§ 6. But there is also another force which, in England at any rate, under the increased application of machinery, makes for an increase rather than a diminution of speculative production. It has been seen that the proportion of workers engaged in producing comforts and luxuries is growing, while the proportion of those producing the prime necessaries of life is declining. How far the operation of the law of diminishing returns will allow this tendency to proceed we cannot here discuss. But statistics show that this is the present tendency both in England and in the United States. Now the demand for comforts and luxuries is essentially more irregular and less amenable to commercial calculation than the demand for necessaries. The greatest economies of machine-production are found in industries where the demand is largest, steadiest, and most calculable. Hence the effect of machinery is to drive ever and ever larger numbers of workers from the less to the more unsteady employments. Moreover, there is a marked tendency for the demand for luxuries to become more irregular and less amenable to calculation, and a corresponding irregularity is imposed upon the trades engaged in producing them. Twenty years ago it was possible for Coventry ribbon-weavers to "make to stock" during the winter months, for though silk ribbons may always be classed as a luxury, certain patterns commanded a tolerably steady sale year after year. Now the fluctuations of fashion are much sharper and more frequent, and a far larger proportion of the consumers of ribbons are affected by fashion-changes. Hence it has become more and more difficult to forecast the market, less and less is made to stock, more and more to order, and orders are given at shorter and shorter notice. So looms and weavers kept idle during a large part of the year are driven into fevered activity of manufacture for short irregular periods. The same applies to many other season and fashion trades. The irregularity of demand prevents these trades from reaping the full advantages of the economies of machinery, though the partial application of machinery and power facilitates the execution of orders at short notice. Hence the increased proportion of the community's income spent on luxuries requires an increased proportion of the labour of the community to be expended in their production. This signifies a drifting of labour from the more steady forms of employment to those which are less steady and whose unsteadiness is constantly increasing. A larger proportion of town workers is constantly passing into trades connected with preparing and preserving animal and vegetable substances, to such industries as the hat and bonnet, confectionery, bookbinding, trades affected by weather, holiday and season trades, or those in which changes in taste and fashion are largely operative.