labour as to stimulate a series of such rises. The automatic movement which Schulze-Gaevernitz and others trace in the typical machine-industries is not shown to apply to industry as a whole, and if the tendency of machine-development is to absorb a larger proportion of the work but a smaller proportion of the workers, it is not possible to found large hopes for the future of the working classes upon this movement of the earning of high wages in machine-industry. § 9. But though the individual self-interest of the producer cannot be relied upon to favour progressive wages, except in certain industries and up to a certain point, the collective interest of consumers lends stronger support to "the economy of high wages." We have seen that the possession of an excessive proportion of "power to consume" by classes who, because their normal healthy wants are already fully satisfied, refuse to exert this power, and insist upon storing it in unneeded forms of capital, is directly responsible for the slack employment of capital and labour. If the operation of industrial forces throw an increased proportion of the "power to consume" into the hands of the working classes, who will use it not to postpone consumption but to raise their standard of material and intellectual comfort, a fuller and more regular employment of labour and capital must follow. If the stronger organisation of labour is able to raise wages, and the higher wages are used to demand more and better articles of consumption, a direct stimulus to the efficiency of capital and labour is thus applied. The true issue, however, must not be shirked. If the power of purchase now "saved" by the wealthier classes passed into the hands of the workers in higher money wages, and was not spent by them in raising their standard of comfort, but was "invested" in various forms of capital, no stimulus to industry would be afforded; the "savings" of one class would have fallen into the hands of another class, and their excess would operate to restrict industry precisely as it now operates. Though we would gladly see in the possession of the working classes an increased proportion of those forms of capital which are socially useful, this simple act of transfer, however brought about, would furnish no stimulus to the aggregate industry. From the standpoint of the community nothing else than a rise in the average standard of current consumption can stimulate industry. When it is clearly grasped that a demand for commodities is the only demand for the use of labour and of capital, and not merely determines in what particular direction these requisites of production shall be applied, the hope of the future of our industry is seen to rest largely upon the confident belief that the working classes will use their higher wages not to draw interest from investments (a self-destructive policy) but to raise their standard of life by the current satisfaction of all those wholesome desires of body and mind