Factor of production

“ In order to carry out more perfectly the division of labour in manufacture, a single branch of production is, according to the varieties of its raw material, or the various forms that one and the same raw material may assume, split up into numerous, and to some extent, entirely new manufactures. ”

“ Turning our attention again to the industrial organism, we shall strive to ascertain the chief changes that have been brought about in the size and structural character of industry, in the relations of the several parts of the industrial world, of the several trades which constitute industry, of the processes within these trades, of the businesses or units which comprise a trade or a market, and of the units of capital and labour comprising a business. It will then remain to undertake closer studies of certain important special outcomes of machinery and factory production. ”

“ We may confine our attention to the system of distribution which is the most complex, and which virtually includes all others—that in which the produce of manufactures is shared between two classes, labourers and capitalists, and the produce of agriculture among three, labourers, capitalists, and landlords.
The characteristic features of what is commonly meant by industrial progress, resolve themselves mainly into three, increase of capital, increase of population, and improvements in production ”

“ Under the stimulus of this the wheels of industry hummed. Factories covered the land. National production grew to a colossal size and the whole outer world seemed laid under a tribute to the great industry. ”

“ Scarcely a single article of consumption comes from the hand of a single producer, but all run through a number of productive processes so that those who finally fit it for our use are only the last in a long row of producers. The production of articles for consumption and for the means of production have a wholly different character. The production for further production belongs to the domain of gigantic industries such as the iron industry, mining, etc. ”

“ Another of our important problems is the distribution of raw materials. We cannot say that we have sufficient raw materials, but we have enough to fill present requirements, and we can hold out for a considerable time with our own production. We have made a thorough inventory and only those factories are supplied which are held to be absolutely in need. ”

“ The materials of manufacture being all drawn from the land, and many of them from agriculture, which supplies in particular the entire material of clothing; the general law of production from the land, the law of diminishing return, must in the last resort be applicable to manufacturing as well as to agricultural history. As population increases, and the power of the land to yield increased produce is strained harder and harder, any additional supply of material, as well as of food, must be obtained by a more than proportionally increasing expenditure of labour. ”

“ Let there be reflection upon the thought that in quarrelling about the division of produce we have been forgetting to produce enough, and have been blind to the unbalance and distortion of our production. ”

“ Mines, factories and mills of all kinds, large business houses and stores, together with those farms whose owners would employ hired labor for the production of goods to be sold at profit, would all be looked upon as being among the principal means of production. ”

“ Means of production play an ever growing part in the productive process and on the commodity market. Compared to the machine, the worker recedes further into the background and the demand resulting from the consumption of the workers is also put into the shade by that which results from productive consumption by the means of production. ”

“ Large investments of capital, specialization in production, the use of machinery in every process, and the consequent subdivision of labor in particular lines in which the technical skill of the handicraftsman is not required, together with the utilization of waste products and the rapid exchange of commodities, mark the progress of activity in the industrial arts. ”

“ It is too narrow an understanding of production which confines it merely to the making of things. Production includes not merely the making of things, but the bringing of them to the consumer. The merchant or storekeeper is thus as truly a producer as is the manufacturer, or farmer, and his stock or capital is as much devoted to production as is theirs. ”

“ But the difficulties of the organization of production and circulation can be diminished in other directions as well as by a decrease in the number of plants. Production can be divided into two great fields; those in which the production is for consumption and those in which production is for production. The production of means of production, thanks to the extensive division of labor, has become to-day the most important portion of production and it continues to increase steadily. ”

“ Production is not a fixed but an increasing thing. When not kept back by bad institutions, or a low state of the arts of life, the produce of industry has usually tended to increase; stimulated not only by the desire of the producers to augment their means of consumption, but by the increasing number of the consumers.
We have seen that the essential requisites of production are three—labor, capital, and natural agents; the term capital including all external and physical requisites which are products of labor, the term natural agents all those which are not. ”

“ We dwell principally on the effects of accumulation of knowledge and division of labour on the working man as a consumer, because it is the more immediate object of this volume to consider such questions with reference to production. But the condition of the working man as a producer is, taking the average of all ranks of producers, greatly advanced by the direction which capital gives to labour, by calling in accumulation of knowledge and division of labour. ”

“ The principle of those illustrations applies to the whole Productive Process. By division of Labor, that is to say, by Labor specialization, Economic accomplishment is multiplied beyond all the possibilities of isolated individual production. ”

“ A country which produces for a larger market than its own, can introduce a more extended division of labour, can make greater use of machinery, and is more likely to make inventions and improvements in the processes of production. Whatever causes a greater quantity of anything to be produced in the same place, tends to the general increase of the productive powers of the world. ”

“ There are four fundamental facts connected with the subject, viz., the points of production, places of consumption, methods of operation and means of communication. Production is upon the farm, consumption in the cities and towns, methods, to be determined by experience, and the mode and means of conveyance, a government function.
Regarding the first of these divisions, certain facts are apparent. The balance of trade, eight to one is against the farmer at the point of production; he receives very much more than he sends. ”

