The injury inflicted upon the wages, working efficiency, and character of the working classes by irregular employment is, however, very inadequately represented by figures indicating the average of "unemployment" during a long period. In the first place, in such an estimate no allowance is made for the "short time," often worked for months together by large bodies of operatives. Secondly, in measuring the evil of "unemployment," we must look rather to the maximum than to the mean condition. If a man is liable to have his food supply cut off for a month at a time, no estimate showing that on the average he has more than enough to eat and drink will fairly represent the danger to which he is exposed. If once in every ten years we find that some 10 per cent. of the skilled workers, and a far larger percentage of unskilled workers, are out of employment for months together, these figures measure the economic malady of "unemployment," which is in no sense compensated by the full or excessive labour of periods of better trade. § 7. Our reasoning from the ascertained tendencies of machine-production points to the conclusion that, having regard to the two prime constituents in demand for labour, the number of those employed, and the regularity of employment, machinery does not, under present conditions, generally favour an increased steady demand for labour. It tends to drive an increased proportion of labour in three directions. (1) To the invention, construction, and maintenance of machinery to make machines, the labour of machine-making being continually displaced by machines, and being thus driven to the production of machines more remote from the machines directly engaged in producing consumptive goods. The labour thus engaged must be in an ever-diminishing proportion to a given quantity of consumption. Nothing but a great increase in the quantity of consumption, or the opening of new varieties of consumption, can maintain or increase the demand for labour in these machine-making industries. (2) To continual specialisation, subdivision, and refinement in the arts of distribution. The multiplication of merchants, agents, retailers, which, in spite of forces making for centralisation in distributive work, is so marked a feature in the English industry of the last forty years, is a natural result of the influence of machinery, in setting free from "making" processes an increased proportion of labour.