separated from the mass, but forms part of a hard and compact body. A series of these operations produces a cable, such as may hold a barge at anchor. The twisted fibres of hemp become yarn; many yarns become a strand; three

strands make a rope; and three ropes makes a cablet, or small cable. By carefully untwisting all its separate parts the principle upon which it is constructed is evident. The operation is a complex one; and the rope-maker is a skilled workman. Rope-making machinery is now carried much farther. But the wheel that twisted the hemp into yarn was a prodigy to the inquiring savage.

Another of these New Zealanders, and he was a very shrewd and intelligent person, carried back to his country a small hand-mill for grinding corn, which he prized as the greatest of all earthly possessions. And well might he prize it! He had no machine for converting corn into meal, but two stones, such as were used in the remote parts of the highlands of Scotland some years ago. And to beat the

grain into meal by these two stones (a machine, remember, however imperfect) would occupy the labour of one-fourth of his family, to procure subsistence for the other threefourths. The ancient Greeks, three thousand years ago,

Analysis of a Cablet.

had improved upon the machinery of the hand-stones, for they had hand-mills. But Homer, the old Greek poet, describes the unhappy condition of the slave who was always employed in using this mill. The groans of the slave were unheeded by those who consumed the produce of his labour; and such was the necessity for meal, that the women were compelled to turn these mills when there were not slaves enough taken in war to perform this irksome office. There was plenty of labour then to be performed, even with the machinery of the hand-mill; but the slaves and the women did not consider that labour was a good in itself, and therefore they bitterly groaned under it. By

and-by the understandings of men found out that water and wind would do the same work that the slaves and the women had done; and that a large quantity of labour was at liberty to be employed for other purposes. Does any one ask if society was in a worse state in consequence. We answer, labour is worth nothing without results. Its value is only to be measured by what it produces. If, in a country where hand-mills could be had, the people were to go on beating grain between two stones, all would pronounce them fools, because they could obtain an equal quantity of meal with a much less expenditure of labour. Some have a general prejudice against that sort of machinery which does its work with very little human assistance: it is not quite so certain, therefore, that they would agree that a people would be equal fools to use the hand-mill when they could employ the wind-mill or the water-mill. But we believe they would think that, if flour could drop from heaven, or be had like water by whoever chose to seek it, it would be the height of folly to have stones, or hand-mills, or watermills, or wind-mills, or any machine whatever for manufacturing flour. Does any one ever think of manufacturing water? The cost of water is only the cost of the labour which brings it to the place in which it is consumed. Yet this admission overturns all objections against machinery. We admit that it is desirable to obtain a thing with no labour at all; can we therefore doubt that it is desirable to obtain it with the least possible labour? The only difference between no labour and a little labour is the difference of the cost of production. And the only difference between little labour and much labour is precisely the same. In procuring anything that administers to his necessities, man makes an exchange of his labour for the thing produced, and the less he gives of his labour the better of course is his bargain.

To return to the hand-mill and the water-mill. An ordinary water-mill for grinding corn will grind about thirtysix sacks a day. To do the same work with a hand-mill would require 150 men. At two shillings a day the wages

of these men would amount to 15l., which, reckoning six working days, is 90l. a week, or 4680l. a year. The rent and taxes of a mill would be about 150l. a year, or 10s. a working day. The cost of machinery would be certainly more for the hand-mills than the water-mill, therefore we will not take the cost of machinery into calculation. To produce, therefore, thirty-six sacks of flour by hand we should pay 15l.; by the water-mill we should pay 108.: that is, we should pay thirty times as much by the one process as by the other. The actual saving is something about the price of the flour in the market; that is, the consumer, if the corn were ground by hand, would pay double what he pays now for flour ground at a mill.

But if the system of grinding corn by hand were a very recent system of society, and the introduction of so great a benefit as the water-mill had all at once displaced the handgrinders, as the spinning machinery displaced the spinningwheel, what must become, it is said, of the one hundred and fifty men who earned the 157. a-day, of which sum the consumer has now got 147. 108. in his pocket? They must go to other work. And what is to set them to that work? The same 14l. 10s.; which, being saved in the price of flour, gives the poor man, as well as the rich man, more animal food and fuel; a greater quantity of clothes, and of a better quality; a better house than his hand-labouring ancestors used to have, much as his house might yet be improved; better furniture, and more of it; domestic utensils; and books. To produce these things there must be more labourers employed than before. The quantity of labour is, therefore, not diminished, while its productiveness is much increased. It is as if every man among us had become suddenly much stronger and more industrious. The machines labour for us, and are yet satisfied without either food or clothing. They increase all our comforts, and they consume none themselves. The hand-mills are not grinding, it is true: but the ships are sailing that bring us foreign produce; the looms are moving that give us more clothes; the potter, and glass

maker, and joiner, are each employed to add to our household goods; we are each of us elevated in the scale of society; and all these things happen because machinery has diminished the cost of production.

The water-mill is, however, a simple machine compared with some mills of modern times. We are familiar with the village-mill. As we walk by the side of some gentle stream, we hear at a distance the murmur of water and the growl of wheels. We come upon the old mill, such as it has stood for a couple of centuries. No peasant quarrels with the mill. It is an object almost of his love; for he knows that it cheapens his food. It seems a part of the natural scenery amidst which he has been reared.

But let a more efficient machine for grinding corn be introduced, such as the Americans have at Pittsburgh, and the peasant might think that the working millers would be ruined. And yet the mill at Pittsburgh is making flour cheaper in England, by that competition which here forces onward improvement in mill-machinery and by increasing the consumption of flour calls into action more superintending labour for its production. That particular American mill produces 500 barrels of flour per day, each containing 196 lbs., and it employs forty managing persons. It produces cheap flour by saving labour in all its processes. It stands on the bank of a navigable river—a high building into which the corn for grinding must be removed from boats alongside. Is the grain necessary to produce these 500 barrels of flour per day, amounting to 98,000 lbs., carried by man's labour to the topmost floor of that high mill? It is "raised by an elevator consisting of an endless band, to which are fixed a series of metal cans revolving in a long wooden trough, which is lowered through the respective hatchways into the boat, and is connected at its upper end with the building where its belt is driven. The lower end of the trough is open, and, as the endless band revolves, six or eight men shovel the grain into the ascending cans, which raise it so rapidly that 4000 bushels can be lifted and