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The economic saving which could be made by the conservation of human strength, the prolongation of life, and the prevention of disease, has recently been demonstrated statistically by Frederick Hoffmann. He estimates that the average annual net gain to society of each male wage-earner employed in manufacturing and mechanical industries is three hundred dollars; and has collated the approximate value of workmen of different grades of efficiency for the years from 15 to 65. Table XXI. condensed from this calculation will serve to illustrate the principle.

TABLE XXI.
The economic value of industrial labor and life. (98)

From this theoretical estimate it is possible to calculate the economic loss due to premature death or impaired efficiency as the result of illness. If the wage-earner should die at the age of 35, the net loss to society would be, according to his wage-earning capacity, $6590, or $10,395, or $17,425. In addition to this there is the strain on the family resources for medical and funeral expenses, and if the family is driven to apply for charity, there is the cost of relief. Rowntree ascertained that 15 per cent of the primary poverty in York was due to the death, or disability of the wage-earner; at least 25 per cent of the applicants for relief in cities in the United States are widows, and in 20 per cent of all cases treated by the New York Charity Organization Society in 1905, a part of the relief given was to improve the physical condition of the family. The total economic loss and expense entailed upon society by the death or disability of an adult wage-earner is from ten to twenty thousand dollars. Even a man of sixty is potentially worth one thousand dollars to society in economic gain, not to speak of his greater value to his family.

A relatively small but permanent condition of industry in modern times, which tends to produce a residual class, is the rising standard of efficiency. An increasing amount of heavy work formerly done by men is now done by machinery. Although there may be ultimately an increase in the number of laborers employed in industries in which this takes place, yet not all the workmen once employed in them can find a place. Professor Seligman says: --

"The immediate result is often a temporary over-supply in the particular trade and the discharge of workmen who for the time being, and until they finally drift to new openings, swell the ranks of the unemployed. One of the most serious problems of the modern industrial system is how to mitigate the evils of this transition period." (99)

Another phase of a rising standard of efficiency which excludes the least competent, especially the foreign immigrants in America, is the swifter pace demanded of workmen. In any group of laborers, as in draught horses, the gait has been adjusted to the hours of labor required and the expenditure of energy demanded.

In proportion as machine processes supersede the heavier manual processes, and as the hours of labor are shortened, the pace is quickened -- men must think faster in order to tend machinery, as a rule, than to perform manual labor. Among a body of laborers accustomed in their own country to manual labor, there will always be a certain number who cannot speed themselves up to the intensity required in America. Mere strength and sinew, if not accompanied by the adaptability of a high nervous organization, may, therefore, be at a discount in the modern labor market.. (100)

Along with these tendencies has come the formation of trades unions. The development of modern industry has forced higher organization; and just as Franklin said to the thirteen colonies, so now the conditions of industry say to the laborer, "join or die." Those who in consequence of conditions or character cannot organize, and who for the most part belong to the ranks of low-skilled labor, find it constantly more and more difficult to maintain themselves. Although at the start they may have possessed a degree of efficiency that formerly would have won them place and living, they are now unable to get work, and through involuntary idleness their incapacity is intensified and perpetuated.