SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES.
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.
The two sister arts of agriculture and industry were not always so
estranged from one another as they are now. There was a time, and
that time is not so far back, when both were thoroughly combined;
the villages were then the seats of a variety of industries, and the
artisans in the cities did not abandon agriculture; many towns were
nothing else but industrial villages. If the mediæval city was the
cradle of those industries which bordered upon art and were intended
to supply the wants of the richer classes, still it was the rural
manufacture which supplied the wants of the million, as it does until
the present day in Russia, and to a very great extent in Germany and
France. But then came the water-motors, steam, the development of
machinery, and they broke the link which formerly connected the farm
with the workshop. Factories grew up and they abandoned the fields.
They gathered where the sale of their produce was easiest, or the raw
materials and fuel could be obtained with the greatest advantage.
New cities rose, and the old ones rapidly enlarged; the fields were
deserted. Millions of labourers, driven away by sheer force from the
land, gathered in the cities in search of labour, and soon forgot
the bonds which formerly attached them to the soil. And we, in our
admiration of the prodigies achieved under the new factory system,
overlooked the advantages of the old system under which the tiller
of the soil was an industrial worker at the same time. We doomed to
disappearance all those branches of industry which formerly used to
prosper in the villages; we condemned in industry all that was not a
big factory.
True, the results were grand as regards the increase of the
productive powers of man. But they proved terrible as regards the
millions of human beings who were plunged into misery and had to rely
upon precarious means of living in our cities. Moreover, the system,
as a whole, brought about those abnormal conditions which I have
endeavoured to sketch in the two first chapters. We were thus driven
into a corner; and while a thorough change in the present relations
between labour and capital is becoming an imperious necessity, a
thorough remodelling of the whole of our industrial organisation has
also become unavoidable. The industrial nations are bound to revert
to agriculture, they are compelled to find out the best means of
combining it with industry, and they must do so without loss of time.
To examine the special question as to the possibility of such a
combination is the aim of the following pages. Is it possible, from a
technical point of view? Is it desirable? Are there, in our present
industrial life, such features as might lead us to presume that a
change in the above direction would find the necessary elements
for its accomplishment? Such are the questions which rise before
the mind. And to answer them, there is, I suppose, no better means
than to study that immense but overlooked and underrated branch of
industries which are described under the names of rural industries,
domestic trades, and petty trades: to study them, not in the works of
the economists who are too much inclined to consider them as obsolete
types of industry, but in their life itself, in their struggles,
their failures and achievements.
* * * * *
The variety of forms of organisation which is found in the small
industries is hardly suspected by those who have not made them a
subject of special study. There are, first, two broad categories:
those industries which are carried on in the villages, in connection
with agriculture; and those which are carried on in towns or in
villages, with no connection with the land--the workers depending for
their earnings exclusively upon their industrial work.
In Russia, in France, in Germany, in Austria, and so on, millions
and millions of workers are in the first case. They are owners or
occupiers of the land, they keep one or two cows, very often horses,
and they cultivate their fields, or their orchards, or gardens,
considering industrial work as a by-occupation. In those regions,
especially, where the winter is long and no work on the land is
possible for several months every year, this form of small industries
is widely spread. In this country, on the contrary, we find the
opposite extreme. Few small industries have survived in England
in connection with land-culture; but hundreds of petty trades are
found in the suburbs and the slums of the great cities, and large
portions of the populations of several towns, such as Sheffield and
Birmingham, find their living in a variety of petty trades. Between
these two extremes there is evidently a mass of intermediate forms,
according to the more or less close ties which continue to exist
with the land. Large villages, and even towns, are thus peopled with
workers who are engaged in small trades, but most of whom have a
small garden, or an orchard, or a field, or only retain some rights
of pasture on the commons, while part of them live exclusively upon
their industrial earnings.
With regard to the sale of the produce, the small industries offer
the same variety of organisation. Here again there are two great
branches. In one of them the worker sells his produce directly to the
wholesale dealer; cabinet-makers, weavers, and workers in the toy
trade are in this case. In the other great division the worker works
for a “master” who either sells the produce to a wholesale dealer, or
simply acts as a middleman who himself receives his orders from some
big concern. This is the “sweating system,” properly speaking, under
which we find a mass of small trades. Part of the toy trade, the
tailors who work for large clothing establishments--very often for
those of the State--the women who sew and embroider the “uppers” for
the boot and shoe factories, and who as often deal with the factory
as with an intermediary “sweater,” and so on, are in this case. All
possible gradations of feudalisation and sub-feudalisation of labour
are evidently found in that organisation of the sale of the produce.
Again, when the industrial, or rather technical aspects of the
small industries are considered, the same variety of types is soon
discovered. Here also there are two great branches: those trades,
on the one side, which are purely domestic--that is, those which
are carried on in the house of the worker, with the aid of his
family, or of a couple of wage-workers; and those which are carried
on in separate workshops--all the just-mentioned varieties, as
regards connection with land and the divers modes of disposing
of the produce, being met with in both these branches. All
possible trades--weaving, workers in wood, in metals, in bone, in
india-rubber, and so on--may be found under the category of purely
domestic trades, with all possible gradations between the purely
domestic form of production and the workshop and the factory.
Thus, by the side of the trades which are carried on entirely at
home by one or more members of the family, there are the trades in
which the master keeps a small workshop attached to his house and
works in it with his family, or with a few “assistants”--that is,
wage-workers. Or else the artisan has a separate workshop, supplied
with wheel-power, as is the case with the Sheffield cutlers. Or
several workers come together in a small factory which they maintain
themselves, or hire in association, or where they are allowed to
work for a certain weekly rent. And in each of these cases they
work either directly for the dealer or for a small master, or for a
middleman.
A further development of this system is the big factory, especially
of ready-made clothes, in which hundreds of women pay so much for
the sewing-machine, the gas, the gas-heated irons, and so on, and
are paid themselves so much for each piece of the ready-made clothes
they sew, or each part of it. Immense factories of this kind exist in
England, and it appeared from testimony given before the “Sweating
Committee” that women are fearfully “sweated” in such workshops--the
full price of each slightly spoiled piece of clothing being deducted
from their very low piecework wages.
