Factories
Factories
Machinery is no more an economic category than is the ox which draws the plough. The modern workshop, which is based on the use of machinery, is a social relation of production, an economic category.
Karl Marx, The Misery of Philosophy, 1846/47
Factories are large commercial enterprises in which semi-finished or finished goods are made ready for the market (Trade) in a process organised on the basis of a time schedule (Chronometer), with a & division of labour and the help of motors (Energy) and machines (Technology) in closed spaces. Investments (Capital) are needed to build and operate factories. The workers, educated to different degrees (Education), are paid different amounts (Wages) for their work.
The age of industrialisation and the factory buildings that it brought with it, dramatically changed the nature of societies and landscapes. Railway lines and smoking factory chimneys imposed themselves on the rural landscape as agricultural endeavour gradually made way for factory-based labour.