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42 Economics in One LessonWhat machines do, to repeat, is to bring an increase in productionand an increase in the standard of living. They may do this in eitherof two ways. They do it by making goods cheaper for consumers (asin our illustration of the overcoats), or they do it by increasing wagesbecause they increase the productivity of the workers. In other words,they either increase money wages or, by reducing prices, they increasethe goods and services that the same money wages will buy. Sometimesthey do both. What actually happens will depend in large partupon the monetary policy pursued in a country. But in any case,machines, inventions, and discoveries increase real wages.4A warning is necessary before we leave this subject. It was preciselythe great merit of the classical economists that they looked for secondaryconsequences, that they were concerned with the effects of agiven economic policy or development in the long run and on thewhole community. But it was also their defect that, in taking the longview and the broad view, they sometimes neglected to take also theshort view and the narrow view. They were too often inclined to minimizeor to forget altogether the immediate effects of developmentson special groups. We have seen, for example, that the English stockingknitters suffered real tragedies as a result of the introduction ofthe new stocking frames, one of the earliest inventions of the IndustrialRevolution.But such facts and their modern counterparts have led some writersto the opposite extreme of looking only at the immediate effects oncertain groups. Joe Smith is thrown out of a job by the introductionof some new machine. “Keep your eye on Joe Smith,” these writersinsist. “Never lose track of Joe Smith.” But what they then proceed todo is to keep their eyes only on Joe Smith, and to forget Tom Jones,who has just got a new job in making the new machine, and TedBrown, who has just got a job operating one, and Daisy Miller, whocan now buy a coat for half what it used to cost her. And because theythink only of Joe Smith, they end by advocating reactionary and nonsensicalpolicies.