SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES (_continued_).
_Petty trades in Germany_: Discussions upon the subject and
conclusions arrived at--Results of the census taken in 1882,
1895, and 1907--_Petty trades in Russia_--Conclusions.
_Petty Trades in Germany._
The various industries which still have retained in Germany the
characters of petty and domestic trades have been the subject of
many exhaustive explorations, especially by A. M. Thun and Prof.
Issaieff, on behalf of the Russian Petty Trades Commission, Emanuel
Hans Sax, Paul Voigt, and very many others. By this time the subject
has a bulky literature, and such impressive and suggestive pictures
have been drawn from life for different regions and trades that I
felt tempted to sum up these life-true descriptions. However, as in
such a summary I should have to repeat much of what has already been
said and illustrated in the preceding chapter, it will probably more
interest the general reader to know something about the conclusions
which can be drawn from the works of the German investigators,[169]
and to know the conclusions that may be drawn from the three censuses
of industries which have been made in Germany in the years 1882,
1895, and 1907. This is what I am going to do.
Unhappily, the discussion upon this important subject has often
taken in Germany a passionate and even a personally aggressive
character.[170] On the one hand the ultra-conservative elements of
German politics tried, and succeeded to some extent, in making of the
petty trades and the domestic industries an arm for securing a return
to the “olden good times.” They even passed a law intended to prepare
a re-introduction of the old-fashioned, closed and patriarchal
corporations which could be placed under the close supervision and
tutorship of the State, and they saw in such a law a weapon against
social democracy. On the other hand, the social democrats, justly
opposed to such measures, but themselves inclined, in their turn, to
take too abstract a view of economical questions, bitterly attack all
those who do not merely repeat the stereotyped phrases to the effect
that “the petty trades are in decay,” and “the sooner they disappear
the better,” as they will give room to capitalist centralisation,
which, according to the social democratic creed, “will soon achieve
its own ruin.” In this dislike of the small industries they are, of
course, at one with the economists of the orthodox school, whom they
combat on nearly all other points.[171]
Under such conditions, the polemics about the petty trades and the
domestic industries are evidently doomed to remain most unproductive.
However, it is pleasant to see that a considerable amount of most
conscientious work has been made for the investigation of the
petty trades in Germany; and, by the side of such monographs, from
which nothing can be learned but that the petty trades’ workers
are in a miserable condition, and nothing whatever can be gathered
to explain why these workers prefer their conditions to those of
factory hands--there is no lack of very detailed monographs (such as
those of Thun, Em. H. Sax, Paul Voigt on the Berlin cabinet-makers,
etc.), in which one sees the whole of the life of these classes of
workers, the difficulties which they have to cope with, and the
technical conditions of the trade, and finds all the elements for an
independent judgment upon the matter.
It is evident that a number of petty trades are already now doomed
to disappear; but there are others, on the contrary, which are
endowed with a great vitality, and all chances are in favour of their
continuing to exist and to take a further development for many years
to come. In the fabrication of such textiles as are woven by millions
of yards, and can be best produced with the aid of a complicated
machinery, the competition of the hand-loom against the power-loom is
evidently nothing but a survival, which may be maintained for some
time by certain local conditions, but finally must die away.
The same is true with regard to many branches of the iron industries,
hardware fabrication, pottery, and so on. But wherever the direct
intervention of taste and inventiveness are required, wherever new
patterns of goods requiring a continual renewal of machinery and
tools must continually be introduced in order to feed the demand, as
is the case with all fancy textiles, even though they be fabricated
to supply the millions; wherever a great variety of goods and the
uninterrupted invention of new ones goes on, as is the case in the
toy trade, in instrument making, watch-making, bicycle making, and
so on; and finally, wherever the artistic feeling of the individual
worker makes the best part of his goods, as is the case in hundreds
of branches of small articles of luxury, there is a wide field for
petty trades, rural workshops, domestic industries, and the like.
More fresh air, more ideas, more general conceptions, and more
co-operation are evidently required in those industries. But where
the spirit of initiative has been awakened in one way or another, we
see the petty industries taking a new development in Germany, as we
have just seen that being done in France.
Now, in nearly all the petty trades in Germany, the position of
the workers is unanimously described as most miserable, and the
many admirers of centralisation which we find in Germany always
insist upon this misery in order to predict, and to call for, the
disappearance of “those mediæval survivals” which “capitalist
centralisation” must supplant for the benefit of the worker. The
reality is, however, that when we compare the miserable conditions
of the workers in the petty trades with the conditions of the wage
workers in the factories, in the same regions and in the same trades,
we see that the very same misery prevails among the factory workers.
They live upon wages of from nine to eleven shillings a week, in town
slums instead of the country. They work eleven hours a day, and they
also are subject to the extra misery thrown upon them during the
frequently recurring crises. It is only after they have undergone all
sorts of sufferings in their struggles against their employers that
some factory workers succeed, more or less, here and there, to wrest
from their employers a “living wage”--and this again only in certain
trades.
