Page:Miscellaneous Papers on Mechanical Subjects.djvu/186

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172
NEW YORK INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION.

hanks in the aggregate per day. In Hindoostan, where they still spin by hand, it would be extravagant to expect a spinner to accomplish one hank per day; so that we find the same amount of man's labour, by the aid of improved machinery, doing more than 3,000 times the work. But a still more striking comparison between hand and machine labour may be made in the case of lace making in England. Lace of an ordinary figured pattern used to be made "on the cushion" by hand, at the rate of about three meshes per minute. At Nottingham, a machine attended by one person will now produce lace of a similar kind at the rate of about 24,000 meshes per minute; so that one person can, by the employment of a machine, produce 8,000 times as much work as one lace maker by hand.

The results which have been obtained in the United States, by the application of machinery wherever it has been practicable to manufactures, are rendered still more remarkable by the fact, that combinations to resist its introduction there are unheard of. The workmen hail with satisfaction all mechanical improvements, the importance and value of which, as releasing them from the drudgery of unskilled labour, they are enabled by education to understand and appreciate. With the comparatively superabundant