Employment of machinery in manufactures and agriculture—Erroneous notions formerly prevalent on this subject—Its advantages to the labourer—Spade-husbandry—The principle of machinery—Machines and tools—Change in the condition of England consequent on the introduction of machinery—Modern New Zealanders and ancient Greeks—Hand-mills and water-mills.

One of the most striking effects of the want of knowledge producing disunions amongst mankind that are injurious to the interests of each and all, is the belief which still exists amongst many well-meaning but unreflecting persons, that the powers and arrangements which Capital has created and devised for the advancement of production are injurious to the great body of working-men in their character of producers. The great forces by which capital and labour now work,—forces which are gathering strength every day,—are accumulation of skill and division of employments. It will be for us to show that the applications of science to the manufacturing arts have the effect of ensuring cheap production and increased employment. These applications of science are principally displayed in the use of Machinery; and we shall endeavour to prove that, although individual labour may be partially displaced, or unsettled for a time, by the use of this cheaper and better power than unassisted manual labour, all are great gainers by the general use of that power. Through that power all principally possess, however poor they may be, many of the comforts which make the difference between man in a civilized and man in a savage state; and further, that, in consequence of machinery having rendered productions of all sorts cheaper, and therefore caused them to be more universally purchased, it has really increased the demand for that manual labour, which it appears to some, reasoning only from a few instances, it has a tendency to diminish.

In the year 1827 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to examine into the subject of Emigration. The first person examined before that Committee was Joseph Foster, a working weaver of Glasgow. He told the Committee that he and many others, who had formed themselves into a society, were in great distress; that numbers of them worked at the hand-loom from eighteen to nineteen hours a day, and that their earnings, at the utmost, did not amount to more than seven shillings a-week, and that sometimes they were as low as four shillings. That twenty years before that time they could readily earn a pound a-week by the same industry; and that as power-loom weaving had increased, the distress of the hand-weavers also had increased in the same proportion. The Committee then put to Joseph Foster the following questions, and received the following answers:—

"Q. Are the Committee to understand that you attribute the insufficiency of your remuneration for your labour to the introduction of machinery?

"A. Yes.

"Q. Do you consider, therefore, that the introduction of machinery is objectionable?

"A. We do not. The weavers in general, of Glasgow and its vicinity, do not consider that machinery can or ought to be stopped, or put down. They know perfectly well that machinery must go on, that it will go on, and that it is impossible to stop it. They are aware that every implement of agriculture or manufacture is a portion of machinery, and, indeed, everything that goes beyond the teeth and nails (if I may use the expression) is a machine. I am authorized, by the majority of our society, to say that I speak their minds, as well as my own, in stating this."

It is worthy of note how the common sense of this working-man, a quarter of a century ago, saw clearly the great principle which overthrows, in the outset, all unreasoning hostility to machinery. Let us follow out his principle.

Amongst the many accounts which the newspapers in December, 1830, gave of the destruction of machinery by agricultural labourers, we observed that in the neighbourhood of Aylesbury a band of mistaken and unfortunate men destroyed all the machinery of many farms, down even to the common drills. The men conducted themselves, says the county newspaper, with civility; and such was their consideration, that they moved the machines out of the farm-yards, to prevent injury arising to the cattle from the nails and splinters that flew about while the machinery was being destroyed. They could not make up their minds as to the propriety of destroying a horse-churn, and therefore that machine was passed over.

A quarter of a century has made a remarkable difference in the feelings, even in the least informed, with regard to machinery. The majority of the people now know, as the weavers of Glasgow knew in 1827, that "machinery must go on, that it will go on, and that it is impossible to stop it." We therefore, adapting this volume to the improved times in which it is now published, think it needless to urge, as fully as we once did, any of the notions of the labourers of Aylesbury to their inevitable conclusions. It is sufficient briefly to show, that, if the labourers had been successful in their career, had broken all those ingenious implements which have aided in rendering British agriculture the most perfect in the world, they would not have advanced a single step in obtaining more employment, or being better paid.

