The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1899-11-17
SCIENCE AND LABOR.
THE EVOLUTION THAT is WORKING
IN THE SOCIAL SCALE.

Men Who Are Displaced by Modern
MnchInery-Conditi Now and q
Hundred Years Ago.
1t certainly seems at first sight to be an
economic danger this educating or the
laboring man and woman to be far too
good for laborer's work. Let us cast our
thoughts, however, over q wider horizon
and see how the decades that bring the
peril are also bringing the remedy. Science
is steadily sweeping away all those hum
blest classes of employment. Hardly any
man has now to toll up ladders with the
hod of bricks upon his shoulder. The
donkey engine does the purely animal
part Of the work. The reaper is replaced
by the machine, and the plowman is fast
receding as the steam plow makes its ap-
pearance. We rarely see long lines Of
men laden with coal bags running up
planks as in the olden days. The need Of
men TO do the work of horses is steadily
diminishing.
1t is true that science has by no means
conquered the whole domain. There is
still mach scrubbing of floors to be done
by men and women on beRded knees, and
coal is still hewn out with pick and AK
and the use of muscle, with but little use
of brains. And yet, even in our fertile
country, science never works by revolu-
ton, but only by progress. One domain
after another has gone. Where are now
the armies of water carriers and chair
porters and night men and sawyers whom
our grandfathers used to require? 1mag-
inc if ships had still to be moved by gal
ley rowers what millions would be DOOM
ed to beastlke toll.
Some parts of the big domain of unre-
fected labor will long be left untouched,
but the process is going forward, and it
is clear that while education is rendering
the lower classes unfit for the humblest
sorts of occupations, science is steadily
sweeping away these occupations. 1t
would be too much to hope that these
processes should be at all times strictly
proportional to one another. But in the,
general drift of things they are compen-
satory, and if we only give to science a
reasonable time it will leave us none of
that labor to be done which requires an
uneducated laborer.
Then comes the uneasy question as to
what is to become of the classes thus de-
prived of occupation. The working class
es themselves often curse the progress of
invention and are tempted to look upon
it as no friend to their welfare. There
are now, it is true, no longer any ma
chine breaking frenzies, but the difficulty
often arises in an acute, though silent.
suffering. Unfortunately society has al
ways to travel to permanent good
through transitory ills. When an army
of compositors is dismissed because some
one has invented a machine, there is OK
cuse for some bitterness of feeling. And
yet there was time when whole army
of manuscript book copiers had to give
way before the advent of the compos-
it0r.
But the difficulty is always evanescent,
for here, too, there are compromising in
fiuences ct work. For il science is abol-
ishing occupations at the lower end of
the scale, she is creating new ones at the
top. think of the hundreds of thousands
of men who in England are now employ
ed in callings that had no existence GO
years ago-the telegraphers and phonog-
raphers and machinists of a hundred
kinds. In the last decade or two what
an army of skilled men has been de-
manded by the invention of the bicycle.
the telephone and the electric light.
AS compared with 100 years ago, think
of the long array of marine and locomo-
tive engineers, the chemists, the journal
lists, the craftsmen, the teachers, the
postmen, railway porters and tram CON
ductors. What q multitude of callings
are there which are either new or else
newly stocked, so that, while the popUla,
ton has quadrupled, their ranks have
been multiplied q hundredfold. But it is
the entirely new employments that strike
the mind most forcibly, and any one who
runs his eye down n census of the occupa-
tons of the people will satisfy himself
that in England of the present day one
fifth part of the adult male population
find their livelihood in callings that had
no existence 100 years ago.
Thus while science takes away with
one hand it literally bestows with the
other, but what it takes away are the
low class occupations, and what it gives
are the high class ones, demanding intel
ligence and cultivating it. The general
tendency is therefore humanizing.
But of course it neverhappens that the
coal HEAVIER, when thrown out of work by
the introduction of q steam crane, can 20
away and get place in one of the newly
created superior callings. He is not such
a fool as to waste his time in applying
for an opening as an electrical engineer.
But there is gradual creeping up that is
always taking place. And yet the trans
fer is much less effected by the promotion
of individuals than by promotion of gen.
erations.
No doubt it sometimes happens that!
the intelligent plumber steps into the new
opening for an electrical engineer and
leaves gap which some one OF all infcri-
or calling steps into, the gaps being filled
in succession until perhaps the riv"tcr.
thrown out Of work by the introduction
of hydraulic machinery, finds vacancy
at last and steps into it. But it more fire..
qucntly happens that the plumber cdu
Gates his son to be an electrical engineer.
and the carter apprentices his boy to the
plumber. and the dock laborcr sees his
young folks aspiring to be carriers.
Thus the general drift of the whole So
cial scale is steadily upward in proper
ton as science provides intelligent occu
pations at the upper end and abolishes
those that are more or less brutclike al
the lower. and so humanity as a whole is
the gamer. There is therefore no reason
to feel uneasy at n prospect Of overeduca-
tion.-Nineteenth Century.