Manufacturing district

“ We were much struck with the busy look of Qŭerētărŏ, which has quite the air of a manufacturing district. More than half the houses contain shops, and the whole population is engaged either in small trades, or in the wool manufactories, which are still very numerous. ”

“ It is in the heart of the manufacturing district of the West Riding, and has large woollen and worsted factories; carpets, machinery and soap are also produced. The town was incorporated in 1893, and is governed by a mayor, 8 aldermen and 24 councillors. ”

“ MANUFACTURING: Manufacturers employ 1,000 residents in the District and account for $300 million in total output. The American Job’s Plan will invest $300 billion to retool and revitalize American manufacturers. ”

“ The ways of the manufacturing districts, which seem unpleasing to those who do not really know them, are described with a faithful yet kindly pen, and we see that each life has its trials and its temptations. ”

“ I am not one who will venture to say that the manufacturing districts of this country are a paradise; I believe there are in those districts evils great and serious; but whatever evils do there exist are referable to other causes than to the existence of factories and long chimneys. ”

“ 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. This contributes to diffuse information relative to the supply of raw materials, and the state of demand for their produce, with which it is necessary manufacturers should be well acquainted. ”

“ Without the dealer, under present circumstances, the farmer would often find it practically impossible to get to markets not in his immediate neighbourhood. The rail and its awkward, inconvenient ways actually shut him off. In manufacturing districts the transit of iron and minerals and worked-up metal is managed with considerable ability. There are appointed to manage the goods traffic men who are alert to the conditions of modern requirements and quick to meet them. In agricultural districts the question often arises if there be really any responsible local goods managers at all. ”

“ The manufacturing operations in the United States are all carried on in little hamlets, which often appear to spring up in the bosom of some forest, gathered around the waterfall that serves to turn the mill wheel. These villages are scattered over a vast extent of country — from Indiana to the Atlantic, and from Maine to North Carolina — instead of being collected together, as they are in England, in great manufacturing districts. ”

“ If these districts have not already reached the point at which the complaint of scarcity of hands ceases, they are not remote from it, and are approaching fast toward it; and having, perhaps, fewer attractions to agriculture than some other parts of the Union, they exhibit a proportionably stronger tendency toward other kinds of industry. In these districts may be discerned no inconsiderable maturity for manufacturing establishments. ”

“ But these are now few and far between; and they are certainly “nooks of the world,” far from manufacturing towns; for my experience coincides with that of Captain Lloyd, as given in his “Field Sports of the North:”—“Manufactures, of whatever nature they may be, may certainly tend to enrich individuals, but, to my mind, they add little to the happiness of the community at large. In what parts of any country in the world, are such scenes of vice and squalid misery to be witnessed, as in manufacturing districts?” ”

“ It is no longer possible for different factories to receive separate orders, as all orders must be transmitted through the Central Production Council, which assigns the order to the factories best fitted to fill them. The organization of a separate raw material department has become necessary, as it is a most difficult thing to furnish small establishments without the district distribution centre, and this is the only efficent method of rationing and controlling production. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many of my readers will probably be astonished to learn that even in the cotton industry a great number of quite small factories continue to exist up to the present day. Even in the West Riding district, which is second only to Lancashire for the number of its cotton mills, and where we find nearly one-third of all the workpeople employed in the cotton industry (237,444 persons) , the average for all the 3,210 factories of this district is only seventy-three persons per factory. ”

“ We ought also to observe, that the effect of driving any establishment into a new district, where similar works have not previously existed, is not merely to place it out of the reach of such combinations; but, after a few years, the example of its success will most probably induce other capitalists in the new district to engage in the same manufacture: and thus, although one establishment only should be driven away, the workmen, through whose combination its removal is effected, will not merely suffer by the loss of that portion of demand for their labour which the factory caused ”

“ 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. ”

“ Listen still more closely, and we hear the dwarf voices in the hum of machines in a garment factory, in the steady turn of metal rolls in a laundry, and even in the clip of the stogy roller's knife in the tiny workroom of a tenement loft. Side by side with the men, the women workers have found a place in the industry of the steel district in the Alleghenies. In a district that calls pre-eminently for strength in its workmen, and if not for strength, for a high degree of training and skill, there is yet place in the congregate activity of factories and shops for women. ”

