REMARKS ON THE PRICE OF LABOR. 



the patronage of Napoleon, and was rewarded by him 

 with a pension of 1000 crowns. It was not, however, 

 bat with extreme difficulty, that he was enabled to in- 

 troduce his machine into use with the silk weavers. 

 Thrice was he exposed to imminent danger of assassi- 

 nation, until finally, the official conservators of the trade 

 of Lyons, broke up the loom in the public square, and 

 the several parts being sundered, the iron was sold for 

 old iron, and the wood for wood, and the name of the 

 inventor of the famous Jacquard loom was consigned to 

 universal hatred and ignominy. Nor was it till the 

 French began to feel the resistless force of foreign com- 

 petition, that they recalled to their aid the admirable 

 invention of their countryman, as their only shield and 

 protection. 



The absurdity of the dogma of Montesquieu and 

 some others, that the labor saving power of machinery, 

 is productive of no permanent good to community, is 

 beautifully illustrated in the following description of the 

 comforts of an Italian silk mill, by an able modern trav- 

 eller. I have introduced it from the work of Dr. Ure, 

 and it was extracted by him, from "Mrs. Jamieson's 

 Diary of an Ennuyee" p. 82. 



" There were vast groves of mulberry trees between 

 Verona and Padua.; and we visited some of the silk 

 mills, in which the united strength of men invariably 

 performed those operations which in England are ac- 

 complished by steam or water. I saw in a huge hori- 

 zontal wheel, about a dozen of these poor creatures 

 laboring so hard, that rny very heart ached to see them, 

 and I begged that the machine might be stopped that I 

 might speak to them ; but when it was stopped, and I 

 beheld their half savage, half stupified, I had almost 

 said, half brutified countenances, I could not utter a 

 single word, but gave them something and turned 

 away." Such is the account which this lady has given 

 us. 



Silk is an absorbent, and will absorb ten per cent, of 



