Chapter III (2)

From these considerations it will appear that where an industry is large and regular in character, it falls more readily and completely under the control of machinery, where it is small and irregular it conforms more slowly and partially to the new methods. Most of the extractive industries of agriculture, stock-raising, fishing, mining, hunting, are irregular by reason of the nature of their material and its subjection to influences, geological, chemical, climatic, and others which are but slightly under calculation or human control. 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. The manufacturing stages where machinery finds fullest application are in nearly all cases intermediate stages of production. Even where machine-production seems directly to satisfy some human want, there are commonly some final processes required which involve individual skill. Almost all products which satisfy the desires of man pass through a large number of productive processes which may be classed as extractive, transport, manufacturing, and distributive. These are, of course, not in all cases clearly distinguishable. Mixed with the extractive processes of mining and wheat-raising are several processes of transport and manufacture: the various stages of manufacture may be broken by stages of transport: a final process of manipulation or manufacture may precede the final act of distribution, as in the sale of drugs to the consumer. But, generally speaking, these four kinds of productive processes mark four historic stages in the passage from raw material to finished commodity.

The two middle stages of transport and manufacture have fallen far more fully under the control of steam-driven machinery than the others, and it is in the elaboration of older manufacturing and transport processes and the addition of new processes that we trace the largest effects of the evolution of modern industrial methods.

The following list of the divisions under which workers engaged in the production of material wealth are classified for purposes of the census may serve to bring out more clearly this proportionate development of machinery. The figures appended give the numbers engaged in the several occupations in 1891, and serve to approximately indicate the relative importance of the several principal branches of industry:--

Agriculture 1,311,720
Fishing 25,225
Mining 561,637
Stone, clay, road-making 209,972
Transport--
(_a_) Railways 186,774
(_b_) Roads 366,605
(_c_) Canals, rivers, seas 208,443
(_d_) Messages and porterage 194,044
Houses, furniture, and decorations 820,582
Food and lodgings 797,989
Iron and steel 380,193
Other metals 146,550
Ships and boats 170,517
Carriages and harness 108,780
Machines and implements 342,231
Textiles 1,128,589
Dress 1,099,833
Earthenware and glass 90,007
Chemicals and compounds 56,047
Books 135,616
Animal substances (manufacture) 76,566
Vegetable substances (paper, etc.) 196,889
General mechanics and labourers 805,105
Commercial--
(_a_) Merchants and agents 363,037
(_b_) Dealers in money 21,891
(_c_) Insurance 31,437
Engineers and surveyors 15,441

In glancing down this list of the chief industries engaged in the production of commercial wealth, it will be recognised at once that the manufacturing and transport industries are those to which steam-power and the economies of large production have been especially applied. Though, historically, the first industrial use of steam-power was in coal-mining, it remains true that the extensive application of modern machinery to agriculture and the other extractive industries is of comparatively recent growth, while the work of retail distribution has hitherto made but trifling use of machinery and steam-power. Only within the last few years have a few gigantic retail distributive businesses shown a tendency to apply steam and electricity to mechanical contrivances for purposes of distribution.

Sec. 10. The new industrial forces first applied to the cotton spinning of South Lancashire, and rapidly forcing their way into other branches of the textile manufactures, then more gradually transforming the industrial methods of the machinery, hardware, and other staple English manufactures, passed into the Western Continent of Europe and America, destroying the old domestic industry and establishing in every civilised country the reign of steam-driven machinery. The factors determining the order and pace of the new movement in the several countries are numerous and complex. In considering the order of machine-development, it must be remembered that the different nations did not start from an equal footing at the opening of the age of great inventions. By the beginning of the eighteenth century England had established a certain supremacy in commerce. The growth of her colonial possessions since the Revolution and the drastic and successful character of her maritime policy had enabled her to outstrip Holland. In 1729 by far the greater part of the Swedish iron exported from Gothenburg went to England for shipbuilding purposes.[83] At the close of the seventeenth century Gregory King placed England, Holland, and France at the head of the industrial nations with regard to the productivity of their labour.[84] Italy and Germany were little behind in the exercise of manufacturing arts, though the naval superiority and foreign possessions of the above-named nations gave them the commercial superiority. By 1760 England had strengthened her position as regards foreign commerce, and her woollen industry was the largest and most highly-developed industry in the world. But so far as the arts of manufacture themselves were concerned there was no such superiority in England as to justify the expectation of the position she held at the opening of the nineteenth century. In many branches of the textile arts, especially in silk spinning and in dyeing, in pottery, printing, and other manufactures, more inventive genius and more skill were shown on the Continent, and there seemed _a priori_ no reason why England should outstrip so signally her competitors.

