MANUFACTURE OF BOOKS. 415 
the very small number of rich men who could indulge in 
this expensive fancy. One of these copyists being able 
by the aid of the new proceeding to do the work of two 
hundred, there were not wanting men in that epoch who 
dubbed the new invention as infernal, as about to reduce 
to inaction, in a certain rank of society, nine hundred 
and ninety-five men out of one thousand. But let us 
now place the real result by the side of the sinister pre- 
diction. 
Manuscript books were very little in demand ; printed 
books, on the contrary, on account of their low price, 
were sought after with the most lively eagerness. It 
was found necessary incessantly to reproduce the Greek 
and Roman authors. New ideas, new opinions occa- 
sioned a multitude of new books to arise ; some of eternal 
interest, others inspired by passing events. At last it 
was calculated that in London, before the invention of 
printing, the book trade employed only two hundred 
men, now they are counted by twenty thousand. 
And how much more would it be if, laying aside the con- 
fined, and I might say material, point of view that I have 
had to select, we were to estimate printing by its moral 
and intellectual phases; if we were to examine the influ- 
ence that it exerted on public manners, on the diffusion 
of public knowledge, on the progress of human reason ; 
if we were to work out the enumeration of the many 
books for which we are indebted to printing, that the 
copyists would certainly have disdained, and in which 
genius yet goes daily gathering the elements of its fruit- 
ful conceptions? But I must keep in mind that at 
present we have only to treat of the number of work- 
men employed by each branch of industry. 
That of cotton offers even more demonstrative results 
