Читать книгу Fields, Factories, and Workshops. Or, Industry Combined with Agriculture and Brain Work with Manual Work онлайн

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But what about the United States, which cannot be accused of employing cheap labour or of sending to Europe “cheap and nasty” produce? Their great industry is of yesterday’s date; and yet the States already send to old Europe constantly increasing quantities of machinery. In 1890 they began even to export iron, which they obtain at a very low cost, owing to admirable new methods which they have introduced in metallurgy.

In the course of twenty years (1870-1890) the number of persons employed in the American manufactures was more than doubled, and the value of their produce was nearly trebled; and in the course of the next fifteen years, the number of persons employed increased again by nearly fifty per cent., while the value of the produce was nearly doubled.ssss1 The cotton industry, supplied with excellent home-made machinery, has been rapidly developing, so that the yearly production of textiles attained in 1905 a value of 2,147,441,400 dollars, thus being twice as large as the yearly production of the United Kingdom in the same branch (which was valued at about £200,000,000); and the exports of cottons of domestic manufacture attained in 1910 the respectable figure of £8,600,000.ssss1 As to the yearly output of pig-iron and steel, it is already in excess of the yearly output in Britain;ssss1 and the organisation of that industry is also superior, as Mr. Berkley pointed out, already in 1891, in his address to the Institute of Civil Engineers.ssss1