The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production. J. A. Hobson
superior skill, regularity, pace, or economy of power obtained by substituting mechanical direction of the tool for close and constant human direction. In modern machinery the sewing-machine illustrates the latter, as the knife-cleaning machine illustrates the former.
The machine is inherently a more complex structure than the tool, because it must contain within itself the mechanical means for working a tool, or even for the combined working of many tools, which formerly received their direction from man. In using a tool man is the direct agent, in using a working machine the transmitting mechanism is the direct agent, so far as the character of the several acts of production is not stamped upon the form of the working machine itself. The man placed in charge of a machine determines whether it shall act, but only within very narrow limits how it shall act. The two characteristics here brought out in the machine, complexity of action and self-direction or automatic character, are in reality the objective and subjective expression of the same factor—namely, the changed relation of man towards the work in which he co-operates.
Some of the directing or mental effort, skill, art, thought, must be taken over, that is to say, some of the processes must be guided not directly by man but by other processes, in order to constitute a machine. A machine thus becomes a complex tool in which some of the processes are relatively fixed, and are not the direct expression of human activity. A machinist who feeds a machine with material may be considered to have some control over the pace and character of the first process, but only indirectly over the later processes, which are regulated by fixed laws of their construction which make them absolutely dependent on the earlier processes. A machine is in the nature of its work largely independent of the individual control of the "tender," because it is in its construction the expression of the individual control and skill of the inventor. A machine, then, may be described as a complex tool with a fixed relation of processes performed by its parts. Even here we cannot profess to have reached a definition which enables us in all cases to nicely discriminate machine from tool. It is easy to admit that a spade is a tool and not a machine, but if a pair of scissors, a lever, or a crane are tools, and are considered as performing single simple processes, and not a number of organically relative processes, we may by a skilfully arranged gradation be led on to include the whole of machinery under tools. This difficulty is of course one which besets all work of definition.
But while it is not easy by attention to complexity of structure always to distinguish a tool from a machine, nothing is gained by making the differentia of a machine to consist in the use of a steam or other non-human motor.
A vast amount of modern machinery is of course directed not to combining tools or series of productive processes upon which the productive skill of man is closely engaged, but to substituting other motors for the muscular power of man. But though certain tools as well as certain forms of human effort are here replaced by machines, these tools are not commonly embodied in the machinery for generating and transmitting the new force, so that the mere consideration of the different part played by the worker in generating productive force does not assist us to distinguish a machine from a tool. A type-writer, a piano, which receive their impulse from the human muscles, must evidently be included among machines. It is indeed true that these, like others of the same order, are exceptional machines, not merely in that the motive power is derived more essentially from human muscles, but in that the raison d'être of the mechanism has been to provide scope for human skill and not to destroy it. But though it is true that a high degree of skill may be imparted to the first process of the working of a piano or type-writer, it is none the less true that the "tool," the implement which strikes the sound or makes the written mark, is not under immediate control of human touch. The skill is confined to an early process, and the mechanism as a whole must be classed under machinery. Nothing would indeed be gained in logical distinctness if we were to abandon our earlier differentia of the machine and confine that term to such mechanical appliances as derived their power from non-human sources—the fact which commonly marks off modern from earlier forms of machine production. For we should find that this substitution of non-human for human power was also a matter of degree, and that the most complex steam-driven machinery of to-day cannot entirely dispense with some directing impulse of human muscular activity, such as the shovelling of coal into a furnace, though the tendency is ever to reduce the human effort to a minimum in the attainment of a given output.
This consideration of the difficulties attending exact definitions of machinery is not idle, for it leads to a clearer recognition of the nicely graded evolution which has changed the character of modern industry, not by a catastrophic substitution of radically different methods, but by the continuous steady development of certain elements, common to all sorts of industrial activity, and a corresponding continuous degeneration of certain other elements.
§ 2. The growth of machine-industry then may be measured by the increased number and complexity of the processes related to one another in the mechanical unit or machine, and by a corresponding shrinkage of the dependence of the product upon the skill and volition of the human being who tends or co-operates with the machine. Every product made by tool or machine is quâ industrial product or commodity the expression of the thought and will of man; but as machine-production becomes more highly developed, more and more of the thought and will of the inventor, less and less of that of the immediate human agent or machine-tender is expressed in the product. But it is evidently not enough to say that the labour-saving machine has merely substituted the stored and concentrated effort of the inventor for that labour of the handicraftsman which is saved. This would be to ignore the saving of muscular power due to the substitution of forces of nature—water, steam, electricity, etc., for the painful effort of man. It is the thought of the inventor, plus the action of various mechanical and other physical forces, which has saved the labour of man in the production of a commodity. The further question—how far this saving of labour in respect of a given commodity is compensated by the increased number of commodities to which human labour is applied—is a consideration which belongs to a later chapter.
In tracing the effect of the application of modern machinery to English industry there appear two prominent factors, which for certain purposes require separate treatment—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 extensive scale of non-human motor powers manifested itself then for the first time.
One important external effect and indication of the momentous character of these changes is to be found in the quickening of that operation, the beginning of which was observable before the great inventions, the substitution of the Factory System for the Domestic System.
The peculiar relation of Machinery to the Factory System consists in the fact that the size, expensiveness, and complexity of machinery on the one hand, and the use of non-human power on the other hand, were forces which united to drive labour from the home workshop to the large specialised workshop—the Factory.
"The water frame, the carding engine, and the other machines which Arkwright brought out in a finished state, required both more space than could be found in a cottage, and more power than could be applied by the human arm. Their weight also rendered it necessary to place them in strongly-built walls, and they also 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 labour, and therefore a greater co-operation was requisite to bring all the processes of production into harmony and under a central superintendence."[60] Hence the growth of machine-production is to a large extent synonymous with the growth of the modern Factory System.
§ 3. Man does his work by moving matter. Hence machinery can only aid him by increasing the motive power at his disposal.
(1) Machinery enables forces of man or nature to be more effectively applied by various mechanical contrivances composed of levers, pulleys, wedges, screws, etc.
(2) Machinery enables man to obtain the use of various