234 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES 
the flow of excess farm workers to the cities add to 
the seriousness of the unemployment problem? 
Will prices continue to decline as a result of lower 
labor and other costs of production? If so, can our 
industries maintain a proper margin of profits? 
Have salesmanship, marketing, advertising and dis- 
tribution costs as a whole so advanced as to absorb in 
large measure the increased profits from the gains in 
the productive efficiency of industry? 
By what practical methods are the wage-earners and 
consumers to be assured of a proper participation in 
the gains arising from increased productive efficiency 
in manufacturing, mining, and agriculture? 
Some of the problems which have thus been raised 
require no serious study. The question of a proper use 
of increased leisure and income by industrial workers is 
as old as industry itself. It has been raised as a warning 
against all past movements for decreasing hours of work 
or radical advances in incomes. It may be profitably 
passed by. Experience has demonstrated that humanity 
will use gains in leisure in an advantageous way, altho it 
may be guilty of lack of wisdom and serious derelictions 
at the outset. Our entire advance in education, culture, 
physical well-being, and democracy has been largely the 
result of gains in leisure, or emancipation from the service 
of time and effort to the purely physical needs of sub- 
sistence. No better demonstration of a wise use of leisure 
and income can be found than the remarkable growth in 
attendance at schools and colleges during recent years, the 
constantly growing participation in wholesome sports and 
recreation, and a corresponding gain during the same 
years in savings deposits and home-ownership. As to 
craftsmanship and artistic values, gains in purchasing 
power and leisure actually stimulate their cultivation. 
11.