Employment of machinery in manufactures and
agriculture--Erroneous notions formerly prevalent on this
subject--Its advantages to the labourer--Spade-husbandry--
The _principle_ of machinery--Machines and tools--Change in
the condition of England consequent on the introduction of
machinery--Modern New Zealanders and ancient
Greeks--Hand-mills and water-mills.
One of the most striking effects of the want of knowledge producing
disunions amongst mankind that are injurious to the interests of each
and all, is the belief which still exists amongst many well-meaning but
unreflecting persons, that the powers and arrangements which Capital has
created and devised for the advancement of production are injurious to
the great body of working-men in their character of producers. The great
forces by which capital and labour now work,--forces which are gathering
strength every day,--are accumulation of skill and division of
employments. It will be for us to show that the applications of science
to the manufacturing arts have the effect of ensuring cheap production
and increased employment. These applications of science are principally
displayed in the use of MACHINERY; and we shall endeavour to prove that,
although individual labour may be partially displaced, or unsettled for
a time, by the use of this cheaper and better power than unassisted
manual labour, all are great gainers by the general use of that power.
Through that power all principally possess, however poor they may be,
many of the comforts which make the difference between man in a
civilized and man in a savage state; and further, that, in consequence
of machinery having rendered productions of all sorts cheaper, and
therefore caused them to be more universally purchased, it has really
increased the demand for that manual labour, which it appears to some,
reasoning only from a few instances, it has a tendency to diminish.
In the year 1827 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to
examine into the subject of Emigration. The first person examined before
that Committee was Joseph Foster, a working weaver of Glasgow. He told
the Committee that he and many others, who had formed themselves into a
society, were in great distress; that numbers of them worked at the
_hand-loom_ from eighteen to nineteen hours a day, and that their
earnings, at the utmost, did not amount to more than seven shillings
a-week, and that sometimes they were as low as four shillings. That
twenty years before that time they could readily earn a pound a-week by
the same industry; and that as _power-loom_ weaving had increased, the
distress of the hand-weavers also had increased in the same proportion.
The Committee then put to Joseph Foster the following questions, and
received the following answers:--
"_Q._ Are the Committee to understand that you attribute the
insufficiency of your remuneration for your labour to the
introduction of machinery?
"_A._ Yes.
"_Q._ Do you consider, therefore, that the introduction of
machinery is objectionable?
"_A._ We do not. The weavers in general, of Glasgow and its
vicinity, do not consider that machinery can or ought to be
stopped, or put down. They know perfectly well that machinery must
go on, that it will go on, and that it is impossible to stop it.
They are aware that every implement of agriculture or manufacture
is a portion of machinery, and, indeed, everything that goes
beyond the teeth and nails (if I may use the expression) is a
machine. I am authorized, by the majority of our society, to say
that I speak their minds, as well as my own, in stating this."
It is worthy of note how the common sense of this working-man, a quarter
of a century ago, saw clearly the great principle which overthrows, in
the outset, all unreasoning hostility to machinery. Let us follow out
his principle.
Amongst the many accounts which the newspapers in December, 1830, gave
of the destruction of machinery by agricultural labourers, we observed
that in the neighbourhood of Aylesbury a band of mistaken and
unfortunate men destroyed all the machinery of many farms, _down even to
the common drills_. The men conducted themselves, says the county
newspaper, with civility; and such was their consideration, that they
moved the machines out of the farm-yards, to prevent injury arising to
the cattle from the nails and splinters that flew about while the
machinery was being destroyed. They _could not make up their minds_ as
to the propriety of destroying a horse-churn, and therefore that machine
was passed over.
A quarter of a century has made a remarkable difference in the feelings,
even in the least informed, with regard to machinery. The majority of
the people now know, as the weavers of Glasgow knew in 1827, that
"machinery must go on, that it will go on, and that it is impossible to
stop it." We therefore, adapting this volume to the improved times in
which it is now published, think it needless to urge, as fully as we
once did, any of the notions of the labourers of Aylesbury to their
inevitable conclusions. It is sufficient briefly to show, that, if the
labourers had been successful in their career, had broken all those
ingenious implements which have aided in rendering British agriculture
the most perfect in the world, they would not have advanced a single
step in obtaining more employment, or being better paid.
