275.  Another circumstance may be noticed, which to a small extent is more advantageous to large than to small factories.  In the export of several articles of manufacture, a drawback is allowed by government, of a portion of the duty paid on the importation of the raw material.  In such circumstances, certain forms must be gone through in order to protect the revenue from fraud; and a clerk, or one of the partners, must attend at the custom-house.  The agent of the large establishment occupies nearly the same time in receiving a drawback of several thousands, as the smaller exporter does of a few shillings.  But if the quantity exported is inconsiderable, the small manufacturer frequently does not find the drawback will repay him for the loss of time.

276.  In many of the large establishments of our manufacturing districts, substances are employed which are the produce of remote countries, and which are, in several instances, almost peculiar to a few situations.  The discovery of any new locality, where such articles exist in abundance, is a matter of great importance to any establishment which consumes them in large quantities; and it has been found, in some instances, that the expense of sending persons to great distances, purposely to discover and to collect such produce, has been amply repaid.  Thus it has happened, that the snowy mountains of Sweden and Norway, as well as the warmer hills of Corsica, have been almost stripped of one of their vegetable productions, by agents sent expressly from one of our largest establishments for the dying of calicos.  Owing to the same command of capital, and to the scale upon which the operations of large factories are carried on, their returns admit of the expense of sending out agents to examine into the wants and tastes of distant countries, as well as of trying experiments, which, although profitable to them, would be ruinous to smaller establishments possessing more limited resources.

These opinions have been so well expressed in the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on the Woollen Trade, in 1806, that we shall close this chapter with an extract, in which the advantages of great factories are summed up.

Your committee have the satisfaction of seeing, that the apprehensions entertained of factories are not only vicious in principle, but they are practically erroneous:  to such a degree. that even the very opposite principles might be reasonably entertained.  Nor would it be difficult to prove, that the factories, to a certain extent at least, and in the present day, seem absolutely necessary to the wellbeing of the domestic system:  supplying those very particulars wherein the domestic system must be acknowledged to be inherently defective:  for it is obvious, that the little master manufacturers cannot afford, like the man who possesses considerable capital, to try the experiments which are requisite, and incur the risks, and even losses, which almost always occur, in inventing and