We have given these examples of several modes of production, in which knowledge and skill have diminished labour, for the purpose of showing that not only machinery and scientific applications are constantly tending to the same end, but that the mere practice of the mechanical arts necessarily leads to labour-saving inventions. Every one of us who thinks at all is constantly endeavouring to diminish his individual labour by the use of some little contrivance which experience has suggested. Men who carry water in buckets, in places where water is scarce, put a circular piece of wood to float on the water, which prevents its spilling, and consequently lessens the labour. A boy who makes paper bags in a grocer's shop so arranges them that he pastes the edges of twenty at a time, to diminish the labour. The porters of Amsterdam, who draw heavy goods upon a sort of sledge, every now and then throw a greased rope under the sledge, to diminish its friction, and therefore to lessen the labour of dragging it. Other porters, in the same city, have a little barrel containing water, attached to each side of the sledge, out of which the water slowly drips like the water upon a stone-cutter's saw, to diminish the friction. In the domestic arrangements of a well-regulated household, whether of a poor man or of a rich man, one of the chief cares is to save labour. Every contrivance to save labour that ingenuity can suggest is eagerly adopted when a country becomes highly civilized. In former times, in our own country, when such contrivances were little known, and materials as well as time were constantly wasted in every direction, a great Baron was surrounded with a hundred menial servants; but he had certainly less real and useful labour performed for him than a tradesman of the present day obtains from three servants. Are there fewer servants now employed than in those times of barbarous state? Certainly not. The middle classes amongst us can get a great deal done for them in the way of domestic service, at a small expense, because servants are assisted by manifold contrivances which do much of the work for them. The contrivances render the article of service cheaper, and therefore there are more servants. The work being done by fewer servants, in consequence of the contrivances, the servants themselves are better paid than if there was no cost saved by the contrivance.