CONCLUSION.
Readers who have had the patience to follow the facts accumulated
in this book, especially those who have given them a thoughtful
attention, will probably feel convinced of the immense powers over
the productive forces of Nature that man has acquired within the
last half a century. Comparing the achievements indicated in this
book with the present state of production, some will, I hope, also
ask themselves the question which will be ere long, let us hope,
the main object of a scientific political economy: Are the means
now in use for satisfying human needs, under the present system of
permanent division of functions and production for profits, really
_economical_? Do they really lead to economy in the expenditure of
human forces? Or, are they not mere wasteful survivals from a past
that was plunged into darkness, ignorance and oppression, and never
took into consideration the economical and social value of the human
being?
In the domain of agriculture it may be taken as proved that if a
small part only of the time that is now given in each nation or
region to field culture was given to well thought out and socially
carried out permanent improvements of the soil, the duration of work
which would be required afterwards to grow the yearly bread-food for
an average family of five would be less than a fortnight every year;
and that the work required for that purpose would not be the hard
toil of the ancient slave, but work which would be agreeable to the
physical forces of every healthy man and woman in the country.
It has been proved that by following the methods of intensive
market-gardening--partly under glass--vegetables and fruit can be
grown in such quantities that men could be provided with a rich
vegetable food and a profusion of fruit, if they simply devoted to
the task of growing them the hours which everyone willingly devotes
to work in the open air, after having spent most of his day in the
factory, the mine, or the study. Provided, of course, that the
production of food-stuffs should not be the work of the isolated
individual, but the planned-out and combined action of human groups.
It has also been proved--and those who care to verify it by
themselves may easily do so by calculating the real expenditure for
labour which was lately made in the building of workmen’s houses by
both private persons and municipalities[198]--that under a proper
combination of labour, twenty to twenty-four months of one man’s
work would be sufficient to secure for ever, for a family of five,
an apartment or a house provided with all the comforts which modern
hygiene and taste could require.
And it has been demonstrated by actual experiment that, by adopting
methods of education, advocated long since and partially applied
here and there, it is most easy to convey to children of an average
intelligence, before they have reached the age of fourteen or
fifteen, a broad general comprehension of Nature, as well as of
human societies; to familiarise their minds with sound methods of
both scientific research and technical work, and inspire their
hearts with a deep feeling of human solidarity and justice; and that
it is extremely easy to convey during the next four or five years
a reasoned, scientific knowledge of Nature’s laws, as well as a
knowledge, at once reasoned and practical, of the technical methods
of satisfying man’s material needs. Far from being inferior to the
“specialised” young persons manufactured by our universities, the
_complete_ human being, trained to use his brain and his hands,
excels them, on the contrary, in all respects, especially as an
initiator and an inventor in both science and technics.
All this has been proved. It is an acquisition of the times we
live in--an acquisition which has been won despite the innumerable
obstacles always thrown in the way of every initiative mind. It has
been won by the obscure tillers of the soil, from whose hands greedy
States, landlords and middlemen snatch the fruit of their labour
even before it is ripe; by obscure teachers who only too often fall
crushed under the weight of Church, State, commercial competition,
inertia of mind and prejudice.
And now, in the presence of all these conquests--what is the reality
of things?
Nine-tenths of the whole population of grain-exporting countries
like Russia, one-half of it in countries like France which live on
home-grown food, work upon the land--most of them in the same way
as the slaves of antiquity did, only to obtain a meagre crop from
a soil, and with a machinery which they cannot improve, because
taxation, rent and usury keep them always as near as possible to the
margin of starvation. In this twentieth century, whole populations
still plough with the same plough as their mediæval ancestors, live
in the same incertitude of the morrow, and are as carefully denied
education as their ancestors; and they have, in claiming their
portion of bread, to march with their children and wives against
their own sons’ bayonets, as their grandfathers did hundreds of years
ago.
In industrially developed countries, a couple of months’ work, or
even much less than that, would be sufficient to produce for a family
a rich and varied vegetable and animal food. But the researches of
Engel (at Berlin) and his many followers tell us that the workman’s
family has to spend one full half of its yearly earnings--that is,
to give six months of labour, and often more--to provide its food.
And what food! Is not bread and dripping the staple food of more than
one-half of English children?
One month of work every year would be quite sufficient to provide
the worker with a healthy dwelling. But it is from 25 to 40 per
cent. of his yearly earnings--that is, from three to five months of
his working time every year--that he has to spend in order to get
a dwelling, in most cases unhealthy and far too small; and this
dwelling will never be his own, even though at the age of forty-five
or fifty he is sure to be sent away from the factory, because the
work that he used to do will by that time be accomplished by a
machine and a child.
We all know that the child ought, at least, to be familiarised with
the forces of Nature which some day he will have to utilise; that
he ought to be prepared to keep pace in his life with the steady
progress of science and technics; that he ought to study science and
learn a trade. Everyone will grant thus much; but what do we do? From
the age of ten or even nine we send the child to push a coal-cart in
a mine, or to bind, with a little monkey’s agility, the two ends of
threads broken in a spinning gin. From the age of thirteen we compel
the girl--a child yet--to work as a “woman” at the weaving-loom,
or to stew in the poisoned, over-heated air of a cotton-dressing
factory, or, perhaps, to be poisoned in the death chambers of a
Staffordshire pottery. As to those who have the relatively rare
luck of receiving some more education, we crush their minds by
useless overtime, we consciously deprive them of all possibility of
themselves becoming producers; and under an educational system of
which the motive is “profits,” and the means “specialisation,” we
simply work to death the women teachers who take their educational
duties in earnest. What floods of useless sufferings deluge every
so-called civilised land in the world!
When we look back on ages past, and see there the same sufferings,
we may say that perhaps then they were unavoidable on account of the
ignorance which prevailed. But human genius, stimulated by our modern
Renaissance, has already indicated new paths to follow.
For thousands of years in succession to grow one’s food was the
burden, almost the curse, of mankind. But it need be so no more.
If you make yourselves the soil, and partly the temperature and
the moisture which each crop requires, you will see that to grow
the yearly food of a family, under rational conditions of culture,
requires so little labour that it might almost be done as a mere
change from other pursuits. If you return to the soil, and co-operate
with your neighbours instead of erecting high walls to conceal
yourself from their looks; if you utilise what experiment has already
taught us, and call to your aid science and technical invention,
which never fail to answer to the call--look only at what they have
done for warfare--you will be astonished at the facility with which
you can bring a rich and varied food out of the soil. You will admire
the amount of sound knowledge which your children will acquire by
your side, the rapid growth of their intelligence, and the facility
with which they will grasp the laws of Nature, animate and inanimate.
Have the factory and the workshop at the gates of your fields and
gardens, and work in them. Not those large establishments, of course,
in which huge masses of metals have to be dealt with and which are
better placed at certain spots indicated by Nature, but the countless
variety of workshops and factories which are required to satisfy
the infinite diversity of tastes among civilised men. Not those
factories in which children lose all the appearance of children in
the atmosphere of an industrial hell, but those airy and hygienic,
and consequently economical, factories in which human life is of more
account than machinery and the making of extra profits, of which we
already find a few samples here and there; factories and workshops
into which men, women and children will not be driven by hunger,
but will be attracted by the desire of finding an activity suited
to their tastes, and where, aided by the motor and the machine,
they will choose the branch of activity which best suits their
inclinations.
Let those factories and workshops be erected, not for making profits
by selling shoddy or useless and noxious things to enslaved Africans,
but to satisfy the unsatisfied needs of millions of Europeans. And
again, you will be struck to see with what facility and in how short
a time your needs of dress and of thousands of articles of luxury
can be satisfied, when production is carried on for satisfying real
needs rather than for satisfying shareholders by high profits or for
pouring gold into the pockets of promoters and bogus directors. Very
soon you will yourselves feel interested in that work, and you will
have occasion to admire in your children their eager desire to become
acquainted with Nature and its forces, their inquisitive inquiries as
to the powers of machinery, and their rapidly developing inventive
genius.
Such is the future--already possible, already realisable; such is
the present--already condemned and about to disappear. And what
prevents us from turning our backs to this present and from marching
towards that future, or, at least, making the first steps towards
it, is not the “failure of science,” but first of all our crass
cupidity--the cupidity of the man who killed the hen that was laying
golden eggs--and then our laziness of mind--that mental cowardice so
carefully nurtured in the past.
For centuries science and so-called practical wisdom have said to
man: “It is good to be rich, to be able to satisfy, at least, your
material needs; but the only means to be rich is to so train your
mind and capacities as to be able to compel other men--slaves, serfs
or wage-earners--to make these riches for you. You have no choice.
Either you must stand in the ranks of the peasants and the artisans
who, whatsoever economists and moralists may promise them in the
future, are now periodically doomed to starve after each bad crop
or during their strikes, and to be shot down by their own sons the
moment they lose patience. Or you must train your faculties so as to
be a military commander of the masses, or to be accepted as one of
the wheels of the governing machinery of the State, or to become a
manager of men in commerce or industry.” For many centuries there was
no other choice, and men followed that advice, without finding in it
happiness, either for themselves and their own children, or for those
whom they pretended to preserve from worse misfortunes.
But modern knowledge has another issue to offer to thinking men. It
tells them that in order to be rich they need not take the bread
from the mouths of others; but that the more rational outcome would
be a society in which men, with the work of their own hands and
intelligence, and by the aid of the machinery already invented and
to be invented, should themselves create all imaginable riches.
Technics and science will not be lagging behind if production takes
such a direction. Guided by observation, analysis and experiment,
they will answer all possible demands. They will reduce the time
which is necessary for producing wealth to any desired amount, so as
to leave to everyone as much leisure as he or she may ask for. They
surely cannot guarantee happiness, because happiness depends as much,
or even more, upon the individual himself as upon his surroundings.
But they guarantee, at least, the happiness that can be found in the
full and varied exercise of the different capacities of the human
being, in work that need not be overwork, and in the consciousness
that one is not endeavouring to base his own happiness upon the
misery of others.
These are the horizons which the above inquiry opens to the
unprejudiced mind.
FOOTNOTE:
[198] These figures may be computed, for instance, from the data
contained in “The Ninth Annual Report of the Commissioner of
Labour of the United States, for the year 1893: Building and Loan
Associations.” In this country the cost of a workman’s cottage is
reckoned at about £200, which would represent 700 to 800 days of
labour. But we must not forget how much of this sum is a toll raised
by the capitalists and the landlords upon everything that is used in
building the cottage: the bricks and tiles, the mortar, the wood, the
iron, etc.
APPENDIX.
A.--BRITISH INVESTMENTS ABROAD.
The important question as to the amount of British capital invested
in the colonies and in other countries has only quite lately received
due attention. For the last ten years or so one could find in the
“Reports of the Commissioner of Inland Revenue” a mention of the
revenue derived from British capital invested in foreign loans to
States and Municipalities and in railway companies; but these returns
were still incomplete. Consequently, Mr. George Paish made in 1909
and 1911 an attempt at determining these figures with more accuracy
in two papers which he read before the Statistical Society.[199]
Mr. Paish based his researches on the Income Tax, completing these
data by special researches about private investments, which do not
appear in the Income Tax returns. He has not yet got to the end of
his investigation; but, all taken, he estimates that the yearly
income received by this country from abroad from different sources
reaches £300,000,000 every year.
B.--FRENCH IMPORTS.