And, finally, there is the small workshop (often with hired
wheel-power) in which a master employs three to ten workers, who
are paid in wages, and sells his produce to a bigger employer or
merchant--there being all possible gradations between such a workshop
and the small factory in which a few time workers (five, ten to
twenty) are employed by an independent producer. In the textile
trades, weaving is often done either by the family or by a master who
employs one boy only, or several weavers, and after having received
the yarn from a big employer, pays a skilled workman to put the yarn
in the loom, invents what is necessary for weaving a given, sometimes
very complicated pattern, and after having woven the cloth or the
ribbons in his own loom or in a loom which he hires himself, he is
paid for the piece of cloth according to a very complicated scale of
wages agreed to between masters and workers. This last form, we shall
see presently, is widely spread up to the present day, especially in
the woollen and silk trades; it continues to exist by the side of
big factories in which 50, 100, or 5,000 wage-workers, as the case
may be, are working with the employers’ machinery and are paid in
time-wages so much the day or the week.
The small industries are thus quite a world,[129] which, remarkable
enough, continues to exist even in the most industrial countries,
side by side with the big factories. Into this world we must now
penetrate to cast a glimpse upon it: a glimpse only, because it
would take volumes to describe its infinite variety of pursuits and
organisation, and its infinitely varied connection, with agriculture
as well as with other industries.
* * * * *
Most of the petty trades, except some of those which are connected
with agriculture, are, we must admit, in a very precarious position.
The earnings are very low, and the employment is often uncertain.
The day of labour is by two, three, or four hours longer than it is
in well-organised factories, and at certain seasons it reaches an
almost incredible length. The crises are frequent and last for years.
Altogether, the worker is much more at the mercy of the dealer or the
employer, and the employer is at the mercy of the wholesale dealer.
Both are liable to become enslaved to the latter, running into debt
to him. In some of the petty trades, especially in the fabrication
of the plain textiles, the workers are in dreadful misery. But those
who pretend that such misery is the rule are totally wrong. Anyone
who has lived among, let us say, the watch-makers in Switzerland and
knows their inner family life, will recognise that the condition of
these workers was out of all comparison superior, in every respect,
material and moral, to the conditions of millions of factory hands.
Even during such a crisis in the watch trade as was lived through
in 1876-1880, their condition was preferable to the condition of
factory hands during a crisis in the woollen or cotton trade; and
the workers perfectly well knew it themselves.
Whenever a crisis breaks out in some branch of the petty trades,
there is no lack of writers to predict that that trade is going to
disappear. During the crisis which I witnessed in 1877, living amidst
the Swiss watchmakers, the impossibility of a recovery of the trade
in the face of the competition of machine-made watches was a current
topic in the press. The same was said in 1882 with regard to the silk
trade of Lyons, and, in fact, wherever a crisis has broken out in the
petty trades. And yet, notwithstanding the gloomy predictions, and
the still gloomier prospects of the workers, that form of industry
does not disappear. Even when some branch of it disappears, there
always remains something of it; some portions of it continue to exist
as small industries (watchmaking of a high quality, best sorts of
silks, high quality velvets, etc.), or new connected branches grow
up instead of the old ones, or the small industry, taking advantage
of a mechanical motor, assumes a new form. We thus find it endowed
with an astonishing vitality. It undergoes various modifications, it
adapts itself to new conditions, it struggles without losing hope of
better times to come. Anyhow, it has not the characteristics of a
decaying institution. In some industries the factory is undoubtedly
victorious; but there are other branches in which the petty trades
hold their own position. Even in the textile industries--especially
in consequence of the wide use of the labour of children and
women--which offer so many advantages for the factory system, the
hand-loom still competes with the power-loom.
As a whole, the transformation of the petty trades into great
industries goes on with a slowness which cannot fail to astonish even
those who are convinced of its necessity. Nay, sometimes we may even
see the reverse movement going on--occasionally, of course, and only
for a time. I cannot forget my amazement when I saw at Verviers, some
thirty years ago, that most of the woollen cloth factories--immense
barracks facing the streets by more than a hundred windows each--were
silent, and their costly machinery was rusting, while cloth was
woven in hand-looms in the weavers’ houses, for the owners of those
very same factories. Here we have, of course, but a temporary fact,
fully explained by the spasmodic character of the trade and the heavy
losses sustained by the owners of the factories when they cannot run
their mills all the year round. But it illustrates the obstacles
which the transformation has to comply with. As to the silk trade,
it continues to spread over Europe in its rural industry shape;
while hundreds of new petty trades appear every year, and when they
find nobody to carry them on in the villages--as is the case in this
country--they shelter themselves in the suburbs of the great cities,
as we have lately learned from the inquiry into the “sweating system.”
Now, the advantages offered by a large factory in comparison with
hand work are self-evident as regards the economy of labour, and
especially--_this is the main point_--the facilities both for sale
and for having the raw produce at a lower price. How can we then
explain the persistence of the petty trades? Many causes, however,
most of which cannot be valued in shillings and pence, are at work in
favour of the petty trades, and these causes will be best seen from
the following illustrations. I must say, however, that even a brief
sketch of the countless industries which are carried on on a small
scale in this country, and on the Continent, would be far beyond
the scope of this chapter. When I began to study the subject some
thirty years ago, I never guessed, from the little attention devoted
to it by the orthodox economists, what a wide, complex, important,
and interesting organisation would appear at the end of a closer
inquiry. So I see myself compelled to give here only a few typical
illustrations, and to indicate the chief lines only of the subject.
_The Small Industries in the United Kingdom._
We have not for the United Kingdom such statistical data as are
obtained in France and Germany by periodical censuses of all
the factories and workshops, and the numbers of the workpeople,
foremen and clerks, employed on a given day in each industrial and
commercial establishment. Consequently, up to the present time all
the statements made by economists about the so-called “concentration”
of the industry in this country, and the consequent “unavoidable”
disappearance of the small industries, have been based on mere
impressions of the writers,--not on statistical data. Up till now
we cannot give, as it is done further in these pages for France and
Germany, the exact numbers of factories and workshops employing, let
us say, from 1,000 to 2,000 persons, from 500 to 1,000, from 50 to
500, less than 50, and so on. It is only since factory inspection has
been introduced by the Factory Act of 1895 that we begin to find, in
the Reports published since 1900 by the Factory Inspectors (_Annual
Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops for the year
1898_: London, 1900), information which permits us to get a general
idea about the distribution of working men in factories of different
sizes, and the extension that the petty trades have retained in this
country up till now.[130] One may see it already from the following
little table for the year 1897, which I take from the just-mentioned
Report. These figures are not yet complete, especially as regards the
workshops, but they contain already the greater part of the English
industries.