The chief factors in determining the order of the development of modern industrial methods in the several countries may be classified as natural, political, economic.

NATURAL. (1) _The structure and position of the several countries._--The insular character of Great Britain, her natural facilities for procuring raw materials of manufacture and supplies of foreign food to enable her population to specialise in manufacture, the number and variety of easily accessible markets for her manufactures, gave her an immense advantage. Add to this a temperate climate, excellent internal communication by river (or canal), and an absence of mountain barriers between the several districts. These advantages were of greater relative importance before steam transport, but they played a large part in facilitating the establishment of effective steam transport in England. Extent of sea-board and good harbourage have in no small measure directed the course of modern industry, giving to England, Holland, France, Italy an advantage which the levelling tendency of modern machinery has not yet been able to counteract. The slow progress of Germany until recent years, and the still slow progress of Russia, is attributable more to these physical barriers of free communication, internal and external, than to any other single cause that can be adduced. Inherent resources of the soil, quality of land for agriculture, the proximity of large supplies of coal and iron and other requisites of the production of machinery and power rank as important determinants of progress. The machine development of France in particular has been retarded by the slow discovery of her natural areas of manufacture, the districts where coal and iron lie near to one another in easily accessible supply. The same remark applies to Germany and to the United States. At the close of last century, when the iron trade of England was rapidly advancing, the iron trade of France were quite insignificant, and during the earlier years of the nineteenth century the progress was extremely slight.[85]

(2) _Race and National Character._--Closely related to climate and soil, these qualities of race are a powerful directing influence in industry. Muscular strength and endurance, yielding in a temperate climate an even continuity of vigorous effort; keen zest of material comfort stimulating invention and enterprise; acquisitiveness, and the love of external display; the moral capacities of industry, truth, orderly co-operation; all these are leading factors determining the ability and inclination of the several nations to adopt new industrial methods. Moral qualities in English workmanship have indisputably played a large part in securing her supremacy. "A British trade-mark was accepted as a guarantee of excellence, while the products of other countries were viewed with a suspicion justified by experience of their comparative inferiority."[86] The more highly civilised nations have thus gained by this civilisation, and have widened the distance which separates them from the less civilised. England, France, Germany, Holland, and the United States are in wealth and in industrial methods far more widely removed from Spain and Russia than was the case a hundred years ago.

(_b_) POLITICAL.--Statecraft has played an important part in determining the order and pace of industrial progress. The possession of numerous colonies and other political attachments in different parts of the world, comprising a large variety of material resources, gave to England, and in a less measure to France, Holland, Spain, a great advantage. The tyrannical use these nations made of their colonies for the purpose of building up home manufactures enabled them to specialise more widely and safely in those industries to which the new methods of production were first applied. Even after the North American colonies broke loose, the policy of repression England had applied to their budding manufactures enabled her to retain to a large extent the markets thus created for her manufactured goods.

The large annexations England made during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gave her a monopoly of many of the finest markets for the purchase of raw materials and for the sale of manufactured goods. The large demand thus established for her textile and metal wares served not only to stimulate fresh inventions, but enabled her to utilise many improvements which could only be profitably applied in the case of large industries with secure and expanding markets.

