EXPORT OF MACHINERY.
Tina operation of a free trade in machinery upon our own manu- factures has formed, very properly, a chief feature of the Parlia- mentary inquiry to which we have already referred. The manufac- turers examined have been Mr. Thomas Asarost the great cotton. manufacturer, Mr. JAMES MARSHALL the Leeds flax-manufac- turer, and Messrs. FELKIN and others interested in the hosiery and lace trades of Nottingham. Mr. ASHTON, a cautious and long-ex- perienced man, declares he has no fear that foreign competition in the cotton manufacture will be advanced by a change of the law whilst as to the flax, Mr. James MARSHALL states that manufac- turers will consult their oum interests by promoting a repeal of the prohibition. Mr. ASHTON emphatically remarks, that so long as we keep our artisans at home, he fears nothing from foreigners; and he, Mr. GRENVILLE WITHERS, (a gentleman of great experi- ence,) Mr. MARSHALL, Mr. MARSDEN, and others, speaking of the European Continent, and Dr. JONES and Mr. Cox as to America, concur in the opinion that the possession or non-possession of machinery constitutes a very small item in the success of manu- factures; that contiguity of manufactories to the machine-shops, and the interchange of ideas thereby occasioned—highly-skilled, steady, and persevering artisans—minute subdivision, with at the same time combination and compactness of labour—cheap fuel, rent, repairs, &c.—the best markets for the raw material, and ex- tended demand for manufactures—abundant capital—the first use of inventions—and perfect freedom of industry,—these were considera- tions all requiring to be blended and enjoyed by foreign manufac- turers before they could rival us. Mr. MARSHALL said it was far more important to suppress machine-shops abroad than, by con- tinuing the prohibition, to retain a slight superiority in quality of machinery here. Mr. Asirros: concurred in this opinion; and said that, with the same implements, foreigners cannot manufacture at any thing like English prices. Mr. WITHERS asserted that there is not in the constitutional temperament of foreigners the capacity for profitable labour which Englishmen display, nor is there the inducement to work which in this country is offered in the good fitith existing between masters and men ; and that the latter are by consequence spiritless and unstable in their employment. Mr. Cox discovers in the climate of America great obstacles to success- ful manufacture; whilst Dr. JONES, an American by birth, con- ceives perfect freedom on the part of this country to be the best preventive of competition in manufactures on both the European Continent and the American.
Mr. Fmk/it, who alone of the Nottingham witnesses went at all fully into the question, admitted that, with perfect free trade he should not object to the export of machinery ; thus materially trade, the weight of any present objections he can offer to the export, inasmuch as it is notorious that the Nottingham manufac- turers enjoy a protection of 30 per cent., and that they therefore can have no ground for urging the want of freedom generally as an argument against freedom in this particular. But he also ventured on an assumption, and promulgated a proposition, both of them sadly at variance with his qualified adhesion to free-trade doctrines. The assumption was this—that each machine exported throws out of employ a proportionate number of our native artisans. Now, not to notice the very sensible opinion of Mr. J. D. Hums, that this trade of machine-making, if free, will probably become the major consideration in the case,—and passing by the supposition, also necessary to maintain this assumption, that there is to be no accession of new markets and no extension of old ones,—it appears distinctly from the evidence, that as to flax and lace, and even cot- ton, the countries which have the most machinery are among our best customers for manufactures; and Mr. FELKIN himself stated as to France the remarkable fact, that though possessing 2,000 bobbinet-machines, she yet takes large quantities of net to employ her own people in embroidery, &c.
The proposition mooted by Mr. FELKIN, and which we are sorry to see coquetted with, if not actually adopted, by some gene- rally clear-headed members of the Committee, is this—that as re- gards freedom of export, a distinction is to be drawn between machinery and the product of that machinery. Thus, Mr. FELKIN stated the yearly return of wages and profit in the hosiery-trade to be 1,177,000/.; and in the lace, 1,645,6701. He did not however state, nor indeed did it seem to have occurred to him to consider, where this return would have been without the machinery and the invention which is constantly at work upon it ; and whether that invention is more likely to thrive, and machinery consequently to improve, under restraint, or having free scope to its energies; and whether the very fact that the mere machines (to wit, the stock- ing-frames, worth V.) bear in market-cost so inconsiderable a relation to the value of their own produce, does not abundantly testify that the success of that production depends upon other and far weightier considerations than the prompt or tardy acquisition, and the more or less recent construction, of an iron automaton. If the argument is worth any thing, it should go to stop the export of steam-boats, because of the vast numbers of Englishmen which one of them might some day carry over to our next enemy ; or of swords and pistols, and guns, because of the number of good Christians swords, one of these, well used, would send to the shades. The Americans, on this ground, should refuse us their raw cotton the Italians their silk, and the Spaniards their wool, because of vast difference between the original cost of these materials and their manufactured value. And it is quite clear that the objection, if it has any truth, applies more forcibly to the tools which beget machines than to the machines themselves. But, not to dwell on this very erroneous view of the machine question, Mr. FELKIN'S general opinions, if carried out, tend rather to the point noted by logicians as the argumentutn ad absurdum. For instance, he stated to the Committee that the stocking- machines have undergone no change for centuries ; be traces the nativity of many of them to the days of WILLIAM and MARY; and he fixes their worth at four pounds! —that being the average product of the sales during recent years. Surely, then, it is absurd to imagine that the prosperity and superiority of England depend upon the retention of a machine so little removed from the rudest implements of antiquity, and worth precisely 41., rather than upon those other considerations which we have already specified, and which in the case of Saxony and her hosiery Mr. FELKIN can- didly admitted and explained. In like manner as to the bobbinet-trade, whilst it should not be forgotten that the manufacturers make their own