Industrialism

“ The effects of industrialism date only from history's yesterday, yet its results have already been momentous and far-reaching. This is particularly true of the close dependence of industries upon supplies of raw materials and fuels, of the volume and the variety of the goods produced and transported, of the speed with which communications are sent, of the widened opportunities for travel, and of the immense amount of information on the printed page and the film that goes, each day, from one part of the world to another. ”

“ The first is a principle of industrialism. It proceeds from and is intelligible only in a society built on the industrial virtues, free endeavor, security of property, and repression of the baser vices; that is, in a society whose industrial system is built on labor and exchange. ”

“ Industrialism. About the year 1880, industrialism leapt into existence in this land which, under the old regime, had been divided between an exclusive aristocracy and a humble peasantry, both extremely simple in their tastes. ”

“ Now, I assume that most of you are more or less familiar with the history of the industrial development of the land; that you know in a general way that in the beginning of industrial society in the United States, when the tool with which work was done was a simple hand tool, made and used by an individual, the average workingman could look forward to the time when he would be an employer instead of an employe; that, having mastered his trade, he could grasp the few simple tools with which his work was done, virtually employ himself, own what he produced and enjoy the fruit of his labor. ”

“ Similarly all industry, not agricultural or handicraft, is indiscriminately comprised in the term of manufacture, and thereby the distinction is obliterated between two great and essentially different periods of economic history: the period of manufacture proper, based on the division of manual labor, and the period of modern industry based on machinery. ”

“ Before capitalistic production, i.e., in the Middle Ages, the system of petty industry obtained generally, based upon the private property of the laborers in their means of production; in the country, the agriculture of the small peasant, freeman or serf; in the towns, the handicrafts organized in guilds. ”

“ The Industrial Revolution, thus springing from the sudden growth in the use of machinery, occasioned not only economic but political and social results. On the economic side, the effect was to extend old industries and to create new ones, as well as to revolutionize the methods of the production and distribution of wealth. ”

“ The technical basis of the greater industry is revolutionary. "Through machinery, chemical processes and other methods, the functions of the working class and the social labor process are revolutionized along with the technical basis of production. The division of labor is also revolutionized and masses of capital and labor are hurled incontinently from one branch of industry to another. The nature of the greater industry demands mobility of labor, a fluidity of functions and a complete adaptibility on the part of the laborers. ”

“ The hand worker with his old tools was more and more at a disadvantage compared with the workman who produced commodities by machinery. The result was inevitable, namely, that domestic industry was supplanted by the factory. ”

“ Industry will never progress to vigorous and healthy development unless our conception of the relationship between industry and the nation is radically revised. That conception to-day is mean, stunted, and utterly devoid of any power of inspiration. Industry I have defined, in the language of economics, as the production of commodities and services for the purpose of satisfying the wants and desires of men. ”

“ In the hurry of the Industrial Revolution, invention proceeded at an accelerating pace, and the introduction of some new appliance into a single industry might reduce the demand for labour by a quarter, or a half, or even three-quarters, and almost depopulate a town at a single blow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Working Grind.—There are many manufacturing towns and small cities that are built on one industry. Thousands of workers, young and old, answer the morning summons of the whistle and pour into the factory for a day's labor at the machine. ”

“ As I have said before there is a common supposition among people who are not employers of labor, that such features of industry as the mechanical devices of modern technology and the division of labor in factory organization, are in their nature opposed to the expansive development of the people involved; that these features of apparent intrinsic importance to mass production, are antagonistic to individual growth and to the interest of workers in productive effort. ”

“ For a time I felt that having brought about in my own mills a relation between capital and labor which I may go so far as to term ideal, and having published my book, my philosophy of an employer's life, I had contributed my utmost to the cause of industrial civilization. ”

“ That's the kernel of the industrial question. Industry has passed out of the alluvial stage into the reefing. We must have machinery to work with or we may all starve in the midst of mountains of gold. ”

