Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/199

Rh Amongst these chains, that numbered 0 and that numbered 24 are exactly of the same price, although the quantity of gold in the latter is twenty-two times as much as in the former. The difficulty of making the smallest chain is so great, that the women who make it cannot work above two hours at a time. As we advance from the smaller chain, the proportionate value of the work to the worth of the material becomes less and less, until at the numbers 2 and 3, these two elements of cost balance each other: after which, the difficulty of the work decreases, and the value of the material increases.

(213.) The quantity of labour expended on these chains is, however, incomparably less than that which is applied in some of the manufactures of iron. In the case of the smallest Venetian chain the value of the labour is not above thirty times that of the gold. The pendulum spring of a watch, which governs the vibrations of the balance, costs at the retail price two-pence, and weighs fifteen one-hundredths of a grain, whilst the retail price of a pound of the best iron, the raw material out of which fifty thousand such springs are made, is exactly the same sum of two pence.

(214.) The comparative price of labour and of raw material entering into the manufactures of France, has been ascertained with so much care, in a memoir of M. A. M. Héron de Villefosse, "Recherches statistiques, sur les Metaux de France," that we shall give an abstract of his results reduced to English measures. The facts respecting the metals relate to the year 1825.