When the discovery of that exact mode of procedure, which the relations and connexions that these new circumstances have to each other renders most expedient, has once been made, it may be found that they are on the whole more favorable, and such as will produce a better article, at less cost, in the country to which the manufacture is transported, than in that in which it was originally exercised.To make the discovery, however, of this exact procedure is always a matter of difficulty, and implies almost necessarily the previous commission of many errors and mistakes, and the incurring of much needless expense and loss.A single individual, whatever intelligence and application he may possess, can scarce hope to arrive at it; it requires the efforts of many individuals, continued through a considerable course of time.
But these modifications, in the process of any manufacture, which its removal from one country to another demands, axe far from being the only difficulty attending that removal.An accurate knowledge of the principles of the manufacture, and of the manner in which every part of it is carried on in the foreign country, must be obtained; the requisite machinery has to be provided, and workmen, possessing the skill and dexterity which each part of the process requires, must be procured.These are generally matters of great difficulty.
Very few individuals have a thorough knowledge of every different part of any complicated manufacture.In examining any large and successful manufacturing establishment, we commonly find that the various parts of it depend, for the perfection with which they are conducted, on the efforts of different individuals, who devote their whole attention to their own departments, and are not at all qualified to change places with each other; while the director of the whole has only such a general knowledge of each as enables him to say when it is properly conducted, not himself to point out the exact mode of best conducting it.It is his business to preserve the economy of the whole, and to search out the individuals best fitted for carrying on every part.Hence the undertaker of any such work, in a country where it has not been practised, has not only to engage one, but generally many individuals, in order that the different processes of the manufacture may be properly conducted.The difficulty of finding persons of sufficient intelligence and integrity for the purpose, who will remove to a distant country, without an extravagant reward, is very great, and the risk of being imposed on by engaging persons of insufficient skill, and consequently suffering considerable loss, is not small.The difficulty of transporting, or of constructing there, the necessary machinery, is often still greater; and when these are procured, workmen having the requisite skill and dexterity for performing the mere manual part are still wanting.
These, if brought from a foreign country, as ms often necessary, can only be induced to expatriate themselves by the receipt of exorbitant wages;and, even if the natives of the country where the new manufacture in to be established can be trained from the first to execute the necessary manual operations, besides the loss arising from their deficient dexterity, they will demand higher wages than those engaged in established employments.
A man naturally prefers continuing in any sort of work which he understands, rather than displaying his awkwardness in attempting to perform an operation that is strange to him.Besides, he has, in general, reason to apprehend that, should the new manufacture fail, he will have difficulty in again finding employment in the trade he had forsaken.On these accounts it happens that "when a projector attempts to establish a new manufacture, he must at first entice his workmen from other employments by higher wages than they can either earn in their own trades, or than the nature of his work would otherwise require; and a considerable time must pass away before he can venture to reduce them to the common level." (26)All these circumstances create so many obstacles to the efforts of private individuals, in their endeavors to carry a manufacture from a country in which it already prospers, to another in which it is unknown, that it is, I believe, very rarely they have succeeded in doing so, without the occurrence of some favorable conjuncture of events, to aid them in the project.
In point of fact it will be found, that the transfer of manufactures from one nation to another, or rather the general propagation, through all countries, of this most important source of the opulence of every one, has been chiefly owing to causes, which, at first sight, would seem little calculated to produce so beneficial effects.Wars and conquests, tyranny and persecution, the jealousy and hatred of rival states, have, strange to say, been the main agents in disseminating arts and industry over the globe, and thus ameliorating the social condition of the whole human race.
Events, that, to those to whom they happened, brought nothing but calamity and suffering, have procured prosperity and opulence to the generations that have succeeded them; convulsions, that disturb and derange the frame of civil society, like those which occasionally shake and desolate the globe, in the midst of present destruction and devastation, carrying often the elements of future fertility and abundance.
Manufactures have commonly been carried to a distance by the men who have exercised those manufactures.But no one willingly expatriates himself.
