'I do think I've solved the problem of labour-saving; I've reduced it to a science.' 'How?' 'By not working, I suppose.'

No one would be mad enough to urge such a retrogression as the abandonment of labour-saving machinery would involve.

But suppose the development of labour-saving machinery should reach a stage where all human labour was eliminated, what would be the effect on man?

Not only kitchen utensils, but laundry fittings, and household furnishings generally; including patent labour-saving devices, and newly invented contrivances which were supposed to be of great aid to any housewife.

"And this bread of yours," I retorted warmlythe plate labour-saving scheme was a happy thought of my own"spells dyspepsia.

As a physical being, he was a perfect labour-saving machine, himself; bringing all the resources of a naturally quick and acute mind to bear on this one end, never doing anything that required a particle more than the exertion and strength that were absolutely necessary to effect his object.

" Half an hour later he found himself shown into a smartly furnished office where Mr. Gavin Ramsay sat at a handsome desk surrounded by shelves and cabinets whereon and wherein were set out the products of the brains of many inventorsmodels of machines, mechanical toys, labour-saving notions, things plainly useful, things obviously extravagant.

But to affirm generally of a country where labour-saving machines are, in consequence of the cheapness of labour, as little used as in India, that there is a 'want of labour' seems to me to be a paradox.

In the end (i.e., A.D. 1914), the whole world had so been divided, the stimulated markets showed signs of repletion, and since exaggerated profits meant increasing capital demanding investment, and the improvement in "labour-saving" devices continued unchecked, the contest for others' markets became acute, and world-politic was concentrated on the vital problem of markets, lines of communication, and tariffs.

With the outbreak of industrialism in the last quarter of the eighteenth century through the institution and introduction of "labour-saving" machinery and the consequent division of labour, the factory system, the joint-stock company and capitalism, this new slavery was extended to industrial workers, and with its establishment disappeared the element of joy in labour.

The new devices were hailed as "labour-saving" but they vastly increased labour both in hours of work and in hands employed.

The instruments which work this wonderful change are called "labour-saving" machinery.

Every improvement in communication, and each application of labour-saving invention adds to the delicacy and difficulty of trade calculations.

Provided the aggregate volume of commerce grows at a corresponding pace with the labour-saving power of new machinery, the classes dependent on the use of their labour have nothing in the long run to fear.

The big screw-manufacturer able to provide some new labour-saving machinery, to advertise more effectively, or even to sell at a loss for a period of time, can drown his weaker competitors and take their trade.

For the present we have enough to do in our own possessions to reclaim the uncultured wastes; but considering the rapid increase of population, the avidity with which land is taken up, the daily increasing use of all modern labour-saving appliances, the time must very shortly come when capital and energy will need new outlets, and one of the most promising of these is in Nepaul.

The secret of labour-saving is organisation.

FOOTNOTES: [Footnote M: Messrs. Wallis and Whitworth, in their Report on the Industry of the United States, remark at Chapter V."In no branch of manufacture does the application of labour-saving machinery produce, by simple means, more important results than in the working of wood.

And the whole strength of our collective intelligence will be directed first to reducing the amount of such irksome work by labour-saving machinery, by ingenuity of management, and by the systematic avoidance of giving trouble as a duty, and then to so distributing the residuum of it that it will become the whole life of no class whatever in our population.

But there is a strong bias, a sort of labour-saving bias in the normal human mind to ignore this, and not only to speak but to think of a thousand bricks or a thousand sheep or a thousand sociologists as though they were all absolutely true to sample.

To him it was as though hens cackled of introducing time-and-labour-saving incubators while the fox pressed against the unfastened door, smiling to think that their cackle smothered all other sounds ere they reached them or the watch-dog.

He is not much more than a hundred years ahead of the English in design, comfort, and economy, and (this is most important) labour-saving appliances in his house.

Only here, the rattle of the badly-put-together machine is always in the ears, though men and women run about with labour-saving appliances and gospels of 'power through repose,' tinkering and oiling and making more noise.

Labour-saving machinery from the United States came in to embolden the growers of cereals; the export of wheat rose to millions of bushels; and the droning hum of the steam threshing-machine and the whir of the reaper-and-binder began to be heard in a thousand fields from northern Canterbury to Southland.

The labour-saving devices, such as electric potato-parers, are of the most modern type.