Manufactured goods

“ In regard to manufactures, as opposed to raw products, it is to be remarked “that, as the course of price in the field of raw products is, on the whole, upward, so in that of manufactured goods the course is, not less strikingly, in the opposite direction. ”

“ Each one of these countries requires cotton and woolens, iron and steel supplies, corrugated iron, tools, machinery, food-products, flour, wines, liquors, mineral waters, wooden ware and manufactures, agricultural implements, 152soaps, perfumes, pharmaceuticals, surgical instruments, boots and shoes, hats, hardware, oil, candles, electric supplies, glassware, coffee sacks, socks, stockings, rubber goods, musical instruments and paints. In fact they are dependent upon the outside world for all the manufactured necessities of life. ”

“ These prescribed, with respect to manufacturing companies, that gross income should consist of the difference between the price received for the goods as sold and the cost of such goods as manufactured ”

“ Your Commission inspected the factory at Modderfontein, and it must be admitted that the construction of the works and general equipment are in many respects admirable, and it appears to us greatly to be regretted that so much money should have been invested in an undertaking for the manufacture of any article whereof the ingredients have to be imported at a great cost, four tons of raw material being required to produce one ton of the manufactured article. ”

“ It encourages the importation of the materials of manufacture, in order that our own people may be enabled to work them up more cheaply, and thereby prevent a greater and more valuable importation of the manufactured commodities. I do not observe, at least in our Statute Book, any encouragement given to the importation of the instruments of trade. When manufactures have advanced to a certain pitch of greatness, the fabrication of the instruments of trade becomes itself the object of a great number of very important manufactures. ”

“ It is said that manufacture precedes commerce, and is not a part of it. But it is equally true that when manufacture ends, that which has been manufactured becomes a subject of commerce; that buying and selling succeed manufacture, come into existence after the process of manufacture is completed, precede transportation, and are as much commercial intercourse, where articles are bought to be carried from one state to another, as is the manual transportation of such articles after they have been so purchased. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To be of the greatest advantage and usefulness, cost records should not only determine factory cost but they should accumulate the data needed to predetermine the selling price with accuracy.
Nature of Raw Materials and Supplies
Materials or raw materials constitute the crude commodities or semi-manufactured articles which are to be worked upon and fashioned into a new product. It is seldom that any factory takes its material in the raw form in which it comes from nature. ”

“ The principal classes of products affected are foods, wearing apparel, building materials, furniture, &c., chemical products, printing and allied trades, and sundry others, such as cigars, matches, tanning, paints, &c. In some manufactures the raw material is imported partly manufactured, such as thread for weaving. ”

“ 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 is a reflection which may with propriety be indulged here that this eventual diminution of the prices of manufactured articles, which is the result of internal manufacturing establishments, has a direct and very important tendency to benefit agriculture. It enables the farmer to procure, with a smaller quantity of his labor, the manufactured produce of which he stands in need, and consequently increases the value of his income and property. ”

“ It is besides an acknowledged fact, that the owners of factories are often amongst the most extensive purchasers at the halls, where they buy from the domestic clothier the established articles of manufacture, or are able at once to answer a great and sudden order; whilst, at home, and under their own superintendence, they make their fancy goods, and any articles of a newer, more costly, or more delicate quality, to which they are enabled by the domestic system to apply a much larger proportion of their capital. ”

“ And our great captains of industry have shown the way, for we note in passing that substantially half of our total manufactured exports are of the four items, food-stuffs, crude copper, mineral oils, and the cruder products of iron and steel. Our manufacturers of shoes, typewriters, sewing machines and agricultural implements have made as clear a demonstration of the coming development wherein American Inventions and comforts may be everywhere accepted. ”

“ The salient facts for us to note are, that among the manufacturers of this country there has arisen a widespread movement to partially or wholly avoid competition in the production and sale of their goods; that in a very great number of manufacturing industries these combinations have progressed so far that their managers have been able to advance prices and check production ”

