Essentials of Economic Theory Part 14

CAPITAL AS AFFECTED BY CHANGES OF METHOD

_Labor Saving and Capital Concentrating._--There is a common impression that whatever saves labor usually requires an increase of capital in the industry where the economy is secured, and this impression is justified by the experience of the century following the invention of the steam engine and the early textile machinery. Hand spinning and weaving require small amounts of fixed capital, while the mills in which spinning and weaving are done by steam or water power require a great deal. Fortunately in any long period this capital comes as abundantly as it is needed from the profits of the very business that calls for it and does not reduce the capital of other industries. The profit of one year furnishes the new instruments required in the next; but the immediate effect of subst.i.tuting a costly machine for hand labor is to concentrate capital, or to call it from places to which it would otherwise go.

_The Liberation of Capital by Invention._--For a long period it was the general rule that a mechanical invention at first called capital to the point at which it was applied, although it afterward created new capital and sent it away to make more than good the draft it originally made. This rule is no longer universally applicable. When an invention cheapens capital goods, it liberates capital. It is clear that a hundred and twenty-five years ago there was small chance that an invention would liberate very much capital by reducing the cost of making tools, buildings, rails, machinery, etc., since there were so few of them to cheapen. Now that machines are at hand in myriad forms the chance is large that an invention will subst.i.tute for many of them others of less costly construction. It will in these cases cause less capital to be required per machine than was formerly needed.

_Simplifying the Forms of Machinery and Cheapening the Materials of It._--The history of invention shows that the early machines sometimes took c.u.mbersome and expensive forms, for which simple and cheaper forms were later subst.i.tuted. Much simplifying of mechanical appliances is all the while going on, and this, of course, liberates some capital. Making instruments of any kind out of cheaper materials has the same effect that anything has which reduces the cost of constructing the instruments. Bessemer steel has made rails, bridges, s.h.i.+ps, buildings, steam boilers, and a vast number of mechanical tools and appliances less costly than they were, and so has liberated some of the capital which such things formerly embodied. After one of the machines of the costlier type has earned the fund on which its owner relies for replacing it as it is worn out, it appears that a part of this fund will suffice for procuring a perfectly good subst.i.tute for it, and the remainder may be used for procuring other appliances of production.

_A'''_ _B'''_ _C'''_ _H'''_ _A''_ _B''_ _C''_ _H''_ _A'_ _B'_ _C'_ _H'_ _A_ _B_ _C_ _H_

_Cheapening the Process of Making Instruments._--If we recur to the table which represents the groups of the industrial system, we shall see that improvements of method in the general group _H-H'''_ have the effect of liberating capital in the other groups and subgroups. _H'''_ is the comprehensive symbol that represents active instruments of all kinds. It is engines and boilers, looms and spindles, lathes and planers, rails, cars, bridges, tunnels, ca.n.a.ls, s.h.i.+ps, buildings, and all the myriad instruments which actively aid man in making the things he wants for consumption. New methods at _H-H'''_ make the supply of all these things cheaper, which means that the labor and capital of the group _H-H'''_ which would have been required for replacing the instruments used in the other groups will more than suffice for that purpose, and a part of their time may be given to making machinery, etc., not formerly used. This amounts to liberating a part of the fixed capital in the three groups producing _A'''_, _B'''_, and _C'''_, although the free capital that is thus gained may in part be used in furnis.h.i.+ng additional appliances for use in these same groups.

_Local Concentration of Capital which causes a General Liberation of It._--In such a case the new method used at _H'''_ may, at its introduction, require more capital than was formerly used at that point in the system. Building Bessemer converters was a costly operation, though the output of cheap steel afterward saved far more capital than the converters required. The power ca.n.a.ls of Niagara cost something, but the products created by means of them are cheapening many tools of industry; and like effects follow most applications of electricity for utilizing waterfalls and carrying to great distances the power which they generate. They follow on a considerable scale as the culm of coal mines is economically burned and made to generate steam and drive dynamos. All cheapening of transportation, besides making consumers' goods cheaper, has the same effect on producers'

goods, and by this means liberates capital. It causes a single productive appliance to cost less than it otherwise would cost and renders available for other purposes a part of the outlay that was formerly required for replacing it at the end of its industrial career.

