As the year advanced, and the harvest approached, it would be discovered that not one-tenth of the land was sown: for although the ploughs were gone, because the horses were turned off, and there was plenty of labour for those who chose to labour for its own sake, or at the price of horse-labour, this amazing employment for human hands, somehow or other, would not quite answer the purpose. It has been calculated that the power of horses, oxen, &c., employed in husbandry in Great Britain is ten times the amount of human power. If the human power insisted upon doing all the work with the worst tools, the certainty is that not even one-tenth of the land could be cultivated. Where, then, would all this madness end? In the starvation of the labourers themselves, even if they were allowed to eat up all they had produced by such imperfect means. They would be just in the condition of any other barbarous people, that were ignorant of the inventions that constitute the power of civilization. They would eat up the little corn which they raised themselves, and have nothing to give in exchange for clothes, and coals, and candles, and soap, and tea, and sugar, and all the many comforts which those who are even the worst off are not wholly deprived of.
All this may appear as an extreme statement; and certainly we believe that no such evils could have happened: for if the laws had been passive, the most ignorant of the labourers themselves would, if they had proceeded to carry their own principle much farther than they had done, see in their very excesses the real character of the folly and wickedness to which it had led, and would lead them. Why should the labourers of Aylesbury not have destroyed the harrows as well as the drills? Why leave a machine which separates the clods of the earth, and break one which puts seed into it? Why deliberate about a horse-churn, when they were resolved against a winnowing-machine? The truth is, these poor men perceived, even in the midst of their excesses, the gross deception of the reasons which induced them to commit them. Their motive was a natural, and, if lawfully expressed, a proper impatience, under a condition which had certainly many hardships, and those hardships in great part produced by the want of profitable labour. But in imputing those hardships to machinery, they were at once embarrassed when they came to draw distinctions between one sort of machine and another. This embarrassment decidedly shows that there were fearful mistakes at the bottom of their furious hostility to machinery.
It has been said, by persons whose opinions are worthy attention, that spade-husbandry is, in some cases, better than plough-husbandry;—that is, that the earth, under particular circumstances of soil and situation, may be more fitly prepared for the influences of the atmosphere by digging than by ploughing. It is not our business to enter into a consideration of this question. The growth of corn is a manufacture, in which man employs the chemical properties of the soil and of the air in conjunction with his own labour, aided by certain tools or machines, for the production of a crop; and that power, whether of chemistry or machinery,—whether of the salt, or the chalk, or the dung, or the guano, which he puts upon the earth, or the spade or the plough which he puts into it,—that power which does the work easiest is necessarily the best, because it diminishes the cost of production. If the plough does not do the work so well as the spade, it is a less perfect machine; but the less perfect machine may be preferred to the more perfect, because, taking other conditions into consideration, it is a cheaper machine. If the spade, applied in a peculiar manner by the strength and judgment of the man using it, more completely turns up the soil, breaks the clods, and removes the weeds than the plough, which receives one uniform direction from man with the assistance of other animal power, then the spade is a more perfect machine in its combination with human labour than the plough is, worked with a lesser degree of the same combination. But still it may be a machine which cannot be used with advantage to the producer, and is therefore not desirable for the consumer. All such questions must be determined by the cost of production; and that cost in agriculture is made up of the rent of land, the profit of capital, and the wages of labour—or the portions of the produce belonging to the landlord, the farmer, and the labourer. Where rent is high, as in the immediate neighbourhood of large towns, it is important to have the labour performed as carefully as possible, and the succession of crops stimulated to the utmost extent by manure and labour. It is economy to turn the soil to the greatest account, and the land is cultivated as a garden. Where rent is low, it is important to have the labour performed upon other principles, because one acre cultivated by hand may cost more than two cultivated by the plough; and though it may be the truest policy to carry the productiveness of the earth as far as possible, field cultivation and garden cultivation must have essential differences. In one case, the machine called a spade is used; in the other, the machine called a plough is employed. The use of the one or the other belongs to practical agriculture, and is a question only of relative cost.
