time. Thus this system is the reverse of that illustrated by the carriage-making, in which a number of crafts had to be combined into the manufacture of one article; whereas in this (pin or needlemaking may be taken as an illustration) a number of processes which once formed portions of one craft, now become each of them a separate craft in itself.
From this follows the complete interdependence of each human being forming a part of the workman-machine, no one of whom can produce anything by himself. The unit of labour is now no longer an individual, but a group.
But all these processes, however subdivided, and however combined, were still acts of handicraft; the same necessities which forced the simple co-operation of the first capitalistic period into division of labour, now forced the latter system to yet further development; though, 246 indeed, other causes besides merely economic ones were at work, such as the growing aggregation of people in towns and the consequent increasing division of labour in Society itself as to the occupations of its members.
This final development was the substitution of the machine and the complete factory-system for the “division-of-labour” and “workshop” systems. Under the new system the group of workmen, every member of which by the performance of a special piece of handicraft turned out some special part of the article made, gave place to a machine which produces the results of all these manoeuvres combined together; or to an association of machines acting in a group, as the workmen acted. The workman is no longer the principal factor in the work, the tools that he handled are now worked by a mechanism connected by another mechanism with the power, whatever it may be, that puts the whole in motion. This is the true machine of modern times, as contrasted with the mere tool-machine of the earlier period, which was an aid to 247 the workman and not a substitute for him. Furthermore, the workshop gives place to the factory, which is not a mere assemblage of machines under