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looms ? They had increased in the same period from 657 to 3059 ; and the number of persons employed in dressing the warp had also increased from 98 to 388 ; making a total increase , in ten years , of 692 persons employed in that particular manufacture into which steam machinery had been introduced . Besides
this , employment had also been created for engineers , architects , clerks and overseers , masons , carpenters , &c . &c . The * Monster ' really had not been so very hard-hearted towards the mechanics . Probably , however , the hand-loom weavers who were thrown out of work might , many of them , not be employed on the power-looms . The old set of workmen might remain in
a state of extreme distress , while a new set of hands was taken into employ . And in some such situation as this , we imagine , did the poet ' s father , and his wife ' s father , find themselves , when the ' Monster invaded their abodes and occupations . A temporary evil of this kind , to some extent , often ^ no doubt , to a very distressing extent , may attend the introduction of machinery . The remedy consists of two parts ; the one to be provided by the Government , and the other bv the operatives themselves . The — - - —
^ ^ ^ laws of apprenticeship , the absurdity of which is so admirably exposed in Miss Martineau ' s ' Tale of the Tyne , ' should be swept away , root and branch ; and secondly , the freedom of labour , thus legalized , should be facilitated in its exercise by the workmen themselves , who are unhappily in determined , but mistaken hostility to it , and keep it within much narrower limits
than those affixed by the law . An apprenticeship of seven years to learn a business is as big a farce as a Grammar School education ; any boy , of average intellect , may learn three or four trades in the time ; but if he did , It would be of no use , so long as all the workmen would strike on his entering a new workshop . The free transfer of labour is a right which the mechanics have grossly invaded in one another , to the common detriment of their
body . They should have outgrown by this time , so stupid a blunder , and so foul an injustice . They should leave the unprincipled principle of monopoly to the aristocracy . Their common interest , ^ and the common interest , require that the utmost facilities should be afforded , for the transition from one
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department of labour to any other department for which the individual is qualified . And if such facilities were allowed , the gentle Monster' would behave himself to their satisfaction , would not sully the permanent good which he does by even temporary evil , and while he i destroyed my father ' s and my wife ' s
father ' s trade , ' would take care not to injure my father and my wife ' s father themselves ; but raising them in his iron hands from the spot on which they stood , would set them softly down elsewhere in a not less pleasant place , as carefully as Gulliver did the Lilliputians . Such mechanics , we mean such men as our author , should be
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836 Saint Monday *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 836, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/32/
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