Industrial combination

“ The scattering of industries over the country ----so as to bring the factory amidst the fields, to make agriculture derive all those profits which it always finds in being combined with industry (see the Eastern States of America) and to produce a combination of industrial with agricultural work--is surely the next step to be made, as soon as a reorganisation of our present conditions is possible. ”

“ In centralizing manufacturing plants in cities, certain industrial economies are secured, such as: (1) economy in motor power, whether it be water or coal; (2) economy in machinery—it is not necessary to duplicate machines ”

“ Mines have been opened, factories established, railroads built, electric plants constructed, by some individual or [Pg 67] corporation interested in making a profit on the investment, and with little or no relation to the well-being of the community. There has been no recognized intelligent guidance behind the development of the industrial system. ”

“ These projects are expected to intensify the technological com­ponent of the industrial structure and the develop­ment of an efficient domestic intermediate goods industry.
The success of industrialization, however, will rely a great deal on our capacity to export our products. ”

“ It was provincial in thought, speech, and habits. It was given over to agriculture, small trade, and rude home manufacture. Presently came the revolutionary inventions of textile machinery, of the steam-engine, and of processes for extracting and utilizing coal and iron. The heavy, costly machinery required capital and the factory. Concentrated capital and machinery required workers. The working people were forced to give up their small home manufacturing and their unprofitable farming and move to the industrial barracks and workrooms of the manufacturing centres. ”

“ Machinery of manufacture as well as of transport has a levelling tendency which makes directly for expansion of the area of competition. As the spread of knowledge places each part of the industrial world more closely en rapport with the rest, the newest and best methods of manufacture are more rapidly and effectively adopted. ”

“ Factories containing machinery operated by steam power could produce cloth, shoes, implements, and almost every other sort of manufactured commodity more cheaply than they could be made by hand-industry in the homes or in small shops. So the factory system spread over the length and breadth of the land, drawing large investments of capital into its vortex, giving rise to great industrial corporations, creating a new labor class, fostering the growth of great cities, and compelling the government to take a hand in the regulation of industry. ”

“ This subdivision of manufactures has hitherto been attended with no inconvenience, because in the vast West, whose growth is visible to the eye, the production cannot at present keep pace with the consumption. But how will it be in a century, or perhaps in fifty years? Will not the condition of mechanical industry undergo some great change, or rather will not the whole of this vast region undergo a complete change of character and condition, which will involve a reorganisation of the industrial system? ”

“ The circumstances which condition the work of consolidation in industry and which decide whether a given move in the direction of a closer and wider organization of industrial processes will be practicable and will result in economies of production, -- these circumstances are of a mechanical nature. They are facts of the comprehensive machine process. The conditions favorable to industrial consolidation on these grounds are not created by the business men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has essentially full employment, a modern distribution system, excellent internal and external communications, and a skilled labor force. Timber, hydropower, and iron ore constitute the resource base of an economy that is heavily oriented toward foreign trade. Privately owned firms account for about 90% of industrial output, of which the engineering sector accounts for 50% of output and exports. ”

“ English manufacturing industry in the first half of the eighteenth century furnishes a variety of different forms of business of widely different nature and complexity. The simplest form of manufacturing industry is that in which an industrial family owning the raw material and the requisite tools, and working with the power of their own bodies in their own homes, produce commodities for their own consumption. ”

“ But very many of our big factories are nothing else but agglomerations under a common management, of several distinct industries; while others are mere agglomerations of hundreds of copies of the very same machine; such are most of our gigantic spinning and weaving establishments. ”

“ As was noted above, each industrial unit, represented by a given industrial "plant", stands in close relations of interdependence with other industrial processes going forward elsewhere, near or far away, from which it receives supplies—materials, apparatus, and the like—and to which it turns over its output of products and waste, or on which it depends for auxiliary work, such as transportation. ”

