Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/385

 the funds necessary in order to produce the goods. The consequence of this system is, that the manufacturers and their men are in a state of dependence almost amounting to servitude. The resident obtains their labor at his own price, and, being supported by the civil and military power, he establishes a monopoly of the worst kind, and productive of the most prejudicial effects to industry. The Act of 1833, which put an end to the commercial character of the Company, will of course abolish all the absurd and oppressive monopolies it exercised.

It cannot but seem astonishing, that in a department of industry, where the raw material has been so grossly neglected, where the machinery is so rude, and where there is so little division of labor, the results should be fabrics of the most exquisite delicacy and beauty, ''unrivalled by the products of any other nation, even those best skilled in the mechanic arts''. This anomaly is explained by the remarkably fine sense of touch possessed by that effeminate people, by their patience and gentleness, and by the hereditary continuance of a particular species of manufacture in families through many generations, which leads to the training of children from their very infancy in the processes of the art. Mr. Orme observes—"The women spin the thread destined for the cloth, and then deliver it to the men, who have fingers to model it as exquisitely as these have prepared it. The rigid, clumsy fingers of a European would scarcely be able to make a piece of canvass with the instruments which are all that an Indian employs in making a piece of cambric (muslin). It is further remarkable, that every distinct kind of cloth is the production of a particular district, in which the fabric has been transmitted perhaps for centuries from father to son,—a custom which must have conduced to the perfection of the manufacture ." The last mentioned fact may be considered as a kind of division of labor.

Mr. Mill thus explains the unequalled manual skill of the Indian weaver:—"It is a sedentary occupation, and thus in harmony with his predominant inclination. It requires patience, of which he has an inexhaustible fund. It requires little