“ To place on imported articles which compete with articles that can be manufactured or produced in the United States, such a rate of duty as will secure to our farmers and laborers fair prices, fair wages, and will induce our people to engage in such manufacture and production. ”

“ It may develop that some other manufacturer has developed a field wherein he can pay a price for the raw product in excess of its value as used in the department and that it should be sold for cash rather than to use it for manufacturing purposes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The same is true of the manufacturer, whose complicated, and it may be extensive, business relations with the producers and dealers who supply him with raw material, with the workmen who convert such material into finished wares, with the merchants or agents who market the products of his factory, all require his oversight and direction. ”

“ It is also certain, that by the diminution of profit which the manufacturer suffers from the diminished price, his ingenuity will be additionally stimulated;—that he will apply himself to discover other and cheaper sources for the supply of his raw material,—that he will endeavour to contrive improved machinery which shall manufacture it at a cheaper rate,—or try to introduce new arrangements into his factory, which shall render the economy of it more perfect. ”

“ The comparatively small amount of materials imported for our factories showed that our manufactures were still local in character, without the strength, or else denied the opportunity, to reach out and draw from distant sources the raw materials which they could work up and return to the currents of the world’s trade. ”

“ By either destroying the requisite supply or raising the price of the article beyond what can be afforded to be given for it by the conductor of an infant manufacture, it is abandoned or fails, and there being no domestic manufactories to create a demand for the raw material which is raised by the farmer it is in vain that the competition of the like foreign article may have been destroyed. ”

“ A study of the production in the United States of a few of the great articles which form the basis of manufactures and the manufacturing industries offers ready explanation of the great increase in the production of manufactures and the consequent marked increase in the exportation of manufactures. Six great articles supply the principal requisites for manufacturing, viz, iron, copper, wood, cotton, wool, and coal as the material which supplies the power by which they are first assembled and afterwards converted into manufactures. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Take, for instance, an employing manufacturer who is engaged in turning raw material into finished products—cotton into cloth, iron into hardware, leather into boots, or so on, as may be, and who pays his hands, as is generally the case, once a week. Make an exact inventory of his capital on Monday morning before the beginning of work, and it will consist of his buildings, machinery, raw materials, money on hand, and finished products in stock. ”

“ It is found in every country, that the situation of large manufacturing establishments is confined to particular districts. In the earlier history of a manufacturing community, before cheap modes of transport have been extensively introduced, it will almost always be found that manufactories are placed near those spots in which nature has produced the raw material: especially in the case of articles of great weight, and in those the value of which depends more upon the material than upon the labour expended on it. ”

“ I hesitate to specify some of the goods which I know there will be a demand for, not that I am in any way interested in the subject for the moment, but only to guard against numbers of people exporting large quantities of merchandise of the same class far in excess of the actual demand. I cannot too strongly advise manufacturers to study on the spot the requirements of the people, and to comply with their requirements, whatever the article might be. ”

“ The materials used by manufacturing establishments may be purchased directly from producers, obtained through customary trade channels, or secured without recourse to the market by transferring the product from one establishment to another which is under the same ownership. Manufacturing production is usually carried on for the wholesale market, for interplant transfer, or to order for industrial users, rather than for direct sale to the domestic consumer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a broad sense of the term, manufactures are such forms of industry as elaborate for economic use materials which are themselves the product of industry. Manufactures are thus distinguished from extractive industry, which procures wealth from nature in its primary forms. In practice it is difficult to draw a hard and fast line between these two types of industry, since many commodities which are commonly classed as raw materials have been subject to one or more elaborative processes, as, for example, raw cotton, raw sugar, pig iron. ”

“ yet it appears to me, that any explanation of the cheapness of manufactured articles, as consequent upon the division of labour, would be incomplete if the following principle were omitted to be stated.
That the master manufacturer, by dividing the work to be executed into different processes, each requiring different degrees of skill or of force, can purchase exactly that precise quantity of both which is necessary for each process; ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”