Manufacturing city

“ 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. ”

“ This is perhaps the most vital cause of the growth of cities. The great city, as we have already said, is very largely the product of modern industrialism. Improved machinery, improved transportation, and enlarged markets, together with the increased wants of men, not only have made possible a great growth of manufacturing industries, but also these same factors have tended to centralize manufacturing industries in the cities. Let us note briefly why it is that manufacturing industries are grouped together in great cities rather than scattered throughout the rural communities. ”

“ It is chiefly known as a manufacturing city, the coal in the region furnishing an abundance of cheap fuel as well as natural gas, which is used in many factories. There are blast-furnaces, iron-foundries and forges, manufactories of mowing and reaping machines, steam-engines, wagons, carriages, nails, leather, paper, extensive glass-factories, potteries and cigar-factories. ”

“ A market for machinery must of necessity be a wide one, for no single community, not even a large modern city, can alone support a great manufacturing enterprise. Machinery building can thrive only in a settled country having a large purchasing power and good transportation facilities. ”

“ Part 2 Manufacturing follows similar lines to wholesaling, the production of articles of great weight or bulk and small value seeking the waterfronts or railroads away from the centre of the city, both for economy in handling the product and because requiring a large area for a low utilization they must have cheap land. The manufacture of light articles of high value or that which consists of the final combination or finishing of products seeks the wholesale or retail stores which form their customers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a manufacturing centre the city has considerable importance. Among the leading products are those of the furnaces, foundries and machine shops, flour and grist mills, planing mills, creameries, bridge and iron works, publishing houses and a packing house; and brick, tile, pottery, patent medicines, furniture, caskets, tombstones, carriages, farm machinery, Portland cement, glue, gloves and hosiery. The value of the factory product in 1905 was $15,084,958, an increase of 79.7% in five years. ”

“ The city is situated on two plateaus; the lower is occupied chiefly by factories, the upper by dwellings. Coal mining and manufacturing are the principal industries; among factory products are iron, steel, tin, stoves, machinery and glassware. ”

“ Manufacturing is the most important interest of the city, embracing 142 large establishments, which in 1873 employed 3,681 hands and a capital of $7,947,500, and produced goods to the value of $24,486,574. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a distance of thirty-five and one-half miles of streets, there are four hundred and seventy-eight manufactories of iron, steel, cotton, brass, oil, glass, copper and wood, occupying less than four hundred feet each; for a measurement of the ground shows that these factories are so contiguous in their positions upon the various streets of the city, that if placed in a continuous row, they would reach thirty-five miles, and each factory have less than the average front stated. ”

“ A visitor from the North or the Midlands would probably be surprised, on entering the gloving metropolis, to find nothing of the noise or dirt which is usually associated with manufacturing industry. No tall chimneys belch out black clouds of smoke; no gaunt factories rear themselves aloft above the houses; no ponderous machinery makes its throb felt even by passers-by in the streets. ”

“ A factory in a town changes every person in the town, mentally and physically. This being true, does not the management of this factory call for men of heart and soul—broad-minded, generous, firm in the right? Then every factory is influenced by the laws of the land, and each country is influenced by the laws of other countries, since most countries that are engaged in manufacturing find a market abroad. ”

“ It is when the transfer of goods is accompanied by a breaking of bulk or by a change of ownership, there being then added the complex mechanism of commercial exchange performed by importers, exporters, wholesalers, retailers, insurers, brokers and bankers, that wealth is accumulated and localized, with consequent power to control business for local benefit.
Manufactures are of constantly increasing importance in city growth, owing to the development of the factory system and the advantages of labor supply, transportation, and markets in the larger cities. ”

“ The man whose sole business is manufacture must look to others for his supply of food-stuffs and raw materials, and these are produced more economically at a distance from the centre of manufacture. Thus England must look to the United States for wheat and cotton, to the Australian Commonwealth for wool, and to New Zealand and the United States for meat. Her chief wealth is in her coal and iron, and these make the nation a great manufacturing centre. So, also, the manufacturer of New York must go to Pittsburg for steel, to Minneapolis for flour, and to Chicago for beef. ”

“ 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 typical modern town is still a place of workshops, not of homes.
Transport-machinery, the railway and the steamship, have been almost as important factors in the making of towns as manufacturing-machinery. By easily, quickly, and cheaply bringing food from a distance, they make town work and [326] town life upon a large scale possible; by imparting increased fluidity to capital and labour, they continually increase the economic advantages of highly concentrated industry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 same is true of the other chief branches of the textile and metal industries. Nor is it only in the manufactures that towns and districts are closely specialised. The enormous increase of commerce due to machinery of manufacture and of transport requires the specialisation of certain towns for purely commercial purposes. London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Hull are more and more devoted to the functions of storage and conveyance. Manchester itself is rapidly losing its manufacturing character and devoting itself almost exclusively to import and export trade. ”

“ Men worked five days a week on three-hour shifts in the factories, but longer hours and more pay went to the builders, to the men who had to manually control the building construction machinery, for law forbade the building of offices on the mass production scheme, since that meant an unvaried, monotonous city. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But conditions changed and school materials and methods did not change to keep pace. Population shifted to urban centers. Production became a mass affair, carried on in big factories, instead of a household affair. Growth of steam and electric transportation brought about production for distant markets, even for a world market. Industry was no longer a local or neighborhood concern. Manufacturing was split up into a very great variety of separate processes through the economies incident upon241 extreme division of labor. ”

“ In mining, railway transportation and building we have positive evidence of diminished efficiency of labor, which in the aggregate is not offset by the improvements of management, or but barely. There remains but manufacturing as the other great branch of producing industry, apart from agriculture. ”

“ But the factory has developed differently in each industry and its social influence has never been quite alike in any two nations. When, for instance, Samuel Slater introduced cotton manufacturing into America, he set up in Rhode Island an exact counterpart of the English factory. When, later, other factories were built in New England there took place the same transition of a vast laboring population from the rural districts to the manufacturing towns;—but this population was very unlike the manufacturing population of England. ”

“ Formerly I had taken pride in the fact that, by actual count, Boston had some four thousand independent manufacturing establishments; but in this very multiplicity and independence I recognized now the secret of the insignificant total product of their industry.
If Washington Street had been like a lane in Bedlam, this was a spectacle as much more melancholy as production is a more vital function, than [Pg 317] distribution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we were to go into the factories of Lowell, or into any of the thousand workshops which are converting Philadelphia into a great manufacturing centre, we would find the manufacture of an article approaching perfection just in proportion to the imperfection (in one sense) of the individual workmen employed in its production. The man [Pg 79] who can make a pin-head better and cheaper than any one else, must give his attention to making pin-heads only. ”

“ It happens under the present law, that a large portion of the population of rural districts are induced to move into the manufacturing; and it happens frequently, that the power, the labor, the best part of a man's life, who so removes, are consumed in that manufacturing district, and thus all the advantages of his strength and good conduct, and industry, are derived by the manufacturing districts during the period of his residence. ”

“ It will not stand comparison with Atlanta or New Orleans or Richmond. Strictly speaking, it is not a city, but an agglomeration of industrialism. Nevertheless, the factories which surround it are owned by companies of vast resources, and it is claimed that in the steel industry there are some of the most extensive industrial plants in the world. Business is little disturbed by strikes. On the gates of the vast factory estates is written: We do not want you unless you are able to look after yourself. Careless men are always liable to accident. ”