Robbie Rhodes wrote in 010722 MMDigest:

> "Entrepreneurs were careful to have families produce only certain
> parts so that each family became very skilled at making its part but
> not capable of producing a whole clock and becoming a competitor."

This was the way nearly all cottage industries worked.  Some still do:
Navaho communities I visited in New Mexico made turquoise and silver
jewelry this way: one home would make round turquoise pieces, another
cubical pieces, another would assemble silver findings, etc.

In Europe, the most famous cottage industries manufactured Swiss
watches and German violins.  It's likely that music boxes were made
in the same manner.  Abuse of workers, who were tied by family and
tradition to the jobs assigned to them by the contractors and
subcontractors, were rampant.

In the United States, clothing was manufactured in New York City
tenement homes by families who'd specialize in particular cutting or
stitching operations until unions and tough labor laws outlawed the
practice in the early 20th century.

Conditions in factories were not much better for the workers than those
employed in home industries, but factories could be monitored by state
inspectors and the workers organized into collective bargaining units
by unions.  This wasn't possible in cottage industry schemes, which
explains their continuing popularity in Third World nations up to the
present time.

Mark Kinsler
Lancaster OH 43130 USA
http://www.frognet.net/~kinsler