Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 04.djvu/115

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FABEICIUS sect" (1911) ; "Social Life in the Insect World" (1913); "The Life of the Spi- der"; and "The Life of the Fly" (1913). FABRICIUS, CAITTS, surnamed Lu- cinus, a Roman general who was twice consul and gained several victories over the Samnites and Lucanians. He was famed for his integrity and contempt of riches. This was shown during his em- bassy to Pyrrhus in 280 B. c, when he firmly withstood all the attempts of Pyrrhus to buy his service. When con- sul, he discovered to Pyrrhus a plot formed to poison him by his physician; and in gratitude Pyrrhus released the Roman prisoners without ransom. Fabri- cius was afterward censor, and endeav- ored to check the growing passion for luxury. He lived a simple life and died poor. FACADE (fa-sadO, the face or front of any building of importance. It may he applied to any side of a large quad- rangular building embellished with suf- ficiently striking architectural features, but it is usually confined to the principal front, in which the chief entrance is most frequently, if not always, situated. FACIAL NEBVE, a nerve of the sev- enth pair of cranial nerves, a motor nerve which supplies the muscles of ex- pression on either side of the face. Par- alysis of this nerve produces facial paralysis. FACTOR, an agent or substitute, es- pecially a steward or agent of an estate, appointed by a landowner to manage the estate, collect rents, let lands, etc.; also an agent employed by merchants to transact business for them in other places, as to buy and sell, to negotiate bills of exchange, etc. He differs from a broker in that he is intrusted with the possession and disposal of the goods, property, etc., and may buy and sell in his own name. One of several circumstances, elements, or influences on which a certain result depends, and which have to be taken into consideration in estimating the probable results of any events. In algebra, a name given to any quan- tity which constitutes an algebraical ex- pression : thus a + b and a — b are fac- tors of the product a' — b'. In arithmetic, the multiplier and the multiplicand; the numbers from the mul- tiplication of which the product results. Prime factors in mathematics, the prime factors of a quantity are those fac- tors which cannot be exactly divided by any other quantity except 1. Every num- ber has 1 for a prime factor. The prime factors of 12 are 1, 2, 2, and 3. 85 FACTORIES FACTORIES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM, the basis of modern industry. The change from the old handicrafts system of manufacturing, in which prac- tically all the needs of life were manu- factured by individual men in their own homes, to the present factory system, where commodities are manufactured in great quantities by a large number of people co-operatively, was primarily caused by the invention of steam-driven machinery. Factory production may be said to have begun with the invention, by James Hargreaves, of the spinning jinny, a machine which obviously could not be operated by one person. The in- vention of the jinny, spinning vast quantities of yam, naturally stimulated the efforts which resulted in the inven- tion of machinery for weaving. These machines were put up in one large build- ing, and gradually the entire process of manufacturing cloth by machinery was carried on in the one factory. Further inventions carried the system into the production of other commodities, and so gradually changed the whole basis of in- dustry, the hand tools being gradually scrapped and the workers becoming the attendants of the machines instead. The speed resulting from the use of machinery was merely one of the big gains achieved through the new system. There was also the great economy re- sulting from organization. Under the handicrafts system one man carded the cotton, another spun it, and a third wove it, and between each process there was the delay necessitated by the removal of the material from one house to another. Each of these transfers of material, in fact, amounted to a separate commercial transaction, since the one handicrafts- man purchased it from the other, until the weaver finally sold the finished cloth to the merchant. In the factory the ma- terial passed quickly from one machine to another, in a continuoi>s stream. This economy of labor and time has progressed equally with the invention of new machinery. 'Each process involved in the manufacture of any commodity represents a separate operation. Each workman, with the aid of machinery, is continuously employed on the one proc- ess, without having to pass from the one to the other. This in itself makes for speed, and also eliminates the skill needed in the entire manufacture of one article by one operator. This economy of organization has probably been brought to its highest degree of efficiency in this country, in the production of automobiles, as in the Ford factories of Detroit, and the manufacture of watches, as in the case of the cheap IngersoU watches. Here the vast scale on which