Читать книгу The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production - J. A. Hobson - Страница 18

	lbs.		lbs.
1765 1766 1767		1823	2,468,121
715,000	1824	4,011,048[78]
	1825	3,604,058
1785 1786 1787		1826	2,253,513
881,000	1827	4,213,153
	1828	4,547,812
1801 to 1812		1829	2,892,201
1,110,000	1830	4,693,517
	1831	4,312,330
1814	2,119,974	1832	4,373,247
1815	1,475,389	1833	4,761,543
1816	1,088,334	1834	4,522,451
1817	1,686,659	1835	5,788,458
1818	1,922,987	1836	6,058,423
1819	1,848,553	1837	4,598,859
1820	2,027,635	1838	4,790,256
1821	2,329,808	1839	4,665,944
1822	2,441,563	1840	4,819,262

In the linen industry the artificial encouragement given to the Irish trade, which, bounty-fed and endowed with a monopoly of the British markets, was naturally slow to adopt new methods of production, and the uncertain condition of the English trade, owing to the strong rivalry of cotton, prevented the early adoption of the new machine methods. Although Adam Smith regarded linen as a promising industry, it was still in a primitive condition. Not until the very end of the eighteenth century were flax spinning mills established in England and Scotland, and not until after 1830 was power-loom weaving introduced, while the introduction of spinning machinery into Ireland upon a scale adequate to supply the looms of that country took place a good deal later.

We see that the early experimental period in the cotton industry produced no very palpable effect upon the volume of the trade. Between 1700 and 1750 the manufacture was stagnant.[79] The woollen manufacture, owing largely to the stimulus of the fly-shuttle, showed considerable expansion. The great increase of cotton production in 1770–90 measures the force of the mechanical inventions without the aid of the new motor. The full effects of the introduction of steam power were retarded by the strain of the French war. Though 1800 marks the beginning of a large continuous expansion in both cotton and woollen manufactures, it was not until about 1817, when the new motor had established itself generally in the large centres of industry and the energy of the nation was called back to the arts of peace, that the new forces began to fully manifest their power. The period 1840 onwards marks the effect of the revolution in commerce due to the application of the new motor to transport purposes, the consequent cheapening of raw material, especially of cotton, the opening up of new markets for the purchase of raw material and for the sale of manufactured goods. The effect of this diminished cost of production and increased demand for manufactured goods upon the textile trades is measured by the rapid pace of the expansion which followed the opening of the early English railways and the first establishment of steam-ship traffic.

§ 8. The development of the textile trades, and that of cotton in particular, arose from the invention of new machinery. This machinery was quickened and rendered effective by the new motor. The iron trade in its development presents the reverse order. The discovery of a new motor was the force which first gave it importance. The mechanical inventions applied to producing iron were stimulated by the requirements of the new motor.

In 1740 the difficulty of obtaining adequate supplies of timber, and the failure of attempts to utilise pit-coal, had brought the iron trade to a very low condition. According to Scrivener, at this time "the iron trade seemed dwindling into insignificance and contempt."[80]

The earlier steps in its rise from this degradation are measured by the increased application of pit-coal and the diminished use of charcoal.

The progress may be marked as follows:—

(1) The application of Watt's earlier improvements upon Newcomen's engines, patented 1769, was followed by a rise in the average output for furnaces worked with charcoal. The average output of 294 tons in 1750 was increased to 545 tons in 1788.

(2) The substitution of coke for charcoal proceeding pari passu with improved methods of smelting yielded an average output for coke-fed furnaces of 903 tons in 1788. To this epoch belong also Cort's inventions for puddling and rolling (patented 1783–84), which revolutionised the production of bar-iron.

(3) The introduction of Watt's double-power engine in 1788–90. In 1796 the production of pig-iron was double that of 1788, and the average output per furnace raised to 1048 tons.

(4) The substitution of hot for cold blast in 1829, effecting an economy of coal to the extent of 2 tons 18 cwt. per ton of cast-iron.

(5) The adoption of raw coal instead of coke in 1833, effecting a further reduction of expenditure of coal from 5 tons 3–½ cwt. to 2 tons 5–¼ cwt. in producing a ton of cast-iron.

