The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1858-04-12
A Day Among the Machinery.

improvement in machinery, that saves
human labor and increases production,
as an unmixed good. The general con-
dition Of the people has been greatly
ameliorated by the advancements made
in the mechanical and manufacturing
arts. They are better clothed-better
lodgcd-and better :ed, and the lowest
laborer now enjoys comforts that the
richest Lord could not obtain century
ago. Yet we never enter machine
shop without sigh, nor leave it without
sad foreboding Of the future. Machin- |
cry is making mighty conquests, but its
conquests are all for the most memorable
and sslfish tyrant on earth. In the con-
test between labor and capital, machinery
becomes the slave and instrument OF the
latter. 1t is working in the free States
precisely what slavery has done in tho
slave States as far as it is practicable
1t expels independent labor. lis driv-
ing out the individuals who work for
themselves. 1t is crushing the small
shopmen-the middle classes Of mechan-
les and the independent laborers. Hand
labor can no longer compete with ma
chinery, the small establishments OF
moderate capital cannot long succeed by
the side of those operated upon large
scala with every modern improvement
in machinery. AS consequence, all our
small workshops are absorbed by large
factories. Horse shoes, and the nails to
put them on, are now made at the
East for every village blacksmith in the
country. The hubs, felloes, shafts, and
all the parts of a wagon are made at the
large factory for the village wheelwright
who has now only to put them together.
A few more inventions, and the occupa-
tions of the village blacksmith, wheel
wright, shoemaker, tailor, and cabinet
maker will all be gone; they will become
employees in large factories owned and
controlled by capital. The private work.
shops will be ruined by the machinery
of the large establishments, as surely as
the spinning jenny and the power loom
have silenced the domestic spinning
wheel and the hand loom. What is tc
become of the large class Of Independent
laborors, who have been their own mas.
tiers and performed their own work, and
who have constituted the middling in.
terest classes-the back bone and sinew
OF society, in every emergency. Must
they descend into the condition Of Top
eraIiyes"--and have their hours o
labor and rest-their wages-their re-
ligious and political opinions prescribed
to them by capital-by the owners o
the machines that have conquered then
in the competition of cheap production
Machinery is dividing society into twt
distinct classes-placing them as ia
asunder as the poles, and creating al
impossible gulf between them. 1t il
making the rich, richer-and the poor
poorer. Wherever capital can buy la
Dor or the agent Of production in tn
form of a machine, or in that Of q negro
it brushes out free unexplained individ
ual labor and enterprise. The law Q
cause and effect is the same whether tn
agencies of labor, owned by capital, b
the black human machine-or the blacl
iron machine. Capital in every depart
ment Of industry is becoming all power
full. 1t is subjugating labor in all it
forms to its control. Instead Of up
preaching the equality Of a free demo
cratic condition, the tendency Of all in
dustrial and commercial affairs now
to increase the power of capital and t
accumulate it in large masses in . fe,
hands-and to make the great body Z
the people subject to its control. On
OF the fatal discoveries Of modern time
is the power Of concentrated capital
Money-like men-when scattered
weak and not dangerous. But combine
like men marShalled in an army, III
der the control of a single leader
may conquer an empire or overehro
the liberties Of republic. Banks al
corporations are modern schemes
combine capital, and marshal it-as ,
army--to subdue the laber Of a PROVING
And how vast have been its silent CO
quests! and how threatening is the {
ture aspect of its career! If Euro
trcmbled at the ambitious and self
designs Of Napoleon, who contemplate
the conquest of the world: how mu
more fearful are the prospects Of t
growing power Of accumulated capt.
over the interest and liberties of t
masses.
Agriculture has heretofore maintain
it's independence and given an asylum
freedom to the independent laborer;