THE CHARACTER OF MANUFACTURING COMMUNITIES The Three Stages of Manufacturing.—Manufacturing is sometimes called secondary production. It takes the materials derived from primary production,—from farming, mining, herding, lumbering, fishing, and hunting,—and converts them into new products. Secondary production falls into three stages: (1) primitive manufacturing, illus trated by an Indian of Guatemala who carves a handle for his big machete and then uses the completed tool to fashion a bowl from a gourd; (2) simple manufacturing, where local raw materials are converted into forms that can be conveniently shipped or kept without injury, as in the milling of wheat, the shaping of lumber, cotton ginning, ore smelting, and the preparation of raw sugar; and (3) complex manu facturing, in which the location of raw materials makes relatively little difference, since the value of the final product depends mainly upon the amount of labor which it requires, as in the making of locomotives, dyes, fine cloth, and high-grade chemicals.
The three stages are well illustrated by shoemaking. Suppose a Mexican herdsman kills a steer and tans the hide at home. Then with no tools except a knife, awl, and needle he shapes the leather into a rough pair of soft-soled shoes. That is primitive manufacturing. But suppose the hide of a steer is shipped along with many others to a local tannery. It is there treated according to the methods of simple manu facturing. First it is softened in lime pits. This makes it ready for a machine which scrapes off the hair, the epidermis, and the fleshy inner part of the skin. Then the lime is removed with acid, and the hide is scraped and pressed to remove the fatty parts. Next the hides are washed and then put in tanning pits where they gradually pass from pits containing weak solutions to those where the solution is strong. After weeks or months in the pits the hides are cleansed, bleached, scoured, and oiled or greased. The whole process of tanning takes from three months with poor leather to eight or ten with the highest grades. The
tannery is a good example of simple manufacturing for two reasons: First, although it employs machinery and puts the goods through a number of processes, the final product is not very different from the original raw material. The chief difference is that it has been made more durable, usable, and easy to ship. Second, the tanning industry depends largely on local raw materials or else is located where raw hides can reach it at relatively slight expense.
Let us carry the hides to a shoe factory and see what happens to them in a complex industry. Here the workmen are largely specialists.
The ordinary shoe consists of eight or ten pieces of leather in addition to the lining, eyelets, lacings, nails, pegs, and perhaps certain parts made of cotton cloth, felt, paper, or rubber. Each part is made by a different workman using a different type of machine. Then the parts go to another set of operatives and are put together with the help of special sewing machines of various kinds according to the parts that are to be united. Other machines drive nails, insert the eyelets, smooth and polish the soles and heels, and perform a score of other operations. When the shoe is finished it not only is wholly different from the original hide in appearance, but it contains materials derived from many dif ferent sources. Moreover, a large part of its value is due to the work that• has been put into it rather than to the raw materials. The shoes which are the product of complex manufacturing are very different from those which the Indian turns out as the result of his primitive manufacturing.
Primitive Manufacturing.—Primitive manufacturing is almost the only kind in many tropical regions including a large part of Africa I and South America, except where the white man has introduced some thing else. It also is the chief kind of manufacturing throughout the greater part of the continent of Asia.