The Small Industries in the United Kingdom

We have not for the United Kingdom such statistical data as are obtained in France and Germany by periodical censuses of all the factories and workshops, and the numbers of the workpeople, foremen and clerks, employed on a given day n each industrial and commercial establishment. Consequently, up to the present time all the statements made by economists about the so-called “concentration:” of the industry in this country, and the consequent “unavoidable” disappearance of the small industries, have been based on mere impressions of the writers, — not on statistical data. Up till now we cannot give, as it is done future in these pages for France and Germany, the exact numbers of factories and workshops employing, let us say, from 1,000 to 2,000 persons, from 500 to 1,000, from 50 to 500, less than 50, and so on. It is only since factory inspection has been introduced by the Factory Act of 1895 that we begin to find, in the Reports published since 1900 by the Factory Inspectors (Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops for the year 1898: London, 1900), information which permits us to get a general idea about the distribution of working men in factories of different sizes, and the extension that the petty trades have retained in this country up till now. For more details about this subject, see an article of mine in the Nineteenth Century, August, 1900. ¹³⁰ One may see it already from the following little table for the year 1897, which I take from the just-mentioned Report. These figures are not yet complete, especially as regards the workshops, but they contain already the greater part of the English industries.

Let me remark that the Factory Inspectors consider as a workshop every industrial establishment which has no mechanical motive power, and as a factory every establishment provided with steam, gas, water, or electric power.

These figures, however, are not complete, because only those workshops are included where women and children are employed, as also all the bakeries. The others were not submitted to inspection at the time when this table was compiled. There is, nevertheless, a means to find out the approximate numbers of workpeople employed in the workshops. The number of women and female children employed in the workshops in 1897 was 356,098 and the number of men and boys was 320,678. But, as the proportion of male workers to the female in all the factories was 2,654,716 males to 1,152,308 females, we may admit that the same proportion prevails in the workshops. This would give for the latter something like 820,000 male workers and 1,176,000 persons of both sexes, employed in 147,000 workshops. At the same time, the grand total of persons employed in industry (exclusive of mining) would be 4,983,000.

We can thus say that nearly one-fourth (24 per cent.) of all the industrial workers of this country are working in workshops having less than eight to ten workers per establishment. The Chief Inspector, Mr. Whitelegge, wrote to me in 1900 that the workshops which did not enter into his reports represented about one-half of all the workshops. Since that time Mr. Whitelegge has continued to publish his interesting reports adding to them new groups of workshops. However, they still remain incomplete to some extent as regards this last point. In the last Report, published in 1911, we see that 147,000 workshops were registered at the end of 1907, and returns were received from 105,000 of them. But as in 32,000 workshops no women or young persons (below 18) were employed, their returns were not published. The Report for 1907 gives, therefore, only 91,249 workshops in which 638,335 persons were employed (186,064 male and 282,324 female adults, 54,605 male and 113,728 female young persons — that is, full-timers from 14 to 18 years old — and 863 male and 751 female children under 14). ¹³¹

It must also be pointed out that out of the 4,483,800 workpeople registered in the above-mentioned tables nearly 60,000 were children who were working half-days only, 401,000 were girls less than eighteen years old, 463,000 were boy from thirteen to eighteen who were making full working days like the adults, and 1,077,115 were considered as women (more than eighteen years old). In other words, one-fifth part of all the industrial workers of this country were girls and boys, and more than two-fifths (41 per cent.) were either women or children. All the industrial production of the United Kingdom, with its immense exports, was thus giving work to less than three million adult men — 2,983,000 out of a population of 42,000,000, to whom we must add 972,200 persons working in the mines. As to the textile industry, which supplies almost one-half of the English exports, there are less than 300,000 adult men who find employment in it. The remainder is the work of children, boys, girls, and women.

