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Title: Fields, factories and workshops
        or, Industry combined with agriculture and brain work with manual work

Author: kniaz Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

Release date: January 20, 2021 [eBook #64353]

Language: English

Credits: Turgut Dincer, John Campbell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


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[Illustration]




  Fields, Factories

  and

  Workshops

  OR

  INDUSTRY COMBINED WITH AGRICULTURE
  AND BRAIN WORK WITH MANUAL WORK

  BY

  P. KROPOTKIN

  [Illustration: (decorative icon)]

  NEW, REVISED, AND ENLARGED EDITION

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  1913




PREFACE.


Fourteen years have passed since the first edition of this book
was published, and in revising it for this new edition I found
at my disposal an immense mass of new materials, statistical and
descriptive, and a great number of new works dealing with the
different subjects that are treated in this book. I have thus had an
excellent opportunity to verify how far the previsions that I had
formulated when I first wrote this book have been confirmed by the
subsequent economical evolution of the different nations.

This verification permits me to affirm that the economical tendencies
that I had ventured to foreshadow then have only become more and
more definite since. Everywhere we see the same decentralisation
of industries going on, new nations continually entering the ranks
of those which manufacture for the world market. Each of these
new-comers endeavours to develop, and succeeds in developing, on its
own territory the principal industries, and thus frees itself from
being exploited by other nations, more advanced in their technical
evolution. All nations have made a remarkable progress in this
direction, as will be seen from the new data that are given in this
book.

On the other hand, one sees, with all the great industrial nations,
the growing tendency and need of developing at home a more intensive
agricultural productivity, either by improving the now existing
methods of extensive agriculture, by means of small holdings, “inner
colonisation,” agricultural education, and co-operative work, or by
introducing different new branches of intensive agriculture. This
country is especially offering us at this moment a most instructive
example of a movement in the said direction. And this movement
will certainly result, not only in a much-needed increase of the
productive forces of the nation, which will contribute to free it
from the international speculators in food produce, but also in
awakening in the nation a fuller appreciation of the immense value
of its soil, and the desire of repairing the error that has been
committed in leaving it in the hands of great land-owners and of
those who find it now more advantageous to rent the land to be turned
into shooting preserves. The different steps that are being taken now
for raising English agriculture and for obtaining from the land a
much greater amount of produce are briefly indicated in Chapter V.

It is especially in revising the chapters dealing with the small
industries that I had to incorporate the results of a great number
of new researches. In so doing I was enabled to show that the growth
of an infinite variety of small enterprises by the side of the very
great centralised concerns is not showing any signs of abatement. On
the contrary, the distribution of electrical motive power has given
them a new impulse. In those places where water power was utilised
for distributing electric power in the villages, and in those cities
where the machinery used for producing electric light during the
night hours was utilised for supplying motive power during the day,
the small industries are taking a new development.

In this domain I am enabled to add to the present edition the
interesting results of a work about the small industries in the
United Kingdom that I made in 1900. Such a work was only possible
when the British Factory Inspectors had published (in 1898, in virtue
of the Factories Act of 1895) their first reports, from which I could
determine the hitherto unknown numerical relations between the great
and the small industries in the United Kingdom.

Until then no figures whatever as regards the distribution of
operatives in the large and small factories and workshops of Great
Britain were available; so that when economists spoke of the
“unavoidable” death of the small industries they merely expressed
hypotheses based upon a limited number of observations, which were
chiefly made upon part of the textile industry and metallurgy. Only
after Mr. Whitelegge had published the first figures from which
reliable conclusions could be drawn was it possible to see how little
such wide-reaching conclusions were confirmed by realities. In this
country, as everywhere, the small industries continue to exist, and
new ones continue to appear as a necessary growth, in many important
branches of national production, by the side of the very great
factories and huge centralised works. So I add to the chapter on
small industries a summary of the work that I had published in the
_Nineteenth Century_ upon this subject.

As regards France, the most interesting observations made by M.
Ardouin Dumazet during his many years’ travels all over the country
give me the possibility of showing the remarkable development of
rural industries, and the advantages which were taken from them for
recent developments in agriculture and horticulture. Besides, the
publication of the statistical results of the French industrial
census of 1896 permits me to give now, for France, most remarkable
numerical data, showing the real relative importance of the great and
the small industries.

And finally, the recent publication of the results of the third
industrial census made in Germany in 1907 gives me the data for
showing how the German small industries have been keeping their
ground for the last twenty-five years--a subject which I could touch
only in a general way in the first editions. The results of this
census, compared with the two preceding ones, as also some of the
conclusions arrived at by competent German writers, are indicated in
the Appendix. So also the results recently arrived at in Switzerland
concerning its home industries.

