So long as, in a given branch of industry, the factory system
 extends itself at the expense of the old handicrafts or of manufacture,
 the result is as sure as is the result of an encounter between an army
 furnished with breach-loaders, and one armed with bows and arrows. This
 first period, during which machinery conquers its field of action, is of
 decisive importance owing to the extraordinary profits that it helps to
 produce. These profits not only form a source of accelerated accumulation,
 but also attract into the favoured sphere of production a large part of
 the additional social capital that is being constantly created, and is
 ever on the look-out for new investments. The special advantages of this
 first period of fast and furious activity are felt in every branch of production
 that machinery invades. So soon, however, as the factory system has gained
 a certain breadth of footing and a definite degree of maturity, and, especially,
 so soon as its technical basis, machinery, is itself produced by machinery;
 so soon as coal mining and iron mining, the metal industries, and the means
 of transport have been revolutionised; so soon, in short, as the general
 conditions requisite for production by the modern industrial system have
 been established, this mode of production acquires an elasticity, 
 a capacity for sudden extension by leaps and bounds that finds no hindrance except in the supply of raw material and in the disposal of the produce. On the
 one hand, the immediate effect of machinery is to increase the supply of
 raw material in the same way, for example, as the cotton gin augmented
 the production of cotton. [151] On the other hand,
 the cheapness of the articles produced by machinery, and the improved means
 of transport and communication furnish the weapons for conquering foreign
 markets. By ruining handicraft production in other countries, machinery
 forcibly converts them into fields for the supply of its raw material.
 In this way East India was compelled to produce cotton, wool, hemp, jute,
 and indigo for Great Britain. [152] By constantly
 making a part of the hands “supernumerary,” modern industry, in all countries where it has taken root, gives a spur to emigration and 425to the colonisation of foreign lands, which are thereby converted into settlements for growing the raw material of the mother country; just as Australia,
 for example, was converted into a colony for growing wool. [153] A new and international division of labour, a division suited to the requirements of the chief centres of modern industry springs up, and converts one part of the globe into a chiefly agricultural field of production, for supplying
 the other part which remains a chiefly industrial field. This revolution
 hangs together with radical changes in agriculture which we need not here
 further inquire into. [154]