Part 16 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: Cowper's machine.]
But there are many hundred copies to be despatched by the morning mails.
Manchester and Glasgow would be frightened from their propriety, if the daily London papers did not arrive at the accustomed hour. The London merchant, banker, lawyer, would go unwillingly to his morning labour, if he had not had one pa.s.sing glance at the division in the House, the state of the money-market, the last foreign intelligence. Late as the paper may have been in its mental completion, Manchester, Glasgow, and London will not be kept without that illumination which has become almost as necessary as sunlight. Machinery has been created by the demand, to carry the demand farther than the warmest imagination could have antic.i.p.ated. In 1814, Koenig, a German, erected the first printing-machine at the ”Times Office,” and produced eighteen hundred impressions an hour on one side. The machine superseded the duplicates of the type which were once necessary, painfully and laboriously to keep up a small supply, worked by men, with relays, at the rate of five hundred an hour. In 1818 Edward Cowper produced his cylinder-machine, which effected a revolution in the commerce of books; and, in connexion with the paper-machine, enabled the principle of cheapness to contend against an impolitic and oppressive tax. This is still the machine in general use for many newspapers and much book-printing. We will briefly describe the operation of printing a sheet of paper on both sides by this instrument.
Upon the solid steel table at each end of the machine lie the pages which print one side of the sheet. At the top of the machine, where the laying-on boy stands, is a heap of wet paper. The signal being given by the director of the work, the laying-on boy turns a small handle, and the moving-power of the strap connected with a steam-engine is immediately communicated. Some ten or twenty spoiled sheets are first pa.s.sed over the types to remove any dirt or moisture. If the director is satisfied, the boy begins to lay on the white paper. He places the sheet upon a flat table before him, with its edge ready to be seized by the apparatus for conveying it upon the drum. At the first movement of the great wheel, the inking-apparatus at each end has been set in motion.
The steel cylinder attached to the reservoir of ink has begun slowly to move,--the ”doctor,” or more properly ”ductor,” has risen to touch that cylinder for an instant, and thus receive a supply of ink,--the inking-table has pa.s.sed under the ”doctor” and carried off that supply,--and the distributing-rollers have spread it equally over the surface of the table. This surface, having pa.s.sed under the inking-rollers, communicates the supply to them; and they in turn impart it to the _form_ which is to be printed. All these beautiful operations are accomplished in the sixteenth part of a minute, by the travelling backward and forward of the carriage or table upon which the _form_ rests. Each roller revolves upon an axis which is fixed. At the moment when the _form_ at the back of the machine is pa.s.sing under the inking-roller, the sheet, which the boy has carefully laid upon the table before him, is caught in the web-roller and conveyed to the endless bands or tapes which pa.s.s it over the first impressing cylinder. It is here seized tightly by the bands, which fall between the pages and on the outer margin. The moment after the sheet is seized upon the first cylinder, the _form_ pa.s.ses under that cylinder, and the paper being brought in contact with it receives an impression on one side. To give the impression on the other side the sheet is to be turned over, and this is effected by the two drums in the centre of the machine. The endless tapes never lose their grasp of the sheet, although they allow it to be reversed. While the impression has been given by the first cylinder, the second _form_ of types at the other end of the table has been inked. The drums have conveyed the sheet during this inking upon the second cylinder; it is brought in contact with the types, and the operation is complete.
Koenig's machine, which was a very complicated instrument, was supplanted at the '_Times_' office by a modification of Applegath's and Cowper's machine, which printed four thousand sheets an hour on one side. But that has been superseded by a vertical machine, which prints ten thousand copies an hour, on one side. The separate columns of type are fixed on a large type-drum, two hundred inches in circ.u.mference. The drum is surrounded by eight impressing cylinders; the ink is applied to the surface of the type by rollers which work between these cylinders; and the sheets are laid on upon eight tables, (_h_, _h_, _h_,) which, by a most ingenious mechanism, carry each sheet to a point where its position is suddenly changed, and it is impressed between the type and the cylinder; the paper being then suspended by tapes, from which it is released as it pa.s.ses forward, to be laid upon the heap which will be scattered, in a few hours, to every corner of the kingdom.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Times Printing-Machine.]
