So far as social policy is concerned, however, the working-class problem had not made any impression on the statesmen of the time. Hamilton in his report on manufactures, dismisses the subject with scant notice. He observe that one of the advantages of the extensive introduction of machinery will be “the employment of persons who would otherwise be idle, and in many cases, a burthen on the community, either from bias of temper, habit infirmity of body, or some other case , indisposing or disqualifying them for the toils of the country. It is worthy of remark, that in general, women and children are rendered more useful, and the latter more early useful, by manufacturing establishments, than they would otherwise be. Of the number of persons employed in the cotton manufactories of Great Britain, it is computed that four-sevenths, nearly, are women and children; of whom the greatest proportion are children, many of them of them of a tender age.” Apparently this advantage was in Hamilton’s view, t accrue principally to the fathers of families, for he remarks: “The husbandman himself experiences a new source of profit and support , from the increased industry of his wife and daughters, invited and stimulated by the demands of the neighboring manufactories.”