“I am trying to carry out what you have taught me in business, where I can do it. Our trade is dressing and buying and selling leather, etc., and making leather belting, hose, and boots. I am trying to the utmost to make everything as good as it can be made, then to ask a fair price for it, and resist all attempts to cheapen or depreciate it in any way. First, because the best thing is, as far as I know, invariably the ‘best value’; secondly, because shoe manufacturing, as now carried on, is, through the division of labour, a largely mechanical work, (though far less so than many trades),—and I believe the surest way of diminishing, as it is surely our duty to do, the amount of all such work, is to spend no labour, nor allow of its being spent, on any but the best thing for wear that can be made; and thirdly, because workmen employed even somewhat mechanically are, I think, far less degraded by their employment when their work and materials are good enough to become the subjects of honest pride. You will understand that, being only in the position of manager of the business, I can only carry out these ideas to a certain point. Still I have been able to reduce the amount of what is called ‘fancy stitching’ on parts of boots, on the stated ground of the injury the work ultimately causes to the operator’s eyesight. And in the dressing of some descriptions of leather, where we used to print by machinery an artificial grain on the skin or hide, we have dispensed with the process, and work up the natural grain by hand-power. “And this brings me to the point I want to put to you about the permitted use of the sewing machine (see Fors XXXIV., p. 30). [78] It may seem unreasonable, when our firm employs so many. But it seems to me that the admission of machinery at all is unwise in principle. Machinery, especially the sewing machine, has demoralized the shoe trade,—the same I think you would find in all other trades,—notably in piece-goods for ladies’ dresses—which, owing to the cheapness with which they can be made up, are far more in number than they could have been if no sewing machine had been used. And a manufacturer told me, only the other day, that common piece-goods, both woollen and others, take as much and generally more labour in making than the best. If all work required to supply clothing to the race were to be done by hand, it would be worth no one’s while to make rubbish of any kind,—the work would be done by fewer people, and all raw material would be cheapened. “In your advice to a young lady, printed at page 29, Letter XXXIV., in the third volume of Fors Clavigera, you give her permission to use a sewing machine. I hope that, on fuller consideration of the subject, you will advise all who set the weal of their country above their own convenience, to discontinue its use wherever it can possibly be dispensed with. “For the effect of the sewing machine upon the great industries connected with clothing has been most disastrous.