Knowledge is Power Part 13

The head of a pin is a more difficult thing to make even than the body.

It is formed of a small piece of wire twisted round so as to fit upon the other wire. It is said that by a machine fifty thousand heads can be made in an hour. We should think that a man would be very skilful to make fifty in an hour by hand, in the roughest manner; if so, the machine does the work of a thousand men. The machine, however, does not do all the work. The head is attached to the body of a pin by the fingers of a child, while another machine rivets it on. The operations of cutting and pointing the pins are also done by machinery; and they are polished by a chemical process.

It is by these processes,--by these combinations of human labour with mechanical power,--that it occurs that fifty pins can be bought for one halfpenny, and that therefore four or five thousand pins may be consumed in a year by the most economical housewife, at a much less price than fifty pins of a rude make cost two or three centuries ago. A woman's allowance was formerly called her _pin-money_,--a proof that the pins were a sufficiently dear article to make a large item in her expenses.

If pins now were to cost a halfpenny apiece instead of being fifty for a halfpenny, the greater number of females would adopt other modes of fastening their dress, which would probably be less neat and convenient than pins. No such circ.u.mstance could happen while the machinery of pin-making was in use.

Needles are not so cheap as pins, because the material of which they are made is more expensive, and the processes cannot be executed so fully by machinery. But without machinery how could that most beautiful article, a _fine_ needle, be sold at the rate of six for a penny?

As in the case of pins, machinery is at work at the first formation of the material. Without the tilt-hammer, which beats out the bar of steel, first at the rate of ten strokes a minute, and lastly at that of five hundred, how could that bar be prepared for needle-making at anything like a reasonable price? In all the processes of needle-making, labour is saved by contrivance and machinery. What human touch, without a machine, would be accurate enough to make the eye of the finest needle, through which the most delicate silk is with difficulty pa.s.sed? There are two needles to be formed out of one piece of wire; in the previous preparation of which the eyes are marked. The workman, holding in his hand several wires, drops one at a time on the bed-iron of the machine, adjusts it to the die, brings down the upper die upon it by the action of the foot, and allows it to fall into a little dish when done. This he does with such rapidity that one stamper can stamp four thousand wires, equivalent to eight thousand needles, in an hour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Stamping the eye of a needle.]

Needles are made in such large quant.i.ties, that it is even important to save the time of the child who lays them all one way when they are completed. Mr. Babbage, who is equally distinguished for his profound science and his mechanical ingenuity, has described this process as an example of one of the simplest contrivances which can come under the denomination of a tool. "It is necessary to separate the needles into two parcels, in order that their points may be all in one direction.

This is usually done by women and children. The needles are placed sideways in a heap, on a table, in front of each operator. From five to ten are rolled towards this person by the forefinger of the left hand; this separates them a very small s.p.a.ce from each other, and each in its turn is pushed lengthways to the right or to the left, according as its eye is on the right or the left hand. This is the usual process, and in it every needle pa.s.ses individually under the finger of the operator. A small alteration expedites the process considerably; the child puts on the forefinger of its right hand a small cloth cap or finger-stall, and, rolling from the heap from six to twelve needles, it keeps them down by the forefinger of the left hand; whilst it presses the forefinger of the right hand gently against the ends of the needles, those which have their points towards the right hand stick into the finger-stall; and the child, removing the finger of the left hand, allows the needles sticking into the cloth to be slightly raised, and then pushes them towards the left side. Those needles which had their eyes on the right hand do not stick into the finger-cover, and are pushed to the heap on the right side previous to the repet.i.tion of the process. By means of this simple contrivance, each movement of the finger, from one side to the other, carries five or six needles to their proper heap; whereas, in the former method, frequently only one was moved, and rarely more than two or three were transported at one movement to their place."

