Think and Act Author:Virginia Penny Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MACHINERY—ITS MERITS AND DEMERITS. MACHINERY has served to furnish the great mass of mankind with the comforts of life. The diffusion of manufactured products... more » is now almost universal. Formerly the favored few enjoyed the results of mechanical skill and artistic design ; now the multitude receive them almost as the water they drink, and the air they breathe. Particularly is this the case in the United States, where wealth is more generally diffused than in the older countries, and where the man of health and industry is the architect of his own fortune. The use of machinery, it is generally admitted, diminishes the demand for manual labor. It does so to a great extent. Yet the increased cheapness of some articles manufactured brings them more in demand, and consequently, after a time, as large a number, or nearly so, of workmen may be employed in the management of machinery as were before in making the same goods by hand. Such, we say, is the case with some machinery, but not with all. Political economists may talk as they please of the increased demand of articles manufactured by machinery, and their proportionate cheapness; but we do know that many have been thrown out of employment by the use of some kinds of machinery. Not that we object at all to machinery, or to its use; but the immediate result is often deplorable — the loss of bread to the poor, who, by it, have been deprived of employment, and cannot find other remunerative labor. It would be well if employers would interest themselves to secure labor for those so displaced. An intelligent shoe-binder told me, in 1862, that she did work then for thirty-seven cents for which she had formerlyreceived seventy-five; and a shirt-maker told a friend of mine she could get but two dollars a week at that time — 1862 — for ...« less