CHAPTER 13.

Distinction Between Making and Manufacturing

163. The economical principles which regulate the application
of machinery, and which govern the interior of all our great
factories, are quite as essential to the prosperity of a great
commercial country, as are those mechanical principles, the
operation of which has been illustrated in the preceding section.

The first object of every person who attempts to make any
article of consumption, is, or ought to be, to produce it in a
perfect form; but in order to secure to himself the greatest and
most permanent profit, he must endeavour, by every means in his
power, to render the new luxury or want which he has created,
cheap to those who consume it. The larger number of purchasers
thus obtained will, in some measure, secure him from the caprices
of fashion, whilst it furnishes a far greater amount of profit,
although the contribution of each individual is diminished. The
importance of collecting data, for the purpose of enabling the
manufacturer to ascertain how many additional customers he will
acquire by a given reduction in the price of the article he
makes, cannot be too strongly pressed upon the attention of those
who employ themselves in statistical enquiries. In some ranks of
society, no diminution of price can bring forward a great
additional number of customers; whilst, amongst other classes, a
very small reduction will so enlarge the sale, as to yield a
considerable increase of profit. Materials calculated to assist
in forming a table of the numbers of persons who possess incomes
of different amount, occur in the 14th Report of the
Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry, which includes a statement of
the amount of personal property proved at the legacy office
during one year; the number of the various classes of testators;
and an account of the number of persons receiving dividends from
funded property, distributed into classes. Such a table, formed
even approximately, and exhibited in the form of a curve, might
be of service.

164. A considerable difference exists between the terms
making and manufacturing. The former refers to the production of
a small, the latter to that of a very large number of
individuals; and the difference is well illustrated in the
evidence, given before the Committee of the House of Commons, on
the Export of Tools and Machinery. On that occasion Mr Maudslay
stated, that he had been applied to by the Navy Board to make
iron tanks for ships, and that he was rather unwilling to do so,
as he considered it to be out of his line of business; however,
he undertook to make one as a trial. The holes for the rivets
were punched by hand-punching with presses, and the 1680 holes
which each tank required cost seven shillings. The Navy Board,
who required a large number, proposed that he should supply forty
tanks a week for many months. The magnitude of the order made it
worth his while to commence manufacture, and to make tools for
the express business. Mr Maudslay therefore offered, if the Board
would give him an order for two thousand tanks, to supply them at
the rate of eighty per week. The order was given: he made tools,
by which the expense of punching the rivet-holes of each tank was
reduced from seven shillings to ninepence; he supplied
ninety-eight tanks a week for six months, and the price charged
for each was reduced from seventeen pounds to fifteen.

165. If, therefore, the maker of an article wish to become a
manufacturer, in the more extended sense of the term, he must
attend to other principles besides those mechanical ones on which
the successful execution of his work depends; and he must
carefully arrange the whole system of his factory in such a
manner, that the article he sells to the public may be produced
at as small a cost as possible. Should he not be actuated at
first by motives so remote, he will, in every highly civilized
country, be compelled, by the powerful stimulus of competition,
to attend to the principles of the domestic economy of
manufactures. At every reduction in price of the commodity he
makes, he will be driven to seek compensation in a saving of
expense in some of the processes; and his ingenuity will be
sharpened in this enquiry by the hope of being able in his turn
to undersell his rivals. The benefit of the improvements thus
engendered is, for a short time, confined to those from whose
ingenuity they derive their origin; but when a sufficient
experience has proved their value, they become generally adopted,
until in their turn they are superseded by other more economical
methods.