The revolution in the industrial methods which is the necessary
 result of the revolution in the instruments of production, is effected
 by a medley of transition forms. These forms vary according to the extent
 to which the sewing-machine has become prevalent in one branch, of industry
 or the other, to the time during which it has been in operation, to the
 previous condition of the workpeople, to the preponderance of manufacture,
 of handicrafts or of domestic industry, to the rent of the workrooms, [190] &c. In dressmaking, for instance, where the labour for the most part was already organised, chiefly by simple co-operation, the sewing-machine
 at first formed merely a new factor in that manufacturing industry. In
 tailoring, shirtmaking, shoemaking, &c., all the forms are intermingled.
 Here the factory system proper. There middlemen receive the raw material
 from the capitalist en chef, and group around their sewing-machines,
 in “chambers” and “garrets,” from 10 to 50 or more workwomen. Finally, as is always the case with machinery when not organised into a system,
 and when it can also be used in dwarfish proportions, handicraftsman and
 domestic workers, along with their families, or with a little extra labour
 from without, make use of their own sewing-machines. [191] The system actually prevalent in England is, that the capitalist concentrates a large number of machines on his premises, and then distributes the produce
 of those machines for further manipulation amongst the domestic workers.
 [192] The variety of the transition forms, however,
 does not conceal the tendency to conversion into the factory system proper.
 This tendency is nurtured by the very nature of the sewing-machine, the
 manifold uses of which push on the concentration, under one roof, and one
 management, of previously separated branches of a trade. It is also favoured
 by the circumstance that preparatory needlework, and certain other operations, are most conveniently done on the premises where the machine is at work; as well as by the inevitable expropriation of the hand sewers, and of the
 domestic workers who work with their own machines. This fate has already
 in part overtaken them. The constantly increasing amount of capital invested
 in sewing-machines, [193] gives the spur to the production of, and gluts the markets with, machine-made articles, thereby giving the
 signal to the domestic workers for the sale of their machines. The overproduction
 of sewing-machines themselves, causes their producers, in bad want of a
 sale, to let them out for so much a week, thus crushing by their deadly
 competition the small owners of machines. [194] Constant changes in the construction of the machines, and their ever-increasing
 cheapness, depreciate day by day the older makes, and allow of their being
 sold in great numbers, at absurd prices, to large capitalists, who alone
 can thus employ them at a profit. Finally, the substitution of the steam-engine
 for man gives in this, as in all similar revolutions, the finishing blow.
 At first, the use of steam power meets with mere technical difficulties,
 such as unsteadiness in the machines, difficulty in controlling their speed, rapid wear and tear of the lighter machines, &c., all of which are
 soon overcome by experience. [195] If, on the one hand, the concentration of many machines in large manufactories leads to the
 use of steam power, on the other hand, the competition of steam
 with human muscles hastens on the concentration of workpeople and machines
 in large factories. Thus England is at present experiencing, not only in
 the colossal industry of making wearing apparel, but in most of the other
 trades mentioned above, the conversion of manufacture, of handicrafts,
 and of domestic work into the factory system, after each of those forms
 of production, totally changed and disorganised under the influence of
 modern industry, has long ago reproduced, and even overdone, all the horrors
 of the factory system, without participating in any of the elements of
 social progress it contains. [196]