About one-tenth part of the cereals consumed in France is still
imported; but, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, the progress
in agriculture has lately been so rapid that even without Algeria
France will soon have a surplus of cereals. Wine is imported, but
nearly as much is exported. So that coffee and oil-seeds remain
the only food articles of durable importance for import. For coal
and coke France is still tributary to Belgium, to this country,
and to Germany; but it is chiefly the inferiority of organisation
of coal extraction which stands in the way of the home supply. The
other important items of imports are: raw cotton (from £12,440,000
to £18,040,000 in 1903-1910), raw wool (from £15,160,000 to
£23,200,000), and raw silk (from £10,680,000 to £17,640,000), as well
as hides and furs, oil-seeds, and machinery (about £10,000,000).
The exports of manufactured goods were £80,000,000 in 1890, and
in subsequent years from £119,000,000 to £137,000,000. Exports of
textiles, exclusive of yarn and linen, £29,800,000 in 1890, and
£34,440,000 in 1908-1910; while the imports of all textiles are
insignificant (from £5,000,000 to £7,000,000).
C.--GROWTH OF INDUSTRY IN RUSSIA.
The growth of industry in Russia will be best seen from the
following:--
1880-81. 1893-94. 1910.
Cwts. Cwts. Cwts.
Cast iron 8,810,000 25,450,000 61,867,000
Iron 5,770,000 9,700,000 } 61,540,700
Steel 6,030,000 9,610,000 }
Railway rails 3,960,000 4,400,000 10,408,300
Coal 64,770,000 160,000,000 530,570,000
(Imports of Coal) from 80,000,000 to 100,000,000
Naphtha 6,900,000 108,700,000 189,267,000
Sugar 5,030,000 11,470,000 28,732,000
Raw cotton, home grown 293,000 1,225,000 3,736,000
Cottons, grey, and yarn 23,640,000 42,045,000 86,950,000
Cottons, printed 6,160,000 7,720,000 37,680,000
1900. 1908.
All cottons £56,156,000 £94,233,000
All woollens 19,064,000 25,388,000
Linen 7,076,600 9,969,000
Silk 3,335,000 3,969,000
The recent growth of the coal and iron industries in South Russia
(with the aid of Belgian capital) was very well illustrated at the
Turin Exhibition of 1911. From less than 100,000 tons in 1860, the
extraction of coal and anthracite rose to 16,840,460 metric tons in
1910. The extraction of iron ore rose from 377,000 tons in 1890 to
3,760,000 tons in 1909. The production of cast iron, which was only
29,270 tons in 1882, reached 2,067,000 tons in 1910, and the amount
of refined iron and steel and their produce rose from 27,830 tons in
1882 to 1,641,960 tons in 1910. In short, South Russia is becoming
an exporting centre for the iron industry. (P. Palcinsky, in Russian
_Mining Journal_, 1911, Nos. 8 and 12.)
D.--IRON INDUSTRY IN GERMANY.
The following tables will give some idea of the growth of mining and
metallurgy in Germany.
The extraction of minerals in the German Empire, in metric tons,
which are very little smaller than the English ton (0·984), was:--
1883. 1893. 1910.
Tons. Tons. Tons.
Coal 55,943,000 76,773,000 152,881,500
Lignite 14,481,000 22,103,000 69,104,900
Iron ore 8,616,000 12,404,000 28,709,700
Zinc ore 678,000 729,000 718,300
Mineral salts (chiefly potash) 1,526,000 2,379,000 9,735,700
Since 1894 the iron industry has taken a formidable development,
the production of pig-iron reaching 12,644,900 metric tons in 1909
(14,793,600 in 1910), and that of half-finished and finished iron
and steel, 14,186,900 tons; while the exports of raw iron, which
were valued at £1,195,000 in 1903, doubled in seven years, reaching
£2,250,000 in 1910.
E.--MACHINERY IN GERMANY.
The rapid progress in the fabrication of machinery in Germany is best
seen from the growth of the German exports as shown by the following
table:--
1890. 1895. 1907.
Machines and parts thereof £2,450,000 £3,215,000 £17,482,500
Sewing-machines and parts thereof 315,000 430,000 1,202,500
Locomotives and locomobiles 280,000 420,000 1,820,000
Three years later the first of these items had already reached
£25,000,000, and the export of bicycles, motor-cars, and motor-buses,
and parts thereof, was valued at £2,904,000.
Everyone knows that German sewing-machines, motor-bus frames, and a
considerable amount of tools find their way even into this country,
and that German tools are plainly recommended in English books.
F.--COTTON INDUSTRY IN GERMANY.
Dr. G. Schulze-Gaewernitz, in his excellent work, _The Cotton Trade
in England and on the Continent_ (English translation by Oscar S.
Hall, London, 1895), called attention to the fact that Germany
had certainly not yet attained, in her cotton industry, the high
technical level of development attained by England; but he showed
also the progress realised. The cost of each yard of plain cotton,
notwithstanding low wages and long hours, was still greater in
Germany than in England, as seen from the following tables. Taking a
certain quality of plain cotton in both countries, he gave (p. 151,
German edition) the following comparative figures:--
England. Germany.
Hours of labour 9 hours 12 hours
Average weekly earnings of the operatives 16s. 3d. 11s. 8d.
Yards woven per week per operative 706 yards 466 yards
Cost per yard of cotton 0·275d. 0·303d.
But he remarked also that in all sorts of printed cottons, in which
fancy, colours and invention play a predominant part, _the advantages
were entirely on the side of the smaller German factories_.
In the spinning mills the advantages, on the contrary, continued to
remain entirely on the side of England, the number of operatives per
1,000 spindles being in various countries as follows (p. 91, English
edition):--
Per 1000 spindles.
Bombay 25 operatives.
Italy 13 ”
Alsace 9½ ”
Mulhouse 7½ ”
Germany, 1861 20 operatives.
” 1882 8 to 9 ”
England, 1837 7 ”
” 1887 3 ”
Considerable improvements had taken place already in the ten years
1884-1894. “India shows us, since 1884, extraordinary developments,”
Schulze-Gaewernitz remarked, and “there is no doubt that Germany also
has reduced the number of operatives per 1,000 spindles since the
last Inquest.” “From a great quantity of materials lying before me,
I cull,” he wrote, “the following, which, however, refers solely to
leading and technically distinguished spinning mills:--
Per 1000 spindles.
Switzerland 6·2 operatives.
Mulhouse 5·8 ”
Baden and Würtemberg 6·2 ”
Bavaria 6·8 ”
Saxony (new and splendid mills) 7·2 ”
Vosges, France (old spinning mills) 8·9 ”
Russia 16·6 ”
The average counts of yarn for all these were between twenties and
thirties.”
It is evident that considerable progress has been realised since
Schulze-Gaewernitz wrote these lines. As an exporter of cotton yarn
and cottons, Germany has made rapid strides. Thus, in 1903, she
exported £1,625,000 worth of cotton yarn, and £15,080,000 worth of
cottons. For 1910 the figures given by the _Statistisches Jahrbuch
for 1911_ were already £2,740,000 and £18,255,000 respectively.
G.--MINING AND TEXTILES IN AUSTRIA.
To give an idea of the development of industries in Austria-Hungary,
it is sufficient to mention the growth of her mining industries and
the present state of her textile industries.
The value of the yearly extraction of coal and iron ore in Austria
appears as follows:--
1880. 1890. 1910.
Coal £1,611,000 £25,337,000 £57,975,000
Brown coal 1,281,300 23,033,000 56,715,000
Raw iron 1,749,000 22,759,000 49,367,000
At the present time the exports of coal entirely balance the imports.
As to the textile industries, the imports of raw cotton into
Austria-Hungary reached in 1907 the respectable value of £12,053,400.
For raw wool and wool yarn they were £6,055,600 worth, and for silk,
£1,572,000; while £3,156,200 worth of woollens were exported.
According to the census of 1902 (_Statistisches Jahrbuch for 1911_),
there were already, in Austria-Hungary, 1,408,855 industrial
establishments, occupying 4,049,320 workpeople, and having a
machinery representing 1,787,900 horse-power. The textile trades
alone had in their service 257,500 horse-power (as against 113,280 in
1890).
The small industry evidently prevailed, nearly one-half of all the
workpeople (2,066,120) being employed in 901,202 establishments,
which had only from one to twenty persons each; while 443,235
workpeople were employed in 10,661 establishments (from twenty-one to
100 workpeople each). Still, the great industry has already made its
appearance in some branches--there being 3,021 establishments which
employed more than 100 workers each, and representing an aggregate of
1,053,790 workpeople. Out of them 105 establishments employed even
more than 1,000 persons each (115 establishments, 179,876 workpeople
in 1910).
In Hungary industry is also rapidly developing; it occupied 1,127,130
persons in 1902 (34,160 in the textiles, and 74,000 in mining). In
1910 the exports of all textiles (stuffs and yarns) from Hungary
reached the sum of £7,040,500.
H.--COTTON MANUFACTURE IN INDIA.
The views taken in the text about the industrial development of
India are confirmed by a mass of evidence. One of them, coming from
authorised quarters, deserves special attention. In an article on the
progress of the Indian cotton manufacture, the _Textile Recorder_
(15th October, 1888) wrote:--
“No person connected with the cotton industry can be ignorant of the
rapid progress of the cotton manufacture in India. Statistics of
all kinds have recently been brought before the public, showing the
increase of production in the country; still it does not seem to be
clearly understood that this increasing output of cotton goods must
seriously lower the demand upon Lancashire mills, and that it is not
by any means improbable that India may at no very distant period be
no better customer than the United States is now.”
One hardly need add at what price the Indian manufacturers obtain
cheap cottons. The report of the Bombay Factory Commission which
was laid before Parliament in August, 1888, contained facts of such
horrible cruelty and cupidity as would hardly be imagined by those
who have forgotten the disclosures of the inquiry made in this
country in 1840-1842. The factory engines are at work, as a rule,
from 5 A.M. till 7, 8, or 9 P.M., and the workers remain at work for
twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours, only releasing one another for
meals. In busy times it happens that the same set of workers remain
at the gins and presses night and day with half an hour’s rest in the
evening. In some factories the workers have their meals at the gins,
and are so worn out after eight and ten days’ uninterrupted work that
they supply the gins mechanically “three parts asleep.”
“It is a sad tale of great want on one side, and cruel cupidity
on the other,” the official report concludes. However, it would
be absolutely erroneous to conclude that Indian manufactures can
compete with the British ones as long as they continue the terrible
exploitation of human labour which we see now. Forty years ago the
British manufactures offered absolutely the same terrible picture of
cruel cupidity. But times will come when Indian workers will restrain
the cupidity of the capitalists, and the manufacturers of Bombay will
be none the worse for that in their competition with the British
manufactures.
The figures relative to the latest growth of the textile industries
in India, given in the text, fully confirm the previsions expressed
twenty-five years ago. As to the conditions of the workpeople in the
Indian cotton-mills, they continue to remain abominable.
I.--THE COTTON INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED STATES.
A few years ago the cotton industry in the United States attracted
the attention of the Manchester cotton manufacturers, and we have
now two very interesting works written by persons who went specially
to the States in order to study the rapid progress made there in
spinning and weaving.[200]
These two inquiries fully confirm what has been said in the text of
this book about the rapid progress made in the American industry
altogether, and especially in the development of a very fine
cotton-weaving machinery. In his preface to Mr. Young’s book, Mr.
Helm says: “The results of this inquiry may not incorrectly be called
a revelation for Lancashire. It was, indeed, already known to a few
on this side of the ocean that there were wide differences between
the methods and organisation of American and English cotton-mills.
But it is only between the last three or four years that suspicion
has arisen amongst us that our competitors in the United States
have been marching faster than we have in the path of economy of
production.”
The most important difference between the British and American
methods was, in Mr. Helm’s opinion, in “the extensive use of the
automatic loom.” Mr. Young’s investigation on the subject left no
doubts that the employment of this loom “substantially reduces the
cost of production, and at the same time increases the earnings of
the weaver, because it permits him to conduct more looms” (p. 15).