A large number of people are employed, at Birmingham chiefly, in the manufacture of b.u.t.tons. The census return gives about seven thousand. In the manufacture of a single b.u.t.ton there is great division of labour amongst piercers, cutters, stampers, gilders, and burnishers. The engraving exhibits the operations of stamping, pressing, and punching, as carried on in a great factory. The shank of a b.u.t.ton is made by very complicated machinery as a distinct cla.s.s of manufacture, and the b.u.t.ton-makers buy the shanks. It has been stated that three firms in Birmingham annually make six hundred million of b.u.t.ton-shanks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Stamping, pressing, and punching b.u.t.tons.--Elliott's factory.]

The application of machinery, or of peculiar scientific modes of working, to such apparently trifling articles as pins, needles, b.u.t.tons, and trinkets, may appear of little importance. But let it be remembered, that the manufacture of such articles furnishes employment to many thousands of our fellow-countrymen; and, enabling us to supply other nations with these products, affords us the means of receiving articles of more intrinsic value in exchange. In 1853 our exports of hardware and cutlery amounted to more than three millions and a half sterling. No article of ready attainment, and therefore of general consumption, whether it be a labourer's spade or a child's marble, is unimportant in a commercial point of view. The wooden figures of horses and sheep that may be bought for twopence in the toy-shops furnish employment to cut them, during the long winter nights, to a large portion of the peasantry of the Tyrol. The Swiss peasant cuts a piece of white wood into a boy or a cottage, as he is tending his herd on the side of a mountain. These become considerable articles of export. In the town of Sonneberg, near the forest of Thuringia, four thousand inhabitants are princ.i.p.ally employed in the toy-trade, and also find employment for the neighbouring villagers. Mr. Osler, of Birmingham, some years ago, addressing a Committee of the House of Commons upon the subject of his beads and trinkets, said,--"On my first journey to London, a respectable-looking man in the City asked me if I could supply him with dolls' eyes; and I was foolish enough to feel half offended. I thought it derogatory to my new dignity as a manufacturer to make dolls' eyes. He took me into a room quite as wide and perhaps twice the length of this (one of the large rooms for Committees in the House of Commons), and we had just room to walk between stacks, from the floor to the ceiling, of parts of dolls. He said, 'These are only the legs and arms--the trunks are below.' But I saw enough to convince me that he wanted a great many eyes; and as the article appeared quite in my own line of business, I said I would take an order by way of experiment; and he showed me several specimens. I copied the order. He ordered various quant.i.ties and of various sizes and qualities. On returning to the Tavistock Hotel, I found that the order amounted to upwards of five hundred pounds."

Mr. Osler tells this story to show the importance of trifles. The making of dolls' eyes afforded subsistence to many ingenious workmen in gla.s.s toys; and in the same way the most minute and apparently insignificant article of general use, when rendered cheap by chemical science or machinery, produces a return of many thousand pounds, and sets in motion labour and labourers. Without the science and the machinery, which render the article cheap, the labourers would have had _no_ employ, for the article would not have been consumed. What a pretty article is a common tobacco-pipe, of which millions are used! It is made cheap and beautiful in a mould--a machine for copying pipes. If the pipe were made without the mould, and other contrivances, it would cost at least a s.h.i.+lling instead of a halfpenny:--the tobacco-smoker would go without his pipe, and the pipe-maker without his employment.

Amongst articles of great demand that have become of importance, though apparently insignificant, in our own day, there is nothing more worthy of notice than the Lucifer-Match. About twenty years ago chemistry abolished the tinder-box; and the burnt rag that made the tinder went to make paper. Slowly did the invention spread. The use of the lucifer-match is now so established that machines are invented to prepare the splints. In London one saw-mill annually cuts up four hundred large timber-trees for matches. The English matches are generally square, and thus thirty thousand splints are cut in a minute.

The American matches are round; and the process of shaping being more elaborate, four thousand five hundred splints are cut in a minute. We will follow a bundle of eighteen hundred of the square splints, each four inches long, through its conversion into three thousand six hundred lucifer-matches.

