Petty Trades in France

Small industries are met with in France in a very great variety, and they represent a most important feature of national economy. it is estimated, in fact, that while one-half of the population of France live upon agriculture, and one-third upon industry, this third part is equally distributed between the great industry and the small one. [See Table 7] ¹³⁸ This last occupies about 1,650,000 workers and supports from 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 persons. A considerable number of peasants who resort to small industries without abandoning agriculture would have to be added to the just-mentioned items, and the additional earnings which these peasants find in industry are so important that in several parts of France peasant proprietorship could not be maintained without the aid derived from the rural industries.

The small peasants know what they have to expect the day they become factory hands in a town; and so long as they have not been dispossessed by the money-lender of their lands and houses, and so long as the village rights in the communal grazing grounds or woods have not been lost, they cling to a combination of industry with agriculture. Having, in most cases, no horses to plough the land, they resort to an arrangement which is widely spread, if not universal, among small French landholders, even in purely rural districts (I saw it even in Haute-Savoie). One of the peasants who keeps a plough and a team of horses tills all the, fields in turn. At the same time, owing to a wide maintenance of the communal spirit, which I have described elsewhere, Mutual Aid: a Factor of Evolution. London (Heinemann), 1902. ¹³⁹ further support is found in the communal shepherd, the communal wine-press, and various forms of “aids” amongst the peasants. And wherever the village-community spirit is maintained, the small industries persist, while no effort is spared to bring the small plots under higher culture.

Market-gardening and fruit culture often go hand in hand with small industries. And wherever well-being is found on a relatively unproductive soil, it is nearly always due to a combination of the two sister arts.

The most wonderful adaptations of the small industries to new requirements, and substantial technical progress in the methods of production, can be noted at the same time. It may even be said of France, as it has been said of Russia, that when a rural industry dies out, the cause of its decay is found much less in the competition of rival factories — in hundreds of localities the small industry undergoes a complete modification, or it changes its character in such cases — than in the decay of the population as agriculturists. Continually we see that only when the small landholders have been ruined, as such, by a group of causes — the loss of communal meadows, or abnormally high rents, or the havoc made in some locality by the marchands de biens (swindlers enticing the peasants to buy land on credit), or the bankruptcy of some shareholders’ company whose shares had been eagerly taken by the peasants See Baudrillart’s Les Populations agricoles de la France: Normandie. ¹⁴⁰ — only then do they abandon both the land and the rural industry and emigrate towards the towns.

Otherwise, a now industry always grows up when the competition of the factory becomes too acute — a wonderful, hardly suspected adaptability being displayed by the small industries; or else the rural artisans resort to some form of intensive farming, gardening, etc., and in the meantime some other industry makes its appearance. A closer study of France under this aspect is instructive in a high degree.

It is evident that in most textile industries the power-loom supersedes the hand-loom, and the factory takes, or has taken already, the place of the cottage industry. Cottons, plain linen, and machine-made lace are now produced at such a low cost by machinery that hand-weaving evidently becomes an anachronism for the plainest descriptions of such goods. Consequently, though there were in France, in the year 1876, 328,300 hand-looms as against 121,340 power-looms, it may safely be taken that the number of the former has been considerably reduced within the next twenty years. However, the slowness with which this change is being accomplished is one of the most striking features of the present industrial organisation of the textile trades of France.

The causes of this power of resistance of handloom-weaving become especially apparent when one consults such works as Reybaud’s Le Coton, which was written in 1863, nearly half a century ago — that is, at a time when the cottage industries were still fully alive. Though an ardent admirer himself of the great industries, Reybaud faithfully noted the striking superiority of well-being in the weavers’ cottages as compared with the misery of the factory hands in the cities. Already then, the cities of St. Quentin, Lille, Roubaix and Amiens were great centres for cotton-spinning Mills and cotton-weaving factories. But, at the same time, all sorts of cottons were woven in hand-looms, in the very suburbs of St. Quentin and in a hundred villages and hamlets around it, to be sold for finishing in the city. And Reybaud remarked that the horrible dwellings in town, and the general condition of the factory hands, stood in a wonderful contrast with the relative welfare of the rural weavers. Nearly every one of these last had his own house and a small field which he continued to cultivate. Le Coton: son regime, ses problemes. Paris, 1863, p. 170. ¹⁴¹

Even in such a branch as the fabrication of plain cotton velvets, in which the competition of the factories was especially keenly felt, homeweaving was widely spread, in 1863 and even in 1878, in the villages round Amiens. Although the earnings of the rural weavers were small, as a rule, the weavers preferred to keep to their own cottages, to their own crops and to their own cattle; and only repeated commercial crises, as well as several of the above-mentioned causes, hostile to the small peasant, compelled most of them to give up the struggle, and to seek employment in the factories, while part of them have, by this time, again returned to agriculture or taken to market-gardening.

Another important centre for rural industries was in the neighbourhood of Rouen, where no less than 110,000 persons were employed, in 1863, in weaving cottons for the finishing factories of that city. In the valley of the Andelle, in the department of Eure, each village was at that time an industrial bee-hive; each streamlet was utilised for setting into work a small factory. Reybaud described the condition of the peasants who combined agriculture with work at the rural factory as most satisfactory, especially in comparison with the condition of the slum-dwellers at Rouen, and he even mentioned a case or two in which the village factories belonged to the village communities.

Seventeen years later, Baudrillart Les Populations agricoles de, la France: Normandie. ¹⁴² depicted the same region in very much the same words; and although the rural factories had had to yield to a great extent before the big factories, the rural industry was still valued as showing a yearly production of 85,000,000 francs (£2,400,000).

At the present time, the factories must have made further progress; but we still see from the excellent descriptions of M. Ardouin Dumazet, whose work will have in the future almost the same value as Arthur Young’s Travels, Voyage en France. Paris, 1893–1910 (Berget-Levreau, publishers), 56 volumes already published. ¹⁴³ that a considerable portion of the rural weavers has still survived; while at the same time one invariably meets, even nowadays, with the remark that relative well-being is prominent in the villages in which weaving is connected with agriculture.

Up to the present time, M. Ardouin Dumazet writes, “there is an industry which gives work to many hand-looms in the villages; it is the weaving of various stuffs for umbrellas and ladies’ boots.” Amiens is the chief centre for this weaving. Ardouin Dumazet, vol. xvii., p. 242. ¹⁴⁴ In other places they are making dresses out of Amiens velvet and various stuffs woven at Roubaix. It is a new industry; it has taken the place of the old one, which was making of Amiens a second Lyons.

In the district of Le Thelle, to the south of Beauvais, there is “a multitude of petty trades, of which one hardly imagines the importance. I have seen,” M. Dumazet says, “small factories of buttons made from bone, ivory, or mother-of-pearl, brushes, shoe-horns, keys for pianos, dominoes, counters and dice, spectacle-cases, small articles for the writing-table, handles for tools, measures, billiard keys — what not!

