When machinery is applied to the production of commodities which are not intended, directly or indirectly, for the use oflabourers, it occasions no alteration in the general rate of wages; -- I say the general rate of wages; because it may diminishthe rate of wages in some employments, -- a diminution. always compensated by a corresponding increase in some others. Iwas shown at Birmingham a small screw, which, in the manufacture of corkscrews, performed the work of fifty-nine men;with its assistance one man could cut a spiral groove in as many corkscrew shanks as sixty men could have cut in the sametime with the tools previously in use. As the use of corkscrews is limited, it .is not probable that the demand for them hassufficiently increased to enable the whole number of labourers previously employed in their manufacture, to remain soemployed after such an increase in their productive power. Some of the corkscrew-makers, therefore, must have beenthrown out of work, and the rate of wages in that trade probably fell. But as the whole fund for the maintenance oflabourers, and the whole number of labourers to be maintained, remained unaltered, that fall must have been balanced by arise somewhere else -- a rise which we may trace to its proximate cause, by recollecting that the fall in the price ofcorkscrews must have left every purchaser of a corkscrew a fund for the purchase of labour, rather larger than he wouldhave possessed if he had paid the former price.
If, however, machinery be applied to the production of any commodity used by the labouring population, the general rateof wages will rise. That it cannot fall is clear, on the grounds which I have just stated. If the improvement be great, and thecommodity not subject to a corresponding increase of demand, some of the labourers formerly employed in its productionwill be thrown out of employment, and wages, in that trade, will fall -- a fall which, as the whole fund for the maintenanceof labour is not diminished, must be met by a corresponding rise in some other trade. But the fund will be increased by theadditional quantity produced of the commodity to which the improvement has been applied: estimated in that commodity,therefore, the general rate of wages, or, in other words, the quantity of commodities obtained by the labouring population,will be increased by the introduction of machinery; estimated in all others, it will be stationary.
The example taken from the manufacture of corkscrews is as unfavourable to the effects of machinery as can be proposed;for the use of the commodity is supposed to be unable to keep up with the increased production, and the whole number oflabourers employed on it is, consequently, diminished. This, however, is a very rare occurrence. The usual effect of anincrease in the facility of producing a commodity is so to increase its consumption as to occasion the employment of more,not less, labour than before.
I have already called your attention to the effects of machinery in the manufacture of cotton and in printing. Each of thesetrades probably employs ten times as many labourers as it would have employed if spinning-jennies and types had not beeninvented. Under such circumstances (and they are the usual ones), the benefits of machinery are not alloyed by even partialinconvenience.
Fifthly . Closely connected with this mistake, and occasioned by the same habit of attending only to what is temporary andpartial, and neglecting what is permanent and general; of dwelling on the evil that is concentrated, and being insensible ofthe benefit that is diffused, is the common error of supposing that the general rate of wages can be reduced by theimportation of foreign commodities. In fact the opening of a new market is precisely analogous to the introduction of anew machine, except that it is a machine which it costs nothing to construct or to keep up. If the foreign commodity be notconsumed by the labouring population, its introduction leaves the general rate of wages unaffected; if it be used by them,their wages are raised as estimated in that commodity. If the absurd laws which favour the wines of Portugal to theexclusion of those of France were repealed, more labourers would be employed in producing commodities for the Frenchmarket, and fewer for the Portuguese. Wages would temporarily fall in the one trade, and rise in the other. The clearbenefit would be derived by the drinkers of wine, who, at the same expense, would obtain more and better wine. So if whatarc called the protecting duties on French silks were removed, fewer labourers would be employed in the direct productionof silk, and more in its indirect production, by the production of the cottons, or hardware, with which it would bepurchased. The wearers of silk would be the only class ultimately benefited; and as the labouting population neither wearsilk nor drink wine, the general rate of wages would, in both cases, remain unaltered. But if the laws which prohibit ourobtaining on the most advantageous terms tea, and sugar, and corn, were altered, that portion of the. fund for themaintenance of labour, which consists of corn, sugar, and tea, would be increased. And the general rate of wages, asestimated in the three most important articles of food, would be raised.
