Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/155

Rh that he was rather unwilling to do so, as he considered it to be out of his line of business; however, he undertook to make one as a trial. The holes for the rivets were punched by hand-punching with presses, and the 1680 holes which each tank required cost seven shillings. The Navy Board, who required a large number, proposed that he should supply forty tanks a week for many months. The magnitude of the order made it worth his while to commence manufacturer, and to make tools for the express business. Mr. Maudslay therefore offered, if the Board would give him an order for two thousand tanks, to supply them at the rate of eighty per week. The order was given: he made tools, by which the expense of punching the rivet-holes of each tank was reduced from seven shillings to nine-pence; he supplied ninety-eight tanks a week for six months, and the price charged for each was reduced from seventeen pounds to fifteen.

(165.) If, therefore, the maker of an article wish to become a manufacturer, in the more extended sense of the term, he must attend to other principles besides those mechanical ones on which the successful execution of his work depends; and he must carefully arrange the whole system of his factory in such a manner, that the article he sells to the public may be produced at as small a cost as possible. Should he not be actuated at first by motives so remote, he will, in every highly civilized country, be compelled, by the powerful stimulus of competition, to attend to the principles of the domestic economy of manufactures. At every reduction in price of the commodity he makes, he will be driven to seek compensation