Altogether, we learn from Mr. Helm’s remarks that there are now
85,000 automatic looms running in the United States, and that “the
demand for weavers is greater than ever” (p. 16). In a Rhode Island
mill, 743 ordinary looms required 100 weavers, while 2,000 Northrop
(or Draper) looms could be conducted by 134 weavers only, which means
an average of fifteen looms for each weaver. At Burlington, Vermont,
from sixteen to twenty Northrop looms were conducted by each weaver,
and altogether these looms are spreading very rapidly. But it is not
only in the looms that such improvements have been introduced. “The
spinning frames,” we are told by Mr. Young, “containing 112 spindles
a side, were tended by girls who ran four, six, eight, or ten sides
each, according to the girl’s dexterity. The average for good
spinners was about eight sides (896 spindles)” (p. 10).
In a New Bedford fine-spinning mill the ring-spinners were minding
1,200 spindles each (p. 16).
It is also important to note the speed at which the cotton industry
has been developing lately in the States. The census of 1900 gave a
total of 19,008,350 spindles. But in 1909 we find already 28,178,860
spindles for cotton alone (34,500,000, including silk, wool, and
worsted). And, what is still more important, most of this increase
fell upon the Southern States, where machinery is also more perfect,
both for spinning and weaving, and where most of the work is being
done by the whites. In a South Carolina print-cloth mill, containing
1,000 Draper looms, the average for narrow looms was 15½ looms to
each weaver. (T. W. Uttley, _l.c._, pp. 4, 50, etc.)
As for the American competition in the Chinese markets, Mr. Helm
gives imposing figures.
J.--MR. GIFFEN’S AND MR. FLUX’S FIGURES CONCERNING THE POSITION OF
THE UNITED KINGDOM IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE.
A few remarks concerning these figures may be of some avail.
When a sudden fall in the British and Irish exports took place in the
years 1882-1886, and the alarmists took advantage of the bad times to
raise the never-forgotten war-cry of protection, especially insisting
on the damages made to British trade by “German competition,” Mr.
Giffen analysed the figures of international trade in his “Finance
Essays,” and in a report read in 1888 before the Board of Trade
Commission. Subsequently, Mr. A. W. Flux analysed again the same
figures, extending them to a later period. He confirmed Mr. Giffen’s
conclusions and endeavoured to prove that the famous “German
competition” is a fallacy.
Mr. Giffen’s conclusions, quoted by Mr. A. W. Flux (“The Commercial
Supremacy of Great Britain,” in _Economical Journal_, 1894, iv., p.
457), were as follows:--
“On the whole, the figures are not such as to indicate any great and
overwhelming advance in German exports, in comparison with those of
the United Kingdom. There is greater progress in certain directions,
but, taken altogether, no great disproportionate advance, and in many
important markets for the United Kingdom Germany hardly appears at
all.”
In this subdued form, _with regard to German competition alone_--and
due allowance being made for figures in which no consideration is
given to what sort of goods make a given value of exports, and in
what quantities--Mr. Giffen’s statement could be accepted. But that
was all.
If we take, however, Mr. Giffen’s figures as they are reproduced in
extended tables (on pp. 461-467 of the just quoted paper), tabulated
with great pains in order to show that Germany’s part in the imports
to several European countries, such as Russia, Italy, Servia, etc.,
had declined, as well as the part of the United Kingdom, all we could
conclude from these figures was, that there were other countries
besides Germany--namely, the United States and Belgium--which
competed very effectively with England, France, and Germany for
supplying what manufactured goods were taken by Russia, Italy,
Servia, etc., from abroad.
At the same time such figures gave no idea of the fact that where
manufactured metal goods were formerly supplied, coal and raw metals
were imported for the home manufacture of those same goods; or, where
dyed and printed cottons were imported, only yarn was required. The
whole subject is infinitely more complicated than it appeared in Mr.
Giffen’s calculations; and, valuable as his figures may have been for
appeasing exaggerated fears, they contained no answer whatever to the
many economic questions involved in the matters treated by Mr. Giffen.
The conclusions which I came to in these lines in the first edition
of this book found further confirmation in the subsequent economical
development of all nations in that same direction. The result is,
that--apart from the extraordinary exports of the years 1910 and 1911
(which I venture to explain by the general prevision of a great
European war going to break out)--the exports from this country,
apart from their usual periodical fluctuations, continued to remain
what they were, in proportion to the increasing population, and many
of them became less profitable; while the exports from all other
countries increased in a much greater proportion.
K.--MARKET-GARDENING IN BELGIUM.
In 1885 the superficies given to market gardening in Belgium was
99,600 acres. In 1894 a Belgian professor of agriculture, who has
kindly supplied me with notes on this subject, wrote:--
“The area has considerably increased, and I believe it can be taken
at 112,000 acres (45,000 hectares), if not more.” And further on:
“Rents in the neighbourhood of the big towns, Antwerp, Liège, Ghent,
and Brussels, attain as much as £5, 16s. and £8 per acre; the cost of
instalment is from £13 to £25 per acre; the yearly cost of manure,
which is the chief expense, attains from £8 to £16 per acre the
first year, and then from £5 to £8 every year.” The gardens are of
the average size of two and a half acres, and in each garden from
200 to 400 frames are used. About the Belgian market-gardeners the
same remark must be made as has been made concerning the French
_maraîchers_. They work awfully hard, having to pay extravagant
rents, and to lay money aside, with the hope of some day being able
to buy a piece of land, and to get rid of the blood-sucker who
absorbs so much of their money returns; having moreover every year
to buy more and more frames in order to obtain their produce earlier
and earlier, so as to fetch higher prices for it, they work like
slaves. But it must be remembered that in order to obtain the same
amount of produce under glass, in greenhouses, the work of _three men
only_, working fifty-five hours a week, is required in Jersey for
cultivating one acre of land under glass.
But I must refer my readers to the excellent work of my friend, B.
Seebohm Rowntree’s _Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium_, London
(Macmillan), 1910, a strong volume of more than 600 pages, which
is the result of several years of laborious studies. It is full
of figures and personal observations, and will be consulted with
advantage for all the questions dealing with the economical life of
Belgium.
L.--THE CHANNEL ISLANDS--THE SCILLY ISLANDS.
The excellent state of agriculture in Jersey and Guernsey has
often been mentioned in the agricultural and general literature of
this country, so I need only refer to the works of Mr. W. E. Bear
(_Journal of the Agricultural Society_, 1888; _Quarterly Review_,
1888; _British Farmer_, etc.) and to the exhaustive work of D. H.
Ansted and R. G. Latham, _The Channel Islands_, third edition,
revised by E. Toulmin Nicolle, London (Allen), 1893.
Many English writers--certainly not those just named--are inclined
to explain the successes obtained in Jersey by the wonderful climate
of the islands and the fertility of the soil. As to climate, it
is certainly true that the yearly record of sunshine in Jersey is
greater than in any English station. It reaches from 1,842 hours a
year (1890) to 2,300 (1893), and thus exceeds the highest aggregate
sunshine recorded in any English station by from 168 to 336 hours
(exclusively high maximum in 1894) a year; May and August seeming
to be the best favoured months.[201] But, to quote from the just
mentioned work of Ansted and Latham:--
“There is, doubtless, in all the islands, and especially in Guernsey,
_an absence of sun heat_ and of the direct action of the sun’s rays
_in summer_, which must have its effect, and _a remarkable prevalence
of cold, dry, east wind in late spring, retarding vegetation_” (p.
407). Everyone who has spent, be it only two or three weeks in late
spring in Jersey, must know by experience how true this remark is.
Moreover, there are the well-known Guernsey fogs, and “owing also to
rain and damp the trees suffer from mildew and blight, as well as
from various aphides.” The same authors remark that the nectarine
does not succeed in Jersey in the open air “owing to the absence of
autumn heat”; that “the wet autumns and cold summers do not agree
with the apricot;” and so on.
If Jersey potatoes are, on the average, three weeks in advance
of those grown in Cornwall, the fact is fully explained by the
continual improvements made in Jersey in view of obtaining, be
it ever so small, quantities of potatoes a few days in advance,
either by special care taken to plant them out as soon as possible,
protecting them from the cold winds, or by choosing tiny pieces of
land naturally protected or better exposed. The difference in price
between the earliest and the later potatoes being immense, the
greatest efforts are made to obtain an early crop.
The decline of prices per ton is best seen from the following prices
in 1910:--
Quantities Prices.
Week ending exported.
Tons. £ _s._ _d._
April 2-30 210 30 11 0
May 7 600 18 12 8
” 14 1,250 15 12 0
” 21 2,000 13 0 0
” 28 5,500 10 3 8
June 4 7,825 8 13 4
” 11 9,200 6 5 8
” 18 13,000 4 17 6
” 25 9,650 4 8 10
July 2 6,600 3 13 8
” 9 1,900 2 18 6
” 16 145 3 9 4
” 23 10 3 18 0
------ --------------
Total 57,890 £381,373
The quantities of early potatoes exported varied during the years
1901 to 1910 from 47,530 tons to 77,800 tons, and their value from
£233,289 to £475,889.
As to the fertility of the soil, it is still worse advocacy, because
there is no area in the United Kingdom of equal size which would
be manured to such an extent as the area of Jersey and Guernsey is
by means of artificial manure. In the seventeenth century, as may
be seen from the first edition of Falle’s _Jersey_, published in
1694, the island “did not produce that quantity as is necessary for
the use of the inhabitants, who must be supplied from England in
time of peace, or from Dantzic in Poland.” In _The Groans of the
Inhabitants of Jersey_, published in London in 1709, we find the same
complaint. And Quayle, who wrote in 1812 and quoted the two works
just mentioned, in his turn complained in these terms: “The quantity
at this day raised is quite inadequate to their sustenance, apart
from the garrison.” (_General View of the Agriculture and the Present
State of the Islands on the Coast of Normandy_, London, 1815, p.
77.) And he added: “After making all allowance, the truth must be
told; the grain crops are here foul, in some instances execrably so.”
And when we consult the modern writers, Ansted, Latham, and Nicolle,
we learn that the soil is by no means rich. It is decomposed granite,
and easily cultivable, but “it contains no organic matter besides
what man has put into it.”
This is certainly the opinion anyone will come to if he only visits
thoroughly the island and looks attentively to its soil--to say
nothing of the Quenvais where, in Quayle’s time, there was “an
Arabian desert” of sands and hillocks covering about seventy acres
(p. 24), with a little better but still very poor soil in the north
and west of it. The fertility of the soil has entirely been made,
first, by the _vraic_ (sea-weeds), upon which the inhabitants have
maintained communal rights; later on, by considerable shipments of
manure, in addition to the manure of the very considerable living
stock which is kept in the island; and finally, by an admirably good
cultivation of the soil.
Much more than sunshine and good soil, it was the conditions of
land-tenure and the low taxation which contributed to the remarkable
development of agriculture in Jersey. First of all, the people of the
Isles know but little of the tax-collector. While the English pay, in
taxes, an average of 50s. per head of population; while the French
peasant is over-burdened with taxes of all imaginable descriptions;
and the Milanese peasant has to give to the Treasury full 30 per
cent. of his income--all taxes paid in the Channel Islands amount to
but 10s. per head in the town parishes and to much less than that
in the country parishes. Besides, of indirect taxes, none are known
but the 2s. 6d. paid for each gallon of imported spirits and 9d. per
gallon of imported wine.
