Why does our friend go back only to the Hand-Press to exhibit the disastrous effects of Machinery on the interests of Labor? The hand-press itself is a labor-saving machine of immense capacity—far more so in its day than the power-press which is now extensively superseding it. It threw wholly out of employment and reduced to absolute destitution thousands upon thousands of skillful, accurate, admirable penmen, who had given the best years of their lives to acquire skill in a profession, or pursuit, which the press almost extirpated. To be at all consistent, “H.” must demand, not the destruction of the power-press only, but of all printing or copying presses whatever.
“Ah! but then there could be no newspapers?”—Nay; that does not follow. Kossuth’s first gazette was not printed, but a carefully prepared abstract of the sayings and doings of the Hungarian Diet, whereof copies were made by scribes for general diffusion. There have been many such instances of unprinted journals.
“Well; there could be no such journals as we now have.” No, nor could there be without the power-press. We could not afford such a paper as The Tribune now is for four times its present price, if we were obliged to print it on hand-presses; in fact, no such paper could be supported at all.
The subsisting truth, then, must be accepted and looked fairly in the face. The mountain will not come to Mahomet; he must go to the mountain. The existence and rapid progress of Machinery is a fact which cannot be set aside; the world will not, cannot go backward: Machinery cannot be destroyed; it cannot even be held where it is, but must move onward to further and vaster triumphs. We may deplore this, but cannot prevent it.”
The perusal of this article would have determined us, had we not been resolved beforehand, to lay before our readers an account of the very remarkable works to which we have before alluded, by the proprietors of which the machinery mentioned in the letter of “the thoughtful laborer” was of course manufactured, as by them it was invented; being no other than the great eight-cylinder, type-revolving, fast-printing press. Similar machines, though varying in the number of cylinders, are employed by the New York Herald and Tribune, the eight-cylinder being used by the Sun, the Philadelphia Ledger, and other journals in the United States, as also by the Parisian La Patrie, the quasi organ of the present Prince President, and, according to present appearances, future Emperor of the French.
These works are in truth one of the most remarkable sights, if not the most worthy of remark, of all that are shown to strangers in New York—and yet to how few are they shown. The changes to which they have already given birth are great enough, even now,
“To overcome us like a summer cloud,”
but the end of those changes is not yet, nor shall be, while we are. What they shall be, we may not even conjecture—perhaps the civilization, the christianizing of the world entire, and the reduction of all tongues and dialects to one universal English language.