INGENUITY AND LUXURY 



were accumulated to such an extent as not to afford 

 liberal pay to the laborer, and has introduced them 

 into other occupations more favorable to their health, 

 and in which larger results are produced by them in 

 less time and by less labor; and the result is, that 

 higher wages can, in consequence, be afforded and is 

 tendered to them. 



"The sewing-machine has entered the dwellings of 

 poverty, met there the widowed mother, upon whom 

 hand-needle service, in her efforts to feed her off- 

 spring, was already inflicting the penalty of corroding 

 and emaciating disease, and taking her by the hand, 

 extricating her from the grasp of exacting necessity 

 which tied her to the needle, and led her out, and 

 pointed her to a way of health and plenty." 



If a man could thus carry conviction by the weight 

 of overwhelming truth at that time, what might be 

 said now, in the light of intervening years of prog- 

 ress, when the social fabric of communities possibly 

 nations has been changed by this device. 



In the opening years of the nineteenth century, 

 when the cotton-gin, spinning-frame, and power-loom 

 had made it possible to produce more thread and cloth 

 than could be utilized by seamstresses sewing by hand, 

 a great want was felt of some mechanical device which 

 would shorten the labor of putting the cloth together, 

 just as other machines had shortened the process of 

 making it. But for many years the problem remained 

 unsolved, despite the fact that hundreds of inventors 

 were attempting its solution. 



The difficulty lay in the fact that most inventors 



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