We will suppose, then, that the farmer has yielded to this violence;
that the violence has had the effect which it was meant to have upon
him; and that he takes on all the hands which were out of employ, to
thrash and winnow, to cut chaff, to plant with a dibber instead of with
a drill, to do all the work, in fact, by the dearest mode instead of the
cheapest. But he employs _just as many people as are absolutely
necessary_, and no more, for getting his corn ready for market, and for
preparing, in a slovenly way, for the seed-time. In a month or two the
victorious destroyers find that not a single hand the more of them is
really employed. And why not? There are no drainings going forward, the
hedges and ditches are neglected, the dung-heap is not turned over, the
chalk is not fetched from the pit; in fact, all those labours are
neglected which belong to a state of agricultural industry which is
brought to perfection. _The farmer has no funds to employ in such
labours_; he is paying a great deal more than he paid before for the
same, or a less, amount of work, because his labourers choose to do
certain labours with rude tools instead of perfect ones.
We will imagine that this state of things continues till the next
spring. All this while the price of grain has been rising. Many farmers
have ceased to employ capital at all upon the land. The neat inventions,
which enabled them to make a living out of their business, being
destroyed, they have abandoned the business altogether. A day's work
will now no longer purchase as much bread as before. The horse, it might
be probably found out, was as great an enemy as the drill-plough; for,
as a horse will do the field-work of six men, there must be six men
employed, without doubt, instead of one horse. But how would the fact
turn out? If the farmer still went on, in spite of all these losses and
crosses, he might employ men in the place of horses, but not a single
man more than the number that would work at the price of the keep of one
horse. To do the work of each horse turned adrift, he would require six
men; but he would only have about a shilling a-day to divide between
these six--the amount which the horse consumed.
As the year advanced, and the harvest approached, it would be discovered
that not one-tenth of the land was sown: for although the ploughs were
gone, because the horses were turned off, and there was plenty of
_labour_ for those who chose to labour for its own sake, or at the price
of horse-labour, this amazing employment for human hands, somehow or
other, would not quite answer the purpose. It has been calculated that
the power of horses, oxen, &c., employed in husbandry in Great Britain
is ten times the amount of human power. If the human power insisted
upon doing all the work with the worst tools, the certainty is that not
even one-tenth of the land could be cultivated. Where, then, would all
this madness end? In the starvation of the labourers themselves, even if
they were allowed to eat up all they had produced by such imperfect
means. They would be just in the condition of any other barbarous
people, that were ignorant of the inventions that constitute the power
of civilization. They would eat up the little corn which they raised
themselves, and have nothing to give in exchange for clothes, and coals,
and candles, and soap, and tea, and sugar, and all the many comforts
which those who are even the worst off are not wholly deprived of.
All this may appear as an extreme statement; and certainly we believe
that no such evils could have happened: for if the laws had been
passive, the most ignorant of the labourers themselves would, if they
had proceeded to carry their own principle much farther than they had
done, see in their very excesses the real character of the folly and
wickedness to which it had led, and would lead them. Why should the
labourers of Aylesbury not have destroyed the harrows as well as the
drills? Why leave a machine which separates the clods of the earth, and
break one which puts seed into it? Why deliberate about a horse-churn,
when they were resolved against a winnowing-machine? The truth is, these
poor men perceived, even in the midst of their excesses, the gross
deception of the reasons which induced them to commit them. Their motive
was a natural, and, if lawfully expressed, a proper impatience, under a
condition which had certainly many hardships, and those hardships in
great part produced by the want of profitable labour. But in imputing
those hardships to machinery, they were at once embarrassed when they
came to draw distinctions between one sort of machine and another. This
embarrassment decidedly shows that there were fearful mistakes at the
bottom of their furious hostility to machinery.
It has been said, by persons whose opinions are worthy attention, that
spade-husbandry is, in some cases, better than plough-husbandry;--that
is, that the earth, under particular circumstances of soil and
situation, may be more fitly prepared for the influences of the
atmosphere by digging than by ploughing. It is not our business to enter
into a consideration of this question. The growth of corn is a
manufacture, in which man employs the chemical properties of the soil
and of the air in conjunction with his own labour, aided by certain
tools or machines, for the production of a crop; and that power, whether
of chemistry or machinery,--whether of the salt, or the chalk, or the
dung, or the guano, which he puts upon the earth, or the spade or the
plough which he puts into it,--that power which does the work easiest is
necessarily the best, _because it diminishes the cost of production_. If
the plough does not do the work so well as the spade, it is a less
perfect machine; but the less perfect machine may be preferred to the
more perfect, because, taking other conditions into consideration, it is
a cheaper machine. If the spade, applied in a peculiar manner by the
strength and judgment of the man using it, more completely turns up the
soil, breaks the clods, and removes the weeds than the plough, which
receives one uniform direction from man with the assistance of other
animal power, then the spade is a more perfect machine in its
combination with human labour than the plough is, worked with a lesser
degree of the same combination. But still it may be a machine which
cannot be used with advantage to the producer, and is therefore not
desirable for the consumer. All such questions must be determined by the
cost of production; and that cost in agriculture is made up of the rent
of land, the profit of capital, and the wages of labour--or the portions
of the produce belonging to the landlord, the farmer, and the labourer.
