The Factory system

The Factory system was a method of manufacturing adopted in England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Workers and machines were brought together. Workers would work in a central factory, and be paid a wage. Generally all the processes would be carried on under one roof, continuous as far as practical.

For instance in the mills pioneered by John Lombe and Richard Arkwright, the raw material would arrive at the top of the mill, and emerge as reels of spun cotton or silk at the base. In the previous traditional cottage industries, individual families would carry on a trade, such as spinning or weaving, and sell their products as they could, usually at a market. In time, particularly as equipment became more complex or expensive, or where a landlord or merchant cornered the supply of materials, the equipment to be rented out to the worker and material supplied, a process nowadays known as outsourcing.

The factory process would be brought about by an increase in demand for a commodity, which would lead to a method being devise to produce it in quantity, usually with a process requiring numbers of people to operate it.

However, it was also much more efficient to bring workers to the machines and organize their labour collectively, particularly as the factories would be located next to rivers and streams, usually the sources of power. The concentration of labour in the new factories also brought the labourers and their families to live in the new towns that rapidly grew up around the factories.

While it is often claimed that the products were inferior, and it marked the end of the individual craftman, many of the products were innovative and could not have produced in any other way.

The factory system was pushed to even greater heights of productivity by the invention of the steam engine, which played a major role in the Industrial Revolution. Originating with the production of cotton goods, the factory system spread to other areas of production, therebye creating whole new industries. The steam engine secured the triumph of the Industrial Revolution.

The factory system first spread to the U.S., when Samuel Slater brought the secret of the water frame from Britain.