+---------------------+-------------+--------------+--------------+
| | Number of | Number of | Average |
| 1897. |factories and| operatives | number of |
| | workshops. |of both sexes.|operatives per|
| | | |establishment.|
+---------------------+-------------+--------------+--------------+
|Textile factories | 10,883 | 1,051,564 | 97 |
|Non-textile factories| 79,059 | 2,755,460 | 35 |
|Various workshops | 88,814 | 676,776 | 8 |
| +-------------+--------------+--------------+
| Total | 178,756 | 4,483,800 | 25 |
+---------------------+-------------+--------------+--------------+
Let me remark that the Factory Inspectors consider as a _workshop_
every industrial establishment which has no mechanical motive power,
and as a _factory_ every establishment provided with steam, gas,
water, or electric power.
These figures, however, are not complete, because only those
workshops are included where women and children are employed, as
also all the bakeries. The others were not submitted to inspection
at the time when this table was compiled. There is, nevertheless, a
means to find out the approximate numbers of workpeople employed in
the workshops. The number of women and female children employed in
the workshops in 1897 was 356,098, and the number of men and boys was
320,678. But, as the proportion of male workers to the female in all
the factories was 2,654,716 males to 1,152,308 females, we may admit
that the same proportion prevails in the workshops. This would give
for the latter something like 820,000 male workers, and 1,176,000
persons of both sexes, employed in 147,000 workshops. At the same
time, the grand total of persons employed in industry (exclusive of
mining) would be 4,983,000.
We can thus say that _nearly one-fourth (24 per cent.) of all the
industrial workers of this country are working in workshops having
less than eight to ten workers per establishment_.[131]
It must also be pointed out that out of the 4,483,800 workpeople
registered in the above-mentioned tables nearly 60,000 were children
who were working half-days only, 401,000 were girls less than
eighteen years old, 463,000 were boys from thirteen to eighteen
who were making full working days like the adults, and 1,077,115
were considered as _women_ (more than eighteen years old). In other
words, one-fifth part of all the industrial workers of this country
were girls and boys, and more than two-fifths (41 per cent.) were
either women or children. All the industrial production of the
United Kingdom, with its immense exports, was thus _giving work to
less than three million adult men_--2,983,000 out of a population
of 42,000,000, to whom we must add 972,200 persons working in the
mines. As to the textile industry, which supplies almost one-half of
the English exports, _there are less than_ 300,000 _adult men who
find employment in it_. The remainder is the work of children, boys,
girls, and women.
A fact which strikes us is that the 1,051,564 workpeople--men, women
and children--who worked in 1897 in the textile industries of the
United Kingdom were distributed over 10,883 factories, which gives
only an average of ninety-three persons per factory in all this
great industry, notwithstanding the fact that “concentration” has
progressed most in this industry, and that we find in it factories
employing as many as 5,000 and 6,000 persons.
It is true that the Factory Inspectors represent each separate branch
of a given industry as a special establishment. Thus, if an employer
or a society owns a spinning mill, a weaving factory, and a special
building for dressing and finishing, the three are represented as
separate factories. But this is precisely what is wanted for giving
us an exact idea about the degree of concentration of a given
industry. Besides, it is also known that, for instance, in the
cotton industry, in the neighbourhood of Manchester, the spinning,
the weaving, the dressing and so on belong very often to different
employers, who send to each other the stuffs at different degrees of
fabrication; those factories which combine under the same management
all the three or four consecutive phases of the manufacture are an
exception.
But it is especially in the division of the non-textile industries
that we find an enormous development of small factories. The
2,755,460 workpeople who are employed in all the non-textile
branches, with the exception of mining, are scattered in 79,059
factories, each of which has only an average of thirty-five workers.
Moreover, the Factory Inspectors had on their lists 676,776
workpeople employed in 88,814 workshops (without mechanical power),
which makes an average of eight persons only per workshop. These last
figures are, however, as we saw, below the real ones, as another
sixty thousand workshops occupying half a million more workpeople
were not yet tabulated.
Such averages as _ninety-three and thirty-five workpeople per
factory, and eight per workshop_, distributed over 178,756 industrial
establishments, destroy already the legend according to which the big
factories have already absorbed most of the small ones. The figures
show, on the contrary, what an immense number of small factories
and workshops resist the absorption by the big factories, and how
they multiply by the side of the great industry in various branches,
especially those of recent origin.
If we had for the United Kingdom full statistics, giving lists of
all the factories, with the number of workpeople employed in each
of them, as we have for France and Germany (see below), it would
have been easy to find the exact number of factories employing more
than 1,000, 500, 100, and 50 workmen. But such lists are issued
only for the mining industry. As to the statistics published by the
Factory Inspectors, they do not contain such data, perhaps because
the inspectors have no time to tabulate their figures, or have not
the right to do so. Be it as it may, the Report of Mr. Whitelegge
for 1897 gives the number of factories (textile and non-textile) and
workshops for each of the 119 counties of the United Kingdom and for
each of the nearly hundred sub-divisions of all the industries, as
well as the number of workpeople in each of these more than 10,000
sub-divisions. So I was enabled to calculate the _averages_ of
persons employed in the factories and workshops for each separate
branch of industry in each county. Besides, Mr. Whitelegge has had
the kindness to give me two very important figures--namely, the
number of factories employing more than 1,000 workpeople, and the
number of those _factories_ where less than ten workers are employed.
* * * * *
Let us take, first of all, the TEXTILE industries, which include
cotton, wool, silk, linen, jute, and hemp, as well as machine-made
lace and knitting. Many of my readers will probably be astonished
to learn that even in the cotton industry a great number of quite
small factories continue to exist up to the present day. Even in the
West Riding district, which is second only to Lancashire for the
number of its cotton mills, and where we find nearly one-third of all
the workpeople employed in the cotton industry (237,444 persons),
the average for all the 3,210 factories of this district is only
seventy-three persons per factory. And even in Lancashire, where we
find nearly one-half of all the workpeople employed in the textiles,
these 434,609 men, women, and children are scattered in 3,132
factories, each of which has thus an average of only 139 workers. If
we remember that in this number there are factories employing from
2,000 to 6,000 persons, one cannot but be struck by the quantity of
small factories employing less than 100 persons, and which continue
to exist by the side of the great cotton mills. But we shall just see
that the same is true for all industries.
As to Nottinghamshire, which is a centre for machine-made lace and
knitting, its 18,434 workpeople are, most of them, working in small
factories. The average for the 386 establishments of this county is
only forty-eight persons per factory. The great industry is thus very
far from having absorbed the small one.
