Part 14 (1/2)
Some may say that this is a case which does not apply to us; because we are free men, and cannot be compelled to perish, up to our necks in mud, upon a pittance of horse-beans, doled out by a tyrant. Exactly so. But what has made us free? Knowledge. Knowledge,--which, in raising the moral and intellectual character of every Englishman, has raised up barriers to oppression which no power can ever break down.
Knowledge,--which has set ingenious men thinking in every way how to increase the profitable labour of the nation, and therefore to increase the comforts of every man in the nation.
The people of England have gone on increasing very rapidly during the last fifty years; and the average length of life has also gone on increasing in the same remarkable manner. Men who have attended to subjects of political economy have always been desirous to procure accurate returns of the average duration of life at particular places, and they could pretty well estimate the condition of the people from these returns. Savages, it is well known, are not long livers; that is, although there may be a few old people, the majority of savages die very young. Why is this? Many of the savage nations that we know have much finer climates than our own; but then, on the other hand, they sustain privations which the poorest man amongst us never feels. Their supply of food is uncertain, they want clothing, they are badly sheltered from the weather, or not sheltered at all, they undergo very severe labour when they are labouring. From all these causes savages die young. Is it not reasonable, therefore, to infer that if in any particular country the average duration of life goes on increasing; that is, if fewer people, in a given number and a given time, die now than formerly, the condition of that people is improved; that they have more of the necessaries and comforts of life, and labour less severely to procure them? Now let us see how the people of England stand in this respect. The average mortality in a year about a century ago was reckoned to be one in thirty, and now it is one in forty-six. This result is, doubtless, produced in some degree by improvement in the science of medicine, and particularly by the use of vaccination. But making every allowance for these benefits, the fact furnishes the most undeniable truth, that the people of England are much better fed, clothed, and lodged than they were a century ago, and that the labour which they perform is far less severe.
The effect of continued violent bodily exertion upon the duration of life might be ill.u.s.trated by many instances; we shall mention one. The late Mr. Edgeworth, in his Memoirs, repeatedly speaks of a boatman whom he knew at Lyons, as an old man. ”His hair,” says Mr. Edgeworth, ”was grey, his face wrinkled, his back bent, and all his limbs and features had the appearance of those of a man of sixty; yet his real age was but twenty-seven years. He told me that he was the oldest boatman on the Rhone, that his younger brothers had been worn out before they were twenty-five years old; such were the effects of the hards.h.i.+ps to which they were subject from the nature of their employment.” That employment was, by intense bodily exertion, and with the daily chance of being upset, to pull a boat across one of the most rapid rivers in the world,--
”The swift and arrowy Rhone,”
as one of our poets calls it. How much happier would these boatmen have been during their lives, and how much longer would they have lived, could their labour have been relieved by some mechanical contrivance!
and without doubt, the same contrivance would have doubled the number of boatmen, by causing the pa.s.sage to be more used. As it was, they were few in number, they lived only a few years, and the only gratification of those few years was an inordinate stimulus of brandy. This is the case in all trades where immense efforts of bodily power are required.
The exertion itself wears out the people, and the dram, which gives a momentary impulse to the exertion, wears them out still more. The coal-heavers of London, healthy as they look, are but a short-lived people. The heavy loads which they carry, and the quant.i.ty of liquor which they drink, both together make sad havoc with them.
Violent bodily labour, in which the muscular power of the body is unequally applied, generally produces some peculiar disease. Nearly all the pressmen who were accustomed to print newspapers of a large size, by hand, were ruptured. The printing-machine now does the same description of work.