But the most important factor determining the priority of England was the political condition of continental Europe at the very period when the new machinery and motor-power were beginning to establish confidence in the new industrial order. When Crompton's mule, Cartwright's power-loom, Watt's engines were transforming the industry of England, her continental rivals had all their energies absorbed in wars and political revolutions. The United States and Sweden were the only commercial nations of any significance who, being neutral, obtained a large direct gain from the European strife. Yet England, in spite of the immense drain of blood and money she sustained, under the momentum of the new motor-power far outstripped the rivalry of such states. Though she had to pay a heavy price for her immunity from invasion, she thereby secured an immense start in the race of modern machine-production. Until 1820 she had the game in her own hands. In European trade she had a practical monopoly of the rapidly advancing cotton industry. It was this monopoly which, ruthlessly applied to maintain prices at a highly remunerative rate, and to keep down wages to starvation point, built up, in an age of supreme and almost universal misery for the masses, the rapid and colossal fortunes of the cotton kings. Not until peace was established did the textile and other factories begin to take shape upon the Continent, and many years elapsed before they were able to compete effectively with England. Switzerland was the first continental country to actively adopt the new methods. The large supply of water-power stood her in good stead, and the people took more willingly to the factory system than in other countries.[87] France was slower in her development, in spite of the strong protective system by which she strove, though not very successfully, to exclude English cotton goods. The fall of English prices and profits in the cotton trade between 1820 and 1830 marks clearly the breakdown of the English monopoly before the cheap labour of Alsace and the cheap raw material of the United States, now organised in the factory system with the new machinery.[88] In this, the most advanced trade, the world-competition which now is operative in a thousand different industries, measuring and levelling economic advantages, first clearly shows itself, and in 1836 Ure finds the continental nations and America competing successfully with England in markets which had hitherto been entirely her own.

(_c_) ECONOMIC CONDITIONS.--The transformation of English agriculture, the growth of large farms, drove great numbers of English peasants into the towns, and furnished a large supply of cheap labour for the new machinery.

This movement was accelerated by the vices of our land tenure. In France and Germany, where the agricultural workers had a stronger interest and property in their land, they were less easily detached for factory purposes. But in England, where the labourer had no property in the land, reformed methods of agriculture and the operation of the Poor Law combined to incite the large proprietors and farmers to rid themselves of all superfluous population in the rural parts and accelerated the migration into the towns. Here the population bred with a rapidity hitherto unknown. The increase of population in England and Wales during the thirty years from 1770 to 1800 is placed at 1,959,590, or 27-1/10 per cent., while during the next thirty years, 1800 to 1830, it amounted to 5,024,207, or 56-3/5 per cent.[89] This large supply of cheap labour in the towns enabled the Lancashire and Yorkshire factories to grow with startling rapidity. The exhaustion left by the Napoleonic wars, the political disorder and insecurity which prevailed on the Continent, retarded until much later the effective competition of other European nations who were behind England in skill, knowledge, and the possession of markets. The American manufactures which had sprung up after the revolution had made considerable strides, but the conquest and settlement of vast new areas of land, and the immense facilities afforded for the production of raw material, retarded their rate of growth until long after the opening of this century. It was, indeed, not until about 1845 that the cotton manufacture made rapid strides in the United States. During the twenty years previous the progress had been very slight, but between 1845 and 1859 a very substantial and, making allowance for fluctuations in the cotton crops, a very steady growth took place.[90]

