On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures

in reversing, for the restoration of that equilibrium which we cannot doubt is constantly maintained throughout even the remotest limits of our system. The operations of man participate in the character of their author; they are diminutive, but energetic during the short period of their existence: whilst those of nature, acting over vast spaces, and unlimited by time, are ever pursuing their silent and resistless career. 18. In stating the broad principle, that all combinations of mechanical art can only augment the force communicated to the machine at the expense of the time employed in producing the effect, it might, perhaps, be imagined, that the assistance derived from such contrivances is small. This is, however, by no means the case: since the almost unlimited variety they afford, enables us to exert to the greatest advantage whatever force we employ. There is, it is true, a limit beyond which it is impossible to reduce the power necessary to produce any given effect, but it very seldom happens that the methods first employed at all approach that limit. In dividing the knotted root of a tree for fuel, how very different will be the time consumed, according to the nature of the tool made use of! The hatchet, or the adze, will divide it into small parts, but will consume a large portion of the workman's time. The saw will answer the same purpose more quickly and more effectually. This, in its turn, is superseded by the wedge, which rends it in a still shorter time. If the circumstances are favourable, and the workman skilful, the time and expense may be still further reduced by the use of a small quantity of gunpowder exploded in holes judiciously placed in the block. 19. When a mass of matter is to be removed a certain force must be expended; and upon the proper economy of this force the price of transport will depend. A country must, however, have reached a high degree of civilization before it will have approached the limit of this economy. The cotton of Java is conveyed in junks to the coast of China; but from the seed not being previously separated, three-quarters of the weight thus carried is not cotton. This might, perhaps, be justified in Java by the want of machinery to separate the seed, or by the relative cost of the operation in the two countries. But the cotton itself, as packed by the Chinese, occupies three times the bulk of an equal quantity shipped by Europeans for their own markets. Thus the freight of a given quantity of cotton costs the Chinese nearly twelve times the price to which, by a proper attention to mechanical methods, it might be reduced. * NOTES: 1. 'The Bandana handkerchiefs manufactured at Glasgow have long superseded the genuine ones, and are now consumed in large quantities both by the natives and Chinese.' Crawford's Indian Archipelago, vol. iii, p. 505. 2. 'Captain Clapperton, when on a visit at the court of the Sultan Bello, states, that 'provisions were regularly sent me from the sultan's table on pewter dishes with the London stamp; and I even had a piece of meat served up on a white wash-hand basin of English manufacture.' Clapperton's Journey, p. 88. 3. At Calicut, in the East Indies (whence the cotton cloth called calico derives its name), the price of labour is one-seventh of that in England, yet the market is supplied from British looms. 4. Liverpool, though not itself a manufacturing town, has been placed in this list, from its connection with Manchester, of which it is the port. 5. So sensible are the effects of grease in diminishing friction, that the drivers of sledges in Amsterdam, on which heavy goods are transported, carry in their hand a rope soaked in tallow, which they throw down from time to time before the sledge, in order that, by passing over the rope, it may become greased.