'nib HISTORY OF THE FACTORY SYSTEM.*
THE author of this very interesting book complains that " it is little less than a scandal to our industrial literature" that " there is absolutely no independent source of information in English literature" dealing with the subject of the Factory System. It is greatly to be hoped that Mr. Cooke Taylor will supply this omission himself. No doubt he may have other things to do. But the reason of the scandal of which he complains is, as a role, that Englishmen are so preoccupied in making money, that they have no time to write the history of the system by which money has been made. Even in the light of an "Introduction" to the subject, this book is somewhat dis- appointing. It is, as we have said, an interesting book. It is a collection of a number of curious facts, and instructive, if not very appropriate, quotations. But the consideration of the factory system is the last thing that it touches on. As to the factory system in the ancient world, mankind is literally sur- veyed from China to Peru ; but the conclusion might have been given in five lines,—that either, as in most of the countries and times alluded to, there never was a factory system ; or else that there are no traces or records of it which can help us to under- stand the modern system, or serve as guides for the future. The rest of the book is taken up with tracing the growth of the factory system in England. The history of enterprise and invention is well touched upon, but it is only touched upon ; and as to the condition of the labourer, Mr. Cooke Taylor, though he recognises the importance of the sub- ject, adds nothing to what Professor Thorold Rogers, the late Mr. Richard Green, and Mr. Fronde had to say upon the subject. The history closes just where the factory system begins. There is no allusion to the manufacturing history of any part of Europe outside England, except the following "Foreigners have not been so backward in the matter. In several noteworthy books abroad, the philosophy and history of the factory system are dealt with in a capable and thoughtful manner, though more usually in the interests of some special school of economic teaching than solely for themselves." Then Mr. Cooke Taylor adds in a note :—" The allusion is to the Socialistic economists of Germany, France, and Italy. It is unnecessary to instance the works of any of these as they have in no case been made use of in the com-
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position of this volume." Now, it seems to us that if Mr. Cooke Taylor had devoted his time to collecting the facts in these capable and thoughtful works, and letting the English public, which is so desperately ignorant on everything out of England, know what they have written, he would have been doing a far greater service than he has done by picking up little facts about ancient or barbarous ways of manufacturing com- mon things. He might' even have given us some idea of the philosophy expounded by these foreign writers, unless be was afraid of making us all Socialists by merely stating their argu- ments.
We do not mean to be severe on Mr. Cooke Taylor. His book is written in an excellent and very intelligent way. If it were not so good as it is, if he were one of the mere bookmakers, we should certainly not have treated him as capable of writing what we agree is much wanted, a real history of the factory system, or, indeed, have taken the trouble to review his book at all. As it is, the book is well worth read- ing; but it is all the more tantalising because we can see that if, instead of beginning his history with Tuba' Cain, or the Chinese Queen who began to cultivate the silkworm in the year 2700 B.C., he had written even an introduction to the modern factory system, it would have been a most fascinating and useful book.
There is much of great interest in the book as it is, and we will quote two specimen passages. After contrasting the in-
introdaoties to a History of the Factory System, By R. Whitely Cooke Taylor. Loudon: Richard Bentley and Son. 1886.
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centives to industry provided by the tribal, patriarchal, the despotic, and the slave systems of labour, Mr. Cooke Taylor proceeds:— "What competition there might be in any of these cases would be likely to be directed then towards the quality, not the quantity of the work done; and some of the finest industrial work ever produced we find to have been produced accordingly under the most despotic of labour systems, whether the despotism took the form of a religious, political, or municipal sovereignty. But the main characteristic of the new system was, that the competition was towards the pro- duction of quantity, not quality ; and that in this direction there was at length no limitation set, either by usage or by any internal or external law. It was this that constituted its greatest novelty as a system of production, as well as its great power as an economic force. Herein, also, was its chief defect, either aesthetically or socially considered. When there was no external impulse to regulate the manufacture, and the greatest freedom in every other respect was absolutely assured, the temptation became exces- sive to make the competition ever a competition downwards, to sacrifice, that is, the quality of the product to the quantity. The number of persons who can judge, or who even profess to be able to judge, of the intrinsic value, and still more of the artistic merit, of a manufactured commodity is comparatively small ; but the number who require products of manufacture is practically illimitable. The great increase of population at home which accompanied the economic changes that have been described, and the discovery of new quarters of the globe having new and vast populations with which trade might be opened, immensely stimulated, if it had not actually aroused, this feeling, to which the general political emancipation in progress both at home and abroad gave new impetus. The mechanical appliances that were presently invented afforded the required means to satisfy the increased demand. Unrestricted com- petition, therefore, quite naturally, and as it were inevitably, set before itself the economic ideal of a great extension of production, and not of excellence in it."
The curious phenomenon of the violent opposition to the machinery which afterwards so much benefited the district in which the violence arose, is well described by Mr. Cooke Taylor. The opposition arose not only from the spinners or weavers who were thrown out of work by the machinery, but from a great majority of the employers as well. Mr. Cooke Taylor, after alluding to the riots, like that described in Charlotte Broutes Shirley, and to the still more curious combination among certain of the employers against those who employed machinery, proceeds to analyse the motives of the operatives "But for the working classes, so far as their experience of the situation was concerned, no excuse is needed; though it is, of course, melancholy that their bitter experiences should sometimes have led them into the excesses that they sometimes did. They believed that machinery deprived them of much that they valued, and machinery did so. It deprived them of some of the most precious parts of the poor inheritance that might ever be theirs. It deprived them of the freer, more hopeful, more personal existence that was the lot of the handicraft worker ; of the individual utilities acquired or the apti- tudes inherited which distinguished this or that particular man from this or that other, and from the general mass. It sapped, or threatened to sap, as they saw it then, that feeling of separate identity, of selfeufficingness, of pride (in its better sense), that is the proper glory of very manhood. list it did even more. Coming upon the country, as the new system of production came, at a time when the means of communication were under any circumstances few and rude, and when every further obstacle which could be imposed upon change of place and work was imposed—by custom, by education, and even by positive law—it deprived (in trans- ferring it elsewhere) large numbers of the population of the means of earning their living ; it planted famine in their midst. This is what they saw, just as the former conditions were what they felt. They saw the labour that they had been accustomed to do with their hands, and that was intimately related to every action and passion of their lives, performed, and far better performed, by a passionless, indefatigable machine : a mere combination of wood and metal without a heart to feel, a stomach to be fed, or tender ties or sympathies to be accounted for. There were counterbalancing advantages, of course. At some future time those machines were to cause more persons to be employed than they had ever thrown out of employment ; they would from the first supply the operatives with the goods they had been used to make themselves cheaper than they had ever made them. But what was that to them i' They did not want to buy the goods, but sell them. They could not wait for this new era, for they must exist meanwhile. The due fulfilment of economical laws did most aesuredly, in the absence of any exterior impulse to the contrary, involve their present destruction ; and that they knew, and for the moment it was all they cared to know. Thus gloomily, amid tumult, fear, and suffering, was the modern factory system Introduced."
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