As to the conditions of land-tenure, the inhabitants have happily
escaped the action of Roman Law, and they continue to live under the
_coutumier de Normandie_ (the old Norman common law). Accordingly,
more than one-half of the territory is owned by those who themselves
till the soil; there is no landlord to watch the crops and to raise
the rent before the farmer has ripened the fruit of his improvements;
there is nobody to charge so much for each cart-load of sea-weeds
or sand taken to the fields; everyone takes the amount he likes,
provided he cuts the weeds at a certain season of the year, and
digs out the sand at a distance of sixty yards from the high-water
mark. Those who buy land for cultivation can do so without becoming
enslaved to the money-lender. One-fourth part only of the permanent
rent which the purchaser undertakes to pay is capitalised and has
to be paid down on purchase (often less than that), the remainder
being a perpetual rent in wheat which is valued in Jersey at fifty
to fifty-four _sous de France_ per cabot. To seize property for debt
is accompanied with such difficulties that it is seldom resorted
to (Quayle’s _General View_, pp. 41-46). Conveyances of land are
simply acknowledged by both parties on oath, and cost nearly nothing.
And the laws of inheritance are such as to preserve the homestead,
notwithstanding the debts that the father may have run into (_ibid._,
pp. 35-41).
After having shown how small are the farms in the islands (from
twenty to five acres, and very many less than that)--there being
“less than 100 farms in either island that exceed twenty-five
acres; and of these only about half a dozen in Jersey exceed fifty
acres”--Messrs. Ansted, Latham, and Nicolle remark:--
“In no place do we find so happy and so contented a country as in the
Channel Islands....” “The system of land-tenure has also contributed
in no small degree to their prosperity....” “The purchaser becomes
the absolute owner of the property, and his position cannot be
touched so long as the interest of these [wheat] rents be paid.
He cannot be compelled, as in the case of mortgage, to refund the
principal. _The advantages of such a system are too patent to need
any further allusion._” (_The Channel Islands_, third edition,
revised by E. Toulmin Nicolle, p. 401; see also p. 443.)
The following will better show how the cultivable area is utilised in
Jersey (_The Evening Post Royal Almanack_):--
1894. 1911.
Acres. Acres.
{ Wheat 1,709 656
Corn crops { Barley and bere 113 125
{ Oats and rye 499 1,213
{ Beans and peas 16 34
Green crops { Potatoes 7,007 8,911
{ Turnips and swedes 111 61
{ Mangolds 232 137
{ Other green crops 447 176
Clover, sainfoin and } For hay 2,842 2,720
grasses under rotation } Not for hay 2,208 1,731
Permanent pasture { For hay 1,117 944
or grass { Not for hay 3,057 2,522
Bare fallow -- 53
Fruit { Small fruit -- 99
{ Orchards and small
{ fruit -- 1,151
Other crops -- 240
----- ------
21,252 20,733
_Living Stock._
1894. 1911.
Horses used solely for agriculture 2,252 2,188
Unbroken horses 83 69
Mares solely for breeding 16 --
----- -----
Horses 2,351 2,257
Cows and heifers in milk or in calf 6,709 6,710
Other cattle:--
Two years or more 864 }
One year to two years 2,252 } 5,321
Less than one year 2,549 }
------ ------
Total cattle 12,374 12,031
Sheep, all ages 332 186
Pigs, including sows for breeding 6,021 4,639
_Exports._
1887. 1888. 1889.
Bulls 102 100 92
Cows and heifers 1,395 1,639 1,629
Potatoes exported:--
Average. Tons. £
1887-1890 54,502 308,713
1891-1894 62,885 413,609
1901-1905 66,731 455,773
1906 51,932 308,229
1907 77,800 377,259
1908 53,100 356,305
1909 62,690 332,404
1910 57,890 381,373
The export value _per acre_ varied in different years from £27, 6s.
in 1893 to £66, 1s. in 1894, and even £95, 18s. in 1904.
As regards greenhouse culture, a friend of mine, who has worked as a
gardener in Jersey, has collected for me various information relative
to the productivity of culture under glass. Out of it the following
may be taken as a perfectly reliable illustration, in addition to
those given in the text:--
Mr. B.’s greenhouse has a length of 300 feet and a width of 18 feet,
which makes 5,400 square feet, out of which 900 square feet are under
the passage in the middle. The cultivable area is thus 4,500 square
feet. There are no brick walls, but brick pillars and boards are used
for front walls. Hot-water heating is provided, but is only used
occasionally, to keep off the frosts in winter--the crops being early
potatoes (which require no heating), followed by tomatoes. The latter
are Mr. B.’s speciality. Catch crops of radishes, etc., are taken.
The cost of the greenhouse, without the heating apparatus, is 10s.
per running foot of greenhouse, which makes £150 for one-eighth of an
acre under glass, or a little less than 7d. per glass-roofed square
foot.
The crops are: potatoes, four cabots per perch--that is,
three-quarters of a ton of early potatoes from the greenhouse; and
tomatoes, in the culture of which Mr. B. attains extraordinary
results. He puts in only 1,000 plants, thus giving to his plants more
room than is usually given; and he cultivates a corrugated variety
which gives very heavy crops but does not fetch the same prices as
the smooth varieties. In 1896 his crop was four tons of tomatoes, and
so it would have been in 1897--each plant giving an average of twenty
pounds of fruit, while the usual crop is from eight to twelve pounds
per plant.
The total crop was thus four and three-quarter tons of vegetables,
to which the catch crops must be added--thus corresponding to 85,000
lb. per acre (over 90,000 lb. with the catch crops). I again omit the
money returns, and only mention that the expenditure for fuel and
manure was about £10 a year, and that the Jersey average is three
men, each working fifty-five hours a week (ten hours a day), for
every acre under glass.
_The Scilly Islands._--These islands also give a beautiful
illustration of what may be obtained from the soil by an intensive
cultivation. When shipping and supplying pilots became a decaying
source of income, the Scillonians took to the growing of potatoes.
For many years, we are told by Mr. J. G. Uren (_Scilly and the
Scillonians_, Plymouth, 1907), this was a very profitable industry.
The crop was ready at least a month in advance of any other source
of supply on the mainland. Every year about 1,000 tons of potatoes
were exported. “In its palmy days the potato harvest in Scilly was
the great event of the year. Gangs of diggers were brought across
from the mainland,” and the prices went occasionally up to £28 a ton
for the earliest potatoes. Gradually, however, the export of potatoes
was reduced to less than one-half of what it was formerly. Then
the inhabitants of the islands went for fishing, and later on they
began to grow flowers. Frost and snow being practically unknown in
the islands, this new industry succeeded very well. The arable area
of the islands is about 4,000 acres, which are divided into small
farms, less than from fifteen to twenty acres, and these farms are
transmitted, according to the local custom, from father to son.
It is not long ago that they began to grow wild narcissuses, to
which they soon added daffodils (a hundred varieties), and lilies,
especially arum-lilies, for Church decoration. All these are grown
in narrow strips, sheltered from the winds by dwarf hedges. Movable
glass-houses are resorted to shelter the flowers for a certain time,
and in this way the gardeners have a succession of crops, beginning
soon after Christmas, and lasting until April or May.
The flowers are shipped to Penzance, and thence carried by rail in
special carriages. At the top of the season thirty to forty tons are
shipped in a single day. The total exports, which were only 100 tons
in 1887, have now reached 1,000 in 1907.
M.--IRRIGATED MEADOWS IN ITALY.
In the _Journal de l’Agriculture_ (2nd Feb., 1889) the following was
said about the _marcites_ of Milan:--
“On part of these meadows water runs constantly, on others it is
left running for ten hours every week. The former give six crops
every year; since February, eighty to 100 tons of grass, equivalent
to twenty and twenty-five tons of dry hay, being obtained from the
hectare (eight to ten tons per acre). Lower down, thirteen tons of
dry hay per acre is the regular crop. Taking eighty acres placed in
average conditions, they will yield fifty-six tons of green grass
per hectare--that is, fourteen tons of dry hay, or the food of three
milch cows to the hectare (two and a half acres). The rent of such
meadows is from £8 to £9, 12s. per acre.”
For Indian corn, the advantages of irrigation are equally apparent.
On irrigated lands, crops of from seventy-eight to eighty-nine
bushels per acre are obtained, as against from fifty-six to
sixty-seven bushels on unirrigated lands, also in Italy, and
twenty-eight to thirty-three bushels in France (Garola, _Les
Céréales_).
N.--PLANTED WHEAT.
_The Rothamsted Challenge._
Sir A. Cotton delivered, in 1893, before the Balloon Society, a
lecture on agriculture, in which lecture he warmly advocated deep
cultivation and planting the seeds of wheat wide apart. He published
it later on as a pamphlet (_Lecture on Agriculture_, 2nd edition,
with Appendix. Dorking, 1893). He obtained, for the best of his
sort of wheat, an average of “fifty-five ears per plant, with three
oz. of grain of fair quality--perhaps sixty-three lbs. per bushel”
(p. 10). This corresponded to ninety bushels per acre--that is,
his result was very similar to those obtained at the Tomblaine and
Capelle agricultural stations by Grandeau and F. Dessprèz, whose work
seems not to have been known to Sir A. Cotton. True, Sir A. Cotton’s
experiments were not conducted, or rather were not reported, in a
thoroughly scientific way. But the more desirable it would have been,
either to contradict or to confirm his statements by experiments
carefully conducted at some experimental agricultural station.
Unfortunately, so far as I know, no such experiments have yet been
made, and the possibility of profitably increasing the wheat crop
by the means indicated by Sir A. Cotton has still to be tested in a
scientific spirit.
O.--REPLANTED WHEAT.
A few words on this method which now claims the attention of the
experimental stations may perhaps not be useless.
In Japan, rice is always treated in this way. It is treated as our
gardeners treat lettuce and cabbage--that is, it is let first to
germinate; then it is sown in special warm corners, well inundated
with water and protected from the birds by strings drawn over the
ground. Thirty-five to fifty-five days later, the young plants, now
fully developed and possessed of a thick network of rootlets, are
_replanted_ in the open ground. In this way the Japanese obtain from
twenty to thirty-two bushels of _dressed_ rice to the acre in the
poor provinces, forty bushels in the better ones, and from sixty
to sixty-seven bushels on the best lands. The average, in six rice
growing states of North America, is at the same time only nine and a
half bushels.[202]
In China, replanting is also in general use, and consequently the
idea has been circulated in France by M. Eugène Simon and the late
M. Toubeau, that replanted wheat could be made a powerful means of
increasing the crops in Western Europe.[203] So far as I know, the
idea has not yet been submitted to a practical test; but when one
thinks of the remarkable results obtained by Hallet’s method of
planting; of what the market-gardeners obtain by replanting once
and even twice; and of how rapidly the work of planting is done by
market-gardeners in Jersey, one must agree that in replanted wheat
we have a new opening worthy of the most careful consideration.
Experiments have not yet been made in this direction; but Prof.
Grandeau, whose opinion I have asked on this subject, wrote to me
that he believes the method must have a great future. Practical
market-gardeners (Paris _maraîcher_) whose opinion I have asked, see,
of course, nothing extravagant in that idea.
With plants yielding 1,000 grains each--and in the Capelle experiment
they yielded an average of 600 grains--the yearly wheat-food of one
individual man (5·65 bushels, or 265 lbs.), which is represented by
from 5,000,000 to 5,500,000 grains, could be grown on a space of
250 square yards; while for an experienced hand replanting would
represent no more than ten to twelve hours’ work. With a proper
machine-tool, the work could probably be very much reduced. In Japan,
two men and two women plant with rice three-quarters of an acre in
one day (Ronna, _Les Irrigations_, vol. iii., 1890, p. 67 seq.). That
means (Fesca, _Japanesische Landwirthschaft_, p. 33) from 33,000 to
66,000 plants, or, let us say, a minimum of 8,250 plants a day for
one person. The Jersey gardeners plant from 600 (inexperienced) to
1,000 plants per hour (experienced).
