. BABBAGE'S "ECONOMY OF MACHINERY AND
MANUFACTURES."

_Voyage of Manufacture._--The produce of our factories has preceded even
our most enterprising travellers. Captain Clapperton saw at the court of
the Sultan Bello, pewter dishes with the London stamp, and had at the
royal table a piece of meat served up on a white wash-hand basin of
English manufacture. The cotton of India is conveyed by British ships
round half our planet, to be woven by British skill in the factories of
Lancashire; it is again set in motion by British capital, and
transported to the very plains whereon it grew, is repurchased by the
lords of the soil which gave it birth, at a cheaper price than that at
which their coarser machinery enables them to manufacture it themselves.
At Calicut, in the East Indies (whence the cotton cloth called calico
derives its name) the price of labour is one-seventh of that in England,
yet the market is supplied from British looms.

_Additions to human power._--The force necessary to move a stone along
the roughly-chiselled floor of its quarry is nearly two-thirds of its
weight; to move it along a wooden floor, three-fifths; by wood upon
wood, five-ninths; if the wooden surfaces are soaped, one-sixth; if
rollers are used on the floor of the quarry, it requires
one-thirty-second part of the weight; if they roll on wood,
one-fortieth; and if they roll between wood, one-fiftieth of its weight.
At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every
new tool, human labour becomes abridged.

_Economy of time._--Several pounds of gunpowder may be purchased for a
sum acquired by a few days' labour; yet, when this is employed in
blasting rocks, effects are produced which could not, even with the best
tools, be accomplished by other means in less than many months.

_Economy of Materials._--The worn-out saucepans and tin-ware of our
kitchens, when beyond the reach of the tinker's art, are not utterly
worthless. We sometimes meet carts loaded with old tin kettles and
worn-out iron coal-scuttles traversing our streets. These have not yet
completed their useful course; the less corroded parts are cut into
strips, punched with small holes, and varnished with a coarse black
varnish for the use of the trunkmaker, who protects the edges and angles
of his box with them; the remainder are conveyed to the manufacturing
chemists in the outskirts of the town, who employ them, in conjunction
with pyroligneous acid, in maki