engaged, the development of
machinery has been generally slower. This condition often unites with
(_b_) or (_c_) to retain an industry in the "domestic" class. A large
mass of essentially "irregular" work requiring a certain delicacy of
manipulation, which by reason of its narrowness of scope is yet easily
attained, and which makes but slight demands upon muscular force or
intelligence, has remained outside machine-production. Important
industries containing several processes of this nature have been slower
to fall into the complete form of the factory system. The slow progress
of the power-loom in cotton and wool until after 1830 is explained by
these considerations. The stocking-frame held out against machinery
still longer, and hand work still plays an important part in several
processes of silk manufacture. Even now, in the very centre of the
factory system, Bolton, the old hand-weaving is represented by a few
belated survivors.[82]

(_f_) _Skilled Workmanship._--High skill in manipulation or treatment
of material, the element of art infused into handicraft, gives the
latter an advantage over the most skilful machinery, or over such
machinery as can economically be brought into competition with it. In
some of the metal trades, in pottery and glass-making there are many
processes which have not been able to dispense with human skill. In
these manufactures, moreover, more progress is attributable to
specific inventions than to the adoption of the common machinery and
motor-power which are not largely available in the most important
processes.

From these considerations it will appear that where an industry is
large and regular in character, it falls more readily and completely
under the control of machinery, where it is small and irregular it
conforms more slowly and partially to the new methods. Most of the
extractive industries of agriculture, stock-raising, fishing, mining,
hunting, are irregular by reason of the nature of their material and
its subjection to influences, geological, chemical, climatic, and
others which are but slightly under calculation or human control. The
final processes by which commodities are adapted to the use of
individual consumers necessarily partake of the irregularity or
variety of human tastes and desires. We shall therefore find most
regularity in the intermediate processes where the raw materials,
having been extracted from nature, are being endowed with those
qualities of shape,