MANITFACTURES (froin Latin manus, a hand, and facto, I make). Bearing the. significance which it gained with its derivation, this word describes the first structures, processes, and compositions designed by the mind of man, and executed by his hand labor, with more accuracy than it does the accomplishment of the machinery of the.
present day, to which it is more generally applied. The first articles of manufacture must have been such as could be successfully employed for procuring the necessaries of life; and, in fact, the first of such articles that have been discovered, representing the ear liest ages of man's existence upon earth of which any traces reniain, have been rude mills for grinding grain; knives and other offensive weapons for destroying game; fish-hooks; pointed implements, which evidently filled the place of needles; and stone hammers, axes, chisels, and other tools, used for building purposes (see LAKE DWELLINGS; LABOR). The processes to enforce nature and render its powers applicable to the preservation of human life were therefore, and in this order, the acquisition of food; the clothing of the body to protect it from the elements; and the erection of dwellings, partly for the same purpose, and partly for safety against wild and dangerous animals, and human. foes hardly less dangerous in their savage condition. And it is to be observed that the ingenuity and toil of man have ever since been devoted to these purposes; added to. which have been the necessities arising from improved or extended mental conditions, and the spread of wants in a direction other than material. Manufactures have there fore included food-processes, the manipulation of fabrics, and building-construction; to which have been added, in the course of time, the art of war, the arts of design, and applied science, as agencies to fulfill the duties imposed by an ever changing and ever advancing.civilization. It is one of the fortunate incidents of human history that with few exceptions the processes of labor applied to the manufactures may be traced even in our day as these existed at the very beginning. It is possible to follow any art to its. inception, and to trace its history to the first rude efforts of primeval man, with a con siderable degree of accuracy, affording, when the results of such an investigation are brought into juxtaposition, a comprehensive view of the entire field of human art_ Such investigations have been made, and their collected results exist in the industria museums of Europe and America. Remarkable also is the occurrence of the earliest methods iu use in the arts, in actual practice among savage and semi-civilized races in different parts of the world in our own time. The natives of Central and South America, Africa, and certain parts of Asia still employ the same processes in agriculture that were in use thousands of years ago; mills of the same character as those used by the Egyptians many centuries before the.Christiau era are still in active employment in northern Africa; and pottery of the same design and fashioned after the same methods. and with the same tools as among the earliest races, are still made by their descendants in different parts of the world. And while we may thus view at one glance, in opera tion, methods and tools divided in actual history by many centuries, we are also enabled to follow the progress of the arts and manufactures, their improvement or their deca dence, through existing specimens of workmanship. From the beginning in the aggre gate--whatever may have been the case with certain nations or races--man seems to have been impressed by a restless spirit, and to have been continually provoked to an active ingenuity in labor. The vely first instances of handiwork that have come to our knowledge through the labors of explorers have illustrated the impulse towards improve ment. From the stone age to the neolithic, and from that to the age of iron—as we generally record our evidences of these periods—the prog,ress not only in excellence of workmanship, but in beauty, is remarkable. And while it is easy to understand the mental processes that induced endeavor after a higher quality of article when the improvement represented a practical good to be achieved, it is necessary for us to recon cile our ideas of prehistoric man with the fact that he was influenced by a leaning towards the Tsthetic, and that even so early he showed signs of struggling toward an improved art-taste. The fact is important that in all the history of manufactures the beautiful has. been allied with the practical,,with a persistence which seems to have the character of a. law.—The next important tendency to be observed in viewing the history of manufac tures is that of applying the forces of nature to the reduction of human labor. As it is to this tendency that we owe the inventions which so extended the scope of the arts, its importance will hardly be underrated. Yet it is to be observed that in the beginning-
the forces of nature, expressed and operative through such rude mechanical devices as were at first invented, were called into operation only- when the power of man bad proved unequal to the task in hand. Man labored to the extent of his capacity, and only then supplemented his own efforts by the employment of the mechanical powcrs. There is nothing therefore inexplicable in the fact that while we know the ancients. possessed a knowledge of the rnore hidden forces, and the means to apply them, they did not m. ake use of these in instances where they might, but seem to have preferred the exercise of human force and ingenuity. A noble ambition appears to have influenced man in those early days; impelling him to push to the utmost his individual capacity; and to place upon record, by means of his work, the comprehensive nature of man's ability, his power to meet emergencies, his control, within himself, of a microcosm representing all the possible constructive capacity of the entire world of mechanism. The arts of Greece and Rome, of Babylon and Nineveh, Carthage and Plienicia, as these have been pre served to us, sufficiently illust"ate this phase of our subject. But the concentration cut of which grew marvelous excellence presently ceased to exist; the fall of Nineveh, Carthage, Greece, and Rome, the inroads of barbarians, and the distribution of power over the face of Europe, blotted out for the time all prog-ress in the arts;. and the " dark ages" settled down upon civilization through a gloomy period of centuries, to the utter check of improvement, and to the destruction of the arts and manufactures, except so far as these contibuted to positive necessities and to sensual desires. Out of this period of inaction and stagnation of creative ability, civilization burst forth in the 13th c., beginning the "middle ages" and the renaimance, a time when man reached the highest pitch of sldll in hand-work, and when manufactures attained an excellence in beauty, capacity for service, and durability, which they have never since surpassed even if they have approached. The history of the arts and crafts of Europe in the middle ages shows a surprising advance in all directions. The progress in merit in the fine arts has been fully recognized, and this was reflected in the condition of the crafts and the improve ment in manufactures. Directly we see it in the wood-carvings of Brabant, Flanders, :and Italy; in the wonderful art displayed in the manufacture of fictile ware; in the form given to bronze, iron, and brass; and in the intricate and beautiful carving of ivory. The most magnificent armor, displaying wcrkmanship of exquisite beauty, is of this period. And so the most commonplace objects—the ordinary utensils of the household, the very architecture of the houses themselves—reflected the splendid genius of the mas ters of art. And above all, we are bound to consider the honesty of the workmanship peculiar to those days. The linen and wool fabrics of Holland and Flanders have never -since been improved upon. The heavy and costly damasks and satins and silks and velvets, which played so large a part in the costumes of the period, were honest stuffs, -whose lasting as well as artistic qualities cannot be gainsaid. The furniture of the period was solid and firmly put together, besides being ornamented and decorated with correct taste and refined sentiment. In the reign of king John in England, the wealthier classes used iron chandeliers and candelabra, and each of these was finished and shaped by hand with the hammer and with the truest art-taste. The story of the Della Robbias, and their labors iu search of a special glaze for china, is equaled only by the later story of Bernard Palissy, whose struggles after the same secret, lost again, have furnished the material for many a book. In those days the blacksmith, and the cordwainer or shoe maker, was as proud of his skill, and as earnest in the fulfillment of what he deemed his obligation to his craft, as was the most esteemed artist of Florence or Venice under the patronage of the 3fedici. Faust, who became a printer, was a goldsmith in 3Ientz; Hans Sachs was a cobbler; Beuvenuto Cellini was a gold and silver smith; Andrea del Surto, the painter, vvas a goldsmith's apprentice; and Ghiberti, who executed the two gates of the baptistery in Florence, which Michael Angelo said were " worthy of Para dise," was the son of a goldsmith. Thus, at that time, art aud manufacture went hand in hand; the union of the beautiful and the useful being considered not only desirable, but incuinbent on the artificer as a part of his trade.