"But unfriendly legislation and one-sided court decisions, were not the only factors in crushing the hopes of labor. This was a period of wonderful scientific discoveries of natural forces and mechanical inventions by which they could be utilized in saving labor. The grandmothers who boasted that they could spin three miles of thread in one day, from sunrise to sunset, lived to see their little granddaughters spin three thousand miles in ten hours with the aid of machinery. Similar improvements were introduced into every branch of industry. The machinery belonged to the employer and he added the saving to his profit. He did not need so many workmen to produce all that the people were able to purchase, and the workmen were dismissed to join the mighty army of the unemployed. For a time certain skilled workmen were enabled to maintain living wages by means of organization, but continued improvements in machinery ultimately enabled common laborers to take their places, and reduced the number of experts required, to such a degree, that their condition was but little better than that of the unskilled. Among the best paid organizations of the olden time was the Locomotive Engineers, but ultimately, electricity took the place of steam, and a motor-man from the ranks of common labor took the places of both an engineer and a fireman. The machine displaced three-fourths of the printers at first, and later a still larger number of what remained, by introducing the principles of multiplex telegraphy, which enabled one expert to operate machines at the same time in a number of separate offices in different parts of the world whenever the copy was the same. "Labor economists called attention to this displacement of labor by machinery, but the press and the politicians in the service of the corporations claimed, that this cheapening of production was of great benefit to the people by securing a corresponding reduction in prices. Finally, after a persistent agitation for years, the national Commissioner of Labor was required to make a careful examination, and in his report, among a multitude of similar items, we find that the labor cost of a five-dollar hat was only thirty-four cents; a ten-dollar plow, seventy-nine cents and so on to the end of a long catalogue of commodities which the people always needed. The question was, Who got the difference between the amount received by the actual producer and the price paid by the consumer? The answer was self-evident; outside of clerk hire, it must have gone to pay profits in some form to non-producers. But after this official demonstration that the 'lion's share' of the wealth created by productive labor went to nonproducing speculators, the great masses of the people still continued to use their influence to perpetuate this inequitable system which practically confiscated the wealth created by their labor to pay profits on speculative investments.