ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF CAPITAL AND

MACHINERY.

AMONGST the circumstances on which the opulence of society depends, the employment of capital holds a distinguished place, and in consequence presents a subject which is worthy of a deliberate examination, not only from the interest which all inquiries bearing immediately on the welfare of society must possess, but from its practical utility, as developing the causes of national opulence, from whence the means are perceived by which the progress of wealth is either advanced or retarded.

The employment of capital seems peculiar to the human species; and forms one of the distinguishing features of its character. The formation of man is peculiarly adapted to, and calls for, such employment, as indispensable to his state and condition. Without it, his condition would be far below that of the inferior animals. These are furnished by nature with members admirably constructed for defence, for procuring food, and for performing whatever labour may be necessary to their well-being but man is sent forth into the world almost defenceless; his hand is not armed like the beak of the bird, or the teeth and claws of the quadruped, and he is under the necessity of resorting to some implement to supply what would otherwise be a defect in his formation.

It is obvious that both the tools which man employs to aid his labour, and the materials on which that labour is bestowed, are indispensable in almost every species of industry. What could the husbandman effect without his spade or his plough, or the weaver without his loom? And again, materials must necessarily be provided, out of which to fabricate the articles our wants demand. Without these two descriptions of capital, scarcely any kind of labour could be prosecuted with success, beyond what could be performed by the unaided powers of the hand, and which yielded an immediate return; and our supply would be confined to the herbs, roots, and fruits of the forest, with a few of the more helpless animals which we might be able to outrun and overcome. Without seed to sow the land, a future harvest could never be obtained. Without a store of food previously accumulated to sustain us during the performance of our work, and until the seasons return, or the operations of nature have been completed which give effect to labour, and its produce to that state in

which it is fit for use or sale, the cultivation of the soil could not be carried on, tillage must be abandoned, and no separate direction of industry or division of labour could subsist. Without storehouses wherein to lodge the fruits of the earth, they could not be preserved to supply our necessities when the season of production is past. To fell the forest, to pierce the mine, or to traverse the waters, without the aid of capital were impracticable: and the tenants of the deep, the treasures of the mine, and the luxuries of foreign climes would for ever remain inaccessible.

The advantages derived from the use of capital are not confined solely to such as is employed to assist labour in the direct production or manipulation of commodities, as the tools, the plant and utensils, the workshops and materials, and in the different branches of business. Similar advantages arise from the use of the floating capital employed and expended in procuring the raw or partly wrought materials, for the workmen to manufacture, in the advance of their wages, conveying goods to market, collecting an assortment of them, and furnishing them in suitable quantities and at convenient seasons to the parties who require them.

To present a view of the important functions which this portion of capital fulfils, let us suppose that all at once it were withdrawn; and that each person were obliged to perform himself the services he now receives from this portion of the capital of the farmer, manufacturer, and dealer. It is impossible, consistently with brevity, accurately to trace all the steps which a consumer would be obliged to take to acquire any commodity, if this capital were abstracted from business. It is sufficient to describe them generally.

In the way in which capital is now employed, if the consumer is in want of a pair of stockings, they may be had at any time, and of any sort or quality, at a hosier's shop. But if the capital which is employed in conducting and keeping them were abstracted, the consumer would be obliged, in the first instance, to quit his usual occupation, and repair to the sheepfarmer's to procure a quantity of wool. Having bought and paid for the wool, he must then convey it to the carder and spinner, whose wages he must advance. He would next have to go in quest of the thread when spun, to convey it to be dyed, and to pay the dyer. Lastly, he must carry the thread from the dyer to the stocking-maker, pay him his wages, and, when finished, fetch the stockings home.

In the instance of commodities which are procurable only by means of a foreign trade, the use of this floating capital is still more essential. Take the case of cotton, sugar, coffee, or other tropical productions, and suppose that the floating capital now employed in purchasing these articles in the countries where they are grown, in conveying them home, and storing them in the shops and warehouses of the traders, were altogether withdrawn. In such case, a consumer in want of either of these articles would have to embark for the East or West Indies to purchase the quantity of them he might require. But when difficulties of such magnitude must be surmounted, it would be impossible for any private individual to procure them at all.

Taking the first and least difficult of the two cases, and examining the task thus imposed on the consumer, it will be found to consist in two different duties, First, he is compelled to withdraw from his own stock the money with which he pays for the wool, and that with which he pays the carder, spinner, and dyer, some time before he acquires the stockings, which occasions a loss of the profit he might procure by retaining this capital in his own business. Secondly, he is obliged to perform the labour of selecting the wool, of conveying it to be carded and spun, the labour of carrying it to the dyer, and, lastly, that of taking it to the stockingmaker, and fetching it from thence home.

