SOME ECONOMIC LOSSES IN THE BUILDING TRADES.
ALL who cling to the a priori method of economic investiga- tion base their reasoning on the tendency of labor to seek the point of least resistance, or, as it is more frequently set forth, on the tendency of man to satisfy his desires with the least possible exertion. The "economic man," always seeking the greatest returns for the least effort, seems to control the directorate of every important industrial and commercial establishment. His influence gives assurance that in every department of trade and industry the most productive and least wasteful methods will be adopted ; that with the progress of invention and discovery the direct and indirect waste of effort will be lessened ; and that the results, in proportion to labor or effort, will be increased to the greatest possible extent. Every machine which inventive genius produces is carefully tested, and the relation of its cost to its efficiency in increasing the productiveness of labor is anxiously computed. Whenever a new invention, whether of a machine or a method, promises a gain, however slight, in the net products of labor, it rapidly displaces old devices. It is no exaggeration to say that in the resulting industrial revolution of recent years the productiveness of labor in some lines has been increased many fold. But in some cases these changes, though apparently increasing the results of human effort, have surrounded that effort with adverse economic conditions, thus neutralizing the supposed economic gain or even turning it into a loss. This has occurred under circumstances which render a return to the method of greatest effectiveness impossible.
These unexpected or overlooked results are chiefly noticea- ble in the building trades, to a few of the branches of which the following observations will be confined. In carpentry labor- saving machinery has accomplished remarkable changes during the past three decades. Only the older generation of house
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