estroy _the sophism_; prove that machines
do not injure _human labor_, nor importations _national industry_."

In an essay of this nature such demonstrations cannot be complete. Our
aim is more to propose difficulties than to solve them; to excite
reflection, than to satisfy it. No conviction of the mind is well
acquired, excepting that which it gains by its own labor. We will try,
nevertheless, to place it before you.

The opponents of importations and machines are mistaken, because they
judge by immediate and transitory consequences, instead of looking at
general and final ones.

The immediate effect of an ingenious machine is to economize, towards
a given result, a certain amount of handwork. But its action does not
stop there: inasmuch as this result is obtained with less effort, it
is given to the public for a lower price; and the amount of the
savings thus realized by all the purchasers, enables them to procure
other gratifications--that is to say, to encourage handwork in
general, equal in amount to that subtracted from the special handwork
lately improved upon--so that the level of work has not fallen, though
that of gratification has risen. Let us make this connection of
consequences evident by an example.

Suppose that in the United States ten millions of hats are sold at
five dollars each: this affords to the hatters' trade an income of
fifty millions. A machine is invented which allows hats to be afforded
at three dollars each. The receipts are reduced to thirty millions,
admitting that the consumption does not increase. But, for all that,
the other twenty millions are not subtracted from _human labor_.
Economized by the purchasers of hats, they will serve them in
satisfying other needs, and by consequence will, to that amount,
remunerate collective industry. With these two dollars saved, John
will purchase a pair of shoes, James a book, William a piece of
furniture, etc. Human labor, in the general, will thus continue to be
encouraged to the amount of fifty millions; but this sum, beside
giving the same number of hats as before, will add the gratifications
obtained by the twenty millions which the machine has spared. These
gratifications are the net products which America has gained by the
invention. It is a gratuitous gift, a tax, which the genius of man has
imposed on Nature. We do not deny that, in the course of the change, a
certain amount of labor may have been _displaced_; but we cannot agree
tha