Where rent is high, as in the immediate neighbourhood of large towns, it
is important to have the labour performed as carefully as possible, and
the succession of crops stimulated to the utmost extent by manure and
labour. It is economy to turn the soil to the greatest account, and the
land is cultivated as a garden. Where rent is low, it is important to
have the labour performed upon other principles, because one acre
cultivated by hand may cost more than two cultivated by the plough; and
though it may be the truest policy to carry the productiveness of the
earth as far as possible, field cultivation and garden cultivation must
have essential differences. In one case, the machine called a spade is
used; in the other, the machine called a plough is employed. The use of
the one or the other belongs to practical agriculture, and is a question
only of relative cost.
[Illustration: Centre of gravity]
And this brings us to the great _principle_ of all machinery. A tool of
the simplest construction is a machine; a machine of the most curious
construction is only a complicated tool. There are many cases in the
arts, and there may be cases in agriculture, in which the human arm and
hand, with or without a tool, may do work that no machine can so well
perform. There are processes in polishing, and there is a process in
copper-plate printing, in which no substance has been found to stand in
the place of the human hand. And, if therefore the man with a spade
alone does a certain agricultural work more completely than a man
guiding a plough, and a team of horses dragging it (which we do not
affirm or deny), the only reason for this is, that the man with the
spade is a better machine than the man with the plough and the horses.
The most stupid man that ever existed is, beyond all comparison, a
machine more cunningly made by the hands of his Creator, more perfect in
all his several parts, and with all his parts more exquisitely adapted
to the regulated movement of the whole body, less liable to accidents,
and less injured by wear and tear, than the most beautiful machine that
ever was, or ever will be, invented. There is no possibility of
supplying in many cases a substitute for the simplest movements of a
man's body, by the most complicated movements of the most ingenious
machinery. The laws of mechanism are the same whether applied to a man,
or to a lever, or a wheel; but the man has more pliability than any
combination of wheels and levers. "When a porter carries a burden, the
attitude of the body must accommodate itself to the position of the
common centre of gravity of himself and his load. Thus, in the
accompanying figures it will be observed that when the man stands
upright the centre of gravity of the man G falls within the base of
support; and if his load L falls without the base, as does likewise _g_,
the common centre of gravity of the man and load, the consequence would
be that he would fall backwards; but this is prevented, or, which is the
same thing, the point _g_ is brought within the base by the man bending
his body forward."[15] What is called the lay figure of the painter--a
wooden image with many joints--may be bent here and there; but the
artist who wanted to draw a porter with a load could not put a
hundredweight upon the back of his image and keep it upon its legs. The
natural machinery by which a man even lifts his hand to his head is at
once so complex and so simple, so apparently easy and yet so entirely
dependent upon the right adjustment of a great many contrary forces,
that no automaton, or machine imitating the actions of man, could ever
be made to effect this seemingly simple motion, without showing that the
contrivance was imperfect,--that it was a mere imitation, and a very
clumsy one. What an easy thing it appears to be for a farming man to
thrash his corn with a flail; and yet what an expensive arrangement of
wheels is necessary to produce the same effects with a thrashing-machine!
The truth is, that the man's arm and the flail form a much more curious
machine than the other machine of wheels, which does the same work; and
the real question as regards the value of the two machines is, which
machine in the greater degree lessens the cost of production?
We state this principle broadly, in our examination into the value of
machinery in diminishing the cost of producing human food. A machine is
not perfect because it is made of wheels or cylinders, employs the power
of the screw or the lever, is driven by wind or water or steam, but
because it best assists the labour of man, by calling into action some
power which he does not possess in himself. If we could imagine a man
entirely dispossessed of this power, we should see the feeblest of
animal beings. He has no tools which are a part of himself, to build
houses like the beaver, or cells like the bee. He has not even learnt
from nature to build, instinctively, by certain and unchangeable rules.
