On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, Charles Babbage [classic romance novels .TXT] 📗

Children, 2.

Total, 10.

 

French manufacture

 

237. Cost of 12,000 pins, No. 6, each being eight-tenths of an

English inch in length,—as they were manufactured in France about

1760; with the cost of each operation: deduced from the

observations and statement of M. Perronet.

 

Name of the process

Time for making twelve thousand pins Hours

Cost of making twelve thousand pins Pence

Workman usually earns per day Pence

Expense of tools and materials Pence

 

1. Wire — — — 24.75

2. Straightening and cutting 1.2 .5 4.5 —

3. Coarse pointing 1.2 .625 10.0 —

Turning wheel(2*) 1.2 .875 7.0 —

Fine Pointing .8 .5 9.375 —

Turning wheel 1.2 .5 4.75 —

Cutting off pointed ends .6 .375 7.5 —

4. Turning spiral .5 .125 3.0 —

Cutting off heads .8 .375 5.625 —

Fuel to anneal ditto — — — .125

5. Heading 12.0 .333 4.25 —

6. Tartar for cleaning — — — .5

Tartar for whitening — — — .5

7. Papering 4.8 .5 2.0 —

Paper — — — 1.0

Wear of tools — — — 2.0

24.3 4.708

 

The great expense of turning the wheel appears to have arisen

from the person so occupied being unemployed during half his

time, whilst the pointer went to another manufactory

 

338. It appears from the analysis we have given of the art of

pinmaking, that it occupies rather more than seven hours and a

half of time, for ten different individuals working in succession

on the same material, to convert it into a pound of pins; and

that the total expense of their labour, each being paid in the

joint ratio of his skill and of the time he is employed, amounts

very nearly to 1s. 1d. But from an examination of the first of

these tables, it appears that the wages earned by the persons

employed vary from 4 1/2d. per day up to 6s., and consequently

the skill which is required for their respective employments may

be measured by those sums. Now it is evident, that if one person

were required to make the whole pound of pins, he must have skill

enough to earn about 5s. 3d. per day, whilst he is pointing the

wires or cutting off the heads from the spiral coils—and 6s.

when he is whitening the pins; which three operations together

would occupy little more than the seventeenth part of his time.

It is also apparent, that during more than one half of his time

he must be earning only 1s. 3d, per day, in putting on the heads;

although his skill, if properly employed, would, in the same

time, produce nearly five times as much. If, therefore, we were

to employ, for all the processes, the man who whitens the pins,

and who earns 6s. per day, even supposing that he could make the

pound of pins in an equally short time, yet we must pay him for

his time 46. 14 pence, or about 3s. 10d. The pins would therefore

cost, in making, three times and three quarters as much as they

now do by the application of the division of labour.

 

The higher the skill required of the workman in any one

process of a manufacture, and the smaller the time during which

it is employed, so much the greater will be the advantage of

separating that process from the rest, and devoting one person’s

attention entirely to it. Had we selected the art of

needlemaking as our illustration, the economy arising from the

division of labour would have been still more striking; for the

process of tempering the needles requires great skill, attention,

and experience, and although from three to four thousand are

tempered at once, the workman is paid a very high rate of wages.

In another process of the same manufacture, dry-pointing, which

also is executed with great rapidity, the wages earned by the

workman reach from 7s. to 12s., 15s., and even, in some

instances, to 20s. per day; whilst other processes are carried on

by children paid at the rate of 6d. per day.

 

239. Some further reflections suggested by the preceding

analysis, will be reserved until we have placed before the reader

a brief description of a machine for making pins, invented by an

American. It is highly ingenious in point of contrivance, and, in

respect to its economical principles, will furnish a strong and

interesting contrast with the manufacture of pins by the human

hand. In this machine a coil of brass wire is placed on an axis;

one end of this wire is drawn by a pair of rollers through a

small hole in a plate of steel, and is held there by a forceps.

As soon as the machine is put in action, -

 

1. The forceps draws the wire on to a distance equal in

length to one pin: a cutting edge of steel then descends close to

the hole through which the wire entered, and severs the piece

drawn out.

 

2. The forceps holding the piece thus separated moves on,

till it brings the wire to the centre of the chuck of a small

lathe, which opens to receive it. Whilst the forceps is returning

to fetch another piece of wire, the lathe revolves rapidly, and

grinds the projecting end of the wire upon a steel mill, which

advances towards it.

 

3. After this first or coarse pointing, the lathe stops, and

another forceps takes hold of the half-pointed pin, (which is

instantly released by the opening of the chuck), and conveys it

to a similar chuck of an adjacent lathe, which receives it, and

finishes the pointing on a finer steel mill.

 

4. This mill again stops, and another forceps removes the

pointed pin into a pair of strong steel clams, having a small

groove in them by which they hold the pin very firmly. A part of

this groove, which terminates at that edge of the steel clams

which is intended to form the head of the pin, is made conical. A

small round steel punch is now driven forcibly against the end of

the wire thus clamped, and the head of the pin is partially

formed by compressing the wire into the conical cavity.

 

NOTES:

 

1. I have already stated that this principle presented itself to

me after a personal examination of a number of manufactories and

workshops devoted to different purposes; but I have since found

that it had been distinctly pointed out in the work of Gioja.

Nuovo Prospetto delle Scienze Economiche. 6 tom. 4to. Milano,

1815, tom. i. capo iv.

 

2. The great expense of turning the wheel appears to have arisen

from the person so occupied being unemployed during half his

time, whilst the pointer went to another manufactory.