There is not one single village, however small, the population of which should not have its own industry.” Ibid., vol. xvii., pp. 100, 101. ¹⁴⁵ At the same time it must not be forgotten that thousands of small articles for the writing-table and for draughtsmen are fabricated on a large scale in the small factories in the same region. Some of the workshops are situated in private houses, and in some of them artistic work is made; but most of them are located in special houses) where the necessary Power is hired by the owner of the workshop. You see here “a fantastic activity” — the word is M. Dumazet’s; the division of labour is very great, and everywhere they invent new machine-tools.

Finally, in the villages of the Vermandois district (department of the Aisne), we find a considerable number of hand-looms (more than 3,000) upon which mixed stuffs made of cotton, wool and silk are Woven. Ardouin Dumazet, Vol. xix., P. 10. ¹⁴⁶

Of course, it must be recognised that, as a rule, in northern France, Where cottons are fabricated on a large scale in factory towns, hand-weaving in the villages is nearly gone. But, as is seen already from the preceding, new small industries have grown up instead, and this is also the case in many other parts of France.

Taking the region situated between Rouen in the north-east, Orleans in the south-east, Rennes in the north-west, and Nantes in the south-west — that is, the old provinces of Normandy, Perche and Maine, and partly Touraine and Anjou, as they were seen by Ardouin Dumazet in 1895 — we find there quite a variety of domestic and petty industries, both in the villages and in the towns.

At Laval (to the south-east of Rennes), where drills (coutils) were formerly woven out of flax in hand-looms, and at Alencon, formerly a great centre for the cottage-weaving of linen, as well as for hand-made lace, Ardouin Dumazet found both the house and the factory linen industry in a lingering state. Cotton takes the lead. Drills are now made out of cotton in the factories, and the demand for flax goods is very small. Both domestic and factory weaving of flax goods are accordingly in a poor condition. The cottagers abandoned that branch of weaving, and the large factories, which had been erected at Alencon with the intention of creating a flax and hemp-cloth industry, had to be closed. Only one factory, occupying 250 hands, remains; while nearly 23,000 weavers, who found occupation at Mans, Fresnay and Alencon in hemp cloths and fine linen, had to abandon that industry. Those who worked in factories have emigrated to other towns, while those who had not broken with agriculture reverted to it. In this struggle of cotton versus flax and hemp, the former was victorious.

As to lace, it is made in such quantities by machinery at Calais, Caudry, St. Quentin and Tarare that only high-class artistic lace-making continues on a small scale at Alencon itself, but it still remains a by-occupation in the surrounding country. Besides, at Flers, and at Ferte Mace (a small town to the south of the former), hand-weaving is still carried on in about 5,400 hand-looms, although the whole trade, in factories and villages alike, is in a piteous state since the Spanish markets have been lost. Spain has now plenty of her own cotton mills. Twelve big spinning mills at Conde (where 4,000 tons of cotton were spun in 1883) were abandoned in 1893, and the workers were thrown into a most miserable condition. Ardouin Dumazet, vol. ii., p. 167. ¹⁴⁷

On the contrary, in an industry which supplies the home market — namely, in the fabrication of linen handkerchiefs, which itself is of a quite recent growth — we see that cottage-weaving is, even now, in full prosperity. Cholet (in Maineet-Loire, south-west of Angers) is the centre of that trade. It has one spinning mill and one weaving mill, but both employ considerably fewer hands than domestic weaving, which is spread over no less than 200 villages of the surrounding region. In Maine-et-Loire, la Vendee, Loire Inferieure, and Deux-Sevres. The same revival takes place in Ireland, where the weaving of handkerchiefs in hand-looms is growing in the shape of a small village industry. ¹⁴⁸ Neither at Rouen nor in the industrial cities of Northern France are so many linen handkerchiefs fabricated as in this region in hand-looms, we are told by Ardouin Dumazet.

Within the curve made by the Loire as it flows past Orleans we find another prosperous centre of domestic industries connected with cottons. “From Romorantin [in Loire-et-Cher, south of Orleans] to Argenton and Le Blanc,” the same writer says, “we have one immense workshop where handkerchiefs are embroidered, and shirts, cuffs, collars and all sorts of ladies’ linen are sewn or embroidered. There is not one house, even in the tiniest hamlets, where the women would not be occupied in that trade ... and if this work is a mere passe-temps in vinegrowing regions, here it has become the chief resource of the population.” Ardouin Dumazet, vol. i., p. 117 et seq. ¹⁴⁹ Even at Romorantin itself, where 400 women and girls are employed in one factory, there are more than 1,000 women who sew linen in their houses.

The same must be said of a group of industrial villages peopled with clothiers in the neighbourhood of another Normandy city, Elbaeuf. When Baudrillart visited them in 1878–1880, he was struck with the undoubted advantages offered by a combination of agriculture with industry. Clean houses, clean dresses, and a general stamp of well-being were characteristic of these villages.

Happily enough, weaving is not the only small industry of both this region and Brittany. On the contrary, scores of other small industries enliven the villages and burgs. At Fougeres (in Ille-et-Vilaine, to the north-east of Reims) one sees how the factory has contributed to the development of various small and domestic trades. In 1830 this town was a great centre for the domestic fabrication of the so-called chaussons de tresse. The competition of the prisons killed, however, this primitive industry; but it was soon substituted by the fabrication of soft socks in felt (chaussons de feutre). This last industry also went down, and then the fabrication of boots and shoes was introduced, this last giving origin, in its turn, to the boot and shoe factories, of which there are now thirty-three at Fougeres, employing 8,000 workers Twelve thousand in 1906. ¹⁵⁰ (yearly production about 5,000,000 pairs). But at the same time domestic industries took a new development. Thousands of women are employed now in their houses in sewing the “uppers” and in embroidering fancy shoes. Moreover, quite a number of smaller workshops grew up in the neighbourhood, for the fabrication of cardboard boxes, wooden heels, and so on, as well as a number of tanneries, big and small. And M. Ardouin Dumazet’s remark is, that one is struck to find, owing to these industries, an undoubtedly higher level of well-being in the villages — quite unforeseen in the centre of this purely agricultural region. Ardouin Dumazet, vol. v., p. 270. ¹⁵¹

In Brittany, in the neighbourhood of Quimperle, a great number of small workshops for the fabrication of the felt hats which are worn by the peasants is scattered in the villages; and rapidly improving agriculture goes hand in hand with that trade. Well-being is a distinctive feature of these villages. Ibid., vol. v., p. 215. ¹⁵² At Hennebont (on the southern coast of Brittany) 1,400 workers are employed in an immense factory in the fabrication of tins for preserves, and every year twenty-two to twenty-three tons of iron are transformed into steel, and next into tins, which are sent to Paris, Bordeaux, Nantes, and so on. But the factory has created “quite a world of tiny workshops” in this purely agricultural region: small tin-ware workshops, tanneries, potteries, and so on, while the slags are transformed in small factories into manure.