P.--IMPORTS OF VEGETABLES TO THE UNITED KINGDOM.
That the land in this country is not sufficiently utilised for
market-gardening, and that the largest portion of the vegetables
which are imported from abroad could be grown in this country, has
been said over and over again within the last twenty-five years.
It is certain that considerable improvements have taken place
lately--the area under market-gardens, and especially the area
under glass for the growth of fruit and vegetables, having largely
been increased of late. Thus, instead of 38,957 acres, which were
given to market-gardening in Great Britain in 1875, there were, in
1894, 88,210 acres, exclusive of vegetable crops on farms, given
to that purpose (_The Gardener’s Chronicle_, 20th April, 1895, p.
483). But that increase remains a trifle in comparison with similar
increases in France, Belgium, and the United States. In France, the
area given to market-gardening was estimated in 1892 by M. Baltet
(_L’horticulture dans les cinq parties du monde_, Paris, Hachette,
1895) at 1,075,000 acres--four times more, in proportion to the
cultivable area, than in this country; and the most remarkable of it
is that considerable tracts of land formerly treated as uncultivable
have been reclaimed for the purposes of market-gardening as also of
fruit growing.
As things stand now in this country, we see that very large
quantities of the commonest vegetables, each of which could be grown
in this country, are imported.
Lettuces are imported--not only from the Azores or from the south
of France, but they continue until June to be imported from France,
where they are mostly grown--not in the open air, but in frames.
Early cucumbers, also grown in frames, are largely imported from
Holland, and are sold so cheaply that many English gardeners have
ceased to grow them.[204] Even beetroot and pickling cabbage are
imported from Holland and Brittany (the neighbourhoods of Saint Malo,
where I saw them grown in a sandy soil, which would grow nothing
without a heavy manuring with guano, as a second crop, after a first
one of potatoes); and while onions were formerly largely grown in
this country, we see that, in 1894, 5,288,512 bushels of onions,
£765,049 worth, were imported from Belgium (chief exporter), Germany,
Holland, France, and so on.
Again, that early potatoes should be imported from the Azores and
the south of France is quite natural. It is not so natural, however,
that more than 50,000 tons of potatoes (58,060 tons, £521,141 worth,
on the average during the years 1891-1894) should be imported from
the Channel Islands, because there are hundreds if not thousands
of acres in South Devon, and most probably in other parts of the
south coast too, where early potatoes could be grown equally well.
But besides the 90,000 tons of early potatoes (over £700,000 worth)
which are imported to this country, enormous quantities of late
potatoes are imported from Holland, Germany, and Belgium; so that the
total imports of potatoes reach from 200,000 to 450,000 tons every
year. Moreover, this country imports every year all sorts of green
vegetables, for the sum of at least £4,000,000, and for £5,000,000
all sorts of fruit (apart from exotic fruit); while thousands of
acres lie idle, and the country population is driven to the cities in
search of work, without finding it.
Q.--FRUIT-CULTURE IN BELGIUM.
It appears from the _Annuaire statistique de la belgique_ that, out
of a cultivated area of 6,443,500 acres, the following areas were
given in Belgium, at the time of the last census, to fruit-growing,
market-gardening, and culture under glass: Orchards, 117,600 acres;
market-gardens, 103,460 acres; vineries, 173 acres (increased since);
growing of trees for afforestation, gardens, and orchards, 7,475
acres; potatoes, 456,000 acres. Consequently, Belgium is able to
export every year about £250,000 worth more vegetables, and nearly
£500,000 worth more fruit, than she imports. As to the vineries, the
land of the communes of Hoeylart and Overyssche near Brussels is
almost entirely covered with glass, and the exports of home-grown
grapes attained, in 1910, 6,800 tons, in addition to 34,000 tons of
other home-grown fruit. Besides, nearly 3,000 acres in the environs
of Ghent are covered with horticultural establishments which export
palms, azaleas, rhododendrons, and laurels all over the world,
including Italy and the Argentine.
R.--CULTURE UNDER GLASS IN HOLLAND.
Holland in its turn has introduced gardening in hothouses on a great
scale. Here is a letter which I received in the summer of 1909 from a
friend:--
“Here is a picture-postcard which J. (a professor of botany in
Belgium) has brought from Holland, and which he asks me to send you.
[The postcard represents an immense space covered with frames and
glass lights.] Similar establishments cover many square kilomètres
between Rotterdam and the sea, in the north of Heuve. At the time
when J. was there (June 10) they had cucumbers, quite ripe, and
melons as big as a head in considerable numbers, exported abroad. The
cultures are made to a great extent without heating. The gardeners
sow also radishes, carrots, lettuce, under the same glass. The
different produce comes one after the other. They also cultivate
large quantities of strawberries in frames.
“The glass-frames are transported at will, so as to keep under glass
for several days or weeks the plants sown in any part of the garden.
J. is full of admiration for the knowledge of the gardeners. Instead
of the usual routine, they apply the last progress of science. He was
told that glass is broken very seldom; they have acquired the art of
handling glass-frames with facility and great skill.
“Besides the frames represented on the photograph, the region between
Rotterdam and the sea, which is named Westland, has also countless
glass-houses, where they cultivate, with or without heating, grapes,
peaches, northern cherries, haricot beans, tomatoes, and other fruit
and vegetables. These cultures have reached a very high degree of
perfection. The gardeners take the greatest care to fight various
plant diseases. They also cultivate ordinary fruit--apples, pears,
gooseberries, strawberries, and so on--and vegetables in the open
air. Westland being very much exposed to strong winds, they have
built numerous walls, which break the wind, and serve at the same
time for the culture of fruit upon the walls.
“All the region feels the favourable influence of the agricultural
school of Naaldwijk, which is situated almost in the centre of the
Westland.”
S.--PRICES OBTAINED IN LONDON FOR DESSERT GRAPES CULTIVATED UNDER
GLASS.
_The Fruit and Market-Gardener_ gives every week the prices realised
by horticultural and intensive gardening produce, as well as by
flowers, at the great market of Covent Garden. The prices obtained
for dessert grapes--Colmar and Hamburg--are very instructive. I took
two years--1907-1908--which differ from ordinary years by the winters
having been foggy, which made the garden produce to be somewhat late.
In the first days of January the Colmar grapes arriving from the
Belgian hothouses were still sold at relatively low prices--from
6d. to 10d. the pound. But the prices slowly rose in January and
February; the Hamburg grapes were late that year, and therefore in
the middle of March and later on in April the Colmars fetched from
1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d.
The English grapes, coming from Worthing and so on, are certainly
preferred to those that come from Belgium or the Channel Islands. By
the end of April, 1907, and at the beginning of May, they were even
sold at 2s. and 4s. the pound. The best and largest grapes for the
dinners are evidently fetching fancy prices.
But at last the Hamburg grapes, which were late in 1907 and 1908,
began to arrive from Belgium, the Channel Islands, and England, and
the prices suddenly fell. By the end of May the Belgian Hamburgs
fetched only from 10d. to 1s. 4d. the pound, and the prices were
still falling. In June and July the gardeners could only get from 5d.
to 7d., and during the months of September, October, and November,
1908, the best Guernsey grapes were quoted at 6d. the pound. Very
beautiful ones fetched only 4d. the pound.
It was only in the first days of November that the prices went up to
10d. and 1s. 1d. But already, in the second half of December, the new
crop of Colmars began to pour in from Belgium, and the prices fell to
9d., and even to 6d. per pound about Christmas.
We thus see that, notwithstanding a great demand for the best
hothouse grapes, with big grains and quite fresh cut, these grapes
are sold in the autumn almost at the same prices as grapes grown
under the beautiful sun of the south.
As to the quantities of grapes imported to this country, the figures
are also most instructive. The average for the three years 1905-1907
was 81,700,000 lbs., representing a value of £2,224,500.
T.--THE USE OF ELECTRICITY IN AGRICULTURE.
In the first editions of this book I did not venture to speak about
the improvements that could be obtained in agriculture with the aid
of electricity, or by watering the soil with cultures of certain
useful microbes. I preferred to mention only well-established facts
of intensive culture; but now it would be impossible not to mention
what has been done in these two directions.
More than thirty years ago I mentioned in _Nature_ the increase of
the crops obtained by a Russian landlord who used to place at a
certain height above his experimental field telegraph wires, through
which an electric current was passed. A few years ago, in 1908, Sir
Oliver Lodge gave in the _Daily Chronicle_ of July 15 the results of
similar experiments made in a farm near Evesham by Messrs. Newman and
Bomford, with the aid of Sir Oliver Lodge’s son, Mr. Lionel Lodge.
A series of thin wires was placed above an experimental field at
distances of ten yards from each other. These wires were attached
to telegraph poles, high enough not to stand in the way of the
carts loaded with corn. Another field was cultivated by the side of
the former, in order to ascertain what would be the crops obtained
without the aid of electricity.
The poles, five yards high, were placed far away from each other, so
that the wires were quite loose. Owing to the high tension of the
currents that had to be passed through the wires, the insulators on
the poles were very powerful. The currents were positive and of a
high potential--about 100,000 volts. The escape of electricity under
these conditions was so great that it could be seen in the dark. One
could also feel it on the hair and the face while passing under the
wires.
Nevertheless, the expenditure of electric force was small, Sir Oliver
Lodge writes; because, if the potential was high, the quantity
of consumed energy was, notwithstanding that, very small. It is
known, indeed, that this is also the case with the discharges of
atmospheric electricity, which are terrible in consequence of their
high tension, but do not represent a great loss of energy. An oil
motor of two horse-power was therefore quite sufficient.
The results were very satisfactory. The wheat crop in the electrified
field was, in the years 1906-1907, by 29 to 40 per cent. greater, and
also of better quality, than in the non-electrified field. The straw
was also from four to eight inches longer.
For strawberries the increase of the crop was 35 per cent., and 25
per cent. for beetroot.
As to the inoculation of useful microbes by means of watering the
soil with cultures of nitrifying bacteria, experiments on a great
scale have been made in Prussia upon some peat-bogs. The German
agricultural papers speak of these experiments as having given most
satisfactory results.
Most interesting results have also been obtained in Germany by
heating the soil with a mixture of air and hot steam passed along the
ordinary draining tubes. A society has been formed to propagate this
system, and the photographs of the results published by the Society
in a pamphlet, _Gartenkultur, Bodenheizung, Klimaverbesserung_
(Berlin, 1906), seem to prove that with a soil thus heated the growth
of certain vegetables is accelerated to some extent.
U.--PETTY TRADES IN THE LYONS REGION.
The neighbourhoods of St. Etienne are a great centre for all sorts of
industries, and among them the petty trades occupy still an important
place. Ironworks and coal-mines with their smoking chimneys, noisy
factories, roads blackened with coal, and a poor vegetation give
the country the well-known aspects of a “Black Country.” In certain
towns, such as St. Chamond, one finds numbers of big factories
in which thousands of women are employed in the fabrication of
_passementerie_. But side by side with the great industry the petty
trades also maintain a high development. Thus we have first the
fabrication of silk ribbons, in which no less than 50,000 men and
women were employed in the year 1885. Only 3,000 or 4,000 looms were
located then in the factories; while the remainder--that is, from
1,200 to 1,400 looms--belonged to the workers themselves, both at St.
Etienne and in the surrounding country.[205] As a rule the women and
the girls spin the silk or make the winding off, while the father
with his sons weave the ribbons. I saw these small workshops in the
suburbs of St. Etienne, where complicated ribbons (with interwoven
addresses of the manufacture), as well as ribbons of high artistic
finish, were woven in three to four looms, while in the next room the
wife prepared the dinner and attended to household work.