The printing machines, which have been in full operation for little more than twenty years, have called into action an amount of employment which was almost wholly unknown when knowledge was for the few. Paper-makers, type-founders, wood-engravers, bookbinders, booksellers, have been raised up by this extension of the art of printing, in numbers which far exceed those of any former period.
But the printing machine would have worked feebly and imperfectly without the paper machine. That most complete invention has not only cheapened paper itself, but it has cheapened the subsequent operations of printing, in a remarkable degree. It has enabled one revolution of the cylinder of the printing machine to produce four sheets instead of one, or a surface of print equal to four sheets. When paper was altogether made by hand, the usual paper for books was called demy; and a sheet of demy produced sixteen octavo pages of a book. The paper could not have been economically made larger by hand. A sheet of paper equal to four sheets of demy is now worked at the newspaper machine; and sixty-four pages of an octavo book might be so worked, if it were needful for cheapening production. Double demy is constantly worked for books. Thus, one economical arrangement of science produces another contrivance; and machines in one direction combine with machines having a different object, to produce legitimate cheapness, injurious to no one, but beneficial to all.
Let us attempt to convey a notion of the beautiful operations of the paper-machine.
In the whole range of machinery, there is, perhaps, no series of contrivances which so forcibly address themselves to the senses. There is nothing mysterious in the operation; we at once see the beginning and the end of it. At one extremity of the long range of wheels and cylinders we are shown a stream of pulp, not thicker than milk and water, flowing over a moving plane; at the other extremity the same stream has not only become perfectly solid, but is wound upon a reel in the form of hard and smooth paper. This is, at first sight, as miraculous as any of the fancies of an Arabian tale. Aladdin's wonderful lamp, by which a palace was built in a night, did not in truth produce more extraordinary effects than science has done with the paper-machine.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Paper-making by Hand.]
At one extremity of the machine is a chest, full of stuff or pulp. We mount the steps by its side, and see a long beam rolling incessantly round this capacious vessel, and thus keeping the fibres of linen, which look like snow flakes, perpetually moving, and consequently equally suspended, in the water. At the bottom of the chest, and above the vat, there is a c.o.c.k through which we observe a continuous stream of pulp flowing into the vat; which is, always, therefore, filled to a certain height. From the upper to the lower part of this vat a portion of the pulp flows upon a narrow wire frame, which constantly jumps up and down with a noise resembling a cherry-clack. Having pa.s.sed through the sifter, the pulp flows still onward to a ledge, over which it falls in a regular stream, like a sheet of water over a smooth dam. Here we see it caught upon a plane, which presents an uninterrupted surface of five or six feet, upon which the pulp seems evenly spread, as a napkin upon a table. A more accurate inspection shows us that this plane is constantly moving onwards with a gradual pace; that it has also a shaking motion from side to side; and that it is perforated all over with little holes--in fact, that it is an endless web of the finest wire. If we touch the pulp at the end of the plane, upon which it first descends, we find it fluid; if we draw the finger over its edge at the other end, we perceive that it is still soft--not so hard, perhaps, as wet blotting-paper,--but so completely formed, that the touch will leave a hole, which we may trace forward till the paper is perfectly made. The pulp does not flow over the sides of the plane, we observe, because a strap, on each side, constantly moving and pa.s.sing upon its edges, regulates the width. After we pa.s.s the wheels upon which these straps terminate, we perceive that the paper is sufficiently formed not to require any further boundary to define its size;--the pulp has ceased to be fluid. But it is yet tender and wet. The paper is not yet completely off the plane of wire; before it quits it, another roller, which is clothed with felt, and upon which a stream of cold water is constantly flowing subjects it to pressure. The paper has at length left what may be called the region of wire, and has entered that of cloth. A tight surface of flannel, or felt, is moving onwards with the same regular march as the web of wire. Like the wire, the felt is what is called endless,--that is, united at the extremities, as a jack-towel is.
We see the sheet travelling up an inclined plane of this stretched flannel, which gradually absorbs its moisture. It is now seized between two rollers, which powerfully squeeze it. It goes travelling up another inclined plane of flannel, and then pa.s.ses through a second pair of pressing-rollers. It has now left the region of cloth, and has entered that of heat. The paper, up to this point, is quite formed; but it is fragile and damp. It is in the state in which, if the machinery were to stop here, as it did upon its first invention, it would require (having been wound upon a reel) to be parted and dried as hand-made paper is.
