482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that interference is just as undesirable and pernicious in the latter case 

 as in the former. Given the most efficient production, that is to say, 

 articles produced in the cheapest, swiftest, and most skillful manner 

 by the free competition of invention, capital, intelligence, and indus- 

 try, and it is true, as a necessary condition of production so sustained, 

 that the wealth created by and arising from it is distributed step by 

 step, as the process goes on, in the most equitable manner among all 

 the parties engaged in the enterprise. 



This is a proposition to be tested by facts, carefully put together, 

 not by ingenious argumentation on hypothetical cases ; and it fortu- 

 nately happens that a paper of great ability on "The Sewing-Machine 

 and its Results," contributed by Mr. John Plummer (well known as a 

 high authority on industrial topics) to the " Companion to the Alma- 

 nac" for the present year (1877), furnishes the precise sort of evidence 

 required. 



The sewing-machine first appeared as a practical invention about 

 thirty years ago. Thimonnier, the real originator of the idea, was a 

 Frenchman, and, like too many great inventors, he did not live to en- 

 joy any part of the fruits of his genius. Elias Howe, who followed 

 Thimonnier, was an American working artisan, and found his first real 

 support in England about 1847. At the present time, that is, about 

 thirty years after the establishment of the invention, there are upward 

 of 4,000,000 sewing-machines in use in various parts of the world ; 

 and the annual number of new machines produced in this country is 

 estimated at 80,000, employing about 100,000 persons. In France, 

 Germany, and Belgium, the production of machines is very large, and 

 in the United States the annual out-turn of machines is perhaps great- 

 er than in the whole of Europe. In 1862 it was estimated that in the 

 United States each machine saved to its owner 505. a week, or say 

 130 per annum, in wages alone; or an aggregate saving in wages, for 

 the whole country, of about 30,000,000. In 1875, that aggregate 

 saving had risen to 100,000,000. 



The facts, therefore, to be considered are imposing by their mag- 

 nitude, and of high value, by reason of the diversity of the countries 

 and populations by which they are supplied. 



Mr. Plummer says : " In England the sewing-machine was first 

 employed in the manufacture of common stays and corsets, of which 

 several million pairs are annually produced. In earlier days the ma- 

 terials were sewed together by needlewomen of the poorest class, prin- 

 cipally the wives of seamen and dock-laborers, whose earnings seldom 

 averaged more than 3s. or 4s. a week. . . . From the stay-trade the 

 sewing-machine found its way into the trades connected with the pro- 

 duction of shirts, mantles, dresses, trousers, coats, and other articles 

 of male and female clothing. In some of these trades the needlewom- 

 en could not, even by working very long hoi;rs, obtain more than 3s. 

 or 4s. a week, and the public were continually shocked by painful rev- 



