Extraordinary as has been this universal growth, the development of manufactures in the United States has been still more marvelous, both absolutely and in relation to other branches of industry Between 1850 and 1900 the population and the products of agriculture both trebled; but the value of manufactured products increased twelvefold and that of capital invested in manufactures nineteenfold The United States, though politically younger than the countries of Europe, is industrially one of the most advanced The application of labor-saving machinery and of improved and economical methods of production and distribution has probably proceeded further here than in any other place Nowhere can we study to better advantage, therefore, than in America the problems that have grown out of this advanced capitalism
The causes of this rapid industrial development are enumerated by the census report as five in number: the agricultural resources of the country, the mineral resources, the highly developed transportation facilities, the freedom of trade between states and territories, and the absence of inherited and over-conservative ideas We have already considered the wonderful agricultural and mineral resources of the country, and have seen how greatly the American people are indebted for their industrial prosperity
to the bounty of nature. The magnificent system of inland waterways, comprising over 18,000 miles of navigable rivers, and the railroad system, with over 200,000 miles of track, facilitate a rapid and cheap exchange of products. The enormous domestic market afforded the American manufacturer, larger in consuming capacity than that in any other country in the world, has permitted the economic production of goods on a large scale and a consequent reduction in cost. Foreigners have often asked the question why, if freedom from tariffs and trade restraints has been a good thing within the United States, freedom of trade with other countries would not prove equally advantageous. In answer to this, James G. Blaine, formerly Secretary of State, wrote, “It is the enjoyment of free trade and protection at the same time which has contributed to the unexampled development and marvelous prosperity of the United States.” Finally, the absence of tradition and of over-conservative ideas handed down from a former and more primitive system of industry has been a great boon. There have been developed traits of energy, inventiveness, and ingenuity, which, aided by a universal system of compulsory free education, have contributed greatly to the material progress of the people.
The system under which the production of wealth in a modern industrial nation is carried on is usually called the factory system, and to this we must now turn, for it is in the factory that the utilization of machinery and capital finds its greatest development. The term is not easily defined, but we may adopt the description given by the late Carroll D. Wright: “A factory is an establishment where several workmen are collected for the purpose of obtaining greater and cheaper conveniences of labor than they could procure in their own homes, for producing results by their combined efforts which they could not accomplish separately, and for preventing the loss occasioned by carrying articles from place to place during
the several necessary processes to complete their manufacture.” The essential elements in such a system are the minute division of labor, the large use of labor-saving machinery, the increasing specialization and localization of industry, and the concentration of production in fewer and larger establishments with consequent increase of product and reduction of cost.
The division of labor may mean either the separation of occupation or the division of a process into minute parts. An illustration of separation of occupations may be found in the manufacture of a carriage: one factory produces hubs, another wheels, a third axles, a fourth the body, a fifth manufactures upholstery, a sixth the hardware, and a seventh (the carriage factory, so-called) assembles the parts and places the completed product on the market in the form of a carriage.
As an example of an extreme division of labor the slaughtering and meat-packing industry offers a classical example, though in this case the use of complex machinery is not involved. “It would be difficult,” writes Professor Commons,[2] “to find another industry where division of labor has been so ingeniously and microscopically worked out. The animal has been surveyed and laid off like a map; and the men have been classified in over thirty specialties and twenty rates of pay, from 16 cents to 50 cents an hour. The 50-cent man is restricted to using the knife on the most delicate parts of the hide (floorman) or to using the axe in splitting the backbone (splitter) and, wherever a less skilled man can be slipped in at 18 cents, 18½ cents, 20 cents, 21 cents, 22½ cents, 24 cents, 25 cents, and so on, a place is made for him, and an occupation mapped out. In working on the hide alone there are nine positions, at eight different rates of pay. A 20-cent man pulls off the tail, a 22½-cent man pounds off another part where the hide separates readily, and the knife of the 40-cent
man cuts a different texture and has a different ‘feel’ from that of the 50-cent man. Skill has become specialized to fit the anatomy.”
Usually, however, when the division of labor becomes as minute as that described, the routine-like process is handed over to a machine. Indeed Mr. John A. Hobson states as a law of machine industry the fact that as soon as a process becomes perfectly automatic and mechanical a machine is invented which can do the work better and more rapidly than human hands. Hand in hand, therefore, with the subdivision of labor goes the extension of labor-saving machinery. Labor becomes relatively of less importance than capital in the new methods of production, and man becomes a machine tender rather than an independent producer. There are practical benefits and disadvantages connected with this system. Many writers insist that the effect on the worker is narrowing in the extreme, but Professor Marshall points out that his labor as tender of a machine demands a higher order of intellectual development than that of a handicraftsman, and that he has more leisure, while the product of the present system is immeasurably greater than under the old hand methods. The manufacture of products by machinery has in turn required the making of machines by machinery, as the complex machines of today could not be turned out by hand methods. A characteristic feature of the modern factory system therefore has been the growth of the machine trades, which supply the equipment of the new industry.
With the growing specialization of industry there has gone on an increasing localization in some favored spot or locality. Thus most of the collars and cuffs (85 per cent) manufactured in the United States are made in Troy, N. Y.; 64 per cent of the oyster canning is carried on in Baltimore; 54 per cent of the gloves are made in Gloversville, N. Y.; 48 per cent of the coke in Connellsville, Pa.; 48 per