Without being separated, each end of the bundle is first dipped into sulphur. When dry, the splints, adhering to each other by means of the sulphur, must be parted by what is called dusting. A boy, sitting on the floor with a bundle before him, strikes the matches with a sort of mallet on the dipped ends till they become thoroughly loosened. They have now to be plunged into a preparation of phosphorus or chlorate of potash, according to the quality of the match. The phosphorus produces the pale, noiseless fire; the chlorate of potash, the sharp cracking illumination. After this application of the more inflammable substance, the matches are separated, and dried in racks. Thoroughly dried, they are gathered up again into bundles of the same quant.i.ty, and are taken to the boys who cut them; for the reader will have observed that the bundles have been dipped at each end. There are few things more remarkable in manufactures than the extraordinary rapidity of this cutting-process and that which is connected with it. The boy stands before a bench, the bundle on his right hand, a pile of half-opened empty boxes on his left. The matches are to be cut, and the empty boxes filled, by this boy. A bundle is opened; he seizes a portion, knowing by long habit the required number with sufficient exactness; puts them rapidly into a sort of frame, knocks the ends evenly together, confines them with a strap which he tightens with his foot, and cuts them in two parts with a knife on a hinge, which he brings down with a strong leverage. The halves lie projecting over each end of the frame; he grasps the left portion and thrusts it into a half-open box, which slides into an outer case; and he repeats the process with the matches on his right hand. This series of movements is performed with a rapidity almost unexampled; for in this way, two hundred thousand matches are cut, and two thousand boxes filled, in a day, by one boy.

It is a law of this manufacture that the demand is greater in the summer than in the winter. The increased summer demand for the lucifer-matches shows that the great consumption is among the ma.s.ses--the labouring population--those who make up the vast majority of the contributors to duties of customs and excise. In the houses of the wealthy there is always fire; in the houses of the poor, fire in summer is a needless hourly expense. Then comes the lucifer-match to supply the want--to light the candle to look in the dark cupboard--to light the afternoon fire to boil the kettle. It is now unnecessary to run to the neighbour for a light, or, as a desperate resource, to work at the tinder-box. The lucifer-matches sometimes fail, but they cost little, and so they are freely used, even by the poorest. Their value was sufficiently shown when an officer in camp at Balaclava wrote home that no want was greater than that of the ready means of procuring fire and light, and that he should hold a box of lucifer-matches cheap at half-a-crown.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Envelope-making machine.]

We may notice one other article of almost universal use, which is of very recent introduction--the Envelope. It is a labour-saving contrivance for the writer of letters. The use of the envelope has been mainly created by the penny postage. We find, in the census, that seven hundred persons, chiefly females, are employed in making envelopes. But there is a beautiful machine also for making them, at the rate of twenty-five thousand a day. The envelope-making machine was one of the most attractive objects in the Great Exhibition.

CHAPTER XIX.

Labour-saving contrivances--The nick in types--Tags of laces--Casting shot--Candle-dipping--Tiring a wheel--Globe-making--Domestic aids to labour--Aids to mental labour--Effects of severe bodily labour on health and duration of life.

We drew attention in the last chapter to a particular process in needle-making--the sorter's sheath--to show that great saving of labour may be effected by what is not popularly called machinery. In modern times, wherever work is carried on upon a large scale, the division of labour is applied; by which one man attending to one thing learns to perform that one thing more perfectly than if he had attended to many things. He thus saves a considerable portion of the whole amount of labour. Every skilful workman has individually some mode of working peculiar to himself, by which he lessens his labour. An expert blacksmith, for instance, will not strike one more blow upon the anvil than is necessary to produce the effect he desires. A compositor, or printer who arranges the types, is a swift workman when he makes no unnecessary movement of his arms or fingers in lifting a single type into what is called his composing-stick, where the types are arranged in lines. There is a very simple contrivance to lessen the labour of the compositor, by preventing him putting the type into his composing-stick the wrong side outwards. It is a nick, or two or three nicks, on the side of the type which corresponds with the lower side of the face of the letter. By this nick or nicks he is enabled to see by one glance of his eye on which side the letter is first to be grasped, and then to be arranged. If the nick were not there he would have to look at the face of every letter before he could properly place it. This is a labour-saving contrivance; and if the labour were not thus saved, two compositors would certainly be required to do the work of one; and the natural and inevitable effect would be that, as the funds for the payment of the compositor's labours would not be increased, the wages of each compositor would be diminished by one-half. The new labour that would be required would enter into compet.i.tion with the old labour, and depreciate its value, because each individual labourer had lost one-half of his efficiency.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Compositor at work.]

