The peculiar relation of Machinery to the Factory System consists in the fact that the size, expensiveness, and complexity of machinery on the one hand, and the use of non-human power on the other hand, were forces which united to drive labour from the home workshop to the large specialised workshop—the Factory.
"The water frame, the carding engine, and the other machines which Arkwright brought out in a finished state, required both more space than could be found in a cottage, and more power than could be applied by the human arm. Their weight also rendered it necessary to place them in strongly-built walls, and they also could not be advantageously turned by any power then known but that of water. Further, the use of machinery was accompanied by a greater division of labour, and therefore a greater co-operation was requisite to bring all the processes of production into harmony and under a central superintendence."[60] Hence the growth of machine-production is to a large extent synonymous with the growth of the modern Factory System.
§ 3. Man does his work by moving matter. Hence machinery can only aid him by increasing the motive power at his disposal.
(1) Machinery enables forces of man or nature to be more effectively applied by various mechanical contrivances composed of levers, pulleys, wedges, screws, etc.
(2) Machinery enables man to obtain the use of various motor forces outside his body—wind, water, steam, electricity, chemical action, etc.[61]
Thus by the provision of new productive forces, and by the more economical application of all productive forces, machinery improves the industrial arts.
Machinery can increase the scope of man's productive ability in two ways. The difficulty of concentrating a large mass of human force upon a given point at the same time provides certain quantitative limits to the productive efficiency of the human body. The steam-hammer can perform certain work which is quantitatively outside the limit of the physical power of any number of men working with simple tools and drawing their motor power from their own bodies. The other limit to the productive power of man arises from the imperfect continuity of human effort and the imperfect command of its direction. The difficulty of maintaining a small, even, accurate pressure, or a precise repetition of the same movement, is rather a qualitative than a purely quantitative limit. The superior certainty and regularity of machinery enables certain work to be done which man alone could not do or could do less perfectly. The work of the printing machine could not be achieved by man. Machinery has improved the texture and quality of certain woollen goods;[62] recent improvements in milling result in improved quality of flour and so on. Machinery can also do work which is too fine or delicate for human fingers, or which would require abnormal skill if executed by hand. Economy of time, which Babbage[63] accounts a separate economy, is rightly included in the economies just named. The greater rapidity with which certain manufacturing processes—e.g., dyeing—can be achieved arises from the superior concentration and continuity of force possible under machinery. All advantages arising from rapid transport are assignable to the same causes.
The continuity and regularity of machine work are also reflected in certain economies of measurement. The faculty of self-registering, which belongs potentially to all machinery, and which is more utilised every day, performs several services which may be summed up by saying that they enable us to know exactly what is going on. When to self-registration is applied the faculty of self-regulation, within certain limits a new economy of force and knowledge is added. But machinery can also register and regulate the expenditure of human power. Babbage well says:—"One of the most singular advantages we derive from machinery is in the check which it affords against the inattention, the idleness, or the knavery of human agents."[64] This control of the machine over man has certain results which belong to another aspect of machine economy.[65]
These are the sources of all the improvements of economies imputed to machine-production. All improvements in machinery, as applied to industrial arts, take therefore one of the following forms:—
(1) Re-arrangement or improvement of machinery so as to utilise more fully the productive power of nature or man. Improvements enabling one man to tend more spindles, or enabling the same engine at the same boiler-pressure to turn more wheels, belong to this order of improvement.