“ The development of large scale factory production, the benefit of combination in the competitive struggle, and the tremendous advantage of concentration in securing possession of the unoccupied opportunities, were so great that vast accumulations of capital became the normal agency of the industrial world. ”

“ We see this very clearly wherever the division of labor has made it customary for different parts of the full process of production to be carried on by different sets of producers—that is to say, wherever we are in the habit of estimating the amount of value which the labor expended in any preparatory stage of production has created. ”

“ The Requisites of Production. The first thing in industry, as we now see, is to decide what we want; the next thing is to get it, or make it, or, as we shall say, produce it, and we ought obviously to produce it with the least possible labour. To learn how this may be done, we must inquire what is needful for the production of wealth. There are, as is commonly and correctly said, three requisites of production ”

“ In manufactures, accordingly, the causes tending to increase the productiveness of industry, preponderate greatly over the one cause which tends to diminish it: and the increase of production, called forth by the progress of society, takes place, not at an increasing, but at a continually diminishing proportional cost. ”

“ From the bowels and the treasures of the earth labor puts out the material for fuel and the essential things which, after being transformed, comprise the implements and machinery of production and distribution. With the matter thus furnished production proper for the providing of all necessary things of life and comfort is carried on in the various, but inter-depending places of production, mills and factories. ”

“ I acknowledge there may not be adequate motives for production, and therefore things will not be produced; but I cannot allow first that with these inadequate motives commodities will be produced, and secondly that, if their production is attended with loss to the producer, it is for any other reason than because too great a proportion is given to the labourers employed. ”

“ It must be borne in mind, that we are now dealing with the production of commodities, and that, up to this point, we have only considered one aspect of the process. Just as commodities are, at the same time, use-values and values, so the process of producing them must be a labour-process, and at the same time, a process of creating value. ”

“ In every society in which production has developed naturally, to which class that of to-day belongs, the producers do not master the means of production but the means of production dominate the producers. ”

“ These restrictions also frequently interfere with the processes of manufacture, requiring the producer to carry on his operations in the way most convenient to the revenue, though not the cheapest, or most efficient for purposes of production. ”

“ The conditions which govern the need of the productive system for labor may be summarized 64 as follows: Firstly, the consumption habits of the community, by which is decided the direction in which the productive powers are employed; secondly, the state of the productive arts, which governs the manner in which the various agents of production are combined for purposes of production; thirdly, the available supply of the agents of production, other than labor. ”

“ Production on a Large and Production on a Small Scale. Whenever it is essential to the greatest efficiency of labor that many laborers should combine, the scale of the enterprise must be such as to bring many laborers together, and the capital must be large enough to maintain them. Still more needful is this when the nature of the employment allows, and the extent of the possible market encourages, a considerable division of labor. The larger the enterprise the further the division of labor may be carried. This is one of the principal causes of large manufactories. ”

“ Apart from natural conditions, such as fertility of the soil, &c., and from the skill of independent and isolated producers (shown rather qualitatively in the goodness than quantitatively in the mass of their products) , the degree of productivity of labour, in a given society, is expressed in the relative extent of the means of production that one labourer, during a given time, with the same tension of labour-power, turns into products. ”

“ It will have to take possession of land, factories, mines, means of communication, etc., and besides, it will have to study what products will promote general well-being, as well as the ways and means of an adequate production. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The three requisites of production, as has been so often repeated, are labour, capital, and land: understanding by capital, the means and appliances which are the accumulated results of previous labour, and by land, the materials and instruments supplied by nature, whether contained in the interior of the earth, or constituting its surface. ”

“ It is the application of machinery to agriculture and the general tendency to production on a large scale. The same tendency which substitutes the factory, with its army of operatives, for many independent hand-loom weavers, is beginning to exhibit itself in agriculture. ”

“ Furthermore, although it may seem a very simple thing to provide that those who do the manual work shall have all the product, it is plain, so soon as we reflect upon the complicated combinations of labor which are involved in any case of production, and also upon the complicated character of modern "products" and the way in which they contribute to, and depend upon each other, that it would be impracticable to divide the products among those who have done the labor part of production. ”

“ In the first place, division of labor—the first and most powerful of all cheapeners of production, but for which there is in extractive industry but very limited scope—finds in manufacturing industry an almost unbounded range for its application; and, secondly, it is in manufacturing industry also that machinery, the other great cheapener of production, admits of being employed on the largest scale, and has, in fact, been employed with the most signal success. ”

“ Thus in the evolution of the modern business we see not only a number of processes in the production of a commodity, each of which constituted a separate business-unit in the earlier division of labour, growing together into a large complex whole, but a growing together of analogous processes in the production of different commodities, a lateral aggregation of processes. ”