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[Illustration]
Fields, Factories
and
Workshops
OR
INDUSTRY COMBINED WITH AGRICULTURE
AND BRAIN WORK WITH MANUAL WORK
BY
P. KROPOTKIN
[Illustration: (decorative icon)]
NEW, REVISED, AND ENLARGED EDITION
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1913
PREFACE.
Fourteen years have passed since the first edition of this book
was published, and in revising it for this new edition I found
at my disposal an immense mass of new materials, statistical and
descriptive, and a great number of new works dealing with the
different subjects that are treated in this book. I have thus had an
excellent opportunity to verify how far the previsions that I had
formulated when I first wrote this book have been confirmed by the
subsequent economical evolution of the different nations.
This verification permits me to affirm that the economical tendencies
that I had ventured to foreshadow then have only become more and
more definite since. Everywhere we see the same decentralisation
of industries going on, new nations continually entering the ranks
of those which manufacture for the world market. Each of these
new-comers endeavours to develop, and succeeds in developing, on its
own territory the principal industries, and thus frees itself from
being exploited by other nations, more advanced in their technical
evolution. All nations have made a remarkable progress in this
direction, as will be seen from the new data that are given in this
book.
On the other hand, one sees, with all the great industrial nations,
the growing tendency and need of developing at home a more intensive
agricultural productivity, either by improving the now existing
methods of extensive agriculture, by means of small holdings, “inner
colonisation,” agricultural education, and co-operative work, or by
introducing different new branches of intensive agriculture. This
country is especially offering us at this moment a most instructive
example of a movement in the said direction. And this movement
will certainly result, not only in a much-needed increase of the
productive forces of the nation, which will contribute to free it
from the international speculators in food produce, but also in
awakening in the nation a fuller appreciation of the immense value
of its soil, and the desire of repairing the error that has been
committed in leaving it in the hands of great land-owners and of
those who find it now more advantageous to rent the land to be turned
into shooting preserves. The different steps that are being taken now
for raising English agriculture and for obtaining from the land a
much greater amount of produce are briefly indicated in Chapter V.
It is especially in revising the chapters dealing with the small
industries that I had to incorporate the results of a great number
of new researches. In so doing I was enabled to show that the growth
of an infinite variety of small enterprises by the side of the very
great centralised concerns is not showing any signs of abatement. On
the contrary, the distribution of electrical motive power has given
them a new impulse. In those places where water power was utilised
for distributing electric power in the villages, and in those cities
where the machinery used for producing electric light during the
night hours was utilised for supplying motive power during the day,
the small industries are taking a new development.
In this domain I am enabled to add to the present edition the
interesting results of a work about the small industries in the
United Kingdom that I made in 1900. Such a work was only possible
when the British Factory Inspectors had published (in 1898, in virtue
of the Factories Act of 1895) their first reports, from which I could
determine the hitherto unknown numerical relations between the great
and the small industries in the United Kingdom.
Until then no figures whatever as regards the distribution of
operatives in the large and small factories and workshops of Great
Britain were available; so that when economists spoke of the
“unavoidable” death of the small industries they merely expressed
hypotheses based upon a limited number of observations, which were
chiefly made upon part of the textile industry and metallurgy. Only
after Mr. Whitelegge had published the first figures from which
reliable conclusions could be drawn was it possible to see how little
such wide-reaching conclusions were confirmed by realities. In this
country, as everywhere, the small industries continue to exist, and
new ones continue to appear as a necessary growth, in many important
branches of national production, by the side of the very great
factories and huge centralised works. So I add to the chapter on
small industries a summary of the work that I had published in the
_Nineteenth Century_ upon this subject.
As regards France, the most interesting observations made by M.
Ardouin Dumazet during his many years’ travels all over the country
give me the possibility of showing the remarkable development of
rural industries, and the advantages which were taken from them for
recent developments in agriculture and horticulture. Besides, the
publication of the statistical results of the French industrial
census of 1896 permits me to give now, for France, most remarkable
numerical data, showing the real relative importance of the great and
the small industries.
And finally, the recent publication of the results of the third
industrial census made in Germany in 1907 gives me the data for
showing how the German small industries have been keeping their
ground for the last twenty-five years--a subject which I could touch
only in a general way in the first editions. The results of this
census, compared with the two preceding ones, as also some of the
conclusions arrived at by competent German writers, are indicated in
the Appendix. So also the results recently arrived at in Switzerland
concerning its home industries.
As to the need, generally felt at this moment, of an education which
would combine a wide scientific instruction with a sound knowledge
of manual work--a question which I treat in the last chapter--it can
be said that this cause has already been won in this country during
the last twenty years. The _principle_ is generally recognised by
this time, although most nations, impoverished as they are by their
armaments, are much too slow in applying the principle in life.
P. KROPOTKIN.
BRIGHTON, _October_, 1912.
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
Under the name of profits, rent, interest upon capital, surplus
value, and the like, economists have eagerly discussed the benefits
which the owners of land or capital, or some privileged nations,
can derive, either from the underpaid work of the wage-labourer, or
from the inferior position of one class of the community towards
another class, or from the inferior economical development of one
nation towards another nation. These profits being shared in a very
unequal proportion between the different individuals, classes and
nations engaged in production, considerable pains were taken to study
the present apportionment of the benefits, and its economical and
moral consequences, as well as the changes in the present economical
organisation of society which might bring about a more equitable
distribution of a rapidly accumulating wealth. It is upon questions
relating to the right to that increment of wealth that the hottest
battles are now fought between economists of different schools.
In the meantime the great question--“What have we to produce, and
how?” necessarily remained in the background. Political economy,
as it gradually emerges from its semi-scientific stage, tends more
and more to become a science devoted to the study of the needs of
men and of the means of satisfying them with the least possible
waste of energy,--that is, a sort of physiology of society. But few
economists, as yet, have recognised that this is the proper domain
of economics, and have attempted to treat their science from this
point of view. The main subject of social economy--that is, the
_economy of energy required for the satisfaction of human needs_--is
consequently the last subject which one expects to find treated in a
concrete form in economical treatises.