Contrivances to economize labour, such as that of the needle-sorter's sheath, and the nicks in the type of the compositor, are constantly occurring in manufactures. The tags of laces, which are made of thin tin, are sometimes bent into their requisite form by the same movement of the arm that cuts them. A piece of steel, adapted to the side of the shears, gives them at once their proper shape. The writer can remember that when he was a boy, and was fitted with a pair of laced boots, he used to wait with patience in the shoemaker's shop, whilst he clumsily bent a piece of tin into the form of a tag, and then as clumsily hammered it round the lace. In a silk manufactory boot-laces are now prepared with tags made by machinery. One machine cuts and hollows the tags much more efficiently than the shears mentioned above; and at another machine, worked by a boy, the tags are fitted to the laces with a rapidity which is acquired by continued practice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Machine for fixing tags to laces.]

If the small shot which is used by sportsmen were each cast in a mould, the price would be enormous; but by pouring the melted lead, of which the shot is made, through a sort of cullender, placed at the top of a tower, high enough for the lead to cool in its pa.s.sage through the air, before it reaches the ground, the shot is formed in a spherical or round shape by the mere act of pa.s.sing through the atmosphere. Some of the shots thus formed are not perfectly spherical--they are pear-shaped.

If the selection of the perfect from the imperfect shots were made by the eye, or the touch, the process would be very tedious and insufficient, and the price of the article much increased. The simplest contrivance in the world divides the bad from the good. The shots are poured down an inclined plane, and, without any trouble of selection, the spherical ones run straight to the bottom, while the pear-shaped ones tumble off on one side or the other of the plane.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Inclined plane for separating shot.]

In speaking of such contrivances we are constantly pa.s.sing over the narrow line which separates them from what we popularly term machinery.

Let us take an example of the readiness with which a small aid to manual labour gradually becomes perfected into a machine, requiring little impulse from human action. The dippers of candles have gradually, in small establishments, made several improvements in their art for the purpose of diminis.h.i.+ng labour. They used to hold the rods between their fingers, dipping three at a time; they next connected six or eight rods together by a piece of wood at each end, having holes to receive the rods; and they now suspend the rods so arranged upon a sort of balance, rising and falling with a pulley and a weight, so as to relieve the arms of the workman almost entirely, while the work is done more quickly and with more precision. But in large candle-factories the principle is carried much further. The wicks, having been cut by machinery of the requisite length, instead of being cut one at a time, are arranged upon a rod. For the sort of candle called "twelves," or twelve to a pound, twenty-four wicks are suspended on one of these rods. Thirty rods are connected together in a frame, which thus holds seven hundred and twenty wicks. Attached to the machine are thirty-six of these frames. The whole number of wicks is therefore twenty-five thousand nine hundred and twenty. The machine, as it revolves, dips one frame into a vessel of melted tallow; and so on till the thirty-six frames have each been once dipped,--and the process is continued till the candles are fully formed.

One man and a boy complete this number of candles in a working-day of ten hours.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dipping-machine.]

