Machinery, therefore, has affected manufactures much more immediately and greatly than it has agriculture. It has not as yet, for example, been found practicable to apply steam to ploughing to any great extent. As the profitable use of most farm machinery requires a level surface and a large area given to a single crop, it cannot be used as well east of the Alleghany Mountains as in the Mississippi Valley, and it is still uneconomical in large portions of the civilized world. Despite this difficulty the methods of the farmer of to-day contrast strongly with those of one hundred or fifty years ago. Planters and seeders, reapers, harvesters, corn-shellers, hay-loaders, automatic unloading-forks, elevators, water-power-, steam-, and gasoline-engines allow great economies. The labor needed to produce food for one hundred people is a fraction of what it was one hundred years ago. In many other industries machines are usable only in a slight measure, indirectly, or not at all. They are of the least assistance in the personal services, and in the work of the thinker, the teacher, the speaker, and the artist. § II. EFFECT OF MACHINERY ON THE WELFARE AND WAGES OF THE MASSES [Sidenote: Evil of sudden introduction of machinery] 1. _The immediate effect of improved machinery, if suddenly introduced, is almost always to throw some men out of employment._ Any sudden change in industry injures men who have become adapted to the work that is affected. A well-mastered trade, a wage-earning though intangible possession, may be made suddenly valueless. Men cannot quickly change their methods of working or their place of work. This is as true of change brought about by new trade routes or by scientific discoveries (where machinery does not enter in) as in the case of labor-saving machines. If machines displace labor rapidly, men who cannot adjust themselves to the new conditions suffer, and there are always some who cannot adjust themselves, always some who suffer. It is rarely possible for a man past middle life to shift over into a new trade where his efficiency will be as great and his pay as high as in the old. New methods of puddling iron sent many old men into the poorhouses of Pennsylvania only a few years ago. Even where the total employment increases, the individual sometimes suffers. The increased demand resulting from the cheapening of a product may call for more workers than were employed before the new machinery came in, and yet some of the former workmen may be thrown out of employment. The introduction of the linotype is said to have displaced a large number of hand type-setters, but to have increased greatly the amount of printing. As the machines are expensive and cannot be worked properly by men not highly expert, men past thirty-five years of age have not been allowed to learn their use. [Sidenote: Loss falls on the less efficient workers]