Agriculture and industry are thus going here hand in hand, the importance of not severing the union being perhaps best seen at Loudeac, a small town in the midst of Brittany (department of Cotes-du-Nord). Formerly the villages in this neighbourhood were industrial, all hamlets being peopled with weavers who fabricated the well-known Brittany linen. Now, this industry having gone down very much, the weavers have simply returned to the soil. Out of an industrial town, Loudeac has become an agricultural market town; Ardouin Dumazet, vol. v., pp. 259–266. ¹⁵³ and, what is most interesting, these populations conquer new lands for agriculture and turn the formerly quite unproductive landes into rich corn fields; while on the northern coast of Brittany, around Dol, on land which began to be conquered from the sea in the twelfth century, market-gardening is now carried on to a very great extent for export to England.

Altogether, it is striking to observe, on perusing M. Ardouin Dumazet’s little volumes, how domestic industries go hand in hand with all sorts of small industries in agriculture-gardening, poultry-farming, fabrication of fruit preserves, and so on — and how all sorts of associations for sale and export are easily introduced. Mans is, as known, a great centre for the export of geese and all sorts of poultry to England.

Part of Normandy (namely, the departments of Eure and Orne) is dotted with small workshops where all sorts of small brass goods and hardware are fabricated in the villages. Of course, the domestic fabrication of pins is nearly gone, and as for needles, polishing only, in a very primitive form, has been maintained in the villages. But all sorts of small hardware, including nails, lockets, etc., in great variety, are fabricated in the villages, especially round Laigle. Stays are also sewn in small workshops in many villages, notwithstanding the competition of prison work. I gave some information about French prison work in a book, In Russian and French Prisons, London, 1888. ¹⁵⁴

Tinchebrai (to the west of Flers) is a real centre for a great variety of smaller goods in iron, mother-of-pearl and horn. All sorts of hardware and locks are fabricated by the peasants during the time they can spare from agriculture, and real works of art, some of which were much admired at the exhibition of 1889, are produced by these humble peasant sculptors in horn, mother-of-pearl and iron. Farther south, the polishing of marble goods is carried on in numbers of small workshops, scattered round Solesmes and grouped round one central establishment where marble pieces are roughly shaped with the aid of steam, to be finished in the small village workshops. At Sable the workers in that branch, who all own their houses and gardens, enjoy a real well-being especially noticed by our traveller. Ardouin Dumazet, Vol. ii., p. 51. ¹⁵⁵

In the woody regions of the Perche and the Maine we find all sorts of wooden industries which evidently could only be maintained owing to the communal possession of the woods. Near the forest of Perseigne there is a small burg, Fresnaye, which is entirely peopled with workers in wood.

“There is not one house,” Ardouin Dumazet writes, “in which wooden goods would not be fabricated. Some years ago there was little variety in their produce; spoons, salt-boxes, shepherds’ boxes, scales, various wooden pieces for weavers, flutes and hautboys, spindles, wooden measures, funnels, and wooden bowls were only made. But Paris wanted to have a thousand things in which wood was combined with iron: mouse-traps, cloak-pegs, spoons for jam, brooms... And now every house has a workshop containing either a turning-lathe, or some machine-tools for chopping wood, for making lattice-work, and so on... Quite a new industry was born, and the most coquettish things are now fabricated. Owing to this industry the population is happy. The earnings are not high, but each worker owns his house and garden, and occasionally a bit of field.” Ibid., Vol. i., pp. 305, 306. ¹⁵⁶

At Neufchatel wooden shoes are made, and the hamlet, we are told, has a most smiling aspect. To every house a garden is attached, and none of the misery of big cities is to be seen. At Jupilles and in the surrounding country other varieties of wooden goods are produced: taps, boxes of different kinds, together with wooden shoes; while at the forest of Vibraye two workshops have been erected for turning out umbrella handles by the million for all France. One of these workshops having been founded by a worker sculptor, he has invented and introduced in his workshop the most ingenious machine-tools. About 150 men work at this factory; but it is evident that half a dozen smaller workshops, scattered in the villages, would have answered equally well.

Going now over to a quite different region, the Nievre, in the centre of France, and Haute Marne, in the east — we find that both regions are great centres for a variety of small industries, some of which are maintained by associations of workers, while others have grown up in the shadow of factories. The small iron workshops which formerly covered the country have not disappeared: they have undergone a transformation; and now the country is covered with small workshops where agricultural machinery, chemical produce, and pottery are fabricated; “one ought to go as far as Guerigny and Fourchambault to find the great industry;” Ardouin Dumazet, vol. i., p. 52. ¹⁵⁷ while a number of small workshops for the fabrication of a variety of hardware flourish by the side of, and owing to the proximity of, the industrial centres.

Pottery makes the fortune of the valley of the Loire about Nevers. High-class art pottery is made in this town, while in the villages plain pottery is fabricated and exported by merchants who go about with their boats selling it. At Gien a large factory of china buttons (made out of felspar-powder cemented with milk) has lately been established, and employs 1,500 workmen, who produce from 3,500 to 4,500 lb. of buttons every day. And, as is often the case, part of the work is done in the villages. For many miles on both banks of the Loire, in all villages, old people, women and children sew the buttons to the cardboard pieces. Of course, that sort of work is wretchedly paid; but it is resorted to only because there is no other sort of industry in the neighbourhood to which the peasants could give their leisure time.

In the same region of the Haute Marne, especially in the neighbourhood of Nogent, we find cutlery as a by-occupation to agriculture, Landed property is very much subdivided in that part of France, and great numbers of peasants own but from two to three acres per family, or even less. Consequently, in thirty villages round Nogent, about 5,000 men are engaged in cutlery, chiefly of the highest sort (artistic knives are occasionally sold at as much as £20 a piece), while the lower sorts are fabricated in the neighbourhoods of Thiers, in Puy-de-Dome (Auvergne). The Nogent industry has developed spontaneously, with no aid from without, and in its technical part it shows considerable progress. Prof. Issaieff in the Russian Memoirs of the Petty Trades Commission (Trudy Kustarnoi Kommissii), vol. v. ¹⁵⁸ At Thiers, where the cheapest sorts of cutlery are made, the division of labour, the cheapness of rent for small workshops supplied with motive power from the Durolle river, or from small gas motors, the aid of a great variety of specially invented machine-tools, and the existing combination of machine-work with hand-work have resulted in such a perfection of the technical part of the trade that it is considered doubtful whether the factory system could further economise labour. Knives are sold at from 6s. 4d. to 8s. per gross, and razors at 3s. 3d. per gross “for export.” ¹⁵⁹ For twelve miles round Thiers, in each direction, all the streamlets are dotted with small work-shops, in which peasants, who continue to cultivate their fields, are at work.