We will suppose, then, that the farmer has yielded to this violence; that the violence has had the effect which it was meant to have upon him; and that he takes on all the hands which were out of employ, to thrash and winnow, to cut chaff, to plant with a dibber instead of with a drill, to do all the work, in fact, by the dearest mode instead of the cheapest. But he employs just as many people as are absolutely necessary, and no more, for getting his corn ready for market, and for preparing, in a slovenly way, for the seed-time. In a month or two the victorious destroyers find that not a single hand the more of them is really employed. And why not? There are no drainings going forward, the hedges and ditches are neglected, the dung-heap is not turned over, the chalk is not fetched from the pit; in fact, all those labours are neglected which belong to a state of agricultural industry which is brought to perfection. The farmer has no funds to employ in such labours; he is paying a great deal more than he paid before for the same, or a less, amount of work, because his labourers choose to do certain labours with rude tools instead of perfect ones.

We will imagine that this state of things continues till the next spring. All this while the price of grain has been rising. Many farmers have ceased to employ capital at all upon the land. The neat inventions, which enabled them to make a living out of their business, being destroyed, they have abandoned the business altogether. A day's work will now no longer purchase as much bread as before. The horse, it might be probably found out, was as great an enemy as the drill-plough; for, as a horse will do the field-work of six men, there must be six men employed, without doubt, instead of one horse. But how would the fact turn out? If the farmer still went on, in spite of all these losses and crosses, he might employ men in the place of horses, but not a single man more than the number that would work at the price of the keep of one horse. To do the work of each horse turned adrift, he would require six men; but he would only have about a shilling a-day to divide between these six—the amount which the horse consumed.

As the year advanced, and the harvest approached, it would be discovered that not one-tenth of the land was sown: for although the ploughs were gone, because the horses were turned off, and there was plenty of labour for those who chose to labour for its own sake, or at the price of horse-labour, this amazing employment for human hands, somehow or other, would not quite answer the purpose. It has been calculated that the power of horses, oxen, &c., employed in husbandry in Great Britain is ten times the amount of human power. If the human power insisted upon doing all the work with the worst tools, the certainty is that not even one-tenth of the land could be cultivated. Where, then, would all this madness end? In the starvation of the labourers themselves, even if they were allowed to eat up all they had produced by such imperfect means. They would be just in the condition of any other barbarous people, that were ignorant of the inventions that constitute the power of civilization. They would eat up the little corn which they raised themselves, and have nothing to give in exchange for clothes, and coals, and candles, and soap, and tea, and sugar, and all the many comforts which those who are even the worst off are not wholly deprived of.

All this may appear as an extreme statement; and certainly we believe that no such evils could have happened: for if the laws had been passive, the most ignorant of the labourers themselves would, if they had proceeded to carry their own principle much farther than they had done, see in their very excesses the real character of the folly and wickedness to which it had led, and would lead them. Why should the labourers of Aylesbury not have destroyed the harrows as well as the drills? Why leave a machine which separates the clods of the earth, and break one which puts seed into it? Why deliberate about a horse-churn, when they were resolved against a winnowing-machine? The truth is, these poor men perceived, even in the midst of their excesses, the gross deception of the reasons which induced them to commit them. Their motive was a natural, and, if lawfully expressed, a proper impatience, under a condition which had certainly many hardships, and those hardships in great part produced by the want of profitable labour. But in imputing those hardships to machinery, they were at once embarrassed when they came to draw distinctions between one sort of machine and another. This embarrassment decidedly shows that there were fearful mistakes at the bottom of their furious hostility to machinery.