A fact which strikes us is that the 1,051,564 workpeople — men, women and children — who worked in 1897 in the textile industries of the United Kingdom were distributed over 10,883 factories, which gives only an average of ninety-three persons per factory in all this great industry, notwithstanding the fact that “concentration” has progressed most in this industry, and that we find in it factories employing as many as 5,000 and 6,000 persons.

It is true that the Factory Inspectors represent each separate branch of a given industry as a special establishment. Thus, if an employer or a society owns a spinning mill, a weaving factory, and a special building for dressing and finishing, the three are represented as separate factories. But this is precisely what is wanted for giving us an exact idea about the degree of concentration of a given industry. Besides, it is also known that, for instance, in the cotton industry, in the neighbourhood of Manchester, the spinning, the weaving, the dressing and so on belong very often to different employers, who send to each other the stuffs at different degrees of fabrication; those factories which combine under the same management all the three or four consecutive phases of the manufacture are an exception.

But it is especially in the division of the non-textile industries that we find an enormous development of small factories. The 2,755,460 workpeople who are employed in all the non-textile branches with the exception of mining, are scattered in 79,059 factories, each of which has only an average of thirty-five workers. Moreover, the Factory Inspectors had on their lists 676,776 workpeople employed in 88,814 workshops (without mechanical power), which makes an average of eight persons only per workshop. These last figures are, however, as we saw, below the real ones, as another sixty thousand workshops occupying half a million more workpeople were not yet tabulated.

Such averages as ninety-three and thirty-five workpeople per factory, and eight per workshop, distributed over 178,756 industrial establishments, destroy already the legend according to which the big factories have already absorbed most of the small ones. The figures show, on the contrary, what an immense number of small factories and workshops resist the absorption by the big factories, and how they multiply by the side of the great industry in various branches, especially those of recent origin.

If we had for the United Kingdom full statistics, giving lists of all the factories, with the number of workpeople employed in each of them, as we have for France and Germany (see below), it would have been easy to find the exact number of factories employing more than 1,000,000, 500, 100, and 50 workmen. But such lists are issued only for the mining industry. As to the statistics published by the Factory Inspectors, they do not contain such data, perhaps because the inspectors have no time to tabulate their figures, or have not the right to do so. Be it as it may, the Report of Mr. Whitelegge for 1897 gives the number of factories (textile and non-textile) and workshops for each of the 119 counties of the United Kingdom and for each of the nearly hundred sub-divisions of all the industries, as well as the number of workpeople in each of these more than 10,000 sub-divisions. So I was enabled to calculate the averages of persons employed in the factories and workshops for each separate branch of industry in each county. Besides, Mr Whitelegge has had the kindness to give me two very important figures — namely, the number of factories employing more than 1,000 workpeople, and the number of those factories where less than ten workers are employed.

Let us take, first of all, the TEXTILE industries, which include cotton, wool, silk, linen, jute, and hemp, as well as machine-made lace and knitting. Many of my readers will probably be astonished to learn that even in the cotton industry a great number of quite small factories continue to exist up to the present day. Even in the West Riding district, which is second only to Lancashire for the number of its cotton mills, and where we find nearly one-third of all the workpeople employed in the cotton industry (237,444 persons), the average for all the 3,210 factories of this district is only seventy-three persons per factory. And even in Lancashire, where we find nearly one-half of all the workpeople employed in the textiles, these 434,609 men, women, and children are scattered in 3,132 factories, each of which has thus an average of only 139 workers. If we remember that in this number there are factories employing from 2,000 to 6,000 persons, one cannot but be struck by the quantity of small factories employing less than 100 persons, and which continue to exist by the side of the great cotton mills. But we shall just see that the same is true for all industries.

As to Nottinghamshire, which is a centre for machine-made lace and knitting, its 18,434 workpeople are, most of them, working in small factories. The average for the 386 establishments of this county is only forty-eight persons per factory. The great industry is thus very far from having absorbed the small one.

