Knowledge is Power Part 8

What the Romans were to England, the colonized English must be to Australia. But the discovery of great natural wealth, the vigour of the race, the intercourse with commercial nations of the old and new world, the free inst.i.tutions which have been transplanted there without any arbitrary meddling or chilling patronage, will effect in a quarter of a century what the parent people, struggling with ignorant rulers and feeble resources, have been ages in accomplis.h.i.+ng.

It is encouraging to all nations to see what we have accomplished in this direction.

In 1839 the turnpike-roads of England and Wales amounted to 21,962 miles, and in Scotland to 3666 miles; while in England and Wales the other highways amounted to 104,772 miles. The turnpike-roads were maintained at a cost of a million a year; and the parish highways at a cost of about twelve hundred thousand pounds. There were at that time nearly eight thousand toll-gates in England and Wales. There had been two thousand miles of turnpike-roads, and ten thousand miles of other highways, added to the number existing in 1814. But the improvements of all our roads during that period had been enormous. Science was brought to bear upon the turnpike lines. Common sense changed their form and re-organized their material. The most beautiful engineering was applied to raise valleys and lower hills. Mountains were crossed with ease; rivers were spanned over by ma.s.sive piers, or by bridges which hung in the air like fairy platforms. The names of M'Adam and Telford became "household words;" and even parish surveyors, stimulated by example, took thought how to mend their ways.

The Ca.n.a.ls of England date only for a hundred years back. The first Act of Parliament for the construction of a ca.n.a.l was pa.s.sed in 1755. The Duke of Bridgewater obtained his first Act of Parliament in 1759, for the construction of those n.o.ble works which will connect his memory with those who have been the greatest benefactors of their country. The great manufacturing prosperity of England dates from this period; and it will be for ever a.s.sociated with the names of Watt, the improver and almost the inventor of the steam-engine,--of Arkwright, the presiding genius of cotton-spinning,--and of Brindley, the great engineer of ca.n.a.ls. In the conception of the vast works which Brindley undertook for the Duke of Bridgewater, there was an originality and boldness which may have been carried further in recent engineering, but which a century ago were the creators of works which were looked upon as marvels. To cut tunnels through hills--to carry mounds across valleys--to build aqueducts over navigable rivers--were regarded then as wild and impracticable conceptions. Another engineer, at Brindley's desire, was called in to give an opinion as to a proposed aqueduct over the river Irwell. He looked at the spot where the aqueduct was to be built, and exclaimed, "I have often heard of castles in the air, but never before was shown the place where any of them were to be erected." Brindley's castle in the air still stands firm; and his example, and that of his truly ill.u.s.trious employer, have covered our land with many such fabrics, which owe their origin not to the government but to the people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Brindley's Aqueduct over the Irwell.]

The navigable ca.n.a.ls of England are more than two thousand miles in length. For the slow transport of heavy goods they hold their place against the compet.i.tion of railroads, and continue to be important instruments of internal commerce. When railways were first projected it is said that an engineer, being asked what would become of the ca.n.a.ls if the new mode of transit were adopted, answered that they would be drained and become the beds of railways. Like many other predictions connected with the last great medium of internal communication, the engineer was wholly mistaken in his prophecy.

The great principle of exchange between one part of this empire and another part, which has ceased to be an affair of restrictions and jealousies, has covered the island with good roads, with ca.n.a.ls, and finally with railways. The railway and the steam-carriage have carried the principle of diminis.h.i.+ng the price of conveyance, and therefore of commodities, by machinery, to an extent which makes all other ill.u.s.trations almost unnecessary. A road with a waggon moving on it is a mechanical combination; a ca.n.a.l, with its locks, and towing-paths, and boats gliding along almost without effort, is a higher mechanical combination; a railway, with its locomotive engine, and carriage after carriage dragged along at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour, is the highest of such mechanical combinations. The force applied upon a level turnpike-road, which is required to move 1800 lbs., if applied to drag a ca.n.a.l-boat will move 55,500 lbs., both at the rate of 2-1/2 miles per hour. But we want economy in time as well as economy in the application of motive power. It has been attempted to apply speed to ca.n.a.l travelling. Up to four miles an hour the ca.n.a.l can convey an equal weight more economically than a railroad; but after a certain velocity is exceeded, that is 13-1/2 miles an hour, the horse on the turnpike-road can drag as much as the ca.n.a.l-team. Then comes in the great advantage of the railroad. The same force that is required to draw 1900 lbs. upon a ca.n.a.l, at a rate above 13-1/2 miles an hour, will draw 14,400 lbs. upon a railway, at the rate of 13-1/2 miles an hour. The producers and consumers are thus brought together, not only at the least cost of transit, but at the least expenditure of time. The road, the ca.n.a.l, and the railway have each their distinctive advantages; and it is worthy of note how they work together. From every railway station there must be a road to the adjacent towns and villages, and a better road than was once thought necessary. Horses are required as much as ever, although mails and post-chaises are no longer the glories of the road; and the post finds its way into every hamlet by the united agency of the road and the railway.

