Says Benson J. Lossimr—a close and accurate compiler, and careful observer as well: "Extravagance in dressblias become more marked since the civil war than at any itime in the history of our country. It is not so much extrava„crance in taste as extrava -gance in cost. A fashionable woman now expects 4 or 5 new bonnets each year, cost ing $25 to $50 each; and some on which rich and rare laces are used may cost $200. Forty to one hundred and fifty dollars are now charged, sometimes, for the making And trimmino- of a single dress, in addition to the cost of the body material. Only by the use o'''f the wonderful sewing-machine, that does the work of scores 3f nimble fingers in the same time, could the needle-work on the dresses of women now, even the plainest that are in fashion, be performed." The number of sewing-machines manufactured in the United States in 1874 was 528,503; in the four years preceding the centennial exhibition the sales of this article averaged half a million a year. The entire sales of the American sewing-machine during the last 25 years are estimated to have numbered as many as ten million machines. The number of patents granted in the United States on sewing-machines and parts of machines since 1842 exceeds 1000, while there are more than 40 separate parts of the article, each of which has been the subject of a patent. The use of the sewing-machine, when compared with band-sewing, is probably in the relation of 1 to 6; a displacement of the -work of 5 per -4°ns for every machine used. The relation of machinery in the manufacture of -watches to hand-labor is as 1 to 4. Mr. Edward Atkinson mentions that a factory that ilses 2,400 bales of cotton in a year, employs 300 to 500 working-men in the field; whereas in the mill it only employs 100 Men, women, and children.
In 1856, M. Leplay, writing on the subject of labor in France, characterized the condition of things in a certain district by stating that the position of its manufactures —"ruined by machinery, had driven the working-people of the district to subsist ou public charity. In witnessing the marvels of industry produced at the cost of so much suffering," the author demands Whether progress thus realized be not actually decay?" The following pertinent remarks on this subject occur in an address of hon. Hugh -McCulloch, July 4, 1878, at Woodstock, Conn.: "Idleness, especially enforced idlenes,,,, brews mischief and is dangerous to the state. Honest employment promotes virtue; idleness vice. Manual labor is reputable, although in no country is it properly respected. Laborinff-men, as a class, are honest men. . . . . It is work that so many idle men—idle not &rough their own fault, but idle by the substitution of machinery for hantls—are begging for, that families are starving for It is not strange, therefore, that the laboring-man looks upon labor-saving machinery and implements as his enemies; and it is by no means certain that they are not. Looking at the labor .question as humanitarians regard it, it is, indeed, questionable if labor-saving machinery is not working against the security of society and the welfare of the race. Political
economists do not take this view of it. They care nothing for instrumentalities. They look only to results, and to results in a particular ilirection—the increase of the national wealth—as if the greatness of a nation consisted of its wealth alone, aud not in the 4character and condition of its people." We recur to the propositions of the friends of machinery. Ch. "It enables the prosecutino. of vast enterprises, involving only the concentration of capital." This, as a -simple statement of fact, is not disputed. The construction and consolidation of rail (roads; the foundation of vast manufacturing: industries; the supplying of enormously increasing populations (to a certain extent) with the necessaries of life; and the provid ing of a smaller and more fortunate number with its luxuries,—these are demonstrable lin-cideuts which may be fairly included among the uses of machinery. But other ques ttions occur; and when the investigator is met by the assertion that only 2 per cent of the business houses of the United States avoid bankruptcy; when it is known that nearly All the older railroads in the country have been at one time or another in the hands of receivers; when factories are periodically- shut down, operatives on strike, and blast furnaces ont,—it becomes, in the minds of a certain class of investigators, a question whether this consolidation and concentration of capital be not in itself a force reacting :to the injury and loss of the very capital thus forced to unnatural meg. The employment of machinery in farm labor has greatly grown during the decade between 1870 and 1880. Comparison in this respect, made prior to 1870, shows some remarkable facts. In 1860 the amount of product (less material) from the capital invested in the manufacturing industries of the country, including minim; and fishing, was $854,256,584, being 15} per cent less than the capital itself—$1,009,855,715. In 1870 the amount of capital employed had more than doubled (being $2,34q,063,198), while the number of hands employed had increased 5'6 per cent. Yet the ratio of product t.o capital in this latter year had fallen 4 per cent, the product, $1,891,575,749, being 19/ per cent less than the capital. This is certainly a remarkable change in relation, when it is considered that the number of establishments, also, had increased SO per cent—a direct and tremendous increase in machinery. Again, the amount of capital invested in machinery and build ings for manufactures being, as above stated, $2,348,063,198 in 1870: that invested in farming implements and machinery was $336,878,429. The product ou the investment in manufactures (less the material used) was $1,891,675,749: that of agriculture was $2,447,538,658. The average product of each farm laborer was $830. The average product of each operative in the manufactures, backed by a capital investedin machinery six times as great as that similarly employed in farming, was $848. Deducting wages, and interest on capital in each of these instances: Manufacturing, share of wages . . . $377 ‘, Ilt .