Petty Trades in Other Countries

If it were worth extending our inquiry to other countries, we should find a vast field for most interesting observations in Switzerland. There we should see the same vitality in a variety of petty industries, and we could mention what has been done in the different cantons for maintaining the small trades by three different sets of measures: the extension of co-operation; a wide extension of technical education in the schools and the introduction of new branches of semi-artistic production in different parts of the country; and the supply of cheap motive power in the houses by means of a hydraulic or an electric transmission of power borrowed from the waterfalls. A separate book of the greatest interest and value could be written on this subject, especially on the impulse given to a number of petty trades, old and new, by means of a cheap supply of motive power. Such a book would also offer a great interest in that it would show to what an extent that mingling together of agriculture with industry, which I described in the first edition of this book as “the factory amidst the fields,” has progressed of late in Switzerland. It strikes at the present time even the casual traveller. See Appendix V. ¹⁷⁶

Belgium would offer an equal interest. Belgium is certainly a country of centralised industry, and a country in which the productivity of the worker stands at a high level, the average annual productivity of each industrial workman — men, women, and children — attaining now the high figure of at least £250 per head. Coal mines in which more than a thousand workers are employed are numerous, and there is a fair number of textile factories in each of which from 300 to 700 workers are occupied. And yet, if we exclude from the industrial workers’ population of Belgium, which numbered 823,920 persons in 1896 (1,102,240 with the clerks, travellers, supervisors and go on), the 116,300 workpeople who are employed in the coal mines, and nearly 165,000 artisans working single or with the aid of their families, we find that out of the remaining 565,200 workers very nearly one-half — that is, 270,200 persons-work in establishments in which less than fifty persons are employed, while 95,000 persons out of these last are employed in 54,500 workshops, which thus have an average of less than three workers per workshop. Here is the distribution of workpeople in all the industries, according to the Annuaire, Statistique for the year 1909: Artisans working single-handed or with the aid of their families, 165,000 establishments; very small industry, from one to four workpeople, 54,000 establishments, 95,000 workpeople; small industry, from five to forty-nine workpeople per factory, 14,800 establishments, 177,000 employees; middle-sized and great industry, from 50 to 499 workpeople per factory, 1,500 establishments, 250,000 employees; very great industry, above 500 workpeople per factory, 200 establishments, 160,000 employees. Total, 230,000 employers great and small; or 7 1,000 employers out of 7,000,000 inhabitants if we do not count the independent artisans. ¹⁷⁷ We may thus say that — taking the mines out of account more than one-sixth part of the Belgian industrial workers are employed in small workshops which have, on the average, less than three workers each, besides the master, and that four-tenths of all the work-people are employed in factories and workshops having on the average less than thirteen work-people each. When shall — we have for the United Kingdom a census as complete as we have it for France, Germany, and Belgium? that is, a census in which the employed and the employers will be counted separately — instead of throwing into one heap the owner of the factory, the managers, the engineers, and the workers — and their distribution in factories of different sizes will be given. ¹⁷⁸

What is still more remarkable is, that the number of small workshops, in which from one to four aids only are employed by the master, attains the considerable figure of 1,867 (2,293 in 1880) in the textile industries, notwithstanding the high concentration of a certain portion Pewile Industries: Artisans working single or with the aid of their families, 1,437; from one to four workmen, 430 establishments, 949 work-people; from five to forty-nine workpeople, 774 establishments, 14,051 workers; above fifty, 379 establishments, 66,103 workers. ¹⁷⁹ of these industries. As to the machinery works and hardware trades, the small workshops in which the master works with from two to four assistants or journeymen are very numerous (more than 13,300), to say nothing of the gun trade which is a petty trade par excellence, and the furniture trade which has lately taken a great development. A highly concentrated industry, and a high productivity, as well as a considerable export trade, which all testify to a high industrial development of the country, thus go hand in hand with a high development of the domestic trades and small industries altogether.