The following pages are a contribution to a portion of this vast
subject. They contain a discussion of the advantages which civilised
societies could derive from a combination of industrial pursuits with
intensive agriculture, and of brain work with manual work.
The importance of such a combination has not escaped the attention of
a number of students of social science. It was eagerly discussed some
fifty years ago under the names of “harmonised labour,” “integral
education,” and so on. It was pointed out at that time that the
greatest sum total of well-being can be obtained when a variety of
agricultural, industrial and intellectual pursuits are combined in
each community; and that man shows his best when he is in a position
to apply his usually-varied capacities to several pursuits in the
farm, the workshop, the factory, the study or the studio, instead of
being riveted for life to one of these pursuits only.
At a much more recent date, in the ’seventies, Herbert Spencer’s
theory of evolution gave origin in Russia to a remarkable work, _The
Theory of Progress_, by M. M. Mikhailovsky. The part which belongs
in progressive evolution to _differentiation_, and the part which
belongs in it to an _integration_ of aptitudes and activities, were
discussed by the Russian author with depth of thought, and Spencer’s
differentiation-formula was accordingly completed.
And, finally, out of a number of smaller monographs, I must mention a
suggestive little book by J. R. Dodge, the United States statistician
(_Farm and Factory: Aids derived by Agriculture from Industries_, New
York, 1886). The same question was discussed in it from a practical
American point of view.
Half a century ago a harmonious union between agricultural and
industrial pursuits, as also between brain work and manual work,
could only be a remote desideratum. The conditions under which the
factory system asserted itself, as well as the obsolete forms of
agriculture which prevailed at that time, prevented such a union
from being feasible. Synthetic production was impossible. However,
the wonderful simplification of the technical processes in both
industry and agriculture, partly due to an ever-increasing division
of labour--in analogy with what we see in biology--has rendered the
synthesis possible; and a distinct tendency towards a synthesis of
human activities becomes now apparent in modern economical evolution.
This tendency is analysed in the subsequent chapters--a special
weight being laid upon the present possibilities of agriculture,
which are illustrated by a number of examples borrowed from different
countries, and upon the small industries to which a new impetus is
being given by the new methods of transmission of motive power.
The substance of these essays was published in 1888-1890 in the
_Nineteenth Century_, and of one of them in the _Forum_. However, the
tendencies indicated therein have been confirmed during the last ten
years by such a mass of evidence that a very considerable amount of
new matter had to be introduced, while the chapters on agriculture
and the small trades had to be written anew.
I take advantage of this opportunity to address my best thanks to
the editors of the _Nineteenth Century_ and the _Forum_ for their
kind permission of reproducing these essays in a new form, as also
to those friends and correspondents who have aided me in collecting
information about agriculture and the petty trades.
P. KROPOTKIN.
BROMLEY, KENT, 1898.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I. THE DECENTRALISATION OF INDUSTRIES 17
Division of labour and integration--The spread of industrial
skill--Each nation its own producer of manufactured goods--The
United Kingdom--France--Germany--Russia--“German Competition.”
CHAPTER II. THE DECENTRALISATION OF INDUSTRIES (_continued_) 50
Italy and Spain--India--Japan--The United States--The cotton,
woollen, and silk trades--The growing necessity for each
country to rely chiefly upon home consumers.
CHAPTER III. THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE 79
The development of agriculture--The over-population prejudice
--Can the soil of Great Britain feed its inhabitants?--British
agriculture--Compared with agriculture in France; in Belgium;
in Denmark--Market-gardening: its achievements--Is it profitable
to grow wheat in Great Britain?--American agriculture: intensive
culture in the States.
CHAPTER IV. THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE (_continued_) 158
The doctrine of Malthus--Progress in wheat-growing--East
Flanders--Channel Islands--Potato crops, past and present
--Irrigation--Major Hallett’s experiments--Planted wheat.
CHAPTER V. THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE (_continued_) 188
Extension of market-gardening and fruit-growing: in France;
in the United States--Culture under glass--Kitchen gardens
under glass--Hothouse culture: in Guernsey and Jersey; in
Belgium--Conclusion.
CHAPTER VI. SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES 241
Industry and agriculture--The small industries--Different
types--_Petty trades in Great Britain_: Sheffield, Leeds,
Lake District, Birmingham--Statistical data--_Petty trades
in France_: weaving and various other trades--The Lyons
region--Paris, emporium of petty trades--Results of the
census of 1896.
CHAPTER VII. SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES
(_continued_) 325
_Petty trades in Germany_: discussions upon the subject and
conclusions arrived at--Results of the census taken in 1882,
1895, and 1907--_Petty trades in Russia_--Conclusions.
CHAPTER VIII. BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK 363
Divorce between science and handicraft--Technical education
--Complete education--The Moscow system; applied at Chicago,
Boston, Aberdeen--Concrete teaching--Present waste of time
--Science and technics--Advantages which science can derive
from a combination of brain work with manual work.
CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSION 410
APPENDIX.
A. BRITISH INVESTMENTS ABROAD 421
B. FRENCH IMPORTS 422
C. GROWTH OF INDUSTRY IN RUSSIA 423
D. IRON INDUSTRY IN GERMANY 423
E. MACHINERY IN GERMANY 424
F. COTTON INDUSTRY IN GERMANY 425
G. MINING AND TEXTILES IN AUSTRIA 427
H. COTTON MANUFACTURE IN INDIA 428
I. THE COTTON INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED STATES 430
J. MR. GIFFEN’S AND MR. FLUX’S FIGURES CONCERNING THE
POSITION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM IN INTERNATIONAL
TRADE 432
K. MARKET-GARDENING IN BELGIUM 434
L. THE CHANNEL ISLANDS--THE SCILLY ISLANDS 435
M. IRRIGATED MEADOWS IN ITALY 444
N. PLANTED WHEAT; THE ROTHAMSTED CHALLENGE 444
O. REPLANTED WHEAT 445
P. IMPORTS OF VEGETABLES TO THE UNITED KINGDOM 447
Q. FRUIT CULTURE IN BELGIUM 449
R. CULTURE UNDER GLASS IN HOLLAND 450
S. PRICES OBTAINED IN LONDON FOR DESSERT GRAPES CULTIVATED
UNDER GLASS 451
T. THE USE OF ELECTRICITY IN AGRICULTURE 452
U. PETTY TRADES IN THE LYONS REGION 454
V. SMALL INDUSTRIES AT PARIS 460
W. RESULTS OF THE CENSUS OF THE FRENCH INDUSTRIES IN 1896 462
X. THE SMALL INDUSTRIES IN GERMANY 468
Y. THE DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES IN SWITZERLAND 475
[Illustration: (decorative icon)]
FIELDS, FACTORIES, AND WORKSHOPS.