The distribution of the textile factories in the other counties of the United Kingdom is even more instructive. We learn that there are nearly 2,000 textile factories in forty-nine counties, and everyone of these factories has much less than 100 workpeople; while a very considerable number of them employ only from forty to fifty, from ten to twenty, and even less than ten persons. From the curve that I computed it appears that all the textile factories are distributed as to their size as follows: — Not less than 500 operatives, 200 factories, 203,100 operatives; from 499 to 200, 660 factories, 231,000 operatives; from 99 to 50, 1,380 factories, 103,500 operatives; less than 50, 1,410 factories, 42,300 operatives; total, 6,605 factories, 1,022,020 operatives. — Nineteenth Century, August,1900, p. 262. ¹³²

This could have been foreseen by everyone who has some practical knowledge of industry, but it is overlooked by the theorists, who know industry mostly from books. In every country of the world there are by the side of the large factories a great number of small ones, the success of which is due to the variety of their produce and the facilities they offer to follow the vagaries of fashion. This is especially true with regard to the woollens and the mixed stuffs made of wool and cotton.

Besides, it is well known to British manufacturers that at the time when the big cotton mills were established, the manufacturers of spinning and weaving machinery, seeing that they had no more orders coming, after they had supplied this machinery to the great factories, began to offer it at a reduced price and on credit to the small weavers. These last associated — three, five, or more of them — to buy the machinery, and this is why we have now in Lancashire quite a region where a great number of small cotton mills continue to exist till nowadays, without there being any reason to foresee their disappearance. At times they are even quite prosperous.

On the other side, when we examine the various branches of textile industry (cotton, wool, silk jute, etc.), we see that if the great factories dominate in the spinning and weaving of cotton, worsted and flax, as well as in the spinning of silk (the result being that the average for these branches reaches 150 workers per factory for cotton, and 267 for the spinning of flax), all other textile industries belong to the domain of the middle-sized and the small industry. In other words, in the manufacture of woollens, shoddy, hemp, hair, machine-made lace, and mechanical knitting, as also in the weaving of silks, there are, of course, large factories; but the majority of these establishments belong to the domain of the small industry. Thus, for the 3,274 woollen factories, the average is only from twenty to fifty workers per factory; it is also from twenty-seven to thirty-eight for shoddy, and thirty-seven to seventy-six for the other branches. Only for knitting do the averages rise to ninety-three persons per factory; but we are just going to see that the small industry reappears in this branch in force under the name of workshops.

All these important branches of the British textile industry, which give work to more than 240,000 men and women, have thus remained up till now at the stage of a small and middle-sized industry.

If we take now the NON-TEXTILE industries, we find, on the one side, an immense number of small industries which have grown up around the great ones, and owing to them; and, on the other side, a large part of the fundamental industries have remained in the stage of small establishments. The average for all these branches, which give occupation to three-fourths of all the industrial workers of the United Kingdom — that is, 2,755,460 workers — hardly attains, we saw, thirty-five persons per factory — the workshops being not yet included in this division. However, it is especially when we go into details, and analyse the figures which I have calculated for each separate branch, that we fully realise the importance of the petty trades in England. This is what we are going to do, mentioning first what belongs here to the great industry, and studying next the small one.

Following the classification adopted by the Factory Inspectors, we see first that the gasworks belong to the domain of the fairly big establishments (seventy-eight people on the average). The india-rubber factories belong to the same category (125 workers on the average): and amidst the 456 glass-works of the United Kingdom there must be some big ones, as the average is eighty-seven workpeople.

Next come mining and metallurgy, which are carried on, as a rule, on a great scale; but already in the iron foundries we find a great number of establishments belonging to the middle-sized and small industry. Thus at Sheffield I saw myself several foundries employing only from five to six workmen, For the making of huge machinery there is, of course, a number of very large works, such as those of Armstrong, Whitworth, or those of the State at Woolwich. But it is very instructive to see how very small works prosper by the side of big ones; they are numerous enough to reduce the average to seventy workers per establishment for the 5,318 works of this category.