It hardly need be said that in Austria, Hungary, Italy, and even the United States, the petty trades occupy a prominent position, and play in the sum total of industrial activity an even much greater part than in France, Belgium, or Germany. But it is especially in Russia that we can fully appreciate the importance of the rural industries and the terrible sufferings which will be quite uselessly inflicted on the population, if the policy of the State is going to be now the policy advocated by a number of landlords and factory-owners — namely, if the State throws its tremendous weight in favour of a pauperisation of the peasants and an artificial annihilation of the rural trades, in order to create a centralised great industry. Since 1907 the Russian Government has inaugurated this policy, and has begun to destroy by violence the village community in the interest of the landlord and the protected industries. ¹⁸⁰

The most exhaustive inquiries into the present state, the growth, the technical development of the rural industries, and the difficulties they have to contend with, have been made in Russia. A house-to-house inquiry which embraces nearly 1,000,000 peasants’ houses has been made in various provinces of Russia, and its results already represent 450 volumes, printed by different county councils (Zemstvos). Besides, in the fifteen volumes published by the Petty Trades Committee, and still more in the publications of the Moscow Statistical Committee, and of many provincial assemblies, we find exhaustive lists giving the name of each worker, the extent and the state of his fields, his live stock, the value of his agricultural and industrial production, his earnings from both sources, and his yearly budget; while hundreds of separate trades have been described in separate monographs from the technical, economical, and sanitary points of view.

The results obtained from these inquiries were really imposing, as it appeared that out of the 80 or 90 million population of European Russia proper, no less than 7,500,000 persons were engaged in the domestic trades, and that their production reached, at the lowest estimate, more than £150,000,000, and most probably £200,000,000 (2,000,000,000 roubles) every year. It appears from the house-to-house inquiry, which embodies 855,000 workers, that the yearly value of the produce which they use to manufacture reaches £21,087,000 (the rouble at 24d.), that is, an average of £25 per worker. An average of E20 for the 7,500,000 persons engaged in domestic industries would already give £150,000,000 for their aggregate production; but the most authoritative investigators consider that figure as below the reality. ¹⁸¹ It thus exceeded the total production of the great industry. As to the relative importance of the two for the working classes suffice it to say that even in the government of Moscow, which is the chief manufacturing region of Russia (its factories yield upwards of one-fifth in value of the aggregate industrial production of European Russia), the aggregate incomes derived by the population from the domestic industries are three times larger than the aggregate wages earned in the factories.

The most striking feature of the Russian domestic trades is that the sudden start which was made by the factories in Russia did not prejudice the domestic industries. On the contrary, it gave a new impulse to their extension; they grew and developed precisely in those regions where the factories were growing up fastest.

Another most suggestive feature is the following: although the unfertile provinces of Central Russia have been from time immemorial the seat of all kinds of petty trades, several domestic industries of modern origin are developing in those provinces which are best favoured by soil and climate. Thus, the Stavropol government of North Caucasus, where the peasantry have plenty of fertile soil, has suddenly become the seat of a widely developed silkweaving industry in the peasants’ houses, and now it supplies Russia with cheap silks which have completely expelled from the market the plain silks formerly imported from France. In Orenburg and on the Black Sea, the petty trades’ fabrication of agricultural machinery, which has grown up lately, is another instance in point.

The capacities of the Russian domestic industrial workers for co-operative organisation would be worthy of more than a passing mention. As to the cheapness of the produce manufactured in the villages, which is really astonishing, it cannot be explained in full by the exceedingly long hours of labour and the starvation earnings, because overwork and very low wages are characteristic of the Russian factories as well. It depends also upon the circumstance that the peasant who grows his own food, but suffers from a constant want of money, sells the produce of his industrial labour at any price. Therefore, all manufactured goods used by the Russian peasantry, save the printed cottons, are the production of the rural manufacturers. But many articles of luxury, too, are made in the villages, especially around Moscow, by peasants who continue to cultivate their allotments. The silk hats which are sold in the best Moscow shops, and bear the stamp of Nonveautés Parisiennes, are made by the Moscow peasants; so also the “Vienna” furniture of the best “Vienna” shops, even if it goes to supply the palaces. And what is most to be wondered at is not the skill of the peasants — agricultural work is no obstacle to acquiring industrial skill — but the rapidity with which the fabrication of fine goods has spread in such villages as formerly manufactured only goods of the roughest description. Some of the produces of the Russian rural industries have lately been introduced in this country, and find a good sale. ¹⁸²

Much more ought to be said with regard to the rural industries of Russia, especially to “how easily the peasants associate for buying new machinery, or for avoiding the middle man in their purchases of raw produce — as soon as misery is no obstacle to the association” Prugavin, in the Vyestnik Promyshlenvosti, June, 1884. S. also the excellent work of V. V. (Vorontsoff) Destinies of Capitalism in Russia, 1882 (Russia). ¹⁸³. Belgium, and especially Switzerland, could also be quoted for similar illustrations, but the above will be enough to give a general idea of the importance, the vital powers, and the perfectibility of the rural industries.