MACHINERY, POLITICAL Ecoxonv OF. It has never been questioned that machinery has added greatly to the productive power and the possessious of mankind, and has thus tended to place the poor more nearly on a par with the rich, by enabling them to obtain, at a cheap rate, articles of comfort and luxury of so good a quality as not to be capable of improvement by increase of expenditure. A mischievous fallacy has, however, often takeu possession of the uninstructed, to the effect that machinery has a tendency to dispense with hand-labor, and so to benefit the eonsuiner at the expense of the workmen. To clear away this fallacy, it is only necessary to remember that machinery itself must be made with hands; that the capital of a country will not be diminished by the employ ment of machinery; and that such capital must continue to be employed in paying wages, as of old. It is true that there is a shifting of the parties to whom the wages are paid. When the power-loom was invented, much of the capital that went to hand weaving was spent on iron and wood for the construction of power-looms. It is a
specialty of machinery that it is apt to train the hands to do but one thing, and that thing is liable to fluctuations. The remedy for this is in the working-man not supposing, as he too often does, that lie has a right to be employed all his days in one special form of work, but iu learning a variety of occupations. or rather learning the faculty pos sessed by intelligent people of turning the hand to a new function when that is necessary. It is of the more importance to keep this in view that some kinds of manufacture acci, mulate in certain districts where they can be best executed, and in these there arises a sort of monopoly in the manufacture for the time being, but this monopoly is liable to be broken and affected by many accidents. Thus, the war with America has lately in this way powerfully affected the cotton manufacture, and driven a large body of people either to find another occupation or to become paupers.