Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/405

Rh personal access, and whose capability to fulfil any contract is best known to him. With these, he will communicate and offer to take their orders for the new machine; nor will he think of writing to foreign customers, so long as he finds the home demand sufficient to employ the whole force of his establishment. Thus, therefore, the machine-maker is himself interested in giving the first advantage of any new improvement to his own countrymen.

(444.) In point of fact, the machine-makers in London greatly prefer home orders, and do usually charge an additional price to their foreign customers. Even the measure of this preference may be found in the evidence before the Committee on the Export of Machinery. It is differently estimated by various engineers; but appears to vary from five up to twenty-five per cent. on the amount of the order. The reasons are:—1. If the machinery be complicated, one of the best workmen, well accustomed to the mode of work in the factory, must be sent out to put it up; and there is always a considerable chance of his having offers that will induce him to remain abroad. 2. If the work be of a more simple kind, and can be put up without the help of an English workman, yet for the credit of the house which supplies it, and to prevent the accidents likely to occur from the want of sufficient instruction in those who use it, the parts are frequently made stronger, and examined more attentively, than they would be for an English purchaser. Any defect or accident also would be attended with more expense to repair, if it occurred abroad, than in England,

(445.) The class of workmen who make machinery,