Basket-making is again an important cottage industry in several parts of France, namely in Aisne and in Haute Marne. In this last department, at Villaines, everyone is a basketmaker, “and all the basketmakers belong to a co-operative society,” Ardouin Dumazet remarks. Ardouin Dumazet, vol. i., p. 213 et seg. ¹⁶⁰ “There are no employers; all the produce is brought once a fortnight to the co-operative stores and there it is sold for the association. About 150 families belong to it, and each owns a house and some vineyards.” At Fays-Billot, also in Haute Marne, 1,500 basket-makers belong to an association; while at Thiérache, where several thousand men are engaged in the same trade, no association has been formed, the earnings being in consequence extremely low.

Another very important centre of petty trades is the French Jura, or the French part of the Jura Mountains, where the watch trade has attained, as known, a high development. When 1 visited these villages between the Swiss frontier and Besançon in the year 1878, I was struck by the high degree of relative well-being which I could observe, even though I was perfectly well acquainted with the Swiss villages in the Val de Saint Imier. It is very probable that the machine-made watches have brought about a crisis in French watch-making as they have in Switzerland. But it is known that part, at least, of the Swiss watch-makers have strenuously fought against the necessity of being enrolled in the factories, and that while watch factories grew up at Geneva and elsewhere, considerable numbers of the watchmakers have taken to divers other trades which continue to be carried on as domestic or small industries. I must only add that in the French Jura great numbers of watch-makers were at the same time owners of their houses and gardens, very often of bits of fields, and especially of communal meadows, and that the communal fruitièes, or creameries, for the common sale of butter and cheese, are widely spread in that part of France.

So far as I could ascertain, the development of the machine-made watch industry has not destroyed the small industries of the Jura hills. The watch-makers have taken to new branches, and, as in Switzerland, they have created various new industries. From Ardouin Dumazet’s travels we can, at any rate, borrow an insight into the present state of the southern part of this region. In the neighbourhoods of Nantua and Cluses silks are woven in nearly all villages, the peasants giving to weaving their spare time from agriculture, while quite a number of small workshops (mostly less than twenty looms, one of 100 looms) are scattered in the little villages, on the streamlets running from the hills. Scores of small saw-mills have also been built along the streamlet Merloz, for the fabrication of all sorts of little pretty things in wood. At Oyonnax, a small town on the Ain, we have a big centre for the fabrication of combs, an industry more than 200 years old, which took a now development since the last war through the invention of celluloid. No less than 100 or 120 “masters” employ from two to fifteen workers each, while over 1,200 persons work in their houses, making combs out of Irish horn and French celluloid. Wheelpower was formerly rented in small workshops, but electricity, generated by a waterfall, has lately been introduced, and is now distributed in the houses for bringing into motion small motors of from one-quarter to twelve horsepower. And it is remarkable to notice that as soon as electricity gave the possibility to return to domestic work, 300 workers left at once the small workshops and took to work in their houses. Most of these workers have their own cottages and gardens, and they show a very interesting spirit of association. They have also erected four workshops for making cardboard boxes, and their production is valued at 2,000,000 fr. every year. Ardouin Dumazet, vol. viii., p. 40. ¹⁶¹

At St. Claude, which is a great centre for briar pipes (sold in large quantities in London with English trade-marks, and therefore eagerly bought by those Frenchmen who visit London, as a souvenir from the other side of the Channel), both big and small workshops, supplied by motive force from the Tacon streamlet, prosper by the side of each other. Over 4,000 men and women are employed in this trade, while all sorts of small by-trades have grown by its side (amber and horn mouth-pieces, sheaths, etc.). Countless small workshops are busy besides, on the banks of the two streams, with the fabrication of all sorts of wooden things: match-boxes, beads, sheaths for spectacles, small things in horn, and so on, to say nothing of a rather large factory (200 workers) where metric measures are fabricated for the whole world. At the same time thousands of persons in St. Claude, in the neighbouring villages and in the smallest mountain hamlets, are busy in cutting diamonds (an industry only fifteen years old in this region), and other thousands are busy in cutting various less precious stones. All this is done in quite small workshops supplied by water-power. Interesting details about the small industries of this region will be found in the articles of Ch. Guicysse, in Pages libres, 1902, Nos. 66 and 71. ¹⁶²

The extraction of ice from some lakes and the gathering of oak-bark for tanneries complete the picture of these busy villages, where industry joins hands with agriculture, and modern machines and appliances are so well put in the service of the small workshops.

On the other side, at Besançon, which was, in 1878, when I visited it, a great centre for watch-making, “all taken, nothing has yet been changed in the habits of the working-class,” M. Dumazet wrote in 1901. The watchmakers continued to work in their houses or in small workshops. Ardouin Dumazet, vol. xxiii., pp. 105, 106. ¹⁶³ Only there was no complete fabrication of the watch or the clock. Many important parts — the wheels, etc. — were imported from Switzerland or from different towns of France. And, as is always the case, numerous small secondary workshops for making the watch-cases, the hands, and so on, grew up in that neighbourhood.

The same has to be said of Montbéliard — another important centre of the watch trade. By the side of the manufactures, where all the parts of the mechanism of the watch are fabricated by machinery, there is quite a number of workshops where various parts of the watch are made by skilled workmen; and this industry has already given birth to a new branch — the making of various tools for these workshops, as also for different other trades.

In other parts of the same region, such as Héricourt, a variety of small industries has grown by the side of the great ironmongery factories. The city spreads into the villages, where the population are making coffee-mills, spice-mills, machines for crushing the grain for the cattle, as well as saddlery, small ironmongery, or even watches. Elsewhere the fabrication of different small parts of the watch having been monopolised by the factories, the workshops began to manufacture the small parts of the bicycles, and later on of the motor-cars. In short, we have here quite a world of industries of modern origin, and with them of inventions made to simplify the work of the band.

Finally, omitting a mass of small trades, I will only name the hat-makers of the Loire, the stationery of the Ardèche, the fabrication of hardware in the Doubs, the glove-makers of the Isère, the broom and brush-makers of the Oise (valued at £800,000 per annum), and the house machine-knitting in the neighbourhoods of Troyes. But I must say a few words more about two important centres of small industries: the Lyons region and Paris.

At the present time the industrial region of which Lyons is the centre For further details see Appendix U. ¹⁶⁴ includes the departments of Rhône, Loire, Drôme, Saône-et-Loire, Ain, the southern part of the Jura department, and the western part of Savoy, as far as Annecy, while the silkworm is reared as far as the Alps, the Cévennes Mountains, and the neighbourhoods of Macon. It contains, besides fertile plains, large billy tracks, also very fertile as a rule, but covered with snow during part of the winter, and the rural populations are therefore bound to resort to some industrial occupation in addition to agriculture; they find it in silk-weaving and various small industries. Altogether it may be said that the région lyonnaise is characterised as a separate centre of French civilisation and art, and that a remarkable spirit of research, discovery and invention has developed there in all directions — scientific and industrial.

