There is no doubt about the "swiftness" of English Workmanship. But this
is one of the merits of English mechanism. M. Jules Simon observes that
heretofore the manual labourer has been an intelligent force, but by
means of machinery he is converted into an intelligent director of
force. It is by the speed of the English machinery, and the intelligent
quickness of the workmen, that his master makes a profit, and himself
such high wages as compared with continental workmen. In France, one
person is employed to mind fourteen spindles; in Russia, one to
twenty-eight; in Prussia, one to thirty-seven; and in Great Britain, one
to seventy-four spindles. It is by means of the swiftness of our
machinery that we are enabled to bring cotton from India, manufacture it
in Manchester, return the manufactured article to the place from which
it was taken, and sell it at a lower price than the native-made calico.
Mr. Chadwick mentions the following case. "A lady, the wife of an
eminent cotton manufacturer, went to him one day rejoicing, with a fine
piece of muslin, as the produce of India, which she had bought in
London, and showing it to him, said, if he produced a fabric like that,
he would really be doing something meritorious in textile art. He
examined it, and found that it was the produce of his own looms, near
Manchester, made for the Indian market exclusively, bought there, and
re-sold in England as rare Indian manufacture!"[1]
[Footnote 1: _Address on Economy and Free Trade_. By Edwin Chadwick,
C.B., at the Association for the Promotion of Social Science at York,
1861.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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