shelter are now so much
more cheaply and abundantly procured than formerly? Sir, the main cause
I take to be the progress of scientific art, or a new extension of the
application of science to art. This it is which has so much
distinguished the last half-century in Europe and in America, and its
effects are everywhere visible, and especially among us. Man has found
new allies and auxiliaries in the powers of nature and in the inventions
of mechanism.

The general doctrine of political economy is, that wealth consists in
whatever is useful or convenient to man, and that labor is the producing
cause of all this wealth. This is very true. But, then, what is labor?
In the sense of political writers, and in common language, it means
human industry; in a philosophical view, it may receive a much more
comprehensive meaning. It is not, in that view, human toil only, the
mere action of thews and muscles; but it is any active agency which,
working upon the materials with which the world is supplied, brings
forth products useful or convenient to man. The materials of wealth are
in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.
Labor obtains these materials, works upon them, and fashions them to
human use. Now it has been the object of scientific art, or of the
application of science to art, to increase this active agency, to
augment its power, by creating millions of laborers in the form of
machines all but automatic, all to be diligently employed and kept at
work by the force of natural powers. To this end these natural powers,
principally those of steam and falling water, are subsidized and taken
into human employment. Spinning-machines, power-looms, and all the
mechanical devices, acting, among other operatives, in the factories and
workshops, are but so many laborers. They are usually denominated
labor-_saving_ machines, but it would be more just to call them
labor-_doing_ machines. They are made to be active agents; to have
motion, and to produce effect; and though without intelligence, they are
guided by laws of science, which are exact and perfect, and they produce
results, therefore, in general, more accurate than the human hand is
capable of producing. When we look upon one of these, we behold a mute
fellow-laborer, of immense power, of mathematical exactness, and of
ever-during and unwearied effort. And while he is thus a most skilful
and productive laborer, he is a non-consumer, at least beyond th