On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, Charles Babbage [classic romance novels .TXT] 📗
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otherwise, the proportion must be left to find its level, and
will be discovered by experience; and it is probable that it will
not fluctuate much. Let us suppose it to be agreed that the
capital of L800 shall receive the wages of one workman. At the
end of each week every workman is to receive one pound as wages,
and one pound is to be divided amongst the owners of the capital.
After a few weeks the returns will begin to come in; and they
will soon become nearly uniform. Accurate accounts should be kept
of every expense and of all the sales; and at the end of each
week the profit should be divided. A certain portion should be
laid aside as a reserved fund, another portion for repair of the
tools, and the remainder being divided into thirteen parts, one
of these parts would be divided amongst the capitalists and one
belong to each workman. Thus each man would, in ordinary
circumstances, make up his usual wages of two pounds weekly. If
the factory went on prosperously, the wages of the men would
increase; if the sales fell off they would be diminished. It is
important that every person employed in the establishment,
whatever might be the amount paid for his services, whether he
act as labourer or porter, as the clerk who keeps the accounts,
or as bookkeeper employed for a few hours once a week to
superintend them, should receive one half of what his service is
worth in fixed salary, the other part varying with the success of
the undertaking.
312. In such a factory, of course, division of labour would
be introduced: some of the workmen would be constantly employed
in forging the fire-irons, others in polishing them, others in
piercing and forming the fenders. It would be essential that the
time occupied in each process, and also its expense, should be
well ascertained; information which would soon be obtained very
precisely. Now, if a workman should find a mode of shortening any
of the processes, he would confer a benefit on the whole party,
even if they received but a small part of the resulting profit.
For the promotion of such discoveries, it would be desirable that
those who make them should either receive some reward, to be
determined after a sufficient trial by a committee assembling
periodically; or if they be of high importance, that the
discoverer should receive one-half, or twothirds, of the profit
resulting from them during the next year, or some other
determinate period, as might be found expedient. As the
advantages of such improvements would be clear gain to the
factory, it is obvious that such a share might be allowed to the
inventor, that it would be for his interest rather to give the
benefit of them to his partners, than to dispose of them in any
other way.
313. The result of such arrangements in a factory would be,
1. That every person engaged in it would have a direct
interest in its prosperity; since the effect of any success, or
falling off, would almost immediately produce a corresponding
change in his own weekly receipts.
2. Every person concerned in the factory would have an
immediate interest in preventing any waste or mismanagement in
all the departments.
3. The talents of all connected with it would be strongly
directed to its improvement in every department.
4. None but workmen of high character and qualifications
could obtain admission into such establishments; because when any
additional hands were required, it would be the common interest
of all to admit only the most respectable and skilful; and it
would be far less easy to impose upon a dozen workmen than upon
the single proprietor of a factory.
5. When any circumstance produced a glut in the market, more
skill would be directed to diminishing the cost of production;
and a portion of the time of the men might then be occupied in
repairing and improving their tools, for which a reserved fund
would pay, thus checking present, and at the same time
facilitating future production.
6. Another advantage, of no small importance, would be the
total removal of all real or imaginary causes for combinations.
The workmen and the capitalist would so shade into each other—
would so evidently have a common interest, and their difficulties
and distresses would be mutually so well understood that, instead
of combining to oppress one another, the only combination which
could exist would be a most powerful union between both parties
to overcome their common difficulties.
314. One of the difficulties attending such a system is, that
capitalists would at first fear to embark in it, imagining that
the workmen would receive too large a share of the profits: and
it is quite true that the workmen would have a larger share than
at present: but, at the same time, it is presumed the effect of
the whole system would be, that the total profits of the
establishment being much increased, the smaller proportion
allowed to capital under this system would yet be greater in
actual amount, than that which results to it from the larger
share in the system now existing.
315. It is possible that the present laws relating to
partnerships might interfere with factories so conducted. If this
interference could not be obviated by confining their purchases
under the proposed system to ready money, it would be desirable
to consider what changes in the law would be necessary to its
existence: and this furnishes another reason for entering into
the question of limited partnerships.
316. A difficulty would occur also in discharging workmen who
behaved ill, or who were not competent to their work; this would
arise from their having a certain interest in the reserved fund,
and, perhaps, from their possessing a certain portion of the
capital employed; but without entering into detail, it may be
observed, that such cases might be determined on by meetings of
the whole establishment; and that if the policy of the laws
favoured such establishments, it would scarcely be more difficult
to enforce just regulations, than it now is to enforce some which
are unjust, by means of combinations either amongst the masters
or the men.
