166 Exploded Fallacies regarding Machinery. CHAP. XIII. purpose as a bookbinder) and walked to London and back for the of buying tools, he was nine days from home, six of which were spent in going and returning. He travelled on foot, dreading robbers, and still more dreading the cost of food and lodging at public-houses. His whole expenses during this toilsome expedition were only ten shillings and eightpence; but he contented himself with the barest necessaries, keeping the money for his tools sewed up in his shirtcollar. If William Hutton had lived in these days, he would, upon sheer principles of economy, have gone to London by the Nottingham train at a cost of twenty shillings for his transit, in one forenoon, and returned in another. The twenty shillings would have been sacrificed for his conveyance, but he would have had a week's labour free to go to work with his new tools; he need not have sewed his money in his shirt-collar for fear of thieves; and his shoes would not have been worn out and his feet blistered in his toilsome march of two hundred and fifty miles. A very few years ago it was not uncommon to hear men say that this wonderful communication, the greatest triumph of modern skill, was not a blessing;-for the machinery had put somebody out of employ. Baron Humboldt, a traveller in South America, tells us that, upon a road being made over a part of the great chain of mountains called the Andes, the government was petitioned against the road by a body of men who for centuries had gained a living by carrying travellers in baskets strapped upon their backs over the fearful rocks, which only these guides could cross. Which was the better course-to make the road, and create the thousand employments belonging to freedom of intercourse, for these very carriers of travellers, and for all other men; or to leave the mountains without a road, that the poor guides might make a premium for risking their lives in an unnecessary peril? But, looking at their direct results, we have no doubt that railroads have greatly multipled the employments connected with the conveyance of goods and passengers. But the indirect occupations called into activity by railroads are so numerous as to defy all attempts at calculating the numbers engaged in them. No doubt many occupations were changed by railroads ;there were fewer coachmen, guards, postboys, waggoners, and others, on such a post-road as that from London to York. But it is equally certain that throughout the kingdom there are far more persons employed in conducting the internal communication of the country, effecting that great addition to its productive powers, without which all other production would languish and decay. (See Appendix, Occupation of the People, Commercial Class.) The vast extension, and the new channels, of our foreign commerce have been greatly affected by the prodigious facilities of our internal communication. They have created, in a measure, special departments of industry, which can be most advantageously pursued in particular localities; but which railways and steam-vessels have united with the whole kingdom, with its colonies, with the habitable globe. The reindeer connects the Laplander with the markets of Sweden, and draws his sledge over the frozen wilds at a speed and power of continuance only rivalled by the locomotive. The same beneficent Providence which has given this animal to the inhabitant of the polar regions,not only for food, for clothing, but for transport to associate him with some civilization, has bestowed upon us the mighty power of steam, to connect us with the entire world, from which we were once held to be wholly separated. QUESTIONS TO CHAPTER XIII. 1. Enumerate the various applications of machinery to the coal trade. 2. What is the cause that a wood fire is dearer than a coal fire? 3. What has been the rate of increase in the consumption of coal since 1685? 4. What causes the difference of cost in coal? 5. Give an instance of the importance of roads, 6. Give some instances of the state of the roads in Great Britain in the last century. 7. What effect had the making of roads on the condition of the Highlanders? 8. Give an instance of the immediate effect of road-making in Ireland. 9. How industry created by the making of roads? 10. What is one of the main causes of the uncertainty of trade with Australia? 11. What is the comparative cost of conveying goods from London to Sydney, and from Sydney to Bathurst? 12. What is the cause of this? 13. What has the principle of exchange effected in the means of communication in England? 14. What is the highest mechanical combination to reduce the price of conveyance ? 15. What was the first application of the railway principle? 16. What has been the effect of the improved means of communication in Great Britain and Ireland ? 17. What has been the increase in the number of letters carried by the post since 1839 ? 18. What has been the increase in the speed of their conveyance? 19. How has labour been affected by the establishment of railways? 20. How has our foreign commerce been affected by the facilities of internal communication? CHAPTER XIV. Houses--The pyramids-Mechanical power-Carpenter's tools-American machinery for building-Bricks-Slate-Household fittings and furniture— Paper-hangings-Carpets-Glass-Pottery-Improvements effected through the reduction or repeal of duties on domestic requirements. THE HE beaver builds his huts with the tools which nature has given him. He gnaws pieces of wood in two with his sharp teeth, so sharp that the teeth of a similar animal, the agouti, form the only cutting-tool which some rude nations possess. When the beavers desire to move a large piece of wood, they join in a body to drag it along. Man has not teeth that will cut wood: but he has reason, which directs him to the choice of much more perfect tools. Some of the great monuments of antiquity, such as the pyramids of Egypt, are constructed of enormous blocks of stone brought from distant quarries. We have no means of estimating, with any accuracy, the mechanical knowledge possessed by the people engaged in these works. It was, probably, very small, and, consequently, the human labour employed in such edifices was not only enormous in quantity, but exceedingly painful to the workmen. The Egyptians, according to Herodotus, a Greek writer who lived two thousand five hundred years ago, hated the memory of the kings who built the pyramids. He tells us that the great pyramid occupied a hundred thousand men for twenty years in its erection, without counting the workmen who were employed in hewing the stones, and in conveying them to the spot where the pyramid was built. Herodotus speaks of this work as a torment to the people; and doubtless the labour engaged in raising huge masses of stone, that was extensive enough to employ a hundred thousand men for twenty years, which is equal to two millions of men for one year, must have been fearfully tormenting without machinery, or with very imperfect machinery. It has been calculated that about half the steam-engines of England, worked by thirty-six thousand men, would raise the same quantity of stones from the quarry, and elevate them to the same height as the great pyramid, in the short time of eighteen hours. The people of Egypt groaned for twenty years under this enormous work. The labourers groaned because they were sorely taxed; and the rest of the people groaned because they had to pay the labourers. The labourers lived, it is true, upon the wages of their labour, that is, they were paid in food-kept like horsesas the reward of their work. Herodotus says that it was recorded on the pyramid that the onions, radishes, and garlic which the labourers consumed, cost sixteen hundred talents of silver: an immense sum, equivalent to several million pounds. But the onions, radishes, and garlic, the bread, and clothes of the labourer, were wrung out of the profitable labour of the rest of the people. The building of the pyramid was an unprofitable labour. There was no immediate or future source of produce in the pyramid; it produced neither food, nor fuel, nor clothes, nor any other necessary. The labour of a hundred thousand men for twenty years, stupidly employed upon this monument, without an object beyond that of gratifying the pride of the tyrant who raised it, was a direct tax upon the profitable labour of the rest of the people. "Instead of useful works, like nature great, Enormous cruel wonders crushed the land." But admitting that it is sometimes desirable for nations and governments to erect monuments which are not of direct utility-which may have an indirect utility in re |