Domestic manufacturing

“ The materials used by manufacturing establishments may be purchased directly from producers, obtained through customary trade channels, or secured without recourse to the market by transferring the product from one establishment to another which is under the same ownership. Manufacturing production is usually carried on for the wholesale market, for interplant transfer, or to order for industrial users, rather than for direct sale to the domestic consumer. ”

“ It is contended that by admitting the exportation of machinery, foreign manufacturers will be supplied with machines equal to our own. The first answer which presents itself to this argument is supplied by almost the whole of the present volume; That in order to succeed in a manufacture, it is necessary not merely to possess good machinery, but that the domestic economy of the factory should be most carefully regulated. ”

“ For too long, we have taken manufacturing, which represents the pioneering, hard-working American spirit, for granted. Due to government neglect and inaction we have witnessed our Nation's manufacturers move their jobs and innovation overseas. ”

“ It is now proper to proceed a step further, and to enumerate the principal circumstances from which it may be inferred that manufacturing establishments not only occasion a positive augmentation of the produce and revenue of the society, but that they contribute essentially to rendering them greater than they could possibly be, without such establishments. ”

“ These are some of the steps by which the systems of the manufacturing world have been, in the past 150 years, transformed from household work, or that of the small shop, into that of the factory—and the factory developed into enormous establishments through the investment of great sums of money in the purchase and installation of ever-improving machinery, more ingenious, more productive, more costly, but turning out more and better of the finished product with each new device and new investment of capital. ”

“ And, moreover, there was no confused mass of high-tariff duties, protecting one industry at the expense of another, and hampering manufacturing production itself with complicated burdens and impediments. I repeat, the manufacturing industries had a clear field before them; their growth was healthy, their spirit self-reliant; and therefore they flourished, not needing more protection and not wishing it. ”

“ Now, if we can give our manufacturers a start and enable [98] them to establish themselves, they will improve all these natural advantages which we possess; and with the abundance of raw material in our mines and farms and forests, with our ingenuity and Yankee enterprise and skill, who can doubt that our manufacturers, once established, can produce goods more cheaply than they could ever be brought across from foreign countries? This protection from foreign competition will be a great incentive to the establishment of manufacturing enterprises. Everywhere mills and factories will spring up ”

“ Every factory contains a carpenter’s and smith’s shop, and handicraftsmen of group (2) are required in every manufacturing concern. Whilst the industries in which hand labour is exclusively employed are becoming fewer and fewer, there are many trades which, owing to the frequent invention of labour-saving appliances, are passing gradually from the class of handicrafts to that of manufactures. ”

“ These plants developed and enlarged, and in due course of time became the machine shops and the factories, which have since multiplied many hundreds of times, not only in number and in value, but in influence and importance, until to-day our country stands the foremost manufacturing nation of the world. ”

“ The system was not one that would be confined to the manufacture of arms, but was adaptable to the production of all kinds of small and moderate-sized machinery, and was the initial effort which in due time revolutionized the then existing shop methods, and which has since built up the American system of manufacturing to the proud distinction of being superior to anything of the kind in other manufacturing countries. ”

“ It ought not to escape observation, in a comparison on this point, that some of the principal manufacturing countries of Europe are much more dependent on foreign supply for the materials of their manufactures than would be the United States, who are capable of supplying themselves with a greater abundance as well as a greater variety of the requisite materials. ”

“ It is the interest of the farmer to have the production of the raw material promoted by counteracting the interference of the foreign material of the same kind. It is the interest of the manufacturer to have the material abundant and cheap. If, prior to the domestic production of the material in sufficient quantity to supply the manufacturer on good terms, a duty be laid upon the importation of it from abroad with a view to promote the raising of it at home, the interest both of the farmer and manufacturer will be disserved. ”

“ It is besides an acknowledged fact, that the owners of factories are often amongst the most extensive purchasers at the halls, where they buy from the domestic clothier the established articles of manufacture, or are able at once to answer a great and sudden order; whilst, at home, and under their own superintendence, they make their fancy goods, and any articles of a newer, more costly, or more delicate quality, to which they are enabled by the domestic system to apply a much larger proportion of their capital. ”

“ It is a reflection which may with propriety be indulged here that this eventual diminution of the prices of manufactured articles, which is the result of internal manufacturing establishments, has a direct and very important tendency to benefit agriculture. It enables the farmer to procure, with a smaller quantity of his labor, the manufactured produce of which he stands in need, and consequently increases the value of his income and property. ”

“ To secure such a market there is no other expedient than to promote manufacturing establishments. Manufacturers, who constitute the most numerous class after the cultivators of the land, are for that reason the principal consumers of the surplus of their labor. ”

“ In order to realize the greatest benefit from these devices, it has become necessary to concentrate our manufacturing operations in enormous factories; to collect under one roof a thousand workmen, increase their efficiency tenfold by the use of modern machinery, and distribute the products of their labor to the markets of the civilized world. The agency which has acted to bring about this result is competition. ”

“ Another, where a manufacture of a simpler kind, the competition of which, with a like domestic article, is desired to be restrained, partakes of the nature of a raw material from being capable, by a further process, to be converted into a manufacture of a different kind, the introduction or growth of which is desired to be encouraged. A third, where the material itself is a production of the country and in sufficient abundance to furnish a cheap and plentiful supply to the national manufacturers. ”

