DR. URE'S PHILOsoPriIi OF MANUFACTURES.

HAVING been employed for a quarter of a century in expounding " to practical men as well as to youth, the applications of mecha- nical and chemical science to the (usend) arts," Dr. URE, at the instance of many of his pupils, thought of writing a "systematic account of their principles and processes." He was about to make a manutheturing tour of inspection, with the view of verifying his old knowledge and acquiring new, when the Government requested him to undertake a series of experiments on sugar-refining. The object, as some of our readers may remember, was to ascertain what proportion the refined bore to the raw commodity,.in order to fix upon the proper drawback to be allowed, and to decide upon the possibility of permitting sugar to be refined in bond without the risk of subjecting the revenue to fraud. This difficult task occupied him longer and strained his energies more severely than he anticipated ; and it left him in poor bodily condition. To improve his health, travelling and " light intellectual exercise" were re- commended; so he set out on a tour through the manufacturing districts, gathering at the same time health and materials for his undertaking.

This, in its fullest extent, is intended to embrace a detailed and practically minute description of our principal manufac- tures. The volume before us is introductory to the main sub- ject whose general principles it professes to expound. In the first book, the author takes a view of manufacturing industry ; briefly tracing its history, and more fully explaining its uses and benefits both to the manufacturer and the public. He next arranges ma- nufactures under the two great divisions of Mechanical and Che- mical, according to the action which is employed in their produc- tion ; and minutely subdivides them in classes according to the mechanical means employed, or the chemical substances whose nature is to be changed. His last subject in this book is the to- pography and statistics of our system ; the former involving an inquiry into the natural or accidental causes which contributed to establish a particular manufacture in certain districts, the latter displaying a curious and elaborate analysis of the population of Great Britain in reference to their employments. The second book contains an exposition of the scientific economy of the Factory System ; the word Factory* being limited so as to exclude all save the textile trades of cotton, wool, flax, and silk ; the nature of each of which substances is minutely examined, and the examina- tions followed by a general description of the operations employed in the manufacture. The third book treats of the moral economy of the system ; instituting a comparison between the condition of the factory operatives as to personal comforts with that of other labouring classes, considering the extent and intensity of their labour in relation to the means of enjoyment which it can procure them, and investigating the state of their health and their moral and religious condition ; upon all which points, the facts are as conclusive and triumphant as they are gratifying. The fourth and last book is devoted to the commercial economy of our Fac- tory System ; and contains some cheering statements. It ap- pears that trade generally is in a sound state; large orders having now to be bespoke instead of being as formerly selected from stocks lying in the warehouses. There is an increasing demand in the cotton, woollen, and linen trades; failures are fewer, pay- ments more punctual; and though there is a reduction in profit, there is also a reduction in risk, whilst the immense amount of capital in the country facilitates the execution of any undertaking, however great. This last fact, however, is a sad proof of the want of a field in which to employ our superabundant capital ; whilst the facility of procuring it may often lead, it would seem, to wild or nskful speculations.

We trust that we shall not be considered as undervaluing Dr. URE, when we limit his merits to a knowledge of the condition of the operatives, to a theoretical and practical acquaintance with manufactures, and to a clear though occasionally a pedantic man- ner of explaining their mysteries. Having apparently devoted the best part of his life to the essentials of these matters, he wants the grasp of mind necessary to comprehend even his own subject in all its connexions and relations, so that his economical views are sometimes shortsighted, and his opinions rather one-sided. Having been engaged, too, upon a course of instruction where the matter was of more importance than the form, the Doctor's style

The term Factory in technology designates the combined operation of many orders of workpeople, adult and young, in tending with assiduous skill a system of productive machines, continuously impelled by a central power. Page 13. is deficient in neatness and elegance; his manner, moreonr:. has somewhat of awkwardness ; and both in advocating his own siews and impugning those of others, lie has rather too much of the appearance of a partisan. In an intimate acquaintance with the arcana of manufactures, we understand that Dr. Ulla is more than equal to Mr. BAlliES; but in skilful arrangement, artful digression, and elegance of narrative and exposition, he is certainly inferior.

Our extracts will be chosen with two objects—to give an idea of the rationale of the factory system; and to indicate to the reader, that in our general summary of the contents of the work many points of interest and importance have been passed without allusion.

BENEFITS OF NTICIIINERY.

