WELFARE OF THE WORKING CLASSES. 407 



stone ; its volume and its weight can be easily calculated ; 

 its weight has been found to be about 5,900,000 kilograms 

 (nearly 5000 tons). 



To elevate this weight to thirty-eight metres, which is 

 the pyramid s centre of gravity, it would require to burn 

 8,244 hectolitres of coal (cubic metres). Our neigh 

 bours have some foundries where they consume this 

 quantity every week. 



MACHINES CONSIDERED RELATIVE TO THEIR EFFECT 

 ON THE WELFARE OF THE WORKING CLASSES.* 



Many persons, without doubting the genius of Watt, 

 look on the inventions for which the world is indebted to 

 him, and on the impulse that they have given to indus 

 trial labours, as a social misfortune. If we believed 

 them, the adoption of each new machine inevitably adds 

 to the troubles and miseries of labourers. Those won- 



* In writing this chapter it seemed to me that I might unscrupu 

 lously avail myself of many documents that I had collected, either in 

 various conversations with my friend Lord Brougham, or works that 

 he himself has published, or that have appeared under his patronage. 



If I were to attend to the criticisms that have been printed after the 

 reading of this Biography, by trying to combat the opinion that ma 

 chines are injurious to the labouring classes, I should be attacking an 

 old prejudice that has no longer any foundation, a mere phantom. I 

 would not ask more than to be able to believe it, for then I would very 

 willingly suppress all my arguments, bad or good. Unfortunately some 

 letters 1 requently sent me by excellent workmen, either as an acade 

 mician or as a deputy ; unfortunately, moreover, the recent and ex- 

 professo dissertations of several economists, leave me no doubt as to 

 the necessity of still saying, of repeating in every shape, that ma 

 chines have never been the true and permanent cause of the sufferings 

 of one of the most numerous and most interesting of the classes of 

 society; that their destruction would aggravate the present state of 

 things ; and that it is by no means in that direction that a remedy 

 would be found for the evils which I warmly compassionate. 



