Knowledge is power : $b A view of the productive forces of modern society and the results of labor, capital and skill.Knight, Charles
Philosophy
Knowledge is power : $b A view of the productive forces of modern society and the results of labor, capital and skill.
Knight, Charles
Industrial arts; Industries
Contrast the course of this unhappy man with that of the Duke of
Bridgewater, who devoted his property to really "making good for trade,"
by constructing the great canals which connect Manchester with the coal
countries and with Liverpool. The Duke of Buckingham lived in a round of
sensual folly: the Duke of Bridgewater limited his personal expenditure
to 400_l._ a-year, and devoted all the remaining portion of his revenues
to the construction of a magnificent work of the highest public utility.
The one supported a train of cooks and valets and horse-jockeys: the
other called into action the labour of thousands, and employed in the
direction of that labour the skill of Brindley, one of the greatest
engineers that any country has produced. The one died without a penny,
loaded with debt, leaving no trace behind him but the ruin which his
waste had produced: the other bequeathed almost the largest property in
Europe to his descendants, and opened a channel for industry which
afforded, and still affords, employment to thousands.
[Illustration: Brindley.]
When a mob amused themselves by breaking windows, as was once a common
recreation on an illumination night, by way of showing the amount of
popular intelligence, some were apt to say they have "made good for
trade." Is it not evident that the capital which was represented by the
unbroken windows was really so much destroyed of the national riches
when the windows were broken?--for if the windows had remained unbroken,
the capital would have remained to stimulate the production of some new
object of utility. The glaziers, indeed, replaced the windows; but there
having been a destruction of windows, there must have been a necessary
retrenchment in some other outlay, that would have afforded benefit to
the consumer. Doubtless, when the glazier is called into activity by a
mob breaking windows, some other trade suffers; for the man who has to
pay for the broken windows must retrench somewhere, and, if he has less
to lay out, some other person has less to lay out. The glass-maker,
probably, makes more glass at the moment; but he does so to exchange
with the capital that would otherwise have gone to the maker of clothes
or of furniture: and, there being an absolute destruction of the funds
for the maintenance of labour, by an unnecessary destruction of what
former labour has produced, trade generally is injured to the extent of
the destruction. Some now say that a fire makes good for trade. The only
difference of evil between the fire which destroys a house, and the mob
which breaks the windows, is, that the fire absorbs capital for the
maintenance of trade, or labour, in the proportion of a hundred to one
when compared with the mob. Some say that war makes good for trade. The
only difference of pecuniary evil (the moral evils admit of no
comparison) between the fire and the war is, that the war absorbs
capital for the maintenance of trade, or labour, in the proportion of a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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