There

There are two other tables, having relation to the occupations of the people, which are interesting. That of the foreigners in England shows how little their industry enters into competition with native exertion. The total foreigners (those of European States), amount to 73,434 persons, of whom 50,844 are males, and 22,590 are females. Of the females, 13,790 belong to the domestic class, of which 3,432 are “in attendance." Of male domestic servants there are 4,433. In the professional class we find as musicians and teachers of music, 2,025 males, 223 females; of teachers generally, 1,153 males, 2,147 females. are 4,777 persons engaged in mercantile pursuits; 15,737 carriers on seas and rivers. Of the industrial class, those employed on dress amount to 6,649; those on watches and philosophical instruments are 1,297. In furniture there are employed 1,071. Very different is the present time from that in which the Flemings were the principal weavers of England. All the foreign workers earning a living amongst us in the factories for textile fabrics-wool, worsted, silk, cotton, flax, and mixed materials-amount only to 529.

There are special tables appropriated to the blind and the deaf and dumb. The total number of the blind is 19,352. Happy is it that they are not wholly deprived of the power of being useful to the community! 56 are clergymen, ministers, and church officers; 609 musicians and teachers of music; 79 teachers. Belonging to the agricultural class there are 1,460; to the industrial class, 4,000. We may see in several items of these returns how the sense of touch compensates in some degree for the loss of sight. There are 677 workers in dress, and 658 in cane, rush, and straw. Amongst the blind there are 539 persons of rank or property, not returned under any office or occupation; and 1,091 living on income from voluntary sources and rates.

The total of the deaf and dumb is 12,236. Of these, 5,104 belong to the domestic class; 932 to the agricultural; and 2,909 to the industrial. Of this class, 1,909 are working and dealing in the textile fabrics and in dress.

PART III.

CAPITALISTS AND LABOURERS: CO-OPERATION.

CHAPTER XXII

Power of skill-Cheap production-Population and production-Partial and temporary evils-Intelligent labour-Division of labour-General knowledge-Union of forces.

WE

E have thus, without pretending to any approach to completeness, taken a rapid view of many of the great branches of industry in this country. We have exhibited capital working with accumulation of knowledge; we have shown labour working with skill. We desire to show that the counter-control to the absorbing power of capital is the rapidly developing power of skill-for that, also, is capital. Knowledge is power, because knowledge is property. Mr. Whitworth, whose Report on American Manufactures we have several times quoted, says that the workmen of the United States, being educated, perform their duty" with less supervision than is required when dependence is to be placed upon uneducated hands." He adds, "It rarely happens that a workman, who possesses peculiar skill in his craft, is disqualified to take the responsible position of superintendent, by the want of education and general knowledge, as is frequently the case in this country." This is a reproach which every young person in our land ought, as speedily as possible, to wipe out. The means of education may not be quite so universal here as in the United States; but they are ample to produce a large increase of that skill and that

trustworthiness which are the most efficient powers which those who work for their living can possibly command, for elevating their individual positions, and for elevating the great body of workers throughout the realm. One of the most essential steps towards the attainment of this elevation is the conviction that manual labour, to be effective, must adapt itself almost wholly to the direction of science; and that under that direction unskilled labour necessarily becomes skilled, and limited trust enlarges into influential responsibility.

Those who have taken a superficial view of the question of scientific application say, that, only whenever there is a greater demand than the existing means can supply, is any new discovery in mechanics a benefit to society, because it gives the means of satisfying the existing wants; but that, on the contrary, whenever the things produced are sufficient for the consumers, the discovery is a calamity, because it does not add to the enjoyments of the consumers; it only gives them a better market, which better market is bought at the price of the existence of the producers.

All such reasoning is false in principle, and unsupported by experience. There is no such thing, nor, if machines went on improving for five hundred years at the rate they have done for the last century, could there be any such thing as a limit to the wants of the consumers. The great mass of facts which we have brought together in this book must have shown, that the cheaper an article of necessity becomes, the more of it is used; that when the most pressing wants are supplied, and supplied amply by cheapness, the consumer has money to lay out upon new wants; that when these new wants are supplied cheaply, he goes on again and again to other new wants; that there are no limits, in fact, to his wants as long as he has any capital to satisfy them. Bear in mind this; that the first great object of every invention and every improvement is to confer a benefit upon the consumers, to make the commodity cheap and plentiful. The working man stands in a double

But we

character; he is both a producer and a consumer.
will be bold to say that the question of cheapness of pro-
duction is a much more important question to be decided
in his favour as a consumer, than the question of dearness
of production to be decided in his favour as a producer.
The truth is, every man tries to get as much as he can for
his own labour, and to pay as little as he can for the labour
of others. If a mechanic, succeeding in stopping the
machine used in his own trade, by any strange deviation
from the natural course of things were to get higher wages
for a time, he himself would be the most injured by the
extension of the principle. When he found his loaf cost
him two shillings instead of sixpence; when he was obliged
to go to the river with his bucket for his supply of water;
when his coals cost a guinea a bushel instead of eighteen
pence; when he was told by the hosier that his worsted
stockings were advanced from a shilling a pair to five shil-
lings; when, in fact, the price of every article that he uses
should be doubled, trebled, and, in nine cases out of ten,
put beyond the possibility of attainment;-what, we ask,
would be the use to him of his advance in wages? Let us
never forget that it is not for the employment of labourers,
but for the benefit of consumers, that labour is employed
at all. The steam-engines are not working in the coal-pits
of Northumberland, and the ships sailing from the Tyne to
the Thames, to give employment to colliers and to sailors,
but to make coals cheap in London. If the people of Lon-
don could have the coals without the steam-engines and the
ships, it would be better for them, and better for the rest
of the world. If they could get coals for nothing, they
would have more produce to exchange for money to spend
upon other things; and the comforts, therefore, of every
one of us would be increased.

This increase of comfort, some may say, is a question that more affects the rich than it affects the great mass. This again is a mistake. The whole tendency of the improvements of the last four hundred years has not only been

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to lift the meanest, in regard to a great many comforts, far above the condition of the rich four hundred years ago, but absolutely to place them, in many things, upon a level with the rich of their own day. They are surrounded as we have constantly shown throughout this book, with an infinite number of comforts and conveniences which had no existence two or three centuries ago; and those comforts and conveniences are not used only by a few, but are within the reach of almost all men. Every day is adding something to our comforts. Our houses are better builtour clothes are cheaper-we have a number of domestic utensils, whose use even was unknown to our ancestorswe can travel cheaply from place to place, and not only travel at less expense, but travel ten times quicker than the richest man could travel two hundred years ago. The bulk of society is not only advancing steadily to the same level in point of many comforts with the rich, but is gaining that knowledge which was formerly their exclusive possession. Let all of us who are producers keep fast hold of that last and best power.

We have endeavoured to show throughout this book that the one great result of machinery, and of every improvement in art, is to lessen the cost of production; to increase the benefit to the consumer. But it is a most fortunate arrangement of the social state, as we have also shown, that cheap production gives increased employment. The same class of false reasoners who consider that the wants of society are limited, cry out, It is better to have a population of men than of steam-engines. That might be true, if the steam-engines did put out the men; but inasmuch as they increase the productions by which men are main tained, they increase the men. What has increased the population of England nearly tenfold during the last five hundred years, but the improvement of the arts of life, which has enabled more men to live within the land? There is no truth so clear, that as the productions of industry multiply, the means of acquiring those productions