FAILURE OF OUR INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VI, Issue 373, 31 May 1856, Page 4

FAILURE OF OUR INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM.

From the " Spectator " of Dec. 8,

Our supremacy in manufactures and in the industiial aits is boldly challenged. " Amiens " assures us tliat the Exhibition of Paris refines our fondly cherished assumption that we are supreme. "I found my own country,"lie says in a letter to the Times, "behind hand in many branches of industry where she has hitherto boasted her superiority, and where those engaged in those particular pursuits are persuaded'liilhe present moment, I {irmly believe, ihatthey have no rivals."

He first takes the subject of iron manufactures, and states that "in the department of manufactured or rol]pd iron to particular forms and purposes, we are lamentably behind both the French and the Prussians." Hence we continue to build the floors of our houses with die most combustible materials ; and when we use fireproof buildings, we waste materials in the floors as well as in the girders themselves, by an old and cumbrous form. Here France beats us both in safety and economy.

Now, though there is much truth in this accusation, we douht the degree of blind presumption which the writer ascribes to the English in jreneral. It is twenty years since we have been accustomed to hear from the mouth of manufacturers that Prussia beats us in iron, and it has recently been admitted that France was making decided progress. ' Amiens' tells us that we heat the French in tools ami machinery while they boat us in scientific instruments; tliat. the French have made jrieut progress since 18.01 ; nuv.nvn makers none. 'The charge, we believe, jni»hi he extended to other manufactures. It is an old reproach that our artists are behind the Continental in designs for ornamental patterns in textile fabrics ; and wt have yet to learn that our Government schools have infused a

new genius into tbis branch of business. For years past the increasing export of half manufactured articles—as cotton yarn—has been remarked ; and the cause that tends to check the extension in cotton manufacture in America, and other countries, is not of a nature that we can count upon. It was the complaint of the Protectionists, that the developement of our manufacturing system renders us dependent upon foreign consumers, as in Russia; and the dependence may become alarming if we find that we may be beaten in foreign markets by foreign producers. Where would then be the boast of our becoming " the workshop of the world"? Nay, it has been argued on behalf of our manufacturers, that it is only by filling the markets to repletion with goods at excessively low rates that we can keep foreign producers out of the market. It is almost represented on their behalf that they might export articles under cost in order to retain their footing —a plen which is as gross a violation of sound economical and commercial principles* as we remember to have encountered,- —that we can only keep the market by ruining ourselves, and incurring a loss exactly in proportion to the energy of our production ! If, indeed, we could keep the market by temporary sacrifices, we might still to a certain extent command <m;k prices in the long run ; but recent symptoms ia* the manufacturing districts only tend to confirm warnings we have had from America and Germany, while they give a formidable corroboration to the challenge of' Amicus.' Looking to discover causes, he ascribes Ih backwardness of our manufacturers to the fac that " we had been getting rich too fast—wer c indifferent, indolent, and careless in our trades, and in fact had got too much into what was called, by a shrewd observer of men, the 'easy chair and port wine ' state of existence.'1 It is strange that a writer in part so precise should be so general in endeavouring to define the cause. Perhaps we should not find one cause but many causes; and they could not be summarily enumerated. We may make a shrewd guess, however, that some of them have been little suspected. The extreme division of labour tends to separate the working classes from the general survey of any one trade. It is amongst the working classes that there is a very considerable number of inventive ideas; but such inventions are mostly applied to paits of a manufacture : and they are often suppressed by their inventors for a twofold reason ; in the first place, because the state of the patent law prevents a workman from getting any advantage out of his invention, or only a very slight advantage in the second, because the workman feels a great reluctance to increase the viches of the master, who already has so much, while the working hands have so small a share. If the workman looks to his own selfish advantage, the master has taught him to do so. The patent law itself proceeds upon giving to selfish rights their due. This places trade and artisan work on a footing intellectually below science. It is " unprofessional " in any scientific employment to keen back a secret in order to si'personal advantage; but the whole organization of our manufacturing system proceeds upon the ground of lotting each man get his own advantage, he caring for nobody and nobody caring for him. Ambition is thus stunted to iis lowest proportions ; the human mind as well as hand is degraded to the office of a machine ; and while we can extend our production by the application of machinery, we find that progress is allayed by this mechanical character.

It is rather remarkable, but most consolatory, that a decided progress is to be observed in our agricultural appliances. This progress is tkm more notable in our own country, since, notwitli^ standing the necessity we have for mechanical aids in the use of a limited surface, the antiquated principles which still prevail in the tenure of land present formidable and sometimes insuperable obstructions to the use of improvements. It is, however, in the proportionate development of our agriculture lhat we are likely to find the great corrective for an unhealthy concentrated mechanical system, and for the undue reliance upon external trade. From the nature of things in agriculture, the patent principle is less potent than in manufactures ; while science is only eager to be accented by the practical agriculturists. How much might have been done in manufactures, if, instead of leaving the inventor to the poor protection of the patent law, the generous manufacturer had given him an open handed honorarium! Individuals might have reaped

less selfish advantage, but our collective progress would have been greater as compared with other countries, and our position would have

been safer

Meanwhile, we are far from presuming that the great Expositions, of which we have only had the second in Paris after the first in London, will he useless. We have had some foretaste of the result in the effect of agricultural shows. They have greatly stimulated the ambition as well as the self-interest of our agriculturists. It was in a species of honorary competition that fatness was cultivated to- its huge perfection, and that the nutritive qualities of particular kinds of feeding were brought to light. The pinguttude was overdone, and then a more discriminating sciencp corrected the mistake. The Meehis, the Huxtahles, and the Westerns, will always keep ahead of the farmers; hut the great body of farmers do follow, although at a distance. Manufacturing shows are likely to have the same effect, and to aid with other causes in opening the more generous impulses without which science flags and commerce is

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