On the Economy of Machinery and ManufacturesBabbage, Charles
ReligionComparative
On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures
Babbage, Charles
Machinery; Manufactures
19. When a mass of matter is to be removed a certain force
must be expended; and upon the proper economy of this force the
price of transport will depend. A country must, however, have
reached a high degree of civilization before it will have
approached the limit of this economy. The cotton of Java is
conveyed in junks to the coast of China; but from the seed not
being previously separated, three-quarters of the weight thus
carried is not cotton. This might, perhaps, be justified in Java
by the want of machinery to separate the seed, or by the relative
cost of the operation in the two countries. But the cotton
itself, as packed by the Chinese, occupies three times the bulk
of an equal quantity shipped by Europeans for their own markets.
Thus the freight of a given quantity of cotton costs the Chinese
nearly twelve times the price to which, by a proper attention to
mechanical methods, it might be reduced. *
NOTES:
1. 'The Bandana handkerchiefs manufactured at Glasgow have long
superseded the genuine ones, and are now consumed in large
quantities both by the natives and Chinese.' Crawford's Indian
Archipelago, vol. iii, p. 505.
2. 'Captain Clapperton, when on a visit at the court of the
Sultan Bello, states, that 'provisions were regularly sent me from
the sultan's table on pewter dishes with the London stamp; and I
even had a piece of meat served up on a white wash-hand basin of
English manufacture.' Clapperton's Journey, p. 88.
3. At Calicut, in the East Indies (whence the cotton cloth called
calico derives its name), the price of labour is one-seventh of
that in England, yet the market is supplied from British looms.
4. Liverpool, though not itself a manufacturing town, has been
placed in this list, from its connection with Manchester, of
which it is the port.
5. So sensible are the effects of grease in diminishing friction,
that the drivers of sledges in Amsterdam, on which heavy goods are
transported, carry in their hand a rope soaked in tallow, which
they throw down from time to time before the sledge, in order
that, by passing over the rope, it may become greased.
Chapter 2
Accumulating Power
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