CHAPTER I.
THE DECENTRALISATION OF INDUSTRIES.
Division of labour and integration--The spread of industrial
skill--Each nation its own producer of manufactured goods--The
United Kingdom--France--Germany--Russia--“German competition.”
Who does not remember the remarkable chapter by which Adam Smith
opens his inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of
nations? Even those of our contemporary economists who seldom revert
to the works of the father of political economy, and often forget
the ideas which inspired them, know that chapter almost by heart, so
often has it been copied and recopied since. It has become an article
of faith; and the economical history of the century which has elapsed
since Adam Smith wrote has been, so to speak, an actual commentary
upon it.
“Division of labour” was its watchword. And the division and
subdivision--the permanent subdivision--of functions has been
pushed so far as to divide humanity into castes which are almost as
firmly established as those of old India. We have, first, the broad
division into producers and consumers: little-consuming producers
on the one hand, little-producing consumers on the other hand.
Then, amidst the former, a series of further subdivisions: the
manual worker and the intellectual worker, sharply separated from
one another to the detriment of both; the agricultural labourers
and the workers in the manufacture; and, amidst the mass of the
latter, numberless subdivisions again--so minute, indeed, that the
modern ideal of a workman seems to be a man or a woman, or even a
girl or a boy, without the knowledge of any handicraft, without any
conception whatever of the industry he or she is employed in, who is
only capable of making all day long and for a whole life the same
infinitesimal part of something: who from the age of thirteen to that
of sixty pushes the coal cart at a given spot of the mine or makes
the spring of a penknife, or “the eighteenth part of a pin.” Mere
servants to some machine of a given description; mere flesh-and-bone
parts of some immense machinery; having no idea how and why the
machinery performs its rhythmical movements.
Skilled artisanship is being swept away as a survival of a past
condemned to disappear. The artist who formerly found æsthetic
enjoyment in the work of his hands is substituted by the human
slave of an iron slave. Nay, even the agricultural labourer, who
formerly used to find a relief from the hardships of his life in
the home of his ancestors--the future home of his children--in his
love of the field and in a keen intercourse with nature, even he has
been doomed to disappear for the sake of division of labour. He is
an anachronism, we are told; he must be substituted, in a Bonanza
farm, by an occasional servant hired for the summer, and discharged
as the autumn comes: a tramp who will never again see the field he
has harvested once in his life. “An affair of a few years,” the
economists say, “to reform agriculture in accordance with the true
principles of division of labour and modern industrial organisation.”
Dazzled with the results obtained by a century of marvellous
inventions, especially in England, our economists and political
men went still farther in their dreams of division of labour. They
proclaimed the necessity of dividing the whole of humanity into
national workshops having each of them its own speciality. We were
taught, for instance, that Hungary and Russia are predestined by
nature to grow corn in order to feed the manufacturing countries;
that Britain had to provide the world-market with cottons, iron
goods, and coal; Belgium with woollen cloth; and so on. Nay, within
each nation, each region had to have its own speciality. So it has
been for some time since; so it ought to remain. Fortunes have been
made in this way, and will continue to be made in the same way. It
being proclaimed that the wealth of nations is measured by the amount
of profits made by the few, and that the largest profits are made by
means of a specialisation of labour, the question was not conceived
to exist as to whether human beings _would_ always submit to such a
specialisation; whether nations could be specialised like isolated
workmen. The theory was good for to-day--why should we care for
to-morrow? To-morrow might bring its own theory!
And so it did. The narrow conception of life which consisted in
thinking that _profits_ are the only leading motive of human society,
and the stubborn view which supposes that what has existed yesterday
would last for ever, proved in disaccordance with the tendencies of
human life; and life took another direction. Nobody will deny the
high pitch of production which may be attained by specialisation.
But, precisely in proportion as the work required from the individual
in modern production becomes simpler and easier to be learned, and,
therefore, also more monotonous and wearisome--the requirements
of the individual for varying his work, for exercising all his
capacities, become more and more prominent. Humanity perceives that
there is no advantage for the community in riveting a human being for
all his life to a given spot, in a workshop or a mine; no gain in
depriving him of such work as would bring him into free intercourse
with nature, make of him a conscious part of the grand whole, a
partner in the highest enjoyments of science and art, of free work
and creation.
Nations, too, refuse to be specialised. Each nation is a compound
aggregate of tastes and inclinations, of wants and resources, of
capacities and inventive powers. The territory occupied by each
nation is in its turn a most varied texture of soils and climates, of
hills and valleys, of slopes leading to a still greater variety of
territories and races. Variety is the distinctive feature, both of
the territory and its inhabitants; and that variety implies a variety
of occupations. Agriculture calls manufactures into existence, and
manufactures support agriculture. Both are inseparable; and the
combination, the integration of both brings about the grandest
results. In proportion as technical knowledge becomes everybody’s
virtual domain, in proportion as it becomes international, and can be
concealed no longer, each nation acquires the possibility of applying
the whole variety of her energies to the whole variety of industrial
and agricultural pursuits. Knowledge ignores artificial political
boundaries. So also do the industries; and the present tendency of
humanity is to have the greatest possible variety of industries
gathered in each country, in each separate region, side by side with
agriculture. The needs of human agglomerations correspond thus to
the needs of the individual; and while a _temporary_ division of
functions remains the surest guarantee of success in each separate
undertaking, the _permanent_ division is doomed to disappear, and to
be substituted by a variety of pursuits--intellectual, industrial,
and agricultural--corresponding to the different capacities of the
individual, as well as to the variety of capacities within every
human aggregate.
