The Washington times., 1894-03-25
MACHINERY VERSUS LABOR
An Instructive Review Of an I'm
paralleled Inventive Age.
LARGE INCREASE OF PRODUCTS
The Displacement Of Labor and the Relative
Bearing on Modern Machinery to Society
at Large-A Great Question Before the
American People.

The Committee on Labor have reported
resolution to the House of Representatives
favoring an investigation into the extensive
use of labor-saving machinery and its conse-
quent effect upon the industrial classes OF our
country. This resolution, while seemingly an
ordinary action of House committee, has
within it subject OF grave Importance to the
community at large, for never in the history
of our great national progress has any agency
excelled the unparalleled strides made by
the use of machinery. Its relative bearing to
the community at large has been wide and
incomprehensible.
We are living in an extraordinary inventive
age. Thu elements of nature. which for CEN
turies past laid waste upon barren fields,
nov rise at the command of man and are
driven before his chariot of peaceful progress
within the realms of luxury and ease.
In this electric century we behold MIN tri-
umphing over his environments. no longer n
cringiug suppliant,of nature. covering from
the storm in his rrde hut or cave. but be the
master she the slave; he the'driver. breaking
the waters. sailing the breezes. Harvesting
lightning and vapors, laughing at time. re-
coming nature-surely he has at last brought
nature to his feet, to obey ar the word of com
mand!
1t is true we have been in stage OF de-
velopment for many years, but il must not
be forgotten that the pulse and pace oi the
world have been marvelously quickened dur
| ing the nineteenth century. Much rs we
boast of our achievements. not every one ap-
! preciates how large proportion OF the
| worlds progress IN civilization has been made
since the application OF steam to travel, COM
| merce. manufactures. and printing.
| At the beginning of the century men lived
! in isolated communities. Being mutually
| ignorant. they were naturally mutually sus-
| picious, and in villages stranger was an
| enemy Under such Il condition OF affairs
there was but little exchange of ideas and less
| OF commodities. The invention of steam was
the application of n new inyigorative impetus
| in the vein of humanity and stimulated the
beginning of a new life and new world.
Crompton's spinning mule was invented in
| l775, CartwriGhts power-loom Ill 1881. and
Whitney's cotton-gin in 1873. but they did
not come into common use until the nine
| teenth century. At the outbreak of the
| Revolutionary war our people used the same
| primitive methods by which the worlds wool
and fax had been reduced TO yarn Tor
| thousands of years, the same rude contrlvance
used in ancient Mycene and Troy by Homer S
| heroines.
There are men alive to-day whose mothers.
| like Solomons virtuous woman. laid their
| hands to the spindle and distatf. and knew no
| other way. Near the close of the eighteenth
| century Lord Campbell journeyed from Edin-
burgh TO London IN three days and three
nights His iudicious friends warned him of
| his dangers, and told him that several persons
| who had been so rash had actually died from
| the mere rapidity of the motion. In August.
| 1883. the same journey was made by the Great
Northern route 392 miles. in seven hours and
| thirty-two minutes.
ANY one as old rs the nineteenth century
I 4aEF, .af ull tl.A
progress in civilization made by the race
| when wears old he might have stood on the
banks OF the Hudson and seen Fulton s steam
| boat on its trial trip. He was 20 years of age
| before there was an iron plow in all the world.
| AT 30 years he might have Travelled on the
the first passenger train. yet in 1889 the world
| had 35g OIL miles of railway. He was IS when
steam communication between Europe and
| America was established. and he had arrived
! nj middle life or II years. when the first tele-
| gram was sent
When the battle of Waterloo was fought. in
| 1915. the thrilling dispatches were delivered
| in London three days later. The lombard
ment of Alexandria in 1882. was received in
the English capital few minutes after the
first shot was fired. Forty-three years after
the beginning of the nineteenth century the
world had $50 433 miles of telegraph lines,
and the number of messages annually is esti-
mated at 90O00O,O00.
Bul WUlt We NdHS lLld'lc StiIue>
in the matter of inventions. it must not be for
gotten that such has been accomplished in
| remarkably short space of time. These in
ventions have wrought many changes and
| have affected many interests. Articles OF COM
mercial industry that employed the many
millions of our people have been suddenly
taken from the source of labor. and the toiler.
| unequal to the quick impetus of machinery,
| has found himself confronted by two condi-
| tions-an abundance of lifes necessities on
the one hand and an empty pocketbook on
| the other.
This displacement of muscular labor by ma
chinery is almost beyond the enlightened
comprehension OF the present mind. There
are three potent factors that figure in this
| displacement First, machinery has made the
hardships OF labor an easy task; second. it
has quickened and lessened the cost of pro-
duction to an enormous extent, making the
| luxuries of the rich the necessities of the
poor: and third, it has finally taken the labor
away from the toiler in many cases and
| handed him the finished product.
In the manufacture OF agricultural imple-