2. The smaller the income the larger the proportion of it that is spent upon commodities whose expense of production and whose price is less affected by machinery. Machine-production, by the fall of prices it brings, has benefited people in direct proportion to their income. The articles which have fallen most rapidly in price are those comforts and luxuries into which machine-production enters most largely. The aristocracy of the working classes, whose standard of comfort includes watches, pianos, books, and bicycles, has gained much more by the fall of prices than those who are obliged to spend all their wages on the purchase of bare necessaries of life. The gain of the former is manifold and great, the benefit of the latter is confined to the cheapening of bread and groceries--a great benefit when measured in terms of improved livelihood no doubt, but small when compared with the increase of purchasing power conferred by modern production upon the Lancashire factory family, with its £3 or £4 a week, and in large measure counterbalanced by the increased proportion of the income, which, in the case of town operatives, goes as rent and price of vegetables, dairy produce, and other commodities which have risen in price. 3. The highly-paid operatives generally work the shortest hours, the low-paid the longest. So far as this is not compensated by an increased intensity of labour on the part of those working short hours, it implies an increased capacity of making the most out of their wages. Longer leisure enables a worker to make the most of his consumption, he can lay out his wages more carefully, is less tempted to squander his money in excesses directly engendered by the reaction from excessive labour, and can get a fuller enjoyment and benefit from the use of the consumables which he purchases. A large and increasing number of the cheapest and the most intrinsically valuable commodities, of an intellectual, artistic, and spiritual character, are only open to the beneficial consumption of those who have more leisure at their command than is yet the lot of the low-skilled workers in our towns. § 2. If we compare the statistics of wages we shall find that the largest proportionate rise of money wages has been in the highly-organised machine industries, and that the benefit which machinery confers upon the workers in the capacity of consumers falls chiefly to the same workers.