We have made and
stimulated every imaginable effort of the mind to replace the
service of men by tools more docile, and we have achieved our
object. Machinery has delivered capital from the oppression of
labor. Wherever we still employ a man, we do so only
temporarily, pending the invention for us of some means of
accomplishing his work without him."
What a system is that which leads a business man to think with
delight that society will soon be able to dispense with men!
MACHINERY HAS DELIVERED CAPITAL FROM THE OPPRESSION OF LABOR!
That is exactly as if the cabinet should undertake to deliver the
treasury from the oppression of the taxpayers. Fool! though the
workmen cost you something, they are your customers: what will
you do with your products, when, driven away by you, they shall
consume them no longer? Thus machinery, after crushing the
workmen, is not slow in dealing employers a counter-blow; for, if
production excludes consumption, it is soon obliged to stop
itself.
During the fourth quarter of 1841 four great failures, happening
in an English manufacturing city, threw seventeen hundred and
twenty people on the street.
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