When we thus revert from the scholastics of our text-books, and
examine human life as a whole, we soon discover that, while all the
benefits of a temporary division of labour must be maintained, it is
high time to claim those of the _integration of labour_. Political
economy has hitherto insisted chiefly upon _division_. We proclaim
_integration_; and we maintain that the ideal of society--that is,
the state towards which society is already marching--is a society
of integrated, combined labour. A society where each individual
is a producer of both manual and intellectual work; where each
able-bodied human being is a worker, and where each worker works both
in the field and the industrial workshop; where every aggregation of
individuals, large enough to dispose of a certain variety of natural
resources--it may be a nation, or rather a region--produces and
itself consumes most of its own agricultural and manufactured produce.
Of course, as long as society remains organised so as to permit the
owners of the land and capital to appropriate for themselves, under
the protection of the State and historical rights, the yearly surplus
of human production, no such change can be thoroughly accomplished.
But the present industrial system, based upon a permanent
specialisation of functions, already bears in itself the germs of
its proper ruin. The industrial crises, which grow more acute and
protracted, and are rendered still worse and still more acute by the
armaments and wars implied by the present system, are rendering its
maintenance more and more difficult. Moreover, the workers plainly
manifest their intention to support no longer patiently the misery
occasioned by each crisis. And each crisis accelerates the day when
the present institutions of individual property and production will
be shaken to their foundations with such internal struggles as will
depend upon the more or less good sense of the now privileged classes.
But we maintain also that any socialist attempt at remodelling the
present relations between Capital and Labour will be a failure, if it
does not take into account the above tendencies towards integration.
These tendencies have not yet received, in our opinion, due attention
from the different socialist schools--but they must. A reorganised
society will have to abandon the fallacy of nations specialised for
the production of either agricultural or manufactured produce. It
will have to rely on itself for the production of food and many,
if not most, of the raw materials; it must find the best means of
combining agriculture with manufacture--the work in the field with a
decentralised industry; and it will have to provide for “integrated
education,” which education alone, by teaching both science and
handicraft from earliest childhood, can give to society the men and
women it really needs.
Each nation--her own agriculturist and manufacturer; each
individual working in the field and in some industrial art; each
individual combining scientific knowledge with the knowledge of a
handicraft--such is, we affirm, the present tendency of civilised
nations.
* * * * *
The prodigious growth of industries in Great Britain, and the
simultaneous development of the international traffic which now
permits the transport of raw materials and articles of food on a
gigantic scale, have created the impression that a few nations of
West Europe were destined to become _the_ manufacturers of the world.
They need only--it was argued--to supply the market with manufactured
goods, and they will draw from all over the surface of the earth
the food they cannot grow themselves, as well as the raw materials
they need for their manufactures. The steadily increasing speed of
trans-oceanic communications and the steadily increasing facilities
of shipping have contributed to enforce the above impression. If we
take the enthusiastic pictures of international traffic, drawn in
such a masterly way by Neumann Spallart--the statistician and almost
the poet of the world-trade--we are inclined indeed to fall into
ecstasy before the results achieved. “Why shall we grow corn, rear
oxen and sheep, and cultivate orchards, go through the painful work
of the labourer and the farmer, and anxiously watch the sky in fear
of a bad crop, when we can get, with much less pain, mountains of
corn from India, America, Hungary, or Russia, meat from New Zealand,
vegetables from the Azores, apples from Canada, grapes from Malaga,
and so on?” exclaim the West Europeans. “Already now,” they say,
“our food consists, even in modest households, of produce gathered
from all over the globe. Our cloth is made out of fibres grown and
wool sheared in all parts of the world. The prairies of America and
Australia; the mountains and steppes of Asia; the frozen wildernesses
of the Arctic regions; the deserts of Africa and the depths of
the oceans; the tropics and the lands of the midnight sun are our
tributaries. All races of men contribute their share in supplying
us with our staple food and luxuries, with plain clothing and fancy
dress, while we are sending them in exchange the produce of our
higher intelligence, our technical knowledge, our powerful industrial
and commercial organising capacities! Is it not a grand sight, this
busy and intricate exchange of produce all over the earth which has
suddenly grown up within a few years?”
Grand it may be, but is it not a mere nightmare? Is it necessary? At
what cost has it been obtained, and how long will it last?
Let us turn a hundred years back. France lay bleeding at the end of
the Napoleonic wars. Her young industry, which had begun to grow
by the end of the 18th century, was crushed down. Germany, Italy
were powerless in the industrial field. The armies of the great
Republic had struck a mortal blow to serfdom on the Continent; but
with the return of reaction efforts were made to revive the decaying
institution, and serfdom meant no industry worth speaking of. The
terrible wars between France and England, which wars are often
explained by merely political causes, had a much deeper meaning--an
economical meaning. They were wars for the supremacy on the world
market, wars against French industry and commerce, supported by a
strong navy which France had begun to build--and Britain won the
battle. She became supreme on the seas. Bordeaux was no more a rival
to London; as to the French industries, they seemed to be killed in
the bud. And, aided by the powerful impulse given to natural sciences
and technology by a great era of inventions, finding no serious
competitors in Europe, Britain began to develop her manufactures. To
produce on a large scale in immense quantities became the watchword.
The necessary human forces were at hand in the peasantry, partly
driven by force from the land, partly attracted to the cities by
high wages. The necessary machinery was created, and the British
production of manufactured goods went on at a gigantic pace. In the
course of less than seventy years--from 1810 to 1878--the output of
coal grew from 10 to 133,000,000 tons; the imports of raw materials
rose from 30 to 380,000,000 tons; and the exports of manufactured
goods from 46 to 200,000,000 pounds. The tonnage of the commercial
fleet was nearly trebled. Fifteen thousand miles of railways were
built.
