f some established craft. Especially was this the case with
machines, which are but tools of a more complete though complicated
kind than those above described.

Take, for instance, the case of the Saw. The tedious drudgery of
dividing timber by the old fashioned hand-saw is well known. To avoid
it, some ingenious person suggested that a number of saws should be
fixed to a frame in a mill, so contrived as to work with a
reciprocating motion, upwards and downwards, or backwards and forwards,
and that this frame so mounted should be yoked to the mill wheel, and
the saws driven by the power of wind or water. The plan was tried,
and, as may readily be imagined, the amount of effective work done by
this machine-saw was immense, compared with the tedious process of
sawing by hand.

It will be observed, however, that the new method must have seriously
interfered with the labour of the hand-sawyers; and it was but natural
that they should regard the establishment of the saw-mills with
suspicion and hostility. Hence a long period elapsed before the
hand-sawyers would permit the new machinery to be set up and worked.
The first saw-mill in England was erected by a Dutchman, near London,
in 1663, but was shortly abandoned in consequence of the determined
hostility of the workmen. More than a century passed before a second
saw-mill was set up; when, in 1767, Mr. John Houghton, a London
timber-merchant, by the desire and with the approbation of the Society
of Arts, erected one at Limehouse, to be driven by wind. The work was
directed by one James Stansfield, who had gone over to Holland for the
purpose of learning the art of constructing and managing the sawing
machinery. But the mill was no sooner erected than a mob assembled and
razed it to the ground. The principal rioters having been punished,
and the loss to the proprietor having been made good by the nation, a
new mill was shortly after built, and it was suffered to work without
further molestation.

Improved methods of manufacture have usually had to encounter the same
kind of opposition. Thus, when the Flemish weavers came over to
England in the seventeenth century, bringing with them their skill and
their industry, they excited great jealousy and hostility amongst the
native workmen. Their competition as workmen was resented as an
injury, but their improved machinery was regarded as a far greater
source of mischief. In a memorial presented to the king in 1621