There was a time when the wages were high in the ribbon trade
(reaching over ten francs a day), and M. Euvert wrote me that
half of the suburban houses of St. Etienne had been built by the
_passementiers_ themselves. But the affairs took a very gloomy aspect
when a crisis broke out in 1884. No orders were forthcoming, and the
ribbon weavers had to live on casual earnings. All their economies
were soon spent. “How many,” M. Euvert wrote, “have been compelled
to sell for a few hundred francs the loom for which they had paid
as many thousand francs.” What an effect this crisis has had on the
trade I could not say, as I have no recent information about this
region. Very probably a great number of the ribbon weavers have
emigrated to St. Etienne, where artistic weaving is continued, while
the cheapest sorts of ribbon must be made in factories.
The manufacture of arms occupies from 5,000 to 6,000 workers, half
of whom are in St. Etienne, and the remainder in the neighbouring
county. All work is done in small workshops, save in the great arm
factory of the State, which sometimes will employ from 10,000 to
15,000 persons, and sometimes only a couple of thousand men.
Another important trade in the same region is the manufacture of
hardware, which is all made in small workshops, in the neighbourhoods
of St. Etienne, Le Chambon, Firminy, Rive de Giers, and St. Bonnet le
Château. The work is pretty regular, but the earnings are low as a
rule. And yet the peasants continue to keep to those trades, as they
cannot go on without some industrial occupation during part of the
year.
The yearly production of silk stuffs in France attained no less
than 7,558,000 kilogrammes in 1881;[206] and most of the 5,000,000
to 6,000,000 kilogrammes of raw silk which were manufactured in
the Lyons region were manufactured by hand.[207] Twenty years
before--that is, about 1865--there were only from 6,000 to 8,000
power-looms, and when we take into account both the prosperous
period of the Lyons silk industry about 1876, and the crisis which
it underwent in 1880-1886, we cannot but wonder about the slowness
of the transformation of the industry. Such is also the opinion of
the President of the Lyons Chamber of Commerce, who wrote me that the
domain of the power-loom is increased every year, “by including new
kinds of stuffs, which formerly were reputed as unfeasible in the
power-looms; but,” he added, “the transformation of small workshops
into factories still goes on so slowly that the total number of
power-looms reaches only from 20,000 to 25,000 out of an aggregate
of from 100,000 to 110,000.” (Since that time it certainly must have
considerably increased.)
The leading features of the Lyons silk industry are the following:--
The preparatory work--winding off, warping and so on--is mostly made
in small workshops, chiefly at Lyons, with only a few workshops of
the kind in the villages. Dyeing and finishing are also made--of
course, in great factories--and it is especially in dyeing, which
occupies 4,000 to 5,000 hands, that the Lyons manufacturers have
attained their highest repute. Not only silks are dyed there, but
also cottons and wools, and not only for France, but also to some
extent for London, Manchester, Vienna, and even Moscow. It is also
in this branch that the best machines have to be mentioned.[208]
As to the weaving, it is made, as we just saw, on from 20,000 to
25,000 power-looms and from 75,000 to 90,000 hand-looms, which partly
are at Lyons (from 15,000 to 18,000 hand-looms in 1885) and chiefly
in the villages. The workshops, where one might formerly find several
_compagnons_ employed by one master, have a tendency to disappear,
the workshops mostly having now but from two to three hand-looms, on
which the father, the mother, and the children are working together.
In each house, in each storey of the Croix Rousse, you find until now
such small workshops. The _fabricant_ gives the general indications
as to the kind of stuff he desires to be woven, and his draughtsmen
design the pattern, but it is the workman himself who must find
the way to weave in threads of all colours the patterns sketched
on paper. He thus continually creates something new; and many
improvements and discoveries have been made by workers whose very
names remain unknown.[209]
The Lyons weavers have retained until now the character of being
the _élite_ of their trade in higher artistic work in silk stuffs.
The finest, really artistic brocades, satins and velvets, are woven
in the smallest workshops, where one or two looms only are kept.
Unhappily the unsettled character of the demand for such a high style
of work is often a cause of misery amongst them. In former times,
when the orders for higher sorts of silks became scarce, the Lyons
weavers resorted to the manufacture of stuffs of lower qualities:
_foulards_, _crêpes_, _tulles_, of which Lyons had the monopoly in
Europe. But now the commoner kinds of goods are manufactured by
the million, on the one side by the factories of Lyons, Saxony,
Russia, and Great Britain, and on the other side by peasants in the
neighbouring departments of France, as well as in the Swiss villages
of the cantons of Basel and Zurich, and in the villages of the Rhine
provinces, Italy, and Russia.
The emigration of the French silk industry from the towns to the
villages began long ago--that is, about 1817--but it was especially
in the ’sixties that this movement took a great development. About
the year 1872 nearly 90,000 hand-looms were scattered, not only
in the Rhône department, but also in those of Ain, Isère, Loire,
Saône-et-Loire, and even those of Drôme, Ardèche, and Savoie.
Sometimes the looms were supplied by the merchants, but most of them
were bought by the weavers themselves, and it was especially women
and girls who worked on them at the hours free from agriculture. But
already since 1835 the emigration of the silk industry from the city
to the villages began in the shape of great factories erected in
the villages, and such factories continue to spread in the country,
making terrible havoc amidst the rural populations.
When a new factory is built in a village it attracts at once the
girls, and partly also the boys of the neighbouring peasantry. The
girls and boys are always happy to find an independent livelihood
which emancipates them from the control of the family. Consequently,
the wages of the factory girls are extremely low. At the same time
the distance from the village to the factory being mostly great, the
girls cannot return home every day, the less so as the hours of
labour are usually long. So they stay all the week at the factory,
in barracks, and they only return home on Saturday evening; while at
sunrise on Monday a waggon makes the tour of the villages, and brings
them back to the factory. Barrack life--not to mention its moral
consequences--soon renders the girls quite unable to work in the
fields. And, when they are grown up, they discover that they cannot
maintain themselves at the low wages offered by the factory; but they
can no more return to peasant life. It is easy to see what havoc the
factory is thus doing in the villages, and how unsettled is its very
existence, based upon the very low wages offered to country girls.
It destroys the peasant home, it renders the life of the town worker
still more precarious on account of the competition it makes to him;
and the trade itself is in a perpetual state of unsettledness.
Some information about the present state of the small industries in
this region will be found in the text; but, unfortunately, we have no
modern description of the industrial life of the Lyons region, which
we might compare with the above.
V.--SMALL INDUSTRIES AT PARIS.
It would be impossible to enumerate here all the varieties of
small industries which are carried on at Paris; nor would such an
enumeration be complete, because every year new industries are
brought into life. I therefore will mention only a few of the most
important industries.
A great number of them are connected, of course, with ladies’
dress. The _confections_--that is, the making of various parts of
ladies’ dress--occupy no less than 22,000 operatives at Paris, and
their production attains £3,000,000 every year, while gowns give
occupation to 15,000 women, whose annual production is valued at
£2,400,000. Linen, shoes, gloves, and so on, are as many important
branches of the petty trades and the Paris domestic industries, while
one-fourth part of the stays which are sewn in France (£500,000 out
of £2,000,000) are made in Paris.
Engraving, book-binding, and all kinds of fancy stationery, as well
as the manufacture of musical and mathematical instruments, are again
as many branches in which the Paris workmen excel. Basket-making is
another very important item, the finest sorts only being made in
Paris, while the plainest sorts are made in the centres mentioned in
the text (Haute Marne, Aisne, etc.). Brushes are also made in small
workshops, the trade being valued at £800,000 both at Paris and in
the neighbouring department of Oise.
For furniture, there are at Paris as many as 4,340 workshops, in
which three or four operatives per workshop are employed on the
average. In the watch trade we find 2,000 workshops with only
6,000 operatives, and their production, about £1,000,000, reaches
nevertheless nearly one-third part of the total watch production in
France. The _maroquinerie_ gives the very high figure of £500,000,
although it employs only 1,000 persons, scattered in 280 workshops,
this high figure itself testifying to the high artistic value of
the Paris leather fancy goods. The jewelry, both for articles of
luxury, and for all descriptions of cheap goods, is again one of
the specialities of the Paris petty trades; and another well-known
speciality is the fabrication of artificial flowers. Finally, we must
mention the carriage and saddlery trades, which are carried on in
the small towns round Paris; the making of fine straw hats; glass
cutting, and painting on glass and china; and numerous workshops for
fancy buttons, attire in mother-of-pearl, and small goods in horn and
bone.
W.--RESULTS OF THE CENSUS OF THE FRENCH INDUSTRIES IN 1896.
If we consult the results of the census of 1896, that were
published in 1901, in the fourth volume of _Résultats statistiques
du recensement des industries et des professions_, preceded by an
excellent summary written by M. Lucien March, we find that the
general impression about the importance of the small industries in
France conveyed in the text is fully confirmed by the numerical data
of the census.
It is only since 1896, M. March says in a paper read before the
Statistical Society of Paris, that a detailed classification of the
workshops and factories according to the number of their operatives
became possible;[210] and he gives us in this paper, in a series of
very elaborate tables, a most instructive picture of the present
state of industry in France.
For the industries proper--including the industries carried on by the
State and the Municipalities, but excluding the transport trades--the
results of the census can be summed up as follows:--
There is, first of all, an important division of “heads of
establishments (_patrons_) working alone, independent artisans,
and working-men without a permanent employment,” which contains
1,530,000 persons. It has a very mixed character, as we find
here, in agriculture, the small farmer, who works for himself; and
the labourer, who works by the day for occasional farmers; and
in industry the head of a small workshop, who works for himself
(_patron-ouvrier_); the working-man, who on the day of the census
had no regular employment; the dressmaker, who works sometimes in
her own room and sometimes in a shop; and so on. It is only in an
indirect way that M. March finds out that this division contains, in
its industrial part, nearly 483,000 artisans (_patrons-ouvriers_);
and independent working-men and women; and about 1,047,000 persons of
both sexes, temporarily attached to some industrial establishment.
There are, next, 37,705 industrial establishments, of which the heads
employ no hired workmen, but are aided by one or more members of
their own families.
We have thus, at least, 520,000 workshops belonging to the very small
industry.
Next to them come 575,530 workshops and factories, giving occupation
to more than 3,000,000 persons. They constitute the bulk of French
industry, and their subdivision into small, middle-sized, and great
industry is what interests us at this moment.
The most striking point is the immense number of establishments
having only from one to ten working-men each. No less than 539,449
such workshops and factories have been tabulated, which makes 94 per
cent. of all the industrial establishments in France; and we find in
them more than one-third of all workpeople of both sexes engaged in
industry--namely, 1,134,700 persons.
Next comes the class, still very numerous (28,626 establishments
and 585,000 operatives), where we find only from eleven to fifty
workmen per establishment. Nearly two-thirds of these small factories
(17,342 establishments, 240,000 workmen) are so small that they give
occupation to less than twenty persons each. They thus belong still
to the small industry.
After that comes a sudden fall in the figures. There are only 3,865
factories having from fifty-one to 100 employees. This class and the
preceding one contain among them 5½ per cent. of all the industrial
establishments, and 27½ per cent. of their employees.
The class of factories employing from 101 to 500 workmen contains
3,145 establishments (616,000 workmen and other employees). But
that of from 501 to 1,000 employees per factory has only 295
establishments, and a total of only 195,000 operatives. Taken
together, these two classes contain less than 1 per cent. of all the
establishments (six per 1,000), and 26 per cent. of all the workmen.
Finally, the number of factories and works having more than a
thousand workmen and employees each is very small. It is only 149.
