A Bolton manufacturer writes: "The elongation of the mules of
our frames permits us to employ but twenty-six spinners where we
employed thirty-five in 1837."
Another decimation of laborers: one out of four is a victim.
These facts are taken from the "Revue Economique" of 1842; and
there is nobody who cannot point to similar ones. I have
witnessed the introduction of printing machines, and I can say
that I have seen with my own eyes the evil which printers have
suffered thereby. During the fifteen or twenty years that the
machines have been in use a portion of the workmen have gone back
to composition, others have abandoned their trade, and some have
died of misery: thus laborers are continually crowded back in
consequence of industrial innovations. Twenty years ago eighty
canal-boats furnished the navigation service between Beaucaire
and Lyons; a score of steam-packets has displaced them all.
Certainly commerce is the gainer; but what has become of the
boating-population? Has it been transferred from the boats to
the packets? No: it has gone where all superseded industries
go,--it has vanished.
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