Manufacturing center

“ Approximately 26% of the rentable area of the building is occupied by the executive offices of manufacturing and mining concerns which are concededly engaged in the production of goods for commerce. Corporate policies are formed and directed from these offices. Most of them purchase raw materials for use in the physical processes of manufacturing. They keep in constant and close contact with the factories, supervising all of the manufacturing activities. ”

“ If the site is so small that the building has to be carried far into the air and supplied with walls strong enough to resist the jar of machinery on many floors, manufacturing becomes a far less economical operation than it would be if the site were larger and the mill lower. The gain from centralizing the manufacturing process comes in part from the increased size of the particular establishments ”

“ Certain provisions of the Factory and Workshop Act, including those which are stated below, apply as if any premises on which machinery worked by mechanical power is temporarily used in the construction of a building, or in structural work in connection with a building, were a factory, and as if the purpose for which the machinery is used were a manufacturing process. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Within the last thirty years a new method of conducting work, called Scientific Management, has been established in various businesses in the United States, including "machine shops and factories, steel work and paper mills, cotton mills and shoe shops, in bleacheries and dye works, in printing and bookbinding, in lithographing establishments, in the manufacture of type-writers and optical instruments, in constructing and engineering work—and to some extent—the manufacturing departments of the Army and Navy." ”

“ The three big factory groups which have grown from the shabby little buildings of 1848 are the fruit of intelligence and ceaseless endeavor, but they are reared primarily on a basis of manufacturing honor, and ruled by the general thesis that forever and ever quality comes before price. This means keeping faith with the structural iron worker, swinging pigmy-small five hundred feet above the din of the city streets; with the sailor, the miner, the rigger; with the hurrying multitude that packs the elevators in tall buildings, and with the aviator, to whom a breaking wire may spell death. ”

“ With the decline of guilds, there was a return on a very large scale to the system of home industry, when every farmstead and rural cottage became a manufacturing centre. The development of the factory system of the eighteenth century, upon the introduction of improved machinery for manufacture, completely removed industry from the home and created the modern factory town. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every factory contains a carpenter’s and smith’s shop, and handicraftsmen of group (2) are required in every manufacturing concern. Whilst the industries in which hand labour is exclusively employed are becoming fewer and fewer, there are many trades which, owing to the frequent invention of labour-saving appliances, are passing gradually from the class of handicrafts to that of manufactures. ”

“ As time wore on, every industry on the island, localized, and every man became specialized. Inventions and machinery multiplied. But every new labor-saving machine saved labor, of course, and produced better goods than hand labor. So every new machine took a job away from several workmen. There was much complaint about this but new inventions kept coming. There were now twenty different hat factories in the manufacturing village, each trying to undersell the other. One day they combined and built a large addition on the largest factory building. ”

“ The small towns of the Eastern states have become centers in which endless varieties of manufactured goods are turned out, and it is up to the editor to exploit every new thing connected with the raw material and with the making and the marketing of the product in which the community is interested. The middle-state towns are given largely to manufacturing on a larger scale, to coal and coke and oil industries, to steel, to the making of machinery. ”

“ The chief interest is manufacturing, for which the city has rare advantages. The surrounding hills and the adjacent country contain immense deposits of bituminous coal, which is readily and cheaply obtained. The leading establishments are iron and nail mills, glass works, and founderies and machine shops. There are in the city six nail factories and two manufactories of railroad, merchant bar, and sheet iron, while within a radius of four miles are four other large iron and nail works. ”

“ If China is developed according to my programs, the demand for machinery will be many times greater than at present and the supply in Europe and America will be too short to meet it. Therefore to establish factories for the manufacturing of clothing machinery is a necessary as well as a profitable undertaking. Such factories should be established in the neighborhood of iron and steel factories, so as to save expenses for transportation of heavy materials. ”

“ This demands efficient organization and special plant so administered as to reduce the working force to an absolute minimum by the employment of machinery to the greatest possible extent. A judicious, effective organization and plant would transform the execution of this work into what may be called a manufactory of excavation with all the intensity of direction and efficiency of well-designed and administered machinery which characterizes the concentration of labor and mechanical appliances in great manufacturing establishments. ”

“ The matter of being near to certain raw materials you need for manufacturing, or to a market for your product is not one that you will probably have to decide alone. Nor need the question of labor take up your time for the wages of skilled machinists, electricians and chemists are about the same throughout the United States, and while rents are higher in large cities than in the towns and villages still nearly one-half of the articles and machines made in the United States are turned out in 100 of the largest cities. ”

“ Cotton and woolen mills, linen looms, knitting machines, machines for weaving fire hose, a shoe-making factory, a broom factory, and many others, are particularly attractive because they are engaged in making familiar articles. The machines in use demonstrate the refinements of present-day manufacturing processes. The factories of many nations are represented in this palace. Germany makes here her largest exhibit, notably of cutlery and pottery. ”

