John Stuart Mill? Henry George? Herbert Vincent Mills? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: Numerous labor-saving machines were designed and built in the nineteenth century, but a prominent political economist was unimpressed. He doubted whether these inventions had lessened the toil of anyone by even a single day.
This notion has been attributed to John Stuart Mill, but I do not recall the precise phrasing. Would you please help me to find a citation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1848 John Stuart Mill published “Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy”. Mill did not believe that machines had improved the quality of life of workers in the past, but he expressed hope that they could be beneficial in the future. Boldface added to excerpt by QI:1
Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make large fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish.
Mill has received credit for a wide variety of different phrasings for this idea. Below is an overview with dates and attributions.
1848: It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being (John Stuart Mill)
1885: All the labor-saving machinery that has hitherto been invented has not lessened the toil of a single human being (Attributed to John Stuart Mill by Henry George)
1886: It is questionable if all the improvements in machinery have lightened the day’s toil of a single human being (Attributed to John Stuart Mill by Herbert Vincent Mills)
1890: It is questionable whether all the labor-saving machinery of the world has lightened the toil of any human being. (Attributed to John Stuart Mill by Frank Cotton)
1898: Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lessened the day’s toil of any human being (Attributed to John Stuart Mill by Laurence M. Gibson)
1923: It is doubtful whether the invention of machinery has ever lightened the day’s toil of a single human being (Attributed to John Stuart Mill by E. T. Williams)
Below are details for selected citations in chronological order.
In 1885 political economist Henry George delivered testimony to a committee of the U.S. Senate, and he attributed a different version of the saying to Mill using the words “labor-saving” and ” lessened”:2
I think that whoever will thoroughly examine the facts will come to the conclusion that John Stuart Mill is right when he says that “all the labor-saving machinery that has hitherto been invented has not lessened the toil of a single human being.” While, on the other hand, by permitting and requiring this great subdivision of labor and dispensing to a great extent with skill on the part of the laborer, it has reduced him to a far more dependent condition than that which he occupied before.
In 1886 U.K. social activist Herbert Vincent Mills published “Poverty and the State, or Work for the Unemployed”. Mills credited Mill with a version of the saying using the word “improvements”:3
And, so far as I can understand the historians, there are quite as many people in England who go forth without sufficient clothing as ever there were. So that, whatever advantages may have accrued to the English people from the introduction of the steam-power loom, it has not resulted in the better protection of their bodies from an inclement atmosphere. “It is questionable,” says John Stuart Mill, “if all the improvements in machinery have lightened the day’s toil of a single human being.”
In 1890 a newspaper in Sydney, Australia printed an essay by Frank Cotton which included an instance using the word “labor-saving” credited to Mill:4
Yet in spite of all this vast increase of productive power, the words of John Stuart Mill are yet true: “It is questionable whether all the labor-saving machinery of the world has lightened the toil of any human being.”
In 1898 the “Handbook for Literary and Debating Societies” Laurence M. Gibson printed an instance with the word “lessened”:5
The so-called labour-saving machines do not really save labour, for, says John Stuart Mill, “Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lessened the day’s toil of any human being.”
In 1923 “The American Journal of International Law” printed an instance with the word “doubtful”:6
It was John Stuart Mill, I believe, who said: “It is doubtful whether the invention of machinery has ever lightened the day’s toil of a single human being”. That may be a true saying, but machinery has multiplied the product of that toil and cheapened for man the food and clothing which his body demands.
In conclusion, John Stuart Mill deserves credit for this quotation which he wrote in his 1848 book “Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy”. Mill has also incorrectly been credited with several alternate phrasings.
Image Notes: Picture of an automobile engine from Raffaele Parente at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Doug Saunders whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1848, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy by John Stuart Mill, Volume 2 of 2, Chapter 6: Of the Stationary State, Quote Page 317, Charles C. Little & James Brown, Boston, Massachusetts. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1885, Report of the Committee of the Senate Upon the Relations Between Labor and Capital and Testimony Taken by the Committee, Relations Between Labor and Capital, (Henry George was interviewed by Wilkinson Call of Florida), Testimony of Henry George, Date: August 22, 1883, Start Page 466, Quote Page 469, Government Printing Office, Washington D.C. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1886, Poverty and the State, or Work for the Unemployed by Herbert V. Mills, Chapter 6: The Causes of Poverty, Quote Page 109, Kegan Paul, Trench & Company, London. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1890 October 24, The Evening News, The Labor Problem by Frank Cotton, Quote Page 2, Column 1, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1898, Handbook for Literary and Debating Societies by Laurence M. Gibson, Chapter: Has the Introduction of Machinery Done More Harm Than Good? Quote Page 127, Hodder & Stoughton, London. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1923 July, The American Journal of International Law, Volume 17, Number 3, Section: Book Reviews, (Book review by E. T. Williams of “The International Development of China”), Start Page 601, Quote Page 601, The American Society of International Law, Washington D.C. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