Manufactured good

“ If we suppose that the same body of labourers carried on a manufacture, and grew food to sustain themselves while doing it, they have had for their trouble the food and the manufactured article; but if they also grew the material and made the tools, they have had nothing for that trouble but the manufactured article alone. ”

“ Manufacturing industries must be in a very highly developed condition, and machinery carried to a high degree of perfection to compete in price with these accessory industries. Cheapness of many products manufactured in convents and monasteries. ”

“ If you wish the consumer to be guaranteed, both as to value and as to healthfulness, you are forced to know and to determine all that constitutes good and honest production, to be continually at the heels of the manufacturer, and to guide him at every step. ”

“ More than this, he invented and applied a wholly new principle of manufacture,—a principle that has done more to advance human industry and increase wealth all over the world than any other known effort of the human mind to solve material problems. ”

“ Her manufacturers have perfect liberty to purchase their raw or partially manufactured materials in the best and cheapest markets; and their constant intercourse with all parts of the world keeps them informed of every new invention and resource. ”

“ It should be one of the first objects of all manufacturers to produce stuffs not only beautiful and quaint in design, but also adapted for every-day service, and decorous in humble and secluded life. And you must remember always that your business, as manufacturers, is to form the market, as much as to supply it. ”

“ In this branch of manufacture, as in every other, organized industry will accomplish results to which individual labor can never attain. A hundred years ago, when our mill-made cloths came from England, and cost more than farmers could afford to pay, they wore home-spun, which was neither so handsome nor so good as the imported article ”

“ Our stock of materials is, in many instances, equal to the greatest demand, and our artisans sufficient to work them up, even for exportation. In those cases, I take it to be the policy of every enlightened nation to give their manufacturers that degree of encouragement necessary to perfect them, without oppressing the other parts of the community; and, under this encouragement, the industry of the manufacturer will be employed to add to the wealth of the nation."—Idem, p. ”

“ But the creation of the body and bulk of that business is shared by everyone who has anything to do with it. No manufacturer can say: "I built this business"--if he has required the help of thousands of men in building it. ”

“ But I go on with the discourse of the woollen manufactures in general; nothing is more certain, than that it is the greatest and most extensive branch of our whole trade, and, as the piece above mentioned says positively, is really the greatest manufacture in the world. ”

“ Another, where a manufacture of a simpler kind, the competition of which, with a like domestic article, is desired to be restrained, partakes of the nature of a raw material from being capable, by a further process, to be converted into a manufacture of a different kind, the introduction or growth of which is desired to be encouraged. A third, where the material itself is a production of the country and in sufficient abundance to furnish a cheap and plentiful supply to the national manufacturers. ”

“ It has, moreover, emancipated a manufacture, eminently dependent upon taste, science, and dexterity, from the venal curiosity of petty excisemen, by whom private improvements, of great value to the inventor, were in perpetual jeopardy of being pirated and sold to any sordid rival. The manufacturer has now become a free agent, a master of his time, his workmen, and his apparatus ”

“ For if on the one side stand those who are employed in the simple and rude products, and on the other those who desire to enjoy something that has been already worked up, the manufacturer, with his skill and hand, is the mediator through whom the other two receive something from each other: each is enabled to gratify his wishes in his own way. The household economy of many crafts, which took its form and colour from the occupation, was likewise an object of my quiet attention ”

“ The gain by manufactures will be increased, because they will be greater in quantity, and better in workmanship. For, he says, "each manufacture will be divided into as many parts as possible whereby the work of each artisan will be simple and easy..... ”

“ Manufacture, in fact, produces the skill of the detail labourer, by reproducing, and systematically driving to an extreme within the workshop, the naturally developed differentiation of trades, which it found ready to hand in society at large. ”

“ Under this system, as I have said, all the romance of the arts died out, but the commonplace of them flourished still; for the idea that the essential aim of manufacture is the making of goods still struggled with a newer idea which has since obtained complete victory, namely, that it is carried on for the sake of making a profit for the manufacturer on the one hand, and on the other for the employment of the working classes. ”

“ The establishment of manufactures within the United States, enables the manufacturer to sell to the farmer, the mechanic, the physician, the lawyer, and all who are engaged in other pursuits of life; and these, in their turns, supply the manufacturer with subsistence, and whatever else his wants require. ”

“ It is a great mistake to think that a successful manufacturer is one who has carefully preserved the secrets of his trade, or that peculiar modes of effecting simple things, processes unknown in other factories, and mysteries beyond the comprehension of the vulgar, are in any way essential to skill as a manufacturer, or to success as a trader."—Professor Solly. ”

“ The advantages which are derived from machinery and manufactures seem to arise principally from three sources: The addition which they make to human power.—The economy they produce of human time.—The conversion of substances apparently common and worthless into valuable products. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The restriction of articles produced in a manufactory to certain sizes, is attended with some good effect in an economical view, arising chiefly from the smaller number of different tools required in making them, as well as from less frequent change in the adjustment of those tools. ”

