Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1878-09-25
The Machinery Question.

This is time when the popular mind i
awake, as it never was before, to the stud
and discussion of great social questions, am
when even "common farmers" are wantin
to know something about the why's an,
wherefores of matters of legislation hereto
fore considered too deep for them, but whcl
they have found out to have essential bear
ings upon their own ability TO pay thei
debts and live comfortably. The worth,
gentlemen who, in their callow days, wer
sent to rub their heads against the plaster
ing of college rectation-rooms for fou
years, and who have been supposed at eas
by themselves, to have thus absorbed ant
monopolized all wisdom, are very fond o
telling farmers, when they try their brains
against such topics, that they had bette
confne their lucubrations to Merino sheer
and Rohan potatoes. 1t is true that thes,
latter are matters of moment, essential t.
supplying nice breakfasts for men of class
ical attachments. Even the master-mind
that have been muddling our politics, ant
exc our religion, for the last twenty-five
years, might find the ratiocination by which
Hammond was guided in perfecting tn,
Merino sheep far too obtruse for them &c
master. If we judge by results, agriculture
has quite as much occasion to be proud Of
its great thinkers, during the last half cen
tury, as law, theology, or medicine.
But at any rate, whether or no, farmers
are thinking over some of these matters, and
it is just as well that they should have their
say about them as anybody. They are citi-
zens and voters, and their opinions will
guide their acts in these capacities. If they
are thinking wrongly, it is better that those
wrong thoughts should be brought out so
that aher men may correct them-which
must be done in other ways than by cheap
sneers about " Rohan potatoes If the
sneerers have the ability in that line which
they pretend to.
The question about which we are going
to display our agricultural ignorance in this
article is the question whether the common
account of the benefits of machinery to man
kind is a just and exhaustive one. We are
told by writers in the papers and magazines
that nothing but benefit can come to the
working classes by the multiplication of
labor-saving machinery. The case of Ark.
wrights spinning-ienny and Cartwright's
loom, the hostility of spinners and weavers
toward them in the beginning, and the great
expansion given by them in few years, to
textile manufactures, and the employment
OF labor, are quoted as conclusive on this
point We wish to inquire whether they
are so.
All will agree that it appears manifest
paradox to say that a labor-saving machine
will increase the amount of labor to be done.
Machines by which two men can produce as
much cotton cloth in day as one hundred
men could produce in the same time with
out them would naturally throw ninety-eight
men out of employment. The harvester
that, drawn by two horses driven by boy,
reaps and binds as much grain in day as
twenty men, will clearly deprive those men
of job. These things are indisputablv
true, unless the demand for the product of
the loom and the wheatfeld is proportion
ally increased. This would keep the full
number of hands busy; and if the demand
were still greater, then even more hands
might be kept busy with labor,saving ma
chnery than without.
1t has been temporarily true of countries |
like England and the United States-nations |
which, almost monopolizing invention, have
had the world for market. The apparent
paradox of "The more labor-saving ma |
the more employment for labor"
has appeared in actual operation, and by
slack-twisted minds has been admitted and
approved as fact of universal application.
But common sense ought to tell every
man who thinks at all that when the limit
OF demand, or of purchasing ability among
consumers, is reached, the limit of profitable
production is also reached; and then labor
saving machinery will have ceased to give
Increasing employment to operatives. The
demand, or purchasing ability, of the world
remaining the same, the number of hands
wil( continue the same. But inventive in
sentlity does not stop there. Cartwright's
loom, has been so improved that one weaver
can now produce four times as much cloth
as at first Spinning machinery has been
equally improved. The limit of improve
ment has by no means been reached Let |
l5 mark the eventual result. The limit of |
demand is at last reached, and the machinery |
OF the world is producing, by the aid of say
one million operatives, all the cotton cloth
the world can use, or pay for Some one
invents simple device by which one
operative can do the work of two, and |
presto half million of them are out of
work. Is anybody going to build more
factories in which to employ them, when
the markets are already glutted with cotton
cloth For awhile this labor may find an
outlet in some other avocation, but only the
sooner to hasten the hour when over-pro-
ducton will ensue there also. When all
industries are thus overdone,
and, with the next mechanical invention, a
half may do the work of the whole, where
will the discharged workers find means to
earn their bread On the land, as so many
are ready to suggest But hardly, when
those already engaged in agriculture are, by
the aid of machinery overstocking the food
markets as greatly as the manufacturers
have over-stocked the market for their wares
And now arises before our eyes another
by the excessive produc.
ton of articles of necessity and use-of
wealth, in fact-a large portion of the
people who produced that wealth are re-
iuced to abject poverty and starvation.
How strange this sounds in the believers
ear !" The claws of trade" in Christian
land, have filled that land to excess with
every kind of useful product-newspaper
books, clothing, dwellings, bridges, roads,
domestic animals and food-and yet-and
yet-the people are in want Where are
all these riches they have made, and why
have they not enough Oh, says the polit
cal economist, it is their own fault. They
are wasteful, lazy, improvident, and that is
the reason they are poor, Wasteful? with
all this accumulation, the work of their
hands, wherewith the markets of the world
ire filled TO Overlooking Lazy ? when