The distribution of the textile factories in the other counties of
the United Kingdom is even more instructive. We learn that there are
nearly 2,000 textile factories in forty-nine counties, and everyone
of these factories has much less than 100 workpeople; while a very
considerable number of them employ only from forty to fifty, from ten
to twenty, and even less than ten persons.[132]
This could have been foreseen by everyone who has some practical
knowledge of industry, but it is overlooked by the theorists, who
know industry mostly from books. In every country of the world there
are by the side of the large factories a great number of small ones,
the success of which is due to the variety of their produce and the
facilities they offer to follow the vagaries of fashion. This is
especially true with regard to the woollens and the mixed stuffs made
of wool and cotton.
Besides, it is well known to British manufacturers that at the
time when the big cotton mills were established, the manufacturers
of spinning and weaving machinery, seeing that they had no more
orders coming, after they had supplied this machinery to the great
factories, began to offer it at a reduced price and on credit to
the small weavers. These last associated--three, five, or more of
them--to buy the machinery, and this is why we have now in Lancashire
quite a region where a great number of small cotton mills continue to
exist till nowadays, without there being any reason to foresee their
disappearance. At times they are even quite prosperous.
* * * * *
On the other side, when we examine the various branches of textile
industry (cotton, wool, silk, jute, etc.), we see that if the great
factories dominate in the spinning and weaving of cotton, worsted
and flax, as well as in the spinning of silk (the result being that
the average for these branches reaches 150 workers per factory
for cotton, and 267 for the spinning of flax), _all other textile
industries belong to the domain of the middle-sized and the small
industry_. In other words, in the manufacture of woollens, shoddy,
hemp, hair, machine-made lace, and mechanical knitting, as also
in the weaving of silks, there are, of course, large factories;
but the majority of these establishments belong to the domain of
the small industry. Thus, for the 3,274 woollen factories, the
average is only from twenty to fifty workers per factory; it is also
from twenty-seven to thirty-eight for shoddy, and thirty-seven to
seventy-six for the other branches. Only for knitting do the averages
rise to ninety-three persons per factory; but we are just going to
see that the small industry reappears in this branch in force under
the name of workshops.
All these important branches of the British textile industry, which
give work to more than 240,000 men and women, have thus remained up
till now at the stage of a small and middle-sized industry.
If we take now the NON-TEXTILE industries, we find, on the one side,
an immense number of small industries which have grown up around
the great ones, and owing to them; and, on the other side, a large
part of the fundamental industries have remained in the stage of
small establishments. The average for all these branches, which give
occupation to three-fourths of all the industrial workers of the
United Kingdom--that is, 2,755,460 workers--hardly attains, we saw,
thirty-five persons per factory--the workshops being not yet included
in this division. However, it is especially when we go into details,
and analyse the figures which I have calculated for each separate
branch, that we fully realise the importance of the petty trades
in England. This is what we are going to do, mentioning first what
belongs here to the great industry, and studying next the small one.
Following the classification adopted by the Factory Inspectors, we
see first that the gas-works belong to the domain of the fairly
big establishments (seventy-eight people on the average). The
india-rubber factories belong to the same category (125 workers
on the average); and amidst the 456 glass-works of the United
Kingdom there must be some big ones, as the average is eighty-seven
workpeople.
Next come mining and metallurgy, which are carried on, as a rule,
on a great scale; but already in the iron foundries we find a great
number of establishments belonging to the middle-sized and small
industry. Thus at Sheffield I saw myself several foundries employing
only from five to six workmen. For the making of huge machinery
there is, of course, a number of very large works, such as those of
Armstrong, Whitworth, or those of the State at Woolwich. But it is
very instructive to see how very small works prosper by the side of
big ones; they are numerous enough to reduce the average to seventy
workers per establishment for the 5,318 works of this category.
Shipbuilding and the manufacture of metallic tubes evidently
belong to the great industry (averages, 243 and 156 persons per
establishment); and the same applies to the two great metallurgical
works of the State, which employ between them 23,455 workmen.
Going over to the chemical works, we find again a great industry in
the fabrication of alkalies and of matches (only twenty-five works);
but, on the contrary, the fabrication of soap and candles, as well
as manures and all other sorts of chemical produce, which represents
nearly 2,000 factories, belongs almost entirely to the domain of
the small industry. The average is only twenty-nine workpeople per
factory. There are, of course, half a dozen of very large soap
works--one knows them only too well by their advertisements on the
cliffs and in the fields; but the low average of twenty-nine workmen
proves how many small factories must exist by the side of the soap
kings. The 2,500 works engaged in the fabrication of furniture, both
in wood and in iron, belong again chiefly to the small industry.
The small and very small factories swarm by the side of a few great
ones, to say nothing of the thousands of the still smaller workshops.
The great storehouses of our cities are for the most part mere
exhibitions of furniture made in very small factories and workshops.
In the fabrication of food produce we find several great sugar,
chocolate, and preserves works; but by their side we find also a very
great number of small establishments, which seem not to complain
of the proximity of the big ones, as they occupy nearly two-thirds
of the workers employed in this branch. I do not speak, of course,
of the village windmills, but one cannot fail to be struck by the
immense number of small breweries (2,076 breweries have on the
average only twenty-four workmen each) and of the establishments
engaged in the fabrication of aerated waters (they number 3,365, and
have on the average only eleven operatives per establishment).
In calico-printing we enter once more the domain of great factories;
but by their side we find a pretty large number of small ones;
so that the average for all this category is 144 workpeople per
factory. We find also fourteen great factories, having an average
of 394 workpeople each, for dyeing in Turkey red. But we find also
by their side more than 100,000 working-men employed in 2,725 small
establishments of this class--bleaching, dressing, packing, and
so on--and this gives us one more illustration of numerous small
industries growing round the main ones.
In the making of ready-made clothing and the fabrication of hats,
linen, boots and shoes, and gloves, we see the averages for the
factories of this description going up to 80, 100, and 150 persons
per factory. But it is here also that countless small workshops come
in. It must also be noticed that most of the factories of ready-made
clothing have their own special character. The factory buys the cloth
and makes the cutting by means of special machinery; but the sewing
is done by women, who come to work in the factory. They pay so much
the sewing-machine, so much the motor power (if there is one), so
much the gas, so much the iron, and so on, and they are on piece
work. Very often this becomes a “sweating system” on a large scale.
Round the big factories a great number of small workshops are centred.