Shipbuilding and the manufacture of metallic tubes evidently belong to the great industry (averages, 243 and 156 persons per establishment); and the same applies to the two great metallurgical works of the State, which employ between them 23,455 workmen.

Going over to the chemical works, we find again a great industry in the fabrication of alkalies and of matches (only twenty-five works); but, on the contrary, the fabrication of soap and candles, as well as manures and all other sorts of chemical produce, which represents nearly 2,000 factories, belongs almost entirely to the domain of the small industry. The average is only twenty-nine workpeople per factory. There are, of course, half a dozen of very large soap works — one knows them only too well by their advertisements on the cliffs and in the fields; but the low average of twenty-nine workmen proves how many small factories must exist by the side of the soap kings. The 2,500 works engaged in the fabrication of furniture, both in wood and in iron, belong again chiefly to the small industry. The small and very small factories swarm by the side of a few great ones, to say nothing of the thousands of the still smaller workshops. The great storehouses of our cities are for the most part mere exhibitions of furniture made in very small factories and workshops.

In the fabrication of food produce we find several great sugar, chocolate, and preserves works; but by their side we find also a very great number of small establishments, which seem not to complain of the proximity of the big ones, as they occupy nearly two-thirds of the workers employed in this branch. I do not speak, of course, of the village windmills, but one cannot fail to be struck by the immense number of small breweries (2,076 breweries have on the average only twenty-four workmen each) and of the establishments engaged in the fabrication of aerated waters (they number 3,365, and have on the average only eleven operatives per establishment).

In calico-printing we enter once more the domain of great factories; but by their side we find a pretty large number of small ones; so that the average for all this category is 144 workpeople per factory. We find also fourteen great factories, having an average of 394 workpeople each, for dyeing in Turkey red. But we find also by their side more than 100,000 working-men employed in 2,725 small establishments of this class — bleaching, dressing, packing, and so on — and this gives us one more illustration of numerous small industries growing round the main ones.

In the making of ready-made clothing and the fabrication of hats, linen, boots and shoes, and gloves, we see the averages for the factories of this description going up to 80, 100, and 150 persons per factory. But it is here also that countless small workshops come in. It must also be noticed that most of the factories of ready-made clothing have their own special character. The factory buys the cloth and makes the cutting by means of special machinery; but the sewing is done by women, who come to work in the factory. They pay so much the sewing-machine, so much the motor power (if there is one), so much the gas, so much the iron, and so on, and they are on piece work. Very often this becomes a “sweating system” on a large scale. Round the big factories a great number of small workshops are centred.

And, finally, we find great factories for the fabrication of gunpowder and explosives (they employ less than 12,000 workpeople), stuff buttons, and umbrellas (only 6,000 employees). But we find also in the table of workshops that in these last two branches there are thousands of them by the side of a few great factories.

All taken, Mr. Whitelegge writes to me that of factories employing more than 1,000 workpeople each, he finds only sixty-five in the textile industries(102,600 workpeople) and only 128 (355,208 workpeople) in all non-textile industries.

In this brief enumeration we have gone over all that belongs to the great industry. The remainder belongs almost entirely to the domain of the small, and often the very small industry. Such are all the factories for woodwork, which have on the average only fifteen men per establishment, but represent a contingent of more than 100,000 workmen and more than 6,000 employers. The tanneries, the manufacture of all sorts of little things in ivory and bone, and even the brick-works and the potteries, representing a total of 260,000 workpeople and 11,200 employers, belong, with a very few exception, to the small industry.

Then we have the factories dealing with the burnishing and enamelling of metals, which also belong chiefly to the small industry — the average being only twenty-eight workpeople per factory. But what is especially striking is the development of the small and very small industry in the fabrication of agricultural machinery (thirty-two workers per factory), of all sorts of tools (twenty-two on the average), needles and pins (forty-three), ironmongery, sanitary apparatus, and various instruments (twenty-five), even of boilers (forty-eight per factory), chains, cables, and anchors (in many districts this work, as also the making of nails, is made by hand by women).