It has been said, by persons whose opinions are worthy attention, that spade-husbandry is, in some cases, better than plough-husbandry;—that is, that the earth, under particular circumstances of soil and situation, may be more fitly prepared for the influences of the atmosphere by digging than by ploughing. It is not our business to enter into a consideration of this question. The growth of corn is a manufacture, in which man employs the chemical properties of the soil and of the air in conjunction with his own labour, aided by certain tools or machines, for the production of a crop; and that power, whether of chemistry or machinery,—whether of the salt, or the chalk, or the dung, or the guano, which he puts upon the earth, or the spade or the plough which he puts into it,—that power which does the work easiest is necessarily the best, because it diminishes the cost of production. If the plough does not do the work so well as the spade, it is a less perfect machine; but the less perfect machine may be preferred to the more perfect, because, taking other conditions into consideration, it is a cheaper machine. If the spade, applied in a peculiar manner by the strength and judgment of the man using it, more completely turns up the soil, breaks the clods, and removes the weeds than the plough, which receives one uniform direction from man with the assistance of other animal power, then the spade is a more perfect machine in its combination with human labour than the plough is, worked with a lesser degree of the same combination. But still it may be a machine which cannot be used with advantage to the producer, and is therefore not desirable for the consumer. All such questions must be determined by the cost of production; and that cost in agriculture is made up of the rent of land, the profit of capital, and the wages of labour—or the portions of the produce belonging to the landlord, the farmer, and the labourer. Where rent is high, as in the immediate neighbourhood of large towns, it is important to have the labour performed as carefully as possible, and the succession of crops stimulated to the utmost extent by manure and labour. It is economy to turn the soil to the greatest account, and the land is cultivated as a garden. Where rent is low, it is important to have the labour performed upon other principles, because one acre cultivated by hand may cost more than two cultivated by the plough; and though it may be the truest policy to carry the productiveness of the earth as far as possible, field cultivation and garden cultivation must have essential differences. In one case, the machine called a spade is used; in the other, the machine called a plough is employed. The use of the one or the other belongs to practical agriculture, and is a question only of relative cost.

And this brings us to the great principle of all machinery. A tool of the simplest construction is a machine; a machine of the most curious construction is only a complicated tool. There are many cases in the arts, and there may be cases in agriculture, in which the human arm and hand, with or without a tool, may do work that no machine can so well perform. There are processes in polishing, and there is a process in copper-plate printing, in which no substance has been found to stand in the place of the human hand. And, if therefore the man with a spade alone does a certain agricultural work more completely than a man guiding a plough, and a team of horses dragging it (which we do not affirm or deny), the only reason for this is, that the man with the spade is a better machine than the man with the plough and the horses. The most stupid man that ever existed is, beyond all comparison, a machine more cunningly made by the hands of his Creator, more perfect in all his several parts, and with all his parts more exquisitely adapted to the regulated movement of the whole body, less liable to accidents, and less injured by wear and tear, than the most beautiful machine that ever was, or ever will be, invented. There is no possibility of supplying in many cases a substitute for the simplest movements of a man's body, by the most complicated movements of the most ingenious machinery. The laws of mechanism are the same whether applied to a man, or to a lever, or a wheel; but the man has more pliability than any combination of wheels and levers. "When a porter carries a burden, the attitude of the body must accommodate itself to the position of the common centre of gravity of himself and his load. Thus, in the accompanying figures it will be observed that when the man stands upright the centre of gravity of the man G falls within the base of support; and if his load L falls without the base, as does likewise g, the common centre of gravity of the man and load, the consequence would be that he would fall backwards; but this is prevented, or, which is the same thing, the point g is brought within the base by the man bending his body forward."[15] What is called the lay figure of the painter—a wooden image with many joints—may be bent here and there; but the artist who wanted to draw a porter with a load could not put a hundredweight upon the back of his image and keep it upon its legs. The natural machinery by which a man even lifts his hand to his head is at once so complex and so simple, so apparently easy and yet so entirely dependent upon the right adjustment of a great many contrary forces, that no automaton, or machine imitating the actions of man, could ever be made to effect this seemingly simple motion, without showing that the contrivance was imperfect,—that it was a mere imitation, and a very clumsy one. What an easy thing it appears to be for a farming man to thrash his corn with a flail; and yet what an expensive arrangement of wheels is necessary to produce the same effects with a thrashing-machine! The truth is, that the man's arm and the flail form a much more curious machine than the other machine of wheels, which does the same work; and the real question as regards the value of the two machines is, which machine in the greater degree lessens the cost of production?

