On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures | Page 7

domestic
arrangement, or interior economy of factories, was so interwoven with
the more general questions, that it was deemed unadvisable to separate
the two subjects. The concluding chapter of this section, and of the
work itself, relates to the future prospects of manufactures, as arising
from the application of science.

Chapter 1
Sources of the Advantages arising from Machinery and Manufactures
1. There exists, perhaps, no single circumstance which distinguishes
our country more remarkably from all others, than the vast extent and
perfection to which we have carried the contrivance of tools and
machines for forming those conveniences of which so large a quantity
is consumed by almost every class of the community. The amount of
patient thought, of repeated experiment, of happy exertion of genius, by
which our manufactures have been created and carried to their present
excellence, is scarcely to be imagined. If we look around the rooms we
inhabit, or through those storehouses of every convenience, of every
luxury that man can desire, which deck the crowded streets of our
larger cities, we shall find in the history of each article, of every fabric,
a series of failures which have gradually led the way to excellence; and
we shall notice, in the art of making even the most insignificant of them,
processes calculated to excite our admiration by their simplicity, or to
rivet our attention by their unlooked-for results.
2. The accumulation of skill and science which has been directed to
diminish the difficulty of producing manufactured goods, has not been
beneficial to that country alone in which it is concentrated; distant
kingdoms have participated in its advantages. The luxurious natives of
the East,(1*) and the ruder inhabitants of the African desert are alike
indebted to our looms. The produce of our factories has preceded even
our most enterprising travellers.(2*) The cotton of India is conveyed by
British ships round half our planet, to be woven by British skill in the
factories of Lancashire: it is again set in motion by British capital; and,
transported to the very plains whereon it grew, is repurchased by the
lords of the soil which gave it birth, at a cheaper price than that at
which their coarser machinery enables them to manufacture it
themselves.(3*)
3. The large proportion of the population of this country, who are
engaged in manufactures, appears from the following table deduced

from a statement in an Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, by the Rev.
R. Jones:
For every hundred persons employed in agriculture, there are:
Agriculturists Non-agriculturists
In Bengal 100 25 In Italy 100 31 In France 100 50 In England 100 200
The fact that the proportion of non-agricultural to agricultural persons
is continually increasing, appears both from the Report of the
Committee of the House of Commons upon Manufacturers'
Employment, July, 1830, and from the still later evidence of the last
census; from which document the annexed table of the increase of
population in our great manufacturing towns, has been deduced.
Increase of population per cent
Names of places 1801-11 1811-21 1821-31 Total Manchester 22 40 47
151 Glasgow 30 46 38 161 Liverpool(4*) 26 31 44 138 Nottingham 19
18 25 75 Birmingham 16 24 33 90 Great Britain 14.2 15.7 15.5 52.5
Thus, in three periods of ten years, during each of which the general
population of the country has increased about 15 per cent, or about 52
per cent upon the whole period of thirty years, the population of these
towns has, on the average, increased 132 per cent. After this statement,
there requires no further argument to demonstrate the vast importance
to the well-being of this country, of making the interests of its
manufacturers well understood and attended to.
4. The advantages which are derived from machinery and manufactures
seem to arise principally from three sources: The addition which they
make to human power. The economy they produce of human time. The
conversion of substances apparently common and worthless into
valuable products.
5. Of additions to human power. With respect to the first of these
causes, the forces derived from wind, from water, and from steam,

present themselves to the mind of every one; these are, in fact,
additions to human power, and will be considered in a future page:
there are, however, other sources of its increase, by which the animal
force of the individual is itself made to act with far greater than its
unassisted power; and to these we shall at present confine our
observations.
The construction of palaces, of temples, and of tombs, seems to have
occupied the earliest attention of nations just entering on the career of
civilization; and the enormous blocks of stone moved from their native
repositories to minister to the grandeur or piety of the builders, have
remained to excite the astonishment of their