Needless to say that the fabrication of furniture, which occupies nearly 64,000 operatives, belongs chiefly — more than three-fourths of it — to the small industry. The average for the 1,979 factories of this branch is only twenty-one workpeople, the workshops not being included in this number. The same is true of the factories for the curing of fish, machine-made pastry, and so on, which occupy 38,030 workpeople in more than 2,700 factories, having thus an average of fourteen operatives each.

Jewelry and the manufacture of watches, photographic apparatus, and all sorts of luxury articles, again belong to the small and very small industry, and give occupation to 54,000 persons.

All that belongs to printing, lithography, bookbinding, and stationery again represents a vast field occupied by the small industry, which prospers by the side of a small number of very large establishments. More than 120,000 are employed in these branches in more than 6,000 factories (workshops not yet included).

And, finally, we find a large domain occupied by saddlery, brush-making, the making of sails, basket-making, and the fabrication of a thousand little things in leather, paper, wood, metal, and so on. This class is certainly not insignificant, as it contains more than 4,300 employers and nearly 130,000 workpeople, employed in a mass of very small factories by the side of a few very great ones, the average being only from twenty-five to thirty-five persons per factory.

In short, in the different non-textile industries, the inspectors have tabulated 32,042 factories employing, each of them, less than ten workpeople.

All taken, we find 270,000 workpeople employed in small factories having less than fifty and even twenty workers each, the result being that the very great industry (the factories employing more than 1,000 workpeople per factory) and the very small one (less than ten workers) employ nearly the same number of operatives.

The important part played by the small industry in this country fully appears from this rapid sketch. And I have not yet spoken of the workshops. The Factory Inspectors mentioned, as we saw, in their first report, 88,814 workshops, in which 676,776 workpeople (356,098 women) were employed in 1897. But, as we have already seen, these figures are incomplete. The number of workshops is about 147,000, and there must be about 1,200,000 persons employed in them (820,000 men and about 356,000 women and children).

It is evident that this class comprises a very considerable number of bakers, small carpenters, tailors, cobblers, cartwrights, village smiths, and so on. But there is also in this class an immense number of workshops belonging to industry, properly speaking — that is, workshops which manufacture for the great commercial market. Some of these workshops may of course employ fifty persons or more, but the immense majority employ only from five to twenty workpeople each.

We thus find in this class 1,348 small establishments, scattered both in the villages and the suburbs of great cities, where nearly 14,000 persons make lace, knitting, embroidery, and weaving in hand-looms; more than 100 small tanneries, more than 20,000 cartwrights, and 746 small bicycle makers. In cutlery, in the fabrication of tools and small arms, nails and screws, and even anchors and anchor chains, we find again many thousands of small work shops employing something like 60,000 workmen. All that, let us remember, without counting those workshops which employ no women or children, and therefore are not submitted to the Factory Inspectors. As to the fabrication of clothing, which gives work to more than 350,000 men and women, distributed over nearly 45,000 workshops, let it be noted that it is not small tailors that is spoken of here, but that mass of workshops which swarm in Whitechapel and the suburbs of all great cities, and where we find from five to fifty women and men making clothing for the tailor shops, big and small. In these shops the measure is taken, and sometimes the cutting is made; but the clothing is sewn in the small workshops, which are very often somewhere in the country. Even parts of the commands of linen and clothing for the army find their way to workshops in country places. As to the underclothing and mercery which are sold in the great stores, they are fabricated in small workshops, which must be counted by the thousand.

The same is true of furniture, mattresses and cushions, hats, artificial flowers, umbrellas, slippers, and even cheap jewelry. The great shops, even the largest stores, mostly keep only an assortment of samples. All is manufactured at a very low price, and day by day, in thousands of small workshops.