We state this principle broadly, in our examination into the value of machinery in diminishing the cost of producing human food. A machine is not perfect because it is made of wheels or cylinders, employs the power of the screw or the lever, is driven by wind or water or steam, but because it best assists the labour of man, by calling into action some power which he does not possess in himself. If we could imagine a man entirely dispossessed of this power, we should see the feeblest of animal beings. He has no tools which are a part of himself, to build houses like the beaver, or cells like the bee. He has not even learnt from nature to build, instinctively, by certain and unchangeable rules. His power is in his mind; and that mind teaches him to subject all the physical world to his dominion, by availing himself of the forces which nature has spread around him. To act upon material objects he arms his weakness with tools and with machines. As we have before said, tools and machines are in principle the same. When we strike a nail upon the head with a hammer, we avail ourselves of a power which we find in nature—the effect produced by the concussion of two bodies; when we employ a water-wheel to beat out a lump of iron with a much larger hammer, we still avail ourselves of the same power. There is no difference in the nature of the instruments, although we call the one a tool, and the other a machine. Neither the tool nor the machine has any force of itself. In one case the force is in the arm, in the other in the weight of water which turns the wheel. The distinctions which have been taken between a tool and a machine are really so trivial, and the line of separation between the one and the other is so slight, that we can only speak of both as common instruments for adding to the efficiency of labour. The simplest application of a principle of mechanics to an every-day hand-tool may convert it into what is called a machine. Take a three-pronged fork—one of the universal tools;—fasten a rope to the end of the handle; put a log under the fork as a fulcrum; and we have a lever, when pulled down by the rope, which will grub up a strongly-rooted large shrub in a few minutes. The labourer has called in a powerful ally. The tool has become a machine.

The chief difference between man in a rude, and man in a civilized state of society is, that the one wastes his force, whether natural or acquired,—the other economizes, that is, saves it. The man in a rude state has very rude instruments; he therefore wastes his force: the man in a civilized state has very perfect ones; he therefore economizes it. Should we not laugh at the gardener who went to hoe his potatoes with a stick having a short crook at the end? It would be a tool, we should say, fit only for children to use. Yet such a tool was doubtless employed by some very ancient nations; for there is an old medal of Syracuse which represents this very tool. The common hoe of the English gardener is a much more perfect tool, because it saves labour. Could we have any doubt of the madness of the man who would propose that all iron hoes should be abolished, to furnish more extensive employ to labourers who should be provided only with a crooked stick cut out of a hedge? The truth is, if the working men of England had no better tools than crooked sticks, they would be in a state of actual starvation. One of the chiefs of New Zealand, before that country had been colonized by us, told Mr. Marsden, a missionary, that his wooden spades were all broken, and he had not an axe to make any more;—his canoes were all broken, and he had not a nail or a gimlet to mend them with;—his potato-grounds were uncultivated, and he had not a hoe to break them up with;—and that for want of cultivation he and his people would have nothing to eat. This shows the state of a people without tools. The man had seen English tools, and knew their value.

About three or four hundred years ago, from the times of king Henry IV. to those of king Henry VI., and, indeed, long before these reigns, there were often, as we have already mentioned, grievous famines in this country, because the land was very wretchedly cultivated. Men, women, and children perished of actual hunger by thousands; and those who survived kept themselves alive by eating the bark of trees, acorns, and pig-nuts. There were no machines then; but the condition of the labourers was so bad, that they could not be kept to work upon the land without those very severe and tyrannical laws noticed in Chap. VII., which absolutely forbade them to leave the station in which they were born as labourers, for any hope of bettering their condition in the towns. There were not labourers enough to till the ground, for they worked without any skill, with weak ploughs and awkward hoes. They were just as badly off as some of the people of Portugal and Spain, who are miserably poor, because they have bad machines; or as the Chinese labourers, who have scarcely any machines, and are the poorest in the world. There was plenty of labour to be performed, but the tools were so bad, and the want of agricultural knowledge so universal, that the land was never half cultivated, and therefore all classes were poorly off. They had little corn to exchange for manufactures, and in consequence the labourer was badly clothed, badly lodged, and had a very indifferent share of the scanty crop which he raised. The condition of the labourer would have proceeded from bad to worse, had agricultural improvement not gone forward to improve the general condition of all classes. Commons were enclosed; arable land was laid down to pasture; sheep were kept upon grass-land where wretched crops had before been growing. This was superseding labour to a great extent, and much clamour was raised about this plan, and probably a large amount of real distress was produced. But mark the consequence. Although the money wages of labour were lowered, because there were more labourers in the market, the real amount of wages was higher, for better food was created by pasturage at a cheaper rate. The labourer then got meat who had never tasted it before; and when the use of animal food became general, there were cattle and corn enough to be exchanged for manufactured goods, and the labourer got a coat and a pair of shoes, who had formerly gone half naked. Step by step have we been going in the same direction for two centuries; and the agricultural industry of Great Britain is now as much directed to the production of meat, milk, butter, cheese, as to the growth of corn and other cereals. The once simple husbandry of our forefathers has become a scientific manufacture.

