Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/112

 labor of these ten men can be saved, the flour which will be the product of the action of the mill will, from that moment, fall in value, in proportion to the amount of labor saved; and society will find itself enriched by all the value of the things which the labor of these ten men can produce, the funds: destined to the support of the workers not having by that suffered the least diminution." (Ricardo.)

Lauderdale, in his turn, says:—

"There is no part of the capital of a country that more obviously derives its profits from supplanting a portion of labor that would otherwise be performed by man, or from performing a portion which is beyond the reach of his personal exertion, than that which is vested in machinery. The small profit which the proprietors of machinery generally acquire, when compared with the wages of labor which the machine supplants, may perhaps create a suspicion of the rectitude of this opinion. Some fire-engines, for instance, draw more water from a coalpit in one day than could be conveyed on the shoulders of three hundred men, even assisted by the machinery of buckets; and a fire-engine undoubtedly performs its labor at a much smaller expense than the amount of the wages of those whose labor it thus supplants. This is, in truth, the case with all machinery. All machines must execute the labor that was antecedently performed, at a cheaper rate than it could be dome by the hand of man. If such a privilege is given for the invention of a machine, which performs, by the labor of one man a quantity of work that used to take the labor of four; as the possession of the exclusive privilege prevents any competition in doing the work, but what proceeds from the labor of the four workmen, their wages, as long as the patent continues, must obviously