This, for a time, produces considerable suffering amongst
the working classes; and it is of great importance for their
happiness that they should be aware of these effects, and be
enabled to foresee them at an early period, in order to diminish,
as much as possible, the injury resulting from them.
407. One very important enquiry which this subject presents
is the question whether it is more for the interest of the
working classes, that improved machinery should be so perfect as
to defy the competition of hand labour; and that they should thus
be at once driven out of the trade by it; or be gradually forced
to quit it by the slow and successive advances of the machine?
The suffering which arises from a quick transition is undoubtedly
more intense; but it is also much less permanent than that which
results from the slower process: and if the competition is
perceived to be perfectly hopeless, the workman will at once set
himself to learn a new department of his art. On the other hand,
although new machinery causes an increased demand for skill in
those who make and repair it, and in those who first superintend
its use; yet there are other cases in which it enables children
and inferior workmen to execute work that previously required
greater skill.
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