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It is truly painful to see how much time they spend in making the simplest tool for want of at least a few labor-saving appliances. Doubtless you have their tools on show in New York. They are to me an interesting study, though I have been long familiar with the rude tools of the Hindoos.
"As I have said," replied the girl, "the profits made by labor-saving machinery resulted from the increased productiveness of the labor employed, thus enabling the capitalist either to turn out a greater product with the same labor cost or an equal product with a less labor cost, the workers supplanted by the machine being discharged.
Punch always drew the Yankee with a blade in his fingers; but they found out long ago in Great Britain that whittling in this land led to something, a Boston notion, a wooden clock, a yacht America, a labor-saving machine, a cargo of wooden-ware, a shop full of knick-knacks, an age of inventions. Boys need not be kept back to the hand-craft of the knife.
The first of these causes, in point of time, were certain labor-saving inventions in England, which vastly enhanced the demand for raw cotton. Arkwright's invention of the spinning machine about twenty years prior to the adoption of the Constitution, perfected by the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, and the mule of Crompton, "turned Lancashire," the historian Green says, "into a hive of industry."
This humane expectation of the young republic failed of realization, owing primarily and chiefly, I think, to the potent influence upon the institution of slavery of certain labor-saving inventions and their industrial application in England and America during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
It is only when such apparatus will, with less labor involved and less time consumed in the process, secure results as good as or better than will another device, and when the cleaning and care of it do not consume so much time and labor as is saved by using it, that it may be considered a true labor-saving device.
In the case of small equipment priced under or around five dollars it is easy to make large sales upon the time or labor-saving qualities the devices may have. But repeat sales are affected by the quality of construction and materials used.
"But only think of his inventing this machine," interposed one of the workmen, rather unluckily. "O yes! a machine for saving work, is it? He'd invent that, I'll be bound; let a nigger alone for that, any time. They are all labor-saving machines themselves, every one of 'em. No, he shall tramp!"
Each housewife must decide for herself whether the expense of a so-called labor-saving device is greater than the value of the time and strength she would use without such a device.
Poverty and want have always been his portion, and even after he had won his triumph, had compelled public recognition of some great invention, it was usually some one else who won the reward. America has been especially strong in the field of invention. Indeed, practically all the great labor-saving devices of the past century and more have originated here.
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