416 [Assembly 



The quantity of Cotton goods made in the United States is estimated 

 at 720,000,000 of yards, of which about 80,000,000 are exported, 

 leaving 640,000,000 for home consumption. 



That the improvements introduced in Machinery has a tendency to 

 lessen the price of Manufactures,* is a truth too evident to need de- 

 monstration ; but it by no means follows, that they lessen the demand 

 for useful labor. The number of laborers employed is really increased, 

 by the useful improvements and inventions introduced in the Arts. 

 We find the following, which is copied from a recent French work, on 

 Political Economy, by Mr. Joseph Granner : — 



" In many cases, machines, far from supplanting human labor have 

 multiplied it. In fact every abridgement of labor, by reducing the 

 cost of production, carries the manufactured article to the door of a 

 greater number of consumers ; and experience proves the consumers 

 multiply in a gTeater degree than the price decreases, especially when 

 the method of manufacture improves the commodity.* The diminu- 

 tion of the price by a fourth has been known to double the consump- 

 tion. We will only cite two examples — printing and cotton spinning. 

 Although the steam press enables one man to do the work of two hun- 

 dred, the multiplication of books, the arts which are connected with 

 them, 'such as the casting of type, the fabrication of paper, tlie pro- 

 fessions of author, corrector, binder, etc., employ a thousand times as 

 many persons as formerly were occupied in them ; and what a differ- 

 ence in form and price betw^een the manuscripts of early times and 

 the books of the present ! When we observe the perfection of the 

 machinery for spinning cotton, and the admirable rapidity with which 

 the bobbins are covered with thread, we may fancy that the greater 

 number of persons formerly employed in spinning have been thrown 

 out of work; yet precisely the reverse has happened. Before the in- 

 vention of machinery, only 5200 female spinners at the wheel, and 

 2700 weavers, altogether 7900 persons, were employed in England ; 

 whilst in 1787, ten .years later, 150,000 spinners, and 247,000 wea- 

 vers, or 397,000 persons were reckoned." 



In this age of Invention and Patent Rights, it will be curious to 

 look at the Ancient Law of Patents in England, and mark the school^ 