“ All possible trades -- weaving, workers in wood, in metals, in bone, in india-rubber, and so on -- may be found under the category of purely domestic trades, with all possible gradations between the purely domestic form of production and the workshop and the factory. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT.—Industries once carried on in the household or in small factories were conducted on a large scale by great corporations. The machine for making tin cans made possible the canning industry. The self- binding harvester and reaper made possible the immense grain fields of the West. The production and refining of petroleum became an industry of great importance. ”

“ Manufacturing Activity.—Since 1954 when we launched our development program, manufacturing activity has recorded a spectacular 52 per cent advance. The establishment of 134 new tax-exempt industrial concerns in 1958 continued the trend of previous years. These industries are largely in food and consumer goods manufacture, textiles, plastics, fabrication of containers, chemicals and fertilizers, pulp and paper. ”

“ This last is, in fact, what we have just seen from our brief sketch for the United Kingdom, and we can only ask ourselves whether--such being the facts--the word "concentration" is well chosen. What we see in reality is, the appearance, in some branches of industry, of a certain number of large establishments, and especially of middle-sized factories. ”

“ Must all this skill, all this intelligence, be swept away by the factory, instead of becoming a new fertile source of progress under a better organisation of production? must all this independence and inventiveness of the worker disappear before the factory levelling? and, if it must, would such a transformation be a progress, as so many economists who have only studied figures and not human beings are ready to maintain? ”

“ It is true that the Factory Inspectors represent each separate branch of a given industry as a special establisment. Thus, if an employer or a society owns a spinning mill, a weaving factory, and a special building for dressing and finishing, the three are represented as separate factories. But this is precisely what is wanted for giving us an exact idea about the degree of concentration of a given industry. ”

“ Next come mining and metallurgy, which are carried on, as a rule, on a great scale; but already in the iron foundries we find a great number of establishments belonging to the middle-sized and small industry. ”

“ The characteristic traits of this era are the handicraft industry and the petty trade which handled the output of that industry, with the trade gradually coming into a position of discretionary management, and even dominating the industry of the craftsmen to such an extent that by the date when the technology of handicraft begins to give way to the factory organisation and the machine industry the workmen are already somewhat fully under the control of the businessmen. ”

“ The typical industries, which set the pace for productive work, for competitive gains, and through the standard rates of gain ultimately also for competitive consumption, are industries carried on on a large scale; that is to say they are such as to require a large material equipment, a wide recourse to technological insight and proficiency, and a large draught on the material resources of the community. ”

“ Again, the growth of machinery makes industry more intricate. Manufacturers no longer produce for a small known market, the fluctuations of which are slight, and easily calculable. The element of speculation enters into manufacture at every pore--size of market, competitors, and price are all unknown. Machinery works at random like the blind giant it is. Every improvement in communication, and each application of labour-saving invention adds to the delicacy and difficulty of trade calculations. ”

“ The various manufactures so combined form more or less separate departments of a larger manufacture, but are at the same time independent processes, each with its own division of labour. In spite of the many advantages offered by this combination of manufactures, it never grows into a complete technical system on its own foundation. ”

“ The economic use of machinery led to production on a larger scale. But new, complex, and expensive machinery is continually being invented, which, for those who can afford to purchase and use it, represents a fresh economy in production, and enables them both to produce larger quantities of goods more rapidly, and to get rid of them by underselling those of their trade competitors who are working with old-fashioned and less effective machinery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Professor Marshall summarizes the tendency in the following words--"We are thus led to a general rule, the action of which is more prominent in some branches of manufacture than others, but which applies to all. It is, that any manufacturing operation that can be reduced to uniformity, so that the same thing has to be done over and over again in the same way, is sure to be taken over sooner or later by machinery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In mining, railway transportation and building we have positive evidence of diminished efficiency of labor, which in the aggregate is not offset by the improvements of management, or but barely. There remains but manufacturing as the other great branch of producing industry, apart from agriculture. ”

“ The process of production does not cease until the finished product reaches the consumer. All workers engaged in the process of distribution are members of the same industrial union, or Department Organization in which the makers of the commodity are organized. ”