To welcome all these sufferings, seeing in them the action of
a “natural law” and a _necessary_ step towards the _necessary_
concentration of industry, would be simply absurd. While to maintain
that the pauperisation of all workers and the wreckage of all village
industries are a _necessary_ step towards a higher form of industrial
organisation would be, not only to affirm much more than one is
entitled to affirm under the present imperfect state of economical
knowledge, but to show an absolute want of comprehension of the sense
of both natural and economic laws. Everyone, on the contrary, who has
studied the question of the growth of great industries on its own
merits, will undoubtedly agree with Thorold Rogers, who considered
the sufferings inflicted upon the labouring classes for that purpose
as having been of _no necessity whatever_, and simply having been
inflicted to suit the temporary interests of the few--by no means
those of the nation.[172]
Moreover, everyone knows to what extent the labour of children and
girls is resorted to, even in the most prosperous factories--even
in this country which stands foremost in industrial development.
Some figures relative to this subject were given in the preceding
chapter. And this fact is not an accident which might be easily
removed, as Maurice Block--a great admirer, of course, of the
factory system--tries to represent it.[173] The low wages paid to
children and youths are now one of the _necessary_ elements in the
cheapness of the factory produced textiles, and, consequently, of
the very competition of the factory with the petty trades. I have
mentioned besides, whilst speaking of France, what are the effects
of “concentrated” industries upon village life; and in Thun’s work,
and in many others as well, one may find enough of ghastly instances
of what are the effects of accumulations of girls in the factories.
To idealise the modern factory, in order to depreciate the so-called
“mediæval” forms of the small industries, is consequently--to say the
least--as unreasonable as to idealise the latter and try to bring
mankind back to isolated home-spinning and home-weaving in every
peasant house.
One fact dominates all the investigations which have been made into
the conditions of the small industries. We find it in Germany, as
well as in France or in Russia. In an immense number of trades it
is not the superiority of the _technical_ organisation of the trade
in a factory, nor the economies realised on the prime-motor, which
militate against the small industry in favour of the factories,
but the more advantageous conditions for _selling_ the produce
and for _buying_ the raw produce which are at the disposal of big
concerns. Wherever this difficulty has been overcome, either by
means of association, or in consequence of a market being secured
for the sale of the produce, it has always been found--first, that
the conditions of the workers or artisans immediately improved; and
next, that a rapid progress was realised in the technical aspects of
the respective industries. New processes were introduced to improve
the produce or to increase the rapidity of its fabrication; new
machine-tools were invented; or new motors were resorted to; or the
trade was reorganised so as to diminish the costs of production.
On the contrary, wherever the helpless, isolated artisans and
workers continue to remain at the mercy of the wholesale buyers, who
always--since Adam Smith’s time--“openly or tacitly” agree to act as
one man to bring down the prices almost to a starvation level--and
such is the case for the immense number of the small and village
industries--their condition is so bad that only the longing of the
workers after a certain relative independence, and their knowledge of
what awaits them in the factory, prevent them from joining the ranks
of the factory hands. Knowing that in most cases the advent of the
factory would mean no work at all for most men, and the taking of the
children and girls to the factory, they do the utmost to prevent it
from appearing at all in the village.
As to combinations in the villages, co-operation and the like, one
must never forget how jealously the German, the French, the Russian
and the Austrian Governments have hitherto prevented the workers,
_and especially the village workers_, from entering into any sort of
combination for economical purposes. In France the peasant syndicates
were permitted only by the law of 1884. To keep the peasant at the
lowest possible level, by means of taxation, serfdom, and the like,
has been, and is still, the policy of most continental States. It
was only in 1876 that some extension of the association rights was
granted in Germany, and even now a mere co-operative association
for the sale of the artisans’ work is soon reported as a “political
association” and submitted as such to the usual limitations, such as
the exclusion of women and the like.[174] A striking example of that
policy as regards a village association was given by Prof. Issaieff,
who also mentioned the severe measures taken by the wholesale buyers
in the toy trade to prevent the workers from entering into direct
intercourse with foreign buyers.
When one examines with more than a superficial attention the life
of the small industries and their struggles for life, one sees
that when they perish, they perish--not because “an economy can be
realised by using a hundred horse-power motor, instead of a hundred
small motors”--this inconveniency never fails to be mentioned,
although it is easily obviated in Sheffield, in Paris, and many
other places by hiring workshops with wheel-power, supplied by
a central machine, and, still more, as was so truly observed by
Prof. W. Unwin, by the electric transmission of power. They do not
perish because a substantial economy can be realised in the factory
production--in many more cases than is usually supposed, the fact
is even the reverse--but because the capitalist who establishes a
factory emancipates himself from the wholesale and retail dealers in
raw materials; and especially, because he emancipates himself from
the buyers of his produce and can deal directly with the wholesale
buyer and exporter; or else he concentrates in one concern the
different stages of fabrication of a given produce. The pages which
Schulze-Gäwernitz gave to the organisation of the cotton industry in
England, and to the difficulties which the German cotton-mill owners
had to contend with, so long as they were dependent upon Liverpool
for raw cotton, are most instructive in this direction. And what
characterises the cotton trade prevails in all other industries as
well.
