Whitworths, and Fairbairns, but the
free industry of this country? If you can build three times more
steam-engines than any other country, and have threefold the force of
mechanics, to whom and to what do you owe that, but to the men who have
trained them, and to those principles of commerce out of which the
wealth of the country has grown? We who have some hand in doing that,
are not ignorant that we have been and are increasing the strength of
the country in proportion as we are raising up skilled artisans." [9]

The reader who has followed us up to this point will have observed that
handicraft labour was the first stage of the development of human
power, and that machinery has been its last and highest. The
uncivilized man began with a stone for a hammer, and a splinter of
flint for a chisel, each stage of his progress being marked by an
improvement in his tools. Every machine calculated to save labour or
increase production was a substantial addition to his power over the
material resources of nature, enabling him to subjugate them more
effectually to his wants and uses; and every extension of machinery has
served to introduce new classes of the population to the enjoyment of
its benefits. In early times the products of skilled industry were for
the most part luxuries intended for the few, whereas now the most
exquisite tools and engines are employed in producing articles of
ordinary consumption for the great mass of the community. Machines
with millions of fingers work for millions of purchasers--for the poor
as well as the rich; and while the machinery thus used enriches its
owners, it no less enriches the public with its products.

Much of the progress to which we have adverted has been the result of
the skill and industry of our own time. "Indeed," says Mr. Fairbairn,
"the mechanical operations of the present day could not have been
accomplished at any cost thirty years ago; and what was then considered
impossible is now performed with an exactitude that never fails to
accomplish the end in view." For this we are mainly indebted to the
almost creative power of modern machine-tools, and the facilities which
they present for the production and reproduction of other machines. We
also owe much to the mechanical agencies employed to drive them. Early
inventors yoked wind and water to sails and wheels, and made them work
machinery of various kinds; but modern inventors have availed
themselves of the far more