These were the leading events in the establishment of the iron industry of this country. The following table indicates the growth of the production of English iron from 1740 to 1840:—

Year.	No. of Furnaces.	Average Output. Tons.	Total Produce. Tons.
1740	59	294	17,350
1788	77	909 coke 545 charcoal	61,300
1796	121	1048	125,079
1806	133	1546	258,206
1825	364 (261 in blast)	2228	703,184
1828	365 (277 in blast)	2530
1839	378	3592	1,347,790

Here we see that economy of power rather than improved machinery is the efficient cause of the development of industry, or more properly, that economy of power precedes and stimulates the several steps in improvement of machinery.

The substitution of coke for charcoal and the application of steam power not merely increased enormously the volume of the trade, but materially affected its localisation. Sussex and Gloucester, two of the chief iron-producing counties when timber was the source of power, had shrunk into insignificance by 1796, when facilities of obtaining coal were a chief determinant. By 1796, it is noteworthy that the four districts of Stafford, Yorkshire, South Wales, and Salop were to the front.

The discovery of the hot blast and substitution of raw coal for coke occurring contemporaneously with the opening of railway enterprise mark the new interdependence of industries in the age of machinery.

Iron has become a foundation upon which every machine-industry alike is built. The metal manufactures, so small in the eighteenth century, attained an unprecedented growth and a paramount importance in the nineteenth.

The application of machinery to the metal industries has led to an output of inventive genius not less remarkable in this century than the textile inventions of the eighteenth century.

"In textile manufacture it was improved machinery that first called for a new motor; in metal manufacture it was the new motor which rendered necessary improved machinery. … For all modern purposes the old handicraft implements were clearly obsolete. The immediate result of this requirement was the bringing to the front a number of remarkable men, Brindley, Smeaton, Maudsley, Clements, Bramah, Nasmyth, etc., to supply mechanism of a proportionate capacity and nicety for the new motive-power to act upon and with, and the ultimate result was the adoption of the modern factory system in the larger tool-making and engineering workshops, as well as in metal manufactories proper. Thus there gradually grew up," says Jevons, "a system of machine-tool labour, the substitution of iron hands for human hands, without which the execution of engines and machines in their present perfection would be impossible."[81]

In the later era of machine development an accumulative importance is attached to the improvements in the machine-making industries. The great inventions associated with the names of Maudsley and Nasmyth, the cheapening of steel by the Bessemer process, and the various steps by which machines are substituted for hands in the making of machinery, have indirect but rapid and important effects upon each and every machine-industry engaged in producing commodities directly adapted to human use. The economy of effort for industrial purposes requires that a larger and larger proportion of inventive genius and enterprise shall be directed to an interminable displacement of handicraft by machinery in the construction of machinery, and a smaller proportion to the relatively unimportant work of perfecting manufacturing machinery in the detailed processes of each manufacture engaged in the direct satisfaction of some human want.

A general survey of the growth of new industrial methods in the textile and iron industries marks out three periods of abnormal activity in the evolution of modern industry. The first is 1780 to 1795, when the fruits of early inventions are ripened by the effective application of steam to the machine-industries. The second is 1830 to 1845, when industry, reviving after the European strife, utilised more widely the new inventions, and expanded under the new stimulus of steam locomotion. The third is 1856 to 1866 (circa), when the construction of machinery by machinery became the settled rule of industry.

§ 9. Bearing in mind how the invention of new specific forms of machinery in the several processes of manufacture proceeds simultaneously with the application of the new motor-power, we find ourselves quite unable to measure the amount of industrial progress due to each respectively. But seeing that the whole of modern industry has thus been set upon a new foundation of coal and iron, it is obvious that the bonds connecting such industries as the textile and the iron must be continually growing closer and stronger. In earlier times the interdependency of trades was slight and indirect, and the progress in any given trade was almost wholly derived from improvements in specific skill or in the application of specific mechanical invention. The earlier eighteenth century did indeed display an abnormal activity in these specific forms of invention. For examples of these it is only necessary to allude to Lombe's silk mill at Derby, the pin factory made famous by Adam Smith, Boulton's hardware factory at Soho, and the renowned discoveries of Wedgwood. But all increased productivity due to these specific improvements was but slight compared with that which followed the discovery of steam as a motor and the mechanical inventions rendering it generally applicable, which marked the period 1790 to 1840. By this means the several specific industries were drawn into closer unity, and found a common basis or foundation in the arts of mining, iron-working, and engineering which they lacked before.