It can thus be said that if we exclude from the class of workshops’ employees 100,000 or even 200,000 workpeople who do not work for industry properly speaking, and if we add on the other side the nearly 500,000 workers who have not yet been tabulated by the inspectors in 1897, we find a population of more than 1,000,000 men and women who belong entirely to the domain of the small industry, and so must be added to those whom we found working in the small factories. The artisans who are, working single-handed were not included in this sketch.

We thus see that even in this country, which may be considered as representing the highest development of the great industry, the number of persons employed in the small trade continues to be immense. The small industries are as much a distinctive feature of the British industry as its few immense factories and ironworks.

Going over now to what is known about the small industries of this country from direct observation, we find that the suburbs of London, Glasgow, and other great cities swarm with small workshops, and that there are regions where the petty trades are as developed as they are. in Switzerland or in Germany. Sheffield is a well known example in point. The Sheffield cutlery — one of the glories of England — is not. made by machinery: it is chiefly made by hand. There are at Sheffield a number of firms which manufacture cutlery right through from the making of steel to the finishing of tools, and employ wageworkers; and yet even these firms — I am told by Edward Carpenter, who kindly collected for me information about the Sheffield trade — let out some part of their work to the “small masters.” But by far the greatest number of the cutlers work in their homes with their relatives, or in small workshops supplied with wheel-power, which they rent for a few shillings a week. Immense yards are covered with buildings, which are subdivided into numbers of small workshops. Some of these cover but a few square yards, and there I saw smiths hammering, all the day long, blades of knives on a small anvil, close by the blaze of their fires; occasionally the smith may have one helper, or two. In the upper storeys, scores of small workshops are supplied with wheel-power, and in each of them, three, four, or five workers and a “master” fabricate, with the occasional aid of a few plain machines, every description of tools: files, saws, blades of knives, razors, and so on. Grinding and glazing are done in other small workshops, and even steel is cast in a small foundry, the working staff of which consists only of five or six men.

When I walked through these workshops I easily imagined myself in a Russian cutlery village, like Pavlovo or Vorsma. The Sheffield cutlery has thus maintained its olden organisation, and the fact is the more remarkable as the earnings of the cutlers are low as a rule; but, even when they are reduced to a few shillings a week, the cutler prefers to vegetate on his small earnings than to enter as a waged labourer in a “house.” The spirit of the old trade organisations, which were so much spoken of in the ‘sixties of the nineteenth century, is thus still alive.

Until lately, Leeds and its environs were also the seat of extensive domestic industries. When Edward Baines wrote, in 1857, his first account of the Yorkshire industries (in Th. Baines’s Yorkshire, Past and Present), most of the woollen cloth which was made in that region was woven by hand. Nearly one-half of the 43,000 operatives who were employed at that time in the woollen trade of this country were weaving in hand-looms. So also one-fifth of the 79,000 persons employed in the worsted trade. ¹³³ Twice a week the hand-made cloth was brought to the Clothiers’ Hall, and by noon it was sold to the merchants, who had it dressed in their factories. Joint-stock mills were run by combined clothiers in order to prepare and spin the wool, but it was woven in the hand-looms by the clothiers and the members of their families. Twelve years later the hand-loom was superseded to a great extent by the power-loom; but the clothiers, who were anxious to maintain their independence, resorted to a peculiar organisation: they rented a room, or part of a room, and sometimes also the power-looms, and they worked independently — a characteristic organisation partly maintained until now, and well adapted to illustrate the efforts of the petty traders to keep their ground, notwithstanding the competition of the factory. And it must be said that the triumphs of the factory were too often achieved only by means of the most fraudulent adulteration and the underpaid labour of the children.

