manufacture of a commodity into several distinct branches, often
undertaken in different localities and with wholly different machinery,
prevents the skilled worker in one branch from passing into another, and
thus limits his practical freedom as an industrial worker. On the other
hand, this has its compensating advantage in the tendency of different
trades to adopt analogous kinds of machinery and similar processes.
Thus, while a machinist engaged in a screw manufactory is so specialized
that he cannot easily pass from one process to another process in the
screw trade, he will find himself able to obtain employment in other
hardware manufactures which employ the same or similar processes.

§ 5. Are all Men equal before the Machine?--It is sometimes said that
"all men become equal before the machine." This is only true in the
sense that there are certain large classes of machine-work which require
in the worker such attention, care, endurance, and skill as are within
the power of most persons possessed of ordinary capacities of mind and
body. In such forms of machine-work it is sometimes possible for women
and children to compete with men, and even to take their places by their
ability to offer their work at a cheaper price. The effect of machinery
development in thus throwing on the labour-market a large quantity of
women and children competitors is one of those serious questions which
will occupy our attention in a later chapter. It is here sufficient to
remember that it was this effect which led to a general recognition of
the fact that machinery and the factory system could not be trusted to
an unfettered system of _laissez faire_. The Factory Acts, and the whole
body of legislative enactments, interfering with "freedom of contract"
between employer and employed, resulted from the fact that machinery
enabled women and children to be employed in many branches of productive
work from which their physical weakness precluded them before.