Out of them, 108 have from 1,001 to 2,000 workmen, twenty-one have
from 2,001 to 5,000, and ten only have more than 5,000 workmen. These
149 very big factories and works give occupation to 313,000 persons
only, out of more than 3,000,000--that is, only 10 per cent. of all
the industrial workers.
It thus appears that more than 99 per cent. of all the industrial
establishments in France--that is, 571,940 out of 575,529--have less
than 100 workmen each. They give occupation to 2,000,000 persons, and
represent an army of 571,940 employers. More than that. The immense
majority of that number (568,075 employers) belong to the category
of those who employ less than fifty workmen each. And I do not yet
count in their number 520,000 employers and artisans who work for
themselves, or with the aid of a member of the family.
It is evident that in France, as everywhere, the petty trades
represent a very important factor of the industrial life. Economists
have been too hasty in celebrating their death. And this conclusion
becomes still more apparent when one analyses the different
industries separately, taking advantage of the tables given in
_Résultats Statistiques_. A very important fact appears from this
analysis--namely, that there are only three branches of industry
in which one can speak of a strong “concentration”--the mines,
metallurgy, and the State’s industries, to which one may add the
textiles and ironmongery, but always remembering that in these two
branches immense numbers of small factories continue to prosper by
the side of the great ones.
In all other branches the small trades are dominant, to such an
extent that more than _95 per cent. of the employers employ less
than fifty workmen each_. In the quarries, in all branches of the
alimentation, in the book trade, clothing, leather, wood, metallic
goods, and even the brick-works, china and glass works, we hardly
find one or two factories out of each hundred employing more than
fifty workmen.
The three industries that make an exception to this rule are, we
have said, metallurgy, the great works of the State, and the mines.
In metallurgy two-thirds of the works have more than fifty men each,
and it is here that we find some twenty great works employing each
of them more than one thousand men. The works of the State, which
include the great shipbuilding yards, are evidently in the same
case. They contain thirty-four establishments, having more than 500
men each, and fourteen employing more than 1,000. And finally, in
the mines--one hardly would believe that--more than one-half of all
establishments employ less than fifty workmen each; but 15 per cent.
of them have more than 500 workmen; forty-one mines are worked by
a staff of more than 1,000 persons each, and six out of them employ
even more than 5,000 miners.
It is only in these three branches that one finds a rather strong
“concentration”; and yet, the small industry continues to exist, as
we saw it already in England, by the side of the great one, even in
mining, and still more so in all branches of metallurgy.
As to the _textile_ industries, they have exactly the same
character as in England. We find here a certain number of very
large establishments (forty establishments having each of them more
than 1,000 workpeople), and especially we see a great development
of the middle-sized factories (1,300 mills having from 100 to 500
workpeople). But on the other side, the small industry is also very
numerous.[211]
Quite the same is also seen in the manufacture of all _metallic
goods_ (iron, steel, brass). Here, also, by the side of a few great
works (seventeen works occupy each of them more than 1,000 workpeople
and salaried employees; out of them five employ more than 2,000
persons, and one more than 5,000); and by the side of a great number
of middle-sized works (440 establishments employing from 100 to 500
persons), we find more than 100,000 artisans who work single-handed,
or with the aid of their families; and 72,600 works which have only
from three to four workpeople.
In the _india-rubber_ works, and those for the manufacture of
_paper_, the middle-sized factories are still well represented (13
per cent. of all the establishments have more than fifty workmen
each); but the remainder belongs to the small industry. It is the
same in the _chemical works_. There is in this branch some ten
factories employing more than 500 persons, and 100 which employ
from 101 to 500 people; but the remainder is 1,000 of small works
employing from ten to fifty people, and 3,800 of the very small works
(less than ten workers).
In all other branches it is _the small or the very small industry_
which dominates. Thus, in the manufacture of articles of food, there
are only eight factories employing more than 500 people each, and
92,000 small establishments having less than ten workpeople each. In
the printing industry the immense majority of establishments are very
small, and employ from five to ten, or from ten to fifty workpeople.
As to the manufacture of _clothing_, it entirely belongs to the small
industry. Only five factories employ more than 200 each; but the
remainder represents 630,000 independent artisans, men and women;
9,500 workshops where the work is done by the family; and 132,000
workshops and factories occupying less than ten workpeople each.[212]
The different branches dealing with straw, feathers, hair, leather,
gloves, again, belong to the small and the very small industry:
125,000 artisans and 43,000 small establishments employing from three
to four persons each.
Shall I speak of the factories dealing with wood, furniture,
brushes, and so on? True, there are in these branches two large
factories employing nearly 2,000 persons; but there are also 214,260
independent artisans and 105,400 small factories and workshops
employing less than ten persons each.
Needless to say that jewelry, the cutting of precious stones, and
stone-cutting for masonry belong entirely to the small industry,
no more than ten to twenty works employing more than 100 persons
each. Only in ceramics and in brick-making do we find by the side
of the very small works (8,930 establishments), and the small ones
(1,277 establishments employing from ten to fifty workpeople), 334
middle-sized works (fifty to 200 workpeople), ninety-three of the
great industry (201 to 1,000), and seven of the very great (more than
1,000 workpeople).[213]
X.--THE SMALL INDUSTRIES IN GERMANY.
The literature of the small industries in Germany being very bulky,
the chief works upon this subject may be found, either in full or
reviewed, in Schmoller’s _Jahrbücher_, and in Conrad’s _Sammlung
national-ökonomischer und statistischer Abhandlungen_. For a
general review of the subject and rich bibliographical indications,
Schönberg’s _Volkwirthschaftslehre_, vol. ii., which contains
excellent remarks about the proper domain of small industries
(p. 401 _seq._), as well as the above-mentioned publication
of K. Bücher (_Untersuchungen über die Lage des Handwerks in
Deutschland_), will be found most valuable. The work of O. Schwarz,
_Die Betriebsformen der modernen Grossindustrie_ (in _Zeitschrift
für Staatswissenschaft_, vol. xxv., p. 535), is interesting by its
analysis of the respective advantages of both the great and the small
industries, which brings the author to formulate the following three
factors in favour of the former: (1) economy in the cost of motive
power; (2) division of labour and its harmonic organisation; and (3)
the advantages offered for the sale of the produce. Of these three
factors, the first is more and more eliminated every year by the
progress achieved in the transmission of power; the second exists in
small industries as well, and to the same extent, as in the great
ones (watchmakers, toy-makers, and so on); so that only the third
remains in full force; but this factor, as already mentioned in the
text of this book, is a _social_ factor which entirely depends upon
the degree of development of the spirit of association amongst the
producers.
A detailed industrial census having been taken in 1907, in addition
to those of 1882 and 1895, most important and quite reliable data
showing the importance and the resistance of the small industries
were brought to light, and a series of most interesting monographs
dealing with this subject have been published. Let me name,
therefore, some of those which could be consulted with profit:
Dr. Fr. Zahn, _Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, unter besonderer
Berücksichtigung der Volkszählung_, 1905, _sowie der Berufs und
Betriebszählung_, 1907; _Sonderabdruck aus der Annalen des Deutschen
Reichs_, München, 1910 and 1911; Dr. Josef Grunzel, _System der
Industriepolitik_, Leipzig, 1905; and _Der Sieg des Industrialismus_,
Leipzig, 1911; W. Sombart, “Verlagssystem (Hausindustrie)”, in
Conrad, _Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften_, 3te Auflage,
Bd. VIII.; R. van der Borght, _Beruf, Gesellschaftliche Gliederung
und Betrieb im Deutschen Reiche_, in _Vorträge der Gehe-Stiftung_,
Bd. II., 1910; and Heinrich Koch, _Die Deutsche Hausindustrie_, M.
Gladbach, 1905. Many other works will be found mentioned by these
authors.
In all these books the reader will find a further confirmation of the
ideas about the small industries that are expressed in chapters vi.
and vii. When I developed them in the first edition of this book, it
was objected to me that, although the existence of a great number
of small industries is out of question, and although their great
extension in a country so far advanced in its industrial development
as England was not known to economists, still the fact proves
nothing. These industries are a mere survival; and if we had data
about the different classes of industry _at different periods_, we
should see how rapidly the small industries are disappearing.
Now we have such data for Germany, for a period of twenty-five years,
in the three censuses of 1882, 1895, and 1907, and, what is still
more valuable, these twenty-five years belong to a moment in the life
of Germany when a powerful industry has developed on an immense
scale with a great rapidity. Here it is that the dying out of the
small industries, their “absorption” by the great concerns, and the
supposed “concentration of capital” ought to be seen in full.
But the numerical results, as they appear from the three censuses,
and as they have been interpreted by those who have studied them,
are pointing out to quite the reverse. The position of the small
industries in the life of an industrial country is exactly the same
which could have been foreseen twenty-five years ago, and very often
it is described in the very same words that I have used.
The German _Statistisches Jahrbuch_ gives us the distribution of
workmen in the different industries of the German Empire in 1882 and
1895. Leaving aside all the concerns which belong to trade and those
for the sale of alcoholic drinks (955,680 establishments, 2,165,638
workpeople), as also 42,321 establishments belonging to horticulture,
fishing, and poultry (103,128 workpeople in 1895), there were, in
all the industries, including mining, 1,237,000 artisans working
single-handed, and over 900,000 establishments in which 6,730,500
persons were employed. Their distribution in establishments of
different sizes was as follows:--
1895. Establish- Employees. Average
ments. per estab-
lishment.
Artisans working single-handed 1,237,000 1,237,000[214] --
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From 1 to 5 employees 752,572 1,954,125 2·6
” 6 to 50 ” 139,459 1,902,049 13
Over 50 ” 17,941 2,907,329 162
--------- --------- ---
Total 909,972 6,763,503 7·5
(With the artisans) (2,146,972) (8,000,503) (4)
Twelve years later the industries, as they appeared
in the next census, made in 1907, were distributed as
follows:--
1907. Establish- Employees. Average
ments. per estab-
lishment.
Artisans working single-handed 994,743 994,743[215] --
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From 1 to 5 employees 875,518 2,205,539 2·5
” 6 to 10 ” 96,849 717,282 7
” 11 to 50 ” 90,225 1,996,906 22
” 51 to 100 ” 15,783 1,103,949 70
” 101 to 500 ” 11,827 2,295,401 194
Over 500 ” 1,423 1,538,577 1,081
--------- ---------- -----
Total 1,091,625 9,858,120 9
(With the artisans) (2,086,368) (10,852,863) (5)
For the sake of comparison, I give also (in round figures) the
numbers of establishments obtained by the three censuses:--
1882. 1895. 1907.
Artisans working single-handed 1,430,000 1,237,000 995,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From 1 to 5 employees 746,000 753,000 875,000
” 6 to 50 ” 85,000 139,000 187,000
Over 50 ” 9,000 18,000 30,000
------- ------- ---------
Total 830,000 910,000 1,092,000
(With the artisans) (2,270,000) (2,147,000) (2,086,000)
What appears quite distinctly from the last census is the rapid
decrease in the numbers of artisans who work single-handed, mostly
without the aid of machinery. Such an individual mode of production
by hand is naturally on the decrease, even many artisans resorting
now to some sort of motive power and taking one or two hired aids;
but this does not prove in the least that the small industries
carried on with the aid of machinery should be on the wane. The
census of 1907 proves quite the contrary, and all those who have
studied it are bound to recognise it.
“Of a pronounced decay of the small establishments in which five or
less persons are employed, is, of course, no sign,” writes Dr. Zahn
in the afore-mentioned work. Out of the 14·3 million people who live
on industry, full 5·4 million belong to the small industry.
Far from decreasing, this category has considerably increased since
1895 (from 732,572 establishments with 1,954,125 employees in 1895,
to 875,518 establishments and 2,205,539 employees in 1907). Moreover,
it is not only the very small industry which is on the increase;
it is also the small one which has increased even more than the
preceding--namely, by 47,615 establishments and 812,139 employees.