What is the effect upon the condition of pressmen generally by the introduction of the printing-machine to do the heaviest labour of printing? That the trade of a pressman is daily becoming one more of _skill_ than of _drudgery_. At the same time that the printing-machine was invented, one of the principles of that machine, that of inking the types with a roller instead of two large cus.h.i.+ons, called b.a.l.l.s, was introduced into hand-printing. The pressmen were delighted with this improvement. ”Ay,” said they, ”this saves our labour; we are relieved from the hard work of distributing the ink upon the b.a.l.l.s.” What the roller did for the individual pressman, the machine, which can only be beneficially applied to rapid and to very heavy printing, does for the great body of pressmen. It removes a certain portion of the drudgery, which degraded the occupation, and rendered it painful and injurious to health. We have seen two pressmen working a daily paper against time: it was always necessary, before the introduction of the machines, to put an immense quant.i.ty of bodily energy into the labour of working a newspaper, that it might be published at the proper hour. Time, in this case, was driving the pressman as fast as the rapid stream drove the boatman of the Rhone; and the speed with which they worked was killing them as quickly.
CHAPTER XX.
Influences of knowledge in the direction of labour and capital--Astronomy--Chronometer--Mariner's compa.s.s--Scientific travellers--New materials of manufactures--India-rubber--Gutta-percha--Palm-oil-- Geology--Inventions that diminish risk--Science raising up new employments--Electricity--Galvanism--Sun-light-- Mental labourers--Enlightened public sentiment.
Lord Bacon, the great master of practical wisdom, has said that ”the effort to extend the dominion of man over nature is the most healthy and most n.o.ble of all ambitions.” ”The empire of man,” he adds, ”over material things has for its only foundation the sciences and the arts.”[24] A great deal of the knowledge which const.i.tutes this dominion has been the property of society, handed down from the earliest ages. No one can tell, for instance, how the art of leavening bread was introduced amongst mankind; and yet this process, now so familiar to all, contributes as much, if not more, than any other art to the wholesome and agreeable preparation of our food. Leavening bread is a branch of chemistry, and, like that process, many other processes of chemistry have been the common property of civilized man from time immemorial. Within a few centuries, however, science has applied its discoveries to the perfection of the arts; and in proportion as capital has been at hand to encourage science, has the progress of the application been certain and rapid. The old Alchemists, or hunters after the philosopher's stone, sought to create capital by their discoveries.
They could not make gold, but they discovered certain principles which have done as much for the creation of utility in a few hundred years as the rude manual labour of all mankind during the same period. Let it not be supposed that we wish to depreciate manual labour. We only wish to show that labour is incomparably more prolific when directed by science. Mahomet Bey, the ruler of Tunis, was dethroned by his subjects.
He had the reputation of possessing the philosopher's stone, or the art of turning common metals into gold. The Dey of Algiers restored him to his throne upon condition that the secret should be communicated to him.
Mahomet, with great pomp and solemnity, sent the Dey of Algiers a plough. This was so far well. He intimated that to compel production by labour is to make a nation rich. But had he been able to transmit some of the science which now controls and guides the operations of the plough--the chemical knowledge which teaches the proper application of manures to soils--the rotation of crops introduced by the turnip-husbandry, which renders it unnecessary that the ground should ever be idle,--he would have gone farther towards communicating the real philosopher's stone.
The indirect influence, too, of a general advance in knowledge upon the particular advance of any branch of labour, is undeniable;--for the inquiring spirit of an age spreads itself on all sides, and improvement is carried into the most obscure recesses, the darkest c.h.i.n.ks and corners of a nation. It has been wisely and beautifully said, ”We cannot reasonably expect that a piece of woollen cloth will be wrought to perfection in a nation which is ignorant of astronomy, or where ethics are neglected.”[25] The positive influence of science in the direction of labour is chiefly exhibited in the operations of mechanics and chemistry applied to the arts, in the shape of machines for saving materials and labour, and of processes for attaining the same economy.
We have described the effects of some of these manifold inventions in the improvement of the condition both of producers and consumers. But there are many particulars in which knowledge has laboured, and is still labouring, for the advance of the physical and moral condition of us all, which may have escaped attention; because these labours operate remotely and indirectly, though not without the highest ultimate certainty and efficiency, in aiding the great business of production.
