This prodigious diminution
in price is attributable to no other cause than the introduction of
Machinery, by which the expense of Manual Labour is comparatively
reduced to nothing.
Now, repeated experiments have demonstrated that the same Machinery is
equally applicable to every Branch of the Woollen Manufactory, and in
truth it would long since have been adopted, but for the popular Clamour
that thousands of Labourers would be thrown out of employment. "It
cannot be denied," say its Opponents, "that Machinery would reduce the
price of Woollen, as it has done that of Cotton Cloths, but the two
Cases bear no Analogy, for when Machinery was applied in the Manufacture
of Cotton the increased Quantity of the raw material furnished
abundance of Employment in some other branch to those whose Labour the
Machine superseded. Make but the same experiment in the Woollen
Manufactory, and its fatal effects upon the poor will soon be felt; for
as you cannot increase the quantity of Animal Wool now being brought
into the Market, any Invention that has a tendency to diminish Manual
Labour is, and must be, pernicious.
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