The capital expended in improvements upon the soil contributes most essentially to heighten the powers of labour, and aug. ment the quantity of agricultural produce. If previous labour had not cleared away the forests which encumbered our lands, and drained off the waters which caused them to be in part in morasses; if it had not been expended in fencing, manuring, constructing farm-buildings, and the other improvements which have been made upon the land, it would be but a small quantity of useful produce that the industry of the country could raise from it. Obliged to undertake these necessary works, the proper cultivation of the land could not be commenced until they were completed. But since the expenditure of capital was made by which these works were executed, the labour of the husbandman is applied at once to cultivation, and it has contributed in a high degree to augment in every subsequent year the produce of industry.

As then the distribution of employments and division of labour can only be established through a previous accumulation of capital, whatever are the benefits derivable

from this distribution, from agriculture, from commerce, and the interchange of com. modities, from the use of tools and machines, from the employment of labouring cattle and the natural moving powers, from agricultural improvements, from the sciences and arts, they are all dependent on the possession and employment of capital, and could not be enjoyed but in connexion with, and through its aid.

It is plain, likewise, that the quantity and excellence of the produce of labour must mainly depend on the quantity of capital employed; such as the goodness and suitableness of our tools and other instruments of labour, the number and strength of our labouring cattle, the high state of cultivation into which the land has been brought, the commodiousness of our workshops, granaries, and storehouses; the number and power of our machines and engines of every description, and the extent to which the natural powers of wind, water, and steam are applied in industry. When the master is possessed of an ample capital, he is enabled to furnish the workmen with the best implements and most efficient machines that can be had, and to afford him every known facility for carrying on his business to the greatest advantage.

The different ways in which advantages result from the employment of capital, may be considered in the four following points of view.

First. It saves time and labour in the production of almost every commodity. With the aid of a useful tool or machine, a man's work is rendered easy, and his time is saved. Without working harder, he is enabled to do more work, or produce more, than he could have done before. In different countries, the horse, the ass, the ox, the camel, the rein-deer, and some other animals, are trained to labour. Much additional power is acquired from the employment of these animals,* and a much larger quantity of work is executed. Still greater power is acquired through the use of machinery impelled by water, wind, or steam. These natural agents work while we rest; our horses and machinery perform our labour for us, while we do nothing but look on; or rather they act in conjunction with us, assist our exertions, and lessen the toil we must otherwise undergo; while they multiply the products of our labour in an immeasurable degree. In every way that

*Mr. Gordon, in his Treatise on Locomotion, estimates the number of horses in the United Kingdom at 2,000,000. The power of a horse is usually reckoned as equal to that of six men; which makes the total of horse-power in the United Kingdom equivalent to 12,000,000 of men, or greater than all our male population of all ages.

capital is employed it is to save or facilitate labour; to increase the quantity or quality of the products of labour. If more capital is expended in working the soil, or in manure, it is to make the produce greater, or better in quality. If canals, rail-roads, or better roads, are formed, these are to lessen the labour of transporting goods. If more extensive or commodious buildings are constructed for business, they are to give greater facilities to the workmen, to secure the goods in a more perfect manner, and save the loss and injury which would otherwise be sustained from the weather or from depredations.

Thus capital acts in the same way as labour, and an increase of capital is equivalent to an increase of workmen, for its effects on industry are the same. There is, however, this important difference between the two;-while an increase of workmen occasions a corresponding additional want and consumption of articles for their support, without leaving more to be enjoyed by any one amongst them, an increase of capital effects an increased production, without adding to the want or necessary consumption, and consequently augments the quantity of commodities to be enjoyed by those who labour. In the same way that a man's circumstances are rendered better by greater industry, so are they according to the larger capital which he is enabled to employ successfully to render his labour more effective.

Secondly. Besides the inconceivably greater power conferred on mankind by the economy of time and labour effected by the employment of capital, this employment enlarges that power in another way, and enables us to execute works which would otherwise have surpassed our abilities. It is evident that every kind of work which requires a long time to accomplish can only be undertaken when there has been a stock of food, clothing, and other necessaries got together to subsist us while engaged upon it. Besides this stock of circulating capital, some portion of fixed capital is necessary. There is scarcely any species of work that can be executed without the aid of tools, more or less, of iron or steel. But to open the bowels of the earth, to construct a furnace, smelt the ore, and fabricate a tool of iron or steel, though undoubtedly it was originally accomplished by man with but an inconsiderable stock of capital, must, notwithstanding, have at first been a work of no small magnitude, doubtless accomplished only by slow degrees and imperfect advances towards perfection. Thus, even to perform the rudest and most simple

kinds of labour, as they require tools of iron, must at first have been a difficult task. But, without capital, to execute works of magnitude, to build a ship, to construct a bridge or a canal, to excavate the earth for mining operations to any considerable depth, would have been utterly impracticable. Yet, with the aid of capital, such works are rendered easy of accomplishment, and are of every-day occurrence.

