pitch.

With respect to the smith's shop, all large pieces of work are now
manipulated under heavy Nasmyth or other steam hammers; while smaller
pieces of work are commonly prepared either in forging machines or
under rapidly moving hammers, and when needed in sufficient numbers
are made in dies. And applicable to all the three industries of the
fitting shop, the boiler shop, and the smith's shop, and also to that
other industry carried on in the foundry, are the traveling and swing
cranes, commonly worked by shafting, or by quick moving ropes for the
travelers, and by hydraulic power or by steam engines for the swing
cranes. It may safely be said, that without the aid of these
implements, it would be impossible to handle the weights that are met
with in machinery of the present day.

I now come to one class of machine which, humble and small as it is,
has probably had a greater effect upon industry and upon domestic life
than almost any other. I mean


THE SEWING MACHINE.

In 1831, there was no means of making a seam except by the laborious
process of the hand needle. In 1846, Eldred Walker patented a machine
for parsing the basting thread through the gores of umbrellas, a
machine that was very ingenious and very simple, but was utterly
unlike the present sewing machine, with its eye-pointed needle, using
sometimes two threads (the second being put in by a shuttle or by
another needle), and making stitches at twenty-fold the rapidity with
which the most expert needlewoman could work. By means of the sewing