The Croix Rousso at Lyons, where the silkweavers (canuts) have their chief quarters, is the centre of that industry, and in IS95 the whole of that hill, thickly covered with houses, five, six, eight and ten storeys high, resounded with the noise of the looms which were busily going in every department of that big agglomeration. Electricity has lately been brought into the service of this domestic industry, supplying motive power to the looms.

To the south of Lyons, in the city of Vienne, hand-weaving is disappearing. “Shoddy” is now the leading produce, and twenty-eight concerns only remain out of the 120 fabriques which existed thirty years ago. Old woollen rags, rags of carpets, and all the dust from the carding and spinning in the wool and cotton factories of Northern France, with a small addition of cotton, are transformed here into cloth which flows from Vienne to all the big cities of France — 20,000 yards of “shoddy” every day — to supply the ready-made clothing factories, Hand-weaving has evidently nothing to do in that industry, and in 1890 only 1,300 hand-looms were at work out of the 4,000 which were in motion in 1870. Large factories, employing a total of 1,800 workers, have taken the place of these hand-weavers, while “shoddy” has taken the place of cloth. All sorts of flannels, felt hats, tissues of horse-hair, and so on, are fabricated at the same time. But while the great factory thus conquered the city of Vienne., its suburbs and its nearest surroundings became the centre of a prosperous gardening and fruit culture, which has already been mentioned in chapter iv.

The banks of the Rhône, between Ampuis and Condrieu, are one of the wealthiest parts, of all France, owing to the shrubberies and nurseries, market-gardening, fruit-growing, vine-growing, and cheese-making out of goats’ milk. Those industries go there hand in hand with an intelligent culture of the soil; Condrieu, for instance, is a famous centre for embroidery, which is made partly by hand, as of old, and partly by machinery.

In the west of Lyons, at I’Arbresles, factories have grown up for making silks and velvets; but a large part of the population still continue to weave in their houses; while farther west, Panissières is the centre of quite a number of villages in which linen and silks are woven as a domestic industry. Not all these workers own their houses, but those, at least, who own or rent a small piece of land or garden, or keep a couple of cows, are said to be well off, and the land, as a rule, is said to be admirably cultivated by these weavers.

The chief industrial centre of this part of the Lyons region is certainly Tarare. At the time when Reybaud wrote his already-mentioned work, Le Coton, it was a centre for the manufacture of muslins and it occupied in this industry the same position as Leeds formerly occupied in this country in the woollen cloth trade. The spinning mills and the large finishing factories were at Tarare, while the weaving of the muslins and the embroidery of the same were made in the surrounding villages, especially in the hilly tracts of the Beaujolais and the Forez. Each peasant house, each farm and métayerie were small workshops at that time, and one could see, Reybaud wrote, the lad of twenty embroidering fine muslin after he had finished cleaning the farm stables, without the work suffering in its delicacy from a combination of two such varied pursuits. On the contrary, the delicacy of the work and the extreme variety of patterns were a distinctive feature of the Tarare muslins and a cause of their success. All testimonies agreed at the same time in recognising that, while agriculture found support in the industry, the agricultural population enjoyed a relative well-being.

By this time the industry has undergone a thorough transformation, but still no less than 60,000 persons, representing a population of about 250,000 souls, work for Tarare in the hilly tracts, weaving all sorts of muslins for all parts of the world, and they earn every year £480,000 in this way.

Amplepuis, notwithstanding its own factories of silks and blankets, remains one of the local centres for such muslins; while close by, Thizy is a centre for a variety of linings, flannels, “peruvian serges,” “oxfords,” and other mixed woollen-and-cotton stuffs which are woven in the mountains by the peasants. No less than 3,000 hand-looms are thus scattered in twentytwo villages., and about £600,000 worth of various stuffs are woven every year by the rural weavers in this neighbourhood alone; while 15,000 powerlooms are at work in both Thizy and the great city of Roanne, in which two towns all varieties of cottons (linings, flannelettes, apron cloth) and. silk blankets are woven in factories by the million yards.

At Cours, 1,600 workers are employed in making “blankets,” chiefly of the lowest sort (even such as are sold at 2s. and even 10d. a piece, for export to Brazil); all possible and imaginable rags and sweepings from all sorts of textile factories (jute, cotton, flax, hemp, wool and silk) are used for that industry, in which the factory is, of course, fully victorious. But even at Roanne, where the fabrication of cottons has attained a great degree of perfection and 9,000 power-looms are at work, producing every year more than 30,000,000 yards — even at Roanne one finds with astonishment that domestic industries are not dead, but yield every year the respectable amount of more than 10,000,000 yards of stuffs. At the same time, in the neighbourhood of that big city the industry of fancy-knitting has taken within the last thirty years a sudden development. Only 2,000 women were employed in it in 1864, but their numbers were estimated by M. Dumazet at 20,000; and, without abandoning their rural work, they find time to knit, with the aid of small knitting-machines, all sorts of fancy articles in wool, the annual value of which attains £6360,000. Ardouin Dumazet, vol. viii., p. 266. ¹⁶⁵

It must not be thought, however, that textiles and connected trades are the only small industries in this locality. Scores of various rural industries continue to exist besides, and in nearly all of them the methods of production are continually improved. Thus, when the rural making of plain chairs became unprofitable, articles of luxury and stylish chairs began to be fabricated in the villages, and similar transformations are found everywhere.

More details about this extremely interesting region will be found in the Appendix, but one remark must be made in this place. Notwithstanding its big industries and coal mines, this part of France has entirely maintained its rural aspect, and is now one of the best cultivated parts of the country. What most deserves admiration is — not so much the development of the great industries, which, after all, here as elsewhere, are to a great extent international in their origins — as the creative and inventive powers and capacities of adaptation which appear amongst the great mass of these industrious populations. At every step, in the field, in the garden, in the orchard, in the dairy, in the industrial arts, in the hundreds of small inventions in these arts, one sees the creative genius of the folk. In these regions one best understands why France, taking the mass of its population, is considered the richest country of Europe. Some further details about the Lyons region and St. Etienne are given in Appendix U. ¹⁶⁶

The chief centre for petty trades in France is, however, Paris. There we find, by the side of the large factories, the greatest variety of petty trades for the fabrication of goods of every description, both for the home market and for export. The petty trades at Paris so much prevail over the factories that the average number of workmen employed in the 98,000 factories and workshops of Paris is less than ,six, while the number of persons employed in workshops which have less than five operatives is almost twice as big as the number of persons, employed in the larger establishments. In 1873, out of a total population of 1,851,800 inhabiting Paris, 816,040 (404,408 men and 411,632 women) were living on industry, and out of them only 293,691 were connected with the factories (grande industrie), while 522,349 were living on the petty trades (petite indu8trie) — Maxime du Camp, Paris et ses Organes, vol. vi. It is interesting to note that of late the small workshops where some of the finest work is made in metals, wood, and so on, have begun to be scattered round Paris. ¹⁶⁷ In fact, Paris is a great bee-hive where hundreds of thousands of men and women fabricate in small workshops all possible varieties of goods which require skill, taste and invention. These small workshops, in which artistic finish and rapidity of work are so much praised, necessarily stimulate the mental powers of the producers; and we may safely admit that if the Paris workmen are generally considered, and really are, more developed intellectually than the workers of any other European capital, this is due to a great extent to the character of the work they are engaged in — a work which implies artistic taste, skill, and especially inventiveness, always wide awake in order to invent now patterns of goods and steadily to increase and to perfect the technical methods of production. It also appears very probable that if we find a highly developed working population in Vienna and Warsaw, this depends again to a very great extent upon the very considerable development of similar small industries, which stimulate invention and so much contribute to develop the worker’s intelligence.