Walking by a wheelwright's shop in some quiet village, did our readers ever see the operation of "tiring" a wheel? The wood-work of the wheel is entirely formed; but the joints of the felloes are imperfectly fitted together. They used to be drawn close by separate straps of iron applied with great labour. The wheel rests upon some raised bricks. Out from the forge rush three or four men bearing a red-hot iron hoop. It is laid upon the outer rim of the wood-work, burning its way as it is hammered down with the united force of the wheelwrights. When it is nearly fitted, floods of water are thrown upon it, till it no longer burns. The knowledge of the simple fact that the iron shrinks as it cools, and thus knits the whole wheel into a firm body, taught the wheelwright how to accomplish the difficult task of giving the last strength to his wheel with the least possible labour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tiring a wheel.]

The manufacture of a globe offers an example of the production of a most beautiful piece of work by the often repeated application of a series of processes, each requiring very little labour. A globe is not a ball of wood; but a hollow sphere of papers and plaster. The mould, if we may so express it, of a globe is turned out of a piece of wood. This sphere need not be mathematically accurate. It is for rough work, and flaws and cracks are of little consequence. This wooden ball has an axis, a piece of iron wire at each pole. And here we may remark, that, at every stage of the process, the revolution of a sphere upon its axis, under the hands of the workman, is the one great principle which renders every operation one of comparative ease and simplicity. The labour would be enormously multiplied if the same cla.s.s of operations had to be performed upon a cube. The solid mould, then, of the embryo globe is placed on its axis in a wooden frame. In a very short time a boy will form a pasteboard globe upon its surface. He first covers it entirely with strips of strong paper, thoroughly wet, which are in a tub of water at his side. The slight inequalities produced by the over-lapping of the strips are immaterial. The saturated paper is not suffered to dry; but is immediately covered over with a layer of pasted paper, also cut in long narrow slips. A third layer of similarly pasted paper--brown paper and white being used alternately--is applied; and then, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth. Here the pasting process ends for globes of moderate size. For the large ones it is carried further. This wet pasteboard ball has now to be dried--placed upon its axis in a rack. If we were determined to follow the progress of this individual ball through all its stages, we should have to wait a fortnight before it advanced another step. But in a large factory there are many scores of globes all rolling onward to perfection; and thus we may witness the next operation performed upon a pasteboard sphere that began to exist some weeks earlier, and is now hard to the core.

The wooden ball, with its solid paper covering, is placed on its axis. A sharp cutting instrument, fixed on a bench, is brought into contact with the surface of the sphere, which is made to revolve. In less time than we write the pasteboard ball is cut in half. There is no adhesion to the wooden mould, for the first coating of paper was simply _wetted_. Two bowls of thick card now lie before us, with a small hole in each, made by the axis of the wooden ball. But a junction is very soon effected.

Within every globe there is a piece of wood--we may liken it to a round ruler--of the exact length of the inner surface of the sphere from pole to pole. A thick wire runs through this wood, and originally projected some two or three inches at each end. This stick is placed upright in a vice. The semi-globe is nailed to one end of the stick, upon which it rests, when the wire is pa.s.sed through its centre. It is now reversed, and the edges of the card rapidly covered with glue. The edges of the other semi-globe are instantly brought into contact, the other end of the wire pa.s.sing through its centre in the same way, and a similar nailing to the stick taking place. We have now a paper globe, with its own axis, which will be its companion for the whole term of its existence.

The paper globe is next placed on its axis in a frame, of which one side is a semicircular piece of metal;--the horizon of a globe cut in half would show its form. A tub of white composition, a compound of whiting, glue, and oil, is on the bench. The workman dips his hand into this "gruel thick and slab," and rapidly applies it to the paper sphere with tolerable evenness; but as it revolves, the semicircle of metal clears off the superfluous portions. The ball of paper is now a ball of plaster externally. Time again enters largely into the manufacture. The first coating must thoroughly dry before the next is applied, and so again till the process has been repeated four or five times. Thus, when we visit a globe-workshop, we are at first surprised at the number of white b.a.l.l.s, from three inches in diameter to three feet, which occupy a large s.p.a.ce. They are all steadily advancing towards completion; and as they advance to the dignity of perfect spheres, increased pains are taken in the application of the plaster. At last they are polished. Their surface is as fine and hard as ivory. But beautiful as they are, they may, like many other beautiful things, want a due equipoise. They must be perfectly balanced. They must move upon their poles with the utmost exactness. A few shot, let in here and there, correct all irregularities. And now the paper and plaster sphere is to be endued with intelligence. The sphere is marked with lines of direction for the purpose of covering it with engraved slips. We have now a globe with a plain map. An artist colours it by hand.

