82 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES 
fabricated products, in 1920, exceeded that of 1900 by 95 
per cent. 
The significance of that in human application is this: that 
if you deduct from that ever-increasing flow of factory 
product, those things which are of current consumption— 
food and clothing—and estimate the residue, as has been 
done by careful calculation, at 25 per cent., annually, of addi- 
tion to permanent household capital—the things we use for 
the further creation of wealth and earning power—it is a 
fair assumption that the average home in America in 1920 
possesses three times the things that the home in 1900 had. 
... We have a theory, which we have sustained and 
demonstrated and proved by every analysis which can be 
applied, that production itself, by its economy and the security 
of its earning power which it itself creates, has vastly 
enlarged the area of common possession and thus greatly 
raised the general standard of common living. 
The wheat crop of to-day requires by careful estimate the 
expenditure of seven million days’ labor, but that wheat crop 
produced under the conditions before the harvester and 
reaper were invented, and the appliances which followed 
‘hem, would require 130 million days’ labor. 
We have saved 123 million days’ labor in the production 
of one of our five cereal crops by the American genius for 
invention and the substitution of mechanical appliances for 
manual labor. Were those workers released to unemploy- 
ment and idleness? You know they were not. You know 
that only by this process can we find the workers to aid old 
industries in their expansion and to create the new ones 
which science and invention are constantly placing before us. 
There is always an increased demand for labor by the very 
economies of displacement. 
The transportation industry of this country has developed 
its efficiency along with other industry. When you remember 
that in 1875 the railroad car of this country was 65 per 
cent. dead weight and 35 per cent. earnings, and that last 
year a special type of car for coal and ore was developed