One cause of depopulation is, however, presented, which lies within the narrowest range of political economy. The progress of the' arts, the progress of industry, and hence even that of wealth and prosperity, discover econo mical methods of producing all the fruits of labour, by employing a smaller number of workmen. Animals are substituted for men in almost all the details of agriculture; and machines are substituted for men in all the operations of manufactures. So long as a nation finds within its reach a market sufficiently extensive to secure for all its productions a prompt and advantageous circulation, each of those discoveries is an advantage, because, instead of diminishing the number of workmen, it augments the mass of labour and its produce. A nation which happens to originate discoveries, succeeds, for a long time, in extend ing its market in proportion to the number of hands set free by every new invention. It immediately employs them in augmenting the produce, which the discovery promises to furnish at a cheaper rate. But a period ar rives at last, when the whole civilized world is but one market, and when new customers cannot be found in new nations. The demand of the universal market is then a precise quantity, which the different industrious nations dispute with each other; if one furnish more, another must furnish less. The total sale can only be increased by the progress of general opulence, or because conve niences, formerly confined to the rich, are brought within the reach of the poor.
The invention of the stocking-frame, by means of which one man does as much work as a hundred did before, was a benefit for humanity, only because, at the sometime, the progress of civilization, of population, and of wealth, in creased the number of consumers. New countries adopt ed the customs of Europe; and this article of dress, for merly reserved for the rich, has now descended to the poorest classes. But if, at the present day, some new dis covery should enable us, by a single stocking-frame, to do the work which ten years ago was clone by a hundred, this discovery would be a national misfortune ; for the number of consumers can scarcely increase, and it would then be the number of producers which would be diminished.
This example may show us the general rule ; 'When ever a discovery, economizing labour, brings within the reach of a poorer class what was previously confined to the rich, it extends the market ; and whilst benefiting under takers, and poor consumers, it does no harm to w_orkinen. But when the discovery cannot increase the number of consumers, though it serves them at a cheaper rate, either because they are already all furnished, or because the thing produced can never be useful to them, however low it may fall,—the discovery becomes a human calamity ; be cause it is advantageous but to a certain manufacturer, and that only at the expense of his brethren ; or it benefits a single nation, and that only at the expense of others.
This national benefit, if purchased at the expense of wretchedness and famine to foreign artisans, would not in itself be much worth coveting ; it is, besides, very far from being certain. From the progress of communication between different states, from the skill of manufacturers, a discovery in one country is imitated in every other before the former has gained any great profit from it.
It will doubtless be said, that whoever introduces a sav ing in any article of his consumption, preserving still the same revenue, will consume what he saves from the fall of price in such and such an article, by a new expenditure, for which he will put in requisition a new labour. But there never will be any proportion between this new de mand and the labour suspended on account of it.
On one hand, consumers make use of goods a little finer, a little prettier, at the same price. The clothes with which the poor workman is dressed, are a little superior in quality, are really worth a little more than those which covered his father, at the expense of the same part of his wages. But himself does not perceive this advantage. Decency, which, according to his station, he is obliged to consult, leaves hint no choice ; he must dress like his equals, without finding more enjoyment; he makes no saving in this article, he cannot apply it to any other ex pense.
On the other hand, the price of goods is not always es tablished in direct proportion to the labour they require, but in a very complicated proportion subsisting between this annual labour, the circulating capital, and a primary, un•enewed labour, in building the manufactory, constructing the machinery with expensive and often foreign materials. Hence, even when a hundred work men are dismissed, that the work may be done with one by means of machinery, the goods are not reduced to the hundredth part of their price. The stocking-frame eco nomizes work nearly in this proportion, yet it scarcely produces stockings ten per cent. cheaper than those made with the needle. Notwithstanding the invention of large mills for spinning wool, silk, cotton, women continue to be employed in spinning with the wheel, or even with the distaff; a certain proof that the saving does not exceed ten per cent. The same observation may be extended to all improved manufactures: they have never diminished the price of their produce, except in arithmetical progression, while they have suspended workmanship in geometrical progression.