If the Sheffield cutlers who now work in their tiny workshops, in
one of the above-mentioned buildings supplied with wheel-power,
were incorporated in one big factory, the chief advantage which
would be realised in the factory would _not_ be an economy in the
costs of production, in comparison to the quality of the produce;
with a shareholders’ company the costs might even increase. And yet
the profits (including wages) probably would be greater than the
aggregate earnings of the workers, in consequence of the reduced
costs of purchase of iron and coal, and the facilities for the sale
of the produce. The great concern would thus find its advantages not
in such factors as are imposed by the _technical_ necessities of the
trade at the time being, but in such factors as could be eliminated
by co-operative organisation. All these are elementary notions among
practical men.
It hardly need be added that a further advantage which the factory
owner has is, that he can find a sale even for produce of the most
inferior quality, provided there is a considerable quantity of it to
be sold. All those who are acquainted with commerce know, indeed,
what an immense bulk of the world’s trade consists of “shoddy,”
_patraque_, “Red Indians’ blankets,” and the like, shipped to distant
countries. Whole cities--we just saw--produce nothing but “shoddy.”
Altogether, it may be taken as one of the fundamental facts of the
economical life of Europe that the defeat of a number of small
trades, artisan work and domestic industries, came through their
being incapable of organising the _sale_ of their produce--not from
the _production_ itself. The same thing recurs at every page of
economical history. The incapacity of organising the sale, without
being enslaved by the merchant, was the leading feature of the
Mediæval cities, which gradually fell under the economical and
political yoke of the Guild-Merchant, _simply because they were not
able to maintain the sale of their manufactures by the community as
a whole_, or to organise the sale of a new produce in the interest
of the community. When the markets for such commodities came to be
Asia on the one side, and the New World on the other side, such was
fatally the case; since commerce had ceased to be _communal_, and had
become _individual_, the cities became a prey for the rivalries of
the chief merchant families.
Even nowadays, when we see the co-operative societies beginning to
succeed in their productive workshops, while fifty years ago they
invariably failed in their capacity of producers, we may conclude
that the cause of their previous failures was not in their incapacity
of properly and economically organising _production_, but in their
inability of acting as _sellers_ and exporters of the produce they
had fabricated. Their present successes, on the contrary, are fully
accounted for by the network of distributive societies which they
have at their command. The sale has been simplified, and production
has been rendered possible _by first organising the market_.
Such are a few conclusions which may be drawn from a study of the
small industries in Germany and elsewhere. And it may be safely
said, with regard to Germany, that if measures are not taken for
driving the peasants from the land on the same scale as they have
been taken in this country; if, on the contrary, the numbers of
small landholders multiply, they necessarily will turn to various
small trades, in addition to agriculture, as they have done, and are
doing, in France. Every step that may be taken, either for awakening
intellectual life in the villages, or for assuring the peasants’ or
the country’s rights upon the land, will necessarily further the
growth of industries in the villages.
In this light it is extremely interesting to see the figures as to
the distribution of the German industries into a small, middle-sized,
and great industry, which are given by three industrial censuses
taken during the last thirty years. But for these figures I refer the
reader to the Appendix.[175]
_Petty Trades in other Countries._
If it were worth extending our inquiry to other countries, we
should find a vast field for most interesting observations in
Switzerland. There we should see the same vitality in a variety
of petty industries, and we could mention what has been done in
the different cantons for maintaining the small trades by three
different sets of measures: the extension of co-operation; a wide
extension of technical education in the schools and the introduction
of new branches of semi-artistic production in different parts of
the country; and the supply of cheap motive power in the houses by
means of a hydraulic or an electric transmission of power borrowed
from the waterfalls. A separate book of the greatest interest and
value could be written on this subject, especially on the impulse
given to a number of petty trades, old and new, by means of a cheap
supply of motive power. Such a book would also offer a great interest
in that it would show to what an extent that mingling together of
agriculture with industry, which I described in the first edition
of this book as “the factory amidst the fields,” has progressed of
late in Switzerland. It strikes at the present time even the casual
traveller.[176]
Belgium would offer an equal interest. Belgium is certainly a country
of centralised industry, and a country in which the productivity of
the worker stands at a high level, the average annual productivity
of each industrial workman--men, women, and children--attaining
now the high figure of at least £250 per head. Coal mines in which
more than a thousand workers are employed are numerous, and there
is a fair number of textile factories in each of which from 300 to
700 workers are occupied. And yet, if we exclude from the industrial
workers’ population of Belgium, which numbered 823,920 persons in
1896 (1,102,240 with the clerks, travellers, supervisors and so
on), the 116,300 workpeople who are employed in the coal mines, and
nearly 165,000 artisans working single or with the aid of their
families, we find that out of the remaining 565,200 workers very
nearly one-half--that is, 270,200 persons--work in establishments
in which less than fifty persons are employed, while 95,000 persons
out of these last are employed in 54,500 workshops, which thus have
an average of less than three workers per workshop.[177] We may thus
say that--taking the mines out of account--more than one-sixth part
of the Belgian industrial workers are employed in small workshops
which have, on the average, less than three workers each, besides
the master, and that four-tenths of all the workpeople are employed
in factories and workshops having on the average less than thirteen
workpeople each.[178]
What is still more remarkable is, that the number of small workshops,
in which from one to four aids only are employed by the master,
attains the considerable figure of 1,867 (2,293 in 1880) in the
textile industries, notwithstanding the high concentration of a
certain portion[179] of these industries. As to the machinery works
and hardware trades, the small workshops in which the master works
with from two to four assistants or journeymen are very numerous
(more than 13,300), to say nothing of the gun trade which is a petty
trade _par excellence_, and the furniture trade which has lately
taken a great development. A highly concentrated industry, and a
high productivity, as well as a considerable export trade, which all
testify to a high industrial development of the country, thus go hand
in hand with a high development of the domestic trades and small
industries altogether.
