Pym

“ Through the doors of the different rooms passed an endless procession; men from the front with the marks of the desert sun on their faces—engineers, superintendents, bosses, messengers, agents—servants of the Company; laborers of every sort and nationality came in answer to the cry: "Men wanted!"; special salesmen from foundry, factory and shop drawn by prospective large sales of machinery, implements and supplies; land-hungry men from everywhere seeking information and opportunity for investment. ”

“ To make exchange perfect there must constantly be great stores of goods in warehouses, ships, and railroad trains—goods held to supply the market, and goods on their way to market. To make labor effective, there must be many and various tools, factories, engines—all sorts of machinery. These tools and these goods in the hands of the producer are capital. ”

“ Three classes of men answer to this specialization at the present day: the traders, who are not producers, but act as middlemen between producer and consumer, deciding what shall be produced and concerning themselves solely with buying and selling; the industrial capitalists, who, at the tradesmen’s orders, direct the transformation of the raw materials entrusted to them, in workshops and with machinery which are their property; finally the workmen, who, mere wage-earners, carry out manual or mechanical work as they are told. ”

“ That capital may limit the form of industry is clear. Without the factory, there could be no factory operatives; without the sewing machine, no machine sewing; without the plough, no ploughman; and without a great capital engaged in exchange, industry could not take the many special forms that are concerned with exchanges. ”

“ Here we find, amongst others, the following edifying passage: "Under the present law, no mill in which persons under 18 years of age are employed, ... can be worked more than 111/2 hours a day, that is 12 hours for 5 days in the week, and nine on Saturday.
"Now the following analysis (!) will show that in a mill so worked, the whole net profit is derived from the last hour. I will suppose a manufacturer to invest £100,000:—£80,000 in his mill and machinery, and £20,000 in raw material and wages. ”

“ Capital had, therefore, to be brought into manufacturing which had been previously used in trade or other employments. Capital was in reality abundant relatively to existing opportunities for investment, and the early machine spinners and weavers drew into partnership moneyed men from the towns who had previously no connection with manufacturing. Again, the new industry required bodies of laborers working regular hours under the control of their employers and in the buildings where the machines were placed and the (p. 213) power provided. ”

“ We propose to own the commodities we produce ourselves and to exchange commodities containing a certain quantity of necessary social labor, for other commodities representing an equal quantity of necessary social labor.
You and I work for the boss because he owns the factory or mine or railroad or the mill. Ownership of the means of production and distribution (the factories, land, mines, mills—the machinery that produces things) makes masters of capitalists and wage-workers of you and me. ”

“ To do this there was one thing besides the manufacturing of the chips—stocks—that was absolutely necessary—a gambling-hell, the working of whose machinery would place a selling value upon such chips; a hell where, after selling the chips, they could be won back. I saw that if these tricksters were to be routed and their ‘System’ was to be destroyed, it must be through the machinery of this Stock Exchange. I studied the machinery, and presently I marvelled that men could for so long have been asses. ”

“ Much more is produced than there is corn, leather, or other goods, to exchange for it. The resources of the mills are great; they can borrow from the banks while they pile up their fabrics in their ware-rooms; they can by means of their concentrated capital keep their machinery running, even at a loss, if by so doing they can crush out a rival or manipulate the market. ”

“ In production, the particular conditions of each industry will determine how much capital is to be set apart for raw material, how much for machinery, buildings, and all forms of fixed capital, and how many laborers will be assigned to a given machine for a given amount of material. With some kinds of hand-made goods the largest share of capital goes to wages, a less amount for materials, and a very small proportion for machinery and tools. In many branches of agriculture and small farming this holds true. The converse, however, is true in many manufactures, where machinery is largely used. ”

“ If the state of the market were such as to yield a remunerating profit on the produce of those mills they would be in full operation, and would, in that case, give employment to about 25,000 persons more than were then employed. ”

“ I invest a capital of £200 in productive industry, £100 for raw material—the further consideration of which is immaterial for the present argument—and £100 as capital reserved for wages. Assuming the capital is turned over four times a year, and that the value added in the labor process, as in Australian manufactures, exceeds wages by 100 per cent, at the end of three months I realize the total capital advanced as wages, with an additional value of £100. ”

“ The owner of a factory, on the contrary, being commonly possessed of a large capital, and having all his workmen employed under his own immediate superintendence, may make experiments, hazard speculation, invent shorter or better modes of performing old processes, may introduce new articles, and improve and perfect old ones, thus giving the range to his taste and fancy, and, thereby alone enabling our manufacturers to stand the competition with their commercial rivals in other countries. ”

“ Units of capital and of labour are not infinitely divisible. In any given manufacturing business the minimum unit of real capital may be the whole plant of a mill, or, at any rate, one expensive machine: the unit of labour is for most purposes the week’s employment of a worker’s time. ”

“ Take, for instance, an employing manufacturer who is engaged in turning raw material into finished products—cotton into cloth, iron into hardware, leather into boots, or so on, as may be, and who pays his hands, as is generally the case, once a week. Make an exact inventory of his capital on Monday morning before the beginning of work, and it will consist of his buildings, machinery, raw materials, money on hand, and finished products in stock. ”

