(The United States have substantially one mile of railway to each 540 inhabitants. Europe has one mile to each 3,000 inhabitants, if Russia be included; about one mile to each 2,540, exclusive of Russia.)
The materials of manufactures being all drawn from the land, and many of them from agriculture, which supplies in particular the entire material of clothing, the general law of production from the land, the law of diminishing return, must in the last resort be applicable to manufacturing as well as to agricultural history. As population increases, and the power of the land to yield increased produce is strained harder and harder, any additional supply of material, as well as of food, must be obtained by a more than proportionally increasing expenditure of labor. But the cost of the material forming generally a very small portion of the entire cost of the manufacture, the agricultural labor concerned in the production of manufactured goods is but a small fraction of the whole labor worked up in the commodity.
Mr. Babbage[137] gives an interesting illustration of this principle. Bar-iron of the value of £1 became worth, when manufactured into—
| £ | |
| Slit-iron, for nails | 1.10 |
| Natural steel | 1.42 |
| Horseshoes | 2.55 |
| Gun-barrels, ordinary | 9.10 |
| Wood-saws | 14.28 |
| Scissors, best | 446.94 |
| Penknife-blades | 657.14 |
| Sword-handles, polished steel | 972.82 |
It can not, however, be said of such manufactures as coarse cotton cloth, wherein the increased cost of raw cotton causes an immediate effect upon the price of the cloth, that the cost of the materials forms but a small portion of the cost of the manufacture.[138]
All the labor (not engaged in preparing materials) tends constantly and strongly toward diminution, as the amount of production increases. Manufactures are vastly more susceptible than agriculture of mechanical improvements and contrivances for saving labor. In manufactures, accordingly, the causes tending to increase the productiveness of industry preponderate greatly over the one cause which tends to diminish it; and the increase of production, called forth by the progress of society, takes place, not at an increasing, but at a continually diminishing proportional cost. This fact has manifested itself in the progressive fall of the prices and values of almost every kind of manufactured goods during two centuries past; a fall accelerated by the mechanical inventions of the last seventy or eighty years, and susceptible of being prolonged and extended beyond any limit which it would be safe to specify. The benefit might even extend to the poorest class. The increased cheapness of clothing and lodging might make up to them for the augmented cost of their food.