On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures | Page 7

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 posterity, long after the purposes of many of these records, as well as the names of their founders, have been forgotten. The different degrees of force necessary to move these ponderous masses, will have varied according to the mechanical knowledge of the people employed in their transport; and that the extent of power required for this purpose is widely different under different circumstances, will appear from the following experiment, which is related by M. Rondelet, Sur L'Art de Batir. A block of squared stone was taken for the subject of experiment:
1. Weight of stone 1080 lbs
2. In order to drag this stone along the floor of the quarry, roughly chiselled, it required a force equal to 758 lbs
3. The