Purveyor

“ The factor often provides a store, together with a complete selling and office force, and every facility for receiving, storing, selling, and shipping the goods, and for financing the business. The salesmen of the house travel throughout the country, reaching all the important markets, and the managers of the different departments, who thus understand the needs of the market, are in a position to advise the mill with intelligence and exactness as to the kind of goods which should be made to meet the requirements of the trade. ”

“ The wholesale dealer, by affording a ready market to the manufacturer, by taking his goods off his hand as fast as he can make them, and by sometimes even advancing their price to him before he has made them, enables him to keep his whole capital, and sometimes even more than his whole capital, constantly employed in manufacturing, and consequently to manufacture a much greater quantity of goods than if he was obliged to dispose of them himself to the immediate consumers, or even to the retailers. ”

“ First, the gentleman farmer, or husbandman, sends his wool to the market, which is bought either by the comber or spinster, and they, the next week, bring it hither again in yarn, which the weaver buys, and the market following brings that hither again in cloth, when it is sold, either to the clothier, who sends it to London, or to the merchant, who, after it hath passed the fuller's mill, and sometimes the dyer's vat, transports it. ”

“ Through the doors of the different rooms passed an endless procession; men from the front with the marks of the desert sun on their faces—engineers, superintendents, bosses, messengers, agents—servants of the Company; laborers of every sort and nationality came in answer to the cry: "Men wanted!"; special salesmen from foundry, factory and shop drawn by prospective large sales of machinery, implements and supplies; land-hungry men from everywhere seeking information and opportunity for investment. ”

“ He may be the head of a department store or the owner of a large clothing establishment or a merchant tailor. Whoever he is, if he is not able to erect or to provide suitable factories instead of shifting the responsibility of workrooms upon his petty contractors, he would better delegate the manufacture of his goods to someone who is. There is no more necessity for any of these men except, perchance, the merchant tailor to make his own garments in little shops and in tenements than for him to make his own muslins and challies and lawns, his silks and linens and broadcloths. ”

“ This warehouse-keeper, or wholesale-man, sells the goods which he buys of the merchant—I say, he sells them to the retailers, and it is for that reason I place it first there. Now, as they buy in smaller quantities than he did of the merchant, so he deals with more of them in number, and he goes about among them the same Saturday, to get in money that he may pay his merchant, and he receives his bag full of promises, too, every where instead of money, and is put off from week to week, perhaps by fifty shopkeepers in a day ”

“ Within those walls twenty-seven thousand men and women living in a degree of comfort never known before to the spinners and weavers of the world, earn their daily bread. [Pg 28] Those towering factories are, every one, monuments to the genius of Richard Arkwright, the penny barber of Preston. If he appropriated the inventions of others, he perfected these inventions and made them of permanent value to mankind; and moreover, he arranged the machinery into series, organized the factory system, and revolutionized industry. ”

“ A class of merchants or manufacturers arose who are spoken of as "clothiers," or "merchant clothiers," who bought the wool or other raw material, and gave it out to carders or combers, spinners, weavers, fullers, and other craftsmen, paying them for their respective parts in the process of manufacture, and themselves disposing of the product at home or for export. ”

“ The proprietors were extremely systematic and particular in their mode of keeping accounts and in their dealings with each other. They held regular meetings, and appointed independent and disinterested persons as valuers in each department; for instance, one to value the stock of finished goods in the ware rooms, another the unfinished ware, another the copper plates, another the buildings, others the moulds and models, the windmill, the horses, the waggons and carts, the raw materials, the woodwork, and every imaginable thing. ”

“ The development of manufactures naturally brought about changes in the organisation of industry. Owing to the operation of the principle of division of labour, new crafts came into existence, and these, in their turn, were also sub-divided into other new crafts. Gradually, all the various classes of the industrial world—the artisan, the [Pg 129] manufacturer, the middleman, and the merchant—began to emerge. ”

“ The same principle holds true in all other relations. The merchant would find a certain advantage in living at his warehouse, the engine-builder at his factory, the cotton-spinner at his mill, the carpenter at his shop, and the grocer at his store. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The factory owner was so high above his workmen that he found himself on the same level as other capitalists, the banker, who gave him credit, and the merchant, who gave him customers. Journeymen in factories could no longer aspire to become masters of their trade and no longer socialized with their employers. ”

“ These persons, in ordinary times, act as salesmen or agents, and make up assortments of goods at the market price, for the use of the home or foreign dealer. They possess large warehouses in which to make up their orders, or keep in store articles purchased during periods of depression ”

“ It is true, therefore, of every particular producer or dealer, that a great demand, a brisk circulation, a rapid consumption, of the commodities which he sells at his shop or produces in his manufactory, is important to him. The dealer whose shop is crowded with customers, who can dispose of a product almost the very moment it is completed, makes large profits, while his next neighbour, with an equal capital but fewer customers, gains comparatively little. ”