The third advantage derived from the employment of capital consists in its superior efficacy in executing labour, over the most improved and highest manual dexterity, enabling us to execute work better, as well as quicker, easier, and cheaper than could be done without it. Machinery in general performs its work more steadily, more uniformly and equally throughout, and with more exactness, than can be done by hand. It commonly gives a superiority of execution and perfection which the labour of the hands could never have attained to. It is said that cotton goods generally at the present time are, in their several degrees of fineness, as much as ten per cent. better in workmanship than they were so recently as fifteen years ago, and this resulting from the greater perfection of the machinery employed in fabricating them. The flattingmill and the die afford striking instances of the superiority of machines in executing products that the utmost skill and attention of the human hand and mind could never accomplish. Every kind of printing, too, is evidently executed with a perfect identity which it would be impossible for the most skilful workman to rival by hand. In this way machinery gives a positively new product, in the degree of perfection which was before unknown. Again, from the precision with which all its operations are performed, there is a saving of waste of materials from work spoiled or imperfectly executed.

Lastly, capital enables us to apply to purposes of the highest utility, articles which would otherwise have remained useless and of no value. The materials of which our houses are constructed, the materials of our clothing and furniture, the metals out of which our tools are formed, in short, almost every useful article we possess, would have remained absolutely useless and worthless, had it not been for the capital, through the aid of which the material has been fashioned and adapted to

row, and other similar machines, whose origin is lost in the night of ages, have powerfully contributed to procure for mankind, besides the absolute necessaries of life, a vast number of the superfluities they now enjoy: whereof they could otherwise never have had any conception. Yet if the cultivation of the soil could be no otherwise carried on than by the spade, the hoe, and other such simple and tardy expedients; if we were unable to make available in agriculture the labour of domestic animals, it is most likely that the whole mass of human labour, now applicable to the arts of industry, would be occupied in raising the bare necessary subsistence of the actual population. Thus, the plough has been instrumental in releasing a number of hands for the prosecution of the arts, and, which is of more importance, for the cultivation of the intellectual faculties."

To exhibit in its proper light the advantages as regards the condition of mankind, which have been derived from the use of capital, it is only necessary to glance at the history of the progress of industry, and trace the slow and gradual advancement of the human race from a few in number, and a state of poverty and bar. barism, to its present augmented numbers, its power, opulence, and refinement. Every step of this advancement has been caused by the singular skill of man in the discovery of the mode of operation of nature, in subjecting her powers to his will, in the invention of tools and machines, and in his happy discoveries of improved processes in the arts, from his faculties of observation, reflection, experiment, and combination, in the character of philosopher and engineer, whereby the hidden laws of nature have been exposed to view, and made subservient to the purposes of industry. But in making these discoveries and inventions, and more especially in their application to industry, the employment of capital was an absolute requisite. In truth, knowledge chiefly displays itself in the application of capital in improved method to the purposes of industry. It is to the employment of such capital, with its height ened effective powers, that we owe the superiority of civilized over savage life, with almost every convenience and external comfort we enjoy.

Having become accustomed to the employment of capital in these improved methods, and to the use of the most powerful machines, we are apt to forget, or to pass over unnoticed, the advantages they have conferred upon our species, the solid

improvement they have effected in our circumstances, or the condition in which we should now he placed without them. Yet though we pass over these improvements without their exciting our observation, they are of such magnitude that the wonder is that poverty and want should still be found amongst civilized nations, and that they should not long since have been banished, and become only matter of history, instead of the sad experience of actual suffering. Let us shortly notice some of the more striking improvements by which the opulence of mankind has been promoted.

The employment of cattle for labouring purposes may be marked as an important step in the progress of industry. The ox and the ass appear to have been trained to labour at a very early period. In Arabia, in the earliest of all recorded times, that of Job, we find them in use. It does not seem that the horse was had recourse to so soon. Afterwards came the use of wheelcarriages, and the formation of roads. Not less important than these were the arts of navigation, and the construction of canals. Amongst the inventions which have mainly contributed to the perfection of nagivation, we cannot omit to mention the telescope and the mariner's compass, chronometers, and the method of finding the longitude. To these we are indebted for America, and the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, as well as the greater part of the safety and certainty of modern navigation.