The bles,,ings which physico-meehanical science has bestowed on society, and the ineail.; it Las still in store for ameliorating the lot of mankind, have been too little dwelt upon ; while on the other hand, it has been accused of lending itself to the rich capitalists as an instrument the harassing the poor, mud of exacting fvoni the operative an accelerated rate of work. It has been said, fur example, that tile straimengine now drives the power-lootns with such velocity as to urge on their attendant WeaVelti at the sane rapid pare; lint that the hand-weaver, not being, subj,ietell to this restless agent, can throw his shuttle and move his treilhes at his convenience. There is, however, this difference in the two cases, that in the- factory, every member of the loom is so adjusted, that the liriving three leacts tie attendant neatly nothing at all to do, certainly no muscular fatigue to sustain, W h Ile it procures for him g,00d, unfailing wages, besides a healthy workshop, yrutis : whereas the non-factory weaver, having every thing to execute by muscular exertion, finds the labour irksome, makes, in conse- quence, innumerable short pauses, separately of little account, but great vhen added together; earns, thesefore, proportionally low wages, while lie loses his health by poor diet and the dampness of his hovel. Dr. Carbutt of Manchester says, 1Vith regard to Sir Robert Peel's asseition a few evenings ago, that the hand-loom weavers are mostly small farmers, nothing can be a greater mistake ; they live, or rather they just keep life together, in the most miserable manner, in the cellars and garrets of the town, working sixteen or eighteen hours for the merest pittance." The constant aim and effect of scientific improvement in manufactures are philanthropic ; as they tend to relieve the workmen either from niceties of adjust- ment which exhaust his mind and fatigue his eyes, or from painful repetition of effort which distort or wear out his frame. At every step of each manufacturing process described in this volume, the humanity of science will be manifest. New illustrations of this truth appear almost evely day ; of which a remarkable one has just come to toy knowledge. In the woollen-cloth trade there is a process between carding and spinuing the wool, called stubbing, which converts the spongy rolls, turned id from the cards, into a continuous length of tine porous cord. Now, though carding and spinning lie within the domain of automatic science, yet slubbing is a handicraft operation, depending on the skill of the !dubber, and participating, therefore, in all his irregularities. If be be a steady, temperate man, he will conduct his business regularly, without reeding to harass hisjuvenile assistants, vvho join together tae series ot card-rolls, and thus feed his machine; but if he be addicted to liquor, and pas'donate, he has it in his power to exercise a feat ful despotism over the young pieeeners, in violation of the pro- prietor's benevolent regulations. This class of operatives, who, though inmates of factories, are not, properly speaking, factory workers, being independent of the moving power, have been the principal source of the obloquy so unsparingly cast on the cotton and other factories, in which no such capricious practices or cruelties exist. The wool-slobber when behindhand with Isis work, after a visit to the beer' shop, resumes his task with violence, and drives his machine at a speed beyond the power of the pieceners to accompany; and if he finds them deficient in the least point, be dues not hesitate to lift up the long wooden rod from his dubbing-frame, called a billy-loller, and beat them unmercifully. I rejoice to find that science now promises to rescue this branch or the business from handicraft caprice, and to place it, like the rest, under the safeguard of automatic mechanism.

The following view of the subject is novel; but the principle involved in it requires perhaps some slight degree of modification. For regularity and uniformity of -workmanship, machinery will of course always possess incomparable advantages over handicraft; but to attain the highest degree of excellence, no machine, we believe, has yet been discovered capable of equalling that won- derful instrument the human hand.