And, finally, we find great factories for the fabrication of
gunpowder and explosives (they employ less than 12,000 workpeople),
stuff buttons, and umbrellas (only 6,000 employees). But we find also
in the table of workshops that in these last two branches there are
thousands of them by the side of a few great factories.
All taken, Mr. Whitelegge writes to me that of factories employing
more than 1,000 workpeople each, he finds _only sixty-five in the
textile industries_ (102,600 workpeople) and only 128 (355,208
workpeople) _in all non-textile industries_.
In this brief enumeration we have gone over all that belongs to
the great industry. The remainder belongs almost entirely to the
domain of the small, and often the very small industry. Such are all
the factories for woodwork, which have on the average only fifteen
men per establishment, but represent a contingent of more than
100,000 workmen and more than 6,000 employers. The tanneries, the
manufacture of all sorts of little things in ivory and bone, and even
the brick-works and the potteries, representing a total of 260,000
workpeople and 11,200 employers, belong, with a very few exceptions,
to the small industry.
Then we have the factories dealing with the burnishing and enamelling
of metals, which also belong chiefly to the small industry--the
average being only twenty-eight workpeople per factory. But what is
especially striking is the development of the small and very small
industry in the fabrication of agricultural machinery (thirty-two
workers per factory), of all sorts of tools (twenty-two on the
average), needles and pins (forty-three), ironmongery, sanitary
apparatus, and various instruments (twenty-five), even of boilers
(forty-eight per factory), chains, cables, and anchors (in many
districts this work, as also the making of nails, is made by hand by
_women_).
Needless to say that the fabrication of furniture, which occupies
nearly 64,000 operatives, belongs chiefly--more than three-fourths
of it--to the small industry. The average for the 1,979 factories of
this branch is only twenty-one workpeople, the workshops not being
included in this number. The same is true of the factories for the
curing of fish, machine-made pastry, and so on, which occupy 38,030
workpeople in more than 2,700 factories, having thus an average of
fourteen operatives each.
Jewelry and the manufacture of watches, photographic apparatus, and
all sorts of luxury articles, again belong to the small and very
small industry, and give occupation to 54,000 persons.
All that belongs to printing, lithography, bookbinding, and
stationery again represents a vast field occupied by the small
industry, which prospers by the side of a small number of very large
establishments. More than 120,000 are employed in these branches in
more than 6,000 factories (workshops not yet included).
And, finally, we find a large domain occupied by saddlery,
brush-making, the making of sails, basket-making, and the fabrication
of a thousand little things in leather, paper, wood, metal, and so
on. This class is certainly not insignificant, as it contains more
than 4,300 employers and nearly 130,000 workpeople, employed in a
mass of very small factories by the side of a few very great ones,
the average being only from twenty-five to thirty-five persons per
factory.
In short, in the different non-textile industries, the inspectors
have tabulated _32,042 factories employing, each of them, less than
ten workpeople_.
All taken, we find 270,000 workpeople employed in small factories
having less than fifty and even twenty workers each, the result being
that the very great industry (the factories employing more than
1,000 workpeople per factory) and the very small one (less than ten
workers) employ nearly the same number of operatives.
* * * * *
The important part played by the small industry in this country
fully appears from this rapid sketch. And I have not yet spoken of
the workshops. The Factory Inspectors mentioned, as we saw, in their
first report, 88,814 workshops, in which 676,776 workpeople (356,098
women) were employed in 1897. But, as we have already seen, these
figures are incomplete. The number of workshops is about 147,000, and
there must be about 1,200,000 persons employed in them (820,000 men
and about 356,000 women and children).
It is evident that this class comprises a very considerable number
of bakers, small carpenters, tailors, cobblers, cartwrights, village
smiths, and so on. But there is also in this class an immense number
of workshops belonging to industry, properly speaking--that is,
workshops which manufacture for the great commercial market. Some of
these workshops may of course employ fifty persons or more, but the
immense majority employ only from five to twenty workpeople each.
We thus find in this class 1,348 small establishments, scattered both
in the villages and the suburbs of great cities, where nearly 14,000
persons make lace, knitting, embroidery, and weaving in hand-looms;
more than 100 small tanneries, more than 20,000 cartwrights, and 746
small bicycle makers. In cutlery, in the fabrication of tools and
small arms, nails and screws, and even anchors and anchor chains, we
find again many thousands of small workshops employing something
like 60,000 workmen. All that, let us remember, without counting
those workshops which employ no women or children, and therefore
are not submitted to the Factory Inspectors. As to the fabrication
of clothing, which gives work to more than 350,000 men and women,
distributed over nearly 45,000 workshops, let it be noted that
it is not small tailors that is spoken of here, but that mass of
_workshops_ which swarm in Whitechapel and the suburbs of all great
cities, and where we find from five to fifty women and men making
clothing for the tailor shops, big and small. In these shops the
measure is taken, and sometimes the cutting is made; but the clothing
is sewn in the small workshops, which are very often somewhere in
the country. Even parts of the commands of linen and clothing for
the army find their way to workshops in country places. As to the
underclothing and mercery which are sold in the great stores, they
are fabricated in small workshops, which must be counted by the
thousand.
The same is true of furniture, mattresses and cushions, hats,
artificial flowers, umbrellas, slippers, and even cheap jewelry. The
great shops, even the largest stores, mostly keep only an assortment
of samples. All is manufactured at a very low price, and _day by
day_, in thousands of small workshops.
It can thus be said that if we exclude from the class of workshops’
employees 100,000 or even 200,000 workpeople who do not work for
_industry_ properly speaking, and if we add on the other side the
nearly 500,000 workers who have not yet been tabulated by the
inspectors in 1897, we find a population of more than 1,000,000 men
and women who belong entirely to the domain of the small industry,
and so must be added to those whom we found working in the small
factories. The artisans who are working single-handed were not
included in this sketch.
We thus see that even in this country, which may be considered
as representing the highest development of the great industry,
the number of persons employed in the small trade continues to be
immense. The small industries are as much a distinctive feature of
the British industry as its few immense factories and ironworks.
* * * * *
Going over now to what is known about the small industries of this
country from direct observation, we find that the suburbs of London,
Glasgow, and other great cities swarm with small workshops, and
that there are regions where the petty trades are as developed as
they are in Switzerland or in Germany. Sheffield is a well-known
example in point. The Sheffield cutlery--one of the glories of
England--is _not_ made by machinery: it is chiefly made by hand.
