48 SOCIAL SCIENTIST mechanism (lor example., gears and crankshafts) and the tool (the cutter in a milling machine, for example). With the evolution of machinery and modern industry(of which the machine as such is only the starting point) two major consequences in the technique of production follow. A machine can bring into play a number of tools simultaneously, using a single motor power, thus escaping "the organic limits that hedge in the tools of a handicraftsman." l Further, with the conversion of the tool from an implement manually handled by the skilled handicraft worker into an implement of a machine, "the motive mechanism also acquired an independent form, entirely emancipated fiom the restraints of human strength."2 With this development, it becomes possible to have a single motive mechanism driving a number of machines simultaneously. With a single power source one can run a number of machines each with its own transmitting mechanism and tool. These may be called "complex machinery systems." Machine-making Technology The phase ofmachineiy and modern industry rests to begin with, on its manufacturing foundations. The manufacture of its crucial component (the machine) was, at this stage, handicraft-based. To quote Marx, modern industry was crippled in its complete development, so long as... the machine owed its existence to personal strength and personal skill, and depended on the muscular development, the keenness of sight, and the cunning of hand, witli which the detail workmen in manufactures, and the natural labourers in handicrafts, wielded their dwarfish implements.3 This led both to high cost, and a necessarily low rate of expansion of production by machinery in so far as the output of machines was constrained by the availability of highly skilled labour. Further development of modern industry required larger and larger prime movers, gears and shafting and tools which the prevailing technical basis of manufacture and handicraft was incapable of producing. Similarly the means of communication and transport handed down from the manufacturing period soon became unbearable trammels on modern industry, with its feverish haste of production, its enormous extent, its constant flinging of capital and labour from one sphere of production into another and its newly-created connections with the markets of the whole world.4 Eventually through a series of technical innovations, most crucially the slide rest, and the steam engine—"a prime mover capable of exerting any amount offeree, and yet under perfect control"—machines came to be made by other machines and (relatively) unskilled labour.8 W^th this development, modern industry gradually came to conquer most branches of production in England, even as England was conquering much of the