There may be some persons still who object to machinery, because, having grown up surrounded with the benefits it has conferred upon them, without understanding the source of these benefits, they are something like the child who sees nothing but evil in a rainy day. The people of New Zealand very rarely came to us; but when they did come they were acute enough to perceive the advantages which machinery has conferred upon us, and the great distance in point of comfort between their state and ours, principally for the reason that they have no machinery, while we have a great deal. One of these men burst into tears when he saw a rope-walk; because he perceived the immense superiority which the process of spinning ropes gave us over his own countrymen. He was ingenious enough, and so were many of his fellow islanders, to have twisted threads together after a rude fashion; but he knew that he was a long way off from making a rope. The New Zealander saw the spinner in the rope-walk, moving away from a wheel, and gradually forming the hemp round his body into a strong cord. By the operation of the wheel he is enabled so to twine together a number of separate fibres, that no one fibre can be separated from the mass, but forms part of a hard and compact body. A series of these operations produces a cable, such as may hold a barge at anchor. The twisted fibres of hemp become yarn; many yarns become a strand; three strands make a rope; and three ropes make a cablet, or small cable. By carefully untwisting all its separate parts, the principle upon which it is constructed is evident. The operation is a complex one; and the rope-maker is a skilled workman. Rope-making machinery is now carried much farther. But the wheel that twisted the hemp into yarn was a prodigy to the inquiring savage.

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Another of these New Zealanders, and he was a very shrewd and intelligent person, carried back to his country a small hand-mill for grinding corn, which he prized as the greatest of all earthly possessions. And well might he prize it! He had no machine for converting corn into meal, but two stones, such as were used in the remote parts of the highlands of Scotland some years ago. And to beat the grain into meal by these two stones (a machine, remember, however imperfect) would occupy the labour of one-fourth of his family, to procure subsistence for the other three-fourths. The ancient Greeks, three thousand years ago, had improved upon the machinery of the hand-stones, for they had hand-mills. But Homer, the old Greek poet, describes the unhappy condition of the slave who was always employed in using this mill. The groans of the slave were unheeded by those who consumed the produce of his labour; and such was the necessity for meal, that the women were compelled to turn these mills when there were not slaves enough taken in war to perform this irksome office. There was plenty of labour then to be performed, even with the machinery of the hand-mill; but the slaves and the women did not consider that labour was a good in itself, and therefore they bitterly groaned under it. By and bye the understandings of men found out that water and wind would do the same work that the slaves and the women had done; and that a large quantity of labour was at liberty to be employed for other purposes. Does any one ask if society was in a worse state in consequence? We answer, labour is worth nothing without results. Its value is only to be measured by what it produces. If, in a country where hand-mills could be had, the people were to go on beating grain between two stones, all would pronounce them fools, because they could obtain an equal quantity of meal with a much less expenditure of labour. Some have a general prejudice against that sort of machinery which does its work with very little human assistance; it is not quite so certain, therefore, that they would agree that a people would be equal fools to use the hand-mill when they could employ the wind-mill or the water-mill. But we believe they would think that, if flour could drop from heaven, or be had like water by whoever chose to seek it, it would be the height of folly to have stones, or hand-mills, or water-mills, or wind-mills, or any machine whatever for manufacturing flour. Does any one ever think of manufacturing water? The cost of water is only the cost of the labour which brings it to the place in which it is consumed. Yet this admission overturns all objections against machinery. We admit that it is desirable to obtain a thing with no labour at all; can we therefore doubt that it is desirable to obtain it with the least possible labour? The only difference between no labour and a little labour is the difference of the cost of production. And the only difference between little labour and much labour is precisely the same. In procuring anything that administers to his necessities, man makes an exchange of his labour for the thing produced, and the less he gives of his labour the better of course is his bargain.

