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I cannot enough admire the humane delicacy of your ingenious friend: and as he
appears to be one of that small and valuable number of men in a community who
are governed in the first place by conscientious motives, and capable upon occasion
of postponing a benefit of their own to a greater benefit of their neighbour, I shall
venture to treat the question you proposed to me as a case of conscience, without
fear of being laughed at for my pains by him I am writing of, should he happen
to come to the knowledge of what I say, any more than I am sure I shall
be by him I am writing to.
Mechanical inventions are calculated for one or the other of 2 purposes:
either 1st do something compass some end that was not compassed before: or 2dly,
to compass one that was, at a less expence. This expence is either 1st of materials
or, 2dly, of workmanship — so that the saving to be made by an
invention of this lastmentioned kind must be a saving either of materials
or of workmanship. Of a saving of materials, (whatever may be the case with it in respect of workmanship) An invention that I saw a few days ago for making
wheels out of single pieces of timber by bending, may serve for an example;
it taking no more than about ⅓ of the wood that is necessary where each quar-
(or felly as it is called) of the wheel is to be cut out of a solid parallellepipedon
A saving of workmanship is made either at the expence of 1.st the
Masters (already in the business) only; or 2. of the Workmen only: or 3d of both
at once. It is made 1. at the expence of the Masters only, when
the quantity of the commodity that might be vented if produced is so much superior
to that actually produced (viz: before the invention) as that employment
might be found but for the same number of Workmen still: at the same time
that the invention, being kept private is put in practise by the inventor
on his own account, who by underselling the Masters can take the
business out of their hands. It is made 2. at the expence of the Workmen only
when the invention is made public, but either the quantity of the commodity in demand
is limited, and the invention is of such a sort, as to require either, 1. an entire
new set of workmen to execute, or, 2 the same set, only a less number,
so as to throw a few out. It is made 3. at the expence of both, in the manner
that you will see by laying the 2 first ones together. You see this 2d case divides
itself into 2 others; the 1st of which was or at least was imagined to be
that of Mr Dingley's Saw Mill at Limehouse which was destroy'd some years
ago by the Sawyers as you probably have heard (& £2000 given by Parliament
to make good the damage) — Mr Burket's Invention I suppose would come
under the other: if the business is executed not solely by men who like those
in the King's service are provided for as I understand, work or no work, but in
part by workmen at large: for I suppose that there would be nothing in his
machine, whatever it is, but what could be done as well by the man at present
employd in making Treenails by hand , as by any others: only that perhaps
it might not find employment for them all.I leave it to your sagacity
to supply a great many deficiencies in these observations that I may come
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Identifier: | JB/537/263/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 537.
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1773-11-04 |
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537 |
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263 |
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002 |
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Correspondence |
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Jeremy Bentham |
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