214 HAMPSHIRE, FRANKLIN, AND 



side, the objection has no ground on which to stand when duly- 

 weighed. If machinery has superseded one branch of servile 

 labor, it has opened the door to a hundred other more kicrative 

 and genial employments. The invention of the printing-press 

 ruined the trade of the copyist; but while one page was copied, 

 ten thousand now are printed, and while one man found em- 

 ployment as a copyist, scores are now engaged in setting type. 

 Machinery takes the laboring oar, and man has only to guide 

 the boat — and a thousand are afloat now where there was one 

 before. Formerly, women carded their own wool and made 

 their own cards ; now machinery does both. And now one 

 single person, who has not to lift a finger of absolute manual 

 labor, will superintend a machine which cards more wool and 

 makes more cards in a single week, than could be done by ten 

 thousand fingers in as many years. 



But is the condition of that class of our female population, 

 who were accustomed to engage in these toilsome pursuits, less 

 enviable than it was a half century ago ? It is on the other 

 hand immeasurably improved ; and I doubt whether there is a 

 farmer or a mechanic, of the present day, who would wish to send 

 his daughters back to the pursuits and habits of their grandmoth- 

 ers. The truth is, mechanical force and skill acts in a vast variety 

 of directions, and if they take from the poor man sometimes an 

 employment, which he has followed as a drudge and a slave, 

 and would have done so to the end of his days, they at the 

 same time open a way to that same poor man to ease, compe- 

 tence and comfort. Hence the rock and the spindle have 

 passed away from the domestic economy without regret ; and 

 the shuttle, which was once as common as the family meal, 

 would now be regarded as an intruder, unwelcome and un- 

 known. Our mothers, — most of them, — knew how to knit, 

 but that much cannot be said of all their daughters, and thou- 

 sands now wear machine-made hose, while one wears genuine 

 home-knit stockings. Straw plaiting and lace making, and 

 embroidery are not yet quite abandoned, and innumerable del- 

 icate fingers are still engaged in these employments ; but even 

 the vocation of the seamstress and embroiderer is doomed. 

 Only last year, four patents were issued from our patent office 



