six weeks. The measuring instruments were supported on two adjustable stands.

They were made on the compensating principle, and inclosed in a double case of tin, to prevent, as much as possible, their being affected by changes of temperature. The ends of the instruments were of agate, one flat, the other having a knife edge. The latter was made to slide, and was connected by a bell-crank lever to a spirit level, which indicated when the end measures were in contact, according to the method employed by Bessel, in making standard measures in Prussia.

CONCLUSIONS.

THE parts of the United States which I visited form, geographically, a small portion of their extended territory, but they are the principal seats of manufactures, and afford ample opportunities for arriving at general conclusions.

I could not fail to be impressed, from all that I saw there, with the extraordinary energy of the people, and their peculiar aptitude in availing themselves to the utmost of the immense natural resources of the country.

The details which I have collected in this report show, by numerous examples, that they leave no means untried to effect what they think it is possible to accomplish, and they have been signally successful in combining large practical results with great economy in the methods by which these results are secured.

The labouring classes are comparatively few in number, but this is counterbalanced by, and indeed may be regarded as one of the chief causes of, the eagerness with which they call in the aid of machinery in almost every department of industry. Wherever it can be introduced as

a substitute for manual labour, it is universally and willingly resorted to; of this the facts stated in my report contain many conclusive proofs, but I may here specially refer, as examples, to plough making, where eight men are able to finish thirty per day; to door making, where twenty men make 100 panelled doors per day; to last making, the process of which is completed in 1 minutes; to sewing by machinery, where one woman does the work of twenty; to net making, where one woman does the work of 100. It is this condition of the labour market, and this eager resort to machinery wherever it can be applied, to which, under the guidance of superior education and intelligence, the remarkable prosperity of the United States is mainly due. That prosperity is frequently attributed to the possession of a soil of great natural fertility, and it is doubtless true that in certain districts the alluvial deposits are rich, and the land fruitful to an extraordinary degree; but while traversing many hundred miles of country in the Northern States, I was impressed with the conviction that the general character of the soil there was the reverse of fertile.

It is not for a moment denied that the natural resources of the United States are immense, that the products of the soil seem capable of being multiplied and varied to almost any extent,

and that the supplies of minerals appear to be nearly unlimited.

The material welfare of the country, however, is largely dependent upon the means adopted for turning its resources to the best account, at the same time that the calls made upon human labour are reduced as far as practicable.

The attention paid to the working of wood, some details connected with which I have included in the report, is a striking illustration of this. The early settlers found in the forests which they had to clear, an unlimited supply of material, which necessity compelled them to employ in every possible way, in the construction of their houses, their furniture, and domestic utensils, in their implements of labour, and in their log-paved roads.

Wood thus became with them a universal material, and work-people being scarce, machinery was introduced as far as possible to supply the want of hands. The character thus given to one branch of manufactures has gradually extended to others. Applied to stonedressing, for example, one man is enabled, as I have shown, to perform as much work as twenty masons by hand. So great again are the improvements effected in spinning machinery, that one man can attend to a mule containing 1,088 spindles, each spinning three hanks, or 3,264

hanks in the aggregate per day. In Hindoostan, where they still spin by hand, it would be extravagant to expect a spinner to accomplish one hank per day; so that we find the same amount of man's labour, by the aid of improved machinery, doing more than 3,000 times the work. But a still more striking comparison between hand and machine labour may be made in the case of lace making in England. Lace of an ordinary figured pattern used to be made "on the cushion" by hand, at the rate of about three meshes per minute. At Nottingham, a machine attended by one person will now produce lace of a similar kind at the rate of about 24,000 meshes per minute; so that one person can, by the employment of a machine, produce 8,000 times as much work as one lace maker by hand.

The results which have been obtained in the United States, by the application of machinery wherever it has been practicable to manufactures, are rendered still more remarkable by the fact, that combinations to resist its introduction there are unheard of. The workmen hail with satisfaction all mechanical improvements, the importance and value of which, as releasing them from the drudgery of unskilled labour, they are enabled by education to understand and appreciate. With the comparatively superabundant