His power is in his mind; and that mind teaches him to subject all the
physical world to his dominion, by availing himself of the forces which
nature has spread around him. To act upon material objects he arms his
weakness with tools and with machines. As we have before said, tools and
machines are in principle the same. When we strike a nail upon the head
with a hammer, we avail ourselves of a power which we find in
nature--the effect produced by the concussion of two bodies; when we
employ a water-wheel to beat out a lump of iron with a much larger
hammer, we still avail ourselves of the same power. There is no
difference in the nature of the instruments, although we call the one a
tool, and the other a machine. Neither the tool nor the machine has any
force of itself. In one case the force is in the arm, in the other in
the weight of water which turns the wheel. The distinctions which have
been taken between a tool and a machine are really so trivial, and the
line of separation between the one and the other is so slight, that we
can only speak of both as common instruments for adding to the
efficiency of labour. The simplest application of a principle of
mechanics to an every-day hand-tool may convert it into what is called a
machine. Take a three-pronged fork--one of the universal tools;--fasten
a rope to the end of the handle; put a log under the fork as a fulcrum;
and we have a lever, when pulled down by the rope, which will grub up a
strongly-rooted large shrub in a few minutes. The labourer has called in
a powerful ally. The tool has become a machine.
[Illustration: A tool made a machine]
The chief difference between man in a rude, and man in a civilized state
of society is, that the one wastes his force, whether natural or
acquired,--the other economizes, that is, saves it. The man in a rude
state has very rude instruments; he therefore wastes his force: the man
in a civilized state has very perfect ones; he therefore economizes it.
Should we not laugh at the gardener who went to hoe his potatoes with a
stick having a short crook at the end? It would be a tool, we should
say, fit only for children to use. Yet such a tool was doubtless
employed by some very ancient nations; for there is an old medal of
Syracuse which represents this very tool. The common hoe of the English
gardener is a much more perfect tool, because it saves labour. Could we
have any doubt of the madness of the man who would propose that all iron
hoes should be abolished, to furnish more extensive employ to labourers
who should be provided only with a crooked stick cut out of a hedge? The
truth is, if the working men of England had no better tools than crooked
sticks, they would be in a state of actual starvation. One of the chiefs
of New Zealand, before that country had been colonized by us, told Mr.
Marsden, a missionary, that his wooden spades were all broken, and he
had not an axe to make any more;--his canoes were all broken, and he had
not a nail or a gimlet to mend them with;--his potato-grounds were
uncultivated, and he had not a hoe to break them up with;--and that _for
want of cultivation_ he and his people would have nothing to eat. This
shows the state of a people without tools. The man had seen English
tools, and knew their value.
About three or four hundred years ago, from the times of king Henry IV.
to those of king Henry VI., and, indeed, long before these reigns, there
were often, as we have already mentioned, grievous famines in this
country, because the land was very wretchedly cultivated. Men, women,
and children perished of actual hunger by thousands; and those who
survived kept themselves alive by eating the bark of trees, acorns, and
pig-nuts. There were no machines then; but the condition of the
labourers was so bad, that they could not be kept to work upon the land
without those very severe and tyrannical laws noticed in Chap. VII.,
which absolutely forbade them to leave the station in which they were
born as labourers, for any hope of bettering their condition in the
towns. There were not labourers enough to till the ground, for they
worked without any skill, with weak ploughs and awkward hoes. They were
just as badly off as some of the people of Portugal and Spain, who are
miserably poor, _because_ they have bad machines; or as the Chinese
labourers, who have scarcely any machines, and are the poorest in the
world. There was plenty of labour to be performed, but the tools were so
bad, and the want of agricultural knowledge so universal, that the land
was never half cultivated, and therefore all classes were poorly off.
They had little corn to exchange for manufactures, and in consequence
the labourer was badly clothed, badly lodged, and had a very indifferent
share of the scanty crop which he raised. The condition of the labourer
would have proceeded from bad to worse, had agricultural improvement not
gone forward to improve the general condition of all classes. Commons
were enclosed; arable land was laid down to pasture; sheep were kept
upon grass-land where wretched crops had before been growing. This was
superseding labour to a great extent, and much clamour was raised about
this plan, and probably a large amount of real distress was produced.