“ In some cases the raw material—wool, linen, metal, or whatever it might be—was purchased by the small manufacturer, and the goods were either manufactured for special customers or taken when completed to a neighboring town on market days, there to be sold to a local dealer, or to a merchant who would transport it to another part of the country or export it to other countries. ”

“ There are hundreds among us who have made fortunes as manufacturers. How does the case stand with them? They have set up a factory, it may be, in some sequestered spot, where a village has immediately arisen. The population has increased from year to year; the capital of the manufacturer has increased with it; his works been extended; new labourers have arrived; and in the evening of his days he retires with a handsome property honourably gained, and it is his joy that he owes nothing to any man. ”

“ Our noble market-place exhibits the laws made by the corporation; and every week there are fewer and fewer people to obey the laws. How convenient! Look at our one warehouse by the river side—with the crane generally idle, and the windows mostly boarded up; and perhaps one man at the door, looking out for the job which his better sense tells him cannot possibly come. ”

“ I know of one firm in the wholesale hat business, that raised hob in a letter with their best man because he would, in selling dozen lots to customers, specify sizes on the goods that his customer wished,—a most absurd thing for the house to do. The merchant must, of course, keep his own stock clean and not become over-stocked on certain sizes. ”

“ Distributing producers, or those who convey the raw material to the manufacturer, and the manufactured article to the consumer,—comprehending the commission merchants, wholesale dealers, importers, grocers, butchers, and shopkeepers of every description; their vast machinery being the ships, railroads, highways, waggons, horses, and men by which this distribution is effected. ”

“ Between the journeymen and apprentices, and the employer, there frequently intervened persons such as the “undertakers” mentioned [Page 55] in connection with the smallware trade, but these men were essentially employees, even though in many cases, no doubt, they might own three or four looms. In the factory, the workpeople, who previously had been scattered over a more or less wide area, were drawn together under one roof, and their operations supervised by foremen and managers; the capital of the employers was now embodied in materials, buildings, plant and machinery ”

“ To supply the wants of those employed in the factories, who were so busily engaged that they could not find time to grow their own food, or make their own clothing, other enterprising men and women established themselves near the factory to sell the required food and household supplies, to supply the fuel with which they cooked their daily food, to buy small portions of the cloth made in the factory and turn it into clothing to sell to the operatives, to shave their rough beards and occasionally trim their hair—and thus arose the factory town. ”

“ Owing to this distribution of manufacturers, it is evident that most of the workpeople would be within easy reach of an employer, and probably the most usual thing was for them to fetch their materials from his house, or warehouse, and after working upon them, to return the product. ”

“ The factory hand spends his working day in a great, dingy shop, with the maddening din of machinery in his ears. His associates are strangers, with whom he has little or nothing in common besides his work. He labors for an indefinite, far-away consumer whose manner of life is unknown to him. ”

“ In many cases the producers and dealers are the same persons, at least as to the ownership of the funds and the control of the operations. The tailor, the shoemaker, the baker, and many other tradesmen, are the producers of the articles they deal in, so far as regards the last stage in the production. ”

“ Another set are actually in trade at the moment, if that can be called a trade, which consists of a shop of all sorts; these are called "general dealers," and partake much of the character of the jobbers; only that the latter for a shop, keep a "warehouse," upstairs in a garret; or their lodging room at the public house serves the purpose of a warehouse! I have known one of these, at the same time a dealer in cutlery, coffins, pictures, paper, hose, books, bandanas, and other heterogeneous articles ”

“ The requisitions for material go through the buying department, the designs go from the drawing office and in a reasonable time, if the organization is complete, the parts commence to collect in the various stores throughout the factory. When the stock is sufficiently forward to ensure a regular supply to the various shops ”

“ The owner of a factory, on the contrary, being commonly possessed of a large capital, and having all his workmen employed under his own immediate superintendence, may make experiments, hazard speculation, invent shorter or better modes of performing old processes, may introduce new articles, and improve and perfect old ones, thus giving the range to his taste and fancy, and, thereby alone enabling our manufacturers to stand the competition with their commercial rivals in other countries. ”

“ The Merchant carries them in Loads to the Paper-Mill, where they pass thro' a fresh Set of Hands, and give life to another Trade. Those who have Mills on their Estates, by this means considerably raise their Rents, and the whole Nation is in a great measure supply'd with a Manufacture, for which formerly she was obliged to her Neighbours. ”

“ 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. ”

“ PROGRESS We have now traced the history of the factory, from its beginning with the inventions of Arkwright down to its permanent establishment in the first half of the last century, and we have noted its influence upon the social life of England. We have seen how, as early as the fifteenth century, the introduction of manufactures assisted in breaking down the feudal system, and how, by making possible the accumulation of wealth by men of humble birth, it contributed to the rise of the middle class. ”

“ Our next enterprise was the establishing of a woolen factory, following the same course as in putting up the tannery—procuring the building materials, doing the mason and carpenter work in the season when laborers would otherwise have been unemployed. This, also, added to our capital—increasing the number of our stockholders without interrupting any man's business. The profits of the mercantile department, with some additional capital, purchased the machinery. ”