Roger North described a Newcastle railway in 1680:--"Another thing that is remarkable is their way-leaves; for when men have pieces of ground between the colliery and the river, they sell leave to lead coals over their ground; and so dear that the owner of a rood of ground will expect 20_l._ per annum for this leave. The manner of the carriage is by laying rails of timber, from the colliery down to the river, exactly straight and parallel; and bulky carts are made with four rowlets fitting these rails; whereby the carriage is so easy that the horse will draw down four or five chaldron of coals, and is an immense benefit to the coal-merchant." Who would have thought that this contrivance would have led to no large results till a hundred and fifty years had pa.s.sed away?

Who could have believed that "the rails of timber, exactly straight and parallel," and the "bulky carts with four rowlets exactly fitting the rails," would have changed the face, and to a great degree the destinies, of the world?

If we add to the road, the ca.n.a.l, and the railway, the steam-boat traffic of our own coasts, we cannot hesitate to believe that the whole territory of Great Britain and Ireland is more compact, more closely united, more accessible, than was a single county two centuries ago. It may be said, without exaggeration, that it would now be impossible for a traveller in England to set himself down in any accessible situation where the post from London would not reach him in twelve hours. When the first edition of the 'Results of Machinery' was published in 1831, we said that the post from London would reach any part of England in three days; and that, "fifty years before, such a quickness of communication would have been considered beyond the compa.s.s of human means." In twenty-four years we have so diminished the practical amount of distance between one part of Great Britain and another, that the post from London to Aberdeen is carried five hundred and forty miles in little more than twenty hours. It is this wonderful rapidity of communication, in connection with the cheapness of postage, which has multiplied letters five-fold since 1839, when the penny rate was introduced. In that year the number of chargeable and franked letters distributed in the United Kingdom was eighty-two millions; in 1853 it was four hundred and ten millions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Locomotive-Engine Factory.]

The annual returns of our railways furnish some of the most astounding figures of modern statistics. On the 1st of January 1854 there were open in England 5811 miles of railway; in Scotland, 995 miles; in Ireland, 834 miles. In 1853 there were one hundred and two million pa.s.sengers conveyed, who travelled one billion five hundred million miles, being an average of nearly fifteen miles to each pa.s.senger. In England considerably less than one-half of the pa.s.sengers were by penny-a-mile and other third-cla.s.s trains; in Ireland one-half; and in Scotland two-thirds. The receipts from goods traffic exceed those of the pa.s.senger traffic in England and Scotland, but are less in Ireland.

These are indeed wonderful results from a system which was wholly experimental twenty-five years ago.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Railway Locomotive.]

When William Hutton, in the middle of last century, started from Nottingham (where he earned a scanty living as a bookbinder) and walked to London and back for the purpose 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 s.h.i.+llings and eight pence; but he contented himself with the barest necessaries, keeping the money for his tools sewed up in his s.h.i.+rt-collar. 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 s.h.i.+llings for his transit, in one forenoon, and returned in another. The twenty s.h.i.+llings 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 s.h.i.+rt-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 pet.i.tioned 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 gain a premium for risking their lives in an unnecessary peril? But, looking at their direct results, we have no doubt that railroads have greatly multiplied the employments connected with the conveyance of goods and pa.s.sengers. In 1853 there were eighty thousand persons employed upon the railroads of the United Kingdom in various capacities. We do not include those employed in working upon lines that are not open for traffic, which cla.s.s in England amounted to twenty-five thousand persons in 1853. 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. The census returns of 1851 give the number of three hundred and eighty-six thousand males so employed, including those engaged on our rivers, ca.n.a.ls, and coast traffic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Reindeer.]

