On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 358 pages of information about On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures.

On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 358 pages of information about On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures.
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.

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On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.