Factory owner

“ It hardly need be added that a further advantage which the factory owner has is, that he can find a sale even for produce of the most inferior quality, provided there is a considerable quantity of it to be sold. ”

“ The immediate change to be desired for the tailors is the introduction of the back-shop. There are two or three reasons for such a change. In the first place, the owner of a factory does not require or expect his workers to pay rent for the room in which they work nor to own the machines they use. The factory system is supposed to have displaced domestic industry in this age in America. ”

“ The factory, with its little army of workers, {202} men, women, and children, was managed according to the will and judgment of the owner, unless in the rare cases where the demand for labor far exceeded the supply. In most places the supply exceeded the demand, and the master was therefore free to make any conditions he pleased with his workers. ”

“ The manufacture being a strictly private enterprise, its owners find it advantageous to have all the branches of a given industry under their own management; they thus cumulate the profits of the successive transformations of the raw material. And when several thousand power-looms are combined in one factory, the owner finds his advantage in being able to hold the command of the market. ”

“ No doubt the present factory owners would consider it ruinous if they had to stop their mills for several months every year, because the capital engaged in a factory is expected to pump money every day and every, hour, if possible. ”

“ Factory Inspector Stuart, himself a Scotchman, and in contrast to the English Factory Inspectors, quite taken captive by the capitalistic method of thinking, remarks expressly on this letter which he incorporates in his report that it is “the most useful of the communications which any of the factory-owners working with relays have given to those engaged in the same trade, and which is the must calculated to remove the prejudices of such of them as have scruples respecting any change of the arrangement of the hours of work. ”

“ Under a scheme of subdivided toil the factory hand succeeded to the journeyman who, with a few mates, had split nails or drawn wire in a shop no bigger than some day he might own for himself. With the need to occupy large premises, to install engines and elaborate machinery, the capital of an employer has to be vastly more than of old, creating a new dependence on the part of the workman, and rendering it all but impossible that he should ever have a factory of his own. While the factory system of production is general in America, it is far from universal. ”

“ As the number of factories increased it became possible for operatives to rise, first to positions of trust within the factory, and later to the rank of master manufacturer—so that many a bobbin boy became a cotton lord. ”

“ Within those walls twenty-seven thousand men and women living in a degree of comfort never known before to the spinners and weavers of the world, earn their daily bread. [Pg 28] Those towering factories are, every one, monuments to the genius of Richard Arkwright, the penny barber of Preston. If he appropriated the inventions of others, he perfected these inventions and made them of permanent value to mankind; and moreover, he arranged the machinery into series, organized the factory system, and revolutionized industry. ”

“ It would make no difference whether one company or one individual owned all the factories fabricating the component parts of a single product, or whether such part were made in our independently owned factory, _if only all adopted the same service methods_. If we can buy as good a part as we can make ourselves and the supply is ample and the price right, we do not attempt to make it ourselves--or, at any rate, to make more than an emergency supply. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The work of a Factory is carried on in workplaces provided by the employer, not in the rooms of the workers or of a middleman.
i. The work of a Factory results in the immediate sale of the commodities produced, and does not consign them to the wholesale dealer to be prepared and dressed, or distributed by wholesale or retail, i.e. the Factory has absolute control of the sale of the commodities produced, in contradistinction to household industry. ”

“ Some tell us that we want capital, and that we should send abroad and get men to come here with money to build factories. This is not what we need. If the cotton lord and the millionaire come here and hire you to build factories and pay you their money for their work, when the factory is erected they own it, and they set their price upon your labor and your wool or cotton—they have dominion over you. But if, by your own efforts and exertions, you cooperate together and build a factory it is your own. ”

“ Here, indeed, we have the factory system—in which the division of labor is a conspicuous feature—employed with all its modern details; but not the steam-driven factory, building great cities and changing the whole social life of the kingdom. ”

“ There are hundreds among us who have made fortunes as manufacturers. How does the case stand with them? They have set up a factory, it may be, in some sequestered spot, where a village has immediately arisen. The population has increased from year to year; the capital of the manufacturer has increased with it; his works been extended; new labourers have arrived; and in the evening of his days he retires with a handsome property honourably gained, and it is his joy that he owes nothing to any man. ”

“ To supply the wants of those employed in the factories, who were so busily engaged that they could not find time to grow their own food, or make their own clothing, other enterprising men and women established themselves near the factory to sell the required food and household supplies, to supply the fuel with which they cooked their daily food, to buy small portions of the cloth made in the factory and turn it into clothing to sell to the operatives, to shave their rough beards and occasionally trim their hair—and thus arose the factory town. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a factory, for the most part, the only way, during working hours, an employer can express himself and his humanness to his workman is through the steel machine he works with—through its being a new, good, fair machine or a poor one. He can only smile and frown at him with steel, be good to him in wheels and levers, or now and then perhaps through a foreman pacing down the aisles.
The question the modern business man in a factory has to face is very largely this: "I have acres of machines all roaring my will at my men. ”

