may, by throwing the labourers out of employment, lower the rate of wages, and it is easy to understand how riots arose repeatedly owing to this cause. But as a rule the effect of labour-saving machinery in diminishing employment has been greatly exaggerated, because two important practical considerations have been overlooked. In the first place, any radical change made in the methods of production will be only gradually and continuously adopted throughout the industrial world; and in the second place these radical changes, these discontinuous leaps, tend to give place to advances by small increments of invention. We have an instance of a great radical change in the steam-engine. Watt's patent for “a method of lessening” the consumption of steam and fuel in fire-engines was published on January 5, 1769, and the movement for utilizing steam-power still found room for extension for a century or more afterwards. The history of the power-loom again shows that the adoption of an invention is comparatively slow. In 1813 there were not more than 2400 power-looms at work in England. In 1820 they increased to 14,150. In 1853 there were 100,000, but the curious thing is that during this time the number of hand-looms had actually increased to some extent (Porter's Progress of the Nation, p. 186). The power-loom also illustrates the gradual continuous growth of improvements. This is clearly shown by Porter. A very good hand-weaver, twenty-five or thirty years of age, could weave two pieces of shining per week. In 1823 a steam-loom weaver, about fifteen years of age, attending two looms, could weave nine similar pieces in a week. In 1826 a steam-loom weaver, about fifteen, attending to four looms, could weave twelve similar pieces a week. In 1833 a steam-loom weaver, from fifteen to twenty, assisted by a girl of twelve, attending to four looms, could weave eighteen pieces. This is only one example, for, as Porter remarks, it would fill many large volumes to describe the numerous inventions which during the 19th century imparted facility to manufacturing processes, and in every case we find a continuity in the improvements. This two-fold progressive character of invention operates in favour of the laborer—in the first place, because in most cases the increased cheapness of the commodity consequent on the use of machinery causes a corresponding extension of the market and the amount produced, and thus there may be no actual diminution of employment even temporarily; and secondly, if the improvement takes place slowly, there is time for the absorption of the redundant labour in other employments. It is quite clear that on balance the great increase in population in the 19th century was largely caused, or rather rendered possible, by the increased use of labour-saving machinery. The way in which the working-classes were at first injured by the adoption of machinery was not so much by a diminution in the number of hands required as by a change in the nature of the employment. Skilled labour of a certain kind lost its peculiar value, and children and women were able to do work formerly only done by men. But the principal evils resulted from the wretched conditions under which, before the factory legislation, the work was performed; and there is good reason to believe that a deterioration of the type of labourer, both moral and physical, was effected. It is, however, a mistake to suppose that on the whole the use of machinery tends to dispense with skill. On the contrary, everything goes to prove that under the present system of Progress of the working-classes. production on a large scale there is on the whole far more skill required than formerly—a fact well brought working-out by Sir Robert Giffen in his essay on the progress of the working-classes (Essays on Finance, vol. ii, p. 365), and expressed by the official reports on wages in different countries. (J. S. N.)
WAGGA-WAGGA, a town of Wynyard county, New South Wales, Australia, on the left bank of the river Murrumbidgee, 309 m. by rail W.S.W. of Sydney and 267 m. N.E. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 5114. The Murrumbidgee is here spanned by a steel viaduct, the approaches of which are formed by heavy embankments. Wagga-Wagga has a school of art with a library attached, a fine convent picturesquely situated on Mount Erin, a good racecourse and agricultural show-grounds. There is a considerable amount of gold-mining in the district, which, however, is chiefly pastoral, although cereals, tobacco and wine are produced in considerable quantities.
WAGNER, ADOLF (1835–), German economist, was born at Erlangen on the 25th of March 1835. Educated at Göttingen and Heidelberg, he was professor of political science at Dorpat and Freiburg, and after 1870 at Berlin. A prolific writer on economic problems, he brought out in his study of the subject the close relation which necessarily exists between economics and jurisprudence. He ranks without doubt as one of the most eminent German economists and a distinguished leader of the historical school. His leanings towards Christian socialism made him one of those to whom the appellation of “Katheder-Socialisten” or “socialists of the (professional) chair” was applied, and he was one of the founders of the Verein für Socialpolitik. In 1871 he undertook, in conjunction with Professor E. Nasse (1829–1890), a new edition of Rau's Lehrbuch der politischen Ökonomie, and his own special contributions, the Grundlegung and Finanzwissenschaft, afterwards published separately, are probably his most important works. He approaches economic studies from the point of view that the doctrine of the jus naturae, on which the physiocrats reared their economic structure, has lost its hold on belief, and that the old a priori and absolute conceptions of personal freedom and property have given way with it. He lays down that the economic position of the individual, instead of depending merely on so-called natural rights or even on his natural powers, is conditioned by the contemporary juristic system, which is itself an historical product. These conceptions, therefore, of freedom and property, half economic, half juristic, require a fresh examination. Wagner accordingly investigates, before anything else, the conditions of the economic life of the community, and in subordination to this, determines the sphere of the economic freedom of the individual. Among his works are Beiträge zur Lehre von den Banken (1857), System der deutschen Zettelbankgesetzgebung (1870–1873) and Agrar- und Industriestaat (1902).
His brother, Hermann Wagner (1840–), a distinguished geographer, joined the Geographical Institute of Justus Perthes in 1868, and was editor of the statistical section of the Gothaer Almanack up to 1876. In 1872 he founded Die Bevölkerung der Erde, a critical review of area and population, and in 1880 he was appointed professor of geography at Göttingen. He was editor of the Geographisches Jahrbuch from 1880 to 1908. His publications include Lehrbuch der Geographie (7th ed., 1903) and Methodischer Schulatlas (12th ed., 1907).
WAGNER, RUDOLPH (1805–1864), German anatomist and physiologist, was born on the 30th of June 1805 at Bayreuth, where his father was a professor in the gymnasium. He began the study of medicine at Erlangen in 1822, and finished his curriculum in 1826 at Würzburg, where he had attached himself mostly to J. L. Schönlein in medicine and to K. F. Heusinger in comparative anatomy. Aided by a public stipendium, he spent a year or more studying in the Jardin des Plantes, under the friendly eye of Cuvier, and in making zoological discoveries at Cagliari and other places on the Mediterranean. On his return he set up in medical practice at Augsburg, whither his father had been transferred; but in a few months he found an opening for an academical career, on being appointed prosector at Erlangen. In 1832 he became full professor of zoology and comparative anatomy there, and held that office until 1840, when he was called to succeed J. F. Blumenbach at Göttingen. At the Hanoverian university he remained till his death, being much occupied with administrative work as pro-rector for a number of years, and for nearly the whole of his residence troubled by ill-health (phthisis). In 1860 he gave over the physiological part of his teaching to a new chair, retaining the zoological, with which his career had begun. While at Frankfurt, on his way to examine the Neanderthal skull at Bonn, he was struck with paralysis, and died at Göttingen a few months later on the 13th of May 1864.
Wagner's activity as a writer and worker was enormous, and his range extensive, most of his hard work having been done at Erlangen while his health was good. His graduation thesis was on the
