Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/238

204 in which improvement should be directed. If a method could be contrived of diminishing by one fourth the time required for fixing on the heads of pins, the expense of making them would be reduced about thirteen per cent.; whilst a reduction of one half the time employed in spinning the coil of wire out of which the heads are cut, would scarcely make any sensible difference in the cost of manufacturing of the whole article. It is therefore obvious, that the attention would be much more advantageously directed to shortening the former than the latter process.

(255.) The expense of manufacturing, in a country where machinery is of the rudest kind, and manual labour is very cheap, is curiously exhibited in the price of cotton cloth in the island of Java. The cotton, in the seed, is sold by the Picul, which is a weight of about 133lbs. Not above one fourth or one fifth of this weight, however, is cotton: the natives, by means of rude wooden rollers, can only separate about 1lb. of cotton from the seed by one day's labour. A Picul of cleansed cotton, therefore, is worth between four and five times the cost of the impure article; and the prices of the same substance, in its different stages of manufacture, arefor one Picul:

Thus it appears that the expense of spinning in Java is 117 per cent. on the value of the raw material; the expense of dying thread blue is 45 per cent. on