VIII NOTES BY THE EDITOR 



the Industry of all Nations, which continued open in London from 

 May to November inclusive, and of the leading characteristics of 

 which very full notices have been given elsewhere in the present vol- 

 ume. M. Michel Chevalier, the distinguished French political econ- 

 omist, in a preface to the " French Jurors' Report," considers that 

 this and other similar international exhibitions exercise their greatest 

 influence for good by the opportunity they afford to nations of taking 

 reckonings of their industrial progress ; and, from a comparison of 

 the results shown in the Exhibition of 1862 with those of the French 

 International Exhibition of 1855, and the London one of 1851, he 

 concludes the producing powers of mankind, or, in other words, the 

 amount of work that one man can perform in a given time, is contin- 

 ually on the increase. This result he attributes to improvements in 

 and to the more extended use of machinery, driven by water and 

 steam power ; and he gives some interesting illustrations confirmatory 

 of his conclusion. Thus, in the manufacture of iron, M. Chevalier 

 finds that the productive power of man has increased in six cen- 

 turies to so great an extent that a man can now produce six hun- 

 dred tons of iron in the same time as was required to produce one 

 ton six hundred years ago. Again, in the production of cotton 

 yarn, dating from 1769, when Arkwright took out his first patent, one 

 man can now spin 400 times more yarn than the best spinner of that 

 period. In grinding grain and making flour one man can do 150 

 tunes more work than he could perform one century ago ; and in the 

 manufacture of lace one woman can produce as much work in a day 

 as one hundred women could execute a hundred years ago. In the 

 refining of sugar, the whole of the operations last only as many days 

 as it required months about thirty years since. The manufacture of 

 looking-glasses with an amalgam of mercury and tin once occupied 

 six weeks in fixing the amalgam on a large glass ; the present pro- 

 cess occupies only forty minutes. The engines of a first-class iron- 

 clad frigate perform as much work in twenty-four hours as 42,000 

 horses. 



The recent progress made in the working of iron and steel, as 

 shown in the recent International Exhibitions, is so wonderful as 

 also to deserve notice. In the London Exhibition of 1851, the largest 



7 O 



mass of rolled iron exhibited was a round bar or roll, weighing a ton 

 and a half; and this was regarded as something extraordinary and 

 deserving of special mention. At the Exhibition of 1862, rolled-iron 

 armor-plates were shown, exceeding thirteen tons in weight. In the 

 Exhibition of 1851, M. Krupp, the celebrated steel manufacturer of 



