No. 216 - THE PENNY MAGAZINE - Aug. 15, 1835

Opposition to Improvement.--In France, as elsewhere, every improvement has had to struggle against vehement opposition. The proprietors of old machines look with jealousy and dislike upon those who introduce any changes likely to diminish the value or supersede the use of those in which their property is invested; and these improvements are most difficult of introduction when they are either completely new or of foreign origin; as, in that case, the whole of the existing interests are against their introduction. In a protected trade, and in the exact proportion of the employed; the motives to adopt better modes are almost wholly destroyed, and the interest of the existing manufacturers is to combine against the intrusion of improved methods of fabrication. The Jacquart loom, the bar loom, and the machinery which adapts the broad loom to riband weaving, would never have been forced upon France but from the improvement-creating pressure of foreign competition. The Jacquard machinery subjected its inventor to be almost hunted out of society; the introducer of the bar loom died in an hospital; and the late employment of the common loom for riband weaving would never have been sanctioned, had not the riband trade absolutely department from Lyons, and forced the manufacturers there to new exercises of ingenuity in order to win it back again; and in this, to a considerable extent, they have succeeded.--Dr. Bowring's Report on the Commercial Relations between France and Great Britain.