Manufacturing plant

“ To do this, however, it was necessary to plant the machines beside the waterfall and bring to them the raw material and the persons necessary to operate them, for the machine was unable to perform its task unless assisted by the intelligent labor and guidance of experienced men and women. Thus arose the system of performing in a [Pg 186] single workshop, with the aid of a considerable number of people and machines, the manufacturing which had been hitherto performed by many people in many households and with many machines of simpler form and operated by human power—the factory system. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These 11 basic industries are in the process of being set up; copper smelter, phosphate fertilizer, aluminum smelter, heavy equipment industries, integrated steel mills, petrochemical complex, diesel engine manufacturing, cement industry expansion, coconut industry rationalization, alcogas, and integrated pulp and paper. ”

“ Manufacturing industry is little developed, but there are three flouring mills, a planing mill and furniture factory, carriage and wagon factories, cement works, founding and machine shops, a castor oil factory, cement pipe works, and a barrel factory, employing in the aggregate 144 men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Modern industry "plants"—steel plants, cement plants, open pit mines, textile plants, machine tool plants, auto plants, rubber factories, oil refineries—not only occupy extensive acreage per plant, but the same interests and corporate managements operate dozens of plants in widely separated geographical areas and produce a great variety of goods and services. ”

“ Although some manufactures have developed since 1870, such as foundries, woolen and sugar mills, glass, paper, cordage, powder, tobacco, tin, and hardware manufacturing concerns, yet even today the absence of adequate supplies of good coal, the smallness of the local market, and the distance from the great centers of population in the East hold manufactures within narrow limits. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is clear to the intelligent observer that in these times of intensely keen competition, the manufacturer will, sooner or later, inevitably be driven to seek a considerable percentage of his profits in the utilization of by-products that now go to waste or bring but little return. The men to solve the manufacturing problems of the future will be chemical engineers. Broadly speaking, comparatively little has been done in this field in the United States, and its possibilities are incalculable. ”

“ Now in any operation of manufacturing raw material, or—what means the same thing—conveying raw material, say water or coal or fish, to the places where they are to be consumed, certain machines or appliances are necessary to enable the operation to take place well. ”

“ 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 very extensive factory of the kind, which experienced the same fate, was under the superintendence of the celebrated Baumé, and affords one out of a thousand instances where theoretical chemists have shown their total incapacity for conducting operations on the scale of manufacturing economy. ”

“ We will work hard on the implementation of projects to build a robust foundation for industrial development and projects to develop and make major equipment, and we will make a big push to develop advanced manufacturing, thus moving toward mid- and high-end manufacturing. ”

“ The machinery required for operating the factory must be made and kept in repair, and new machines made to take the place of those worn out. So there came occupation for mechanics and skilled machinists in manufacturing and repairing the machines, and for others skilled in operating them. The material used in manufacturing the cloth must be transported to the factory, instead of being used at the place where it was grown as formerly ”

“ These plants developed and enlarged, and in due course of time became the machine shops and the factories, which have since multiplied many hundreds of times, not only in number and in value, but in influence and importance, until to-day our country stands the foremost manufacturing nation of the world. ”

“ One of the advantages of manufacturing in a large city is that you can always get skilled labor and a great variety of materials on short notice. Should your product be in the nature of gas or steam engines, harvesting machines or automobiles you should locate your factory on some navigable river, on the Great Lakes, or on a railroad line (with a spur-track running alongside) , in order to insure good and cheap transportation. ”

“ Owing to the various kinds of skilled labor, numerous expensive tools, machinery, high rents for suitable manufacturing places necessary for the building of machinery, requiring the investment of large capital, and the devotion of a great deal of time for organization and supervision, many inventors find it convenient, even profitable, to have their machines built under contract by some established manufacturing concern which is properly equipped for that special kind of work. ”

“ Technological advances may easily require a basic industry plant to expand its processes into semi-finished or finished goods so as to produce desired articles in greater volume and with less expense. ”

“ The nonoil manufacturing and construction sectors, which account for about 20% of GDP, have expanded from processing mostly agricultural products to include the production of petrochemicals, iron, steel, and aluminum. ”

“ Its evident object was to permit manufacturing corporations to purchase mines from which they could extract their own ore, or manufactories of raw material, such as pig iron or lumber, which could furnish to them material to be worked up into their own products ”

“ From this raw material is gathered the chief stock that goes into bowling alleys and the pins.
The company has its own logging crews that cut the timber and pile it on flat cars, whence it is transported over a private railroad until it arrives at the company sawmills. Here the raw material enters upon the manufacturing process.
The rough stock-strips for the alley “bed,” “leveling strips,” “return chute,” “post” and “kick-backs” are sawed out of certain of the logs. They are then shipped to a factory where they are seasoned, being kiln dried. The stock is next cut to the required sizes. ”

“ It is in a coal and lumbering region, and makes extensive coal-shipments. Its important manufacturing establishments are sash, door and nail factories, coffin and casket works, a rolling and a planing mill, silk-mills, dye-works and railroad-shops. ”

“ Another characteristic of modern manufacturing is exemplified in the study of the iron and steel industry and the relation of capital, labor and product, as is also the concentration of industries into great establishments and groups of establishments. As has already been noted, the value of the product of the iron and steel blast furnaces, steel works and rolling mills grew from 297 million in 1880 to 906 million in 1905, having thus a little more than trebled in that time. ”

“ When we began to make our own parts we practically took for granted that they all had to be made in the one factory--that there was some special virtue in having a single roof over the manufacture of the entire car. We have now developed away from this. If we build any more large factories, it will be only because the making of a single part must be in such tremendous volume as to require a large unit. I hope that in the course of time the big Highland Park plant will be doing only one or two things. ”

“ It is, however, in the manufacturing and transport industries that we trace the most general and rapid growth of the unit of production. And here machinery is the chief external cause. Gigantic railways and steamship companies are the successors of stage coach businesses and small shippers. The size and value of the modern cotton factory, iron works, sugar refinery, or brewery are incomparably greater than the units of which these industries were composed a century and a half ago. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The factory includes a water-power plant delivering, through an American water wheel and by cable, 250 horse-power to the main shafting, an auxiliary steam plant of 150 horse-power as a reserve, a rubber mill, a coffee mill, three sisal-stripping machines, smoke-houses, drying fields and houses for sisal, drying floors and houses for coffee, sorting rooms, blacksmith shop, machine shop, brass-fitting foundry, packing houses, warehouses, and other equipment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If allowed to expand for 18 years without diversion to production, the factory output could exponentiate to more than 4 X 109 tons per year, roughly the entire annual industrial output of all human civilization. ”

“ 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. ”