The general, or average, gain is not to be judged by comparing the conditions of the lowest grade of society with those of fifty years ago, for while that grade may have been bettered only a little, it has been possible for large numbers to rise to higher grades because of the use of machinery. The physical tasks are to-day much lighter than ever before, and a larger proportion of society is engaged in industries that require skill and thought rather than physical labor. That portion of the work is being more and more shifted upon machines. It is important, though, to distinguish between classes of workers in judging of the benefits and evils of machines. A machine is "an iron man," it has been said, and comes into competition with other men to lower their wages by outworking and underbidding them. But this iron man can do only automatic tasks; it is not capable of exercising judgment. Every intelligent laborer who can adjust, adapt, fit himself for more intelligent action will rise above the machine and profit by its presence. But the crude physical labor which can compete only on the plane of automatic machines, must find its field of employment more and more hedged in. If the wages of unskilled labor are not depressed, it is because of the enterprise of others who rise to more skilled employments and thus reduce the competitors of the lowest rank. [Sidenote: The growth of factories] 5. _The early effects of the factory system on the health, intelligence, and morals of the workers often have been bad; but not necessarily the abiding effects._ Some kinds of machines can be more profitably used when they are grouped in great factories, and, where this is common, it is spoken of as the factory system. In the ideal modern factory (realized in few cases) each smaller machine is a part of a larger organization of machinery, so perfect that the material goes in at one end of the building and out at the other without the loss of a single motion. Factories compel great numbers of laborers to live near each other and to work together. The sudden crowding together of people into new social relations is usually bad for morals. Men are moral under the eyes of their neighbors, acquaintances, and families; habits become adjusted to right standards, and the temptations in new conditions are always great. Until of late, engineering science has not been able to deal with the problems that arise where population is densely crowded, and the early factories with their surroundings were most unsanitary. Under the degrading conditions that resulted in some places, especially in England, the effect of machinery on the intelligence of the workers was bad. Whether this is its natural result is debatable, but the factory worker in general does not appear to be less intelligent than the agricultural worker. The alertness of the city dweller is due doubtless to social contact more than to the immediate work he does.