It is useless to repeat now at what a cost the above results were
achieved. The terrible revelations of the parliamentary commissions
of 1840-1842 as to the atrocious condition of the manufacturing
classes, the tales of “cleared estates,” and kidnapped children
are still fresh in the memory. They will remain standing monuments
for showing by what means the great industry was implanted in
this country. But the accumulation of wealth in the hands of
the privileged classes was going on at a speed never dreamed of
before. The incredible riches which now astonish the foreigner
in the private houses of England were accumulated during that
period; the exceedingly expensive standard of life which makes a
person considered rich on the Continent appear as only of modest
means in Britain was introduced during that time. The taxed
property alone doubled during the last thirty years of the above
period, while during the same years (1810 to 1878) no less than
£1,112,000,000--nearly £2,000,000,000 by this time--was invested
by English capitalists either in foreign industries or in foreign
loans.[1]
But the monopoly of industrial production could not remain with
England for ever. Neither industrial knowledge nor enterprise could
be kept for ever as a privilege of these islands. Necessarily,
fatally, they began to cross the Channel and spread over the
Continent. The Great Revolution had created in France a numerous
class of peasant proprietors, who enjoyed nearly half a century of
a comparative well-being, or, at least, of a guaranteed labour. The
ranks of homeless town workers increased slowly. But the middle-class
revolution of 1789-1793 had already made a distinction between the
peasant householders and the village _prolétaires_, and, by favouring
the former to the detriment of the latter, it compelled the labourers
who had no household nor land to abandon their villages, and thus to
form the first nucleus of working classes given up to the mercy of
manufacturers. Moreover, the peasant-proprietors themselves, after
having enjoyed a period of undeniable prosperity, began in their
turn to feel the pressure of bad times, and their children were
compelled to look for employment in manufactures. Wars and revolution
had checked the growth of industry; but it began to grow again
during the second half of our century; it developed, it improved;
and now, notwithstanding the loss of Alsace, France is no longer the
tributary to England for manufactured produce which she was sixty
years ago. To-day her exports of manufactured goods are valued at
nearly one-half of those of Great Britain, and two-thirds of them are
textiles; while her imports of the same consist chiefly of the finer
sorts of cotton and woollen yarn--partly re-exported as stuffs--and
a small quantity of woollen goods. For her own consumption France
shows a decided tendency towards becoming entirely a self-supporting
country, and for the sale of her manufactured goods she is tending
to rely, not on her colonies, but especially on her own wealthy home
market.[2]
Germany follows the same lines. During the last fifty years, and
especially since the last war, her industry has undergone a thorough
re-organisation. Her population having rapidly increased from forty
to sixty millions, this increment went entirely to increase the
urban population--without taking hands from agriculture--and in the
cities it went to increase the population engaged in industry.
Her industrial machinery has been thoroughly improved, and her
new-born manufactures are supplied now with a machinery which mostly
represents the last word of technical progress. She has plenty of
workmen and technologists endowed with a superior technical and
scientific education; and in an army of learned chemists, physicists
and engineers her industry has a most powerful and intelligent aid,
both for directly improving it and for spreading in the country
serious scientific and technical knowledge. As a whole, Germany
offers now the spectacle of a nation in a period of _Aufschwung_, of
a sudden development, with all the forces of a new start in every
domain of life. Fifty years ago she was a customer to England. Now
she is already a competitor in the European and Asiatic markets,
and at the present speedy rate of growth of her industries, her
competition will soon be felt even more acutely than it is already
felt.
At the same time the wave of industrial production, after having had
its origin in the north-west of Europe, spreads towards the east
and south-east, always covering a wider circle. And, in proportion
as it advances east, and penetrates into younger countries, it
implants there all the improvements due to a century of mechanical
and chemical inventions; it borrows from science all the help that
science can give to industry; and it finds populations eager to grasp
the last results of modern knowledge. The new manufactures of Germany
begin where Manchester arrived after a century of experiments and
gropings; and Russia begins where Manchester and Saxony have now
reached. Russia, in her turn, tries to emancipate herself from her
dependency upon Western Europe, and rapidly begins to manufacture all
those goods she formerly used to import, either from Britain or from
Germany.
Protective duties may, perhaps, sometimes help the birth of new
industries: always at the expense of some other growing industries,
and always checking the improvement of those which already exist;
but the decentralisation of manufactures goes on with or without
protective duties--I should even say, notwithstanding the protective
duties. Austria, Hungary and Italy follow the same lines--they
develop their home industries--and even Spain and Servia are going
to join the family of manufacturing nations. Nay, even India, even
Brazil and Mexico, supported by English, French, and German capital
and knowledge, begin to start home industries on their respective
soils. Finally, a terrible competitor to all European manufacturing
countries has grown up of late in the United States. In proportion
as technical education spreads more and more widely, manufactures
grow in the States; and they do grow at such a speed--an American
speed--that in a very few years the now neutral markets will be
invaded by American goods.
The monopoly of the first comers on the industrial field has ceased
to exist. And it will exist no more, whatever may be the spasmodic
efforts made to return to a state of things already belonging to the
domain of history. New ways, new issues must be looked for: the past
_has_ lived, and it will live no more.
* * * * *
Before going farther, let me illustrate the march of industries
towards the east by a few figures. And, to begin with, let me take
the example of Russia. Not because I know it better, but because
Russia is one of the latest comers on the industrial field. Fifty
years ago she was considered as the ideal of an agricultural nation,
doomed by nature itself to supply other nations with food, and to
draw her manufactured goods from the west. So it was, indeed--but it
is so no more.
