Industry

“ 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. ”

“ The Manufacturing Industry.—It is the function of the agriculturist and the herdsman, the miner and the lumberman, to produce the raw material. The sailor and the train-hand, the longshoreman and the teamster, transport them to the industrial centres. It is the business of [181] the manufacturer and his employees to turn them into the finished product for the use of society. ”

“ THE ORGANIZATION AND CONTROL OF INDUSTRY The purpose of this chapter is to explain how American industry is organized and how the government has endeavored to regulate this organization in the public interest.
The broad scope of industry. What is Industry?—Industry comprises the whole process of converting raw materials into finished products. It includes the production of goods by hand in the workshops, and by machinery in the factories. Agriculture, mining, and forestry furnish the raw materials; industry works them up; commerce distributes them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In relation to product it means any substance on which industry is to be exerted. In relation to industry, the material on which industry is about to confer value, that on which it has conferred value; the instruments which are used for the conferring of value, as well as the means of sustenance by which the being is supported while he is engaged in performing the operation.”—Elements of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. ”

“ Industry is the means by which the material resources of the world are transformed, through human intelligence and human energy, with the aid of natural powers, tools, and machines, into commodities and services available for human use. It is a vast process of transformation, itself a series of transforming processes so inter-related and numerous as to unite mankind, in this age of world-wide industrial expansion, in an enterprise that encompasses the globe.
The Parties to Industry We are accustomed to discuss the problems of industry in terms of Capital and Labor. ”

“ Or reversely, we may take Industry as a whole, the Industrial Organism as it exists at any given time, consider the nature and extent of the cohesion existing between its several parts, and, further, resolving these parts into their constituent elements, gain a close understanding of the extent to which differentiation of industrial functions has been carried in the several divisions. ”

“ The employments of agriculture, commerce, and navigation are all branches of the same domestic industry; they all furnish employment for American capital and American labor. And when the question is, whether new duties shall be laid, for the purpose of giving further encouragement to particular manufactures, every reasonable man must ask himself, both whether the proposed new encouragement be necessary, and whether it can be given without injustice to other branches of industry. ”

“ To familiarize ourselves with the conception, let us consider what is done with the capital invested in any of the branches of business which compose the productive industry of a country. A manufacturer, for example, has one part of his capital in the form of buildings, fitted and destined for carrying on his branch of manufacture. ”

“ Existing Organisation of Industry Inadequate Is our present organization of industry in any way suggestive of a partnership, in which Labor, Capital, Management, and the Community are regarded as interrelated and interdependent? ”

“ He is fully aware how industry in all its forms has been affected by the government and civilization of a people; but he regards industry itself, or the commercial ambition of the industrious classes, as more potent still. ”

“ Human work consists in specialized industry and the exchange of its products; and without it is no civilization. As industry develops, civilization develops; peace expands; wealth increases; science and art help on the splendid total. Productive industry, and its concomitant of distributive industry cover the major field of human life. ”

“ Will the present standards of management, skill, workmanship and factory discipline be improved? Will the consumers benefit? Will people save? i. e. Will sufficient fresh capital be forthcoming for the further developments of industry? ”

“ 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. ”

“ It must include all the various kinds of labor required in a specific industry; labor of every kind which contributes to the production of the commodity for the making of which the industry exists; all the various factors which combine to form the marketable object. ”

“ The industry which so comes into the foreground and so affects the scheme of institutions is peculiar in that its [Pg 50] most obvious and characteristic trait is the workmanlike initiative and efficiency of the individual handicraftsman and the individual enterprise of the petty trader. ”

“ In its widest sense industry includes not only manufacturing, as we ordinarily understand the term, but mining, lumbering, the fisheries, shipbuilding, and many other great branches of economic activity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The subjects treated in the several sections are thoroughly representative, if not completely exhaustive, of English industrial life, and a general survey of the subject is contained in my last chapter, where I have outlined as broadly as possible the general principles that governed the Control of Industry—the typical regulations made by, or for, the craftsmen in the interest of the [vii] employer, the workman, or the consumer. ”

“ The question how industry would be located, assuming the whole surface of the globe was brought into a single market or area of competition, with an equal development of transport facilities in all its parts; or in other words, "What is the ideal disposition of industry in a world-society making its chief end the attainment of industrial wealth estimated at present values?" ”

