Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/256

222 where such articles exist in abundance, is a matter of great importance to any establishment which consumes them in large quantities; and it has been found, in some instances, that the expense of sending persons to great distances, purposely to discover and to collect such produce, has been amply repaid. Thus it has happened, that the snowy mountains of Sweden and Norway, as well as the warmer hills of Corsica, have been almost stripped of one of their vegetable productions, by agents sent expressly from one of our largest establishments for the dying of calicos. Owing to the same command of capital, and to the scale upon which the operations of large factories are carried on, their returns admit of the expense of sending out agents to examine into the wants and tastes of distant countries, as well as of trying experiments, which, although profitable to them, would be ruinous to smaller establishments possessing more limited resources.

These opinions have been so well expressed in the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on the Woollen Trade, in 1806, that we shall close this chapter with an extract, in which the advantages of great factories are summed up.

"Your committee have the satisfaction of seeing, that the apprehensions entertained of factories are not only vicious in principle, but they are practically erroneous; to such a degree, that even the very opposite principles might be reasonably entertained. Nor would it be difficult to prove, that the factories, to a certain extent at least, and in the present day, seem absolutely necessary to the well-being of the domestic system; supplying those very particulars wherein the domestic system must be acknowledged to be