The variety of domestic industries carried on in the Lake District is much greater than might be expected,, but they still wait for careful explorers. I will only mention the hoop-makers, the basket trade, the charcoal-burners, the bobbin-makers, the small iron furnaces working with charcoal at Backbarrow, and so on. E. Roscoe’s notes in the English Illustrated Magazine, May, 1884. ¹³⁴ As a whole, we do not well know the petty trades of this country, and therefore we sometimes come across quite unexpected facts. Few continental writers on industrial topics would guess, indeed, that twenty-five years ago nails were made by hand by thousands of men, women, and children in the Black Country of South Staffordshire, as also in Derbyshire, Bevan’s Guide to English Industries. ¹³⁵ and that some of this industry remains still in existence, or that the best needles are made by hand at Redditch. Chains are also made by hand at Dudley and Cradley, and although the Press is periodically moved to speak of the wretched conditions of the chain-makers, men and women, the trade still maintains itself; while nearly 7,000 men were busy in 1890 in their small workshops in making locks, even of the plainest description, at Walsall, Wolverhampton, and Willenhall. The various ironmongeries connected with horse-clothing — bits, spurs, bridles, and so on — are also largely made by hand at Walsall.

The Birmingham gun and rifle trades, which also belong to the same domain of small industries, are well known. As to the various branches of dress, there are still important divisions of the United Kingdom where a variety of domestic trades connected with dress is carried on on a large scale. I need only mention the cottage industries of Ireland, as also some of them which have survived in the shires of Buckingham, Oxford, and Bedford; hosiery is a common occupation in the villages of the counties Of Nottingham and Derby; and several great London firms send out cloth to be made into dress in the villages of Sussex and Hampshire. Woollen hosiery is at home in the villages of Leicester, and especially in Scotland; straw-plaiting and hat-making in many parts of the country; while at Northampton, Leicester, Ipswich, and Stafford shoemaking was, till quite lately, a widely spread domestic occupation, or was carried on in small workshops; even at Norwich it remains a petty trade to some extent, notwithstanding the competition of the factories. It must also be said that the recent appearance of large boot and shoe factories has considerably increased the number of girls and women who sew the “uppers” and embroider the slippers, either in their own houses or in sweaters’ workshops, while new small factories have developed of late for the making of heels, card-boxes, and so on.

The petty trades are thus an important factor of industrial life even in Great Britain, although many of them have gathered into the towns. But if we find in this country so many fewer rural, industries than on the Continent, we must not imagine that their disappearance is due only to a keener competition of the factories. The chief cause was the compulsory exodus from the villages.

As everyone knows from Thorold Rogers’ work, the growth of the factory system in England was intimately connected with that enforced exodus. Whole industries, which prospered till then, were killed downright by the forced clearing of estates. Thorold Rogers, The Economic Interpretation of History. ¹³⁶ The workshops, much more even than the factories, multiply wherever they find cheap labour; and the specific feature of this country is, that the cheapest labour — that is, the greatest number of destitute people — is to be found in the great. cities. The agitation raised (with no result) in connection with the “Dwellings of the Poor,” the “Unemployed,” and the “Sweating System,” has fully disclosed that characteristic feature of the economic life of England and Scotland; and the painstaking researches made by Mr. Charles Booth have shown that one-quarter of the population of London — that is, 1,000,000 out of the 3,800,000 who entered within the scope of his inquest — would be happy if the heads of their families could have regular earnings of something like 91 a week all the year round. Half of them would be satisfied with even less than that. The same state of things was found by Mr. Seebohm Rowntree at York. Poverty: a Study of Town Life, London (Macmillan), 1901. ¹³⁷ Cheap labour is offered in such quantities in the suburbs of all the great cities of Great Britain, that the petty and domestic trades, which are scattered on the Continent in the villages, gather in this country in the cities.

Exact figures as to the small industries are wanting, but a simple walk through the suburbs of London — would do much to realise the variety of petty trades which swarm in the metropolis, and, in fact, in all chief urban agglomerations. The evidence given before the “Sweating System Committee” has shown how far the furniture and ready-made clothing palaces and the “Bonheur des Dames” bazaars of London are mere exhibitions of samples, or markets for the sale of the produce of the small industries. Thousands of sweaters, some of them having their own workshops, and others merely distributing work to sub-sweaters who distribute it again amidst the destitute, supply those palaces and bazaars with goods made in the slums or in very small workshops. The commerce is centralised in those bazaars — not the industry. The furniture palaces and bazaars are thus merely playing the part which the feudal castle formerly played in agriculture: they centralise the profits — not the production.