“ By stimulating industry, by rewarding ingenuity, and by using most efficaciously the peculiar powers bestowed by nature, it distributes labour most effectively and most economically: while, by increasing the general mass of productions, it diffuses general benefit, and binds together by one common tie of interest and intercourse, the universal society of157 nations throughout the civilized world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in modern industry, when the market is worldwide, the technique most complex, and the competition most severe, when inventiveness, sagacity, courage, and decision in initiative, and skill in management, are factors so important, no such exclusive place as has been claimed can be assigned to labour. ”

“ Then, again, the ability to organize and conduct industrial, commercial, or financial enterprises is rare; the great captains of industry are as rare as great generals. ”

“ Capitalistic Industry, or Industrialism, is the system by which production is controlled by the owners of capital, and the labourers or producers, men, women and children receive individual wages. [1]
8Domestic and family industry existed side by side during the middle ages; for example, brewing, baking, spinning, cheese and butter making were conducted both as domestic arts and for industrial purposes. ”

“ In order to estimate the progress that industry will achieve in the sphere of production during the coming time, it must be remembered that, if industry is the action of man upon matter, modern science has only within the last few years begun to account for what matter is. ”

“ The system of industry is built upon the constancy of certain conditions of human existence, upon the certainty of the economic forces which thence arise, and upon the fact that those forces act with perfect regularity under changeless laws. ”

“ The whole industry and commerce of the world have been built up into a great system in which organization has become essential and in which it has been carried forward215 and is being carried forward every day to new developments. Industry has been growing more and more impersonal as far as the parties to it are concerned. ”

“ It is the business of operative industry to produce, transform, and distribute all such material objects as are suited to satisfy the wants of mankind. The primary production of these objects is assigned to the husbandman, the fisherman, and the miner ”

“ As we have just seen, many interesting events occurred and many prominent men figured in it; but these are overshadowed by the enormous development of manufactures, trade, commerce, and farming,—that is to say, by the stupendous results that have followed the application of the nation’s mind and energy to almost every department of human industry. ”

“ It is often suggested that if the state assumed control of industry the blight of business could be removed. But in the transfer we would not necessarily gain opportunity to enjoy the adventure which industry holds out. ”

“ We may create it by our own industry; that is, it may be the product of our labor. It may be given to us by some one who has created it by his industry, either as a free-will offering or in exchange for a product of our own ”

“ Still another, and equally important, industry developed was that of supplying the food and other requirements of the men and women engaged in the factory, and this gave new activity to the agricultural industries near the factory and further occupation to those engaged in transportation. ”

“ And yet there is in modern industry a certain regularity of outline, and a general tendency to follow the economic laws discussed in the preceding three chapters. This circumstance prevents us from concluding that our industrial life is entirely a haphazard affair. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They have access to the books at all times, so that they may know how much profits are made, where the raw materials come from, how much of them are used, how the supply is regulated, where the finished products go to, what the turn-over of labor is, the general statistics of industry, etc. ”

“ and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. ”

“ It is as I have said, on account of the necessity of these positions in the general scheme that managers of factories are interested in finding more men who have initiative, than industry under their direction has produced. ”

“ Not least is the business enterpriser, whose function is to direct the economic forces for production. It is vain to assign a mean place to the organizing intelligence and its social work. Its importance grows apace with the growing magnitude and complexity of industry. ”

“ The industrial organization had been perfected. Work was done by machines. Men attended them for short hours and played through long ones. There were no rich, and no poor. The products of industry were fairly divided. ”

“ The method here adopted is to take for our intellectual objective one important factor in modern industrial movements, to study the laws of its development and activity, and by observing the relations which subsist between it and other leading factors or forces in industry to obtain some clearer appreciation and understanding of the structure of industry as a whole, and its relation to the evolution of human society. ”

“ His business gradually increased, and then, with his constantly saved means, he was enabled to increase his stock of type, and to undertake larger jobs. Industry always tells, and in the long-run leads to prosperity. ”

“ In America and in Europe the chief concern is industry,—industry in the large sense, agriculture, manufacture, commerce. These are the interests that concern the people, [312] that control their policy. ”

“ Habits of industry should be inculcated as they grow up, and the field of their operations enlarged when they are grown, by portioning out lands and providing a market for their surplus stock and produce. ”