Raw material

“ If we confine our attention to some particular lot of raw materials, of rags, for instance, in paper manufacture, or of wire in needle manufacture, we perceive that it passes in succession through a series of stages in the hands of the various detail workmen until completion. On the other hand, if we look at the workshop as a whole, we see the raw material in all the stages of its production at the same time. ”

“ In the industrial arts, the introduction of a new kind of raw material, the recognition that a mixture or blending is often more serviceable than when the substances employed are uncombined, the discovery of new processes of treating the articles used in manufactures, the invention of improved machinery, all lead to the expansion of trade to the occupation of the people, and to the development of great industrial centers. ”

“ Like the raw material of the manufacturer, they form the bases of innumerable fabrics, are woven into many theories finely spun or coarsely spun, which wear out with time, become unfashionable, or else prove to be indeed true and fit, and as such remain. ”

“ Organic Materials—embracing whatever is practically interesting in all vegetable and animal substances used in manufacturing, having in view their sources, culture, collection, commercial importance and qualities as connected with manufacturing. This department presents a vast field of immense importance to every merchant and importer of raw material. ”

“ As plants convert the minerals into food for animals, so each man converts some raw material in nature to human use. The inventors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron; lead, glass, linen, silk, cotton; the makers of tools; the inventor of decimal notation; the geometer; the engineer; musician,—severally make an easy way for all, through unknown and impossible confusions. ”

“ One where the material is itself an object of general or extensive consumption, and a fit and productive source of revenue. Another where a manufacture of a simpler kind, the competition of which with a like domestic article is desired to be restrained, partakes of the nature of a raw material from being capable by a further process to be converted into a manufacture of a different kind, the introduction or growth of which is desired to be encouraged. ”

“ To be of the greatest advantage and usefulness, cost records should not only determine factory cost but they should accumulate the data needed to predetermine the selling price with accuracy.
Nature of Raw Materials and Supplies
Materials or raw materials constitute the crude commodities or semi-manufactured articles which are to be worked upon and fashioned into a new product. It is seldom that any factory takes its material in the raw form in which it comes from nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These adherents of formal logic may be compared to a maker of porcelain dishes who would contend that he was simply paying attention to the form of his dishes, pots, and vases, but that he did not have anything to do with the raw material, while it is evident that he is compelled to form the body in trying to embody forms. ”

“ Or a particular manufacturing business might be taken, as agricultural implements, or shoes, or carpets, and the effect of protecting its raw material be individually considered. Although the general principle applies throughout, it is quite natural that its illustrations should be easier to draw, and clearer to see, in some lines than others. ”

“ By the simple addition of a certain quantity of labour, new value is added, and by the quality of this added labour the original values of the means of production are preserved in the product. That part of capital which is represented by means of production, by the raw material, auxiliary material, and the instruments of labour, does not, in the process of production, undergo any quantitative alteration of value. ”

“ In the most highly organised machine industry an increasing proportion of the economy goes into the improved methods of manipulating material so as to prevent waste, and by improved quality of work and elaboration of manufacture to get a larger net amount of product out of a given quantity of raw material. ”

“ One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with"; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. ”

“ It is almost a factory, where he must take his raw materials—earth, water, heat, light, and the wonderful thread of life, and mold these all into a hundred marvelous forms of beauty and utility. Something of art, something of science, something of business, must all be brought to his interesting work. ”

“ I need not speak of the science involved in this—the study of the fibers, of geographical features, the conditions under which raw materials are grown, the great centers of manufacture and distribution, the physics involved in the machinery of production; nor, again, of the historical side—the influence which these inventions have had upon humanity. You can concentrate the history of all mankind into the evolution of the flax, cotton, and wool fibers into clothing. ”

“ Are various kinds of the same article made in one establishment, or at different ones, and are there differences in the processes?
To what defects are the goods liable?
What substitutes or adulterations are used?
What waste is allowed by the master?
What tests are there of the goodness of the manufactured articles?
The weight of a given quantity, or number, and a comparison with that of the raw material?
The wholesale price at the manufactory? £⁠s.⁠d. per
The usual retail price? £⁠s.⁠d.
Who provide tools? Master, or men? Who repair tools? Master, or men? ”

“ So, it is obvious that even raw materials in the form in which nature has produced them, are mostly of no value and unavailable for use, unless reproduced through the process of “human creative production.” ”

“ What, then, is production? It is the application of labor to the raw materials that nature provides for the making of things that satisfy human desires. Nothing can be produced in any other way. True, there are things men want that apparently do not involve the use of raw materials, things that are usually described as services. ”

“ Research may enable us to raise all the cotton and ramie we need for our textile industry, kenaf for our bags, and the rubber for our tire and rubber industry. It may lead to the discovery of new uses, as raw materials or food or medicine or chemicals, of our crops, plants, and other pro­ducts, and to the invention of machines and equipment suited to our farms, forests, and other needs. ”