Another great economic advantage which assisted England was the fact that she, more than any other European nation, had broken down the old industrial order, with its guilds, its elaborate restrictions, and conservative methods. Personal freedom, security of property, liberty to work and live where and how one liked, existed in England to an extent unknown on the Continent before the French Revolution. The following account of the condition of the cotton manufacture in Germany in the eighteenth century will serve to indicate the obstacles to the reformed methods of industry:--"Everything was done by rule. Spinning came under public inspection, and the yarn was collected by officials. The privilege of weaving was confined to the confraternity of the guild. Methods of production were strictly prescribed; public inspectors exercised control. Defects in weaving were visited with punishment. Moreover, the right of dealing in cotton goods was confined to the confraternity of the merchant guild: to be a master-weaver had almost the significance of a public office. Besides other qualifications, there was the condition of a formal examination. The sale also was under strict supervision; for a long time a fixed price prevailed, and a maximum sale was officially prescribed for each dealer. The dealer had to dispose of his wares to the weaver, because the latter had guaranteed to him a monopoly of the export trade."[91]

Under such conditions the new machine-industry could make little advance. Excepting in the case of the woollen industries, England had for the most part already shaken off the old regulations before 1770. In particular, the cotton trade, which was in the vanguard of the movement, being of recent growth and settling outside the guild towns, had never known such restrictions, and therefore lent itself to the new order with a far greater facility than the older trades. Moreover, England was free from the innumerable and vexatious local taxes and restrictions prevalent in France and in the petty governments of Germany. Although the major part of these foolish and pernicious regulations has been long swept away from Germany and other continental nations, the retarding influence they exercised, in common with the wider national system of protection which still survives, kept back the cotton industry, so that in Germany it still stands half a century behind its place in England.[92]

The following figures show how substantial was the lead held by England in the cotton manufacture a little before the middle of the century.

NUMBER OF SPINDLES WORKING IN COTTON MILLS IN 1846.[93]

Spindles.
England and Wales 15,554,619
Scotland 1,727,871
Ireland 215,503
Austria and Italy 1,500,000
France 3,500,000
Belgium 420,000
Switzerland 650,000
Russia 7,585,000
United States 3,500,000
States of the Zollverein 815,000
----------
35,467,993

The development of the cotton industry in 1888 in the chief industrial countries, as indicated by the consumption of raw cotton, is expressed in the accompanying diagram.

Lastly, the national trade policy of England was of signal advantage in her machine development. Her early protective system had, by the enlargement of her carrying trade and the increase of her colonial possessions, laid the foundation of a large complex trade with the more distant parts of the world, though for a time it crippled our European commerce. While we doubtless sacrificed other interests by this course of policy, it must be generally admitted that "English industries would not have advanced so rapidly without Protection."[94] But as we built up our manufacturing industries by Protection, so we undoubtedly conserved and strengthened them by Free Trade--first, by the remission of tariffs upon the raw materials of manufacture and machine-making, and later on by the free admission of food stuffs, which were a prime essential to a nation destined to specialise in manufacture. France, our chief national competitor, weakened her position by a double protective policy, not merely refusing admittance to foreign manufactures in her markets, but retaining heavy duties upon the importation of foreign coal and iron, the foundational constituents of machine-production. This protective policy, adopted by nations whose skill, industry, and natural resources would have rendered them formidable competitors to English manufacturers, has hindered considerably the operation of those economic forces which impel old and thickly-peopled countries to specialise in manufacture and trade, and so has retarded the general development of modern machine-production. But while protective tariffs indisputably operate in this way, it is not possible to determine the extent of their influence. In a large country of rich resources a high degree of specialisation in manufacture is possible in spite of a protective policy. The pressure of high wages is an economic force more powerfully operative than any other in stimulating the adoption of elaborate machinery.[95] Both in the textile and the iron industries the United States present examples of factory development more advanced even than those of England. Certain processes of warping and winding are done by machinery in America which are still done by hand labour in England.[96] The chain and nail-making trades, which employ large numbers of women in South Staffordshire and Worcestershire, are made more cheaply by machinery in America.[97] Moreover, the high standard of living and the greater skill of the American operatives enables them to tend more machines. In German factories a weaver tends two, or rarely three looms; in Lancashire women weavers undertake four, and in Massachusetts often six looms, and sometimes eight.[98]

Thus we see how the new industrial forces were determined in the order of their operation by the character and conditions of the several countries, their geographical position and physical resources, the elements of racial character, political and industrial institutions, deliberate economic policies, and, above all, by the absorbing nature of the military and political events contemporary with the outburst of inventive ingenuity. The composition of these forces determined the several lines of less resistance along which the new industry moved.

