Thomas Edison Ok The Labor Question

As is usuajly the case when a man of eminent attainments in one line attempte to talk about another subject to which he has paid no attention, Mr. Thomas Edison bas been making a sorry spectacle of himself in talking on the labor question. Mr. Edison thinks that machinery will solve the labor question. HesayB: "The multiplication of machinery means for every worker more food, better clothes, better houses, less work." If the multiplication of machinery alone can solve the labor question, then there ought to bo ao labor question now, because the productive power of labor, owing to machinery, has increased marvelously in the past few years. The productive power of the agricultural laborer of England today is 700 or 800 per cent. greater than it was a few centuries ago, and yet Hallam and Thorold Rogers teil us that the agricultural laborer of England is now in a worse condition, relatively and absolutely, than the agricultural laborer of the 14th century. He gets less to eat, and is less sure of getting it. Theoretically, increase of labor-saving machinery ought to solve the labor question, but somehow it doesn't. The laborer is constantly producing more, but he gets less and less in proportion to the amount he produces. The rate of wages may have risen in the past fifty years, but so have man's necessities increased. John StuartMill says it is doubtful if a labor-saving invention has ever lightened the day's toil of a single human being.