What Machinery Has Done for the World.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 65, 30 August 1884, Page 5

What Machinery Has Done for the World.

The timo was not long ago when by a large class 1 of people engaged in the various branches of handicraft, machinery was looked upon as the natural enemy of labour, and its introduction denounced and opposed at every point as a ruinous innovation upon the rights and interests of the latter. But time and experience have to a great extent corrected this popular error, even in the minds of those Avhose former occupations have been destroyed or changed by it, and now labour-saving machinery has come to be universally regarded in its true relations to society, and as the best friend and benefactor to the human race. The prejudices and scepticism a\ Inch assailed it at every .step and stage of its growth have at length passed away ; all of us are now ready to acknowledge that it lias done more to increase the sum of human happiness, and to build up those great industries which lie at the base of modern civilization, than all other agencies together. The discovery of the steam-engine was, of course, the great test and the most far-reaching in its results of any of those inventions which have substituted machinework for manual labour. The enormous power thus generated and applied to the simple pioce;*s of turning a crank has set in motion hundreds and thousands of other machines whose ollice is to do more cheaply and expeditiously, as well as more skilfully in many cases, the work which human hands were formerly wont to slowly and painfully accomplish. Thus have the Utopian dreams oi the enthusiasts of past generations been realized, the best reoults of scientific investigation and discovery reduced to practice, a new realm of art created and opened up to the working man as well as the scholar, and commodities which from their high cost and difficult manufacture were once considered articles of luxury or curiosity are now placed within reach of all. J3y cheapening and facilitating the various processes of production, the use of machinery has vastly stimulated the consumption of both the necessaries and comforts of life. At the same time, this increased consumption has reacted upon production, enlarging the sphere of all branches of industry, and creating new and higher fields for the employment of skilled labour. In these new fields the working man has found full compensation for those from which he has been driven by the tireless muscles of steel, and the nimble, perpetually moving figures of wood, brass or iron. And what a relief is this to the weary, toiling masses, who have been accustomed to work out the most insignificant results in productive industry at a vast expenditure of time and labour. How often the strongest and most persevering would involuntarily shrink from a task to the performance of which must be brought an almost superhuman degree of patience and endurance. Now all this is changed, and the brains and vigilance of the man only are taxed in the way of supervision, while the machine is busy in doing the hard work which once devolved upon the former. This is as it should be, and further progress is to be made in the same dh'ection for the emancipation of the human race from mere physical toil and drudgery. At the same time labour is to be educated and elevated, and its rewards scalo 1 up to a point which "will bring it in closer relations and sympathy with capital. — "Australasian Machinery Market."