* * * * *
It hardly need be said that in Austria, Hungary, Italy, and even the
United States, the petty trades occupy a prominent position, and play
in the sum total of industrial activity an even much greater part
than in France, Belgium, or Germany. But it is especially in Russia
that we can fully appreciate the importance of the rural industries
and the terrible sufferings which will be quite uselessly inflicted
on the population, if the policy of the State is going to be now the
policy advocated by a number of landlords and factory-owners--namely,
if the State throws its tremendous weight in favour of a
pauperisation of the peasants and an artificial annihilation of the
rural trades, in order to create a centralised great industry.[180]
The most exhaustive inquiries into the present state, the growth,
the technical development of the rural industries, and the
difficulties they have to contend with, have been made in Russia.
A house-to-house inquiry which embraces nearly 1,000,000 peasants’
houses has been made in various provinces of Russia, and its results
already represent 450 volumes, printed by different county councils
(_Zemstvos_). Besides, in the fifteen volumes published by the Petty
Trades Committee, and still more in the publications of the Moscow
Statistical Committee, and of many provincial assemblies, we find
exhaustive lists giving the name of each worker, the extent and the
state of his fields, his live stock, the value of his agricultural
and industrial production, his earnings from both sources, and his
yearly budget; while hundreds of separate trades have been described
in separate monographs from the technical, economical, and sanitary
points of view.
The results obtained from these inquiries were really imposing, as
it appeared that out of the 80 or 90 million population of European
Russia proper, no less than 7,500,000 persons were engaged in the
domestic trades, and that their production reached, at the lowest
estimate, more than £150,000,000, and most probably £200,000,000
(2,000,000,000 roubles) every year.[181] It thus exceeded the total
production of the great industry. As to the relative importance of
the two for the working classes suffice it to say that even in the
government of Moscow, which is the chief manufacturing region of
Russia (its factories yield upwards of one-fifth in value of the
aggregate industrial production of European Russia), the aggregate
incomes derived by the population from the domestic industries are
three times larger than the aggregate wages earned in the factories.
The most striking feature of the Russian domestic trades is that
the sudden start which was made by the factories in Russia did not
prejudice the domestic industries. On the contrary, it gave a new
impulse to their extension; they grew and developed precisely in
those regions where the factories were growing up fastest.
Another most suggestive feature is the following: although the
unfertile provinces of Central Russia have been from time immemorial
the seat of all kinds of petty trades, several domestic industries
of modern origin are developing in those provinces which are best
favoured by soil and climate. Thus, the Stavropol government of
North Caucasus, where the peasantry have plenty of fertile soil, has
suddenly become the seat of a widely developed silk-weaving industry
in the peasants’ houses, and now it supplies Russia with cheap silks
which have completely expelled from the market the plain silks
formerly imported from France. In Orenburg and on the Black Sea, the
petty trades’ fabrication of agricultural machinery, which has grown
up lately, is another instance in point.
The capacities of the Russian domestic industrial workers for
co-operative organisation would be worthy of more than a passing
mention. As to the cheapness of the produce manufactured in the
villages, which is really astonishing, it cannot be explained in full
by the exceedingly long hours of labour and the starvation earnings,
because overwork and very low wages are characteristic of the Russian
factories as well. It depends also upon the circumstance that the
peasant who grows his own food, but suffers from a constant want
of money, sells the produce of his industrial labour at any price.
Therefore, all manufactured goods used by the Russian peasantry, save
the printed cottons, are the production of the rural manufacturers.