“ The attention of the manufacturer should be directed to the use of his materials in such proportions as will furnish, in the melting-pot, the proper quantities of the essential ingredients, as determined from the known composition of the best commercial samples. The purity of the raw materials and the accuracy of his proportions and quantities are proved or disproved by the excellence of the product ”

“ Over 15,000 selected formulæ are here collected, nearly every branch of the useful arts being represented. Many of the principal substances and raw materials used in the arts are described, and almost every inquiry relating to formulæ will be found answered. ”

“ We have here collected the products of our artistic, scientific and industrial life. The raw materials of the farm, the vineyard, the mine and the forest have been transformed by the skilled artisan, the artist and the architect into the finished products before you. By the co-operation of all these resources, of all these activities, of all these workers, this result has been accomplished. ”

“ Nature, however, in thus furnishing us with an inexhaustible stock of raw materials, leaves it in some measure to the ingenuity of man to appropriate them to its own purposes. But, like a kind parent, she stimulates him to exertion, by setting 252 the example and pointing out the way. ”

“ The final processes by which commodities are adapted to the use of individual consumers necessarily partake of the irregularity or variety of human tastes and desires. We shall therefore find most regularity in the intermediate processes where the raw materials, having been extracted from nature, are being endowed with those qualities of shape, position, etc., which are required to enable them to satisfy human wants. ”

“ Production, in the common signification of the word, means the conversion of one substance into another, weight for weight, agreeably with, or under, mechanical, chemical, and vital laws. I speak, of course, of material production. ”

“ The exposure of any body to such a heat as will dry and consolidate its parts without wasting them. Thus wood, pottery, and porcelain, are baked, as well as bread.
BALANCE. To conduct arts, manufactures, and mines, with judgment and success, recourse must be had, at almost every step, to a balance. Experience proves that all material bodies, existing upon the surface of the earth, are constantly solicited by a force which tends to bring them to its centre, and that they actually fall towards it when they are free to move. ”

“ Nearly every manufacturer is aware by painful experience of the great and almost incessant variation that occurs in the quality and properties of the materials used in his trade, and the frequent risk of failure of his process. ”

“ They are simple and strong in construction, of high capacity with comparatively small consumption of power, and furnish a good, uniform product, the size of which ranges from fine powder to coarse granules, according to the screens used and the class of material treated. ”

“ In the class of “wrappings” and miscellaneous papers a large number of other materials find use, such as various residues of manufacturing and preparing processes, scutching wastes, ends of rovings and yarns, flax, hemp and manila rope waste, adansonia bast, and jute wastes, raw (cuttings) and manufactured (bagging) . ”

“ And it is equally clear, in cases of chemical inventions, that when, as in the present case, the manufacture claimed as novel is not a new composition of matter, but an extract obtained by the decomposition or disintegration of material substances, it cannot be of importance from what it has been extracted. ”

“ Every color manufactory possesses another system to produce its products, and after thousands of experiments I was finally forced to resort to chemistry for the purpose of gaining a knowledge of the raw products viz: earths, metals, acids, bases and their conditions and qualities in order to study their compositions and precipitations, the coloring composite of lake colors and their bodies, and to subject them to investigation on their effects on marbling size. ”

“ Hence arises a demand for every sort of material which human invention can employ, either usefully or ornamentally, in building, dress, equipage, or household furniture; for the fossils and minerals contained in the bowels of the earth, the precious metals, and the precious stones. ”

“ The spirit of Invention, one of the chief conditions in the production of material commodities, thus simply illustrated along the line of a single manufacture, may serve us for a sample of similar improvements taken and taking place in scores upon scores of other lines of effort and production. ”

“ II. Men who apply their head and hands to this material and transform it into other shapes, fitting it for human use; men that make grain into flour and bread, cotton into cloth, iron into needles or knives, and the like. ”

“ These consist, generally, of materials furnished to us by nature, endowed with many most remarkable properties fitting them for our purposes; if one of them is a production of art, yet its adaptation to the use of mankind,—the qualities which render it available to us,—must be referred to the same source as those derived immediately from nature. ”

“ And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this,—that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. ”

“ Contemplated in this view, an art or manufacture may be defined to be that species of industry which effects a certain change in a substance, to suit it for the general market, by combining its parts in a new order and form, through mechanical or chemical means. ”

“ Some of the large brewers, chemical manufacturers, candle companies, and many others, constantly employ scientific men in this way to examine their materials, processes and products, and keep them acquainted with the progress of discovery and invention in relation to their own particular trades. ”

“ Think of the beautiful colours of our carpets, draperies, silks, &c.—the chemist has devised the dyes with which they are stained; and in our chemical factories, what tons of vitriol, soda, bleaching powder, and scores of other chemical agents are daily produced. All this is the result of study and perseverance. Neither have the Fine Arts been behind in contributing to civilisation, as may be seen in the structure and decoration of our houses, churches, and public buildings; in our glass and pottery ware ”