There are at Sheffield a number of firms which manufacture cutlery
right through from the making of steel to the finishing of tools,
and employ wage-workers; and yet even these firms--I am told by
Edward Carpenter, who kindly collected for me information about
the Sheffield trade--let out some part of their work to the “small
masters.” But by far the greatest number of the cutlers work in their
homes with their relatives, or in small workshops supplied with
wheel-power, which they rent for a few shillings a week. Immense
yards are covered with buildings, which are subdivided into numbers
of small workshops. Some of these cover but a few square yards, and
there I saw smiths hammering, all the day long, blades of knives
on a small anvil, close by the blaze of their fires; occasionally
the smith may have one helper, or two. In the upper storeys scores
of small workshops are supplied with wheel-power, and in each of
them, three, four, or five workers and a “master” fabricate, with
the occasional aid of a few plain machines, every description of
tools: files, saws, blades of knives, razors, and so on. Grinding and
glazing are done in other small workshops, and even steel is cast in
a small foundry, the working staff of which consists only of five or
six men.
When I walked through these workshops I easily imagined myself in
a Russian cutlery village, like Pavlovo or Vorsma. The Sheffield
cutlery has thus maintained its olden organisation, and the fact is
the more remarkable as the earnings of the cutlers are low as a rule;
but, even when they are reduced to a few shillings a week, the cutler
prefers to vegetate on his small earnings than to enter as a waged
labourer in a “house.” The spirit of the old trade organisations,
which were so much spoken of in the ’sixties of the nineteenth
century, is thus still alive.
Until lately, Leeds and its environs were also the seat of extensive
domestic industries. When Edward Baines wrote, in 1857, his first
account of the Yorkshire industries (in Th. Baines’s _Yorkshire,
Past and Present_), most of the woollen cloth which was made in that
region was woven by hand.[133] Twice a week the hand-made cloth
was brought to the Clothiers’ Hall, and by noon it was sold to the
merchants, who had it dressed in their factories. Joint-stock mills
were run by combined clothiers in order to prepare and spin the
wool, but it was woven in the hand-looms by the clothiers and the
members of their families. Twelve years later the hand-loom was
superseded to a great extent by the power-loom; but the clothiers,
who were anxious to maintain their independence, resorted to a
peculiar organisation: they rented a room, or part of a room, and
sometimes also the power-looms, and they worked independently--a
characteristic organisation partly maintained until now, and well
adapted to illustrate the efforts of the petty traders to keep their
ground, notwithstanding the competition of the factory. And it must
be said that the triumphs of the factory were too often achieved only
by means of the most fraudulent adulteration and the underpaid labour
of the children.
The variety of domestic industries carried on in the Lake District is
much greater than might be expected, but they still wait for careful
explorers. I will only mention the hoop-makers, the basket trade,
the charcoal-burners, the bobbin-makers, the small iron furnaces
working with charcoal at Backbarrow, and so on.[134] As a whole, we
do not well know the petty trades of this country, and therefore
we sometimes come across quite unexpected facts. Few continental
writers on industrial topics would guess, indeed, that twenty-five
years ago nails were made by hand by thousands of men, women, and
children in the Black Country of South Staffordshire, as also in
Derbyshire,[135] and that some of this industry remains still in
existence, or that the best needles are made by hand at Redditch.
Chains are also made by hand at Dudley and Cradley, and although the
Press is periodically moved to speak of the wretched conditions of
the chain-makers, men and women, the trade still maintains itself;
while nearly 7,000 men were busy in 1890 in their small workshops
in making locks, even of the plainest description, at Walsall,
Wolverhampton, and Willenhall. The various ironmongeries connected
with horse-clothing--bits, spurs, bridles, and so on--are also
largely made by hand at Walsall.
The Birmingham gun and rifle trades, which also belong to the same
domain of small industries, are well known. As to the various
branches of dress, there are still important divisions of the United
Kingdom where a variety of domestic trades connected with dress
is carried on on a large scale. I need only mention the cottage
industries of Ireland, as also some of them which have survived in
the shires of Buckingham, Oxford, and Bedford; hosiery is a common
occupation in the villages of the counties of Nottingham and Derby;
and several great London firms send out cloth to be made into
dress in the villages of Sussex and Hampshire. Woollen hosiery is
at home in the villages of Leicester, and especially in Scotland;
straw-plaiting and hat-making in many parts of the country; while at
Northampton, Leicester, Ipswich, and Stafford shoemaking was, till
quite lately, a widely spread domestic occupation, or was carried
on in small workshops; even at Norwich it remains a petty trade to
some extent, notwithstanding the competition of the factories. It
must also be said that the recent appearance of large boot and shoe
factories has considerably increased the number of girls and women
who sew the “uppers” and embroider the slippers, either in their own
houses or in sweaters’ workshops, while new small factories have
developed of late for the making of heels, card-boxes, and so on.
The petty trades are thus an important factor of industrial life even
in Great Britain, although many of them have gathered into the towns.
But if we find in this country so many fewer rural industries than on
the Continent, we must not imagine that their disappearance is due
only to a keener competition of the factories. The chief cause was
the compulsory exodus from the villages.
As everyone knows from Thorold Rogers’ work, the growth of the
factory system in England was intimately connected with that enforced
exodus. Whole industries, which prospered till then, were killed
downright by the forced clearing of estates.[136] The workshops,
much more even than the factories, multiply wherever they find
cheap labour; and the specific feature of this country is, that
the cheapest labour--that is, the greatest number of destitute
people--is to be found in the great cities. The agitation raised
(with no result) in connection with the “Dwellings of the Poor,” the
“Unemployed,” and the “Sweating System,” has fully disclosed that
characteristic feature of the economic life of England and Scotland;
and the painstaking researches made by Mr. Charles Booth have shown
that one-quarter of the population of London--that is, 1,000,000 out
of the 3,800,000 who entered within the scope of his inquest--would
be happy if the heads of their families could have regular earnings
of something like £1 a week all the year round. Half of them would
be satisfied with even less than that. The same state of things was
found by Mr. Seebohm Rowntree at York.[137] Cheap labour is offered
in such quantities in the suburbs of all the great cities of Great
Britain, that the petty and domestic trades, which are scattered on
the Continent in the villages, gather in this country in the cities.
