To return to the hand-mill and the water-mill. An ordinary water-mill for grinding corn will grind about thirty-six sacks a day. To do the same work with a hand-mill would require 150 men. At two shillings a day the wages of these men would amount to 15_l._, which, reckoning six working days, is 90_l._ a week, or 4680_l._ a year. The rent and taxes of a mill would be about 150_l._ a year, or 10_s._ a working day. The cost of machinery would be certainly more for the hand-mills than the water-mill, therefore we will not take the cost of machinery into calculation. To produce, therefore, thirty-six sacks of flour by hand we should pay 15_l._; by the water-mill we should pay 10_s._: that is, we should pay thirty times as much by the one process as by the other. The actual saving is something about the price of the flour in the market; that is, the consumer, if the corn were ground by hand, would pay double what he pays now for flour ground at a mill.
But if the system of grinding corn by hand were a very recent system of society, and the introduction of so great a benefit as the water-mill had all at once displaced the hand-grinders, as the spinning machinery displaced the spinning-wheel, what must become, it is said, of the one hundred and fifty men who earned the 15_l._ a-day, of which sum the consumer has now got 14_l._ 10_s._ in his pocket? They must go to other work. And what is to set them to that work? The same 14_l._ 10_s._; which, being saved in the price of flour, gives the poor man, as well as the rich man, more animal food and fuel; a greater quantity of clothes, and of a better quality; a better house than his hand-labouring ancestors used to have, much as his house might yet be improved; better furniture, and more of it; domestic utensils; and books. To produce these things there must be more labourers employed than before. The quantity of labour is, therefore, not diminished, while its productiveness is much increased. It is as if every man among us had become suddenly much stronger and more industrious. The machines labour for us, and are yet satisfied without either food or clothing. They increase all our comforts, and they consume none themselves. The hand-mills are not grinding, it is true: but the ships are sailing that bring us foreign produce; the looms are moving that give us more clothes; the potter, and glass-maker, and joiner, are each employed to add to our household goods; we are each of us elevated in the scale of society; and all these things happen because machinery has diminished the cost of production.