Book Description

Excerpt from History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860 The free commerce of the American settlements was but another phase of the revolt against commercial restraint which his company was encountering in England itself; and more silently, with fewer dramatic episodes, a revolt against industrial restraints, actuated by the same spirit under similar conditions, was beginning both in the mother country and in America. The capitalist organization of manufactures grew out of the capital ist organization of commerce, and was the outcome of a broader market rather than of the introduction of machinery.2 A craftsman might own his tools and purchase his raw materials, but he could not, while plying his trade, transport his manufactures to a distant market or hold them for a protracted period before finding a purchaser. These processes Of exchange were a function of capital. The expansion of commerce in Great Britain, therefore, hastened the reorganization Of manufactures by favoring a class of merchant employers who, to supply evenly the permanent demands Of their distant markets, intervened more and more directly in manufacturing Operations. As manufactures became more complex and depended to a greater extent upon raw materials imported from abroad, the industrial activities of the merchant employer grew still more important. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.