Thus, when printing superseded the copies of books by writing, a large body of people were put out of employ;--they had to seek new employ. It was the same with the introduction of the spinning machinery,--the same with the power-loom. It would be presumptuous to say that no such great changes could again happen in any of the principal branches of human industry; but it may be said, that the difficulty of superseding our present expeditious and cheap modes of manufacture is daily increasing. The more machines are multiplied, that is, the more society approaches towards perfection, the less room is there for those great inventions which change the face of the world. We shall still go on improving, doubtless; but ingenuity will have a much narrower range to work in. It may perfect the machines which we have got, but it will invent fewer original machines. And who can doubt, that the nearer we approach to this state, the better will it be for the general condition of mankind? Who can doubt whether, instead of a state of society where the labourers were few and wretched, wasting human strength, unaided by art, in labours which could be better performed by wind, and water, and steam,--by the screw and the lever,--it would not be better to approach as nearly as we can to a state of society where the labourers would be many and lightly tasked, exerting human power in its noblest occupation, that of giving a direction by its intelligence to the mere physical power which it had conquered? Surely, a nation so advanced as to apply the labour of its people to occupations where a certain degree of intelligence was required, leaving all that was purely mechanical to machines and to inferior animals, would produce for itself the greatest number of articles of necessity and convenience, of luxury and taste, at the cheapest cost. But it would do more. It would have its population increasing with the increase of those productions; and that population employed in those labours alone which could not be carried on without that great power of man by which he subdues all other power to his use,--his reason. But it is not only science which has determined, and is more and more determining, the condition of the great body of operatives, but the organization of industry upon the factory principle, so universal and so powerful, has rendered it impossible for the future that the larger amount of the labour of a country should be regarded as an insulated force. It must work in conjunction with higher and more powerful forces.