The Galerie du travail at the Paris exhibitions is always a most remarkable sight. One can appreciate in it both the variety of the small. industries which are carried on in French towns and the skill and inventing powers of the workers. And the question necessarily arises: Must all this skill, all this intelligence, be swept away by the factory, instead of becoming a new fertile source of progress under a better organisation of production? must all this independence and inventiveness of the worker disappear before the factory levelling? and, if it must, would such a transformation be a progress, as so many economists who have only studied figures and not human beings are ready to maintain?

At any rate, it is quite certain that even if the absorption of the French petty trades by the big factories were possible — which seems extremely doubtful — the absorption would not be accomplished so soon as that. The small industry of Paris fights hard for its maintenance, and it shows its vitality by the numberless machine-tools which are continually invented by the workers for improving and cheapening the produce.

The numbers of motors which were exhibited at the last exhibitions in the Galerie du travail bear a testimony to the fact that a cheap motor, for the small industry, is one of the leading problems of the day. Motors weighing only forty-five lb., including the boiler, were exhibited in 1889 to answer that want. Small two-horsepower engines, fabricated by the engineers of the Jura (formerly watch-makers) in their small works-hops, were at that time another attempt to solve the problem to say nothing of the water, gas and. electrical motors. Everyone knows what an immense progress has been realised since by the motors used in motor cars and aeroplanes, and what is achieved now by the transmission of electrical power. But I leave these lines as they were written, as a testimony of the way in which the conquest of air began, and of the part taken in it by the French small industry. ¹⁶⁸ The transmission of steam-power to 230 small workshops which was made by the Société des Immeubles industriels was another attempt in the same direction, and the increasing efforts of the French engineers for finding out the best means of transmitting and subdividing power by means of compressed air, “tole-dynamic cables,” and electricity are indicative of the endeavours of the small industry to retain its ground in the face of the competition of the factories. (See Appendix V.)

Such are the small industries in France, as they have been described by observers who saw them on the spot. It is, however, most interesting to have exact statistical items concerning the extension of the small industries, and to know their importance, in comparison with the, great industry. Fortunately enough, a general census of the French industries was made in the year 1896; its results have been published in full, under the title of Résultats statistiques du recensement des industries et des professions, and in the fourth volume of this capital work we find an excellent summing up of the main results of the census, written by M. Lucien March. I give a résumé of these results in the Appendix, as otherwise I should have been compelled, in speaking of the distribution of great and small industry in France, to repeat very much what I have said in this same chapter, speaking of the United Kingdom. There is so much in common in the distribution of small and large factories in the different branches of industry in both countries that it would have been a tedious repetition. So I give here only the main items and refer the reader to Appendix W.

The general distribution of the workers’ population in large, middle-sized, and small factories in the year 1896 was as follows. First of all there was the great division of independent artisans who worked single-banded, and working men and women who were without permanent employment on the day of the census. Part of this large division belongs to agriculture but, after having deducted the agricultural establishments, M. March arrives at the figures of 483,000 establishments belonging to this category in industry, and 1,047,000 persons of both sexes working in these establishments, or temporarily attached to some industrial establishment. To these we must add 37,705 industrial establishments, where no hired workmen are employed, but the head of the establishment works with the aid of the members of his own family. We have thus, in these two divisions, about 520,700 establishments and 1,084,700 persons which I inscribe in the following table under the head of “No hired operatives.” The table then appears as follows: —

These figures speak for themselves and show what an immense importance the small industry has in France. More details, showing the distribution of the great, middle-sized and small industry in different branches will be found in the Appendix, and there the reader will also see what a striking resemblance is offered under this aspect by the industry of France and that of the United Kingdom. In the next chapter it will be seen from a similar census that Germany stands in absolutely the same position.

It would have been very interesting to compare the present distribution of industries in France with what it was previously. But M. Lucien March tells us that “no statistics previous to 1896 have given us a knowledge of that distribution.” Still, an inquest made between 1840 and 1845, and which M. March considers “very complete for the more important establishments which employed more than fifty workmen,” was worked out by him, and he found that such establishments numbered 3,300 in 1840; in 1896 they had already attained the number of 7,400, and they occupied more than fifty-five per cent. of all the workpeople employed in industry. As to the establishments which employed more than 500 persons and which — numbered 133 in 1840 (six per cent. of all the workpeople), they attained the number of 444 in 1896, and sixteen per cent. of all the workpeople were employed in them.

The conclusion to be drawn from these fact is thus worded by M. March: “To sum up, during the last fifty years a notable concentration of the factories took place in the big establishments; but the just-mentioned results, supported by the statistics of the patents, permit us to recognise that this concentration does not prevent the maintenance of a mass of small enterprises, the average sizes of which increase but very slowly.” This last is, in fact, what we have just seen from our brief sketch for the United Kingdom, and we can only ask ourselves whether — such being the facts — the word “concentration” is well chosen. What we see in reality is, the appearance, in some branches of industry, of a certain number of large establishments, and especially of middle-sized factories. But this does not prevent in the least that very great numbers of small factories should continue to exist, either in other branches, or in the very same branches where large factories have appeared (the textiles, work in metal), or in branches connected with the main ones, which take their origin in these main ones, as the industry of clothing takes its origin from that of the textiles.

This is the only conclusion which a serious analysis permits us to draw from the facts brought to light by the census of 1896 and subsequent observations. As to the large deductions about “concentration” made by certain economists, they are mere hypotheses — useful, of course, for stimulating research, but becoming quit obnoxious when they are represented as economical laws, when in reality they are not confirmed at all by the testimony of carefully observed facts.

The various industries which still have retained in Germany the characters of petty and domestic trades have been the subject of many exhaustive explorations, especially by A. M. Thun and Prof. Issaieff, on behalf of the Russian Petty Trades Commission, Emanuel Hans Sax, Paul Voigt, and very many others. By this time the subject has a bulky literature, and such impressive and suggestive pictures have been drawn from life for different regions and trades that I felt tempted to sum up these life-true descriptions. However, as in such a summary I should have to repeat much of what has already been said and illustrated in the preceding chapter, it will probably more interest the general reader to know something about the conclusions which can be drawn from the works of the German investigators, The remarks of Prof. Issaieff — a thorough investigator of petty trades in Russia, Germany and France — (see Works of the Commission for the Study of Petty Trades in Russia (Russian), St. Petersburg, 1879–1887 vol. i.) were for me a valuable guide when I prepared the first edition of this book. Since that time the two industrial censuses of 1895 and 1907 have yielded such a valuable material, that there are quite a number of German works which came to the same conclusions. I shall mention them further on. ¹⁶⁹ and to know the conclusions that may be drawn from the three censuses of industries which have been made in Germany in the years 1882, 1895, and 1907. This is what I am going to do.

