578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In 187o there were no less than 4,519 of the so-called '•'•master-weavers'''' in 

 Chemnitz, each of whom employed from one to ten journeymen at hand-loom 

 weaving in their own houses. The introduction of machinery, however, imposed 

 conditions upon these weavers which they found the more difficult to meet the 

 more the machinery was improved. The plainer goods were made on power- 

 looms, and work in the factories was found to be more remunerative. Instead 

 of giving work to others, they were gradually compelled to seek work for them- 

 selves. The independent " master " soon fell into ranks with the dependent 

 factory-hand, but as he grew older and his eyesight failed him he was re|)laccd 

 by younger and more active hands, and what once promised to become a well- 

 to-do citizen in his old age now bids fair to become a burden upon the commu- 

 nity. Those who had means of procuring the newer Jacquard contrivance, or 

 even the improved '"leaf" ox " shaft-looms," managed to eke out a subsistence; 

 but the prospects of the weavers who have learned to work only with the hand- 

 looms are becoming more hopeless every day. 



Now, while such cases of displacement of labor appeal most strongly 

 to human sympathy, and pre-eminently constitute a field for individual 

 or societary action for the purpose of relief, it should be at the same 

 time remembered that the world, especially during the last century, 

 has had a large experience in such matters, and that the following 

 points may be regarded as established beyond the possibility of con- 

 travention : 1. That such phases of human suffering are now, al- 

 ways have been, and undoubtedly always will be, the inevitable con- 

 comitants of the progress of civilization, or the transitions of the life 

 of society to a higher and better stage. They seem to be in the nature 

 of "growing -pains," or of penalty which Nature exacts at the outset, 

 but for once only, whenever mankind subordinates her forces in greater 

 degree to its own will and uses. 2. That it is not within the power of 

 statute enactment to arrest such transitions, even when a large and 

 immediate amount of human suffering can certainly be predicated as 

 their consequent, except so far as it initiates and favors a return of 

 society toward barbarism ; for the whole progress in civilization con- 

 sists in accomplishing greater or better results with the same or lesser 

 effort, physical or mental. 3. All experience shows that, whatever of 

 disadvantage or detriment the introduction and use of new and im- 

 proved instrumentalities or methods of production and distribution 

 may temporarily entail on individuals or cldsses, the ultimate result 

 is always an almost immeasurable degree of increased good to man- 

 kind in general. In illustration and proof of this, attention is asked 

 to the following selection from the record of a great number of well- 

 ascertained and pertinent experiences : 



The invention of the various machines which culminated in the 

 knitting or weaving of stockings by machinery in place of by hand, 

 occasioned great disturbances about the commencement of the present 

 century among a large body of operatives in the counties of Leices- 

 ter and Nottingham, in England, who had been educated to old pieth- 

 ods.af stocking-making and were dependent upon the continued prose- 



