Examples of the increased production of goods by machinery.
An example of the greatly increased output rendered possible by the use of machinery and division of labor is given by the distinguished Scotch economist, Adam Smith, whose great work, The Wealth of Nations, appeared in 1776. Speaking of the manufacture of a pin in his own time, Adam Smith says: "To make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pin is another. It is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper, and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations." By this division, he adds, ten persons can make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. A recent writer reports that now an English machine makes one hundred and eighty pins a minute, cutting the wire, flattening the heads, sharpening the points, and dropping the pin into its proper place. In a single factory which he visited seven million pins were made in a day, and three men were all that were required to manage the mechanism.
Another example of modern mechanical work is found in printing. For several centuries after the development of that art the type was set up by hand, inked by hand, each sheet of paper was laid by hand upon the type and then printed by means of a press operated by a lever. Nowadays our newspapers are, in the great cities at least, printed almost altogether by machinery, from the setting up of the type until they are dropped complete and counted out by hundreds at the bottom of a rotary press. The paper is fed into the press from a great roll and is printed on both sides and folded at the rate of two hundred or more newspapers a minute.
New means of communication.
Steamboats.
279. The factory system would never have developed upon a vast scale had the manufacturers been able to sell their goods only in the neighborhood. The discovery that steam could be used to carry the goods cheaply and speedily to all parts of the world made it possible for a manufacturer to widen his market indefinitely. Fulton, an American inventor, devised the first steamboat that was really successful, in 1807, yet over half a century elapsed before steamships began to supplant the old and uncertain sailing ship. It is now possible to make the journey from New York to Southampton, three thousand miles, in less than six days, and with almost the regularity of an express train. Japan may be reached from Vancouver in thirteen days, and from San Francisco via Honolulu, a distance of five thousand five hundred miles, in eighteen days. A commercial map of the world shows that the globe is now crossed in every direction by definite routes, which are followed by innumerable freight and passenger steamers passing regularly from one port to another. These are able to carry goods for incredibly small sums. For example, wheat has frequently been shipped from New York to Liverpool for two cents a bushel.
Development of the railroad.
Just as the gigantic modern steamship has taken the place of the schooner and clipper, so, on land, the merchandise which used to be slowly dragged in carts by means of horses and oxen is now transported in long trains of capacious cars, each of which holds as much as many ordinary carts. A ton of freight can now be carried for less than a cent a mile. In 1825 Stephenson's locomotive was put into operation in England. Other countries soon began to follow England's lead in building railroads. France opened its first railroad in 1828, Germany in 1835. By 1840 Europe had over eighteen hundred miles of railroad; fifty years later this had increased to one hundred and forty thousand.
Startling improvements in the means of communication.
Besides the marvelous cheapening of transportation, other new means of communication have resulted from modern inventions. The telegraph, the submarine cable, and the telephone, all have served to render communication prompt and certain. Steamships and railroads carry letters half round the globe for a price too trivial to be paid for delivering a message round the corner. The old, awkward methods of making payments have given way to a tolerably uniform system of coinage. Instead of each petty principality and each town having its own coins, as was common, especially in Germany and Italy, before the nineteenth century, all coins are now issued by the national central governments. Yet the most convenient coins are difficult to transfer in large quantities, and nowadays all considerable sums are paid by means of checks and drafts. The banks settle their accounts by means of a clearing house, and in this way almost no large amount of money need pass from hand to hand.