Unhappily, the discussion upon this important subject has often taken in Germany a passionate and even a personally aggressive character See K. Buecher’s Preface to the Untersuchungen über die Lage des Handwerks in Deutschland, vol. iv. ¹⁷⁰ On. the one hand the ultra-conservative elements of German politics tried, and succeeded to some extent, in making of the petty trades and the domestic industries an arm for securing a return to the “olden good times.” They even passed a law intended to prepare a reintroduction of the old-fashioned, closed and patriarchal corporations which could be placed under the close supervision and tutorship of the State, and they saw in such a law a weapon against social democracy. On the other hand, the social democrats, justly opposed to such measures, but themselves inclined, in their turn, to take too abstract a view of economical questions, bitterly attack all those who do not merely repeat the stereotyped phrases to the effect that “the petty trades are in decay,” and “the sooner they disappear the better,” as they will give room to capitalist centralisation, which, according to the social democratic creed, “will soon achieve its own ruin.” In this dislike of the small industries they are, of course, at one with the economists of the orthodox school, whom they combat on nearly all other points. The foundation for this creed is contained in one of the concluding chapters of Marx’s Kapitall (the last but one), in which the author spoke of the concentration of capital and saw in it the “fatality of a natural law.” In the “forties,” this idea of “concentration of capital,” originated from what was going on in the textile industries, was continually recurring in the writings of all the French socialists, especially Considérant, and their German followers, and it was used by them as an argument in favour of the necessity of a social revolution. But Marx was too much of a thinker that he should not have taken notice of the subsequent developments of industrial life, which were not foreseen in 1848; if he had lived now, he surely would not have shut his eyes to the formidable growth of the numbers of small capitalists and to the middle-class fortunes which are made in a thousand ways under the shadow of the modern “millionaires.” Very likely he would have noticed also the extreme slowness with which the wrecking of small industries goes on — a slowness which could not be predicted fifty or forty years ago, because no one could foresee at that time the facilities which have been offered since for transport, the growing variety of demand, nor the cheap means which are now in use for the supply of motive power in small quantities. Being a thinker, lie would have studied these facts, and very probably he would have mitigated the absoluteness of his earlier formulae, as in fact he did once with regard to the village community in Russia. It would be most desirable that his followers should rely less upon abstract formulae — easy as they may be as watchwords in political struggles — and try to imitate their teacher in his analysis of concrete economical phenomena. ¹⁷¹

Under such conditions, the polemics about the petty trades and the domestic industries are evidently doomed to remain most unproductive. However, it is pleasant to see that a considerable amount of most conscientious work has boon made for the investigation of the petty trades in Germany; and, by the side of such monographs, from which nothing can be learned but that the petty trades’ workers are in a miserable condition, and nothing whatever can be gathered to explain why these workers prefer their conditions to those of factory hands — there is no lack, of very detailed monographs (such as those of Thun, Em. 14. Sax, Paul Voigt on the Berlin cabinetmakers, etc.), in which one sees the whole of the life of these classes of workers, the difficulties which they have to cope with, and the technical conditions of the trade, and finds all the elements for an independent judgment upon the matter.

It is evident that a number of petty trades are already now doomed to disappear; but. there are others, on the contrary, which are endowed with a great vitality, and all chances are in favour of their continuing to exist and to take a further development for many years to come. In the fabrication of such textiles as are woven by millions of yards, and can be best produced with the aid of a complicated machinery, the competition of the hand-loom against the power-loom is evidently nothing but a survival, which may be maintained for some time by certain local conditions, but finally must die away.

The same is true with regard to many branches of the iron industries, hardware fabrication, pottery, and so on. But wherever the direct intervention of taste and inventiveness are required, wherever new patterns of goods requiring a continual renewal of machinery and tools must continually be introduced in order to feed the demand, as is the case with all fancy textiles, even though they be fabricated to supply the millions; wherever a great variety of goods and the uninterrupted invention of new ones goes on, as is the case in the toy trade., in instrument making, watch-making, bicycle making, and so on; and finally, wherever the artistic feeling of the individual worker makes the best part of his goods, as is the case in hundreds of branches of small articles of luxury, there is a wide field for petty trades, rural workshops, domestic industries, and the like. More fresh air, more ideas, more general conceptions, and more co-operation are evidently required in those industries. But where the spirit of initiative has been awakened in one way or another, we see the petty industries taking a new development in Germany, as we have just seen that being done in France.

Now, in nearly all the petty trades in Germany, the position of the workers is unanimously described as most miserable, and the many admirers of centralisation which we find in Germany always insist upon this misery in order to predict, and to call for, the disappearance of “those mediaeval survivals” which “capitalist centralisation” must supplant for the benefit of the worker. The reality is, however, that when we compare the miserable conditions of the workers in the petty trades with the conditions of the wage workers in the factories, in the same regions and in the same trades, we see that the very same misery — prevails among the factory workers. They live upon wages of from nine to eleven shillings a week, in town slums instead of the country. They work eleven hours a day, and they also are subject to the extra misery thrown upon them during the frequently recurring crises. It is only after they have undergone all Sorts of sufferings in their struggles against their employers that some factory workers succeed, more or less, here and there, to wrest from their employers a “living wage” — and this again only in certain trades.

To welcome all these sufferings, seeing in them the action of a “natural law” and a necessary step towards the necessary concentration of industry, would be simply absurd. While to maintain that the pauperisation of all workers and the wreckage of all village industries are a necessary step towards a higher form of industrial organisation would be, not only to affirm much more than one is entitled to affirm under the present imperfect state of economical knowledge, but to show an absolute want of comprehension of the sense of both natural and economic laws. Everyone, on the contrary, who has studied the question of the growth of great industries on its own merits, will undoubtedly agree with Thorold Rogers, who considered the sufferings inflicted upon the labouring classes for that purpose as having been of no necessity whatever, and simply having been inflicted to suit the temporary interests of the few — by no means those of the nation. The Economic Interpretation of History. ¹⁷²

Moreover, everyone knows to what extent the labour of children and girls is resorted to, even in the most prosperous factories — even in this country which stands foremost in industrial development. Some figures relative to this subject were given in the preceding chapter. And this fact is not an accident which might be easily removed, as Maurice Block — a great admirer, of course, of the factory systemtries to represent it. Les Progrès de la Science économique depuis Adam Smith, Paris, 1890, t. i., pp. 460,461. ¹⁷³ The low wages paid to children and youths are now one of the necessary elements in the cheapness of the factory produced textiles, and, consequently, of the very competition of the factory with the petty trades. I have mentioned besides, whilst speaking of France, what are the effects of concentrated “industries upon village life and in Thun’s work, and in many others as well, one may find enough of ghastly instances of what are the effects of accumulations of girls in the factories. To idealise the modern factory, in order to depreciate the so-called “mediaeval” forms of the small industries, is consequently to say the least — as unreasonable as to idealise the latter and try to bring mankind back to isolated home-spinning and home-weaving in every peasant house.