We have given these examples of several modes of production, in which knowledge and skill have diminished labour, for the purpose of showing that not only machinery and scientific applications are constantly tending to the same end, but that the mere practice of the mechanical arts necessarily leads to labour-saving inventions. Every one of us who thinks at all is constantly endeavouring to diminish his individual labour by the use of some little contrivance which experience has suggested. Men who carry water in buckets, in places where water is scarce, put a circular piece of wood to float on the water, which prevents its spilling, and consequently lessens the labour. A boy who makes paper bags in a grocer's shop so arranges them that he pastes the edges of twenty at a time, to diminish the labour. The porters of Amsterdam, who draw heavy goods upon a sort of sledge, every now and then throw a greased rope under the sledge, to diminish its friction, and therefore to lessen the labour of dragging it. Other porters, in the same city, have a little barrel containing water, attached to each side of the sledge, out of which the water slowly drips like the water upon a stone-cutter's saw, to diminish the friction.

In the domestic arrangements of a well-regulated household, whether of a poor man or of a rich man, one of the chief cares is to save labour.

Every contrivance to save labour that ingenuity can suggest is eagerly adopted when a country becomes highly civilized. In former times, in our own country, when such contrivances were little known, and materials as well as time were constantly wasted in every direction, a great Baron was surrounded with a hundred menial servants; but he had certainly less real and useful labour performed for him than a tradesman of the present day obtains from three servants. Are there fewer servants now employed than in those times of barbarous state? Certainly not. The middle cla.s.ses amongst us can get a great deal done for them in the way of domestic service, at a small expense, because servants are a.s.sisted by manifold contrivances which do much of the work for them. The contrivances render the article of service cheaper, and therefore there are more servants. The work being done by fewer servants, in consequence of the contrivances, the servants themselves are better paid than if there was no cost saved by the contrivance.

The common jack by which meat is roasted is described by Mr. Babbage as "a contrivance to enable the cook in a few minutes to exert a force (in winding up the jack) which the machine retails out during the succeeding hour in turning the loaded spit, thus enabling her to bestow her undivided attention on her other duties." We have seen, years ago, in farm-houses, a man employed to turn a spit with a handle; dogs have been used to run in a wheel for the same purpose, and hence a particular breed so used are called "turnspits." When some ingenious servant-girl discovered that, if she put a skewer through the meat and hung it before the fire by a skein of worsted, it would turn with very little attention, she made an approach to the principle of the bottle-jack. All these contrivances diminish labour, and ensure regularity of movement;--and therefore they are valuable contrivances.

A bell which is pulled in one room and rings in another, and which therefore establishes a ready communication between the most distant parts of a house, is a contrivance to save labour. In a large family the total want of bells would add a fourth at least to the labour of servants. Where three servants are kept now, four servants would be required to be kept then. Would the destruction of all the bells therefore add one-fourth to the demand for servants? Certainly not. The funds employed in paying for service would not be increased a single farthing; and, therefore, by the destruction of bells, all the families of the kingdom would have some work left undone, to make up for the additional labour required through the want of this useful contrivance: or all the servants in the kingdom would be more hardly worked,--would have to work sixteen hours a day instead of twelve.

