The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1858-05-13

unite theory and practice and afford opportuni-
ties for intelligent experiment. Agricultural so
always useful, and tend directly to promote agri-
cultural prosperity and enterprise.
In the mechanical and useful arts, however,
progress is perrin s more perceptible than in any
other branch of labor. Labor saving machines
have been introduced everywhere, with the effect
to increase manufacture and cheaper prices.
Their introduction has revolutionized the indus
trial world. Since the discovery Of gunpowder
and printing we have had the spinning jenny and
power loom stereotype plates aud power presses /;
the manufacture of iron into nails and screws at
a price less than that of the raw material for
merly f; the planning machine of Woodwork and
the various kinds of saws, water wheels, &c. In
olden times distaffs were used in spinning and it
is related that Hercules was once raped over the
head by Omphale for awkwardly holding hers.
Now a nation may be clothed in cottons in less
time than was formerly required to prepare the
cotton for the spindle. Every year enough thread
is spun in the manufactures of the world to reach
two or three times from one planet to another.
Indeed, if the world goes on a great many thou
N~A0 yS"AS AhOAS, oS ~ AioS uoAAhS tAC
last century, nothing less than comets will do for
our manufacturers shuttles, and the asteroid.
will have to be used for the bobbins to unreel the
thread. The transformation which the invention
of the steam engine has made in the department
of mechanics is familiar to every one-and the
new kinds of machinery to which it gave rise are
improving each succeeding year. The simple APP
p~lication of rotary motion to machinery, regu-
lating the movements of saws, paddles, presses,
&C., &C., has increased a hundred fold the gen.
eral comforts O; the human race. The materials
for war furnish also a field for the inventive fac
ulties of the human mind and we see the results
in our Congreve rockets, revolving pistols, Mimic
rifles, and the great gun at Woolwich, England,
which, with a charge of one hundred pounds of
powder, is capable of throwing a shell, three feet
in diameter, to the distance of a mile and a quar-
ter.
The subtle, and once unmanageable agent, cleo
tricity, is now applied to many uses-one of the
most curious of which is that of Astronomical
lurgy, by which process the most delicate objects
may be plated, or infinitely copied in silver, gold
or other metal-even the stamens and pistils of
flowers and the eyes of the common house fly are
transferred with scrupulous fidelity to the metal
lie copy. The discovery of Daguerre has bene-
fitted science by impressions of the sun, moon and
stars and already the rays of the sun have be-
gun to supersede the craftsman in the prepara-
ton of blocks for the engraver.
1t is thought by many that the improvements
which have been introduced into machinery tend
to lessen the demand for useful labor-a narrow
view, which a moments reflection will d~issipate.
We quote the following paragraph from a French
work on political economy by Mr.. Joseph Gran
ner:
I" in many cases, machines, far from supplanting
human labor, have multiplied it. In fact, every
of labor, by reducing the cost of produc-
ton, carries the manufactured article to the door Of
q eat number of consumers; and experience proves
the consumers multiply IN a greater degree than the
price decreases, especially when the method of man
ufacture improves the commodity. The diminution
of the price by n fourth has been known to double the
consumption. We will only cite tp o examples-print-
and cotton spinning. Although the steam press
enables one man tn do the work of two hundred, the
multiplication of books, the arts which are connected
with them, such as the casting of type, the fabrica-
of paper. the professions OF author, corrector,
binder, etc, employ n thousand times as many per-
sons as formerly were occupied in them; and what a
in form and price between the manuscript
Of early times and the books of the present. When
observe the perfection of the machinery for SPIN
ming cotton, and the admirable rapidity with which
the bobbins are covered with thread, we may fancy
the greater nuinDer OF persons Formerly EN-
ployed in spinning, have been thrown out of work;
yet precisely the reverse has happened. Before the
of machinery, only $500 female spinners at
the wheel, and 200 weavers, altogether 1900 per-
sons, were employed in England; whilst in 1887, ten
years later, 100000 pinners and 247. 900 weavers,
or 391 900 persons, were reckoned."
Thus goes the world. Every new discovery or
invention, every important addition to human
knowledge, raises man one step higher above the
brutes, and one step nearer his God. Progress
to be an order of Nature and the nearer
nan approaches the goal the more rapid is his
ADVANCE towards perfection. Whenever a new
field is opened a galaxy of inventors swarm around
10 deyelope its treasures-as in the case of the
cotton gin, the steam engine and the telegraph.
The more there is known the more there seems to
De to acquire. Discoveries perhaps of greater
than any hitherto. remain yet to be
made. and there are to this day a host of pioneers
.ngaged in seeking for them. We may look for
,reat events in the world of science before the be-
Timing of the year of our Lord nineteen hundred.
The Hulas.