The exact measurement of so multiform a force is impossible. The appended tables and diagrams may, however, serve to indicate the progress of the several industrial nations as measured by (i.) development of railway and merchant shipping; (ii.) consumption of coal and iron; (iii.) application of steam-power; (iv.) estimated annual value of manufactures:--

I. COMPARATIVE MILEAGE OF RAILWAYS, 1840 TO 1890.

1840. 1850. 1860. 1870. 1880. 1890.
United Kingdom 800 6,600 10,400 15,500 17,900 19,800
Continent of Europe 800 7,800 21,400 47,800 83,800 110,200
United States 2,800 9,000 30,600 53,400 93,600 156,000
India -- -- 800 4,800 9,300 16,000
Australia -- -- 200 1,200 5,400 10,100
Rest of the World -- -- 2,800 5,500 18,400 42,300

RAILWAY MILEAGE IN RELATION TO AREA AND POPULATION.

Density of Railway
Population per Mileage
Square Square Mile (1888).
Area. Miles. (1890).
United Kingdom 120,849 320 19,810
France 204,092 184 20,900
Germany 208,738 233 24,270
Russia 1,902,227 42 17,700
Austria 240,942 166 15,610
Italy 110,623 260 7,830
Spain 197,670 86 5,930
Portugal 34,038 136 1,190
Sweden 170,979 28 4,670
Norway 124,495 16 970
Denmark 15,289 133 1,220
Holland 12,648 350 1,700
Belgium 11,373 530 2,760
Switzerland 15,976 190 1,870
Greece 25,041 88 370
Turkey 65,909 73 900
U.S.A. (excluding
Alaska and Indian
territory) 1,175,550 21 156,080
Japan 145,655 274 910
India 964,992 229 15,250
Australia 3,030,771 1.20 10,140
Canada 3,315,647 1.45 12,700
Egypt (cultiv. area) 12,976 638 1,260

FOOTNOTES:

[58] Karl Marx, _Capital_, p. 367.

[59] Marx points out how in many of the most highly evolved machines the original tool survives, illustrating this from the original power-loom. (_Capital_, p. 368.)

[60] Cooke Taylor, _History of the Factory System_, p. 422.

[61] Cf. Babbage, p. 15.

[62] Burnley, _Wool and Wool-combing_, p. 417.

[63] _Economy of Machinery_, p. 6.

[64] _Economy of Machinery_, p. 39.

[65] _Vide infra_, p. 249.

[66] Scrivener, _History of the Iron Trade_, pp. 296, 297.

[67] Sir Lyon Playfair, _North American Review_, Nov. 1892.

[68] _Der Grossbetrieb_, p. 85.

[69] The important part which the cotton and iron industries play in the export trade of England entitles them to special consideration as representatives of world-industry. Out of L263,530,585 value of English exports in 1890, cotton comprised L74,430,749; iron and steel, L31,565,337.

[70] Cunningham, chap. ii. p. 450.

[71] Schulze-Gaevernitz, _Der Grossbetrieb_, p. 34.

[72] Ure, _The Cotton Manufacture_, p. 187.

[73] Modern economy now favours the specialisation of a factory and often of a business in a single group of processes--_e.g._, spinning or weaving or dyeing, both in the cotton and woollen industries. This, however, is applicable chiefly to the main branches of textile work. In minor branches, such as cotton thread, the tendency is still towards an aggregation of all the different processes under a single roof, both in England and in the United States.

