(_e_) _Ease or simplicity of labour involved._--Where abundance of cheap labour adequate to the work can be obtained, and particularly in trades where women and children are largely engaged, the development of machinery has been generally slower. This condition often unites with (_b_) or (_c_) to retain an industry in the "domestic" class. A large mass of essentially "irregular" work requiring a certain delicacy of manipulation, which by reason of its narrowness of scope is yet easily attained, and which makes but slight demands upon muscular force or intelligence, has remained outside machine-production. Important industries containing several processes of this nature have been slower to fall into the complete form of the factory system. The slow progress of the power-loom in cotton and wool until after 1830 is explained by these considerations. The stocking-frame held out against machinery still longer, and hand work still plays an important part in several processes of silk manufacture. Even now, in the very centre of the factory system, Bolton, the old hand-weaving is represented by a few belated survivors.[82]
(_f_) _Skilled Workmanship._--High skill in manipulation or treatment of material, the element of art infused into handicraft, gives the latter an advantage over the most skilful machinery, or over such machinery as can economically be brought into competition with it. In some of the metal trades, in pottery and glass-making there are many processes which have not been able to dispense with human skill. In these manufactures, moreover, more progress is attributable to specific inventions than to the adoption of the common machinery and motor-power which are not largely available in the most important processes.
From these considerations it will appear that where an industry is large and regular in character, it falls more readily and completely under the control of machinery, where it is small and irregular it conforms more slowly and partially to the new methods. Most of the extractive industries of agriculture, stock-raising, fishing, mining, hunting, are irregular by reason of the nature of their material and its subjection to influences, geological, chemical, climatic, and others which are but slightly under calculation or human control. The final processes by which commodities are adapted to the use of individual consumers necessarily partake of the irregularity or variety of human tastes and desires. We shall therefore find most regularity in the intermediate processes where the raw materials, having been extracted from nature, are being endowed with those qualities of shape, position, etc., which are required to enable them to satisfy human wants. The manufacturing stages where machinery finds fullest application are in nearly all cases intermediate stages of production. Even where machine-production seems directly to satisfy some human want, there are commonly some final processes required which involve individual skill. Almost all products which satisfy the desires of man pass through a large number of productive processes which may be classed as extractive, transport, manufacturing, and distributive. These are, of course, not in all cases clearly distinguishable. Mixed with the extractive processes of mining and wheat-raising are several processes of transport and manufacture: the various stages of manufacture may be broken by stages of transport: a final process of manipulation or manufacture may precede the final act of distribution, as in the sale of drugs to the consumer. But, generally speaking, these four kinds of productive processes mark four historic stages in the passage from raw material to finished commodity.