In 1861--the year of the emancipation of the serfs--Russia and Poland
had only 14,060 manufactories, which produced every year the value
of 296,000,000 roubles (about £36,000,000). Twenty years later the
number of establishments rose to 35,160, and their yearly production
became nearly four times the above, _i.e._, 1,305,000,000 roubles
(about £131,000,000); and in 1894, although the census left the
smaller manufactures and all the industries which pay excise duties
(sugar, spirits, matches) out of account, the aggregate production
in the Empire reached already 1,759,000,000 roubles, _i.e._,
£180,000,000. The most noteworthy feature of this increase is, that
while the number of workmen employed in the manufactures has not even
doubled since 1861 (it attained 1,555,000 in 1894, and 1,902,750
in 1910), the production per workman has more than trebled in the
leading industries. The average was less than £70 per annum in 1861;
it reaches now £219. The increase of production is thus chiefly due
to the improvement of machinery.[3]
If we take, however, separate branches, and especially the textile
industries and the machinery works, the progress appears still more
striking. Thus, if we consider the eighteen years which preceded 1879
(when the import duties were increased by nearly 30 per cent. and a
protective policy was definitely adopted), we find that even without
protective duties the bulk of production in cottons increased three
times, while the number of workers employed in that industry rose by
only 25 per cent. The yearly production of each worker had thus grown
from £45 to £117. During the next nine years (1880-1889) the yearly
returns were more than doubled, attaining the respectable figure of
£49,000,000 in money and 3,200,000 cwts. in bulk. Since that time,
from 1890 to 1900, it has doubled once more, the quantity of raw
cotton worked in the Russian factories having increased from 255,000
to 520,700 cwts., and the number of spindles having grown from
3,457,000 to 6,646,000 in 1900, and to 8,306,000 in 1910. It must
also be remarked that, with a population of 165,000,000 inhabitants,
the home market for Russian cottons is almost unlimited; while some
cottons are also exported to Persia and Central Asia.[4]
True, that the finest sorts of yarn, as well as sewing cotton, have
still to be imported. But Lancashire manufacturers will soon see
to that; they now plant their mills in Russia. Two large mills for
spinning the finest sorts of cotton yarn were opened in Russia in
1897, with the aid of English capital and English engineers, and
a factory for making thin wire for cotton-carding has lately been
opened at Moscow by a well-known Manchester manufacturer. Several
more have followed since. Capital is international and, protection or
no protection, it crosses the frontiers.
The same is true of woollens. In this branch Russia was for a certain
time relatively backward. However, wool-combing, spinning and weaving
mills, provided with the best modern plant, were built every year in
Russia and Poland by English, German and Belgian mill-owners; so that
now four-fifths of the ordinary wool, and as much of the finer sorts
obtainable in Russia, are combed and spun at home--one fifth part
only of each being sent abroad. The times when Russia was known as
an exporter of raw wool are thus irretrievably gone.[5]
In machinery works no comparison can even be made between nowadays
and 1861, or even 1870. Thanks to English and French engineers
to begin with, and afterwards to technical progress within the
country itself, Russia needs no longer to import any part of her
railway plant. And as to agricultural machinery, we know, from
several British Consular reports, that Russian reapers and ploughs
successfully compete with the same implements of both American
and English make. During the years 1880 to 1890, this branch of
manufactures has largely developed in the Southern Urals (as a
village industry, brought into existence by the Krasnoufimsk
Technical School of the local District Council, or _zemstvo_), and
especially on the plains sloping towards the Sea of Azov. About
this last region Vice-Consul Green reported, in 1894, as follows:
“Besides some eight or ten factories of importance,” he wrote, “the
whole of the consular district is now studded with small engineering
works, engaged chiefly in the manufacture of agricultural machines
and implements, most of them having their own foundries.... The
town of Berdyansk,” he added, “can now boast of the largest reaper
manufactory in Europe, capable of turning out three thousand machines
annually.”[6]
Let me add that the above-mentioned figures, including only those
manufactures which show a yearly return of more than £200, do not
include the immense variety of domestic trades which also have
considerably grown of late, side by side with the manufactures. The
domestic industries--so characteristic of Russia, and so necessary
under her climate--occupy now more than 7,500,000 peasants, and
their aggregate production was estimated a few years ago at more
than the aggregate production of all the manufactures. It exceeded
£180,000,000 per annum. I shall have an occasion to return later on
to this subject, so that I shall be sober of figures, and merely
say that even in the chief manufacturing provinces of Russia round
about Moscow domestic weaving--for the trade--shows a yearly return
of £4,500,000; and that even in Northern Caucasia, where the petty
trades are of a recent origin, there are, in the peasants’ houses,
45,000 looms showing a yearly production of £200,000.
As to the mining industries, notwithstanding over-protection, and
notwithstanding the competition of fuelwood and naphtha,[7] the
output of the coal mines of Russia has doubled during the years
1896-1904, and in Poland it has increased fourfold.[8] Nearly all
steel, three-quarters of the iron, and two-thirds of the pig-iron
used in Russia are home produce, and the eight Russian works for
the manufacture of steel rails are strong enough to throw on the
market over 10,000,000 cwts. of rails every year (10,068,000 cwts. in
1910).[9]
* * * * *
It is no wonder, therefore, that the imports of manufactured goods
into Russia are so insignificant, and that since 1870--that is,
nine years before the general increase of duties--the proportion
of manufactured goods to the aggregate imports has been on a steady
decrease. Manufactured goods make now only one-fifth of the imports,
and only occasionally rise to one-third, as was the case in 1910--a
year of maximal imports. Besides, while the imports of Britain into
Russia were valued at £16,300,000 in 1872, they were only £6,884,500
to £11,320,000 in the years 1894 to 1909. Out of them, manufactured
goods were valued at a little more than £2,000,000--the remainder
being either articles of food or raw and half-manufactured goods
(metals, yarn and so on). They reached £15,300,000 in 1910--a year
of maximum, and consisted chiefly of machinery and coal. In fact,
the imports of British home produce have declined in the course of
ten years from £8,800,000 to £5,000,000, so as to reduce in 1910
the value of British manufactured goods imported into Russia to
the following trifling items: machinery, £1,320,000; cottons and
cotton yarn, £360,000; woollens and woollen yarn, £480,000; chemical
produce, £476,000; and so on. But the depreciation of British goods
imported into Russia is still more striking. Thus, in 1876 Russia
imported 8,000,000 cwts. of British metals, and they were paid
£6,000,000; but in 1884, although the same quantity was imported, the
amount paid was only £3,400,000. And the same depreciation is seen
for all imported goods, although not always in the same proportion.
It would be a gross error to imagine that the decline of foreign
imports is mainly due to high protective duties. The decline of
imports is much better explained by the growth of home industries.