machines, and can therefore keep them at home without the aid of Parliament,— Mr. FELKIN, when asked if the French had our improvements, stated that they had, though not our last ; " they follow us," he said, "in certain steps " : and he added, "but I have an opinion that that which is supposed to be an improvement may not be so : it is the question of the capacity to produce goods which may be profitably sold ; and I do not apprehend that many of the changes to which machinery has been subjected there [in France] at all prove that there has been any improvement in the construction of the machinery." This is undoubtedly true, and is confirmed by the condition of the French trade : for whilst the French have some 2,000 machines—the number in this country being between 3,000 and 4,000—it is notorious that not only they have to use entirely English yarn for their manufacture of lace, but that the chief part of their home consumption is English late (smuggled); that a con- siderable trade in France is that of embroidering English lace to be sent back and sold here ; and that Mr. HEATHCOAT, member of this Committee, and a gentleman well known for his manufacturing success at Nottingham, has an establishment in France supplied with English machinery, English workmen, and English yarn ; and yet that he produces lace at a cost of 28 per cent. above English production ; that the manufacturers generally cannot approach within SO per cent, of the English prices; and that these 2,000 bobbinet-machines are kept [see Evidence of Mr. WITHERS] more as a cover for the sale of English smuggled lace than for the purposes of a bond fide manufacture. These are facts recorded before a French Commission which sat about 1834, when the French manufacturers very seriously expressed their belief that the English lace-manufacturers were selling belowL prime coat for the mere purpose of ruining them Mr. FEMUR might therefore safely dismiss his fear of selling our machinery to the French. Apart, however, from their inability to use them beneficially, ig as this gentleman says, all changes in the machines are not improvements, there is obviously little risk in allowing foreigners to have them : better, indeed, to tempt them to buy, to lock up their capital in comparatively worthless machines, and thus to cripple their own capabilities. If, again, success depend upon the " capacity to produce,"—that is, the power of adaptation, which power may be applied as well to an old machine as to a mo- dern one,—it is obvious that to do ourselves any good by the prohi- bition, we must not only keep back our new, but we must win back from the French their stock of old machines ; whilst, on the other hand, to effect against us any harm, they must acquire from nature or from us our skill in adaptation and application of old implements to new objects--or, to use Mr. FELKIN'S words, "our capacity to produce." Unless, in short, the repeal of the law rob our machin- ists and manufacturers of that sort of divinus afflatus, if we may venture on the phrase, which seems hitherto to have possessed them, we are as likely to continue ahead of foreigners, and they to follow us "in certain steps," when the trade is free, as now that it is subject to a nominal restraint.*
We learn, indeed, that without having the Dover Channel to cross, inventions and improvements are long in becoming widely known or profitably applied. Even among themselves, in Notting- ham, the shrewd ones distance the drones—the heads, not the ma- chines, constitute the productive capital. Mr. Hsanzar said, with admirable naivete—" We have been very much affected of late by our friend Birkin the improvements that he has made in the fabric have much affected us : they have come out with great ingenuity of late, and have caused some of our machines to be idle." And, as if to give a quietus to the alarms which himself would fain have excited among Honourable Members by the statements he made, the Mr. Maim here referred to announced, that some time ago., having it in thought to extend his manufactory, and having heard much of foreign competition, he went over to France to see with his own eyes the progress making there : he looked, he came home, and—he enlarged his works ! So much for the objections and the fears of the Nottingham manufacturers.
To that other class of objectors of whom we shortly spoke last week—those, namely, who would postpone relief to the machinists until the Corn-law be repealed—we do not deem it necessary to refer at length, because they are not likely, as we now hear, to find many partisans. The Chamber of Commerce at Glasgow is stated to have declared in favour of a repeal of the law, and we shall hope to see so good an example generally followed. The trade is pecu- liarly a national one ; and its importance is best proved by the fact that the large establishments of only the principal towns in Lan- cashire have embarked a capital of a million and a half, and York- shire nearly half a million in it. That a free trade would strangle foreign competition, seems evident from the fact that for making tools, which have always been exportable, there is not either on the European Continent OT in America a single establishment ; whilst capital and labour are flowing into the manufacture of such things as we do prohibit. With such experience, therefore, of the relative work- ings of freedom and of prohibition, there can be no risk in a change. And certainly it seems to indicate a strange timidity, that in a country which actually founded her manufactures some three centuries ago upon the ruin and defeat of those of Germany—which first achieved the marvellous work of adapting steam and automatic powers to the produce of cotton, woollen, silken, and linen fabrics—which actually lives de die in diem upon invention, and which has thus not only kept out of the field all modern competitors, but, carrying her manufactures over thousands of miles of sea, has even reduced to silence the simple and costless looms of the poor Indian, who once-a-day plied his shuttle beneath the rich foliage of his native plains—it indicates, we say, a strange misgiving of her own power, that a nation of such achievements should fear to allow foreigners to purchase her machinery.
Rightly did Mr. HUSKISSON chastise this species of blinded selfishness in an instance which Mr. HUME records in his evidence- " I can very well remember, upon one occasion of a deputation to the Board of Trade, when Mr. Huskisson held up one of those small articles of machinery to the gentlemen who attended that meeting, and he said, 'So gentlemen, then the prosperity of the trade of this country depends upon our preventing this thing from being carried out of it l'"
• We have dealt only with Mr. FEMUR'S evidence : the papers put in by him, and which appear in an Appendix, tell still more forcibly than his oral testimony against the prohibition.
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