IV 



THE SEWING-MACHINE 



A&OUT half a century ago, when the sewing- 

 machine was still in the early stages of devel- 

 opment, an eminent lawyer, pleading the cause 

 of its inventor, told eloquently of the wonders it had 

 already accomplished. "The sewing-machine," he 

 said, "has opened the doors of workshops, tainted by 

 the pale victims of the hand-needle, whose long and 

 confining imprisonment to its service was preying 

 upon their health, and rapidly fitting them for the 

 premature grave to which it had already hurried mil- 

 lions of their sex; and the continued tax upon whose 

 vision, in scanning minutely the close relation between 

 the needle-point and the last stitch in the process of 

 sewing, had already so affected their eyesight as to 

 threaten them with a speedy discharge from employ- 

 ment for the want of ability to see. 



"The sewing-machine has called them out of such 

 employment, and tenders them a more healthy occu- 

 pation and higher wages for less time. It has called 

 multitudes out of the non-productive, time-wasting, 

 and health-destroying service of hand-needle sewing, 

 where much labor was bestowed and much time spent 

 to produce small results and as a consequence all 

 other expenses of the business in which it was done 



[87] 