In some parts of India the natives have a very rude contrivance to mark the progress of time. A thin metal cup, with a small hole in its bottom, is put to float in a vessel of water; and as the water rises through the hole the cup sinks in a given time--in 24 minutes. A servant is set to watch the sinking of the cup, and when this happens he strikes upon a bell. Half a century ago, almost every cottage in England had its hour-gla.s.s--an imperfect instrument for registering the progress of time, because it only indicated its course between hour and hour; and an instrument which required a very watchful attention, and some labour, to be of any use at all. The universal use of watches or clocks, in India, would wholly displace the labour of the servants who note the progress of time by the filling of the cup; and the same cause has displaced, amongst us, the equally unprofitable labour employed in turning the hour-gla.s.s, and watching its movement. Almost every house in England has now a clock or watch of some sort; and every house in India would have the same, if the natives were more enlightened, and were not engaged in so many modes of unprofitable labour to keep them poor. His profitable labour has given the English mechanic the means of getting a watch.

Machinery, used in every possible way, has made this watch cheap. The labour formerly employed in turning the hour-gla.s.s, or in running to look at the church clock, is transferred to the making of watches. The user of the watch obtains an accurate register of time, which teaches him to know the value of that most precious possession, and to economize it; and the producers of the watch have abundant employment in the universal demand for this valuable machine.

A watch or clock is an instrument for a.s.sisting an operation of the mind. Without some instrument for registering time, the mind could very imperfectly attain the end which the watch attains, not requiring any mental labour. The observation of the progress of time, by the situation of the sun in the day, or of particular stars at night, is a labour requiring great attention, and various sorts of accurate knowledge. It is therefore never attempted, except when men have no machines for registering time. In the same manner the labours of the mind have been saved, in a thousand ways, by other contrivances of science.

The foot-rule of the carpenter not only gives him the standard of a foot measure, which he could not exactly ascertain by any experience, or any mental process, but it is also a scale of the proportions of an inch, or several inches, to a foot, and of the parts of an inch to an inch. What a quant.i.ty of calculations, and of dividing by compa.s.ses, does this little instrument save the carpenter, besides ensuring a much greater degree of accuracy in all his operations! The common rules of arithmetic, which almost every boy in England now learns, are parts of a great invention for saving mental labour. The higher branches of mathematics, of which science arithmetic is a portion, are also inventions for saving labour, and for doing what could never be done without these inventions. There are instruments, and very curious ones, for lessening the labour of all arithmetical calculations; and tables, that is, the results of certain calculations, which are of practical use, are constructed for the same purpose. When we buy a joint of meat, we often see the butcher turn to a little book, before he tells us how much a certain number of pounds and ounces amounts to, at a certain price per pound. This book is his 'Ready Reckoner,' and a very useful book it is to him; for it enables him to despatch his customers in half the time that he would otherwise require, and thus to save himself a great deal of labour, and a great deal of inaccuracy. The inventions for saving mental labour, in calculations of arithmetic, have been carried so far, that Mr. Babbage had almost perfected a calculating machine, which not only did its work of calculation without the possibility of error, but absolutely was to arrange printing types of figures, in a frame, so that no error could be produced in copying the calculations before they are printed. We mention this curious machine, to show how far science may go in diminis.h.i.+ng mental labour, and ensuring accuracy.

The want of government funds prevented its completion.

To all who read this book it is no difficulty to count a hundred; and most know the relation which a hundred bears to a thousand, and a thousand bears to a million. Most are able, also, to read off those numbers, or parts of those numbers, when they see them marked down in figures. There are many uncivilized people in the world who cannot count twenty. They have no idea whatever of numbers, beyond perhaps as far as the number of their fingers, or their fingers and their toes. How have we obtained this great superiority over these poor savages? Because science has been at work, for many centuries, to diminish the amount of our mental labour, by teaching us the easiest modes of calculation. And how did we learn these modes? We learnt them from our schoolmasters.

If any follow up the false reasoning which has led some to think that whatever diminishes labour diminishes the number of labourers, they might conclude, that, as there is less mental work to be done, because science has diminished the labour of that work, there would, therefore, be fewer mental workmen. Thank G.o.d, the greater facilities that have been given to the cultivation of the mind, the greater is the number of those who exert themselves in that cultivation. The effects of saving unprofitable labour are the same in all cases. The use of machinery in aid of _bodily_ labour has set that bodily labour to a thousand new employments; and has raised the character of the employments, by transferring the lowest of the drudgery to wheels and pistons. The use of science in the a.s.sistance of _mental_ labour has conducted that labour to infinitely more numerous fields of exertion; and has elevated all intellectual pursuits, by making their commoner processes the play of childhood, instead of the toil of manhood.

