New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1855-07-13
THE OLD STORY.

At a meeting Of street cleaneIs of this City
the street sweeping machine has been formally
denounced as hostile 10 she poor man. Here Is
the venerable folly once more
In locking at the history of the Mechanic Arts
We find that the chief inventions which have
benefited mankind and tended to equalize con-
ditous have been assailed very often by mobs
destroying machinery and threatening or ill.,
hicting Iorsoutl violence on the inventors.
Looms, engines, brickmakDg machines, presses,
steam saH.mills, steamboats, even, have been 80
attacked The Flemish inventors in England
were objects Of popular vengeance; the steam
beat in Span was deemed God defsiDg
and coming 10 our own country, we find brick.
yards the scenes Of notable riots when labor
abbrey iatlon first sought place in them. The
freedom, hoHeyer, OF any nation is always in the
ratio OF its labor. saving machinery. Take away
the ms chnery ofEnglsnd, and the people, now SO
advancing to have secured an unstamped
Press, would relapse into The condition ofthe serfs
of the Edwards and Henrys. On the Continent
the traveller cannot fail to observe that 10 those
districts where the people are the mos, besOsted,
impoverished and dOvn-trOdden there is the
clumsiest machinery for all the ordinary and ex-
traordusIy business of life. We have sesn at CO.
logre foIty-two men occupied upon pile-drv-
ing machine which did clumsily the same work
thata machine tended by man and boy ex-
ecutes adroitly in this country So, too, in the
fields wIetched pl(ws and other farming uten-
sils, which without figure of speech are about
the same as those used in the tine of the
Caesars, prevent the peasant from rising TO the
dignity of q farmer. So completely Ignorant
are the people who employ these antiques of
any better, and so sOul'married TO their use, that
they stoutiy refuse new things. We have even
known a case in France where fax machine
was rejected, the ante-Homeric plan OF beat
ing flax between an upper aud neither stone be-
ngIreierred. The consequence ofthis is that the
peasants are kept at next to starvation wages,
and poverty beirg close upon slavery, they are
used by NapoleOns and Alexanders as conscript.
seris, to be destroyed to swell Imperial glory.
1t msy be set down as the highest axiom of
political science, and one which overrides all the
wisdom of The FtderGiist or the Constitution
that without the habitual dominance of labor
saving machinery over crude hand labor. indi-
viduai and general liberty is impossible. 1t is
1he denial of this great truth that mas kept the
Southern portion of this country in such miser.
able iDierority to the Northern-a community
of few masters and many slaves In proof Of
this take the following from among thousands
Ct similar confessions in the Southern Press:
very few persons either AZ home or abroad have
en- icea OF the immense water-power of Richmond
and It's copaciiy TO become great manufacturing
town. Patterson, whose water power is one of the
best known and most appreciated may be selected 10
compare with Richmond. Patterson has q fsn OF Sc
feet capable of being used three times the amount of
cubic feet Of water per second thirty or an average
Of two and half feet of head discharged from the
siGe of the forebay the bottom of the aperture being
three feet Ii is estimated Il "a, one square foot drawn
IN this way is equal thrseen-hoTse power 80 that
he HORSEPOWER may be put down at Ito. Counting
rs spindles 10 HORSEPOWER Patterson has only
erpower sufficient TO drive 27l PSI spindes, their
equivalent. The James River q, this city, gagged
by Mr. f. Gill in lsi9 and the discharge found be
444 cubic feet per second. The fall of the hrs three
niles Is = feet. Adopting the rule for Pat
erson allowing three falls Of 20 feet each and simt-
ing The average head of two and half feet an aper
ure OF is square inches viii discharge cubic feet per
econd which will make the James River power. al |