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 a.s.sociate 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Beaver.]

CHAPTER XIV.

Houses--The pyramids--Mechanical power--Carpenters'

tools--American machinery for building--Bricks--Slate-- Household fittings and furniture--Paper-hangings-- Carpets--Gla.s.s--Pottery--Improvements effected through the reduction or repeal of duties on domestic requirements.

The 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pyramid and sphinx]

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 quant.i.ty, 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 ma.s.ses 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 quant.i.ty 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 horses--as 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 crush'd 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 recording the memory of great exploits, or in producing feelings of reverence or devotion,--it is clearly an advantage that these works, as well as all other works, should be performed in the cheapest manner; that is, that human labour should derive every possible a.s.sistance from mechanical aid. We will give an ill.u.s.tration of the differences of the application of mechanical aid in one of the first operations of building, the moving a block of stone. The following statements are the result of actual experiment upon a stone weighing ten hundred and eighty pounds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portland Quarry.]

To drag this stone along the smoothed floor of the quarry required a force equal to seven hundred and fifty-eight pounds. The same stone dragged over a floor of planks required six hundred and fifty-two pounds. The same stone placed on a platform of wood, and dragged over the same floor of planks, required six hundred and six pounds. When the two surfaces of wood were soaped as they slid over each other, the force required to drag the stone was reduced to one hundred and eighty-two pounds. When the same stone was placed upon rollers three inches in diameter, it required, to put it in motion along the floor of the quarry, a force only of thirty-four pounds; and by the same rollers upon a wooden floor, a force only of twenty-eight pounds. Without any mechanical aid, it would require the force of four or five men to set that stone in motion. With the mechanical aid of two surfaces of wood soaped, the same weight might be moved by one man. With the more perfect mechanical aid of rollers, the same weight might be moved by a very little child.

From these statements it must be evident that the cost of a block of stone very much depends upon the quant.i.ty of labour necessary to move it from the quarry to the place where it is wanted to be used. We have seen that with the simplest mechanical aid labour may be reduced sixty-fold.

With more perfect mechanical aid, such as that of water-carriage, the labour may be reduced infinitely lower. Thus, the streets of London are paved with granite from Scotland at a moderate expense.

The cost of timber, which enters so largely into the cost of a house, is in a great degree the cost of transport. In countries where there are great forests, timber-trees are worth nothing where they grow, except there are ready means of transport. In many parts of North America, the great difficulty which the people find is in clearing the land of the timber. The finest trees are not only worthless, but are a positive inc.u.mbrance, except when they are growing upon the banks of a great river; in which case the logs are thrown into the water, or formed into rafts, being floated several hundred miles at scarcely any expense. The same stream which carries them to a seaport turns a mill to saw the logs into planks; and when sawn into planks the timber is put on s.h.i.+pboard, and carried to distant countries where timber is wanted. Thus mechanical aid alone gives a value to the timber, and by so doing employs human labour. The stream that floats the tree, the sawing-mill that cuts it, the s.h.i.+p that carries it across the sea, enable men profitably to employ themselves in working it. Without the stream, the mill, and the s.h.i.+p, those men would have no labour, because none could afford to bring the timber to their own doors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Timber Rafts of the Tyrol.]

