introduction of so great a benefit as the watermill had all at once displaced the hand-grinders, as the spinning machinery displaced the spinning-wheel, what must become, you say, of the one hundred and fifty men who earned the 15l. a day, of which sum the consumer has now got 147. 10s. in his pocket? They must go to other work. And what is to set them to that work? The same 14. 10s.: which, being saved in the price of flour, gives the poor man, as well as the rich man, more animal food and fuel; a greater quantity of clothes, and of a better quality; better furniture, and more of it; domestic utensils, and books. To produce these things there must be more laborers employed than before. The quantity of labor is, therefore, not diminished, while its productiveness is much increased. It is as if every man among us had become suddenly much stronger and more industrious. The machines labor for us, and are yet satisfied without either food or clothing. They increase all our comforts, and they consume none themselves. The hand-mills are not grinding, it is true: but the ships are sailing that bring us foreign produce; the looms are moving that give us more clothes; the potter, and glass-maker, and joiner, are each employed to add to our household goods: we are each of us elevated in the scale of society and all these things happen because machinery has diminished the cost of produc tion.

CHAPTER IV.

ALL laborers in agriculture know full well the value of a tool; but some hate machinery. This is inconsistent. Unless the laborer made a plow (if he will consent even to a plow) out of two pieces of stick, and carried it upon his shoulder to the field, as the toil-worn and poor people of India do, he must have some iron about it. He cannot get iron without machinery. He hates machinery, and therefore he will have nothing to do with a plow! Will he have his hoe, then? He is not quite sure. Will he give up his knife? No; he must keep his knife. He has got every thing to do for himself, and his knife is his tool of all-work.

Well, how does he get this same knife? People that have no machinery sharpen a stone, or bit of shell, or bone, and cut or saw with it in the best way they can; and after they have become very clever, they fasten it to a wooden handle with a cord of bark. An Englishman examines two or three dozens of knives, selects which he thinks the best, and pays a shilling for it, the seller thanking him for his custom. The man who has nothing but the bone or the shell would gladly toil a month, for that which does not cost an English laborer half a day's wages.

And how does the Englishman obtain his knife upon such easy terms? From the very D

same causes that he obtains all his other accommodations cheaper, in comparison with the ordinary wages of labor, than the inhabitant of any other country,—that is, from the use of machinery, either in the making of the thing itself, or in procuring that without which it could not be made. We must always remember that if we could not get the materials without machinery, it would be as impossible for us to get what is made of those materials as if a machine delivered it to us ready for use.

Keeping this in mind, let us see how a knife could be obtained by a man who had nothing to depend upon but his hands.

Ready-made, without the labor of some other man, a knife does not exist; but the iron, of which the knife is made, is to be had. Very little iron has ever been found in a native state, or fit for the blacksmith. The little that has been found in that state has been found only very lately; and if human art had not been able to procure any in addition to that, gold would have been cheap as compared with

iron.

Iron is, no doubt, very abundant in nature; but it is always mixed with some other substance that not only renders it unfit for use, but hides its qualities. It is found in the state of what is called iron stone, or iron ore. Sometimes it is mixed with clay, at other times with line or with the earth of flint; and there are also cases in which it is mixed with sulphur. In short, in the state in which iron is frequently met with, it is a much more likely

substance to be chosen for paving a road, or building a wall, than for making a knife.

But suppose that the man knows the particular ore or stone that contains the iron, how is he to get it out? Mere force will not do; for the iron and the clay, or other substance, are so nicely mixed, that though the ore were ground to the finest powder, the grinder is no nearer the iron than when he had a lump of a ton weight.

A man who has a block of wood has a wooden bowl in the heart of it; and he can get it out too by labor. The knife will do it for him in time; and if he take it to the turner, the turner, with his machinery, his lathe, and his gouge, will work it out for him in half an hour. The man who has a lump of iron ore has just as certainly a knife in the heart of it; but no mere labor can work it out. Shape it as you may, it is not a knife, or steel, or even iron,-it is iron ore; and dress it as you will, it would not cut better than a brick-bat, certainly not so well as the shell or bone of the savage.

There must be knowledge before any thing can be done in this case. We must know what is mixed with the iron, and how to separate it. We cannot do it by mere labor, as we can chip away the wood and get out the bowl; and therefore we have recourse to fire.

In the ordinary mode of using it, fire would make matters worse. If we put the material into the fire as a stone, we should probably receive it back as slag or dross. We

must, therefore, prepare our fuel. Our fire must be hot, very hot; but if our fuel be wood we must burn it into charcoal, or if it be coal into coke.

The charcoal, or coke, answers for one purpose; but we have still the clay or other earth mixed with our iron, and how are we to get rid of that? Pure clay, or pure lime, or pure earth of flint, remains stubborn in our hottest fires; but when they are mixed in a proper proportion, the one melts the other.

So charcoal or coke, and iron stone or iron ore, and limestone, are put into a furnace; the charcoal, or coke, is lighted at the bottom, and wind is blown into the furnace, at the bottom also. If that wind is not sent in by machinery, and very powerful machinery too, the effect will be little, and the work of the man great; but still it can be done.

In this furnace the lime and clay, or earth of flint, unite, and form a sort of glass, which floats upon the surface. At the same time the carbon, or pure charcoal, of the fuel, with the assistance of the limestone mixes with the stone, or ore, and melts the iron, which, being heavier than the other matters, runs down to the bottom of the furnace, and remains there till the workman lets it out by a hole made at the bottom of the furnace for that purpose, and plugged with sand. When the workman knows there is enough melted, or when the appointed time arrives, he displaces the plug of sand with an iron rod, and the melted iron runs out like water, and is conveyed into fur