MECHANICAL ENGINEERING. 41 



the task of the machine could not be performed at all; as, for example, 

 the haulage of the railway train at the rate of a mile a minute or more, 

 or the driving of a transoceanic liner across three thousand miles of 

 stormy seas at the speed of fifteen to twenty-five miles an hour. A large 

 fleet would be required to carry the labor and provisions for a single 

 craft, equivalent in total power, driven by animal force. 



It has been the use of machinery that has permitted the people of 

 our country to use twenty pounds of cotton per capita where they for- 

 merly used but five; to increase their consumption of iron and steel 

 from a few pounds to four hundred per capita, and the consumption of 

 steel from an insignificant amount up to two hundred and fifty pounds 

 and over. This use of machinery and universal extension of mechanical 

 engineering has even permitted the doubling of our population in the 

 last generation and the increase in the number of people employed in 

 productive vocations one hundred and seventy-five per cent., according 

 to Mr. Wright's statistics. One-sixteenth of the whole population of 

 the country is supported by labor in railway transportation, and the 

 once minute proportion engaged in coach and other transportation by 

 means of horses has been multiplied many times over; yet these people 

 M'ere the most vigorous and powerful of all opponents of this advance. 



The sewing machine, giving the power of multiplying many times 

 the productivity of the needle, instead of displacing the sewing girl, as 

 once anticipated by many ignorant persons, proves to be not properly a 

 labor-saving machine, but a machine assisting labor and multiplying 

 not only the efficiency of the worker, but also many times increasing the 

 quantity of work to be done and the numbers needed for the work, as 

 occurs in all such cases. In a thousand instances the invention of a 

 machine or the introduction of a new method in some department of 

 mechanical engineering has brought into use an entirely new form of 

 industry and made effective and productive the highest powers of thou- 

 sands of people who otherwise would probably be compelled to drudge 

 on in old ways and to content themselves with old rates of compensa- 

 tion. The reduction of costs of product and the increase in the wages 

 of labor are the two most striking results of the revolution of the cen- 

 tury; while the accession of value conferred upon material is sometimes 

 quite as impressive, if not actually as important — as when the often- 

 recounted fact is noted of the increase of the value of iron from one 

 dollar in the ore to five or six in the shape of iron bar, to $10 in any one 

 of many finished machine-made forms, to $200 and upward in fine cut- 

 lery, to $5,000 and $10,000 in needles, to $200,000 and more in common 

 watch-springs, and to perhaps half a million dollars in the shape of 

 hair-springs, the most refined condition of the metal yet attained, or 

 even up to $2,500,000, according to Mr. Woods, in the form of pallet- 

 arbors. 