These are the influences of science upon labour, not so direct as the mechanical skill which has contrived the steam-engine, or so indirect as the operation of ethics upon the manufacture of a piece of woollen cloth; but which confer a certain and in some instances enormous benefit upon production, by the operation of causes which, upon a superficial view, appear to be only matters of laborious but unprofitable speculation. If we succeed in pointing out the extent and importance of those aids which production derives from the labours of men, who have not been ordinarily cla.s.sed amongst ”working men,” but who have been truly the hardest and most profitable workers which society has ever possessed, we shall show what an intimate union subsists amongst those cla.s.ses of society who appear the most separated, and that these men really labour with all others most effectually in the advancement of the great interests of mankind.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Harrison.]
When Hume thought that a nation would be behind in the manufacture of cloth that had not studied astronomy, he perhaps did not mean to go the length of saying, that the study of astronomy has a real influence in making cloth cheaper, in lessening the cost of production, and in therefore increasing the number of consumers. But look at the direct influence of astronomy upon navigation. A seaman, by the guidance of principles laid down by the great minds that have directed their mathematical powers to the study of astronomy--such minds as those of Newton and La Place--measures the moon's apparent distance from a particular star. He turns to a page in the 'Nautical Almanac,' and, by a calculation directed princ.i.p.ally by this table, can determine whereabout he is upon the broad ocean, although he may not have seen land for three months. Sir John Herschel, who unites to the greatest scientific reputation the rare desire to make the vast possessions of the world of science accessible to all, has given, in his 'Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy,' an instance of the accuracy of such lunar observations, in an account of a voyage of eight thousand miles, by Captain Basil Hall, who, without a single landmark during eighty-nine days, ran his s.h.i.+p into the harbour of Rio as accurately, and with as little deviation, as a coachman drives his stage into an inn-yard. But navigation not only depends upon lunar distances, but upon an instrument which shall keep perfect time under every change of temperature produced by variety of climate. That instrument is a chronometer. Every one who possesses a watch, however good, must have experienced the effects of heat or cold upon its accuracy, in making it go faster or slower--perhaps a minute in a week. Now if there were not an instrument that would measure time so exactly that between London and New York not a minute, or large fraction of a minute, would be lost or gained, the voyage would be one of difficulty and uncertainty. A Yorks.h.i.+re joiner, John Harrison, at the beginning of the last century, found out the principle of the chronometer, which consists in the union in the balance-spring of two metals, one which contracts under increased temperature, and one which expands; and on the contrary under diminished temperature. Harrison worked for fifty years at his discovery; and he obtained a parliamentary reward of 20,000_l._
[Ill.u.s.tration: Greenwich Observatory.]
The English chronometers are set by what is called Greenwich time. At the Greenwich Observatory a ball falls from a staff exactly at one o'clock; and by the application of electricity, a similar ball falls at the same instant at Charing Cross. The beautiful instruments that are constantly at work, and the laborious calculations which are daily proceeding, at the Observatory, are essentially necessary for the maintenance of a commerce that embraces the whole habitable globe.
But what has this, it may be said, to do with the price of clothing?
Exactly this: part of the price arises from the cost of transport. If there were no ”lunar distances” in the 'Nautical Almanac,' or chronometers, the voyage from New York to Liverpool might require three months instead of a fortnight. But go a step farther back in the influence of science upon navigation. There was a time when s.h.i.+ps could hardly venture to leave the sh.o.r.e. In the days of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, a merchant who went three times over sea with his own craft, was ent.i.tled to rank as a thegn, or n.o.bleman. Long after this early period of England's navigation, voyages across the Atlantic could never have been attempted. That was before the invention of the mariner's compa.s.s; but even after that invention, when astronomy was not scientifically applied to navigation, long voyages were considered in the highest degree dangerous. The crews both of Vasco de Gama, who discovered the pa.s.sage to India, and of Columbus, princ.i.p.ally consisted of criminals, who were pardoned on condition of undertaking a service of such peril. The discovery of magnetism, however, changed the whole principle of navigation, and raised seamans.h.i.+p to a science. If the mariner's compa.s.s had not been invented, America could never have been discovered; and if America, and the pa.s.sage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, had never been discovered, cotton would never have been brought to England; and if cotton had never been brought to England, we should have been as badly off for clothing as the people of the middle ages, and the million of working men and women, manufacturers of cotton, and dealers in cotton goods, would have been without employment.