Centre of gravity
And this brings us to the great principle of all machinery. A tool of the simplest construction is a machine; a machine of the most curious construction is only a complicated tool. There are many cases in the arts, and there may be cases in agriculture, in which the human arm and hand, with or without a tool, may do work that no machine can so well perform. There are processes in polishing, and there is a process in copper-plate printing, in which no substance has been found to stand in the place of the human hand. And, if therefore the man with a spade alone does a certain agricultural work more completely than a man guiding a plough, and a team of horses dragging it (which we do not affirm or deny), the only reason for this is, that the man with the spade is a better machine than the man with the plough and the horses. The most stupid man that ever existed is, beyond all comparison, a machine more cunningly made by the hands of his Creator, more perfect in all his several parts, and with all his parts more exquisitely adapted to the regulated movement of the whole body, less liable to accidents, and less injured by wear and tear, than the most beautiful machine that ever was, or ever will be, invented. There is no possibility of supplying in many cases a substitute for the simplest movements of a man's body, by the most complicated movements of the most ingenious machinery. The laws of mechanism are the same whether applied to a man, or to a lever, or a wheel; but the man has more pliability than any combination of wheels and levers. "When a porter carries a burden, the attitude of the body must accommodate itself to the position of the common centre of gravity of himself and his load. Thus, in the accompanying figures it will be observed that when the man stands upright the centre of gravity of the man G falls within the base of support; and if his load L falls without the base, as does likewise g, the common centre of gravity of the man and load, the consequence would be that he would fall backwards; but this is prevented, or, which is the same thing, the point g is brought within the base by the man bending his body forward."[15] What is called the lay figure of the painter—a wooden image with many joints—may be bent here and there; but the artist who wanted to draw a porter with a load could not put a hundredweight upon the back of his image and keep it upon its legs. The natural machinery by which a man even lifts his hand to his head is at once so complex and so simple, so apparently easy and yet so entirely dependent upon the right adjustment of a great many contrary forces, that no automaton, or machine imitating the actions of man, could ever be made to effect this seemingly simple motion, without showing that the contrivance was imperfect,—that it was a mere imitation, and a very clumsy one. What an easy thing it appears to be for a farming man to thrash his corn with a flail; and yet what an expensive arrangement of wheels is necessary to produce the same effects with a thrashing-machine! The truth is, that the man's arm and the flail form a much more curious machine than the other machine of wheels, which does the same work; and the real question as regards the value of the two machines is, which machine in the greater degree lessens the cost of production?
We state this principle broadly, in our examination into the value of machinery in diminishing the cost of producing human food. A machine is not perfect because it is made of wheels or cylinders, employs the power of the screw or the lever, is driven by wind or water or steam, but because it best assists the labour of man, by calling into action some power which he does not possess in himself. If we could imagine a man entirely dispossessed of this power, we should see the feeblest of animal beings. He has no tools which are a part of himself, to build houses like the beaver, or cells like the bee. He has not even learnt from nature to build, instinctively, by certain and unchangeable rules. His power is in his mind; and that mind teaches him to subject all the physical world to his dominion, by availing himself of the forces which nature has spread around him. To act upon material objects he arms his weakness with tools and with machines. As we have before said, tools and machines are in principle the same. When we strike a nail upon the head with a hammer, we avail ourselves of a power which we find in nature—the effect produced by the concussion of two bodies; when we employ a water-wheel to beat out a lump of iron with a much larger hammer, we still avail ourselves of the same power. There is no difference in the nature of the instruments, although we call the one a tool, and the other a machine. Neither the tool nor the machine has any force of itself. In one case the force is in the arm, in the other in the weight of water which turns the wheel. The distinctions which have been taken between a tool and a machine are really so trivial, and the line of separation between the one and the other is so slight, that we can only speak of both as common instruments for adding to the efficiency of labour. The simplest application of a principle of mechanics to an every-day hand-tool may convert it into what is called a machine. Take a three-pronged fork—one of the universal tools;—fasten a rope to the end of the handle; put a log under the fork as a fulcrum; and we have a lever, when pulled down by the rope, which will grub up a strongly-rooted large shrub in a few minutes. The labourer has called in a powerful ally. The tool has become a machine.