But in a few seconds more it is subjected to a process by which all this labour and time is saved. From the last pair of cloth-pressing rollers, the paper is received upon a small roller which is guided over the polished surface of a large heated cylinder. The soft pulp tissue now begins to smoke; but the heat is proportioned to its increasing power of resistance. From the first cylinder, or drum, it is received upon a second, considerably larger, and much hotter. As it rolls over this polished surface, we see all the roughness of its appearance, when in the cloth region, gradually vanis.h.i.+ng. At length, having pa.s.sed over a third cylinder, still hotter than the second, and having been subjected to the pressure of a blanket, which confines it on one side, while the cylinder smooths it on the other, it is caught upon the last roller, which hands it over to the reel. The last process of the machine is to cut the roll of paper into sheets.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Various processes of Bookbinding.]
In consequence of the cheaper production of the press, and the consequent extension of the demand for books, bookbinding has become a large manufacture, carried on with many scientific applications. We have rolling-machines, to make the book solid; cutting-machines, to supersede the hand-labour of the little instrument called a plough; embossing machines, to produce elaborate raised patterns on leather or cloth; embossing presses, to give the gilt ornament and lettering. These contrivances, and other similar inventions, have not only cheapened books, but have enabled the publisher to give them a permanent instead of a temporary cover, ornamental as well as useful. There are eleven thousand bookbinders now employed, of which one-third are females. The number employed has been quadrupled by these inventions. In 1830, the journeymen bookbinders of London opposed the introduction of the rolling-machine. Books were formerly beat with large hammers upon a stone, to give them solidity. The workmen were relieved from the drudgery of the beating-hammer by the easy operation of the rolling-machine. They soon discovered the weak foundation of their objection to an instrument which, in truth, had a tendency, above all other things, to elevate their trade, and to make that an art which in one division of it was a mere labour. If the painter were compelled to grind his own colours and make his own frames, he would no longer follow an art, but a trade; and he would receive the wages of a labourer instead of the wages of an artist, not only so far as related to the grinding and frame-making, but as affecting all his occupations, by the drudgery attending a portion of them.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Papyrus.]
The commerce of literature has been doubled in twenty years. But it would be scarcely too much to a.s.sert that the influence of the press, in forming public opinion, and causing it to operate upon legislation, has doubled almost every other employment. To that public opinion, chiefly so formed, we owe the successive removals of restrictions upon trade, which have carried forward our exports from thirty-six millions sterling in 1831 to ninety millions in 1853. To that public opinion we owe the abolition of prohibitive duties upon foreign produce, which has given us a far wider range of beneficial consumption. To that public opinion we owe the repeal of the oppressive excise duties upon salt, leather, candles, gla.s.s, bricks--which duties impeded production even more effectually than the extortions and tyrannies of the middle ages.
Strange it is, that the power of the press, which has done so much for the removal of other fiscal impediments to industry, should have been able to effect so little for itself;--that the tax upon paper should still interfere with the commerce of literature, when general education has no longer to encounter any misgivings in the minds of those who govern an earnest and patriotic people. The difficulty of procuring the material of paper has become a serious impediment to the cheap diffusion of knowledge; and the paper-tax works in the same evil direction. There have been innumerable obstacles to the extension of knowledge since the days when books were written on the papyrus--obstacles equally raised up by despotic blindness and popular ignorance. But it is not fitting that either of such causes should still be in action in the days of the printing-machine.
CHAPTER XXII.
Power of skill--Cheap production--Population and production--Partial and temporary evils--Intelligent labour--Division of labour--General knowledge--The Lowell Offering--Union of forces.
We have thus, without pretending to any approach to completeness, taken a rapid view of many of the great branches of industry in this country.
