Thus far of the manufactures of cotton, wool, and silk. The seats of the iron and hardware trades exhibit similar re sults. In the same period of forty years Birmingham increased from 73,670 to 190,542, or 158 per cent. ; Sheffield, from 31,314 to 68,18o, or 117'6 per cent.; Wolverhampton, from 12,565 to 36,382, or 189 per cent.; Merthyr Tydvil, from 7705 to 34,947, or 353 per cent.; and West Bromwich from 5687 to 26,121 or 359 per cent.
In this extraordinary ratio has the population increased in the seats of our staple manufactures, which by the aid of machinery have supplied the whole world with articles wrought by the indus try of our people. Let us now com pare these places with those agricultural counties in which machinery has ex ercised the least influence, and let us see if the absence of machinery has been equally favourable to the support of a growing population. In the same pe riod, from 1801 to 1841, Devon increased 55•3 per cent. ; Somerset, 59 per cent.; Norfolk, 501; Lincoln, 73-5: Essex, 52, and Suffolk, 49.5 per cent. The average increase of these six agricultural counties did not exceed 50 per cent. in forty years; while, setting aside the extraordi nary increase exhibited in the particular towns already enumerated, the population of six manufacturing counties, viz. : Lan caster, Middlesex, York, W. R., Stafford, Chester, and Durham, including all the agriculturists, increased These facts prove conclusively that ma chinery, so far from diminishing the aggregate employment of labour in those trades in which it is used, increases it in an extraordinary degree. And not only does it give employment to larger num tiers of persons, but their wages are con siderably higher. We will not stop to compare the income of an agricultural labourer with that of operatives en gaged in the infinite variety of trades carried on in manufacturing towns, in connexion with machinery : but it is sufficient to ask, whence has come the manufacturing population ? Its natural growth would have been comparatively insignificant if thousands had not been attracted to the towns from other places. And what could have induced them to leave their homes and engage in new trades but the encouragement offered by more certain employment and higher wages ? It has been shown that machinery has had a beneficial influence upon the em ployment of labour in the particular trades in which it has been used, and it now remains to consider its effects upon the employment of labour in other trades.
In the first place, a few of its obvious results may be noticed. For example, the manufacture and repair of machinery alone gives employment, directly and in directly, to vast numbers of persons who are unconnected with the particular trades in which the machinery itself is used. Again, the production of all com modities is increased by machinery ; and thus the producers of the raw materials of manufactures, the carriers of goods by land and sea, the merchants, the retail traders, their clerks, porters, and others, must find more employment. It is clear also, that while the manufacturing and commercial population are thus increased by the use of machinery, the cultivators of the soil must receive more employment in supplying them with food.
In this and other ways the general em ployment of labour is directly extended by machinery. At the same time the application of machinery to existing branches of industry creates new trades and distributes capital into other enter prises which afford employment for new descriptions of labour. A hundred exam ples of this fact might be cited; of which railways and steam navigation are amongst the most remarkable ; hut such examples will be superfluous if it can be shown that it is the necessary result of the use of machinery to apply capital to new enterprises. It has been said that machinery cheapens production by re ducing the amount of labour expended upon it: it folltws that a less amount of capital with the aid of machinery will produce as much as a larger capi tal without such aid. A portion of ca pital is thus disengaged, either for in creased production in the same trade, or for application to new speculations. In some way it must be employed, or it will yield no profit, and in some form or other it must be ultimately expended in labour. As long as a person can extend the accus tomed operations of his own trade with a profit, he is disposed to do so ; but as soon as he finds them less profitable than other investments, be changes the direc tion of his capital, and seeks new modes of increasing his profits.