LABOR AND MACHINERY.

Motueka Star, Volume II, Issue 94, 8 July 1902, Page 5

LABOR AND MACHINERY.

Man’s labor the world over is steadily decreasing in importance. It is the age of machinery" (says “Scribner”). The forces of nature are to' do man’s “work. All the world over the cost of production 'has fallep. The relative importance of labor in the cost of production is lessening ; the sway of machinery is increasing. The twentieth century will be the century of machinery. Before it is half completed we may expect to see that sort of human labor that is the painful and laborious exerci.se of muscle almost supplanted by automatic machinery directed by trained intelligence. Such development of machine production steadily increases the importance of raw material in the productive process. As the proportion of labor cost, decreases, the cost of the raw material forms' a larger part of the value of the finished product. The age of machinery is also the age of motive power, which is but another way of saying that it is the age of coal. The nation which has the cheapest raw material and the cheapest coal has a permanent and predominant advantage in the world’s markets, and it is an advantage which every improvement in method of manufacture will only serve to emphasise.