After long depression and many fluctuations, it appears that there is a revival of a steady demand for labour. The condition of our capitalists is, however, different from what it was in most former periods of prosperity. They are now busy; but they work for very low profits in almost every branch of manufacture or trade. Their men must also work hard for little pay, till some of the many circumstances which tend to raise profits shall have occurred. Never, however, were our working-class less disposed to take the low wages which alone the masters are able to give. Combinations to secure a rise are everywhere spreading, and grand preparations are thus making for securing a fall. The low profits of the masters will not stand encroachment. There is a brisk foreign competition, which forbids trifling with any present demand. Under these circumstances, if our working men choose to stand idle, what remains to be done but to use machinery to the utmost extent that ingenuity can devise on the spur of a great occasion? The quantity of human labour already thus superseded is very considerable; and there will be more, in proportion to the failure of harmony between capitalists and labourers, till not a visible chance is left for the employment of half our working men in the way they themselves propose. Happy will it be for them if the usual consequences of the improvement of machinery follow in the extension of our manufactures, so that there may still be room for such as can learn a new business! and happy will it be for them if they have become convinced, in their time of hardship, that to moderate the supply of labour is the only way of securing its desired recompense! The following case illustrates the method by which human labour is driven out of demand: it is only one of many which have arisen out of the tyranny of the leaders of strikes, who, not satisfied with turning out themselves, compel their weaker, but reluctant, brethren to be idle also. In the case in question, the turning out of the head spinners in a cotton factory, compelling the idleness of six or seven work-people subordinate to each spinner, has led the head spinner’s master to find that he can do without him, and the six or seven subordinates to rejoice in their freedom from dependence on his movements.