_Effect of Speeding Machinery._--Increasing the speed of a machine is a capital-liberating operation, since it enables a certain number of machines to do the work of a larger number. Running spindles and looms rapidly, while it requires fewer laborers for a given amount of product, requires fewer spindles and looms also.

_Cases in which Liberated Capital remains partly in the Same Industry in which it has been Used._--A distinction has carefully to be made between causing less capital to be used _per unit_ of physical product, and causing less to be used in a particular occupation without regard to the amount of the product. If we cheapen the operation of cloth making, we shall increase the consumption of cloth, and in this way we may draw new capital into this business, even though we can build and equip a mill of a given capacity more cheaply than before. In this case we have liberated capital in this business and at once reemployed it at the same point. If we use as many looms as before, the more rapid running calls for more spindles to furnish yarn, and the new spindles require larger engines and boilers, or more water wheels, wheel pits, and reservoirs, to furnish power. Enlarging a business in this way usually calls for an enlarged general capital _in the industry_, though it calls for less capital for a given output; and the striking fact is that this effect may be realized by means of devices which actually save capital at particular points in the industry. If, after power looms were introduced, some inventive genius had made them cost only a quarter as much as on their first introduction they had cost, the profits of the business would have been increased and, in time, far more capital in the shape of spinning machinery, engines, etc., would have been required than had formerly been used in those forms. With general growth of population and wealth the increased consumption of cloth calls, in the end, for more capital in the form of the looms themselves.

_General Consumption as affected by a Specific Increase of Productive Power._--Consumption in the generic--the use of consumers' goods of every kind--grows as the power to make the good increases; but a point that is of great importance is that any _specific_ increase of productive power brings about a _general_ increase of consumption. It brings about a greater all-round creating and using of commodity. If we can hereafter make the _A'''_ of our table with the expenditure of half as much labor and capital as we have heretofore used in creating it, the liberated agents of production become available for making whatever is most needed, and they will, in fact, be used for increasing the supply of all three types of consumers' goods represented in the table. They will give us more of _A'''_, _B'''_, and _C'''_ in quant.i.ties adjusted by the laws of value. The outcome of this is that an economy in making _A'''_ actually gives us more of _A'''_, _B'''_, and _C'''_. We become larger consumers of everything because of the cheapening of anything which enters into our list of articles for personal use. This presents a further aspect of the process of moving labor and capital from group to group, in which the possibility of hards.h.i.+p for particular persons inheres. The conclusion to which a fair weighing of the effects of mechanical progress has already led us is that there are very few, even of the workers who suffer displacements of this kind, who do not during their lives gain far more than they lose by general progress; and the effects of cheapening capital goods at one point, and so liberating capital for use at other points, increases this beneficent effect. The special costs of making the new kinds of machinery have been large in the earlier stages of the process, but have afterward grown smaller; and as machinery has come into general use the liberating of capital by the cheapening of the machines has become a more and more important factor. Some of the capital liberated at _A_ goes to a.s.sist labor in furnis.h.i.+ng the additional amount of _B'''_ and _C'''_ which enlarged consumption requires.

_Hards.h.i.+ps entailed on Capitalists by Progress._--As the old handicrafts have now been largely supplanted by machinery, and the hards.h.i.+p that continuing progress entails on laborers is greatly reduced, there is involved in progress a new burden which falls altogether on the capitalist employer. The machine itself is often a hopeless specialist. It can do one minute thing and that only, and when a new and better device appears for doing that one thing, the machine has to go, and not to some new employment, but to the junk heap. There is thus taking place a considerable waste of capital in consequence of mechanical and other progress. As there have come into use marine boilers made of steel and capable of standing a very high pressure, the low-pressure boilers of former days have become useless.

With the advent of triple expansion cylinders, twin screws, and better and larger hulls, s.h.i.+ps of the old type lost their value; and similar things are occurring in every line of production. A new mill is built and equipped with the best machinery known at the date of its building; but before a year has gone by all the machines in one department are so antiquated that it is best to throw them out.