Exact figures as to the small industries are wanting, but a simple
walk through the suburbs of London would do much to realise the
variety of petty trades which swarm in the metropolis, and, in fact,
in all chief urban agglomerations. The evidence given before the
“Sweating System Committee” has shown how far the furniture and
ready-made clothing palaces and the “Bonheur des Dames” bazaars of
London are mere exhibitions of samples, or markets for the sale of
the produce of the small industries. Thousands of sweaters, some
of them having their own workshops, and others merely distributing
work to sub-sweaters who distribute it again amidst the destitute,
supply those palaces and bazaars with goods made in the slums or
in very small workshops. The commerce _is_ centralised in those
bazaars--not the industry. The furniture palaces and bazaars are thus
merely playing the part which the feudal castle formerly played in
agriculture: they centralise the profits--not the production.
In reality, the extension of the petty trades, side by side with the
great factories, is nothing to be wondered at. It is an economic
necessity. The absorption of the small workshops by bigger concerns
is a fact which had struck the economists in the ’forties of the last
century, especially in the textile trades. It is continued still in
many other trades, and is especially striking in a number of very
big concerns dealing with metals and war supplies for the different
States. But there is another process which is going on parallel with
the former, and which consists in the continuous creation of new
industries, usually making their start on a small scale. Each new
factory calls into existence a number of small workshops, partly to
supply its own needs and partly to submit its produce to a further
transformation. Thus, to quote but one instance, the cotton mills
have created an immense demand for wooden bobbins and reels, and
thousands of men in the Lake District set to manufacture them--by
hand first, and later on with the aid of some plain machinery. Only
quite recently, after years had been spent in inventing and improving
the machinery, the bobbins began to be made on a larger scale in
factories. And even yet, as the machines are very costly, a great
quantity of bobbins are made in small workshops, with but little aid
from machines, while the factories themselves are relatively small,
and seldom employ more than fifty operatives--chiefly children. As
to the reels of irregular shape, they are still made by hand, or
partly with the aid of small machines, continually invented by the
workers. New industries thus grow up to supplant the old ones; each
of them passes through a preliminary stage on a small scale before
reaching the great factory stage; and the more active the inventive
genius of a nation is, the more it has of these budding industries.
The countless small bicycle works which have lately grown up in
this country, and are supplied with ready-made parts of the bicycle
by the larger factories, are an instance in point. The domestic
and small workshops fabrication of boxes for matches, boots, hats,
confectionery, grocery and so on is another familiar instance.
Besides, the large factory stimulates the birth of new petty trades
by creating new wants. The cheapness of cottons and woollens, of
paper and brass, has created hundreds of new small industries. Our
households are full of their produce--mostly things of quite modern
invention. And while some of them already are turned out by the
million in the great factory, all have passed through the small
workshop stage, before the demand was great enough to require the
great factory organisation. The more we may have of new inventions,
the more shall we have of such small industries; and again, the more
we have of them, the more shall we have of the inventive genius,
the want of which is so justly complained of in this country (by W.
Armstrong, amongst many others). We must not wonder, therefore, if
we see so many small trades in this country; but we must regret that
the great number have abandoned the villages in consequence of the
bad conditions of land tenure, and that they have migrated in such
numbers to the cities, to the detriment of agriculture.
In England, as everywhere, the small industries are an important
factor in the industrial life of the country; and it is chiefly
in the infinite variety of the small trades, which utilise the
half-fabricated produce of the great industries, that inventive
genius is developed, and the rudiments of the future great industries
are elaborated. The small bicycle workshops, with the hundreds
of small improvements which they introduced, have been under our
very eyes the primary cells out of which the great industry of the
motor cars, and later on of the aeroplanes, has grown up. The small
village jam-makers were the precursors and the rudiments of the great
factories of preserves which now employ hundreds of workers. And so
on.
Consequently, to affirm that the small industries are doomed to
disappear, while we see new ones appear every day, is merely to
repeat a hasty generalisation that was made in the earlier part of
the nineteenth century by those who witnessed the absorption of
hand-work by machinery work in the cotton industry--a generalisation
which, as we saw already, and are going still better to see on the
following pages, finds no confirmation from the study of industries,
great and small, and is upset by the censuses of the factories and
workshops. Far from showing a tendency to disappear, the small
industries show, on the contrary, a tendency towards making a further
development, since the municipal supply of electrical power--such
as we have, for instance, in Manchester--permits the owner of a
small factory to have a cheap supply of motive power, exactly in the
proportion required at a given time, and to pay only for what is
really consumed.
_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.[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,[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[140]--only then do they abandon both the land and the rural
industry and emigrate towards the towns.
Otherwise, a new 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 hand-loom-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.[141]
Even in such a branch as the fabrication of plain cotton velvets, in
which the competition of the factories was especially keenly felt,
home-weaving 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[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_,[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.[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.”[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.[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, Orléans
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 Alençon, 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 Alençon 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 Alençon 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 Alençon itself, but it
still remains a by-occupation in the surrounding country. Besides, at
Flers, and at Ferté Macé (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 Condé (where
4,000 tons of cotton were spun in 1883) were abandoned in 1893, and
the workers were thrown into a most miserable condition.[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 Maine-et-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.[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 Orléans we find
another prosperous centre of domestic industries connected with
cottons. “From Romorantin [in Loire-et-Cher, south of Orléans] 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 vine-growing regions, here it has become the chief
resource of the population.”[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, Elbœuf.
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 Fougères (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 Fougères, employing 8,000
workers[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.[151]
In Brittany, in the neighbourhood of Quimperlé, 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.[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
Loudéac, a small town in the midst of Brittany (department of
Côtes-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, Loudéac has become an agricultural market town;[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.[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 Sablé the workers in that branch, who all own their
houses and gardens, enjoy a real well-being especially noticed by our
traveller.[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.”[156]
At Neufchâtel 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 Nièvre, 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 Guérigny and Fourchambault to
find the great industry;”[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-Dôme (Auvergne). The Nogent
industry has developed spontaneously, with no aid from without, and
in its technical part it shows considerable progress.[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.[159] For twelve miles round Thiers, in each direction, all
the streamlets are dotted with small workshops, 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 basket-maker, “and all the
basket-makers belong to a co-operative society,” Ardouin Dumazet
remarks.[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 I 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 watch-makers 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 _fruitières_, 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 anyrate, 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 new 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. Wheel-power 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 horse-power. 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.[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.[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 watch-makers continued to work in their houses or in
small workshops.[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 hand.