As to the very great industry, a closer analysis of what the German
statisticians describe as giant establishments (_Riesenbetriebe_)
shows that they belong chiefly to industries working for the State,
or created in consequence of State-granted monopolies. Thus, for
instance, the Krupp Shareholders Company employ 69,500 persons in
their nine different establishments, and everyone knows that the
works of Krupp are in reality a dependency of the State.
The opinions of the above-named German authors about the facts
revealed by the industrial censuses are very interesting.
In speaking of the small industries in Germany, W. Sombart writes
in the article, “Verlagssystem (Hausindustrie),” in Conrad’s
_Handwörterbuch_: “It results from the census of 1907 that the losses
in the small industries are almost exclusively limited to those
home industries which are usually described as the _old ones_; while
the increases belong to the home industries of modern origin.” The
statistical data thus confirm that “at the present time a sort of
rejuvenation is going on in the home industries; instead of those
of them which are dying out, new ones, almost equal in numbers, are
growing up” (p. 242). Prof. Sombart points out that the same is going
on in Switzerland, and refers to some new works on this subject.[216]
Dr. J. Grunzel comes to a similar conclusion: “Life experience shows
that the home industries are not a form of industrial organisation
which has had its time,” he writes in his afore-mentioned work. “On
the contrary, it proves to be possessed of a great life force in
certain branches. It is spread in all branches in which handwork
offers advantages above the work of the machine” (p. 46). It is also
retained wherever the value of labour exceeds very much the value of
the raw produce; and finally, in all the branches devoted to articles
which are rapidly changing with the seasons or the vagaries of
fashion. And he shows (pp. 46 and 149) how the home industries have
been increasing in Germany from 1882 to 1895, and how they are widely
spread in Austria, France, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, and England.
The conclusions of R. van der Borght are quite similar.
“It is true,” Dr. van der Borght says, “that the numbers of artisans
working single-handed have diminished in numbers in most industries;
but they still represent two-fifths of all industrial establishments,
and even more than one-half in several industries. At the same time,
the small establishments (having from one to five workers) have
increased in numbers, and they contain nearly one-half of all the
industrial establishments, and even more than that in several groups.”
As for Koch’s work, _Die Deutsche Hausindustrie_, it deserves special
mention for the discussion it contains of the measures advocated,
on the one side, for the weeding out of the domestic industries,
and, on the other side, for improving the condition of the workers
and the industries themselves by the means of co-operation, credit,
workshops’ inspection, and the like.
Y.--THE DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES IN SWITZERLAND.
We have most interesting monographs dealing with separate branches
of the small industries of Switzerland, but we have not yet such
comprehensive statistical data as those which have been mentioned
in the text in speaking of Germany and France. It was only in
the year 1901 that the first attempt was made to get the exact
numbers of workpeople employed in what the Swiss statisticians
describe as _Hausindustrie_, or “the domestic industries’ extension
of the factory industries” (_der hausindustrielle Anhang der
Fabrikindustrie_). Up till then these numbers remained “an absolutely
unknown quantity.” For many it was, therefore, a revelation when
a first rough estimate, made by the factory inspectors, gave the
figure of 52,291 workpeople belonging to this category, as against
243,200 persons employed in all the factories, large and small,
of the same branches. A few years later, Schuler, in _Zeitung für
Schweizerische Statistik_, 1904 (reprinted since as a volume), came
to the figure of 131,299 persons employed in the domestic industries;
and yet this figure, although it is much nearer to reality than the
former, is still below the real numbers. Finally, an official census
of the industries, made in 1905, gave the figure of 92,162 persons
employed in the domestic industries in 70,873 establishments, in the
following branches--textiles, watches and jewellery, straw-plaiting,
clothing and dress, wood-carving, tobacco. They thus represent more
than one-fourth (28·5 per cent.) of the 317,027 operatives employed
in Switzerland in these same branches, and 15·7 per cent. of all the
industrial operatives, who numbered 585,574 in 1905.
Out of the just-mentioned 92,162 workpeople, registered as belonging
to the domestic trades, nearly three-quarters (66,061 in 49,168
establishments) belong to the textile industry, chiefly knitting
and the silks; then comes the watch-trade (12,871 persons in 9,186
establishments), straw-plaiting, and dress. However, these figures
are still incomplete. Not only several smaller branches of the
domestic trades were omitted in the census, but also the children
under fourteen years of age employed in the domestic trades, whose
numbers are estimated at 32,300, were not counted. Besides, the
census having been made in the summer, during the “strangers’
season,” a considerable number of persons employed in a variety of
domestic trades during the winter did not appear in the census.
It must also be noted that the Swiss census includes under the name
of _Heimarbeit_ (domestic trades) only those “dependencies of the
industrial employers” which do not represent separate factories
placed under the employer’s management; so that those workshops
and small factories, the produce of which is sold directly to the
consumers, as also the small factories directly managed by small
employers, are not included in this category. If all that be taken
into consideration, we must agree with the conclusion that the
“domestic trades have in Switzerland a much greater extension than
in any other country of Europe” (save Russia), which we find in
an elaborate recent work, published in connection with the 1910
exhibition of Swiss domestic industries, and edited by Herr Jac.
Lorenz (_Die wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Verhältnisse in der
Schweizerischen Heimarbeit_, Zurich, 1910-1911, p. 27).
A feature of importance which appears from this last work is, that
more than one-half of the workers engaged in domestic trades have
some other source of income besides these trades. Very many of them
carry on agriculture, so that it has been said that in Switzerland
“the domestic trades’ question is as much _a peasant question_ as a
labour question.”
It would be impossible to sum up in this place the interesting data
contained in the first four fascicles published by Herr Lorenz, which
deal with the cotton, the silk, and the linen domestic industries,
their struggles against the machine, their defeats in some branches
and their holding the ground in other branches, and so on. I must
therefore refer the reader to this very instructive publication.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[199] “Great Britain’s Capital Investments in Other Lands” (_Journal
of the Statistical Society_, September 1909, vol. lxxii., pp.
475-495), followed by a most interesting discussion; and “Great
Britain’s Capital Investments in India, Colonial and Foreign
Countries,” same journal, January 1911, vol. lxxiv., pp. 167-200.
[200] T. M. Young, _The American Cotton Industry_. Introduction
by Elijah Helm, secretary to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce,
London 1902; and T. W. Uttley, _Cotton Spinning and Manufacturing
in the United States: A report ... of a tour of the American cotton
manufacturing centres made in 1903 and 1904_. Publications of
Manchester University, Economic Series, No. II., Manchester, 1905.
[201] _Ten Years of Sunshine in the British Isles_, 1881-1890.
[202] Dr. M. Fesca, _Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Japanesischen
Landwirthschaft_, Part ii., p. 33 (Berlin, 1893). The economy in
seeds is also considerable. While in Italy 250 kilogrammes to the
hectare are sown, and 160 kilogrammes in South Carolina, the Japanese
use only sixty kilogrammes for the same area. (Semler, _Tropische
Agrikultur_, Bd. iii., pp. 20-28.)
[203] Eugène Simon, _La cité chinoise_ (translated into English);
Toubeau, _La répartition métrique des impôts_, 2 vols., Paris
(Guillaumin), 1880.
[204] _The Gardener’s Chronicle_, 20th April, 1895, p. 483. The same,
I learn from a German grower near Berlin, takes place in Germany.
[205] I am indebted for the following information to M. V. Euvert,
President of the Chamber of Commerce of St. Etienne, who sent me,
while I was in the Clairvaux prison, in April, 1885, a most valuable
sketch of the various industries of the region, in reply to a letter
of mine, and I avail myself of the opportunity for expressing to M.
Euvert my best thanks for his courtesy. This information has now an
historical value only. But it is such an interesting page of the
history of the small industries that I retain it as it was in the
first edition, the more so as it is most interesting to compare it
with the pages given in the text to the present conditions of the
same industries.
[206] It had been 5,134,000 kilogrammes in 1872. _Journal de la
Société de Statistique de Paris_, September, 1883.
[207] I take these figures from a detailed letter which the President
of the Lyons Chamber of Commerce kindly directed to me in April,
1885, to Clairvaux, in answer to my inquiries about the subject. I
avail myself of this opportunity for addressing to him my best thanks
for his most interesting communication.
[208] _La fabrique lyonnaise de soieries. Son passé, son prêsent._
Imprimé par ordre de la Chambre de Commerce de Lyon, 1873. (Published
in connection with the Vienna Exhibition.)
[209] Marius Morand, _L’organisation ouvrière de la fabrique
lyonnaise_; paper read before the Association Française pour
l’avancement des Sciences, in 1873.
[210] _Journal de la Société de Statistique de Paris_, June 1901, pp.
189-192, and “Résultats Généraux,” in vol. iv. of the above-mentioned
publication.
[211] Here is how they are distributed: Workmen working
single-handed, 124,544; with their families, but without paid
workmen, 8,000; less than 10 workmen, 34,433 factories; from 10 to
100 workpeople, 4,665 factories; from 101 to 200 workpeople, 746
factories; from 201 to 500 workpeople, 554; from 501 to 1,000, 123;
from 1,001 to 2,000, 38; more than 2,000, 2 factories.
[212] In an excellent monograph dealing with this branch (_Le
développement de la fabrique et le travail à domicile dans les
industries de l’habillement_, by Professor Albert Aftalion, Paris,
1906), the author gives most valuable data as to the proper domains
of domestic work and the factory, and shows how, why, and in which
domains domestic work successfully competes with the factory.
[213] The industrial establishments having more than 1,000 employees
each are distributed as follows: Mining, 41; textiles, 40 (123 have
from 500 to 1,000); industries of the State and the Communes, 14;
metallurgy, 17; working of metals--iron, steel, brass--17; quarries,
2; alimentation, 3; chemical industries, 2; india-rubber, paper,
cardboard, 0 (9 have from 500 to 1,000); books, polygraphy, 0 (22
have from 500 to 1,000); dressing of stuffs, clothing, 2 (9 from
500 to 1,000); straw, feathers, hair, 0 (1 from 500 to 1,000);
leather, skins, 2; wood, cabinet-making, brushes, etc., 1; fine
metals, jewelry, 0; cutting of precious stones, 0; stone-cutting
for buildings, 0; earthworks and building, 1; bricks, ceramics, 7;
preparation and distribution of food, 0; total, 149 out of 575,531
establishments. To these figures we may add six large establishments
in the transports, and five in different branches of trade. We may
note also that, by means of various calculations, M. March comes to
the conclusion that 91 per cent. of the workmen and employees in
industry and 44 per cent. in commerce are employees--that is, clerks,
managers, and so on.
[214] In reality there are no employees. I give this figure only for
the totals.
[215] In reality there are no employees. I give this figure only for
the totals.
[216] _Die Hausindustrie in der Schweiz: Auszug aus der Ergebnissen
der Eidgenossischen Betriebszahlung von Aug. 9, 1905_; E. Ryser,
_L’industrie horlogère_, Zurich, 1909; J. Beck, _Die Schweizerische
Hausindustrie, ihre soziale und wirthschaftliche Lage_, Grütliverein,
1909.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg 132 Footnote [63]: ‘unjurious grasses’ replaced by
‘injurious grasses’.
Pg 142: ‘Besides, the amout’ replaced by ‘Besides, the amount’.
Pg 190: ‘At Ploustagel’ replaced by ‘At Plougastel’.
Pg 285 Footnote [138]: ‘Résultats statitisques’ replaced by
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Pg 375: ‘finally at Tuskagee’ replaced by ‘finally at Tuskegee’.
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