“ A brief resume of the industrial history of the last one hundred years or so will be relevant at this stage of the discussion. Capitalistic production, in its modern significance, was born of the industrial revolution in England in the latter half of the eighteenth century. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus employed, the workman learned little or nothing of the process of the manufacture at which he assisted, or of other departments of the work than the particular one in which he was engaged, and his only opportunity of acquiring such knowledge was outside the workshop or factory in a technical school. The economy effected by the division of labour led to the extension of the principle to other industries than those in which machinery is largely employed. ”

“ The starting point of Modern Industry is, as we have shown, the revolution in the instruments of labour, and this revolution attains its most highly developed form in the organised system of machinery in a factory. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Factory legislation, that first conscious and methodical reaction of society against the spontaneously developed form of the process of production, is, as we have seen, just as much the necessary product of modern industry as cotton yarn, self-actors, and the electric telegraph. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since the onset of the great revolution the goods and services have come increasingly from a factory-office centered occupational apparatus. When we consider the integration of the world economy, it is this industrialized, modern economy that we have chiefly in mind. ”

“ We divide the history of industrial production since the Middle Ages into three periods: (1) handicraft, small master craftsmen with a few journeymen and apprentices, where each laborer produces the complete article (2) manufacture, where greater numbers of workmen, grouped in one large establishment, produce the complete article on the principle of division of labor, each workman performing only one partial operation, so that the product is complete only after having passed successively through the hands of all ”

“ 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. ”

“ Trusting to the reports of our exhibitions of industrial skill, I was ready to swear that we had left our neighbours of England a hundred leagues behind, and that their manufacturers, to avoid being reduced to beggary by our competition, would soon be obliged to come over to learn how to smelt and refine iron, how to spin cotton, how to manufacture steel, how to manage the most gigantic establishments in the most economical manner, how to despatch mountains of merchandise beyond sea most expeditiously. ”

“ Because he possesses not only a pair of hands, but also those means of production without which work is impossible nowadays: factories, land, machines, railroads, mines, ships and steamers, and all kinds of apparatus and instruments. ”

“ Industries are in an appalling condition, and the employing class stand aghast at their own handiwork. For almost a century and a-half theirs has been the task to apply the economic policy of industry. ”

“ The passion of capital for an unlimited and reckless extension of the working day, is first gratified in the industries earliest revolutionised by water-power, steam, and machinery, in those first creations of the modern mode of production, cotton, wool, flax, and silk spinning, and weaving. ”

“ The modern manufacturing organization and the influence of machinery have been treated, from the economic standpoint, by Hobson, Modern capitalism, and Schulze-Gaevernitz, The cotton trade, Manchester, 1895. ”

“ In industry it is difficult to recognize, because every civilized nation in a healthy state of development must present an extension of industrial production, for the following four reasons: 1. Because occupations that were formerly domestic in character have been taken over by industry. ”

“ This genius for simplification of processes, this wonderful knack of devising machinery which will do the work of the human hand, has multiplied the output of our factories: and this in turn has increased wages and decreased the hours of labor, and so brought a great uplift into the lives of our workmen; given them the power to provide better homes for their families, better education for their children, and greater leisure in which to work out a broader destiny for themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is evident that we must build up such an order of workers' management of enterprises which would train the workers in the idea that every factory is the property not only of the workers of that particular factory, but of the whole working people. ”

“ Manufactures and Commerce.—The scarcity of labour prevents the growth of any great manufacturing industries. There is no native artisan class; for except in very rare cases, the people value their independence too highly to work in factories, or even to enter domestic service. ”

“ The Industrial Revolution is the term applied to the change which came over industry when mechanical appliances led to the factory system and the specialising of factory labour. There were rich men before that happened, but they belonged to the class of merchants and financiers rather than to that of manufacturers. And when the Industrial Revolution came, the manufacturer was not specially wealthy. He lived, as a rule, like a workman enjoying a substantial income. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the dawn of history the manufacturer and craftsman had been, as we have said, a sort of middle-class townsman. The machine and the employer now superseded his skill, and he either became an employer of his fellows, and grew towards wealth and equality with the other rich classes, or he remained a worker and sank very rapidly to the level of a mere labourer. This great change in human affairs is known as the Industrial Revolution. ”