On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures

by Charles Babbage

358. In some few factories, in which the men are paid by the piece, it is usual, when any portion of work, delivered in by a workman, is rejected by the master on account of its being badly executed, to fine the delinquent. Such a practice tends to remedy one of the evils attendant upon that mode of payment, and greatly assists the master, since his own judgement is thus supported by competent and unprejudiced judges.

359. Societies exist amongst some of the larger bodies of workmen, and others have been formed by the masters engaged in the same branches of trade. These associations have different objects in view; but it is very desirable that their effects should be well understood by the individuals who compose them; and that the advantages arising from them, which are certainly great, should be separated as much as possible from the evils which they have, unfortunately, too frequently introduced. Associations of workmen and of masters may, with advantage, agree upon rules to be observed by both parties, in estimating the proportionate value of different kinds of work executed in their trade, in order that time may be saved, and disputes be prevented. They may also be most usefully employed in acquiring accurate information as to the number of persons working in the various departments of any manufacture, their rate of wages, the number of machines in use, and other statistical details. Information of this nature is highly valuable, both for the guidance of the parties who are themselves most interested, and to enable them, upon any application to government for assistance, or with a view to legislative enactments, to supply those details, without which the propriety of any proposed measure cannot be duly estimated. Such details may be collected by men actually engaged in any branch of trade, at a much smaller expense of time, than by persons less acquainted with, and less interested in it.

360. One of the most legitimate and most important objects of such associations as we have just mentioned, is to agree upon ready and certain modes of measuring the quantity of work done by the workmen. For a long time a difficulty upon this point existed in the lace trade, which was justly complained of by the men as a serious grievance; but the introduction of the rack, which counts the number of holes in the length of the piece, has entirely put an end to the most fertile cause of disputes. This invention was adverted to by the Committee of 1812, and a hope was expressed, in their report, that the same contrivance would be applied to stocking-frames. It would, indeed, be of great mutual advantage to the industrious workman, and to the master manufacturer in every trade, if the machines employed in it could register the quantity of work which they perform, in the same manner as a steam-engine does the number of strokes it makes. The introduction of such contrivances gives a greater stimulus to honest industry than can readily be imagined, and removes one of the sources of disagreement between parties, whose real interests must always suffer by any estrangement between them.

361. The effects arising from combinations amongst the workmen, are almost always injurious to the parties themselves. There are numerous instances, in which the public suffer by increased price at the moment, but are ultimately gainers from the permanent reduction which results; whilst, on the other hand, the improvements which are often made in machinery in consequence of 'a strike' amongst the workmen, most frequently do injury, of greater or less duration, to that particular class which gave rise to them. As the injury to the men and to their families is almost always more serious than that which affects their employers, it is of the utmost importance to the comfort and happiness of the former class, that they should themselves entertain sound views upon this question. For this purpose a few illustrations of the principle which is here maintained, will probably have greater weight than any reasoning of a more general nature, though drawn from admitted principles of political economy. Such instances will, moreover, present the advantage of appealing to facts known to many individuals of those classes for whose benefit these reflections are intended.

362. There is a process in the manufacture of gun barrels for making what, in the language of the trade, are called skelps. The skelp is a piece or bar of iron, about three feet long, and four inches wide, but thicker and broader at one end than at the other; and the barrel of a musket is formed by forging out such pieces to the proper dimensions, and then folding or bending them into a cylindrical form, until the edges overlap, so that they can be welded together.

About twenty years ago, the workmen, employed at a very extensive factory in forging these skelps out of bar-iron, 'struck' for an advance of wages; and as their demands were very exorbitant, they were not immediately complied with. In the meantime, the superintendent of the establishment directed his attention to the subject; and it occurred to him, that if the circumference of the rollers, between which the bar-iron was rolled, were to be made equal to the length of a skelp, or of a musket barrel, and if also the groove in which the iron was compressed, instead of being of the same width and depth throughout, were cut gradually deeper and wider from a point on the rollers, until it returned to the same point, then the bar-iron passing between such rollers, instead of being uniform in width and thickness, would have the form of a skelp. On making the trial, it was found to succeed perfectly; a great reduction of human labour was effected by the process, and the workmen who had acquired peculiar skill in performing it ceased to derive any advantage from their dexterity.