“ Among manufacturers, men that have no property may have art and industry, which make them necessary, and therefore valuable. But where flocks and corn are the only wealth, there are always more hands than work, and of that work there is little in which skill and dexterity can be much distinguished. ”

“ The amount of patient thought, of repeated experiment, of happy exertion of genius, by which our manufactures have been created and carried to their present excellence, is scarcely to be imagined. If we look around the rooms we inhabit, or through those storehouses of every convenience, of every luxury that man can desire, which deck the crowded streets of our larger cities, we shall find in the history of each article, of every fabric, a series of failures which have gradually led the way to excellence ”

“ If it should be objected that the remark is needless, that we are an industrious and laborious people, that we are the best manufacturers in the world, thoroughly versed in all the methods and arts for that purpose; and that our trade is improved to the utmost in all places, and all cases possible ”

“ To secure such a market there is no other expedient than to promote manufacturing establishments. Manufacturers, who constitute the most numerous class after the cultivators of the land, are for that reason the principal consumers of the surplus of their labor. ”

“ And to crown the whole by the great advantage which is the peculiar fruit of this new principle, what other master or manufacturer is there, who to appearance constantly, and in reality as much as he thinks proper, has every look and motion of each workman under his eye? Without any of these advantages, we see manufacturers not only keeping their heads above water, but making their fortunes every day. A manufacturer in this situation may certainly fail, because so may he in any other. ”

“ Other manufacturers who were aware that profits were to be made, although not so large as formerly, entered the field, built new manufactories, established machinery, and thus introduced fresh competition. ”

“ A dissemination of knowledge of this kind will guide the manufacturer in his legitimate business and protect the public against deceptions such as those mentioned above.
In the evolution of society, economy and efficiency indicate that specializations should be made as completely as possible. ”

“ The spirit of Invention, one of the chief conditions in the production of material commodities, thus simply illustrated along the line of a single manufacture, may serve us for a sample of similar improvements taken and taking place in scores upon scores of other lines of effort and production. ”

“ I have been assured by an extensive manufacturer, that on promoting his workmen to situations of greater responsibility but less physically laborious than those previously filled by them, he found that they required more food and that, too, of a better quality. ”

“ And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this,—that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. ”

“ The objections to the pursuit of manufactures in the United States, which next present themselves to discussion represent an impracticability of success, arising from three causes—scarcity of hands, dearness of labor, want of capital. ”

“ The change, at first view, is not striking, for the manufacturing was still done by petty artisans working at home with their own tools. The ownership of the raw material, however, had passed from the artisans to an employer, who took the risk of the manufacture and reaped profits corresponding to his success in conducting it.
Brain power now took a place in manufactures above hand power. The new class of employers were men who could devote their energy entirely to studying the larger questions212 of production. ”

“ One illustration will serve for almost every phase of the cause. In the manufacture of products we have the whole story. It applies to all combinations of human industry, as stimulated and enlarged by the inventions of this scientific age. ”

“ It is now proper to proceed a step further, and to enumerate the principal circumstances from which it may be inferred that manufacturing establishments not only occasion a positive augmentation of the produce and revenue of the society, but that they contribute essentially to rendering them greater than they could possibly be, without such establishments. ”

“ And it is worthy of remark, that the superiority obtained in this particular manufacture is not owing to any local advantages; on the contrary, labour and material are more expensive than in the countries to which the exportations are made; it is to be ascribed solely to the enterprise and energy of the manufacturer, and his judicious employment of machinery. ”

“ Nearly every manufacturer is aware by painful experience of the great and almost incessant variation that occurs in the quality and properties of the materials used in his trade, and the frequent risk of failure of his process. ”

“ But, as we know, even in our human factories, the by-product is sometimes more valuable than the product. ”

“ In this respect a manufacturing concern is very like a human being in that it has a brain and a body. You and those interested with you are the brains of the organization and those who work for you, to the end that profits may pile up for your benefit and behoof, form the body.
On your head, most likely, will fall the responsibility of turning out a high-grade product at the lowest possible cost and to do this the right way and to the [147] best advantage you must begin at the beginning and think and scheme out how you can obtain the best results with the least outlay of time, labor and money. ”

“ Why don't you engage more thoroughly and wisely in providing the raw material for every article we need, and in manufacturing those materials into hats, boots, cloth, and everything useful? I have been engaged in this movement, and have been pleading with and exhorting my family to go into home manufacturing. ”

“ For one to be capable of taking charge of a manufactory in my line, he must devote many years of close application, and must be a man of fine taste, in order to [Pg 389] get up a taking style of goods, as the success of the business, in a great measure, depends upon that, coupled with a fine finish. The perfection of the manufacture may be all that could be desired, but if the arrangement of the shadings of the colors were faulty, there would be a very limited sale of them. ”