Indeed, a quick throwing away of instruments which have barely begun to do their work is often a secret of the success of an enterprising manager; but it entails a destruction of capital. What is easily to be seen is (1) that a single change of that kind makes an immediate draft on the general fund of available social capital; and (2) that this draft, as a rule, is soon repaid with increase. Machinery that is nearly new is thrown away when it appears that another kind soon will earn enough to make good the waste thus entailed, and the paradox is in the fact that the _entrepreneur_ who quickly destroys capital really saves it, while he who, by using the old appliances, tries to hold on to the capital loses it, since he sacrifices profits from which more would have come. Running his antiquated engine, the unenterprising man has to content himself with small returns and, in the meanwhile, sees his actual productive fund dwindling by the deterioration of the old equipment.

_The Offset for Capital destroyed by Changes of Method._--What has happened in such a case to the enterprising man is a loss of personal capital. What he has just paid for the supplanted instruments has gone for nothing. His financial status is improved rather than injured because of the prospective profits which the new appliances will earn.

What has happened to the man who keeps the old machinery is a partial or total loss of whatever he has lately put into it, not offset by such profits. By keeping his capital goods he is losing his capital without having his rival's a.s.sured prospect of regaining it. Whether the gains made by those who promptly discard antiquated appliances offset the wastes suffered by those who hold on to them too long, is a question that requires more s.p.a.ce than can here be allotted to it; but the following facts determine the answer:--

(1) Instruments naturally at any one date are of an average age equal to about half their working duration.

(2) Discarding all of one kind at any one date would involve drawing on the fund of social capital for about one half of the amount needed to replace these instruments.

(3) Very few are at once discarded on the invention of the improved types.

(4) Nothing but a fall in the price of the product created by the aid of these old machines can prevent them from earning the remainder of the fund required for replacing them. If they do this, they prevent any positive destruction of capital which many inventions cause.

(5) When only one _entrepreneur_ introduces the new appliance, his production is usually increased, but not to an extent that causes a quick fall in price. This affords to the users of old appliances whose plants are not already at the final point of inefficiency a chance to continue acc.u.mulating the fund for replacement. The profits of the user of the better appliance are meanwhile accruing.

(6) When all _entrepreneurs_ introduce the new appliance at once they do so--provided that their act is intelligent--because the saving effected in the cost of production makes the change advantageous in spite of the waste entailed. They expect an all-round net profit during the period before the price of the product falls to its new level, and they expect that this will give them more than is required for interest, cost of future replacement of the superior instruments, and the deficit in the accounts caused by the early discarding of the superseded appliances.

(7) Without treating this prospective profit inhering in the new appliance as capital, we must regard it as affording an a.s.surance that new capital will soon appear. There are great gains to be made by using the new appliances, and some of these will add themselves to the permanent fund of productive wealth.

(8) The cost of the new appliances may be defrayed by their owner's earlier acc.u.mulations or by loans. In either case they come out of a social fund that is created mainly by the appliances which in a preceding period have yielded special gains. The machine of to-day is paid for from the available surplus created by the machine of an earlier day, and a series of inventions enlarges the social fund of capital in spite of all wastes by which it is attended.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The effect that a series of improvements has on the amount of social capital, if we measure the fund solely on the basis of the cost of the capital goods which embody it, may be represented thus:--The horizontal line measures time and is graduated in years from one to ten. The distance of the point above this base represents the amount of capital as estimated in units of cost, in the possession of the society at the time a particular improvement is made, and would remain unchanged if society were static. The level of the line _AB_ represents what, under such a condition, would be the capital of a decade. The curved line _AB'_, dipping below _AB_ and then rising above it, expresses the fact that a single important improvement first trenches on the amount of capital in use, and soon makes good the deduction and makes a positive addition. It raises the sum total of capital to the level of the latter part of the line _AB'_. The curved line _A'B''_, first falling below _A'B'_ and then rising above it, expresses the fact that a second improvement, made a year or two after the first one, makes a reduction of the amount of capital as determined by the first improvement, and later adds more than enough to make good this reduction. A third improvement, at the end of two or three further years, has the effect expressed by the line _A''B'''_; that is, it first reduces the fund below the level at which at that time it would otherwise have stood,--but by no means to the level at which it stood when the series of improvements began,--and later carries it above the line expressing the highest level it would, without this improvement, have attained. In so far as these three improvements affect the level of the social capital for the ten-year period, it stands at the level indicated by the line _AA'A''B'''_, and no later improvement, even at the time of its introduction, does more than to make a small reduction of the increment of capital accruing from the products of the earlier improvements. A series of economical changes means a perpetual increase of the social capital as well as a perpetual improvement in the mode of applying labor. The increments of capital due to the earlier changes are far more than is required by the introduction of any later one.

