No. 199.] 413 



The speaker then reterrea to the Sewing Machine on exhibition, 

 by which the needle was successfully made to work by the applica- 

 tion of steam power, and demonstrated that it could sew a seam with 

 extraordinary speed over manual labor. 



He also called attention to the improvement of the Pin-making 

 machine. It had before stood as a wonder of the age, (he said,) in 

 being able to make and head complete at the rate of two hundred 

 per minute. It now hastens its work, and will produce Pins perfectly 

 made and complete, at the rate of six hundred per minute. 



He said, it was Porter, of Pennsylvania, who gave to his country 

 new and improved machinery in the manufacture of Slate for roofs 

 — but more especially for our Common Schools. Where an experienced 

 man could before polish and frame te*n or twelve slates in a day, 

 he can now with this new labor-saving machinery, complete for mar- 

 ket, ten or twelve dozen per day. The cost of slates is now about 

 as many cents as it was shillings before, with a great hindrance to 

 importations. The improvement is one of the material pillars of the 



and four and a half reams of newspaper, of the size of twenty by thirty inohes, was 

 technically termed "a day's ti-orfc;" and required the constant labor of three men, witli 

 the occasional assistance of two more. These four and a half reams contained two 

 th»usaHd one hundred and sixty sheets, which, if placed close together in a line, 

 would measure five thousaad four hundred feet— a little more than one mile. 



By the introduction of machinery, this part of the process of Paper-making has 

 keen entirely changed. The paper is now run off in one continuous sheet, and, on 

 •ur best machines, at the rate of forty-five feet per minute. Some of the machines 

 in use being of the width of eighty-four inches, the attention of two men and four 

 girls is required to form Paper of the size before mentioned, twenty by thirty inches. 

 Such a machine — working the same amount of time as the old fashioned variety, 

 (twelve hours) — will make thirty-two thousand four hundred feet of paper eighty 

 inches wide ! 



But this is not all. When the three men with their assistants, under the old plan, 

 had finished their day's work and made their one mile, of paper, it was wet, and it 

 became necessary to dry it upon poles. If the weather proved favorable, this might 

 be done, taken down andfinished in^^re days — ten times longar than tlie time occu- 

 pied in making it. Now, when the two men and four girls have in twelve hours 

 made their twenty-four miles of paper, it is dry,and when cut into sheets, is ready for 

 the printer; and this without regard to the weather, be it rain or shine. 



Thus it is evident that formerly it took ten times as long to prepare tlie paper for 

 market, after it was moulded into sheets, as was now required to convert it from 

 the pulp — and that the labor of five persons in one day produced for the market only 

 the one-twenty -fourth part now obtained by the use of labor-saving machinery. 