We cannot doubt that any invention which gives a.s.sistance to the thinking powers of mankind, and, therefore, by dispensing with much mental drudgery, leads the mind forward to n.o.bler exertions, is a benefit to all. It is not more than four hundred years ago, that the use of Arabic numerals, or figures, began to be generally known in this country. The first date in those numerals said to exist in England, is upon a bra.s.s plate in Ware church, 1454. The same date in Roman numerals, which were in use before the Arabic ones, would be expressed by eight letters, MCCCCLIV. The introduction of figures, therefore, was an immense saving of time in the commonest operations of arithmetic. How puzzled we should be, and what a quant.i.ty of labour we should lose, if we were compelled to reckon earnings and marketings by the long mode of notation, instead of the short one! This book is easily read, because it is written in words composed of twenty-four letters. In China, where there are no letters in use, every word in the language is expressed by a different character. Few people in China write or read; and those who do, acquire very little knowledge, except the mere knowledge of writing and reading. All the time of their learned men is occupied in acquiring the means of knowledge, and not knowledge itself; and the bulk of the people get very little knowledge at all. It would be just the same thing if there were no machines or engines for diminis.h.i.+ng manual labour.

Those who had any property would occupy all their time, and the time of their immediate dependents, in raising food and making clothes for themselves, and the rest of the people would go without any food or clothes at all; or rather, which comes to the same thing, there would be _no_ "rest of the people;" the lord and his va.s.sals would have all the produce;--there would be half a million of people in the United Kingdom instead of twenty-seven millions.

When a boy has got hold of what we call the rudiments of learning, he has possessed himself of the most useful tools and machines which exist in the world. He has obtained the means of doing that with extreme ease, which, without these tools, is done only with extreme labour. He has earned the time which, if rightly employed, will elevate his mind, and therefore improve his condition. Just so is it with all tools and machines for diminis.h.i.+ng bodily exertion. They give us the means of doing that with comparative ease, which, without them, can only be done with extreme drudgery. They set at liberty a great quant.i.ty of mere animal power, which, having then leisure to unite with mental power, produces ingenious and skilful workmen in every trade. But they do more than this. They diminish human suffering--they improve the health--they increase the term of life--they render all occupations less painful and laborious;--and, by doing all this, they elevate man in the scale of existence.

A late Pasha of Egypt, in one of those fits of caprice which it is the nature of tyrants to exhibit, ordered, a few years ago, that the male population of a district should be set to clear out one of the ancient ca.n.a.ls which was then filled up with mud. The people had no tools, and the Pasha gave them no tools; but the work was required to be done. So to work the poor wretches went, to the number of fifty thousand. They had to plunge up to their necks in the filthiest slime, and to bale it out with their hands, and their hands alone. They were fed, it is true, during the operation; but their food was of a quality proportioned to the little _profitable_ labour which they performed. They were fed on horse-beans and water. In the course of one year, more than thirty thousand of these unhappy people perished. If the tyrant, instead of giving labour to fifty thousand people, had possessed the means of setting up steam-engines to pump out the water, and scoop out the mud,--or if he had provided the pump, which is called Archimedes' screw, and was invented by that philosopher for the very purpose of draining land in Egypt,--or if the people had even had scoops and shovels, instead of being degraded like beasts, to the employment of their una.s.sisted hands,--the work might have been done at a fiftieth of the cost, even of the miserable pittance of horse-beans and water; and the money that was saved by the tools and machines, might have gone to furnish _profitable_ labour to the thousands who perished amidst the misery and degradation of their _unprofitable_ labour.