“ At the period of my visit, there were eighteen flour mills in operation, grinding annually 2,500,000 bushels of wheat. The manufacturing interests are immense—ready-made clothing being the most extensive, and boots and shoes ranking next. Other leading manufactures are those of iron bridges, India-rubber goods, carriages, furniture, optical instruments, steam engines, glassware and agricultural machinery. Of flourishing industries may be mentioned breweries, tobacco factories, blast furnaces and fruit canning. ”

“ Approximately 26% of the rentable area of the building is occupied by the executive offices of manufacturing and mining concerns which are concededly engaged in the production of goods for commerce. Corporate policies are formed and directed from these offices. Most of them purchase raw materials for use in the physical processes of manufacturing. They keep in constant and close contact with the factories, supervising all of the manufacturing activities. ”

“ The American factory system is highly organized and more efficient than any other, and, if our export trade were as well developed, there would be little to fear. The only lesson our manufacturers need to learn, it would seem, is the necessity of manufacturing especially for foreign trade; and the great increase of requests for information from our consuls as to the kinds of goods wanted in particular markets, and also of manufacturing processes employed in this or that line of industry, encourages the hope that there is beginning to be a general perception of this important fact. ”

“ America's manufacturers have laid the foundation for our Nation's vibrant economy and have secured our reputation as an economic superpower. Our manufacturing products consistently set the global standard for design and quality. American manufacturing has been enduringly successful because it is the potent combination of the two great pillars of the American economy: the American entrepreneur and the American worker. The American entrepreneur is renowned throughout the world for a steadfast determination to deliver value and innovation to the global marketplace. ”

“ American manufactures began, in this period, to outgrow the simple forms of domestic industry, and to attract the capital necessary for the establishment of regular factories. Many companies were incorporated to manufacture goods by means of power machinery, and industrial methods which had long been practised in England were now first introduced in this country on an extensive scale. The development of the textile industries was especially rapid. ”

“ When, on the other hand, we turn to the manufacturing occupations, we find that they have followed an analogous, though not precisely similar, course of evolution. Certainly from the first the manufacturers showed themselves far ahead of their fellows in the economical management of the raw material, in the adoption of every kind of labor and time-saving device and in the disposal of refuse. ”

“ Encouraged and fostered by national, state, and local governments, and by discoveries of sources of supplies, it has extended to all parts of the country. Manufacturing has grown to proportions which place it at the very head of our industries, if we except agriculture, the growth of which has been largely influenced by the progress in manufactures. ”

“ These revenue duties, including freights and charges, which the importer must pay before he can come in competition with the home manufacturer in our markets, amount on nearly all our leading branches of manufacture to more than one-third of the value of the imported article, and in some cases to almost one-half its value. With such advantages it is not doubted that our domestic manufacturers will continue to prosper, realizing in well-conducted establishments even greater profits than can be derived from any other regular business. ”

“ Another characteristic of modern manufacturing is exemplified in the study of the iron and steel industry and the relation of capital, labor and product, as is also the concentration of industries into great establishments and groups of establishments. As has already been noted, the value of the product of the iron and steel blast furnaces, steel works and rolling mills grew from 297 million in 1880 to 906 million in 1905, having thus a little more than trebled in that time. ”

“ The change, at first view, is not striking, for the manufacturing was still done by petty artisans working at home with their own tools. The ownership of the raw material, however, had passed from the artisans to an employer, who took the risk of the manufacture and reaped profits corresponding to his success in conducting it.
Brain power now took a place in manufactures above hand power. The new class of employers were men who could devote their energy entirely to studying the larger questions212 of production. ”

“ The immediate result of these inventions was seen in the rapid transference of all the processes of cotton and woollen manufactures from the home of the individual weaver and spinner to large industrial centres, the centralization of important interests in the hands of a few, and a division of labor that multiplied indefinitely the results previously accomplished.
But the factory system of manufactures that superseded the domestic system of previous generations has not been the product of inventions alone. ”

“ An aggregate capital of $520,178,654 is employed in manufacturing, and the value of the productions is $750,000,000 annually, while 250,000 persons are employed. The building of locomotives and the manufacture of iron and steel implements, carpets, woolens, upholstery goods and cotton goods employ about 125,000 workmen and produce $350,000,000 yearly, and there are sugar refineries, oil refineries, breweries and great chemical works, besides a very considerable foreign commerce. ”

“ This gives at least a suggestion as to the growth of investment in manufacturing. So far as relates to the United States, the only country for which we have statistics on this subject, the enormous increase in the use of costly machinery in manufacturing has increased the sums required for carrying on the industry, and machinery has in a marked degree been substituted for man in the [Pg 219] factory operations. The number of wage-earners employed increased, it will be seen, a little more than fivefold while the capital employed increased twenty-fivefold. ”

“ Thus manufacturing and services dominate economic activity, and raw materials and semimanufactures constitute a large proportion of imports. In 1988 manufacturing accounted for 35% of GDP, with other sectors contributing lesser amounts. ”