“ There never plays upon their imagination the least glimpse of the wonderful complexity of the mechanism of finance nor of the amazingly intricate organization of buying and selling. Who can blame them—they have never been told. I have kept a meeting of workmen keenly interested for an hour, after the conclusion of some official business, in a simple explanation of the functions played by finance in industry, and of the various kinds of financial operations entailed in the marketing of the product of their particular factory. ”

“ It is true, therefore, of every particular producer or dealer, that a great demand, a brisk circulation, a rapid consumption, of the commodities which he sells at his shop or produces in his manufactory, is important to him. The dealer whose shop is crowded with customers, who can dispose of a product almost the very moment it is completed, makes large profits, while his next neighbour, with an equal capital but fewer customers, gains comparatively little. ”

“ For what is it that, by means of great capital, working with the powers which their immortal discoveries have conferred, manufacturing industry has become? Why, it has all, or nearly all, run into huge mills, or other establishments, in which machinery, at a cost of thirty, forty, or fifty thousand pounds, is erected, and a crown of needy women and children are employed, in ordinary [Pg 540] times, at the lowest wages which can support existence, with a few men at a guinea or twenty-five shillings a-week, to direct and superintend their labours. ”

“ The effect of improvements in machinery, seems incidentally to increase production, through a cause which may be thus explained. A manufacturer making the usual profit upon his capital, invested in looms or other machines in perfect condition, the market price of making each of which is a hundred pounds, invents some improvement. ”

“ Almost all other forms of economic occupation have subsequently taken on the main characteristics of the factory system, in utilizing improved machinery, in the extensive scale on which they are administered, in the use of large capital, and in the organization of employees in large bodies. ”

“ And when the producer, after buying the tools and employing them in his own occupation, comes to estimate his gains, he must set aside a portion of the produce to replace not only the wages paid both by himself and by the tool-maker, but also the profits of the tool-maker, advanced by himself out of his own capital. ”

“ Our next enterprise was the establishing of a woolen factory, following the same course as in putting up the tannery—procuring the building materials, doing the mason and carpenter work in the season when laborers would otherwise have been unemployed. This, also, added to our capital—increasing the number of our stockholders without interrupting any man's business. The profits of the mercantile department, with some additional capital, purchased the machinery. ”

“ Every person in a civilized country requires, according to his station in life, the use of a certain quantity of money, to make the ordinary purchases of the articles which he consumes. The same individual pieces of coin, it is true, circulate again and again, in the same district: the identical piece of silver, received by the workman on Saturday night, passing through the hands of the butcher, the baker, and the small tradesman, is, perhaps, given by the latter to the manufacturer in exchange for his check, and is again paid into the hands of the workman at the end of the succeeding week. ”

“ The manufacturing establishment, and the mercantile affairs and public accounts are all managed by one person; he, I believe, is one of the sons of Rapp. They have a bank, where a separate account is kept for each person; if any one puts in money, or has put in money, he may on certain conditions as to time, take it out again. They labour and possess in common; that is to say, except where it is not practicable or is immaterial, as with their houses, gardens, cows and poultry, which they have to themselves, each family. ”

“ The characteristic feature which is currently held to differentiate the existing economic situation from that out of which the present has developed, or out of which it is emerging, is the prevalence of the machine industry with the consequent larger and more highly specialised organisation of the market and of the industrial force and plant. As has been pointed out above, and as is well enough known from the current discussions of the economists, industrial life is organised on a pecuniary basis and managed from the pecuniary side. ”

“ When machinery was applied to industry, and mill and factory took the place of the country blacksmith shop; when the workers were divorced from their tools and recruited in the mills; when they were obliged to compete against each other for employment; when they found themselves in the labor market with but a low bid or none at all upon their labor power ”

“ It would be of great importance, if, in every large establishment the mode of payment could be so arranged, that every person employed should derive advantage from the success of the whole; and that the profits of each individual should advance, as the factory itself produced profit, without the necessity of making any change in the wages. ”

“ Closely allied with the manufacturing occupations are those branches of industry classified in the census reports under the heading: "trading and transportation." They comprise all commercial activities. Merchants, clerks, bookkeepers, salesmen and women, typewriters, telegraph and telephone operators, etc., are enumerated in this class. Flourishing industries are invariably accompanied by flourishing commerce, and the capitalistic system of production depends upon a constant expansion of trade. ”

“ If you will drop your present schemes, if you will be content to share with these men and children a portion of your profits, to let them toil eight hours instead of twelve per day, and if on every Saturday you will give to them one full long day in God's dear sunlight, I will invest the amount of capital necessary to cover all which you as a body have invested, and I will stand beside you in your mill. ”

“ Nothing in modern times has exerted a more profound or far-reaching influence upon the general course of civilization. The factory is the symbol of a new economic order. It has been said, and rightly, that three things,—steam, steel, and credit,—have revolutionized industry during the past hundred years.
Industrial Organization of Today.—In the days of hand-industry men needed no large amounts of capital in order to engage in the production of goods. ”