But many articles of luxury, too, are made in the villages,
especially around Moscow, by peasants who continue to cultivate their
allotments. The silk hats which are sold in the best Moscow shops,
and bear the stamp of _Nouveautés Parisiennes_, are made by the
Moscow peasants; so also the “Vienna” furniture of the best “Vienna”
shops, even if it goes to supply the palaces. And what is most to be
wondered at is not the skill of the peasants--agricultural work is no
obstacle to acquiring industrial skill--but the rapidity with which
the fabrication of fine goods has spread in such villages as formerly
manufactured only goods of the roughest description.[182]
As to the relations between agriculture and industry, one cannot
peruse the documents accumulated by the Russian statisticians without
coming to the conclusion that, far from damaging agriculture, the
domestic trades, on the contrary, are the best means for improving
it, and the more so, as for several months every year the Russian
peasant has nothing to do in the fields. There are regions where
agriculture has been totally abandoned for the industries; but
these are regions where it was rendered impossible by the very
small allotments granted to the liberated serfs, the bad quality
or the want of meadows in the land allotted to the peasants, and by
the general impoverishment of the peasants, following a very high
taxation and very high redemption taxes for the land. But wherever
the allotments are reasonable and the peasants are less over-taxed,
they continue to cultivate the land, and their fields are kept in
better order; besides, the average numbers of live stock are higher
where agriculture is carried on in association with the domestic
trades. Even those peasants whose allotments are small, find the
means of renting more land if they earn some money from their
industrial work. As to the relative welfare, I need hardly add that
it always stands on the side of those villages which combine both
kinds of work. Vorsma and Pavlovo--two cutlery villages, one of which
is purely industrial, while the inhabitants of the other continue
to till the soil--could be quoted as a striking instance for such a
comparison.[183]
Much more ought to be said with regard to the rural industries
of Russia, especially to show how easily the peasants associate
for buying new machinery, or for avoiding the middleman in their
purchases of raw produce--as soon as misery is no obstacle to the
association. Belgium, and especially Switzerland, could also be
quoted for similar illustrations, but the above will be enough to
give a general idea of the importance, the vital powers, and the
perfectibility of the rural industries.
_Conclusions._
The facts which we have briefly passed in review show, to some
extent, the benefits which could be derived from a combination of
agriculture with industry, if the latter could come to the village,
not in its present shape of a capitalist factory, but in the shape
of a socially organised industrial production, with the full aid
of machinery and technical knowledge. In fact, the most prominent
feature of the petty trades is that a relative well-being is found
only where they are combined with agriculture: where the workers
have remained in possession of the soil and continue to cultivate
it. Even amidst the weavers of France or Moscow, who have to reckon
with the competition of the factory, relative well-being prevails
so long as they are not compelled to part with the soil. On the
contrary, as soon as high taxation or the impoverishment during a
crisis has compelled the domestic worker to abandon his last plot of
land to the usurer, misery creeps into his house. The sweater becomes
all-powerful, frightful overwork is resorted to, and the whole trade
often falls into decay.
Such facts, as well as the pronounced tendency of the factories
towards migrating to the villages, which becomes more and more
apparent nowadays, and found of late its expression in the ‘Garden
Cities’ movement, are very suggestive. Of course, it would be a
great mistake to imagine that industry ought to return to its
hand-work stage in order to be combined with agriculture. Whenever
a saving of human labour can be obtained by means of a machine, the
machine is welcome and will be resorted to; and there is hardly one
single branch of industry into which machinery work could not be
introduced with great advantage, at least at some of the stages of
the manufacture. In the present chaotic state of industry, nails and
cheap pen-knives can be made by hand, and plain cottons be woven
in the hand-loom; but such an anomaly will not last. The machine
will supersede hand-work in the manufacture of plain goods. But at
the same time, handwork very probably will extend its domain in the
artistic finishing of many things which are now made entirely in the
factory; and it will always remain an important factor in the growth
of thousands of young and new trades.
But the question arises, Why should not the cottons, the woollen
cloth, and the silks, now woven by hand in the villages, be woven by
machinery in the same villages, without ceasing to remain connected
with work in the fields? Why should not hundreds of domestic
industries, now carried on entirely by hand, resort to labour-saving
machines, as they already do in the knitting trade and many others?
There is no reason why the small motor should not be of a much more
general use than it is now, wherever there is no need to have a
factory; and there is no reason why the village should not have its
small factory, wherever factory work is preferable, as we already see
it occasionally in certain villages in France.
More than that. There is no reason why the factory, with its motive
force and machinery, should not belong to the community, as is
already the case for motive power in the above-mentioned workshops
and small factories in the French portion of the Jura hills. It is
evident that now, under the capitalist system, the factory is the
curse of the village, as it comes to overwork children and to make
paupers out of its male inhabitants; and it is quite natural that it
should be opposed by all means by the workers, if they have succeeded
in maintaining their olden trades’ organisations (as at Sheffield,
or Solingen), or if they have not yet been reduced to sheer misery
(as in the Jura). But under a more rational social organisation the
factory would find no such obstacles: it would be a boon to the
village. And there is already unmistakable evidence to show that a
move in this direction _is being made_ in a few village communities.