When Adam Smith wrote his immortal elements of economics, automatic machinery being hardly known, he was properly led to regard the division of labour as the grand principle of manufacturing improvement ; and he showed, in the example of pin-making, how each handicraftsman' being thereby enabled to perfect himself by practice in one point, became a quicker and Cheaper work- man. In each branch of manufacture he saw, that some parts were, on that principle, of easy execution, like the cutting of pin-wires into uniform lengths, and some were comparatively difficult, like the formation and fixation of their heads ; and therefore he concluded that to each a workman of appropriate value and cost was naturally assigned. This appropriation forms the very essence of the division of labour, and has been constantly made since the origin of society. The ploughman, with powerful hand and skilful eye, has been always hired at high wages to form the furrow, and the ploughboy at low wages to lead the team. But what was in Dr. Smith's time a topic of useful illustration,- cannot now be used without risk of misleading the public mind as to the right principle of manufacturing industry. In fact, the division, or rather adaptation of labour to the different talents of men, is little thought of in factory employment. On the contrary, wherever a process requites peculiar dextmity and steadiness of baud, it is withdrawn as soon as possible from the canning workman, who is prone to irregularities of many kinds, and it is placed in charge of a peculiar mechanism, so self-regulating that a phild may superintend it. Thus, to take an example from the spinnins.' of cotton, the first operation in delicacy and im- portance is that of laying [he fibres truly parallel in the spongy slivers; and the next is that of drawing these out into slender spongy cords, called rovings, with the least possible twist ; both being perfectly uniform throughout their total length. To execute either of these processes tolerably by a band-wheel, would require a degree of skill not to be met with in one artisan out of a hundred. But line yarn could not be made in factory-spinning except by taking these steps, nor was it ever made by machinery till Arkwlight's sagacity contrived them. Moderately good yarn may be spun, indeed, on the hand-wheel without any di awings at all, and with even indifferent rovings, because the thread, under the twofold action of twisting and extension, has a tendency to equalize itself. The prniciple of the factory system then is, to substitute mechanical science for hand skill, and the partition of a process into its essential constituents, for the division or graduation of labour among artisans. On the handicraft plan, labour more or less skilled, was usually the most expensive element of produc-

• Letter of 3d of May 1833, to Dr. Hawkins in his Medical Report, Factory Commis. sion, p. 282.

tioa—Materiam sverutat opus ; but on the automatic plan, skilled labour gets progressively superseded, and %%ill, eventually, be replaced by mere overhookers of machines.

• By the infirmity of human nature it happens, that the mere skilild the work.. man, the more self.willed and intractable he is apt to bee0111e, and, of course, the less fit a component of a mechanical system, in which, by occasional irre- gularities, he may do great damage to the whole. The grand object, therefore, of the modern manufacturer is, through the union of capital and science, to re. duce the tusk of his workpeople to the exercise of vigilance and dexterity ; faculties, when concentered m one process, speedily brought to perfection iu the young.

Here is the same subject carried beyond mechanics even into physiological and intellectual speculation: a new light thrown upon the subject of Combination of Lab.)ur.

On the graduation system, a man must serve an apprenticeship of many years before his band and eye become skilled enough for certain mechanical feats ; but on the system of decomposing a process into its constituents, and embodying each part in an automatic machine, a person of common care and capacity may be intrusted with any of the said elementary parts after a short pro'iation, and may be transferred from one to another, on any emergency, at the discretion of the master. Such translations arc utterly at variance with the old practice of the division of labour, which fixed one man to shaping the head of a pin, and another to sharpening itspoint, with most irksome and spirit-wasting uoiformity, for a whole life.

It was indeed a subject of regret to olrierve how frequently the workman's eminence in any craft had to be purchased by the sacrifice of his health and comfort. To one unvaried operation, which required unremitting ilextrrity and diligence, his hand and eye were constantly on the strain ; Or if they were sutkred to swerve from their task for a time etaisiderable loss ensued, either to the employer or the operative, according as tle work was done by the day or by the piece. But on the equalization plan of telf-acting machines, the cperative needs to call his faculties only into agreeable exercise; he is seldom harassed with . anxiety or fatigue, and may rind ninny leisure moments for either amusement or meditation, without detriment to his master's interests or his own. As his busi- ness consists in tending the work of a well-regulated mechanism, he can learn it in a short period ; and when he transfeia his services bolo one machine to another, he varies his task, and enlarges his views, by thinking on thme general combinations which result from his and his comp whin,' labours. Thus, that cramping of the faculties, that narrowing of the mind, that st uniting of the frame, which were ascribed, and not tnijustly, by moral WI iters, to th.t division of labour, cannot, in common circumstances occur under the equable distribution of industry. How superior in vigour andintelligence are the factory mechanics in Lancashire, where the latter system Of labour prevails, to the handicraft artisans of London, who. to a great extent, continue slaves to the farmer ! The one set is familiar with almost every physico-mechanical combination, while the other seldom knows any thing beyond the pin-head sphere of his daily task.

To works descriptive of certain processes, plates are as necessary as maps to books of travels ; and it should be said that Dr. URE S volume is illustrated by a great number of clear and neat outline drawings, explanatory of his text.