To return to the hand-mill and the water-mill. An ordinary water-mill for grinding corn will grind about thirty-six sacks a day. To do the same work with a hand-mill would require 150 men. At two shillings a day the wages of these men would amount to 15l., which, reckoning six working days, is 90l. a week, or 4680l. a year. The rent and taxes of a mill would be about 150l. a year, or 10s. a working day. The cost of machinery would be certainly more for the hand-mills than the water-mill, therefore we will not take the cost of machinery into calculation. To produce, therefore, thirty-six sacks of flour by hand we should pay 15l.; by the water-mill we should pay 10s.: that is, we should pay thirty times as much by the one process as by the other. The actual saving is something about the price of the flour in the market; that is, the consumer, if the corn were ground by hand, would pay double what he pays now for flour ground at a mill.

But if the system of grinding corn by hand were a very recent system of society, and the introduction of so great a benefit as the water-mill had all at once displaced the hand-grinders, as the spinning machinery displaced the spinning-wheel, what must become, it is said, of the one hundred and fifty men who earned the 15l. a-day, of which sum the consumer has now got 14l. 10s. in his pocket? They must go to other work. And what is to set them to that work? The same 14l. 10s.; which, being saved in the price of flour, gives the poor man, as well as the rich man, more animal food and fuel; a greater quantity of clothes, and of a better quality; a better house than his hand-labouring ancestors used to have, much as his house might yet be improved; better furniture, and more of it; domestic utensils; and books. To produce these things there must be more labourers employed than before. The quantity of labour is, therefore, not diminished, while its productiveness is much increased. It is as if every man among us had become suddenly much stronger and more industrious. The machines labour for us, and are yet satisfied without either food or clothing. They increase all our comforts, and they consume none themselves. The hand-mills are not grinding, it is true: but the ships are sailing that bring us foreign produce; the looms are moving that give us more clothes; the potter, and glass-maker, and joiner, are each employed to add to our household goods; we are each of us elevated in the scale of society; and all these things happen because machinery has diminished the cost of production.

The water-mill is, however, a simple machine compared with some mills of modern times. We are familiar with the village-mill. As we walk by the side of some gentle stream, such as that which turns the mill at Guy's Cliff, in Warwickshire, we hear at a distance the murmur of water and the growl of wheels. We come upon the old mill, such as it has stood for a couple of centuries. No peasant quarrels with the mill. It is an object almost of his love; for he knows that it cheapens his food. It seems a part of the natural scenery amidst which he has been reared.

But let a more efficient machine for grinding corn be introduced, such as the Americans have at Pittsburgh, and the peasant might think that the working millers would be ruined. And yet the mill at Pittsburgh is making flour cheaper in England, by that competition which here forces onward improvement in mill-machinery; and by increasing the consumption of flour calls into action more superintending labour for its production. That particular American mill produces 500 barrels of flour per day, each containing 196lbs., and it employs forty managing persons. It produces cheap flour by saving labour in all its processes. It stands on the bank of a navigable river—a high building into which the corn for grinding must be removed from boats alongside. Is the grain necessary to produce these 500 barrels of flour per day, amounting to 98,000lbs., carried by man's labour to the topmost floor of that high mill? It is "raised by an elevator consisting of an endless band, to which are fixed a series of metal cans revolving in a long wooden trough, which is lowered through the respective hatchways into the boat, and is connected at its upper end with the building where its belt is driven. The lower end of the trough is open, and, as the endless band revolves, six or eight men shovel the grain into the ascending cans, which raise it so rapidly that 4000 bushels can be lifted and deposited in the mill in an hour."[16] The drudging and unskilled labourers who would have toiled in carrying up the grain are free to do some skilled labour, of which the amount required is constantly increasing; and the cost saved by the elevator goes towards the great universal fund, out of which more labour and better labour are to find the means of employment.

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