* * * * *
The moral and physical advantages which man would derive from
dividing his work between the field and the workshop are
self-evident. But the difficulty is, we are told, in the necessary
centralisation of the modern industries. In industry, as well as in
politics, centralisation has so many admirers! But in both spheres
the ideal of the centralisers badly needs revision. In fact, if we
analyse the modern industries, we soon discover that for some of
them the co-operation of hundreds, or even thousands, of workers
gathered at the same spot is really necessary. The great iron works
and mining enterprises decidedly belong to that category; oceanic
steamers cannot be built in village factories. But very many of our
big factories are nothing else but agglomerations under a common
management, of several distinct industries; while others are mere
agglomerations of hundreds of copies of the very same machine; such
are most of our gigantic spinning and weaving establishments.
The manufacture being a strictly private enterprise, its owners
find it advantageous to have all the branches of a given industry
under their own management; they thus cumulate the profits of the
successive transformations of the raw material. And when several
thousand power-looms are combined in one factory, the owner finds his
advantage in being able to hold the command of the market. But from a
_technical_ point of view the advantages of such an accumulation are
trifling and often doubtful. Even so centralised an industry as that
of the cottons does not suffer at all from the division of production
of one given sort of goods at its different stages between several
separate factories: we see it at Manchester and its neighbouring
towns. As to the petty trades, no inconvenience is experienced from
a still greater subdivision between the workshops in the watch trade
and very many others.
We often hear that one horse-power costs so much in a small engine,
and so much less in an engine ten times more powerful; that the
pound of cotton yarn costs much less when the factory doubles the
number of its spindles. But, in the opinion of the best engineering
authorities, such as Prof. W. Unwin, the hydraulic, and especially
the electric, distribution of power from a central station sets
aside the first part of the argument.[184] As to its second part,
calculations of this sort are only good for those industries which
prepare the half-manufactured produce for further transformations.
As to those countless descriptions of goods which derive their value
chiefly from the intervention of skilled labour, they can be best
fabricated in smaller factories which employ a few hundreds, or even
a few scores of operatives. This is why the “concentration” so much
spoken of is often nothing but an amalgamation of capitalists for the
purpose of _dominating the market_, not for cheapening the technical
process.
Even under the present conditions the leviathan factories offer
great inconveniences, as they cannot rapidly reform their machinery
according to the constantly varying demands of the consumers. How
many failures of great concerns, too well known in this country
to need to be named, were due to this cause during the crisis of
1886-1890. As for the new branches of industry which I have mentioned
at the beginning of the previous chapter, they always must make a
start on a small scale; and they can prosper in small towns as well
as in big cities, if the smaller agglomerations are provided with
institutions stimulating artistic taste and the genius of invention.
The progress achieved of late in toy-making, as also the high
perfection attained in the fabrication of mathematical and optical
instruments, of furniture, of small luxury articles, of pottery
and so on, are instances in point. Art and science are no longer
the monopoly of the great cities, and further progress will be in
scattering them over the country.
The geographical distribution of industries in a given country
depends, of course, to a great extent upon a complexus of natural
conditions; it is obvious that there are spots which are best suited
for the development of certain industries. The banks of the Clyde
and the Tyne are certainly most appropriate for shipbuilding yards,
and shipbuilding yards must be surrounded by a variety of workshops
and factories. The industries will always find some advantages in
being grouped, to some extent, according to the natural features of
separate regions. But we must recognise that now they are _not at
all_ grouped according to those features. Historical causes--chiefly
religious wars and national rivalries--have had a good deal to do
with their growth and their present distribution; still more so the
employers were guided by considerations as to the facilities for sale
and export--that is, by considerations which are already losing their
importance with the increased facilities for transport, and will lose
it still more when the producers produce for themselves, and not for
customers far away.
Why, in a rationally organised society, ought London to remain a
great centre for the jam and preserving trade, and manufacture
umbrellas for nearly the whole of the United Kingdom? Why should the
countless Whitechapel petty trades remain where they are, instead
of being spread all over the country? There is no reason whatever
why the mantles which are worn by English ladies should be sewn at
Berlin and in Whitechapel, instead of in Devonshire or Derbyshire.
Why should Paris refine sugar for almost the whole of France? Why
should one-half of the boots and shoes used in the United States
be manufactured in the 1,500 workshops of Massachusetts? There is
absolutely no reason why these and like anomalies should persist. The
industries must be scattered all over the world; and the scattering
of industries amidst all civilised nations will be necessarily
followed by a further scattering of factories over the territories of
each nation.