From these considerations it will follow that the order in which the several industries has fallen under the sway of modern industrial methods will largely depend upon the facility they afford to the application of steam-driven machinery. The following are some of the principal characteristics of an industry which determine the order, extent, and pace of its progress as a machine industry:—

(a) Size and complexity of Structure.—The importance of the several leading textile manufactures, the fact that some of them were highly centralised and already falling under a factory system, the control of wealthy and intelligent employers, were among the chief causes which enabled the new machinery and the new motor to be more quickly and successfully applied than in smaller, more scattered, and less developed industries.

(b) Fixity in quantity and character of demand.—Perfection of routine-work is the special faculty of machine-production. Where there is a steady demand for the same class of goods, machinery can be profitably applied. Where fashion fluctuates, or the individual taste of the consumer is a potent factor, machinery cannot so readily undertake the work. In the textile industries there are many departments which machinery has not successfully invaded. Much lace-making, embroidery, certain finer weaving is still done by human power, with or without the aid of complex machinery. In the more skilled branches of tailoring, shoe-making, and other clothing trades, the individual character of the demand—i.e., the element of irregularity—has limited the use of machinery. A similar cause retains human motor-power in certain cases to co-operate with and control complex machinery, as in the use of the sewing-machine.

(c) Uniformity of material and of the processes of production.—Inherent irregularity in the material of labour is adverse to machinery. For this reason the agricultural processes have been slow to pass under steam-power, especially those directly concerned with work on the soil, and even where steam-driven machines are applied their economy, as compared with hand labour, is less marked than in manufacturing processes. To the getting of coal and other minerals steam and other extra-human power has been more slowly and less effectively applied than in dealing with the matter when it is detached from the earth.

(d) Durability of valuable properties.—The production of quickly perishable articles being of necessity local and immediate demands a large amount of human service which cannot economically be replaced or largely aided by machinery. The work of the butcher and the baker have been slow to pass under machinery. Where butchering has become a machine-industry to some extent, the direct cause has been the discovery of preservative processes which have diminished the perishability of meat. So with other food industries, the facility of modern means of transport has alone enabled them gradually to pass under the control of machinery. Until quite recently cakes and the finer forms of bakery were a purely local and handicraft product.

(e) Ease or simplicity of labour involved.—Where abundance of cheap labour adequate to the work can be obtained, and particularly in trades where women and children are largely engaged, the development of machinery has been generally slower. This condition often unites with (b) or (c) to retain an industry in the "domestic" class. A large mass of essentially "irregular" work requiring a certain delicacy of manipulation, which by reason of its narrowness of scope is yet easily attained, and which makes but slight demands upon muscular force or intelligence, has remained outside machine-production. Important industries containing several processes of this nature have been slower to fall into the complete form of the factory system. The slow progress of the power-loom in cotton and wool until after 1830 is explained by these considerations. The stocking-frame held out against machinery still longer, and hand work still plays an important part in several processes of silk manufacture. Even now, in the very centre of the factory system, Bolton, the old hand-weaving is represented by a few belated survivors.[82]

(f) Skilled Workmanship.—High skill in manipulation or treatment of material, the element of art infused into handicraft, gives the latter an advantage over the most skilful machinery, or over such machinery as can economically be brought into competition with it. In some of the metal trades, in pottery and glass-making there are many processes which have not been able to dispense with human skill. In these manufactures, moreover, more progress is attributable to specific inventions than to the adoption of the common machinery and motor-power which are not largely available in the most important processes.

