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4.The powers of machinery to do work that requires too much accuracy to be done by hand are perhaps best seen in some branches of the metal industries in which the system of Interchangeable Parts is being rapidly developed.It is only after long training and with much care and labour that the hand can make one piece of metal accurately to resemble or to fit into another: and after all the accuracy is not perfect.But this is just the work which a well made machine can do most easily and most perfectly.For instance, if sowing and reaping machines had to be made by hand, their first cost would be very high; and when any part of them was broken, it could be replaced only at a great cost by sending the machine back to the manufacturer or by bringing a highly skilled mechanic to the machine.But as it is, the manufacturer keeps in a store many facsimiles of the broken part, which were made by the same machinery, and are therefore interchangeable with it.A farmer in the North-West of America, perhaps a hundred miles away from any good mechanic's shop, can yet use complicated machinery with confidence; since he knows that by telegraphing the number of the machine and the number of any part of it which he has broken, he will get by the next train a new piece which he can himself fit into its place.The importance of this principle of interchangeable parts has been but recently grasped; there are however many signs that it will do more than any other to extend the use of machine-made machinery to every branch of production, including even domestic and agricultural work.(6*)The influences which machinery exerts over the character of modern industry are well illustrated in the manufacture of watches.Some years ago the chief seat of this business was in French Switzerland; where the subdivision of labour was carried far, though a great part of the work was done by a more or less scattered population.There were about fifty distinct branches of trade each of which did one small part of the work.In almost all of them a highly specialized manual skill was required, but very little judgment; the earnings were generally low, because the trade had been established too long for those in it to have anything like a monopoly, and there was no difficulty in bringing up to it any child with ordinary intelligence.But this industry is now yielding ground to the American system of making watches by machinery, which requires very little specialized manual skill.In fact the machinery is becoming every year more and more automatic, and is getting to require less and less assistance from the human hand.But the more delicate the machine's power, the greater is the judgment and carefulness which is called for from those who see after it.Take for instance a beautiful machine which feeds itself with steel wire at one end, and delivers at the other tiny screws of exquisite form; it displaces a great many operatives who had indeed acquired a very high and specialized manual skill, but who lived sedentary lives, straining their eyesight through microscopes, and finding in their work very little scope for any faculty except a mere command over the use of their fingers.But the machine is intricate and costly, and the person who minds it must have an intelligence, and an energetic sense of responsibility, which go a long way towards making a fine character; and which, though more common than they were, are yet sufficiently rare to be able to earn a very high rate of pay.No doubt this is an extreme case; and the greater part of the work done in a watch factory is much simpler.But much of it requires higher faculties than the old system did, and those engaged in it earn on the average higher wages; at the same time it has already brought the price of a trustworthy watch within the range of the poorest classes of the community, and it is showing signs of being able soon to accomplish the very highest class of work.(7*)Those who finish and put together the different parts of a watch must always have highly specialized skill: but most of the machines which are in use in a watch factory are not different in general character from those which are used in any other of the lighter metal trades: in fact many of them are mere modifications of the turning lathes and of the slotting, punching, drilling, planing, shaping, milling machines and a few others, which are familiar to all engineering trades.This is a good illustration of the fact that while there is a constantly increasing subdivision of labour, many of the lines of division between trades which are nominally distinct are becoming narrower and less difficult to be passed.In old times it would have been very small comfort to watch-makers, who happened to be suffering from a diminished demand for their wares, to be told that the gun-making trade was in want of extra hands; but most of the operatives in a watch factory would find machines very similar to those with which they were familiar, if they strayed into a gun-making factory or sewing-machine factory, or a factory for making textile machinery.A watch factory with those who worked in it could be converted without any overwhelming loss into a sewing-machine factory; almost the only condition would be that in the new factory no one should be put to work which required a higher order of general intelligence, than that to which he was already accustomed.