In reality, the extension of the petty trades, side by side with the great factories, is nothing to be wondered at. It is an economic necessity.

The absorption of the small workshops by bigger concerns is a fact which had struck the economists in the ‘forties of the last century, especially in the textile trades. It is continued still in many other trades, and is especially striking in a number of very big concerns dealing with metals and war supplies for the different States. But there is another process which is going on parallel with the former, and which consists in the continuous creation of new industries, usually making their start on a small scale. Each new factory calls into existence a number of small workshops, partly to supply its own needs and partly to submit its produce to a further transformation. Thus, to quote but one instance, the cotton mills have created an immense demand for wooden bobbins and reels, and thousands of men in the Lake District set to manufacture them — by hand first, and later on with the aid of some plain machinery. Only quite recently, after years had been spent in inventing and improving the machinery, the bobbins began to be made on a larger scale in factories. And even yet, as the machines are very costly, a great quantity of bobbins are made in small workshops, with but little aid from machines, while the factories themselves are relatively small, and seldom employ more than fifty operatives chiefly children. As to the reels of irregular shape, they are still made by hand, or partly with the aid of small machines, continually invented by the workers. New industries thus grow up to supplant the old ones; each of them passes through a preliminary stage on a small scale before reaching the great factory stage; and the more active the inventive genius of a nation is, the more it has of these budding industries. The countless small bicycle works which have lately grown up in this country, and are supplied with ready-made parts of the bicycle by the larger factories, are an instance in point. The domestic and small workshops fabrication of boxes for matches, boots, hats, confectionery, grocery and so on is another familiar instance.

Besides, the large factory stimulates the birth of now petty trades by creating new wants. The cheapness of cottons and woollens, of paper and brass, has created hundreds of new small industries. Our households are full of their produce — mostly things of quite modern invention. And while some of them already are turned out by the million in the great factory, all have passed through the small workshop stage, before the demand was great enough to require the great factory organisation, The more we may have of new inventions, the more shall we have of such small industries; and again, the more we have of them, the more shall we have of the inventive genius, the want of which is so justly complained of in this country (by W. Armstrong, amongst many others). We must not wonder, therefore, if we see so many small trades in this country; but we must regret that the great number have abandoned the villages in consequence of the bad conditions of land tenure, and that they have migrated in such numbers to the cities, to the detriment of agriculture.

In England, as everywhere, the small industries are an important factor in the industrial life of the country ; and it is chiefly in the infinite variety of the small trades, which utilise the half-fabricated produce of the great industries, that inventive genius is developed, and the rudiments of the future great industries are elaborated. The small bicycle workshops, with the hundreds of small improvements which they introduced, have been under our very eyes the primary cells out of which the great industry of the motor cars, and later on of the aeroplanes, has grown up. The small village jam-makers were the precursors and the rudiments of the great factories of preserves which now employ hundreds of workers. And soon.

Consequently, to affirm that the small industries are doomed to disappear, while we see new ones appear every day, is merely to repeat a hasty generalisation that was made in the earlier part of the nineteenth century by those who witnessed the absorption of hand-work by machinery work in the cotton industry — a generalisation which, as we saw already, and are going still better to see on the following pages, finds no confirmation from the study of industries, great and small, and is upset by the censuses of the factories and workshops. Far from showing a tendency to disappear, the small industries show, on the contrary, a tendency towards making a further development, since the municipal supply of electrical power — such as we have, for instance, in Manchester — permits the owner of a small factory to have a cheap supply of motive power, exactly in the proportion required at a given time, and to pay only for what is really consumed.