“ If manufactures spring up spontaneously out of original strength, and by independent development, of course they “add value to land,” that is to say, the district has new industrial power and every interest in it is benefited; but if the manufactures have to be protected, paid for, and supported, they do not do any good as manufactures but only as a device for drawing capital from elsewhere, as tribute. ”

“ Cotton spinning and the manufacture of cotton and muslin are extensively carried on, and there are also iron and brass foundries and boiler factories. Railway-wagon building is an important industry. The district contains a number of coal-mines and stone-quarries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Each new factory calls into existence a number of small workshops, partly to supply its own needs and partly to submit its produce to a further transformation. Thus, to quote but one instance, the cotton mills have created an immense demand for wooden bobbins and reels, and thousands of men in the Lake District set to manfuacture them-by hand first, and later on with the aid of some plain machinery. Only quite recently, after years had been spent in inventing and improving the machinery, the bobbins began to be made on a larger scale in factories. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The small manufacturer is constantly adding another state or territory as his factory grows and trade expands. He "takes on" Texas, New England or Wisconsin. He is thoroughly accustomed to meeting the special requirements of a district new to him as respects goods, credits and trade customs. He is indifferent whether the distance is a hundred miles or two thousand. ”

“ Nine-tenths of all the raw materials of every kind and description consumed in American manufactories are of American production. The manufacturing establishments tend steadily to migrate into the heart of the great agricultural districts. The centre of the manufacturing industry in 1900 was near the middle of Ohio, and it is moving westward at the rate of about thirty miles in every decade; and this movement is invariably accompanied by a marked increase in the value of farm lands. ”

“ The manufacturing interests are very important, the establishments including electric car works, table glassware and bottle works, locomotive shops of the Baltimore and Ohio, stove foundries, bent-wood works, rope-halter factory, hardwood sawmill, cigar factory, engine and machine works, and iron foundry, agricultural implement works, flouring mills, carriage factory, chemical laboratory, etc. ”

“ Already manufacturers are returning to their own factories, and making capital of the fact among their customers. The new law, which greatly extends the factory inspector's power over sweatshops, is an expression of this enlightened sentiment. It will put New York a long stride ahead, and quite up to Massachusetts. ”

“ The Production Division is under charge of the Factory Manager, who has for his personal assistant a Production Engineer or Superintendent, who plans the productive scheme of the factory and supervises the departmental distribution of the work and the shop operations necessary for the routine work upon it. In a large manufacturing establishment, the Production Engineer will be at the head of a considerable force of draftsmen and clerks comprising what is sometimes called the Planning Department, which arranges all operations, shop routine, time schedules, premium rates, and similar matters. ”

“ 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 ”

“ A number of small buildings, workshops, stores, etc., are rising all over it. I am looking at what is to be the great "filling" factory of the district, where 9,000 women, in addition to male workmen, will soon be employed in charging the shell coming from the new shell factories we have left behind in the darkness. ”

“ A large part of those who settled in Cedar Rapids came from the east where manufacturing leads all other industries and it is but natural that they should embark in their new home in those lines with which they were familiar. The papers and records of the early days tell of a long line of enterprises that have come and gone. There were flour mills, woolen mills, implement works, engine factories, wagon factories, oil mills—the list is a long and interesting one to the delver into local history. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There can be found nowhere in this country a better illustration of what a great manufacturing centre will do for the farmer in enhancing the value of his farm and in furnishing a home market for his products than the city of Springfield. [Cheers.] [181] Your city and county—your merchants and farmers—are prosperous, because you have a great body of well-paid wage-earners in your great shops and factories. [Cheers.] It is the policy of the Republican party to multiply, all through our agricultural regions, such centres of manufacturing industries as Springfield. ”

“ While the region covered by our four counties is not naturally a manufacturing country, yet from the first there have been those whose tastes and interests have lead them to mechanical pursuits. In a growing community where the foundation products are those of the soil and yet where the building arts are in constant demand there must necessarily be some manufacturing. Most of the enterprises of that nature in this section have been connected either with building materials or with agricultural implements. ”