“ And these best possible conditions, as far as the employees are concerned, are also the best possible conditions from the manufacturing standpoint. One could not put a great plant on a little stream. One can put a small plant on a little stream, and the combination of little plants, each making a single part, will make the whole cheaper than a vast factory would. There are exceptions, as where casting has to be done. In such case, as at River Rouge, we want to combine the making of the metal and the casting of it and also we want to use all of the waste power. ”

“ A factory is defined as any room where two or more persons are employed in connection with a handicraft or in preparing or manufacturing goods for trade or sale. It includes bakehouses, buildings in which machinery is used for preparing articles for trade or for packing goods for export, and all places in which Asiatics are employed, even if only one of them is at work. The occupier is deemed to be one of the workers. No workroom is too small to come within the definition, and there are no bodies of employees engaged in factory work who do not come under the regulations. ”

“ At the period of my visit, there were eighteen flour mills in operation, grinding annually 2,500,000 bushels of wheat. The manufacturing interests are immense—ready-made clothing being the most extensive, and boots and shoes ranking next. Other leading manufactures are those of iron bridges, India-rubber goods, carriages, furniture, optical instruments, steam engines, glassware and agricultural machinery. Of flourishing industries may be mentioned breweries, tobacco factories, blast furnaces and fruit canning. ”

“ There are woolen factories, including a company for manufacturing imitation seal-skin goods and a large blanket mill. The manufacture of Blank books and Envelopes, Steam-pumps, Wire, Machinery, Cutlery, Screws, Fire-hydrants and Steam-boilers, Cement works, Spindles and Reeds, Fourdrinier wire and Rubber-goods are among the city's greatly diversified industries. There are extensive brickyards and stone quarries near at hand and the lumbering business is an important industry.
OPERA HOUSE.
The building growth of the city has kept pace with the manufacturing. ”

“ 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 principal manufacturing establishments are, a steam grist-mill, steam engine factory, slitting-mill, to which is attached a nail factory, the first of the kind in America; a cannon foundery, air furnace, cotton and woollen factories, two potteries, three breweries, &c.—There are four printing-offices, and two bookstores. ”

“ Among the manufacturing institutions may be mentioned two large flouring mills, one woolen mill, one pants factory, one silk mill, two sumac mills, three excelsior mills, one mattress factory, two pickle factories, one canning factory, one shoe factory, one shirt factory, one spoke factory and six repair shops. ”

“ Manufacturing is the leading occupation in thousands of busy towns and small cities of all the industrial nations of western Europe and America, and shares with commerce and trade as a leading enterprise in the cosmopolitan centres. The merchant or financier who thinks his type of emporium or exchange is the only municipal centre of consequence, needs only to mount to the top of a tall building or climb a suburban hill where he can look off over the city and see the many smoking chimneys, to realize the importance of the factory. ”

“ It is also true that with the manufacturing facilities that we possess we would gladly see them greatly enlarged and more fully developed, also new ones erected and operated, but with this accomplished we would not forget that there are better fabrics than those that are manufactured by mechanical appliances. ”

“ Third, we will make the equipment manufacturing industry stronger and larger. We will implement the project to increase self-sufficiency in doing R&D on manufacturing major equipment and implement a related system of government procurement. We will vigorously develop manufacturing of complete sets of major equipment, high-tech equipment and equipment needed in high-tech industries, raise the level of integrated innovation and make greater use of domestic components in the equipment manufacturing industry. ”

“ Slowly Millet, Weaver and Johnson began to get the complete picture of the strange factory. Huge boxes were brought in from the outside, obviously from the second factory, and were unpacked. The machinery and parts were assorted and distributed. Motors were sent to one place, girders, wires, steel, plates and glass to other places. The trio followed the distribution from one end to another. By the time they reached the center of the plant they realized what was being made. At the end of the factory, ready to be rolled out, they saw it. ”

“ The accumulation of many large manufacturing establishments in the same district has a tendency to bring together purchasers or their agents from great distances, and thus to cause the institution of a public mart or exchange. ”

“ The principal manufactories are a planing mill, a machine shop, 7 wagon and carriage factories, 2 agricultural implement factories, 3 grist mills, 2 elevators, 2 breweries, 4 packing houses, a tannery, a soap factory, a woollen factory, a pottery, 3 furniture factories, and 2 mineral water factories, all operated by steam or wind power. ”

“ An experienced observer feels entirely at home in any industrial center, on any continent. In Detroit, in Dusseldorf, in Osaka, in Shanghai, in Bombay, the architecture of the plants is essentially the same, the machines in the widely separated plants bear a striking resemblance to one another, and the problems of management are similar.
Unit plants and their coordinated managements in the aggregate compose the present-day world economy. They are the essence of its being. They occupy the skyline and dominate the economic life of modern industrial society. ”

“ Under a scheme of subdivided toil the factory hand succeeded to the journeyman who, with a few mates, had split nails or drawn wire in a shop no bigger than some day he might own for himself. With the need to occupy large premises, to install engines and elaborate machinery, the capital of an employer has to be vastly more than of old, creating a new dependence on the part of the workman, and rendering it all but impossible that he should ever have a factory of his own. While the factory system of production is general in America, it is far from universal. ”