Let us turn to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. The first chapter [...] is called “Of the division of labor,” and on the second page of this first chapter the author tells us that a workman unacquainted with the use of machinery employed in pin-making “could scarce make one pin a day, and certainly not twenty,” but with the use of this machinery he can make 4,800 pins a day. In the pin-making industry there was already, if machines merely throw men out of jobs, 99.98 percent unemployment.
Arkwright invented his cotton-spinning machinery in 1760. At the time it was estimated that there were in England 5,200 spinners using spinning wheels, and 2,700 weavers - in all 7,900 persons engaged in the production of cotton textiles. The introduction of Arkwright’s invention was opposed on the ground that it threatened the livelihood of the workers, and the opposition had to be put down by force. Yet in 1787 [...] the number of persons actually involved in the spinning and weaving of cotton had risen from 7,900 to 320,000, an increase of 4,400 percent.