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 frequently 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. 



