304 M. Arago on Machinery considered in Belation 



unceasingly. New ideas and new opinions gave rise to a mul- 

 titude of works, some of an enduring interest, whilst others 

 were called into existence by passing events ; so that, it has 

 been calculated that, in London, previous to the invention of 

 printing, the trade in books afforded occupation to about two 

 hundred individuals, whereas, now, there are, engaged in it, 

 tens of thousands. And what would be the result, if, laying 

 aside the restricted and, so to speak, the material view of the 

 subject, we regard printing in its moral and intellectual as- 

 pects ; if we examined its influence upon public manners, upon 

 the diffusion of knowledge, and the progress of the human 

 mind ; if we could count the number of volumes for which we 

 are indebted to it, which the copyists would certainly have 

 despised, but from which genius daily draws forth the elements 

 of its best and most pregnant conceptions ? However, I must 

 not forget that the question before us, regards the number of 

 workmen employed in the different branches of industry. 



The manufacture of cotton presents us with results still 

 more remarkable than those of printing. At the time when 

 an ingenious barber at Preston, by name Arkwi'ight, who left a 

 fortune of about one hundred thousand pounds a-year to his chil- 

 dren, rendered the substitution of turning rollers for the spin- 

 ners' fingers, useful and profitable, the annual product of the 

 cotton manufacture of England did not amount to more than 

 L.2,000,000, now it exceeds L.37,000,000. In the county of 

 Lancaster alone, there is delivered, every year, to the manufac- 

 turers, a quantity of cotton thread, which twenty-one millions 

 of expert spinners could not prepare by means of the spindle 

 and distaff. Now, although, in the art of preparing this thread, 

 mechanical means have been carried to their extreme limits, a 

 million and a half of workmen find daily employment, where, 

 previous to the inventions of Arkwright and Watt, there were 

 not fifty thousand employed.* 



A certain philosopher has exclaimed. Nothing new is now 



* Mr Edward Baines, the author of an esteemed ■work upon the history of 

 the cotton manufacture in Britain, has had the singular curiosity to cal- 

 culate the length of the thread which is annually employed in the fabrica- 

 tion of cotton goods, and has found that the total length equals fifty-one 

 times the distance of the sun from the earth (fifty-one times thirty-nine 

 i 1 lions of leagues), or about two thousand millions of leagues. 



