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 distribution
 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 subsistence.
 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.