One fact dominates all the investigations which have been made into the conditions of the small industries. We find it in Germany, as well as in France or in Russia. In an immense number of trades it is not the superiority of the technical organisation of the trade in a factory, nor the economies realised on the prime-motor, which militate against the small industry in favour of the factories, but the more advantageous conditions for selling the produce and for buying the raw produce which are at the disposal of big concerns. Wherever this difficulty has been overcome, either by means of association, or in consequence of a market being secured for the sale of the produce, it has always been found-first, that the conditions of the workers or artisans immediately improved; and next, that a rapid progress was realised in the technical aspects of the respective industries. New processes were introduced to improve the produce or to increase the rapidity of its fabrication; new machine-tools were invented; or new motors were resorted to; or the trade was reorganised so as to diminish the costs of production.

On the contrary, wherever the helpless, isolated artisans and workers continue to remain at the mercy of the wholesale buyers, who always — since Adam Smith’s time — “openly or tacitly” agree to act as one man to bring down the prices almost to a starvation level — and such is the case for the immense number of the small and village industries their condition is so bad that only the longing of the workers after a certain relative independence, and their knowledge of what awaits them in the factory, prevent them from joining the ranks of the factory hands. Knowing that in most cases the advent of the factory would mean no work at all for most men, and the taking of the children and girls to the factory, they do the utmost to prevent it from appearing at all in the village.

As to combinations in the villages, cooperation and the like, one must never forget how jealously the German, the French, the Russian and the Austrian Governments have hitherto prevented the workers, and especially the village workers, from entering into any sort of combination for economical purposes. In France the peasant syndicates were permitted only by the law of 1884. To keep the peasant at the lowest possible level, by means of taxation, serfdom, and the like, has been, and is still, the policy of most continental States. It was only in 1876 that some extension of the association rights was granted in Germany, and even now a mere co-operative association for the sale of the artisans’ work is soon reported as a “political association” and submitted as such to the usual limitations, such as the exclusion of women and the like. See the discussions in the Reichstag in January, 1909, on the Polish Syndicates, and the application that is made to them of the paragraph of the law of the associations relative to language (Spraakenzaragraph). ¹⁷⁴ A striking example of that policy as regards a village association was given by Prof. Issaieff, who also mentioned the severe measures taken by the wholesale buyers in the toy trade to prevent the workers from entering into direct intercourse with foreign buyers.

When one examines with more than a superficial attention the life of the small industries and their struggles for life, one sees that when they perish, they perish — not because “an economy can be realised by using a hundred horsepower motor, instead of a hundred small motors” — this inconveniency never fails to be mentioned, although it is easily obviated in Sheffield, in Paris, and many other places by hiring workshops with wheel-power, supplied by a central machine, and, still more, as was so truly observed by Prof. W. Unwin, by the electric transmission of power. They do not perish because a substantial economy can be realised in the factory production — in many more cases than is usually supposed, the fact is even the reverse — but because the capitalist who establishes a factory emancipates himself from the wholesale and retail dealers in raw materials; and especially, because he emancipates himself from the buyers of his produce and can deal directly with the wholesale buyer and exporter; or else he concentrates in one concern the different stages of fabrication of a given produce. The pages which Schulze-Gäwernitz gave to the organisation of the cotton industry in England, and to the difficulties which the German cotton-mill owners had to contend with, so long as they were dependent — upon Liverpool for raw cotton, are most instructive in this direction. And what characterises the cotton trade prevails in all other industries as well.

If the Sheffield cutlers who now work in their tiny workshops, in one of the above mentioned buildings supplied with wheel-power, were incorporated in one big factory, the chief advantage which would be realised in the factory would not be an economy in the costs of production, in comparison to the quality of the produce; with a shareholders’ company the costs might even increase. And yet the profits (including wages) probably would be greater than the aggregate earnings of the workers, in consequence of the reduced costs of purchase of iron and coal, and the facilities for the sale of the produce. The great concern would thus find its advantages not in such factors as are imposed by the technical necessities of the trade at the time being, but in such factors as could be eliminated by cooperative organisation. All these are elementary notions among practical men.

It hardly need be added that a further advantage which the factory owner has is, that he can find a sale even for produce of the most inferior quality, provided there is a considerable quantity of it to be sold. All those who are acquainted with commerce know, indeed, what an immense bulk of the world’s trade consists of “shoddy,” patraque, “Red Indians’ blankets,” and the like, shipped to distant countries. Whole cities — we just saw — produce nothing but “shoddy.”

Altogether, it may be taken as one of the fundamental facts of the economical life of Europe that the defeat of a number of small trades, artisan work and domestic industries, came through their being incapable of organising the sale of their produce — not from the production itself. The same thing recurs at every page of economical history. The incapacity of organising the sale, without being enslaved by the merchant, was the leading feature of the Mediaeval cities, which gradually fell under the economical and political yoke of the Guild-Merchant, simply because they were not able to maintain the sale of their manufactures by the community as a whole, or to organise the sale of a new produce in the interest of the community. When the markets for such commodities came to be Asia on the one side, and the New World on the other side, such was fatally the case; since commerce had ceased to be communal, and had become individual, the cities became a prey for the rivalries of the chief merchant families.

Even nowadays, when we see the co-operative societies beginning to succeed in their productive workshops, while fifty years ago they invariably failed in their capacity of producers, we may conclude that the cause of their previous failures was not in their incapacity of properly and economically organising production, but in their inability of acting as sellers and exporters of the produce they had fabricated. Their present successes, on the contrary, are fully accounted for by the network of distributive societies which they have at their command. The sale has been simplified, and production has been rendered possible by first organising the market.

Such are a few conclusions which may be drawn from a study of the small industries in Germany and elsewhere. And it may be safely said, with regard to Germany, that if measures are not taken for driving the peasants from the land on the same scale as they have been taken in this country; if, on the contrary, the numbers of small landholders multiply, they necessarily will turn to various small trades, in addition to agriculture, as they have done, and are doing, in France. Every step that may be taken, either for awakening intellectual life in the villages, or for assuring the peasants’ or the country’s rights upon the land, will necessarily further the growth of industries in the villages.

In this light it is extremely interesting to see the figures as to the distribution of the German industries into a small, middle-sized, and great industry, which are given by three industrial censuses taken during the last thirty years. But for these figures I refer the reader to the Appendix. See Appendix X. ¹⁷⁵