of them is established on a wider and a
firmer ground; there is a consequent decrease
in the fluctuations of the trade. Not only then
has a better kind of labour been produced,
and in the end an increase made in the
number of labourers employed; not only
is prosperity increased; but it is also made
more durable.

And it is made more durable to the workman
not only in the way just mentioned. Skill
having become more necessary in the men
employed, employers in a time of pressure
are less willing to disperse their staff. Mere
hand-labour is to be picked up in any street,
but a man who has secured the service of
skilled labour, exactly suited to his wants,
will endure much inconvenience rather
than run the risk of losing its assistance.
The more valuable the machinery too, the
more important it becomes that the capital
represented by it should not be left altogether
idle: that what is meant for an investment
should not be transformed into a
debt, a mass of property upon which interest
is paid instead of made.

We have so far stated the case simply in
the form of argument; what may appear
doubtful in the statement the succeeding
illustrations will help to confirm. As to the
general effect on labour of the increased use
of machinery, here is a piece of evidence
furnished by one of the chief Lancashire
manufacturers some years ago. In the year
seventeen hundred and ninety-two it cost a
shilling, with the machinery then used, to
make a pound of yarn; fifty years later, the
cost was only twopence. Of the one sum the
labourer received as wages fivepence-half-penny
on every pound of material: of the
other he received only a penny; and yet, in
the former period, the weekly wages were
four shillings and fourpence, and in the latter
eight shillings and eightpence — earned chiefly,
in each case, by women and children. The
cost of production has, since this account was
rendered, been still further lessened, and the
wages have still risen.

At Calicut in India, the native home of
calico, cotton is, to this day, spun with the
distaff; and the Hindoo weaver all the day
through, works at his rude loom for a handful
of rice. It has been found worth while to
take the raw cotton from the very hand of the
Hindoo; to convey it by an expensive land-transport
on the backs of horses over regions
crossed by tracks instead of roads; to devote a
ship, in which thousands of pounds have
been spent, to the business of carrying it
half round the world to the English port,
from which it is conveyed, by a road that
has cost thirty thousand pounds per mile, to
a factory, in which a hundred thousand
pounds have been invested, and a thousand
persons are employed. There, a single
steam engine, continually working with the
power of five thousand men, moves one
hundred and fifty thousand spindles, and
delivers thirty thousand miles of thread per
hour. The Hindoo spinner, earning bare
subsistence, can produce only a mile of thread
for fourpence; nineteen miles can be produced
in England for three-halfpence, and
the yarn or cloth spun from the Indian cotton
can be delivered back to the Hindoo by rail
and ship and road, employing labour to and
fro, and be, after the double journey, still
a cheaper article than the Hindoo can
make.

The lace-knitter upon the pillow can weave
perhaps five meshes in a minute, and will
make a square yard of plain lace in six
hundred hours. Forty-six years ago the
plain lace-making machines at Nottingham,
then a yard wide, made a thousand meshes in
a minute, or a square yard in two hours.
Now, these machines are five yards wide,
and the square yard of plain lace, once made
by hand in six hundred hours, is now made,
by help of machinery, in five minutes.
The result is not destruction but creation of livelihoods.
In the year eighteen hundred and
nine, the finished pieces of plain net were
sold at five pounds the square yard. The
present price of the same quantity is sixpence.
When lace was a luxury which but few
people could afford, there were high profits
obtained, doubtless, by a very few producers.
Now, it is a distinct article of consumption,
and causes the yearly distribution of more
than three million of pounds in wages to one
hundred and thirty-five thousand people.
The rate of wages on plain lace machines has
risen: for boys, from twelve to sixteen shillings
a-week; for men, from a pound to
one pound four. A week's work on the
fancy lace machines, which, as they are constantly
improved, call for fresh care and
skill in management, has risen in value from
a pound to thirty shillings, and from twenty-five
shillings to fifty. Who, then, shall regret
that the use of the lace-pillow, or any other
manual work that consists merely of incessantly
repeating the same action, has been
superseded by mechanical contrivance?

Close by the lace machine trade, there was
the old stocking manufactory worked with
inferior machines. Ten years ago, the wages
earned at them were from five to ten shillings
a-week. The manufacture was improved
by introduction of a new machine,
and now, for fewer hours of lighter labour,
the wages have advanced to ten shillings and
a pound.

Neither is the temporary distress so great
as may be, at first thought, supposed when
the kind of labour that is paid most wretchedly
is abolished by the introduction of
machines. It has been found on investigation
specially directed to the subject, that
the rapid introduction of machinery into a
district never is attended with a pressure
towards the workhouse of the man whose
labour seems to have been superseded. In
one instance, the introduction of Mr. Whitworth's