What an infinite variety of machines, in combination with the human hand, is found in a carpenter's chest of tools! The skilful hand of the workman is the _power_ which sets these machines in motion; just as the wind or the water is the power of a mill, or the elastic force of vapour the power of a steam-engine. When Mr. Boulton, the partner of the great James Watt, waited upon George III. to explain one of the improvements of the steam-engine which they had effected, the king said to him, "What do you sell, Mr. Boulton?" and the honest engineer answered, "What kings, sire, are all fond of--_power_." There are people at Birmingham who let out _power_, that is, there are people who have steam-engines who will lend the use of them, by the day or the hour, to persons who require that saving of labour in their various trades; so that a person who wants the strength of a horse, or half a horse, to turn a wheel for grinding, or for setting a lathe in motion, hires a room, or part of a room, in a mill, and has just as much as he requires. The _power_ of a carpenter is in his hand, and the machines moved by that power are in his chest of tools. Every tool which he possesses has for its object to reduce labour, to save material, and to ensure accuracy--the objects of all machines. What a quant.i.ty of waste both of time and stuff is saved by his foot-rule! and when he chalks a bit of string and stretches it from one end of a plank to the other, to jerk off the chalk from the string, and thus produce an unerring line upon the face of the plank, he makes a little machine which saves him great labour. Every one of his hundreds of tools, capable of application to a vast variety of purposes, is an invention to save labour. Without some tool the carpenter's work could not be done at all by the human hand. A knife would do very laboriously what is done very quickly by a hatchet. The labour of using a hatchet, and the material which it wastes, are saved twenty times over by the saw. But when the more delicate operations of carpentry are required--when the workman uses his planes, his rabbet-planes, his fillisters, his bevels, and his centre-bits--what an infinitely greater quant.i.ty of labour is economized, and how beautifully that work is performed, which, without them, would be rough and imperfect! Every boy of mechanical ingenuity has tried with his knife to make a boat; and with a knife only it is the work of weeks. Give him a chisel, and a gouge, and a vice to hold his wood, and the little boat is the work of a day. Let a boy try to make a round wooden box, with a lid, having only his knife, and he must be expert indeed to produce anything that will be neat and serviceable. Give him a lathe and chisels, and he will learn to make a tidy box in half an hour. Nothing but absolute necessity can render it expedient to use an imperfect tool instead of a perfect. We sometimes see exhibitions of carving, "all done with the common penknife." Professor Willis has truly said, with reference to such weak boasting, "So far from admiring, we should pity the vanity and folly of such a display; and the more, if the work should show a natural apt.i.tude in the workman: for it is certain that, if he has made good work with a bad tool, he would make better with a good one."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Boulton.]

The Emperor Maximilian, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, ordered a woodcut to be engraved that should represent the carpentry operations of his time and country. This prince was, no doubt, proud of the advance of Germany in the useful arts. If the President of the United States were thus to record the advance of the republic of which he is the chief, he would show us his saw-mills and his planing-mills.

The German carpenters, as we see, are reducing a great slab of wood into shape by the saw and the adze. The Americans have planing-mills, with cutters that make 4000 revolutions, and which plane boards eighteen feet long at the rate of fifty feet, per minute; and while the face of the board is planed, it is tongued and grooved at the same time--that is, one board is made to fit closely into another. But the Americans carry machinery much farther into the business of carpentry. Mr. Whitworth tells us that "many works in various towns are occupied exclusively in making doors, window-frames, or staircases, by means of self-acting machinery, such as planing, tenoning, morticing, and jointing machines.

They are able to supply builders with various parts of the wood-work required in building at a much cheaper rate than they can produce them in their own workshops without the aid of such machinery."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Carpenters and their tools. (From an old German woodcut.)]

By the use of those machines we are told that twenty men can make panelled doors at the rate of a hundred a day--that is, one man can make five doors. A panelled door is a very expensive part of an English house; and so are window-frames and staircases. If doors and windows and staircases can be made cheaper, more houses and better houses will be built; and thus more carpenters will be employed in building than if those parts of a house were made by hand. The same principle applies to machines as to tools. If carpenters had not tools to make houses, there would be few houses made; and those that were made would be as rough as the hut of the savage who has no tools. The people would go without houses, and the carpenter would go without work,--to say nothing of the people, who would also go without work, that now make tools for the carpenter.

We build in this country more of brick than of stone, because brick-earth is found almost everywhere, and stone fit for building is found only in particular districts. Bricks used to pay the state a duty of five s.h.i.+llings and ten pence a thousand; and yet at the kilns they were to be bought under forty s.h.i.+llings a thousand, which is less than a halfpenny apiece. The government wisely resolved, in 1850, to repeal the excise-duty on bricks. In 1845 the duty on gla.s.s was repealed. In 1847 the timber-duties were reduced; and in 1848 they were further reduced.

The ever-present necessities of the people--the absolute want of house-accommodation for a population increasing so rapidly--rendered it a paramount duty of the government no longer to let tax interfere with the cheap building of houses. Every invention that adds to cheapness acts in the same direction; for although the direct taxes cease to press upon the various trades of building, the constant demand keeps bricks and timber at a price almost as high as before the removal or mitigation of the tax. But bricks, regarded as the production of a vast amount of labour, are intrinsically cheap. And why? Because they are made by what is truly machinery; as they were made three thousand years ago by the Egyptians.

