Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/290

256 remainder being divided into thirteen parts, one of these parts would be divided amongst the capitalists and one belong to each workman. Thus each man would, in ordinary circumstances, make up his usual wages of two pounds weekly. If the factory went on prosperously, the wages of the men would increase; if the sales fell off they would be diminished. It is important that every person employed in the establishment, whatever might be the amount paid for his services, whether he act as labourer or porter, as the clerk who keeps the accounts, or as book-keeper employed for a few hours once a week to superintend them, should receive one half of what his service is worth in fixed salary, the other part varying with the success of the undertaking.

(312.) In such a factory, of course, division of labour would be introduced; some of the workmen would be constantly employed in forging the fire-irons, others in polishing them, others in piercing and forming the fenders. It would be essential that the time occupied in each process, and also its expense, should be well ascertained; information which would soon be obtained very precisely. Now, if a workman should find a mode of shortening any of the processes, he would confer a benefit on the whole party, even if they received but a small part of the resulting profit. For the promotion of such discoveries, it would be desirable that those who make them should either receive some reward, to be determined after a sufficient trial by a committee assembling periodically; or if they be of high importance, that the discoverer should receive one-half, or two-thirds, of the profit resulting from them during the next