_The Impossibility of Reducing Capital by too Rapid Progress._--There is a theoretical question whether this series might be too rapid to permit this result. If the interval were a month instead of several years, and if the amount of capital put into the new appliances were the same that, in the figure, they are represented as requiring, the effect would be to make twelve deductions from the amount of the social capital in the course of a year, which would carry it some distance below its original level, _while in this one year_ there would have been no time for the profits to accrue in order to restore and add to the fund. In the next year and the following ones this would follow, and the effect, in the course of ten years, would be to carry the social capital to a still higher level than the one it reaches in consequence of the slower succession of economical changes.

Increasing the rapidity of productive inventions only multiplies the additions made to the social capital.

We may summarize the chief facts concerning technical progress as follows:--

(1) Progress may throw particular men out of their present employment, but cannot destroy the social demand for their labor. Somewhere in society there is a place for them.

(2) If improvements were long confined to one subgroup, they might send labor into other subgroups and even into other general groups.

Occurring as they do at nearly all parts of the system, they very seldom require an absolute diminution of the amount of labor in a subgroup, and practically never cause such a reduction in a general group.

(3) The gradual introduction of an improvement is important, since it affords time for an increase in the social demand for the product which is thus cheapened and for introducing at many other points improvements which neutralize, in a large degree, the labor-expelling effect of the first improvement.

(4) Technical gains are the largest source of additions to the total amount of the social capital. The constant influx of new capital facilitates the placing of laborers at the points where they are needed.

(5) The fact that elementary utilities which are produced by agriculture cater to a less elastic demand than do the form utilities which are the product of manufacturing occupations, has caused labor to move slowly from the lowest subgroups of the various series to the upper ones, as the productive power of labor in agriculture has increased.

(6) This movement is so gradual that it can be accomplished almost entirely by devoting to the industries const.i.tuting the upper subgroups an enlarged share of new laborers as they enter the field in quest of employment. Young men drift from the farm to the village and the city.

(7) In addition to the upward flow of labor in the series of subgroups there are some lateral movements, or transfers from group to group, to be taken into account. The fact that improvements are widely diffused and that there is a succession of them at each point makes it possible to make these lateral movements of labor in the same way in which the movement within the groups is accomplished; namely, by putting the new men who are entering the field of employment in the places where they are most needed.

(8) These facts do not always prevent particular men from losing the special benefit that skilled handicrafts have insured to them, since a machine, to the running of which they are compelled to betake themselves, may often be as well tended by persons who have never learned such a handicraft.

(9) The loss thus entailed on craftsmen was very large during the original process of supplanting hand labor by machinery, but bids fair to be relatively small hereafter, since fewer men go through long and costly apprentices.h.i.+ps, and since the operator of one machine can usually learn to operate another with little waste of time.

(10) Such injuries as particular men now suffer from the introduction of economical devices are, as a rule, more than atoned for even to these men by the greater productivity of social labor, as it is applied in new ways, and by the greater abundance of social capital.

These gains are the result of improvements made in the earlier periods, and they benefit every one who labors.

(11) The new capital created by productive inventions is an essential cause of the continuing gain of the working cla.s.s.

(12) While most inventions at first draw capital from the social fund to the point where they are applied, many of them soon liberate capital by cheapening particular appliances of production, and nearly all of them, by means of the profits they insure, ultimately add to the social capital.

_The Vital Importance of Continued Improvement._--Intelligent study will make it clear to every one that any a.s.sertion that machinery is the enemy of labor is not merely erroneous, it is a contradiction of the most striking and important fact connected with general progress.

