On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures

There exists, perhaps, no single circumstance which distinguishes ourcountry more remarkably from all others, than the vast extent andperfection to which we have carried the contrivance of tools andmachines for forming those conveniences of which so large a quantityis consumed by almost every class of the community. The amount ofpatient thought, of repeated experiment, of happy exertion of genius, bywhich our manufactures have been created and carried to their presentexcellence, is scarcely to be imagined. If we look around the rooms we inhabit, or through those storehouses of every convenience, of everyluxury that man can desire, which deck the crowded streets of our largercities, we shall find in the history of each article, of every fabric, a seriesof failures which have gradually led the way to excellence; and we shallnotice, in the art of making even the most insignificant of them...