If extreme examples are taken, it may be made to appear either that an increase or that a decrease of employment results from machinery. Industries grade off from those that are capable of developing a greater and greater demand, to those at the other extreme that are capable of a very slight increase, as a result of a lowering of the price. There seems to be practically no limit to the consumption of textiles, provided their price falls; the demand for dress alone is indefinitely expansible. Queen Elizabeth, who had a different dress for every day in the year, has many potential imitators. There is a constant increase relatively, as well as absolutely, in the number employed in transportation, as each census shows; there are more railroad men relatively than there were stage-drivers and teamsters before the day of railroads. The number of people now engaged in printing books and papers is larger by far than in the days when all the books of the world were written by the old monks in their cloisters. The proportion of workers in agriculture, on the other hand, is less than it formerly was. In part this is a change in appearance only, for the farmer once made a large part of his tools which are now made by workers employed in manufactures, yet who in a very real way are aiding in agriculture. In part the change is, however, the effect of the use of machinery and other improvements in agricultural processes. The amount of raw-food products required for each hundred persons is quite inelastic. As it becomes possible to expend more for food, the change is made in quality, variety, flavor, rather than in quantity. The greater part of the saving in the cost of food is, however, expended in other products, and the labor saved in agriculture finds employment in supplying these rising wants. In other cases also, new industries are made possible as machines liberate energy from the production of the more necessary goods. At each census it is necessary to change the schedule of occupations, because men have adopted callings unknown before. [Sidenote: Abnormal effect of the new machinery in England] 3. _In some cases the introduction of new machines injures particular workmen._ The only reason for the use of machinery is to improve the quality or to lower the price of products. If the workers can do nothing but blindly pursue the same tasks, it is to be expected that the wages of hand-labor will fall in a particular trade into which machinery is suddenly introduced. When, as sometimes happens, employers introduce machines for the immediate purpose of breaking a strike, the workmen are convinced that machinery is the enemy of labor.