The protective duties have no doubt contributed (together with other
causes) towards attracting German and English manufacturers to Poland
and Russia. Lodz--the Manchester of Poland--is quite a German city,
and the Russian trade directories are full of English and German
names. English and German capitalists, English engineers and foremen,
have planted within Russia the improved cotton manufactures of
their mother countries; they are busy now in improving the woollen
industries and the production of machinery; while Belgians have
rapidly created a great iron industry in South Russia. There is
now not the slightest doubt--and this opinion is shared, not only
by economists, but also by several Russian manufacturers--that a
free-trade policy would not check the further growth of industries in
Russia. It would only reduce the high profits of those manufacturers
who do not improve their factories and chiefly rely upon cheap labour
and long hours.
Moreover, as soon as Russia succeeds in obtaining more freedom, a
further growth of her industries will immediately follow. Technical
education--which, strange to say, was for a long time systematically
suppressed by the Government--would rapidly grow and spread; and in a
few years, with her natural resources and her laborious youth, which
even now tries to combine workmanship with science, Russia would
see her industrial powers increase tenfold. She _farà da sè_ in the
industrial field. She will manufacture all she needs; and yet she
will remain an agricultural nation.
At the present time only a little more than 1,500,000 men and women,
out of the 112,000,000 strong population of European Russia, work in
manufactures, and 7,500,000 combine agriculture with manufacturing.
This figure may treble without Russia ceasing to be an agricultural
nation; but if it be trebled, there will be no room for imported
manufactured goods, because an agricultural country can produce
them cheaper than those countries which live on imported food. Let
us not forget that in the United Kingdom 1,087,200 persons, all
taken, are employed in _all_ the textile industries of England,
Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and that _only_ 300,000 out of them
are males above eighteen years of age (311,000 in 1907); that these
workpeople keep going 53,000,000 spindles and more than 700,000
looms in the cotton factories only; and that the yearly production
of textiles during the last few years was so formidable that it
represented a value of £200,000,000, and that the average value of
textiles exported every year attained £136,257,500 in 1905-1910--to
say nothing of the £163,400,000 reached in the extraordinary year of
1911.[10]
* * * * *
The same is still more true with regard to other European nations,
much more advanced in their industrial development, and especially
with regard to Germany. So much has been written about the
competition which Germany offers to British trade, even in the
British markets, and so much can be learned about it from a mere
inspection of the London shops, that I need not enter into lengthy
details. Several articles in reviews; the correspondence exchanged
on the subject in _The Daily Telegraph_ in August, 1886; numerous
consular reports, regularly summed up in the leading newspapers, and
still more impressive when consulted in originals; and, finally,
political speeches, have familiarised the public opinion of this
country with the importance and the powers of German competition.[11]
Moreover, the forces which German industry borrows from the technical
training of her workmen, engineers and numerous scientific men, have
been so often discussed by the promoters of technical education in
England that the sudden growth of Germany as an industrial power can
be denied no more.
Where half a century was required in olden times to develop an
industry, a few years are sufficient now. In the year 1864 only
160,000 cwts. of raw cotton were imported into Germany, and only
16,000 cwts. of cotton goods were exported; cotton spinning and
weaving were mostly insignificant home industries. Twenty years
later the imports of raw cotton were already 3,600,000 cwts., and
in another twenty years they rose to 7,400,000 cwts.; while the
exports of cottons and yarn, which were valued at £3,600,000 in
1883, and £7,662,000 in 1893, attained £19,000,000 in 1905. A great
industry was thus created in less than thirty years, and has been
growing since. The necessary technical skill was developed, and at
the present time Germany remains tributary to Lancashire for the
finest sorts of yarn only. However, it is very probable that even
this disadvantage will soon be equalised.[12] Very fine spinning
mills have lately been erected, and the emancipation from Liverpool,
by means of a cotton exchange established at Bremen, is in fair
progress.[13]
In the woollen trade we see the same rapid increase, and in 1910 the
value of the exports of woollen goods attained £13,152,500 (against
£8,220,300 in 1894), out of which £1,799,000 worth were sent on the
average to the United Kingdom during the years 1906-1910.[14] The
flax industry has grown at a still speedier rate, and as regards
silks Germany is second only to France.
The progress realised in the German chemical trade is well known,
and it is only too badly felt in Scotland and Northumberland; while
the reports on the German iron and steel industries which one finds
in the publications of the Iron and Steel Institute and in the
inquiry which was made by the British Iron Trade Association show how
formidably the production of pig-iron and of finished iron has grown
in Germany since 1871. (See Appendix D.) No wonder that the imports
of iron and steel into Germany were reduced by one-half during the
twenty years, 1874-1894, while the exports grew nearly four times.
As to the machinery works, if the Germans have committed the error
of too slavishly copying English patterns, instead of taking a new
departure, and of creating new patterns, as the Americans did, we
must still recognise that their copies are good and that they very
successfully compete in cheapness with the tools and machinery
produced in this country. (See Appendix E.) I hardly need mention the
superior make of German scientific apparatus. It is well known to
scientific men, even in France.
In consequence of the above, the imports of manufactured goods into
Germany are, as a rule, in decline. The aggregate imports of textiles
(inclusive of yarn) stand so low as to be compensated by nearly
equal values of exports. And there is no doubt that not only the
German markets for textiles will be soon lost for other manufacturing
countries, but that German competition will be felt stronger and
stronger both in the neutral markets and those of Western Europe.
One can easily win applause from uninformed auditories by exclaiming
with more or less pathos that German produce can _never_ equal the
English! The fact is, that it competes in cheapness, and sometimes
also--where it is needed--in an equally good workmanship; and this
circumstance is due to many causes.
