Year: 1878

Scientific American.


One OF the arguments made use of by
many against the patent law, is the old
fallacy that improvements in machinery
take the bread out of the mouth of the
laborer, and the great number of unem-
ployed people at the present time is cit
ed as an example of the effect of the
use of machinery enabling one man to
do the work of several, who must. it is
stated, be thrown out of employment
because the one man on the machine
does all the work that the others did be-
FORE From this it is argued that pat
ent law for encouraging invention is a
bad law, and should be abolished.


This is one of the old ideas that are
continually cropping up, and its fallacy
has been so thoroughly exposed by the
logic of events that it seems to many as
hardly worth considering. We certain
ly thought so until lately, but it has
made its appearance quite often of late
in places where we would hardly have
thought to have seen it. Petitions have
been sent to Congress for the abolition
of the patent law; various newspapers
have been publishing articles condemn
ing the introduction of new machinery,
and seriously proposing a return to the
old methods of hand labor, so as to give
employment TO the thousands who can
not get it, and it appears from various
questions asked by some of the men,
bers of the Congressional Committees
on patents, in the recent discussion on
the amendments to the patent law, that
they are, or rather were, believers in this
doctrine. We say were because we
believe that since the discussion before
these committees the members thereof
have become so well posted on the good
effected by patent laws that some of
them, who were originally inimical to
to the law and seriously desired to re-
peal it or suspend it's operation, are
now in it's favor. The fact, however,
that men having sufficient general intel
ligence to edit newspaper or to reach
the position Of members of Congress be-
lieve in the theory that machinery is
hurtful to the laborer seems to call for
some effort on our part, as the special
champion of the inventor and the patent
law, to show how erroneous is this idea,
and we therefore propose to cite few
instances that occur to us where it
would appear that if there were any
chances Of machinery throwing people
permanently out of employment, it GER
tainly would be in the examples men
toned.


As one of the prominent and most ia
miliar examples, let us consider the sew
ing machine When Walter Hunt in
vented his machine in 1888, his wife OBJ
jected to his introducing it, as she
thought, like many others, that it
would throw all the sewing women out
of employment" Hunt appeared to
think the same himself, and on his wife s
entreaties abandoned his invention, thus
losing a fortune and leaving the field
open to Howe, who was either wiser
than Hunt on this point or had less
scruples. Now what has been the re-
suit of the introduction Of sewing ma
chimes in lcssening the demand for la
Dor? Are there fewer people now en-
ployed at sewing than there were form
erly? Is it not a fact that the thou
sands of operators earn much more than
they formerly could by hand; that
where one stitch was put in dress
when made by hand there are now ten;
that the miserable 'three-stitches to-the-
inch style Of clothing has disappeared
from the market since sewing machines
have been introduced; that tens of
thousands of women who formerly made
the underclothing of their families, now
buy it ready-made, because it is made
so cheap by sewing machines; and that
sewing machine made goods are export
ed in large quantities to countries that
would otherwise supply us, because
with their underpaid laborers they
could compete with and undcrsell our
manufacturers, and thus throw thou
sands of our people out Of employment?


These statements may, however, be
said to be mere assertions, not borne
out by facts. Let us see, therefore,
what the figures of the census say on
! this question. In 1850 there were 81
069 tailors employed in the United
States, which then had population of
%, 191 1916, or one tailor to AS inhabi-
tants. In 1870, Notwithstanding the in
PRODUCTION and use of thousands of sew
ing machines, there were 106,679 tailors
in population of 39, ,558,371, or one to
361 Inhabitants. SO that although the
population had not doubled by nearly
eight millions, the number of tailors
employed had more than doubled. The
statistics relating to wOmen's clothing
are not SO readily obtained, or we have
no doubt but that they would show
equally as well.


There is, however, another point to be
considered. The introduction of the
sewing machine has not been made
without labor, for according to the cen.
sus there were 1882 hands employed
in sewing machine factories in 1870, and
there were 1852 dealers in machines in
the same year, besides the almost count
less hosts Of canvassers or agents" who
were perambulating the country, all Of
whom got their living directly from the
sewing machine industry, to say nothing
of the numbers of people who were EN-
ployed in mining and manufacturing