550 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



in the ages past slept in the thunder cloud above the mountain top, puts 

 on a paper cap and a leather apron and enters the lists of labor. It drives 

 engines, copies pictures, molds metals, separates ores, explodes the blast 

 in the mine, heals diseases, hatches chickens, carries messages, and does 

 chores more nimbly than the fairy Puck, who could put a girdle round the 

 earth in forty minutes. 



This general employment of the mechanical and material forces in the 

 world's work, has aroused much prejudice in some quarters, by which we 

 are enabled to gauge the possible density of human stupidity. In England 

 large petitions go to Parliament every year for the repeal of the patent 

 laws and the prohibition of the manufacture of certain kinds of machinery, 

 and millions of dollars' worth of property has been destroyed by the trades 

 unions in the last twenty years because its owners employed machinery in 

 certain industries hitherto carried on by manual labor. In many manu- 

 facturing districts they will not allow the use of machinery in the manu- 

 facture of pressed brick or of ribbons, or the use of sewing machines in 

 the manufacture of boots and shoes. In 1879 the County of Limerick, 

 Ireland, paid $30,000 for property destroyed by the trades unions on ac- 

 count of the employment of machinery. Within the last ten years I have 

 seen machinery and stacks of grain and standing crops burned in the fields 

 of the Santa Clara Valley for the same reason. A California harvester 

 which heads a swath twenty feet wide, and which, with the aid of only 

 three men, cuts, thrashes, and bags fifty acres of grain in one day, is by 

 many regarded as taking the bread out of men's mouths, and to the door 

 of the Chinaman and the inventor is laid the responsibility for the alleged 

 fact that "the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer." But the pes- 

 simist and alarmist who make that statement are not in harmony with the 

 facts. The condition of the laborer, whether in town or country, was never 

 so good as now. Six hundred years ago the laborer was not a man in the 

 modern acceptation of that term. The student of Buckle, or Lecky, or 

 Draper, finds that then he was only a serf, a retainer belonging to the soil, 

 and transferred with it. He lodged with the animals, and, like the prodi- 

 gal, ate with the swine. A stable was his home, and he was scarcely a 

 remove above the rude clod he turned with his share and trod upon. He 

 often wore a brass collar with his master's name engraved upon it. He 

 could not hold property nor carry arms, and his marriage was made and 

 unmade at the pleasure of the lord of the manor. Now he is the equal of 

 the best, the peer of the proudest, in the eyes of the law and of society. 

 There is no function of government he may not exercise, no privilege he 

 may not enjoy. The average farmer or mechanic to-day lives in a better 

 house, sits at a better table, has more of the conveniences and comforts 

 and luxuries of life, has more education and intelligence, and is a much 

 better man than the English nobleman or monarch of three hundred years 

 ago. 



Compare their condition now with fifty years ago — about the time that 

 the power loom came into use. Before that time all the cloth used for 

 clothing and house furnishing by the farmers and mechanics of this coun- 

 try was made with the family spinning-wheel and hand-loom, at which 

 our mothers and grandmothers spent many a weary day. A maiden, to 

 obtain her wedding outfit, had first to card the cotton or wool into rolls. 

 Then by ten hours' hard labor she could spin four miles of thread or yarn, 

 walking eight miles while doing so. She must toil weary weeks and 

 months, and even years, to obtain fabrics enough to " set up housekeep- 

 ing," and when her lover called they would count the hanks of yarn over 

 head, each one bringing the wedding day a little nearer. 



