speed of printing-presses. If I had
doubted what was to be the consequence of bringing machinery into
competition with the sewing-women, it was owing to my utter ignorance of
how other great revolutions had affected the labor of different classes
of workers.

This doubt thus satisfactorily resolved, it very soon became with me a
question for profound wonder, what became of the immensely increased
quantity of clothing which was manufactured by so many thousands of
machines. I could not learn that our population had suddenly increased
to an extent sufficient to account for the enlarged consumption that was
evidently taking place. I had heard that there were nations of savages
who considered shirts a sort of superfluity, and who moved about in very
much the same costume as that in which our primal mother clothed herself
just previously to indulging in the forbidden fruit. But they could not
have thus suddenly taken to the wearing of machine-made shirts. There
was a paragraph also in our paper which stated that the usual dress in
hot weather, in some parts of our own South, was only a hat and spurs.
This, however, I regarded as a piece of raillery, and was not inclined
to place much faith in it. But I had never heard that any other portion
of our people were in the habit of going without shirts or pantaloons.
If such had been the practice, and if it had on the instant been
renounced, it would have accounted for the sudden and unprecedented
demand which now sprang up for these indispensable articles of dress. Or
if the fashion had so changed that men had taken to wearing two shirts
instead of one, that also might account for it,--though the wearing of
two would be considered as great an eccentricity as the wearing of none.

I found that others with whom I conversed on the subject were equally
surprised with myself. Even some who were concerned in carrying on the
establishment in which we were employed could not account for the
immediate absorption of the vastly increased quantities of work that
were turned out. Few could tell exactly why more was wanted than
formerly, nor where it went. The only fact apparent was that there was a
demand for thrice as much as before sewing-machines were brought into
use. My own conclusion was eventually this,--that distant sections of
our country were supplied exclusively from these manufactories in the
great cities, which combined capital, energy, and enterprise in the
creation of an immen