We have exhibited capital working with acc.u.mulation of knowledge; we have shown labour working with skill. We desire to show that the counter-control to the absorbing power of capital is the rapidly developing power of skill--for that, also, is capital. Knowledge is power, because knowledge is property. Mr. Whitworth, whose Report on American Manufactures we have several times quoted, says that the workmen of the United States, being educated, perform their duty ”with less supervision than is required when dependence is to be placed upon uneducated hands.” He adds, ”It rarely happens that a workman, who possesses peculiar skill in his craft, is disqualified to take the responsible position of superintendent, by the want of education and general knowledge, _as is frequently the case in this country_.” This is a reproach which every young person in our land ought, as speedily as possible, to wipe out. The means of education may not be quite so universal here as in the United States; but they are ample to produce a large increase of that skill and that trustworthiness which are the most efficient powers which those who work for their living can possibly command, for elevating their individual positions, and for elevating the great body of workers throughout the realm. One of the most essential steps towards the attainment of this elevation is the conviction that manual labour, to be effective, must adapt itself almost wholly to the direction of science; and that under that direction unskilled labour necessarily becomes skilled, and limited trust enlarges into influential responsibility.
Those who have taken a superficial view of the question of scientific application say, that, only whenever there is a greater demand than the existing means can supply, is any new discovery in mechanics a benefit to society, because it gives the means of satisfying the existing wants; but that, on the contrary, whenever the things produced are sufficient for the consumers, the discovery is a calamity, because it does not add to the enjoyments of the consumers; it only gives them a better market, which better market is bought at the price of the existence of the producers.
All such reasoning is false in principle, and unsupported by experience.
There is no such thing, nor, if machines went on improving for five hundred years at the rate they have done for the last century, could there be any such thing, as a limit to the wants of the consumers. The great ma.s.s of facts which we have brought together in this book must have shown, that the cheaper an article of necessity becomes, the more of it is used; that when the most pressing wants are supplied, and supplied amply by cheapness, the consumer has money to lay out upon new wants; that when these new wants are supplied cheaply, he goes on again and again to other new wants; that there are no limits, in fact, to his wants as long as he has any capital to satisfy them. Bear in mind this; that the first great object of every invention and every improvement is to confer a benefit upon the consumers,--to make the commodity cheap and plentiful. The working man stands in a double character; he is both a producer and a consumer. But we will be bold to say that the question of cheapness of production is a much more important question to be decided in his favour as a consumer, than the question of dearness of production to be decided in his favour as a producer. The truth is, every man tries to get as much as he can for his own labour, and to pay as little as he can for the labour of others. If a mechanic, succeeding in stopping the machine used in his own trade, by any strange deviation from the natural course of things were to get higher wages for a time, he himself would be the most injured by the extension of the principle.
When he found his loaf cost him two s.h.i.+llings instead of sixpence; when he was obliged to go to the river with his bucket for his supply of water; when his coals cost a guinea a bushel instead of eighteen pence; when he was told by the hosier that his worsted stockings were advanced from a s.h.i.+lling a pair to five s.h.i.+llings; when, in fact, the price of every article that he uses should be doubled, trebled, and, in nine cases out of ten, put beyond the possibility of attainment;--what, we ask, would be the use to him of his advance in wages? Let us never forget that it is not for the employment of labourers, but for the benefit of consumers, that labour is employed at all. The steam-engines are not working in the coal-pits of Northumberland, and the s.h.i.+ps sailing from the Tyne to the Thames, to give employment to colliers and to sailors, but to make coals cheap in London. If the people of London could have the coals without the steam-engines and the s.h.i.+ps, it would be better for them, and better for the rest of the world. If they could get coals for nothing, they would have more produce to exchange for money to spend upon other things; and the comforts, therefore, of every one of us would be increased.
This increase of comfort, some may say, is a question that more affects the rich than it affects the great ma.s.s. This again is a mistake. The whole tendency of the improvements of the last four hundred years has not only been to lift the meanest, in regard to a great many comforts, far above the condition of the rich four hundred years ago, but absolutely to place them, in many things, upon a level with the rich of their own day. They are surrounded, as we have constantly shown throughout this book, with an infinite number of comforts and conveniences which had no existence two or three centuries ago; and those comforts and conveniences are not used only by a few, but are within the reach of almost all men. Every day is adding something to our comforts. Our houses are better built--our clothes are cheaper--we have a number of domestic utensils, whose use even was unknown to our ancestors--we can travel cheaply from place to place, and not only travel at less expense, but travel ten times quicker than the richest man could travel two hundred years ago. The bulk of society is not only advancing steadily to the same level in point of many comforts with the rich, but is gaining that knowledge which was formerly their exclusive possession. Let all of us who are producers keep fast hold of that last and best power.