The spinning of yarn and weaving of cloth, arts, the commencement of which is lost in the darkness of the earliest ages, have been perfected in recent times; chiefly first, by the substitution of the spinningwheel for the rack and spindle, which, with the same quantity of labour, enabled the spinner to perform twice the quantity of work; secondly, by the introduction of the spinning-jenny in place of the spinningwheel, whereby a child was enabled to work from eighty to one hundred and twenty spindles, and thus to do the work of as many grown persons: afterwards still further improved so as to leave nothing to man but to feed the machine with cotton, and to join the threads when they happen to break; and lastly, by the invention of the power-loom. The united effect of these improvements is, that one person by the aid of these machines can now do as much work as two hundred could have done fifty years ago. Besides these striking instances of improvement in the manufacture of cotton cloth, there are in the woollen manufacture, the employment of the fulling-mill

for thickening the cloth, instead of treading it in water; the machinery for combing wool, whereby one man and five or six children can do as much as thirty men in the old way; besides a multitude of ingenious machines and inventions too numerous to mention, by means of which the various processes previous to weaving have been so abridged as to enable one person to execute nearly as much work as required fifty about a century ago.

The employment of water-mills and windmills has contributed very considerably to the opulence of modern nations. Amongst the ancients, water and wind were either unknown as moving powers, or but little used. With them, the whole process of grinding corn was for a long time performed by manual labour; which consequently formed a very important and laborious part of household duty. After wards corn mills were driven by cattle. Water seems to have been applied for this purpose in Asia about the time of Mithridates, or earlier. Water-mills were known in Rome in the time of Augustus; but were not then common: they had become so in the reign of Justinian. The invention of wind-mills is later than that of watermills, and its origin is not well known; but wind-mills seem likewise to have been an Eastern invention, and to have been brought into Europe about the time of the crusades. Yet neither wind-mills nor water-mills were in use in England in the beginning of the sixteenth century. At first they were applied solely for grinding corn; but they are now also employed for many other purposes. In the case of grinding corn, the expenditure of human labour saved by these mills is, perhaps, twentyfold, and the whole labour thus dispensed with is applicable to the production and fabrication of articles of use or ornament.

The discovery of steam as a moving power is well known to be modern, and has been in use hardly a century; while the improved steam-engine, whose regularity and steadiness of motion equals the water-wheel, and has consequently been applied to work all sorts of the most intricate and delicate machinery, may be dated only since about the year 1800. Yet notwithstanding that steam as a moving power is so recent an invention, it is already in use in our own country to an equal or perhaps greater extent than even wind and water; while it obviates the inconveniences which attend the use of both from want of wind, or from interruption from frosts, or continued droughts. The power of the

steam-engines in this country has been estimated as equal to the force of 6,400,000 effective labourers: an effective labourer being equal to rather more than two average labourers; or, on the whole, to the work of above 12,000,000 of labourers,

But it would be unnecessary to enlarge further on the past progress of the arts, for the purpose of proving that, by the employment of capital in these improved ways, the powers of industry have been multiplied to an extent which it is impossible to compute; and thereby not only a great mass of labour set free and rendered avail able to other purposes, but an abundance of commodities acquired, of the highest excellence, notwithstanding the diminution in the exertion of labour, and the vast number of idle persons, or persons unproductively employed. It is by such means that our comparatively sterile soils have been brought under tillage, and cultivation forced on other and better soils, to a degree which would otherwise have been impracticable. The extent of our island is the same now as it ever was, yet the quantity of subsistence which is drawn from its soil is incomparably greater than in the early periods of our history: while an advancement equally great has taken place in all the other things which minister to our wants and pleasures. Lastly, by these means competency and leisure have been acquired, whereby the means have been obtained of prosecuting with success all those objects in which the higher interests of our species are involved.

Dr. Adam Smith attributes to the division of labour, the great multiplication of the productions of the different arts, and the universal opulence observed in wellgoverned societies, which extends its influence even to the lowest ranks of the people. But we cannot ascribe this opulence to the operation of one single cause. It is to the conjoint operation of the several causes which contribute to facilitate and abridge labour; amongst the most essential of which is, the employment of capital. It is to labour applied in conjunction with capital, and directed with consummate skill and science, to the perfection of which all past ages have contributed. It is not only to the labour of man, but to that of his domestic animals, his agents of wind, water, and steam, which skill and science have enabled him to press into his service, and set at work to perform his daily labour for him. Again, it is to bis machinery, by which his hands and fingers are, as it were, multiplied by magic,