242 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

When these new industries reach the point of saturation a
very serious problem of continual displacement of men
through the use of improved machinery must be constructively
 met and settled.

In commenting on an article by Professor Sumner H.
Slichter of Cornell University, in which he declared that
increasing unemployment would be the price of our outstanding
 industrial progress unless remedial measures were
inaugurated, The New Republic stated editorially in its
issue of February 8, 1928:
Mr. Slichter believes, and so do we, that a good deal of the
unemployment now in evidence is due, not to the cyclical
alteration of boom and depression, but to changing methods
and increasing productivity in industry, whereby more goods
can be turned out by fewer men. Classical economics teaches
that such advances in productivity help the workers themselves
 (in the long run) by increasing the general stock of
goods per capita. On this basis economists and employers
have lectured labor for its occasional opposition to improved
machinery and better devices, and have welcomed labor’s
new favorable attitude to increased efficiency. But how long
will this welcome conversion endure if (in the short run,
which may continue for years) the better living standards
of others are purchased at the cost of deplorable privation
on the part of millions thrown out of work? A far-seeing
industrial leadership would in its own interest give concentrated
 attention to this problem. When more goods are
produced by fewer men, what will suffice to give employment
to the men dispensed with?
It had thus been realized on all sides—by executives
and by the great multitude of workers directly affected, as
well as by students, social workers, ‘economists, and publicists—that
 in the rapid development of the new order of
industrial efficiency, tremendous forces for good had been
established, but unless these forces were kept going at