s capital in a way that is parallel to the
minute subdivision of labor. If the machine is to work at all
economically, it must put its touch quickly on one after another of a
series of articles, as they are submitted to it in uninterrupted
succession. If only one kind of machine were employed in the making of
shoes--if, for instance, the sewing of the uppers to the soles were
done on sewing machines, even though all the rest were done by
hand--it would be natural and almost necessary to have one class of
workers to prepare the uppers, another to prepare the soles, and a
third to sew them together by aid of the machine. When the several
stages of the process are thus given over to different classes of
workers, the situation is ripe for the application of more machines,
and inventors readily devise apparatus that will perform one or
another minute part of the manufacturing process. In the end most
branches of manufacture take such shapes that the raw material is
intrusted to a series of machines and passes from one to another by a
nearly continuous movement, till it emerges from the hands of these
automata as complete as any manipulation can make it and ready for the
merchants who will convey it to their customers.

_Economy of Capital._--There is an economy of capital involved in the
fact that instruments can be used thus continuously. A worker does not
have to have several sets of tools, many of which would be idle the
greater part of the time, as would be the case if the man performed
several unlike operations; but the greatest economy comes from the
energy, rapidity, and accuracy with which the new instruments act. The
tools are far more efficient than they could be if human muscles
furnished the power and eyes and nerves supplied the deftness and
accuracy that the making of the goods requires. Automata which men set
working excel hand tools with men wielding them by a greater ratio
than can be calculated.

CHAPTER V

PRODUCTION A SYNTHESIS; DISTRIBUTION AN ANALYSIS

The essential fact about production, as it is carried on by all
society, is that it is a synthetic operation, by which a grand total
is made up by the contributions of different industries. There is a
corresponding fact about the production which is carried on within a
particular line of business, or, as we should express it, within a
particular subgroup; for within the subgroup there are laborers, on
the one hand, and capitalists, on the oth