Page:The Kinematics of Machinery.djvu/545

 prominent that it is hardly possible to avoid glancing at it. We have traced the growth of the machine from the primitive fire-drill to the Jacquard loom, and have seen to some extent the direction which its future development is likely to take. The growth of the machine has been simultaneous with that of the race; what has been the influence of the former upon the latter? The question is altogether of too wide and too general a nature to be treated here; it may be interesting, however, just to look at a few of the matters suggested by it which seem to be most directly connected with our investigations.

The present form of the industry of civilised nations dates from the introduction of the steam-engine. The ancients certainly carried on important and lucrative manufactures, but the methods of production were then essentially different from those with which we are familiar. They were in general based upon home-industry, each worker doing his own share of the whole at his own house, as is still the case among semi-civilised peoples. The germ of the modern factory appeared when the home-worker took assistants to work along with him. In the middle ages this system had already attained considerable proportions; and since the close of the last century, it has grown with increasing rapidity, until we now have huge factories, full of busy workmen and workwomen, in every part of the country. It is the steam-engine which supplies the driving energy in these factories; had we been still dependent upon the older motors—upon muscular force, or wind, or falling water—they would never have existed. It is easy to see how this prime-mover, once introduced, brought with it the rapid growth of machinery in general. Its influence made itself felt in both directions in which, as we have seen, the machine naturally grows (cf. § 51). It increased, on the one side, the  at our command; not only did it react upon itself, so that engines were made larger and more powerful, but the older hydraulic prime-movers also received new development from the ease with which they could now be constructed. It increased, on the other hand, the attainable variety of  by removing all difficulties as to want of sufficient power for their execution. In this way it has become the parent of an immense number of direct-actors, and we owe to it, in very great measure, both the advantages and the drawbacks of our modern industrial life.