Factor
an agent or substitute, especially a steward or agent of an estate, appointed by a landowner to manage the estate, collect rents, let lands, etc.; also an agent employed by merchants to transact business for them in other places, as to buy and sell, to negotiate bills of exchange, etc. He differs from a broker in that he is intrusted with the possession and disposal of the goods, property, etc., and may buy and sell in his own name.
One of several circumstances, elements, or influences on which a certain result depends, and which have to be taken into consideration in estimating the probable results of any events.
In algebra, a name given to any quantity which constitutes an algebraical expression: thus a + b and a b are factors of the product a² - b². In arithmetic, the multiplier and the multiplicand; the numbers from the multiplication of which the product results. Prime factors in mathematics, the prime factors of a quantity are those factors which cannot be exactly divided by any other quantity except 1. Every number has 1 for a prime factor. The prime factors of 12 are 1, 2, 2, and 3.
FACTORIES FACTORIES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM, the basis of modern industry.
The change from the old handicrafts system of manufacturing, in which practically all the needs of life were manufactured by individual men in their own homes, to the present factory system, where commodities are manufactured in great quantities by a large number of people co-operatively, was primarily caused by the invention of steam-driven machinery. Factory production may be said to have begun with the invention, by James Hargreaves, of the spinning jinny, a machine which obviously could not be operated by one person. The invention of the jinny, spinning vast quantities of yarn, naturally stimulated the efforts which resulted in the invention of machinery for weaving. These machines were put up in one large building, and gradually the entire process of manufacturing cloth by machinery was carried on in the one factory. Further inventions carried the system into the production of other commodities, and so gradually changed the whole basis of industry, the hand tools being gradually scrapped and the workers becoming the attendants of the machines instead.
The speed resulting from the use of machinery was merely one of the big gains achieved through the new system.
There was also the great economy resulting from organization. Under the handicrafts system one man carded the cotton, another spun it, and a third wove it, and between each process there was the delay necessitated by the removal of the material from one house to another.
Each of these transfers of material, in fact, amounted to a separate commercial transaction, since the one handicraftsman purchased it from the other, until the weaver finally sold the finished cloth to the merchant. In the factory the material passed quickly from one machine to another, in a continuous stream.
This economy of labor and time has progressed equally with the invention of new machinery. Each process involved in the manufacture of any commodity represents a separate operation. Each workman, with the aid of machinery, is continuously employed on the one process, without having to pass from the one to the other. This in itself makes for speed, and also eliminates the skill needed in the entire manufacture of one article by one operator. This economy of organization has probably been brought to its highest degree of efficiency in this country, in the production of automobiles, as in the Ford factories of Detroit, and the manufacture of watches, as in the case of the cheap Ingersoll watches. Here the vast scale on which FACTORIES production is carried on is another element of economy, since the minutest operation becomes the work of an entire department of the plant by itself. Another illustration of the efficiency of the factory system is seen in the killing and dressing of meats by the large packing houses of this country. Where the killing was formerly done by the independent small butcher, one man could kill and dress only a very few pigs or beeves in one day. Under the factory system thousands are killed and dressed by a correspondingly small number of men, each motion involved being performed with lightning speed by one man.
It was in England and Scotland, where machinery was first applied to manufacturing, that factories were first established. But the system followed very soon after in this country, especially in New England, where the many small streams and the rivers furnished hydraulic power for the machinery. The first factory in which the entire series of processes involved in making finished cotton cloth out of the raw material were carried on under one roof was put into operation in Waltham, Mass., in 1814. Similar textile mills were soon established all over New England and, after the Civil War, were introduced in the South, with Northern capital.
The chief result of the factory system of industry has been the tremendous cheapening of the cost of production.
As an instance, in the days of handicrafts industry, in England, woolen goods were cheaper than cotton, because wool was a home product and cotton must be imported from abroad. So little was the amount of goods which could be produced under this system that the scarcity of wool as compared to cotton had no influence in raising the cost.
The cheapening of the cost of production as a social gain, however, has been more than offset by the evils which the factory system has worked on the working classes. First of all, the large majority of skilled artisans were thrown out of employment. Unskilled labor was found quite as suitable as skilled, and, furthermore, in the manufacture of a given commodity much greater quantities could be produced by one-tenth as many workers, the machinery doing most of the actual work. Then it was found that women and children could serve quite as well as men in attending the machinery, and large numbers of men were left out of employment. Added to this, the workers could now only find employment under the roofs of the masters, who owned the machines and the factories, and so they came un- FACTORY INSPECTION der their personal autocratic control.
With this came a gradual reduction of wages, also brought about by the keen competition for work among the workers themselves, a natural result from the fact that only a portion of them were needed to work in the factories. Thus there was a tendency to lower wages to a point where they could only sustain the lives of the cheapest workers, the women and children, and the hours of labor were extended to the limits of human endurance.
These inhuman tendencies were first checked by legislation, known as the famous Factory Acts, which first of all shortened the hours of labor (see EIGHT- HOUR DAY). Afterward, both in England and this country, came legislation indicating minimum wages for women and children, and, in rarer instances, for men as well.
Another, and even stronger, check on the evils of factory labor has been the gradual growth in power of labor organizations. The organized workers, through their economic organizations, have brought such pressure to bear on the manufacturers that gradually conditions have been improved.