CHAPTER XVIII.

There are great temporary inconveniences in the introduction of a new machine. Who can doubt it?

Who can deny that it is a serious evil, when the honest industry of a working man is suddenly invaded by a power against which he cannot struggle ;when, in fact, such a man as Joseph Foster, laborious, intelligent, reflecting, and singularly honest in the expression of his opinions, says, that his condition has been declining ever since the introduction of power-loom weaving;-that he has not any hope that any possible improvement in the cotton trade would provide in future for the hand-weavers out of employment;—that the well-informed weavers have a general persuasion that the hand-weaving is a business which is nearly extinct altogether. The state of change is doubtless a state of suffering. The moment the machine comes into competition with human labor, the wages of that labor begin to adjust themselves to the lesser cost of production by the machine. The Rev. Mr. Turner (the present learned and benevolent Bishop of Calcutta) was in 1827 the rector of Wilmslowe, in Cheshire, a manufacturing parish. The questions of the same Committee that examined

Joseph Foster, and Mr. Turner's answers, show how the competition of human labor is maintained against machinery, until that labor finds new objects of employment, generally created by the machines themselves.

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"Q. How long has the hand-loom weaving been introduced in your parish?

A. I cannot speak with great certainty, but I should think for thirty years it has been the standard occupation of our people, and it has been an occupation in which they have engaged without any limitation but the size of their families, for they had as much work as the looms they set up would enable them to furnish. Q. Has not the invention of the power-loom superseded the use of those hand-looms?

A. Undoubtedly; it would have superseded them much more rapidly than it has done, if the hand-loom weaver were not enabled to submit to a reduction of wages.

Q. But in so submitting, he has accepted wages which are insufficient to support him, and he looks to parochial contribution for the remainder of his support?

A. Yes; and, in fact, the competition between the hand-loom and the power-loom is maintained out of the poor-rates."

Now we perceive, most clearly, that society, when such changes occur, interposes an artificial power to prevent immediate ruin from such changes. Society breaks the fall of the workman who is thrust out of

his place by them. There can be no doubt that it is the duty of society to interpose, in some way or other, to prevent a general blessing from becoming a particular curse. The only question is, in what way that interposition shall be effected. The hand-loom weavers, in 1827, were desirous to emigrate. They had been struggling, and very naturally, for twenty years, to keep the less useful machine in the field against the more useful machine; and they could only maintain that struggle by a constant yielding in the price of their own labor. They at last could yield no longer; and they wisely determined to give up the struggle. They wished to change their situation altogether; to remove to new places, and engage in new occupations; they wished to have their labor profitable instead of unprofitable. If it were within the power of a government to assist such a wish, there can be no doubt but that power would be beneficially, because humanely, employed. Of the possibility of the exercise of such power it is not for us to speak. It is our duty only to show, that the wish to change their employment, on the part of the handloom weavers, was the wisest wish they could form; a wish, the completion of which would have been as beneficial to others as to themselves.

In the consideration of the evils resulting from the introduction of a new machine, you must never forget the principle which we have sought to impress upon you throughout this book,-that the object for which

machines are established, and the object which they do effect, is cheapness of production. Machines either save material, or diminish labor, or both. "Which is the cheapest," said the Committee to Joseph Foster, "a piece of goods made by a powerloom, or a piece of goods made by a hand-loom?" He answered, "a power-loom is the cheapest." What, then, is the effect of this reduced cost of production, ultimately, upon the employment of labor? That the manufacture is increased,—that more cloth is consumed, that the consumer has more money to lay out in cloth, or more money to lay out in other things. We have shown you, most distinctly, the effect of the spinning machinery in increasing twenty-fold the number of people engaged in that branch of manufacture. But let us put the circumstance before your eyes once more, in the words of a person old enough to recollect the precise facts connected with the first introduction of that machinery. The Committee that we have so often mentioned examined Mr. Fielden, a resident at Blackburn, upon this particular subject.

"Q. Do you remember what occurred in Lancashire when spinning factories were first established? A. I recollect that period very well.

Q. Were not a very considerable number of persons thrown out of work, and was not there great distress, in consequence of the introduction of machinery, when spinning was done by machinery and not by hand labor?

A. Yes there was a great deal of distress, and much rioting took place at the time.

Q. Persons who had formerly obtained a good living by spinning by hand-labor, were unable to obtain the same wages, and in the same manner, in consequence of the introduction of spinning machinery?

A. If the description of spinning that was carried on in the neighbourhood of Blackburn is alluded to, that which was done by the hand, the raw cotton was taken out by the weaver, and spun in his own house, and the change was productive of considerable inconvenience in the first instance; great alarm was created, and some spinning-mills were destroyed at the time; many persons were thrown out of employment; but at that time the manufacture of the kingdom was in a very limited state, compared with what it is at present.

Q. Was not the result of the introduction of that machinery an immense increase of the manufacture? A. Very great.

Q. And more advantageous wages for a considerably increased number?

A. Yes, materially so."

It is, we think, self-evident, that if the temporary distress of the hand-spinners, which produced the rioting, and the destruction of spinning-mills here described, had gone on to prevent altogether the manufacture of cotton thread by the spinning machin