and gone; when once expended, it is incapable of ever being paid in wages or applied to the maintenance of laborers again; as a matter of account, the result is, that so much food and clothing and tools have been consumed, and the country has got a railway instead.
It already appears, from these considerations, that the conversion of circulating capital into fixed, whether by railways, or manufactories, or ships, or machinery, or canals, or mines, or works of drainage and irrigation, is not likely, in any rich country, to diminish the gross produce or the amount of employment for labor. There is hardly any increase of fixed capital which does not enable the country to contain eventually a larger circulating capital than it otherwise could possess and employ within its own limits; for there is hardly any creation of fixed capital which, when it proves successful, does not cheapen the articles on which wages are habitually expended.
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As regards the effects upon the material condition of the wages-receiving class, since it seems clear that capital increases faster than improvements, and probably faster even than population, it follows that in countries where the laboring-classes are evidently growing in intelligence, they gain in wages with the progress of society. Such certainly seems to be the teaching of Mr. Giffen's late studies (see Book IV, Chap. III, § 5).
