"[1]
[Footnote 1: _Work and Wages_, p. 114.]
The English are also the best miners, the best tool-makers, the best
instrument-makers, the best "navvies," the best ship-builders, the best
spinners and weavers. Mr. Brassey says that during the construction of
the Paris and Rouen Railway, the Frenchman, Irishman, and Englishman
were employed side by side. In the same quarry at Bounieres, the
Frenchman received three francs, the Irishman four, and the Englishman
six; and the last was found to be the most advantageous workman of the
three. The superiority of the English workman over persons of other
nations was equally remarkable whenever there was an opportunity of
employing him side by side with them.
There is no doubt about the "swiftness" of English Workmanship. But this
is one of the merits of English mechanism. M. Jules Simon observes that
heretofore the manual labourer has been an intelligent force, but by
means of machinery he is converted into an intelligent director of
force. It is by the speed of the English machinery, and the intelligent
quickness of the workmen, that his master makes a profit, and himself
such high wages as compared with continental workmen. In France, one
person is employed to mind fourteen spindles; in Russia, one to
twenty-eight; in Prussia, one to thirty-seven; and in Great Britain, one
to seventy-four spindles.
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