[74] P.R. Hodge, civil engineer--evidence before House of Lords Committee in 1857.

In Germany a spinning-wheel had been long in use for flax-spinning, which in effect was an anticipation of the throstle (cf. Karmarch, _Technologie_, vol. ii. p. 844, quoted Schulze-Gaevernitz, p. 30), and machine-weaving is said to have been discovered in Danzig as early as 1579.

[75] Cf. Brentano, _Uber die Ursachen der heutigen socialen Noth; Der Grossbetrieb_, p. 30.

[76] Porter, _Progress of the Nation_, p. 219.

[77] Selected from Porter, p. 218.

[78] In 1824 Mr. Huskisson introduced the principle of free trade, securing a reduction of the duties on raw and thrown silks, and in 1825, 1826, considerable further reductions were made. (Cf. Ure, _Philosophy of Manufactures_, p. 454, etc.) But protection of English silk manufactured goods was maintained until the French Treaty of 1860.

[79] Cf. Ure, _History of the Cotton Manufacture_, vol. i. p. 223.

[80] Scrivener, _History of the Iron Trade_, p. 56.

[81] Cooke Taylor, _Modern Factory System_, p. 164; cf. also Karl Marx, _Capital_, p. 381.

[82] Schulze-Gaevernitz, p. 140.

[83] Yeats, _The Growth and Vicissitudes of Commerce_, p. 284.

[84] The average income for England in 1688 he puts at L7 18s; for Holland, L8 1s. 4d.; France, L6--p. 47. Such an estimate, however, has little value.

[85]

In 1810 the total produce was 140,000 tons.
" 1818 " " " 114,000 "
" 1824 " " " 164,000 "

(Scrivener, _History of the Iron Trade_, p. 153.)

[86] Yeats, _Growth and Vicissitudes of Commerce_, p. 285.

[87] Schulze-Gaevernitz, _Der Grossbetrieb_, p. 48.

[88] Ellison, _History of the Cotton Trade_, presents the following interesting table (yarn, 40 hanks to the lb.):--

1779. 1784. 1799. 1812. 1830. 1882.
s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d.

Selling price 16 0 10 11 7 6 2 6 1 2-1/2 0 10-1/2
Cost of Cotton
(18 oz.) 2 0 2 0 3 4 1 6 0 7-3/4 0 7-1/8
----- ----- ---- ---- -------- ---------
Labour & Capital 14 0 8 11 4 2 1 0 0 6-3/4 0 3-3/8

[89] Porter, _Progress of the Nation_, p. 13. Eighteenth century figures are, however, not trustworthy. The first census was in 1801.

[90] Ure, _Philosophy of Manufactures_, p. 531.

[91] Schulze-Gaevernitz, _Der Grossbetrieb_, p. 34.

[92] In 1882 42 per cent. of the German textile industry was still conducted in the home or domestic workshop, while only 38 per cent. was carried on in factories employing more than 50 persons. More weavers were still engaged with hand-looms than with power-looms, and the latter was so little developed that the hand-loom could still hold its own in many articles. Knitting, lace-making, and other minor textile industries are still in the main home industries.--(_Social Peace_, p. 113.) "While in England in 1885 each spinning or weaving mill had an average of 191 operatives, each spinning mill in Germany in 1882 employed an average of 10 persons only."--(Brentano, _Hours, Wages, and Production_, p. 64.)

[93] Ure, _Philosophy of Manufactures_, p. 515.

[94] Toynbee, _Industrial Revolution_, p. 79.

[95] The highly elaborate American machine industry of watch-making is a striking example of this influence of high wages. Cf. Schulze-Gaevernitz, _Social Peace_, p. 125.

[96] Schoenhof, _Economy of High Wages_, p. 279.

[97] _Ibid._, pp. 225, 226.

[98] Schulze-Gaevernitz, p. 66 (note). This six and eight-loom weaving is, however, at a lower speed.