◆¹ Let me once again, then, state the great proposition which I am anxious to put beyond the reach of all denial or misconception. A given number of people, a hundred years ago, produced yearly in this country _a hundred and forty million pounds_. The same number of people to-day produce two and a half times as much. Labour, a hundred years ago, could not have produced more than the total product of the community—that is to say, _a hundred and forty million pounds_; and, if it produced that then, it produces no more now. The whole added product is produced by the action of Ability. The proposition is a double one. Let us take the two parts in order. [Sidenote ◆1 History shows us that Labour is not progressive, except within very narrow limits that were reached long ago, or, at all events, by the end of the last century.] ◆¹ I have already here and there pointed out in passing how certain special advances in the productive powers of the community were due demonstrably to Ability, not to Labour; but I have waited till our argument had arrived at its present stage to insist on the general truth that, except within very narrow limits, Labour is, in its very nature, not progressive at all. If we cast our eyes backwards as far into the remote past as any records or relics of human existence will carry us, we can indeed discern three steps in industrial progress, which we may, if we please, attribute to the self-development of Labour—the use of stone, the use of bronze, and the use of iron. But these steps followed each other slowly, and at immeasurable intervals; and though the last was taken in the early morning of history, yet Labour even then had, in certain respects, reached for thousands of years an efficiency which it has never since surpassed. In the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, which belong to the age of stone, objects have been found which bear witness to a manual skill equal to that of the most dexterous workmen of to-day. No labour, again, is more delicate than that of engraving gems; and yet the work of the finest modern gem-engravers is outdone by that of the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was even found, when the unburied ship of a Viking was being reproduced for the International Exhibition at Chicago, that in point of mere workmanship, with all our modern appliances, it was impossible to make the copy any better than the original; whilst, if we institute a comparison with times nearer our own—especially if we come to the close of the last century—it is hardly necessary to say that in every operation which depended on training of eye and hand, the great-grandfathers of the present generation were the equals of their great-grandsons. [Sidenote ◆1 Let us then compare the workers of that period with their great-grandsons of to-day.]