The “cheap labour” cause, so often alluded to in discussions about
“German competition,” which take place in this country and in France,
must be dismissed by this time, since it has been well proved by
so many recent investigations that low wages and long hours do not
necessarily mean cheap produce. Cheap labour and protection simply
mean the possibility for a number of employers to continue working
with obsolete and bad machinery; but in highly developed staple
industries, such as the cotton and the iron industries, the cheapest
produce is obtained with high wages, short hours and the best
machinery. When the number of operatives which is required for each
1000 spindles can vary from seventeen (in many Russian factories)
to three (in England), and when one weaver can look either after
twenty Northrop machine-looms, as we see it in the United States, or
after two machine-looms only, as it is the case in backward mills,
then it is evident that no reduction of wages can compensate for
that immense difference. Consequently, in the best German cotton
mills and ironworks the wages of the worker (we know it directly for
the ironworks from the above-mentioned inquiry of the British Iron
Trade Association) are not lower than they are in Great Britain. All
that can be said is, that the worker in Germany gets more for his
wages than he gets in this country--the paradise of the middleman--a
paradise which it will remain so long as it lives chiefly on imported
food produce.
The chief reason for the successes of Germany in the industrial field
is the same as it is for the United States. Both countries have only
lately entered the industrial phase of their development, and they
have entered it with all the energy of youth. Both countries enjoy
a widely-spread scientifically-technical--or, at least, concrete
scientific--education. In both countries manufactories are built
according to the newest and best models which have been worked out
elsewhere; and both countries are in a period of awakening in all
branches of activity--literature and science, industry and commerce.
They enter now on the same phase in which Great Britain was in the
first half of the nineteenth century, when British workers took such
a large part in the invention of the wonderful modern machinery.
We have simply before us a fact of _the consecutive development of
nations_. And instead of decrying or opposing it, it would be much
better to see whether the two pioneers of the great industry--Britain
and France--cannot take a new initiative and do something new again;
whether an issue for the creative genius of these two nations must
not be sought for in a new direction--namely, the utilisation of both
the land and the industrial powers of man for securing well-being to
the whole nation instead of to the few.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Appendix A.
[2] See Appendix B.
[3] For the last few years, since the Japanese war, the figures
were uncertain. It appeared, however, in 1910, that there were in
the empire, including the industries paying an excise duty, 19,983
establishments, employing 2,253,790 persons, and showing a yearly
production of 4,565,400,000 roubles (£494,600,000). Out of them,
the industrial establishments under the factory inspectors in
European Russia proper, Poland, and the four northern provinces of
Caucasia numbered 15,720, employing 1,951,955 workpeople, out of whom
1,227,360 were men, 521,236 women, and 203,359 children.
[4] The yearly imports of raw cotton from Central Asia and
Transcaucasia represent, as a rule, about one-tenth part of the total
imports of raw cotton (£1,086,000, as against £11,923,000 in 1910).
They are quite a recent growth, the first plantations of the American
cotton tree having been introduced in Turkestan by the Russians, as
well as the first sorting and pressing establishments. The relative
cheapness of the plain cottons in Russia, and the good qualities
of the printed cottons, attracted the attention of the British
Commissioner at the Nijni Novgorod Exhibition in 1897, and are spoken
of at some length in his report.
[5] The yearly production of the 1,037 woollen mills of Russia and
Poland (149,850 workpeople) was valued at about £25,000,000 in 1910,
as against £12,000,000 in 1894.
[6] Report of Vice-Consul Green, _The Economist_, 9th June, 1894:
“Reapers of a special type, sold at £15 to £17, are durable and go
through more work than either the English or the American reapers.”
In the year 1893, 20,000 reaping machines, 50,000 ploughs, and so on,
were sold in that district only, representing a value of £822,000.
Were it not for the simply prohibitive duties imposed upon foreign
pig-iron (two and a half times its price in the London market), this
industry would have taken a still greater development. But in order
to protect the home iron industry--which consequently continued
to cling to obsolete forms in the Urals--a duty of 61s. a ton of
imported pig-iron was levied. The consequences of this policy for
Russian agriculture, railways and State’s budget have been discussed
in full in a work by A. A. Radzig, _The Iron Industry of the World_.
St. Petersburg, 1896 (Russian).
[7] Out of the 1,500 steamers which ply on Russian rivers one-quarter
are heated with naphtha, and one-half with wood; wood is also the
chief fuel of the railways and ironworks in the Urals.
[8] The output was, in 1910, 24,146,000 tons in European Russia, and
1,065,000 tons in Siberia.
[9] See Appendix C.
[10] Here are the figures obtained by the official census of 1908. In
all the cotton industry, only 220,563 men (including boys), 262,245
women, and 90,061 girls less than eighteen years old were employed.
They produced 6,417,798,000 yards of unbleached gray, and 611,824,000
yards of bleached white and coloured cottons--that is, 160 yards
per head of population--and 1,507,381,000 lb. of yarn, valued
£96,000,000. We have thus 12,271 yards of cotton, and 2,631 lb. of
yarn per person of workpeople employed. For woollens and worsted
there were 112,438 men and boys, 111,492 women, and 34,087 girls
under eighteen. The value (incomplete) of the woven goods was about
£40,250,000, and that of the yarn about £21,000,000. These figures
are most instructive, as they show how much man can produce with the
present machinery. Unfortunately, the real productivity in a modern
factory is not yet understood by the economists. Thus, we saw lately
Russian economists very seriously maintaining that it was necessary
to “proletarize” the peasants (about 100,000,000) in order to create
a great industry. We see now that if one-fourth, or even one-fifth,
part only of the yearly increase of the population took to industry
(as it has done in Germany), Russian factories would soon produce
such quantities of all sorts of manufactured goods, that they would
be able to supply with them 400 or 500 million people, in addition to
the population of the Russian Empire.
[11] Many facts in point have also been collected in a little book,
_Made in Germany_, by E. E. Williams. Unhappily, the facts relative
to the recent industrial development of Germany are so often used
in a partisan spirit in order to promote protection that their real
importance is often misunderstood.
[12] Francke, _Die neueste Entwickelung der Textil-Industrie in
Deutschland_.
[13] _Cf._ Schulze Gäwernitz, _Der Grossbetrieb_, etc.--See
Appendixes D, E, F.
[14] The imports of German woollen stuffs into this country have
steadily grown from £607,444 in 1890 to £907,569 in 1894, and
£1,822,514 in 1910. The British exports to Germany (of woollen stuffs
and yarns) have also grown, but not in the same proportion. They were
valued at £2,769,392 in 1890, £3,017,163 in 1894, and £4,638,000 in
1906-1910 (a five years’ average).