It is by means of English workmen and English tools and machines that continental manufactories themselves have been established; and yet, notwithstanding their cheaper labour, we should command the foreign market, but for the prohibitory duties which foreigners impose upon English manufactures.  Mr. Brassey, in his book on Work and Wages, says, “It may be affirmed that as practical mechanics the English are unsurpassed.  The presence of the English engineer, the solitary representative, among a crew of foreigners, of the mechanical genius of his country, is a familiar recollection to all who have travelled much in the steamers of the Mediterranean.  Consul Lever says that in the vast establishment of the Austrian Lloyds at Trieste, a number of English mechanical engineers are employed, not only in the workshops, but as navigating engineers in the company’s fleet.  Although there is no difficulty in substituting for these men Germans or Swiss, at lower rates of payment, the uniform accuracy of the English, their intelligence, their consummate mastery of all the details of their art, and their resources in every case of difficulty, have entirely established their superiority."[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.  It is by means of the swiftness of our machinery that we are enabled to bring cotton from India, manufacture it in Manchester, return the manufactured article to the place from which it was taken, and sell it at a lower price than the native-made calico.

Mr. Chadwick mentions the following case.  “A lady, the wife of an eminent cotton manufacturer, went to him one day rejoicing, with a fine piece of muslin, as the produce of India, which she had bought in London, and showing it to him, said, if he produced a fabric like that, he would really be doing something meritorious in textile art.  He examined it, and found that it was the produce of his own looms, near Manchester, made for the Indian market exclusively, bought there, and re-sold in England as rare Indian manufacture!"[1]