192 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES 
quantitative output increased by 178 per cent. As a result, 
production per wage earner in 1925 was 48 per cent. greater 
than in 1899. Even in the short period from 1919 to 1925 
the output per wage-earner in our factories increased about 
40 per cent. as a consequence of the greater efficiency of the 
wage-earners themselves, improved management, more sci- 
entific methods and waste elimination, and greater use of 
machinery and other forms of capital as an aid to human 
effort. The advances in educational standards and in scien- 
tific research are the funadmental causes of this progress in 
industry. 
In the years since the war there has been a considerable 
increase in the total agricultural production of the United 
States and an even greater gain in the average output per 
worker. In 1925, the most recent year for which complete 
data aré available, the quantitative output of agricultural 
products was 8 per cent. larger than in 1919, while the output 
per agricultural worker showed an increase of 18 per cent. 
A more extended analysis of the causes and results of 
our new industrial policy was also made in a comprehen- 
sive but cogent way by Secretary Hoover in the course of 
a public address in New York City in March, 1926. On 
that occasion, he said in part :! 
Our work people have increased in education and skill. 
Above all, they are largely free from the economic fallacy 
that restriction of individual effort increases the number of 
jobs. Our national unions have long since declared against 
such theories. We are reaping the benefits of some 600 indus- 
trial research laboratories, mostly established in the last ten 
years. They are ceaselessly searching for invention and for 
every economy in the use of materials and method. . . . 
These are the reasons why we are able to sell goods of 
high quality, produced under the highest real wages in the 
world, in competition with goods produced under lower 
1 Quoted from “Industry’s Coming of Age,” by Rexford Guy Tugwell; 
Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York, 1927; pp. 10-11.