But mark the consequence. Although the money wages of labour were
lowered, because there were more labourers in the market, the real
amount of wages was higher, for better food was created by pasturage at
a cheaper rate. The labourer then got meat who had never tasted it
before; and when the use of animal food became general, there were
cattle and corn enough to be exchanged for manufactured goods, and the
labourer got a coat and a pair of shoes, who had formerly gone half
naked. Step by step have we been going in the same direction for two
centuries; and the agricultural industry of Great Britain is now as much
directed to the production of meat, milk, butter, cheese, as to the
growth of corn and other cereals. The once simple husbandry of our
forefathers has become a scientific manufacture.
[Illustration: Spinning.]
There may be some persons still who object to machinery, because, having
grown up surrounded with the benefits it has conferred upon them,
without understanding the source of these benefits, they are something
like the child who sees nothing but evil in a rainy day. The people of
New Zealand very rarely came to us; but when they did come they were
acute enough to perceive the advantages which machinery has conferred
upon us, and the great distance in point of comfort between their state
and ours, principally for the reason that they have no machinery, while
we have a great deal. One of these men burst into tears when he saw a
rope-walk; because he perceived the immense superiority which the
process of spinning ropes gave us over his own countrymen. He was
ingenious enough, and so were many of his fellow islanders, to have
twisted threads together after a rude fashion; but he knew that he was a
long way off from making a rope. The New Zealander saw the spinner in
the rope-walk, moving away from a wheel, and gradually forming the hemp
round his body into a strong cord. By the operation of the wheel he is
enabled so to twine together a number of separate fibres, that no one
fibre can be separated from the mass, but forms part of a hard and
compact body. A series of these operations produces a cable, such as may
hold a barge at anchor. The twisted fibres of hemp become yarn; many
yarns become a strand; three strands make a rope; and three ropes make a
cablet, or small cable. By carefully untwisting all its separate parts,
the principle upon which it is constructed is evident. The operation
is a complex one; and the rope-maker is a skilled workman. Rope-making
machinery is now carried much farther. But the wheel that twisted the
hemp into yarn was a prodigy to the inquiring savage.
[Illustration: Making Ropes by Huddart's Machinery.]
[Illustration: Analysis of a Cablet.]
Another of these New Zealanders, and he was a very shrewd and
intelligent person, carried back to his country a small hand-mill for
grinding corn, which he prized as the greatest of all earthly
possessions. And well might he prize it! He had no machine for
converting corn into meal, but two stones, such as were used in the
remote parts of the highlands of Scotland some years ago. And to beat
the grain into meal by these two stones (a machine, remember, however
imperfect) would occupy the labour of one-fourth of his family, to
procure subsistence for the other three-fourths. The ancient Greeks,
three thousand years ago, had improved upon the machinery of the
hand-stones, for they had hand-mills. But Homer, the old Greek poet,
describes the unhappy condition of the slave who was always employed in
using this mill. The groans of the slave were unheeded by those who
consumed the produce of his labour; and such was the necessity for meal,
that the women were compelled to turn these mills when there were not
slaves enough taken in war to perform this irksome office. There was
plenty of labour then to be performed, even with the machinery of the
hand-mill; but the slaves and the women did not consider that labour was
a good in itself, and therefore they bitterly groaned under it. By and
bye the understandings of men found out that water and wind would do the
same work that the slaves and the women had done; and that a large
quantity of labour was at liberty to be employed for other purposes.
Does any one ask if society was in a worse state in consequence? We
answer, labour is worth nothing without results. Its value is only to be
measured by what it produces. If, in a country where hand-mills could be
had, the people were to go on beating grain between two stones, all
would pronounce them fools, because they could obtain an equal quantity
of meal with a much less expenditure of labour. Some have a general
prejudice against that sort of machinery which does its work with very
little human assistance; it is not quite so certain, therefore, that
they would agree that a people would be equal fools to use the hand-mill
when they could employ the wind-mill or the water-mill. But we believe
they would think that, if flour could drop from heaven, or be had like
water by whoever chose to seek it, it would be the height of folly to
have stones, or hand-mills, or water-mills, or wind-mills, or any
machine whatever for manufacturing flour. Does any one ever think of
_manufacturing_ water? The cost of water is only the cost of the labour
which brings it to the place in which it is consumed. Yet this admission
overturns all objections against machinery. _We admit that it is
desirable to obtain a thing with no labour at all; can we therefore
doubt that it is desirable to obtain it with the least possible labour?_
The only difference between no labour and a little labour is the
difference of the cost of production. And the only difference between
little labour and much labour is precisely the same. In procuring
anything that administers to his necessities, man makes an exchange of
his labour for the thing produced, and the less he gives of his labour
the better of course is his bargain.
