butcher’s meat, their grocery, or their clothing:  the encumbrance of these frames became entailed upon them:  if any deadness took place in the work they must take it at a very reduced price, for fear of the consequences that would fall upon them from the person who bought the frame:  thus the evil has been daily increasing, till, in conjunction with the other evils crept into the trade, they have almost crushed it to atoms.”

348.  The evil of not assigning fairly to each tool, or each article produced, its proportionate value, or even of not having a perfectly distinct, simple, and definite agreement between a master and his workmen, is very considerable.  Workmen find it difficult in such cases to know the probable produce of their labour; and both parties are often led to adopt arrangements, which, had they been well examined, would have been rejected as equally at variance in the results with the true interests of both.

349.  At Birmingham, stamps and dies, and presses for a great variety of articles, are let out:  they are generally made by men possessing small capital, and are rented by workmen.  Power also is rented at the same place.  Steam-engines are erected in large buildings containing a variety of rooms, in which each person may hire one, two, or any other amount of horsepower, as his occupation may require.  If any mode could be discovered of transmitting power, without much loss from friction, to considerable distances, and at the same time of registering the quantity made use of at any particular point, a considerable change would probably take place in many departments of the present system of manufacturing.  A few central engines to produce power, might then be erected in our great towns, and each workman, hiring a quantity of power sufficient for his purpose, might have it conveyed into his own house; and thus a transition might in some instances be effected, if it should be found more profitable, back again from the system of great factories to that of domestic manufacture.

350.  The transmission of water through a series of pipes, might be employed for the distribution of power, but the friction would consume a considerable portion.  Another method has been employed in some instances, and is practised at the Mint.  It consists in exhausting the air from a large vessel by means of a steam-engine.  This vessel is connected by pipes, with a small piston which drives each coining press; and, on opening a valve, the pressure of the external air forces in the piston.  This air is then admitted to the general reservoir, and pumped out by the engine.  The condensation of air might be employed for the same purpose; but there are some unexplained facts relating to elastic fluids, which require further observations and experiment before they can be used for the conveyance of power to any considerable distance.  It has been found, for instance, in attempting to blow a furnace by means of a powerful water-wheel driving air through a cast-iron pipe of above a mile in length, that scarcely any sensible effect was produced at the opposite extremity.  In one instance, some accidental obstruction being suspected, a cat put in at one end found its way out without injury at the other, thus proving that the phenomenon did not depend on interruption within the pipe.