The gains of labor during the past century, which have been partly due to the occupation of areas of new land, have been largely due to the mechanical inventions and technical discoveries which have put the forces of nature so largely at man's disposal. These forces have worked for all society, indeed, but they have worked largely for the men who labor, whether in the factory, in the shop, on the railroad, or on the farm. Their effects are all-pervasive, since they signify an increase in the productive power of that final unit of social labor on which wages generally depend. General riches have been and must continue to be generally beneficent. As an isolated man working, Crusoe-like, for himself alone, gains by every technical discovery he can make and by everything he can add to his stock of productive appliances, so society, the great and isolated organism which is the tenant of our planet, reaps a benefit by every improvement it can make, and the forces of distribution see to it that this benefit is carried through and through the system and made to improve the condition of the most humble members. Since the great areas of new land are no longer available as a future resource, the hope of labor during the coming centuries, under any form of industrial organization, whether it be compet.i.tive or socialistic, rests on the prospect of continued technical gains,--an unending succession of calls on the exhaustless serving power of nature.

_The Effect of Changes in the Relative Amounts of Labor and Capital._--The law of wages, as stated in an early chapter of this work, makes it evident that an increase of population, while the social fund of capital remains the same, would reduce the product of marginal labor and therefore the rate of wages. In every establishment into which more workmen should come, while its capital remained the same in amount, the power of an individual worker to produce goods would be lessened. Moreover, any influx of laborers into the society as a whole would be attended by a diffusion of them among all the groups and subgroups, so that the power of an individual laborer to create any kind of goods would be reduced. This means that labor has lost some of its power to create _commodity_, which is the concrete name for general wealth, and its wages fall accordingly.

An influx of capital without any change in the number of laborers would have the opposite effect. It would add to the productive power of marginal labor. As the new capital should diffuse itself through the producing organism it would enlarge the product of workers everywhere. The wages of labor depend in part on a numerical ratio between units of capital and units of labor, as they cooperate in production; and the change in the ratio which enlarging capital causes improves the condition of the working people. The capital also diffuses itself throughout the system, every subgroup gets a share of it, and labor everywhere responds to this influence and produces more than before. In a change in this ratio--in a gain of _per capita_ wealth in productive forms--lies one influence which has a great power over human destiny and is one main cause of weal or woe for coming generations. Method as it improves is related in two ways to this critical change in the ratio of capital to population. It is a prominent cause of the increase of capital. What men make by juggling with values and putting taxes on other men adds nothing to the aggregate wealth; but what they make by improved methods of production causes a net addition to it. The improvement in method also directly reenforces the influence of enlarging capital, by infusing productivity into labor and increasing its returns.

_The Resultant of the Five Dynamic Changes acting Together._--So long as the increase of capital more than offsets the increase of population, the ultimate result of all five of the general changes which characterize a dynamic state is to increase the well-being of laborers. The movement of labor from point to point in the system of industrial groups is a necessary means of securing the largest gain for society as a whole and of diffusing the benefit among all members.

It is wage earners who are most numerous and most needy, and the greatest benefit which can be credited to any economic influence is that which takes the shape of a rise in wages. Moreover, an upward trend in the rate of pay is of far greater importance than the level of the rate at any one time. A system that should afford high present wages would stand condemned if it precluded all chance of higher ones hereafter; while a system that should begin with a low rate and afford a guaranty that it should grow higher each year to the end of time would have the most important merit which any system could possess.

The outlook it would afford for humanity would far outweigh a measure of hards.h.i.+p imposed on the present generation. A present purgatory with dynamic capabilities must in the end excel any earthly paradise which is held fast in a stationary state.

We may represent the resultant of the actual growth of population and of capital by the following figure:--

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Measuring time by decades along the horizontal base line and the rate of wages at the beginning of a century by the line _AB_, we represent the increase in the pay of labor which would be brought about by an increase of capital not counteracted by any other influence by the dotted line _BC_, and the reduction which would be caused by an increase of population by the dotted line _BE_. The line _BD_ describes the resultant effect of these two changes acting together, on the supposition that during the latter part of the century the growth of population is somewhat r.e.t.a.r.ded and that the increase of capital is the predominating influence.

We may further represent the change in the rate of wages which is caused by improvements in method and organization by lines rising above the one which expresses the trend of wages as it is affected only by an increase of capital and of population.