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[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 Mâcon. It contains, besides fertile plains,
large hilly 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 Rousse at Lyons, where the silk-weavers (_canuts_) have
their chief quarters, is the centre of that industry, and in 1895 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. House 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 l’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 twenty-two villages, and about
£600,000 worth of various stuffs are woven every year by the rural
weavers in this neighbourhood alone; while 15,000 power-looms 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
£360,000.[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.[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.[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 new 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 anyrate, 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-horse-power engines,
fabricated by the engineers of the Jura (formerly watch-makers) in
their small workshops, were at that time another attempt to solve the
problem--to say nothing of the water, gas and electrical motors.[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, “tele-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. Is 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-handed, 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:--
+-----------------------------+---------------+--------------------+
| | Number of |Number of operatives|
| |establishments.| and clerks. |
+-----------------------------+---------------+--------------------+
| No hired operatives | 520,700 | 1,084,700 |
+-----------------------------+---------------+--------------------+
| From 1 to 10 employees | 539,449 | 1,134,700 |
| From 11 to 50 ” | 28,626 | 585,000 |
| From 51 to 100 ” | 3,865 | 268,000 |
| From 101 to 500 ” | 3,145 | 616,000 |
| From 501 to 1000 ” | 295 | 195,000 |
| More than 1000 ” | 149 | 313,000 |
+-----------------------------+---------------+--------------------+
| | 575,529 | 3,111,700 |
| +---------------+--------------------+
| Total (with first division).| 1,096,229 | 4,196,400 |
+-----------------------------+---------------+--------------------+
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 facts 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 quite noxious when they are represented _as economical
laws_, when in reality they are not confirmed at all by the testimony
of carefully observed facts.
FOOTNOTES:
[129] This is why the German economists find such difficulties
in delimiting the proper domain of the domestic trades
(_Hausindustrie_), and now identify this word with _Verlagssystem_,
which means “working either directly or through the intermediary of
a middleman employer (or buyer) for a dealer or employer, who pays
the small producer for the goods he has produced, before they have
reached the consumer.”
[130] For more details about this subject, see an article of mine in
the _Nineteenth Century_, August, 1900.
[131] The Chief Inspector, Mr. Whitelegge, wrote to me in 1900 that
the workshops which did not enter into his reports represented about
one-half of all the workshops. Since that time Mr. Whitelegge has
continued to publish his interesting reports, adding to them new
groups of workshops. However, they still remain incomplete to some
extent as regards this last point. In the last Report, published
in 1911, we see that 147,000 workshops were registered at the
end of 1907, and returns were received from 105,000 of them. But
as in 32,000 workshops no women or young persons (below 18) were
employed, their returns were not published. The Report for 1907
gives, therefore, only 91,249 workshops in which 638,335 persons
were employed (186,064 male and 282,324 female adults, 54,605 male
and 113,728 female young persons--that is, full-timers from 14 to 18
years old--and 863 male and 751 female children under 14).
[132] From the curve that I computed it appears that all the textile
factories are distributed as to their size as follows:--Not less than
500 operatives, 200 factories, 203,100 operatives; from 499 to 200,
660 factories, 231,000 operatives; from 199 to 100, 2,955 factories,
443,120 operatives; from 99 to 50, 1,380 factories, 103,500
operatives; less than 50, 1,410 factories, 42,300 operatives; total,
6,605 factories, 1,022,020 operatives.--_Nineteenth Century_, August,
1900, p. 262.
[133] Nearly one-half of the 43,000 operatives who were employed
at that time in the woollen trade of this country were weaving in
hand-looms. So also one-fifth of the 79,000 persons employed in the
worsted trade.
[134] E. Roscoe’s notes in the _English Illustrated Magazine_, May,
1884.
[135] Bevan’s _Guide to English Industries_.
[136] Thorold Rogers, _The Economic Interpretation of History_.
[137] _Poverty: a Study of Town Life_, London (Macmillan), 1901.
[138] These figures, which were found during the census of 1866,
have not changed much since, as may be seen from the following table
which gives the proportional quantities of the different categories
of the _active_ population of both sexes (employers, working men, and
clerks) in 1866 and 1896:--
+---------------------+--------------+--------------+
| | 1866. | 1896. |
+---------------------+--------------+--------------+
|Agriculture | 52 per cent. | 47 per cent. |
|Industry | 34 ” | 35 ” |
|Commerce | 4 ” | 5 ” |
|Transport and various| 3 ” | 5 ” |
|Liberal professions | 7 ” | 8 ” |
+---------------------+--------------+--------------+
As has been remarked by M. S. Fontaine who worked out the results of
the last census, “the number of persons employed in industry properly
speaking, although it has increased, _has nevertheless absorbed
a smaller percentage_ of the loss sustained by the agricultural
population than the other categories.”--_Résultats statistiques du
recensement des professions_, t. iv., p. 8.
[139] _Mutual Aid: a Factor of Evolution._ London (Heinemann), 1902.
[140] See Baudrillart’s _Les Populations agricoles de la France:
Normandie_.
[141] _Le Coton: son régime, ses problèmes._ Paris, 1863, p. 170.
[142] _Les Populations agricoles de la France: Normandie._
[143] _Voyage en France._ Paris, 1893-1910 (Berget-Levreau,
publishers), 56 volumes already published.
[144] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. xvii., p. 242.
[145] _Ibid._, vol. xvii., pp. 100, 101.
[146] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. xix., p. 10.
[147] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. ii., p. 167.
[148] In Maine-et-Loire, la Vendée, Loire Inférieure, and
Deux-Sèvres. 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.
[149] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. i., p. 117 _et seq._
[150] Twelve thousand in 1906.
[151] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. v., p. 270.
[152] _Ibid._, vol. v., p. 215.
[153] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. v., pp. 259-266.
[154] I gave some information about French prison work in a book, _In
Russian and French Prisons_, London, 1888.
[155] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. ii., p. 51.
[156] _Ibid._, vol. i., pp. 305, 306.
[157] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. i., p. 52.
[158] Prof. Issaieff in the Russian _Memoirs of the Petty Trades
Commission_ (_Trudy Kustarnoi Kommissii_), vol. v.
[159] Knives are sold at from 6s. 4d. to 8s. per gross, and razors at
3s. 3d. per gross--“for export.”
[160] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. i., p. 213 _et seq._
[161] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. viii., p. 40.
[162] Interesting details about the small industries of this region
will be found in the articles of Ch. Guieysse, in _Pages libres_,
1902, Nos. 66 and 71.
[163] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. xxiii., pp. 105, 106.
[164] For further details see Appendix U.
[165] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. viii., p. 266.
[166] Some further details about the Lyons region and St. Etienne are
given in Appendix U.
[167] 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 industrie_).--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.
[168] 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.