From these considerations it will appear that where an industry is large and regular in character, it falls more readily and completely under the control of machinery, where it is small and irregular it conforms more slowly and partially to the new methods. Most of the extractive industries of agriculture, stock-raising, fishing, mining, hunting, are irregular by reason of the nature of their material and its subjection to influences, geological, chemical, climatic, and others which are but slightly under calculation or human control. The final processes by which commodities are adapted to the use of individual consumers necessarily partake of the irregularity or variety of human tastes and desires. We shall therefore find most regularity in the intermediate processes where the raw materials, having been extracted from nature, are being endowed with those qualities of shape, position, etc., which are required to enable them to satisfy human wants. The manufacturing stages where machinery finds fullest application are in nearly all cases intermediate stages of production. Even where machine-production seems directly to satisfy some human want, there are commonly some final processes required which involve individual skill. Almost all products which satisfy the desires of man pass through a large number of productive processes which may be classed as extractive, transport, manufacturing, and distributive. These are, of course, not in all cases clearly distinguishable. Mixed with the extractive processes of mining and wheat-raising are several processes of transport and manufacture: the various stages of manufacture may be broken by stages of transport: a final process of manipulation or manufacture may precede the final act of distribution, as in the sale of drugs to the consumer. But, generally speaking, these four kinds of productive processes mark four historic stages in the passage from raw material to finished commodity.

The two middle stages of transport and manufacture have fallen far more fully under the control of steam-driven machinery than the others, and it is in the elaboration of older manufacturing and transport processes and the addition of new processes that we trace the largest effects of the evolution of modern industrial methods.

The following list of the divisions under which workers engaged in the production of material wealth are classified for purposes of the census may serve to bring out more clearly this proportionate development of machinery. The figures appended give the numbers engaged in the several occupations in 1891, and serve to approximately indicate the relative importance of the several principal branches of industry:—

Agriculture	1,311,720
Fishing	25,225
Mining	561,637
Stone, clay, road-making	209,972
Transport—
(a) Railways	186,774
(b) Roads	366,605
(c) Canals, rivers, seas	208,443
(d) Messages and porterage	194,044
Houses, furniture, and decorations	820,582
Food and lodgings	797,989
Iron and steel	380,193
Other metals	146,550
Ships and boats	170,517
Carriages and harness	108,780
Machines and implements	342,231
Textiles	1,128,589
Dress	1,099,833
Earthenware and glass	90,007
Chemicals and compounds	56,047
Books	135,616
Animal substances (manufacture)	76,566
Vegetable substances (paper, etc.)	196,889
General mechanics and labourers	805,105
Commercial—
(a) Merchants and agents	363,037
(b) Dealers in money	21,891
(c) Insurance	31,437
Engineers and surveyors	15,441

In glancing down this list of the chief industries engaged in the production of commercial wealth, it will be recognised at once that the manufacturing and transport industries are those to which steam-power and the economies of large production have been especially applied. Though, historically, the first industrial use of steam-power was in coal-mining, it remains true that the extensive application of modern machinery to agriculture and the other extractive industries is of comparatively recent growth, while the work of retail distribution has hitherto made but trifling use of machinery and steam-power. Only within the last few years have a few gigantic retail distributive businesses shown a tendency to apply steam and electricity to mechanical contrivances for purposes of distribution.

§ 10. The new industrial forces first applied to the cotton spinning of South Lancashire, and rapidly forcing their way into other branches of the textile manufactures, then more gradually transforming the industrial methods of the machinery, hardware, and other staple English manufactures, passed into the Western Continent of Europe and America, destroying the old domestic industry and establishing in every civilised country the reign of steam-driven machinery. The factors determining the order and pace of the new movement in the several countries are numerous and complex. In considering the order of machine-development, it must be remembered that the different nations did not start from an equal footing at the opening of the age of great inventions. By the beginning of the eighteenth century England had established a certain supremacy in commerce. The growth of her colonial possessions since the Revolution and the drastic and successful character of her maritime policy had enabled her to outstrip Holland. In 1729 by far the greater part of the Swedish iron exported from Gothenburg went to England for shipbuilding purposes.[83] At the close of the seventeenth century Gregory King placed England, Holland, and France at the head of the industrial nations with regard to the productivity of their labour.[84] Italy and Germany were little behind in the exercise of manufacturing arts, though the naval superiority and foreign possessions of the above-named nations gave them the commercial superiority. By 1760 England had strengthened her position as regards foreign commerce, and her woollen industry was the largest and most highly-developed industry in the world. But so far as the arts of manufacture themselves were concerned there was no such superiority in England as to justify the expectation of the position she held at the opening of the nineteenth century. In many branches of the textile arts, especially in silk spinning and in dyeing, in pottery, printing, and other manufactures, more inventive genius and more skill were shown on the Continent, and there seemed à priori no reason why England should outstrip so signally her competitors.