Astronomy, therefore, and navigation, both sciences the results of long ages of patient inquiry, have opened a communication between the uttermost ends of the earth; and therefore have had a slow, but certain effect upon the production of wealth, and the consequent diffusion of all the necessaries, comforts, and conveniences of civilized life. The connexion between manufactures and science, practical commerce and abstract speculation, is so intimate that it might be traced in a thousand striking instances. Columbus, the discoverer of America, satisfied his mind that the earth was round; and when he had got this abstract idea firmly in his head, he next became satisfied that he should find a new continent by sailing in a westerly course. The abstract notion which filled the mind of Columbus that the earth was a sphere, ultimately changed the condition of every living being in the Old World that then existed, or has since existed. In the year 1488, the first geographical maps and charts that had been seen in England were brought hither by the brother of Christopher Columbus. If these maps had not been constructed by the unceasing labours of men in their closets, Columbus would never have thought of discovering ”the unknown land”
which occupied his whole soul. If the scanty knowledge of geography which existed in the time of Columbus had not received immense additions from the subsequent labours of other students of geography, England would not have twenty-seven thousand merchant s.h.i.+ps ready to trade wherever men have anything to exchange,--that is, wherever men are enabled to give of their abundance for our abundance, each being immensely benefited by the intercourse. A map now appears a common thing, but it is impossible to overrate the extent of the acc.u.mulated observations that go to make up a map. An almanac seems a common thing, but it is impossible to overrate the prodigious acc.u.mulations of science that go to make up an almanac. With these acc.u.mulations, it is now no very difficult matter to construct a map or an almanac. But if society could be deprived of the acc.u.mulations, and we had to re-create and remodel everything for the formation of our map and our almanac, it would perhaps require many centuries before these acc.u.mulations could be built up again; and all the arts of life would go backward, for want of the guidance of the principles of which the map and the almanac are the interpreters for popular use.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Linnaeus in his Lapland dress.]
There never was a time when man had so complete possession of the planet which he inhabits as the present. Much of the globe has yet to be explored; but how much is familiar to us that was comparatively unknown even at the beginning of the present century. How thoroughly during that period have we acclimated many of the plants of distant lands, which are now the common beauties of our gardens and greenhouses. There are thousands of timber-trees coming to rapid maturity in our parks and pleasure-grounds which thirty years ago grew only in the solitudes of California and Australia. One enterprising man, James Douglas, whose father was a working mason at Scone, bestowed upon this country, about twenty-five years ago, two hundred new species of plants which are now of common culture, and he gave us a tree of the pine-tribe, called after his name, which will in all probability become one of the most valuable of our timbers, from its strength, its rapid growth, and its enormous size. What impelled James Douglas, and hundreds of other travellers of a similar character, to encounter the perils of travel in desert regions, but the abstract love of science, which made them naturalists in their closets before they were explorers and discoverers? We are familiar with the name of Linnaeus, and the Linnean system of botany; and some may think that this great naturalist was not doing much for knowledge when he cla.s.sified and arranged what we call the vegetable kingdom. When very young, Linnaeus underwent many hards.h.i.+ps in travelling through Lapland, in search of plants. So far, some may say, he was well employed. He was equally well employed when he made such an inventory, to use a familiar term, of all the known plants of his time, as would enable succeeding naturalists to know a distinct species from an accidental variety, and to give a precision to all future botanical investigation. Other naturalists have produced other systems, which may be more simple and convenient; but the impulse which Linnaeus gave to botanical discovery, and thence to the increase of the vegetable wealth of Europe, can never be too highly appreciated.