Henceforth it is apparent that of man, the worker, the skill and the slight, no more the sinews and the sweat, are to be called into requisition; that the head, and not the hand, is to be the chief instrument; that the intellectual and no longer the physical forces are to predominate, even in the merest labor.
To direct, not to wield, the power is henceforth to be the principal duty of the mechanic, even of the lowest grade; and in no respect is the progression, set in movement by the progress of science, more real than in this—that increased intelligence, increased capacity of comprehension, increased application to study, is hourly becoming more and more essential to the working-man of the present and the coming ages.
To be as strong as an elephant and as patient as a camel, with an average intelligence inferior probably to that of either animal, will no longer suffice to the swart smith, who now wields, by simple direction of a small spring or tiny lever, forces ten thousand times superior to any power that could be effected by the mightiest of sledge-hammers swung by the brawniest of human arms.
It is worthy of note, that at all periods, from the first introduction of labor-saving machinery, fears have been entertained, even by scientific men and political economists of high order, that the vast increase of working power would exert an injurious influence against the human worker; as if production were about to outrun demand and consumption, so that there would not in the end be enough of labor to be done to employ those seeking to exercise their industry or ingenuity, and depending on that exercise for the support of themselves and their families. Panics have, moreover, arisen among the workmen of the manufacturing classes, as if the machinery were about to rob them of their daily labor, whence their daily bread; and the consequences have been, especially in the large English manufacturing towns, fearful riots, conflagrations of mills and factories, destruction of much valuable machinery, the ruin of owners and employers, and—as a natural consequence of the cause last named—stagnation in business, deterioration of the laborer’s condition, and actual loss of life.
Now, it is not to be denied that on the first introduction into any factory, or class of factories, of any new labor-saving machine, by which perhaps one man is enabled to perform the work of a dozen or twenty, a large number of hands must necessarily be thrown out of work, and more or less immediate distress arise therefrom; neither is it to be admired, or held as an especial wonder, that poor men, ignorant of the operation of great principles, suffering the extremes of poverty, smarting under the idea that their right to be employed and to earn is superseded and usurped forever by the twin colossi, capital and machinery, and goaded to frenzy by the gross folly of socialist editors and journalists, should attempt to abate, what they naturally esteem dangerous and aggressive nuisances, by physical violence.
But it is certain that they do so wrongfully as regards theoretical rights, wrongfully as regards general principles and the general good, and not least wrongfully as regards their own particular welfare.
For not only is it manifestly unjust that the great mass of mankind, as consumers, throughout the universe, should be deprived of the incalculable benefit of increased supplies of necessaries at decreased prices, in order to advance the interests of a certain class of producers—not only is it manifestly absurd to dream of a return to first principles, either in arts, manufacture or science, to fancy that, once invented, elaborated and rendered public, labor-saving machinery can be abolished and thrown into compulsory disuse—but it can be shown, evidently enough, that the condition of the mechanical and manufacturing laborer is in fact improved, not deteriorated, by every successive step gained in saving labor and lowering the prices of production by the agency of machines.
Their intellectual capacity is improved; their powers of production are increased, in a much more rapid progression than their prices are lowered; and, above all, so infinitely and incalculably is the consumption of products augmented, in excess of the decrease of money values, that, the demand increasing in a ratio far greater than any arithmetical progression, the call for laborers, the increased prices of the entire production, and the command of wages by ability, skill and intellect, increase pari passu. Nor is this all; for it cannot be denied that the mechanic, the artisan and the manufacturer must necessarily rise in position, in self-respect, in social esteem, and in the natural scale of humanity, as a higher range of qualifications are required of him, and as he is compelled to advance in his own attainments and capacities, in order to keep up with the advances of the age and nation.
This is the true solution of the great problem of the laboring classes, their prospects and their condition; and this is the true reply to all the imbecile jargon of the pseudo-philosophical socialists of the French school, concerning the nobility of manual labor, and the equality, or I believe, superiority of the hand-worker to the head-worker; of the delver, the ditcher, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, to the thinker, the inventor, the creator—or in other words, of the equality, or superiority, accordingly as it may be claimed, of mere physical force, unguided by any thing of judgment or intellect, to the highest cultivation of the thinking powers, to the completest development of the loftiest human capabilities, to the largest expansion of those qualities in which, after the affections, we approximate the nearest to divinity. But there is no such thing, nor ever will be. There is no nobility, whatsoever, in the mere act and exercise of bodily labor, or even of patient industry—although in the causes, which stimulate to that exertion and lend endurance to that industry, there may be much of the very noblest.
There is, in the nature of things, no possible show of equality, much less of superiority, as between physical and intellectual ability, between the head-worker and the hand-worker; because, in the latter, the utmost powers that man can put forward are as the toils of a pigmy, a mere Lilliputian, to the enormous forces of the elephant or of the camel; while in the former, the genius of the man, and the grasp of his mental attainments, are a little lower only than those of the angels; and these are hourly making progress toward that perfectionment which never will be attained in this world; whereas, in those there has been no increase, but probably the reverse, from the days of the patriarchs to the present hour.