To return to the hand-mill and the water-mill. An ordinary water-mill
for grinding corn will grind about thirty-six sacks a day. To do the
same work with a hand-mill would require 150 men. At two shillings a day
the wages of these men would amount to 15_l._, which, reckoning six
working days, is 90_l._ a week, or 4680_l._ a year. The rent and taxes
of a mill would be about 150_l._ a year, or 10_s._ a working day. The
cost of machinery would be certainly more for the hand-mills than the
water-mill, therefore we will not take the cost of machinery into
calculation. To produce, therefore, thirty-six sacks of flour by hand we
should pay 15_l._; by the water-mill we should pay 10_s._: that is, we
should pay thirty times as much by the one process as by the other. The
actual saving is something about the price of the flour in the market;
that is, the consumer, if the corn were ground by hand, would pay double
what he pays now for flour ground at a mill.
But if the system of grinding corn by hand were a very recent system of
society, and the introduction of so great a benefit as the water-mill
had all at once displaced the hand-grinders, as the spinning machinery
displaced the spinning-wheel, what must become, it is said, of the one
hundred and fifty men who earned the 15_l._ a-day, of which sum the
consumer has now got 14_l._ 10_s._ in his pocket? They must go to other
work. And what is to set them to that work? The same 14_l._ 10_s._;
which, being saved in the price of flour, gives the poor man, as well as
the rich man, more animal food and fuel; a greater quantity of clothes,
and of a better quality; a better house than his hand-labouring
ancestors used to have, much as his house might yet be improved; better
furniture, and more of it; domestic utensils; and books. To produce
these things there must be more labourers employed than before. The
quantity of labour is, therefore, not diminished, while its
productiveness is much increased. It is as if every man among us had
become suddenly much stronger and more industrious. The machines labour
for us, and are yet satisfied without either food or clothing. They
increase all our comforts, and they consume none themselves. The
hand-mills are not grinding, it is true: but the ships are sailing that
bring us foreign produce; the looms are moving that give us more
clothes; the potter, and glass-maker, and joiner, are each employed to
add to our household goods; we are each of us elevated in the scale of
society; and all these things happen because machinery has diminished
the cost of production.
[Illustration: Mill at Guy's Cliff.]
The water-mill is, however, a simple machine compared with some mills of
modern times. We are familiar with the village-mill. As we walk by the
side of some gentle stream, such as that which turns the mill at Guy's
Cliff, in Warwickshire, we hear at a distance the murmur of water and
the growl of wheels. We come upon the old mill, such as it has stood for
a couple of centuries. No peasant quarrels with the mill. It is an
object almost of his love; for he knows that it cheapens his food. It
seems a part of the natural scenery amidst which he has been reared.
But let a more efficient machine for grinding corn be introduced, such
as the Americans have at Pittsburgh, and the peasant might think that
the working millers would be ruined. And yet the mill at Pittsburgh is
making flour cheaper in England, by that competition which here forces
onward improvement in mill-machinery; and by increasing the consumption
of flour calls into action more superintending labour for its
production. That particular American mill produces 500 barrels of flour
per day, each containing 196 lbs., and it employs forty managing persons.
It produces cheap flour by saving labour in all its processes. It stands
on the bank of a navigable river--a high building into which the corn
for grinding must be removed from boats alongside. Is the grain
necessary to produce these 500 barrels of flour per day, amounting to
98,000 lbs., carried by man's labour to the topmost floor of that high
mill? It is "raised by an elevator consisting of an endless band, to
which are fixed a series of metal cans revolving in a long wooden
trough, which is lowered through the respective hatchways into the boat,
and is connected at its upper end with the building where its belt is
driven. The lower end of the trough is open, and, as the endless band
revolves, six or eight men shovel the grain into the ascending cans,
which raise it so rapidly that 4000 bushels can be lifted and deposited
in the mill in an hour."[16] The drudging and unskilled labourers who
would have toiled in carrying up the grain are free to do some skilled
labour, of which the amount required is constantly increasing; and the
cost saved by the elevator goes towards the great universal fund, out of
which more labour and better labour are to find the means of employment.
[15] See an article by Mr. Bishop, on 'Locomotion of Animals,' in
'English Cyclopaedia.'
[16] Whitworth's Special Report.