When we consider nations or groups of people and their use of modern methods of manufacturing, we may properly say that the principal manufacturing sections of the world are western Europe and the United States, and that, as above indicated, the bulk of the world’s manufactures by the factory process are now produced in those two sections of the world. Manufacturing by machinery may perhaps be said to have originated in England, spreading thence to France, to Germany, and westward to the United States. More recently it has extended in a somewhat limited form into Canada in the west and India and Japan at the extreme east. India has utilized modern methods of manufacture, especially in cottons and certain other industries, for more than a score of years, while the one other country of the Orient which has as yet entered the field of machine manufacture, Japan, though somewhat later in adopting machine methods, has been more active and extended modern manufacturing to a much greater variety of industries than have the people of India.
While certain of the European countries were earlier in the manufacturing field than the United States, the larger population, the greater supply of natural materials, the larger supplies of fuel for cheap power, the ingenuity of the American workman, and the enormous domestic demand of an active and prosperous people, have brought the United States clearly to the head of the list of manufacturing nations. It may safely be said that the value of manufactures produced in the United States is approximately twice as great as that of any other manufacturing nation, and that the stated value of our manufactures is nearly as great as the estimated value of the manufactures of all Europe. The latest official figures on the value of the manufactures of the United States are those of the Census Bureau, which put the value of manufactures produced in the calendar year 1904, as recorded by the Census of 1905, at 16,867 million dollars, including in this an
estimate of a little more than 2 billion dollars’ worth of manufactures classed as “mechanical and neighborhood industries,” which were included in all former census reports, but not recorded by the Census of 1905, which was by law merely a census of manufactures produced under “the factory system.”
No other country than the United States takes a periodic census of its manufactures. The United Kingdom is at the present time about taking for the first time a census of its manufactures, but no figures with reference thereto are as yet available. As a consequence all statements regarding the value of manufactures of European countries, or indeed of any country other than the United States, are estimates and estimates only. True, they are based upon certain known facts of quantities of raw materials consumed in manufacturing, values of manufactures exported, and the estimated proportion which these form of the total manufactures; but in no other country than the United States are there available official statements of the total value of manufactures produced in the country in question. Therefore the estimates of the value of the manufactures produced by European countries which are quoted from time to time and which are presented elsewhere in this text, must be accepted as merely estimates. A comparatively recent estimate, and one which has been given wide publicity, and appears to have been generally accepted, is that of William J. Clark, published in The Engineering Magazine in 1904, which put the value of the manufactures of the United Kingdom at 5 billion dollars, Germany 4,600 million, France 3,450 million, Austria-Hungary 2 billion, Russia 1,980 million, Italy 1,700 million, Belgium 750 million. These estimates, if accepted, would bring the value of the manufactures of the countries enumerated to a figure slightly in excess of that officially reported by the Census Office as the value of the product of all manufacturing establishments of the United States in
1904. The figures above quoted for certain European countries present however no estimate of the value of the product of Switzerland, Spain, Holland and the Scandinavian countries, so that it probably might be said with greater accuracy that the stated value of the manufactures of the United States is about equal to the estimated value of continental Europe, and about three times as great as the estimated value of the manufactures of the United Kingdom.
It is proper, however, before leaving this question of the relative value of the manufactures of the various countries, to again call attention to the fact that the official figures of the value of manufactures produced in the United States include certain articles not classed in certain other countries as manufactures, and in addition to this contain many duplications due to the fact that the products of one manufacturer frequently become the raw material of another, and thus the grand totals which merely combine the stated value of the product of each manufacturer necessarily include a second and in some cases a third valuation of the products thus utilized. The manufacturer of yarn, for example, reports to the Census Office the full value of the product of his factory. The manufacturer of cloth, who utilized that yarn, also reports the full value of the product of his factory, and thus includes in that valuation the value of the yarn purchased by him but already reported by the manufacturer of yarn. The manufacturer of clothing, in stating the value of the product of his factory, includes the sums which he paid for the cloth already reported by the manufacturer of clothing and included in his statement. Thus many duplications occur in our census statement of the gross value of the products of the manufacturing industries of the United States. “This gross value,” says the Census Report of 1900, page cxxxix, “does not represent the final value of the manufactured products of the country. It does fairly represent
the total value of commercial transactions involved in manufacturing enterprises.... As the finished products of one branch of manufacture are constantly used as materials in other branches, in the ascending scale of modern industry, it follows that they are counted over and over again, swelling in this manner the gross total value of products. Thus in cotton manufacture, the product of the yarn mill, manufacturing yarn for sale as the material of the cloth mill, and the product of the cloth mill as the material for the manufacturer, so that by the time the aggregate is made the value of the yarn has been counted three times and the value of the cloth twice.... Duplications and re-duplications of this sort run all through the total value of products as reported by this (the Census) office. * * * The net or true value of the products is found by subtracting from the gross value the cost of all materials purchased in a partially manufactured form. In 1900 the cost of these manufactures was $4,633,804,967 and” (subtracting this sum from the gross value, $13,004,400,143), “the net value of products was therefore $8,370,595,176.”
When it is further considered that the Census of Manufactures in the United States includes in its list of manufactures all products of slaughtering and meat-packing establishments wholesale, valued in 1905 at 112 million dollars, the product of printing and publishing newspapers and periodicals only, valued at 309 million, and the product of canning and preserving fish, oysters and vegetables, valued at over 100 million—it will be seen that an effort to determine even approximately the share of the world’s manufactures produced by the United States or by the various manufacturing nations of the world is a difficult—an impossible—task.
It may safely be asserted, however, that the United States is the world’s greatest manufacturing nation, and that the value of our manufactures exceeds those of any other country. This is due, as already indicated, to the
fact that our supply of raw materials is greater than that of any other country, our supply of materials for producing power also greater than that of any other country, our use of machinery for manufacturing far in advance of that of any other nation, the activity of our inventors and the skill of our workmen quite equal to those of any other part of the world, and the demands of our home population upon our own manufacturers far in excess of those of any other country, both by reason of the large population and high purchasing power of a people prosperous and active in all lines of industry—agriculture, transportation, manufacture. The country which produces three-fourths of the world’s cotton, twice as much iron and steel as any other single nation, as much copper as all of the remainder of the world combined, more of wood suitable for use in manufacturing than any other country, more wool than any other of the manufacturing nations, and a population much larger than that of any other country actively engaged in the manufacturing industries, has quite naturally and almost necessarily become the leading manufacturer of the world.