In the course of this evolution, the natural produce of each region
and its geographical conditions certainly will be _one_ of the
factors which will determine the character of the industries going
to develop in this region. But when we see that Switzerland has
become a great exporter of steam-engines, railway engines, and
steam-boats--although she has no iron ore and no coal for obtaining
steel, and even has no seaport to import them; when we see that
Belgium has succeeded in being a great exporter of grapes, and that
Manchester has managed to become a seaport--we understand that in the
geographical distribution of industries, the two factors of local
produces and of an advantageous position by the sea are not yet the
dominant factors. We begin to understand that, all taken, it is the
_intellectual_ factor--the spirit of invention, the capacity of
adaptation, political liberty, and so on--which counts for more than
all others.
That all the industries find an advantage in being carried on in
close contact with a great variety of other industries the reader
has seen already from numerous examples. Every industry requires
_technical surroundings_. But the same is also true of agriculture.
Agriculture cannot develop without the aid of machinery, and the
use of a perfect machinery cannot be generalised without industrial
surroundings: without mechanical workshops, easily accessible to
the cultivator of the soil, the use of agricultural machinery is
not possible. The village smith would not do. If the work of a
thrashing-machine has to be stopped for a week or more, because one
of the cogs in a wheel has been broken, and if to obtain a new wheel
one must send a special messenger to the next province--then the
use of a thrashing-machine is not possible. But this is precisely
what I saw in my childhood in Central Russia; and quite lately I
have found the very same fact mentioned in an English autobiography
in the first half of the nineteenth century. Besides, in all the
northern part of the temperate zone, the cultivators of the soil
must have some sort of industrial employment during the long winter
months. This is what has brought about the great development of rural
industries, of which we have just seen such interesting examples. But
this need is also felt in the soft climate of the Channel Islands,
notwithstanding the extension taken by horticulture under glass. “We
need such industries. Could you suggest us any?” wrote to me one of
my correspondents in Guernsey.
But this is not yet all. Agriculture is so much in need of aid from
those who inhabit the cities, that every summer thousands of men
leave their slums in the towns and go to the country for the season
of crops. The London destitutes go in thousands to Kent and Sussex
as hay-makers and hop-pickers, it being estimated that Kent alone
requires 80,000 additional men and women for hop-picking; whole
villages in France and their cottage industries are abandoned in
the summer, and the peasants wander to the more fertile parts of
the country; hundreds of thousands of human beings are transported
every summer to the prairies of Manitoba and Dacota. Every summer
many thousands of Poles spread at harvest time over the plains of
Mecklenburg, Westphalia, and even France; and in Russia there is
every year an exodus of several millions of men who journey from the
north to the southern prairies for harvesting the crops; while many
St. Petersburg manufacturers reduce their production in the summer,
because the operatives return to their native villages for the
culture of their allotments.
Agriculture cannot be carried on without additional hands in the
summer; but it still more needs temporary aids for _improving_ the
soil, for tenfolding its productive powers. Steam-digging, drainage,
and manuring would render the heavy clays in the north-west of London
a much richer soil than that of the American prairies. To become
fertile, those clays want only plain, unskilled human labour, such
as is necessary for digging the soil, laying in drainage tubes,
pulverising phosphorites, and the like; and that labour would be
gladly done by the factory workers if it were properly organised in a
free community for the benefit of the whole society. The soil claims
that sort of aid, and it would have it under a proper organisation,
even if it were necessary to stop many mills in the summer for that
purpose. No doubt the present factory owners would consider it
ruinous if they had to stop their mills for several months every
year, because the capital engaged in a factory is expected to pump
money every day and every hour, if possible. But that is the
capitalist’s view of the matter, not the community’s view.
As to the workers, who ought to be the real managers of industries,
they will find it healthy _not_ to perform the same monotonous work
all the year round, and they will abandon it for the summer, if
indeed they do not find the means of keeping the factory running by
relieving each other in groups.
The scattering of industries over the country--so as to bring the
factory amidst the fields, to make agriculture derive all those
profits which it always finds in being combined with industry
(see the Eastern States of America) and to produce a combination
of industrial with agricultural work--is surely the next step to
be made, as soon as a reorganisation of our present conditions is
possible. It is being made already, here and there, as we saw on
the preceding pages. This step is imposed by the very necessity
of _producing for the producers themselves_; it is imposed by the
necessity for each healthy man and woman to spend a part of their
lives in manual work in the free air; and it will be rendered the
more necessary when the great social movements, which have now
become unavoidable, come to disturb the present international
trade, and compel each nation to revert to her own resources for
her own maintenance. Humanity as a whole, as well as each separate
individual, will be gainers by the change, and the change will take
place.
However, such a change also implies a thorough modification of our
present system of education. It implies a society composed of men and
women, each of whom is able to work with his or her hands, as well as
with his or her brain, and to do so in more directions than one. This
“integration of capacities” and “integral education” I am now going
to analyse.