The chief factors in determining the order of the development of modern industrial methods in the several countries may be classified as natural, political, economic.

Natural. (1) The structure and position of the several countries.—The insular character of Great Britain, her natural facilities for procuring raw materials of manufacture and supplies of foreign food to enable her population to specialise in manufacture, the number and variety of easily accessible markets for her manufactures, gave her an immense advantage. Add to this a temperate climate, excellent internal communication by river (or canal), and an absence of mountain barriers between the several districts. These advantages were of greater relative importance before steam transport, but they played a large part in facilitating the establishment of effective steam transport in England. Extent of sea-board and good harbourage have in no small measure directed the course of modern industry, giving to England, Holland, France, Italy an advantage which the levelling tendency of modern machinery has not yet been able to counteract. The slow progress of Germany until recent years, and the still slow progress of Russia, is attributable more to these physical barriers of free communication, internal and external, than to any other single cause that can be adduced. Inherent resources of the soil, quality of land for agriculture, the proximity of large supplies of coal and iron and other requisites of the production of machinery and power rank as important determinants of progress. The machine development of France in particular has been retarded by the slow discovery of her natural areas of manufacture, the districts where coal and iron lie near to one another in easily accessible supply. The same remark applies to Germany and to the United States. At the close of last century, when the iron trade of England was rapidly advancing, the iron trade of France were quite insignificant, and during the earlier years of the nineteenth century the progress was extremely slight.[85]

(2) Race and National Character.—Closely related to climate and soil, these qualities of race are a powerful directing influence in industry. Muscular strength and endurance, yielding in a temperate climate an even continuity of vigorous effort; keen zest of material comfort stimulating invention and enterprise; acquisitiveness, and the love of external display; the moral capacities of industry, truth, orderly co-operation; all these are leading factors determining the ability and inclination of the several nations to adopt new industrial methods. Moral qualities in English workmanship have indisputably played a large part in securing her supremacy. "A British trade-mark was accepted as a guarantee of excellence, while the products of other countries were viewed with a suspicion justified by experience of their comparative inferiority."[86] The more highly civilised nations have thus gained by this civilisation, and have widened the distance which separates them from the less civilised. England, France, Germany, Holland, and the United States are in wealth and in industrial methods far more widely removed from Spain and Russia than was the case a hundred years ago.

(b) Political.—Statecraft has played an important part in determining the order and pace of industrial progress. The possession of numerous colonies and other political attachments in different parts of the world, comprising a large variety of material resources, gave to England, and in a less measure to France, Holland, Spain, a great advantage. The tyrannical use these nations made of their colonies for the purpose of building up home manufactures enabled them to specialise more widely and safely in those industries to which the new methods of production were first applied. Even after the North American colonies broke loose, the policy of repression England had applied to their budding manufactures enabled her to retain to a large extent the markets thus created for her manufactured goods.

The large annexations England made during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gave her a monopoly of many of the finest markets for the purchase of raw materials and for the sale of manufactured goods. The large demand thus established for her textile and metal wares served not only to stimulate fresh inventions, but enabled her to utilise many improvements which could only be profitably applied in the case of large industries with secure and expanding markets.

But the most important factor determining the priority of England was the political condition of continental Europe at the very period when the new machinery and motor-power were beginning to establish confidence in the new industrial order. When Crompton's mule, Cartwright's power-loom, Watt's engines were transforming the industry of England, her continental rivals had all their energies absorbed in wars and political revolutions. The United States and Sweden were the only commercial nations of any significance who, being neutral, obtained a large direct gain from the European strife. Yet England, in spite of the immense drain of blood and money she sustained, under the momentum of the new motor-power far outstripped the rivalry of such states. Though she had to pay a heavy price for her immunity from invasion, she thereby secured an immense start in the race of modern machine-production. Until 1820 she had the game in her own hands. In European trade she had a practical monopoly of the rapidly advancing cotton industry. It was this monopoly which, ruthlessly applied to maintain prices at a highly remunerative rate, and to keep down wages to starvation point, built up, in an age of supreme and almost universal misery for the masses, the rapid and colossal fortunes of the cotton kings. Not until peace was established did the textile and other factories begin to take shape upon the Continent, and many years elapsed before they were able to compete effectively with England. Switzerland was the first continental country to actively adopt the new methods. The large supply of water-power stood her in good stead, and the people took more willingly to the factory system than in other countries.[87] France was slower in her development, in spite of the strong protective system by which she strove, though not very successfully, to exclude English cotton goods. The fall of English prices and profits in the cotton trade between 1820 and 1830 marks clearly the breakdown of the English monopoly before the cheap labour of Alsace and the cheap raw material of the United States, now organised in the factory system with the new machinery.[88] In this, the most advanced trade, the world-competition which now is operative in a thousand different industries, measuring and levelling economic advantages, first clearly shows itself, and in 1836 Ure finds the continental nations and America competing successfully with England in markets which had hitherto been entirely her own.

