On the other hand the use of electricity in the great factory or manufacturing establishment is equally important. Instead of transmitting the power of the engine to the various classes of machinery by belts, shafting and
gearing, much of it is now transmitted and applied in the form of electricity. Great cranes which handle many tons of material are operated by the electric motor without the intervention of the costly shafting, belting and gearing; and the great magnet, made such by electricity, picks up its ton of steel rails with the same ease that the toy magnet picks up the needle, and is managed with no greater physical exertion than the other.
Cassier’s Magazine, an accepted authority on engineering matters, publishes with favorable editorial comment, in its issue of September, 1909, a statement by Sylvester Stewart that “we could take out in regions where water power is needed at least a hundred times as much water power as is now employed, furnishing a safer and cleaner power than steam, at a lower cost, and thus prolong the existence of our coal fields. * * * A running stream may be compared to an endless driving belt only awaiting connection to the machinery it is capable of driving, but it has not been appreciated because we have become so familiar with it; if it had suddenly been discovered, doubtless it would have been harnessed immediately. Coal is passing away, but water flows continuously. A hundred thousand horsepower may be taken from a river and its place is still filled, but the coal vein once emptied is emptied forever.” Mr. Stewart adds that probably not one-thousandth part of the water power of the world is now utilized, and that while the greater part of this power is not at present available, because of its existence in out-of-the-way places, or in rivers so deep and sluggish that the energy obtainable from them would cost more than steam power, at least a hundred times as much water power as is now used could be, under present conditions, utilized in a manner to supply it at less than the cost of coal at present prices.
II. THE USE OF MACHINERY IN MANUFACTURING.
The statements made in this discussion that the great expansion in the production of manufactures came with the adoption of machinery for manufacturing must not be understood as meaning that no machinery was used in manufacturing prior to the period of expansion. Machines have been used in manufacturing for many centuries.
The spinning wheel, used many hundred years ago, was a machine, and so was the hand loom, by which the threads spun by the wheel were woven into cloth. Flax and wool were originally turned into thread by the use of the distaff, a stick to which the spinner attached a small portion of the fiber, and by revolving the stick against his body twisted the fibers into a thread. Then by letting the end of the stick drop downward he drew out the thread, and with another roll of the stick against his body again twisted the fibers and lengthened the thread, which he then wound around the distaff. After many years of this process it occurred to somebody that by setting the distaff in a frame and passing a cord or a piece of rawhide around it and also around a large wheel and turning the wheel he could get a much more rapid and regular revolution of the distaff. This was the beginning of the use of the “machine” in the making of yarn, for the spinning wheel was a machine, of a crude type, to be sure, but a machine. This served many generations of men and women for the manufacture of thread and yarn, from flax, from wool and from cotton.
To turn this thread or yarn into cloth another “machine” was used, the loom, which, by fixing the thread on certain frames and passing other threads back and forth as the frames were raised or lowered, formed the cloth. But this “machine,” the loom, was operated by human power, as was that other machine, the spinning wheel. The women and children spun the thread or yarn, the father
and sons operated the loom, chiefly in the winter months in which they had no occupation in the fields. If a man chose to give his time to weaving and became a weaver by trade he lightened his heavy labors at times by attention to the garden surrounding his workshop, performing the necessary work for the production of his food supply. “The workshop of the weaver,” says Ure in his History of the Cotton Manufactures, “was a rural cottage from which, when he was tired of the sedentary labor, he could sally forth into his little garden and with the spade or hoe attend to his culinary products. The cotton which was to form his weft was picked clean by the fingers of his younger children and was carded and spun by the older girls assisted by his wife, and the yarn was woven by himself assisted by his sons.” In the manufacture of woolen goods conditions were similar. “The work,” says James in his History of the Worsted Manufactures, “was entirely domestic, and its different branches widely scattered over the country. The manufacturer had to travel on horseback to purchase his wool among the farmers or at the great fairs or markets, and the wool, after being sorted and combed, was distributed among the peasantry and received back as yarn. The machine used by them was still the old one-thread spinning wheel, and in summer weather on many a village green might be seen the housewives plying their busy trade. Returning with his yarn the manufacturer had to seek out his weavers, who ultimately delivered to him his camelets or russells or calimancoes ready for sale to the merchant or delivery to the dyer.”
These are pictures of the manufacturing industry in England as late as 1770. “Machines” were in use, but of the simplest type, and all operated by the power of the man or woman using them, or at the best by human or animal power, and in most cases the work was performed in the household or a small shop adjoining the household.
The transformation to the “machine method” or factory system began when some power greater than that of man or beast was applied to the operation of the machines, and the machines themselves were so enlarged as to multiply their producing power. “In tracing the effect of the application of modern machinery to English industry,” says Hobson in his Evolution of Modern Capitalism, “there appear two prominent factors, the growth of improved mechanical apparatus, and the evolution of extra-human motor power. We speak of the industry which has prevailed since the middle of the eighteenth century as ‘machine production’ not because there were no machines before that time but, firstly, because a vast acceleration in the invention of complex machinery applied to almost all industrial arts dates from that period, and secondly, because the application upon an extended scale of non-human motor powers manifested itself then for the first time.” “The water frame, the carding engine, and the other machines which Arkwright brought out, in a finished state,” says Cooke Taylor in his History of the Factory System, “required both more space than could be found in a cottage and more power than could be applied by the human arm. Their weight required them to be placed in strongly built walls, and they 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 labor, and therefore a greater co-operation was necessary to bring all the processes under a central supervision.”