The clay is ground in a horse-mill; the wooden mould, in which every brick is made singly, is a copying machine. One brick is exactly like another brick. Every brick is of the form of the mould in which it is made. Without the mould the workman could not make the brick of uniform dimensions; and without this uniformity the after labour of putting bricks together would be greatly increased. Without the mould the workman could not form the bricks quickly;--his own labour would be increased ten-fold. The simple machine of the mould not only gives employment to a great many brickmakers who would not be employed at all, but also to a great many bricklayers who would also want employment if the original cost of production were so enormously increased.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Egyptian labour in the brick-field.]

There is another material for building which was little used at the beginning of the century. The consumption of slate in London alone was, in 1851, from thirty thousand to forty thousand tons per annum. The quarries of Wales princ.i.p.ally supply this immense quant.i.ty; but some slates are s.h.i.+pped from Lancas.h.i.+re and Westmorland, and from Scotland and Ireland. In the production of this one material, eight thousand quarriers are employed in Great Britain. Slates are not only used for roofing houses, but in slabs for cisterns and chimney-pieces. The great increase of the supply of water to houses by machinery led to a demand for a safer and cheaper material than lead for cisterns; and slate supplied the want.

How great a variety of things are contained in an ironmonger's shop!

Half his store consists of tools of one sort or another to save labour; and the other half consists of articles of convenience or elegance most perfectly adapted to every possible want of the builder or the maker of furniture. The uncivilized man is delighted when he obtains a nail,--any nail. A carpenter and joiner, who supply the wants of a highly civilized community, are not satisfied unless they have a choice of nails, from the finest brad to the largest clasp-nail. A savage thinks a nail will hold two pieces of wood together more completely than anything else in the world. It is seldom, however, that he can afford to put it to such a use. If it is large enough, he makes it into a chisel. An English joiner knows that screws will do the work more perfectly in some cases than any nail; and therefore we have as great a variety of screws as of nails.

The commonest house built in England has hinges, and locks, and bolts. A great number are finished with ornamented k.n.o.bs to door-handles, with bells and bell-pulls, and a thousand other things that have grown up into necessities, because they save domestic labour, and add to domestic comfort. And many of these things really are necessities. M. Say, a French writer, gives us an example of this; and as his story is an amusing one, besides having a moral, we may as well copy it:--

"Being in the country," says he, "I had an example of one of those small losses which a family is exposed to through negligence. For the want of a latchet of small value, the wicket of a barn-yard leading to the fields was often left open. Every one who went through drew the door to: but as there was nothing to fasten the door with, it was always left flapping; sometimes open, and sometimes shut. So the c.o.c.ks and hens, and the chickens, got out, and were lost. One day a fine pig got out, and ran off into the woods; and after the pig ran all the people about the place,--the gardener, and the cook, and the dairymaid. The gardener first caught sight of the runaway, and, hastening after it, sprained his ankle; in consequence of which the poor man was not able to get out of the house again for a fortnight. The cook found, when she came back from pursuing the pig, that the linen she had left by the fire had fallen down and was burning; and the dairymaid having, in her haste, neglected to tie up the legs of one of her cows, the cow had kicked a colt, which was in the same stable, and broken its leg. The gardener's lost time was worth twenty crowns, to say nothing of the pain he suffered. The linen which was burned, and the colt which was spoiled, were worth as much more.

Here, then, was caused a loss of forty crowns, as well as much trouble, plague, and vexation, for the want of a latch which would not have cost three-pence." M. Say's story is one of the many examples of the truth of the old proverb--"for want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the man was lost."

Nearly all the great variety of articles in an ironmonger's shop are made by machinery. Without machinery they could not be made at all, or they would be sold at a price which would prevent them being commonly used. Some of the finer articles, such as a Bramah lock, or a Chubb's lock, could not be made at all, unless machinery had been called in to produce that wonderful accuracy, through which no one of a hundred thousand locks and keys shall be exactly like another lock and key. With machinery, the manufacture of ironmongery employs large numbers of artisans who would be otherwise unemployed. There are hundreds of ingenious men at Birmingham who go into business with a capital acquired by their savings as workmen, for the purpose of manufacturing some one single article used in finis.h.i.+ng a house, such as the k.n.o.b of a lock.

All the heavy work of their trade is done by machinery. The cheapness of the article creates workmen; and the savings of the workmen acc.u.mulate capital to be expended in larger works, and to employ more workmen.