(c) Economic Conditions.—The transformation of English agriculture, the growth of large farms, drove great numbers of English peasants into the towns, and furnished a large supply of cheap labour for the new machinery.

This movement was accelerated by the vices of our land tenure. In France and Germany, where the agricultural workers had a stronger interest and property in their land, they were less easily detached for factory purposes. But in England, where the labourer had no property in the land, reformed methods of agriculture and the operation of the Poor Law combined to incite the large proprietors and farmers to rid themselves of all superfluous population in the rural parts and accelerated the migration into the towns. Here the population bred with a rapidity hitherto unknown. The increase of population in England and Wales during the thirty years from 1770 to 1800 is placed at 1,959,590, or 27–1/10 per cent., while during the next thirty years, 1800 to 1830, it amounted to 5,024,207, or 56–⅗ per cent.[89] This large supply of cheap labour in the towns enabled the Lancashire and Yorkshire factories to grow with startling rapidity. The exhaustion left by the Napoleonic wars, the political disorder and insecurity which prevailed on the Continent, retarded until much later the effective competition of other European nations who were behind England in skill, knowledge, and the possession of markets. The American manufactures which had sprung up after the revolution had made considerable strides, but the conquest and settlement of vast new areas of land, and the immense facilities afforded for the production of raw material, retarded their rate of growth until long after the opening of this century. It was, indeed, not until about 1845 that the cotton manufacture made rapid strides in the United States. During the twenty years previous the progress had been very slight, but between 1845 and 1859 a very substantial and, making allowance for fluctuations in the cotton crops, a very steady growth took place.[90]

Another great economic advantage which assisted England was the fact that she, more than any other European nation, had broken down the old industrial order, with its guilds, its elaborate restrictions, and conservative methods. Personal freedom, security of property, liberty to work and live where and how one liked, existed in England to an extent unknown on the Continent before the French Revolution. The following account of the condition of the cotton manufacture in Germany in the eighteenth century will serve to indicate the obstacles to the reformed methods of industry:—"Everything was done by rule. Spinning came under public inspection, and the yarn was collected by officials. The privilege of weaving was confined to the confraternity of the guild. Methods of production were strictly prescribed; public inspectors exercised control. Defects in weaving were visited with punishment. Moreover, the right of dealing in cotton goods was confined to the confraternity of the merchant guild: to be a master-weaver had almost the significance of a public office. Besides other qualifications, there was the condition of a formal examination. The sale also was under strict supervision; for a long time a fixed price prevailed, and a maximum sale was officially prescribed for each dealer. The dealer had to dispose of his wares to the weaver, because the latter had guaranteed to him a monopoly of the export trade."[91]

Under such conditions the new machine-industry could make little advance. Excepting in the case of the woollen industries, England had for the most part already shaken off the old regulations before 1770. In particular, the cotton trade, which was in the vanguard of the movement, being of recent growth and settling outside the guild towns, had never known such restrictions, and therefore lent itself to the new order with a far greater facility than the older trades. Moreover, England was free from the innumerable and vexatious local taxes and restrictions prevalent in France and in the petty governments of Germany. Although the major part of these foolish and pernicious regulations has been long swept away from Germany and other continental nations, the retarding influence they exercised, in common with the wider national system of protection which still survives, kept back the cotton industry, so that in Germany it still stands half a century behind its place in England.[92]

The following figures show how substantial was the lead held by England in the cotton manufacture a little before the middle of the century.