Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/400

366 structure, any improved mode of making it. If, as would most usually happen, he should be unsuccessful in this attempt, he must endeavour to contrive improvements in his own machinery, or to acquire information respecting those which have been made in the factories of the richer country. Perhaps after an ineffectual attempt to obtain by letters the information he requires, he sets out to visit in person the factories of his competitors. To a foreigner and rival manufacturer such establishments are not easily accessible; and the more recent the improvements, the less likely he will be to gain access to them. His next step, therefore, will be to obtain the knowledge he is in search of from the workmen employed in using or making the machines. Without drawings or an examination of the machines themselves, this process will be slow and tedious; and he will be liable, after all, to be deceived by artful and designing workmen, and be exposed to many chances of failure. But suppose he returns to his own country with perfect drawings and instructions, he must then begin to construct his improved machines: and these he cannot execute either so cheaply or so well as his rivals in the richer countries. But after the lapse of some time, we shall suppose the machines thus laboriously improved, to be at last completed, and in working order.

(440.) Let us now consider what will have occurred to the manufacturer in the rich country. He will, in the first instance, have realized a profit by supplying the home market, at the usual price, with an article which it costs him less to produce; he will then reduce the price both in the home and foreign market,