HKB
engaged in irregular work of alteration and repairs upon the plant and machinery of the textile factories. The same holds of all important manufactures, especially those which are closely localised.
A somewhat similar relation appertains between those manufactures engaged in producing the main body of any product and the minor industries, which supply some slighter and essentially subsidiary part. In relation to the main textile and clothing industries, the manufacture of buttons, of tape, feathers, and other elements of ornament or trimmings may be regarded as subsidiary. In the same way the manufacture of wall-papers or house paint may be considered subsidiary to the building trades, that of blacking to the shoe manufacture. These subsidiary trades are related to the primary one more or less closely, and are affected by the condition of the latter more or less powerfully in proportion as the subsidiary elements they furnish are more or less indispensable in character. The fur and feather trades are far more dependent upon direct forces of fashion than upon any changes of price or character in the main branches of the clothing trade. On the other hand, any cause which affected considerably the price of sugar would have a great and direct influence on the jam manufacture, while the rise in price of tin due to the M'Kinley tariff caused serious apprehension to the Chicago manufacturers and exporters of preserved meats.
(3) The relations between one of the great arterial industries, such as coal-mining, railway transport, or machine-making, and a specific manufacture may be regarded as auxiliary. The extent to which the price of coal, railway rates, etc., enters into the price of the goods and affects the condition of profits in the trade measures the closeness of this auxiliary connection. In the case of the smelting industries or in the steam transport trades, even in the pottery trades, the part played by coal is so important that the relation is rather that of a primary than an auxiliary connection--i.e., coal-mining must be ranked as co-ordinate to smelting. But where heat is not the direct agent of manufacture, but is required to furnish steam-motor alone, as in the textile factories, the connection may be termed auxiliary.
(4) The relationship between some industries is "sympathetic" in the sense that the commodities they produce appeal to closely related tastes, or are members of a group whose consumption is related harmoniously. In foods we have the relations between bread, butter, and cheese; the relation in which sugar and salt stand to a large number of consumables. Some of these are natural relations in the sense that one supplies a corrective to some defect of the other, or that the combination enhances the satisfaction or advantage which would accrue from the consumption of each severally. In other cases the connection is more conventional, as that between alcohol and tobacco. The sporting tastes of man supply a strong sympathetic bond between many trades. The same is true of literary, artistic, or other tastes, which by the simultaneous demand which they make upon several industries, in some proportion determined by the harmonious satisfaction of their desires, throw these industries into sympathetic groups.[114] These four bonds mark an identity of interest between different industries.