317. Some approach to this system is already practised in
several trades: the mode of conducting the Cornish mines has
already been alluded to; the payment to the crew of whaling ships
is governed by this principle; the profits arising from fishing
with nets on the south coast of England are thus divided:
one-half the produce belongs to the owner of the boat and net;
the other half is divided in equal portions between the persons
using it, who are also bound to assist in repairing the net when
injured.
NOTES:
1. For a detailed account of the method of working the Cornish
mines, see a paper of Mr John Taylor’s Transactions of the
Geological Society, vol. ii, p. 309.
On Contriving Machinery
318. The power of inventing mechanical contrivances, and of
combining machinery, does not appear, if we may judge from the
frequency of its occurrence, to be a difficult or a rare gift. Of
the vast multitude of inventions which have been produced almost
daily for a series of years, a large part has failed from the
imperfect nature of the first trials; whilst a still larger
portion, which had escaped the mechanical difficulties, failed
only because the economy of their operations was not sufficiently
attended to.
The commissioners appointed to examine into the methods
proposed for preventing the forgery of banknotes, state in their
report, that out of one hundred and seventy-eight projects
communicated to the bank and to the commissioners, there were
only twelve of superior skill, and nine which it was necessary
more particularly to examine.
319. It is however a curious circumstance, that although the
power of combining machinery is so common, yet the more beautiful
combinations are exceedingly rare. Those which command our
admiration equally by the perfection of their effects and the
simplicity of their means, are found only amongst the happiest
productions of genius.
To produce movements even of a complicated kind is not
difficult. There exist a great multitude of known contrivances
for all the more usual purposes, and if the exertion of moderate
power is the end of the mechanism to be contrived, it is possible
to construct the whole machine upon paper, and to judge of the
proper strength to be given to each part as well as to the
framework which supports it, and also of its ultimate effect,
long before a single part of it has been executed. In fact, all
the contrivance, and all the improvements, ought first to be
represented in the drawings.
320. On the other hand, there are effects dependent upon
physical or chemical properties for the determination of which no
drawings will be of any use. These are the legitimate objects of
direct trial. For example; if the ultimate result of an engine is
to be that it shall impress letters on a copperplate by means of
steel punches forced into it, all the mechanism by which the
punches and the copper are to be moved at stated intervals, and
brought into contact, is within the province of drawing, and the
machinery may be arranged entirely upon paper. But a doubt may
reasonably spring up, whether the bur that will be raised round
the letter, which has been already punched upon the copper, may
not interfere with the proper action of the punch for the letter
which is to be punched next adjacent to it. It may also be feared
that the effect of punching the second letter, if it be
sufficiently near to the first, may distort the form of that
first figure. If neither of these evils should arise, still the
bur produced by the punching might be expected to interfere with
the goodness of the impression produced by the copperplate; and
the plate itself, after having all but its edge covered with
figures, might change its form, from the unequal condensation
which it must suffer in this process, so as to render it very
difficult to take impressions from it at all. It is impossible by
any drawings to solve difficulties such as these, experiment
alone can determine their effect. Such experiments having been
made, it is found that if the sides of the steel punch are nearly
at right angles to the face of the letter, the bur produced is
very inconsiderable; that at the depth which is sufficient for
copperplate printing, no distortion of the adjacent letters takes
place, although those letters are placed very close to each
other; that the small bur which arises may easily be scraped off;
and that the copperplate is not distorted by the condensation of
the metal in punching, but is perfectly fit to print from, after
it has undergone that process.
321. The next stage in the progress of an invention, after
the drawings are finished and the preliminary experiments have
been made, if any such should be requisite, is the execution of
the machine itself. It can never be too strongly impressed upon
the minds of those who are devising new machines, that to make
the most perfect drawings of every part tends essentially both to
the success of the trial, and to economy in arriving at the
result. The actual execution from working drawings is
comparatively an easy task; provided always that good tools are
employed, and that methods of working are adopted, in which the
perfection of the part constructed depends less on the personal
skill of the workman, than upon the certainty of the method
employed.
322. The causes of failure in this stage most frequently
derive their origin from
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