A system of machinery, whether it reposes on the mere co-operation
 of similar machines, as in weaving, or on a combination of different machines,
 as in spinning, constitutes in itself a huge automaton, whenever it is
 driven by a self-acting prime mover. But although the factory as a whole
 be driven by its steam-engine, yet either some of the individual machines
 may require the aid of the workman for some of their movements (such aid
 was necessary for the running in of the mule carriage, before the invention
 of the self-acting mule, and is still necessary in fine-spinning mills);
 or, to enable a machine to do its work, certain parts of it may require
 to be handled by the workman like a manual tool; this was the case in machine-makers’
 workshops, before the conversion of the slide rest into a self-actor. As
 soon as a machine executes, without man’s help, all the movements requisite
 to elaborate the raw material, needing only attendance from him, we have
 an automatic system of machinery, and one that is susceptible of constant
 improvement in its details. Such improvements as the apparatus that stops
 a drawing frame, whenever a sliver breaks, and the self-acting stop, that
 stops the power-loom so soon as the shuttle bobbin is emptied of weft,
 are quite modern inventions. As an example, both of continuity of production,
 and of the carrying out of the automatic principle, we may take a modern
 paper mill. In the paper industry generally, we may advantageously study
 in detail not only the distinctions between modes of production based on
 different means of production, but also the connexion of the social conditions
 of production with those modes: for the old German paper-making furnishes
 us with a sample of handicraft production; that of Holland in the 17th
 and of France in the 18th century with a sample of manufacturing in the
 strict sense; and that of modern England with a sample of automatic fabrication
 of this article. Besides these, there still exist, in India and China,
 two distinct antique Asiatic forms of the same industry.