363. It is somewhat singular that another and a still more remarkable instance of the effect of combination amongst workmen, should have occurred but a few years since in the very same trade. The process of welding the skelps, so as to convert them into gun barrels, required much skill, and after the termination of the war, the demand for muskets having greatly diminished, the number of persons employed in making them was very much reduced. This circumstance rendered combination more easy; and upon one occasion, when a contract had been entered into for a considerable supply to be delivered on a fixed day, the men all struck for such an advance of wages as would have caused the completion of the contract to be attended with a very heavy loss.

In this difficulty, the contractors resorted to a mode of welding the gun barrel, for which a patent had been taken out by one of themselves some years before this event. The plan had not then succeeded so well as to come into general use, in consequence of the cheapness of the usual mode of welding by hand labour, combined with some other difficulties with which the patentee had to contend. But the stimulus produced by the combination of the workmen, induced him to make new trials, and he was enabled to introduce such a facility in welding gun barrels by rollers, and such perfection in the work itself, that, in all probability, very few will in future be welded by hand labour.

This new process consisted in folding a bar of iron, about a foot long, into the form of a cylinder, with the edges a little overlapping. It was then placed in a furnace, and being taken out when raised to a welding heat, a triblet, or cylinder of iron, was placed in it, and the whole was passed quickly through a pair of rollers. The effect of this was, that the welding was performed at a single heating, and the remainder of the elongation necessary for extending the skelps to the length of the musket barrel, was performed in a similar manner, but at a lower temperature. The workmen who had combined were, of course, no longer wanted, and instead of benefiting themselves by their combination, they were reduced permanently, by this improvement in the art, to a considerably lower rate of wages: for as the process of welding gun barrels by hand required peculiar skill and considerable experience, they had hitherto been in the habit of earning much higher wages than other workmen of their class. On the other hand, the new method of welding was far less injurious to the texture of the iron, which was now exposed only once, instead of three or four times, to the welding heat, so that the public derived advantage from the superiority, as well as from the economy of the process. Another process has subsequently been invented, applicable to the manufacture of a lighter kind of iron tubes, which can thus be made at a price which renders their employment very general. They are now to be found in the shops of all our larger ironmongers, of various lengths and diameters, with screws cut at each end; and are in constant use for the conveyance of gas for lighting, or of water for warming, our houses.

364. Similar examples must have presented themselves to all those who are familiar with the details of our manufactories, but these are sufficient to illustrate one of the results of combinations. It would not, however, be fair to push the conclusion deduced from these instances to its extreme limit. Although it is very apparent, that in the two cases which have been stated, the effects of combination were permanently injurious to the workman, by almost immediately placing him in a lower class (with respect to his wages) than he occupied before; yet they do not prove that all such combinations have this effect. It is quite evident that they have all this tendency, it is also certain that considerable stimulus must be applied to induce a man to contrive a new and expensive process; and that in both these cases, unless the fear of pecuniary loss had acted powerfully, the improvement would not have been made. If, therefore, the workmen had in either case combined for only a small advance of wages, they would, in all probability, have been successful, and the public would have been deprived, for many years, of the inventions to which these combinations gave rise. It must, however, be observed, that the same skill which enabled the men to obtain, after long practice, higher wages than the rest of their class, would prevent many of them from being permanently thrown back into the class of ordinary workmen. Their diminished wages will continue only until they have acquired, by practice, a facility of execution in some other of the more difficult operations: but a diminution of wages, even for a year or two, is still a very serious inconvenience to any person who lives by his daily exertion. The consequence of combination has then, in these instances, been, to the workmen who combined—reduction of wages; to the public -reduction of price; and to the manufacturer increased sale of his commodity, resulting from that reduction.