FOOTNOTES:
[169] The remarks of Prof. Issaieff--a thorough investigator of petty
trades in Russia, Germany and France--(see _Works of the Commission
for the Study of Petty Trades in Russia_ (Russian), St. Petersburg,
1879-1887, vol. i.) were for me a valuable guide when I prepared
the first edition of this book. Since that time the two industrial
censuses of 1895 and 1907 have yielded such a valuable material,
that there are quite a number of German works which came to the same
conclusions. I shall mention them further on.
[170] See K. Buecher’s Preface to the _Untersuchungen über die Lage
des Handwerks in Deutschland_, vol. iv.
[171] The foundation for this creed is contained in one of the
concluding chapters of Marx’s _Kapital_ (the last but one), in
which the author spoke of the concentration of capital and saw in
it the “fatality of a natural law.” In the “forties,” this idea of
“concentration of capital,” originated from what was going on in the
textile industries, was continually recurring in the writings of
all the French socialists, especially Considérant, and their German
followers, and it was used by them as an argument in favour of the
necessity of a social revolution. But Marx was too much of a thinker
that he should not have taken notice of the subsequent developments
of industrial life, which were not foreseen in 1848; if he had lived
now, he surely would _not_ have shut his eyes to the formidable
growth of the numbers of small capitalists and to the middle-class
fortunes which are made in a thousand ways under the shadow of the
modern “millionaires.” Very likely he would have noticed also the
extreme slowness with which the wrecking of small industries goes
on--a slowness which could not be predicted fifty or forty years ago,
because no one could foresee at that time the facilities which have
been offered since for transport, the growing variety of demand, nor
the cheap means which are now in use for the supply of motive power
in small quantities. Being a thinker, he would have studied these
facts, and very probably he would have mitigated the absoluteness
of his earlier formulæ, as in fact he did once with regard to the
village community in Russia. It would be most desirable that his
followers should rely less upon abstract formulæ--easy as they may
be as watchwords in political struggles--and try to imitate their
teacher in his analysis of _concrete_ economical phenomena.
[172] _The Economic Interpretation of History._
[173] _Les Progrès de la Science économique depuis Adam Smith_,
Paris, 1890, t. i., pp. 460, 461.
[174] See the discussions in the Reichstag in January, 1909, on
the Polish Syndicates, and the application that is made to them of
the paragraph of the law of the associations relative to language
(_Sprachenparagraph_).
[175] See Appendix X.
[176] See Appendix Y.
[177] Here is the distribution of workpeople in all the industries,
according to the _Annuaire Statistique_ for the year 1909: Artisans
working single-handed or with the aid of their families, 165,000
establishments; very small industry, from one to four workpeople,
54,000 establishments, 95,000 workpeople; small industry, from five
to forty-nine workpeople per factory, 14,800 establishments, 177,000
employees; middle-sized and great industry, from 50 to 499 workpeople
per factory, 1,500 establishments, 250,000 employees; very great
industry, above 500 workpeople per factory, 200 establishments,
160,000 employees. Total, 236,000 employers great and small; or
71,000 employers out of 7,000,000 inhabitants if we do not count the
independent artisans.
[178] When shall we have for the United Kingdom a census as
complete as we have it for France, Germany, and Belgium? that is,
a census in which the employed and the employers will be counted
separately--instead of throwing into one heap the owner of the
factory, the managers, the engineers, and the workers--and their
distribution in factories of different sizes will be given.
[179] _Textile Industries_: Artisans working single or with the
aid of their families, 1,437; from one to four workmen, 430
establishments, 949 workpeople; from five to forty-nine workpeople,
774 establishments, 14,051 workers; above fifty, 379 establishments,
66,103 workers.
[180] Since 1907 the Russian Government has inaugurated this policy,
and has begun to destroy by violence the village community in the
interest of the landlord and the protected industries.
[181] It appears from the house-to-house inquiry, which embodies
855,000 workers, that the yearly value of the produce which they
use to manufacture reaches £21,087,000 (the rouble at 24d.),
that is, an average of £25 per worker. An average of £20 for the
7,500,000 persons engaged in domestic industries would already
give £150,000,000 for their aggregate production; but the most
authoritative investigators consider that figure as below the reality.
[182] Some of the produces of the Russian rural industries have
lately been introduced in this country, and find a good sale.
[183] Prugavin, in the _Vyestnik Promyshlennosti_, June, 1884.
See also the excellent work of V. V. (Vorontsoff) _Destinies of
Capitalism in Russia_, 1882 (Russia).
[184] I may add from my own experience that such is also the opinion
of several Manchester employers: “I am saving a great deal by using
municipal electric power in my factory, instead of the steam-engine.”
I was told by one of the most respected members of the Manchester
community: “I pay for motive power according to the number of persons
I employ--two hundred at certain times, and fifty in other parts of
the year. I need not buy coal and stock it in advance for all the
year; I have saved the room that was occupied by the steam-engine;
and the room above it is not heated and shaken by the engine as it
used to be.”