“ All these acting in conjunction with the material force—invention—have operated on manufacturing industries to produce the factory system of to-day. It is, indeed, because the factory system is the resultant of so many forces working in the past that it touches in the present nearly every great economic, social, political, moral, and philanthropic question. ”

“ Going through the various departments of these two factories, the visitor would not be surprised if told that he was in an engineering, joinery, or almost any kind of industrial establishment; for all branches of the modern workshop are carried on in different parts of the premises. Nearly everything required for upkeep and packing is made upon the spot in the foundries, machine shops, carpenters’ shops and the marvellous tin can factory with its elaborate machinery that is almost human. ”

“ Hand workers sought employment in the factories. Vast numbers of purely agricultural laborers left the rural districts for the manufacturing [Pg 59] towns. And, augmenting this great supply of labor, came thousands of children—for an eight-year-old child was capable of operating a spinning-frame, in which, for this very reason, the spindles were set near to the floor. With an unlimited supply of labor, the cotton masters had only the cost of production to consider, and so it came about that they thought only of their profits and forgot the human hands which operated the machinery. ”

“ A factory that turns out a completed product is like a watch. You know that unless every wheel of the watch turns; unless every minute rivet and screw is in its place and doing its part we get no perfect result. It is just as important a service to be a wee screw in that organism as to be something larger and more conspicuous. So it is with each workman in a factory. He performs his part—often, alas, a small and dull one too, I am afraid; but viewed from the standpoint of the completed product that man with his humdrum task is as worthy our respect as is any other member of the working staff. ”

“ The strength and profit of the factory system lie in its assembling a wide variety of machines, the first delivering its product to the second for another step toward completion, and so on until a finished article is sent to the ware-room. It is this minute subdivision of labour, together with the saving and efficiency that inure to a business conducted on an immense scale under a single manager, that bids us believe that the factory has come to stay. To be sure, a weaver, a potter, or a lens-grinder of peculiar skill may thrive at his loom or wheel at home ”

“ It is really a co-operative concern, as the Craighelbyl place is fast becoming now. The factory is to produce second-class goods—that is, articles which are to be worth every penny asked for them, and warranted to wear, but without the finish, the polish, for which our other goods are—if you will excuse the egotism of a manufacturer—known all over the world. These men of mine are themselves conducting this factory, and every man whom they employ is one who has been rescued from drunkenness or some other wrongdoing. So, you see, it is more than a factory—it is a mission of usefulness. ”

“ There are several factories in Lowell, each of which belongs to what we should term a Company of Proprietors, but what they call in America a Corporation. I went over several of these; such as a woollen factory, a carpet factory, and a cotton factory: examined them in every part; and saw them in their ordinary working aspect, with no preparation of any kind, or departure from their ordinary everyday proceedings. I may add that I am well acquainted with our manufacturing towns in England, and have visited many mills in Manchester and elsewhere in the same manner. ”

“ The case was the same with the home-products of earlier times, and compared with them the newer factory-product was shoddy; because, if the manufacturer was to earn a living from his industry he must produce a certain quantity within a limited time. These by-products of the home were enabled to hold their own against the factory products until the development of machinery in the eighteenth century; and until that time the factory system, although factories existed on a rudimentary scale, did not fully develop. ”

“ A factory is defined as any room where two or more persons are employed in connection with a handicraft or in preparing or manufacturing goods for trade or sale. It includes bakehouses, buildings in which machinery is used for preparing articles for trade or for packing goods for export, and all places in which Asiatics are employed, even if only one of them is at work. The occupier is deemed to be one of the workers. No workroom is too small to come within the definition, and there are no bodies of employees engaged in factory work who do not come under the regulations. ”

“ The factory hand spends his working day in a great, dingy shop, with the maddening din of machinery in his ears. His associates are strangers, with whom he has little or nothing in common besides his work. He labors for an indefinite, far-away consumer whose manner of life is unknown to him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The establishment of the factory altered completely the relation between employer and employee. Indeed in the modern sense these relations were then first established. Labor became a commodity which the master manufacturer, who was also the capitalist, bought and which the workingman sold. When in the year 1785 Arkwright’s patents were set aside and the use of his perfected spinning machinery became free to all manufacturers, a great extension of the cotton industry followed. ”

“ The manufacturing industry is continually passing under the management of fewer individuals, while the number of operatives in each factory tends to increase. With concentration of management goes concentration of wealth, and the gap widens between rich and poor. Out of the modern factory system has come the industrial problem with all its varieties of skilled and unskilled work, woman and child labor, sweating, wages, hours and conditions of labor, unemployment, and other difficulties. ”