" 5th. It increases the capacityfor foreign trade:" this statement is generally answered as already given in quotations from Carlyle and Edward Atkinson. and with the counter statement that the increase of foreign trade which is fostered at the expense.of home consumption cannot be healthy. The fact that American prints are sold on the market at Manchester, Eng., for fid.. per yard, while the same goods are gathering dust on the shelves and counters of stores in the place of their prodnetion, for lack of purchasing power in the American people to exhaust the supply, can hardly be esteemed an illustra tion of good political economy. " ath. It favors the laborer by procuring for him higher wages with greater purchasing power." While even this statement may be accepted as it stands, it is with a proviso that annihilates its value as an adjunct to the argument. And this because of the claim Which is set forth and diligently suStained by the antago nists of too much machinery, that the result of machine labor, the quality and character of its product, are so inferior that a great increase of expenditure is required in the direction of. manufactured goods, to supply the same necessities which would be fully satisfied by the product of hand labor at a greatly lessened cost; thus rendering. nugatoiy all possible advantao.e of increased wages 'sin certain directions), with increased purchasing power. When tAltis is added the fact of displacement through the concen tration of wages in a few hands, it is claimed that the proposition is practically confuted, Says Charles Eastlake in his 'lints on Household Taste: " But it is to be feared that instead of progressing we have, for some ages, at least, gone hopelessly backward in the arts of manufacture. And this is true, not only with respect to the character of design, Init often in regard to the actual quality of the material employ-ed. It is generally .admitted by every housewife who has attained a matronly age, that linen, silk, and other articles of textile fabric, though less expensive than formerly, are far inferior to what was made in the days of our grandfathers. Metal-workers tell us that it is almost impos -sible to procure for the purpose of their trade, brass such as appears to have been in use a century ago. Joinery is neither as sound nor as artistic as it was in the early Georgian era. A cheap and easy method of workmanship, an endeavor to make a show of finish with the least possible labor, and, above all, an unhealthy spirit of competition in regard to price, such as was unknown to previous generations, have combined to deteriorate the value of our ordinary mechanical work." Mr. G. Phillips Bevan, in his admirable Industrial Classes and Industrial Statistics, article, "Paper," says: " The making of p:tper by hand is but seldom practiced now in this country (England), except by a few makers who have a specialty for best writing and drawing paper, the hand-made in these oases being considered superior to the machine-made" (p. 198). Mr. G. W. Smalley, the London correspondent of the New York Tribune, in a letter to that journal dated " London, Feb. 25, 1878," on book.binding at the Paris exposition, writes: "Machinery is largely employed, and the use of machinery is fatal. Commercially, perhaps, it is indispensable, but it is none the less destructive to artistic excellence in binding, as in most other things in which art has any share." Again, Mr. Bevan: " For many years the textile industry was carried on in the rural districts only. The power used was
water. Water on the hill-sides was irregular in its flow; work was therefore irregular. When the strearn was full, work was brisk (wc should have called it excessive); when it was dry, the factory hands were employed on the lands, in hay-making, or other like operations. Thus the operatives were farm laborers as as factory workers, and as manufacturing was not the complicated affair it is now, they were free from many of the evils which afterwards arose from the introduction of steam, and the immense enter prise, and energy of our manufacturers." Speaking of the cotton-dust in the mills, lie says: "The operatives showed the effect of this dust in their pale, emaciated faces, and in the bronchial irritation from which they constantly suffered, causing cough, antemia, debility, diarrhea, and other formidable symptoms of pulmonary mischief, including expectoration, in which the cotton fiber was plainly visible by the microscope." " The physical strength suffers much in factories from confined heated atmosphere, loaded with fine cotton fibers, flinty sand, and cutaneous exhalations; the number of gas-lights, each light destroying oxygen equal to one man; transitions front the mills and their irregular temperature to their own dwellings; diet and drinks adapted to a heated employment, and stimulants to soothe an excited, nervous tension; vision always on the move; perception and volition, from the nature of their work, always in action. . . . No doubt factory physique is not n.00d, but it is made worse by factory' associates of vice and iniquity.' Mr. Bevan adcrs that a series of questions addressed in 1873 to the certifying surgeons proved beyond doubt the fact of the degeneracy of the factory population.
The conclusion of the opponents of what they deem to be the abnormal emplbymene of mechanism in manufactures may be set forth in the following authoritative statement: The superintendent of the census estimates the loss to the gross product of the wealth of the country to be $604.89 per capita of those not counted as producing (see p. 376,1cinth Census, vol. 3). This sum includes wages, and therefore the producing power per capita. The displacement of 3,000,000 of laboring-men by the over-use of machinery would therefore mean a loss to the annual product of the country of rnore than $1,800.000,000. When there is added to this sum the cost of supporting these 3,000,000 of idle men -say at 25 cents per day per head—we have a trifle over $2,000,000,000 per annum as the amount to be placed to the debit of the country, being, in fact, as much as the entire capital invested in the manufacturing industrie3 of the United States. Against this it is set forth that no evidence has ever shown that there were 3,000,0011 uneinployed laboring-men at any one time in the United States. Admitting this, the computation as to the amount of existing idleness is open to any one, whenever it may seem desirable to make.it. Those rejectinff the figures afforded by the leading American journals, hereinbefore quoted, can easily atain such data as may be procurable and est:tb lish results that will satisfy them. The application to these, whatever they may be, of the per capita loss in such a citse as estimated by the superintendent of the census of 1870, will be found to be of value. It is evident that this important subject covers an immense field, and embraces a complexity of elements, physical, intellectual, social, and, moral. To its solution all these departments must contribute.