MANUFACTURES (ML. manufactura, from Let. manufactus, menu foetus, made by hand, from mane, ab1. sg. of manes, hand, and factus, p.p. of faeere, to make). In a broad sense of the term, manufactures are such forms of industry as elaborate for economic use materials which are themselves the product of industry. Manu factures are thus distinguished from extractive industry, which procures wealth from nature in its primary forms. In practice it is difficult to draw a hard and fast line between these two types of industry, since many commodities which are commonly classed as raw materials have been subject to one or more elaborative processes, as, for example, raw cotton, raw sugar, pig iron. The practice of American statisticians is to class with extractive industry processes which are di rectly connected with the exploitation of natural products. Butter and cheese which are made on the farm are treated as agricultural products; when produced in factories distinct from the form they are classed with manufactures. A product in its earliest merchantable form may then be classed with raw materials; when sub jected to further processes of elaboration it be comes a manufactured commodity. For the tech nical legal distinction in this matter, see MANU FACTURED ARTICLE.
Again, many commodities undergo minor changes incidental to consumption. The prepa ration of food may be cited as a case in point. Such processes are not usually placed under manufactures. If the preparation of fond is carried on in separate establishment,: with a view to supplying a market, it will fall under the head of manufactures. This distinction is t to make in practice. The twelfth census of the United States excludes from manufactures proper most forms of order produetion, confining the term to production of standard commodities for a general market.
From a theoretical point of view, however, it is better to include under manufactures all proc esscs of elaboration of merchantable materials into commodities primarily designed for sale.
In this sense of the term manufactures pre suppose a developed economic life. They did not exist when each household produced exclusively for its own consumption. In West ern Europe they were first carried on the guilds (q.v.), forming, however, but an insignifi vent part of the economic life. With the rise of capital in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. manufactures were carried on more extensively under the domestic system. 'lie' eapitalist-iner chant put out materials to be worked up at home by workmen whose chief occupation was usually agriculture. This form of manufacture still ex ists in America and England : it is widely prac ticed in France, Germany, and and in some European districts, notably in Norway, it is the prevalent form.
Tn the more advanced nations domestic manu facture has been largely supplanted by the fac tory system (q.v.). The extension of the market in early modern times, requiring a vastly in creased production of goods of standard kinds, led first to excessive division of labor and later to the invention of machinery. The first indus tries to respond to these influences were the textile and the iron industries as discussed in detail under the heads of TEXTILE MANUFACTUR ING and IRON AND STEEL, METALLURGY OF.