As to the need, generally felt at this moment, of an education which
would combine a wide scientific instruction with a sound knowledge
of manual work--a question which I treat in the last chapter--it can
be said that this cause has already been won in this country during
the last twenty years. The _principle_ is generally recognised by
this time, although most nations, impoverished as they are by their
armaments, are much too slow in applying the principle in life.

  P. KROPOTKIN.

  BRIGHTON, _October_, 1912.




PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.


Under the name of profits, rent, interest upon capital, surplus
value, and the like, economists have eagerly discussed the benefits
which the owners of land or capital, or some privileged nations,
can derive, either from the underpaid work of the wage-labourer, or
from the inferior position of one class of the community towards
another class, or from the inferior economical development of one
nation towards another nation. These profits being shared in a very
unequal proportion between the different individuals, classes and
nations engaged in production, considerable pains were taken to study
the present apportionment of the benefits, and its economical and
moral consequences, as well as the changes in the present economical
organisation of society which might bring about a more equitable
distribution of a rapidly accumulating wealth. It is upon questions
relating to the right to that increment of wealth that the hottest
battles are now fought between economists of different schools.

In the meantime the great question--“What have we to produce, and
how?” necessarily remained in the background. Political economy,
as it gradually emerges from its semi-scientific stage, tends more
and more to become a science devoted to the study of the needs of
men and of the means of satisfying them with the least possible
waste of energy,--that is, a sort of physiology of society. But few
economists, as yet, have recognised that this is the proper domain
of economics, and have attempted to treat their science from this
point of view. The main subject of social economy--that is, the
_economy of energy required for the satisfaction of human needs_--is
consequently the last subject which one expects to find treated in a
concrete form in economical treatises.

The following pages are a contribution to a portion of this vast
subject. They contain a discussion of the advantages which civilised
societies could derive from a combination of industrial pursuits with
intensive agriculture, and of brain work with manual work.

The importance of such a combination has not escaped the attention of
a number of students of social science. It was eagerly discussed some
fifty years ago under the names of “harmonised labour,” “integral
education,” and so on. It was pointed out at that time that the
greatest sum total of well-being can be obtained when a variety of
agricultural, industrial and intellectual pursuits are combined in
each community; and that man shows his best when he is in a position
to apply his usually-varied capacities to several pursuits in the
farm, the workshop, the factory, the study or the studio, instead of
being riveted for life to one of these pursuits only.

At a much more recent date, in the ’seventies, Herbert Spencer’s
theory of evolution gave origin in Russia to a remarkable work, _The
Theory of Progress_, by M. M. Mikhailovsky. The part which belongs
in progressive evolution to _differentiation_, and the part which
belongs in it to an _integration_ of aptitudes and activities, were
discussed by the Russian author with depth of thought, and Spencer’s
differentiation-formula was accordingly completed.

And, finally, out of a number of smaller monographs, I must mention a
suggestive little book by J. R. Dodge, the United States statistician
(_Farm and Factory: Aids derived by Agriculture from Industries_, New
York, 1886). The same question was discussed in it from a practical
American point of view.

Half a century ago a harmonious union between agricultural and
industrial pursuits, as also between brain work and manual work,
could only be a remote desideratum. The conditions under which the
factory system asserted itself, as well as the obsolete forms of
agriculture which prevailed at that time, prevented such a union
from being feasible. Synthetic production was impossible. However,
the wonderful simplification of the technical processes in both
industry and agriculture, partly due to an ever-increasing division
of labour--in analogy with what we see in biology--has rendered the
synthesis possible; and a distinct tendency towards a synthesis of
human activities becomes now apparent in modern economical evolution.
This tendency is analysed in the subsequent chapters--a special
weight being laid upon the present possibilities of agriculture,
which are illustrated by a number of examples borrowed from different
countries, and upon the small industries to which a new impetus is
being given by the new methods of transmission of motive power.

The substance of these essays was published in 1888-1890 in the
_Nineteenth Century_, and of one of them in the _Forum_. However, the
tendencies indicated therein have been confirmed during the last ten
years by such a mass of evidence that a very considerable amount of
new matter had to be introduced, while the chapters on agriculture
and the small trades had to be written anew.

I take advantage of this opportunity to address my best thanks to
the editors of the _Nineteenth Century_ and the _Forum_ for their
kind permission of reproducing these essays in a new form, as also
to those friends and correspondents who have aided me in collecting
information about agriculture and the petty trades.

  P. KROPOTKIN.

  BROMLEY, KENT, 1898.




                         CONTENTS.


                                                                  PAGE

  CHAPTER I. THE DECENTRALISATION OF INDUSTRIES                     17

  Division of labour and integration--The spread of industrial
  skill--Each nation its own producer of manufactured goods--The
  United Kingdom--France--Germany--Russia--“German Competition.”


  CHAPTER II. THE DECENTRALISATION OF INDUSTRIES (_continued_)      50

  Italy and Spain--India--Japan--The United States--The cotton,
  woollen, and silk trades--The growing necessity for each
  country to rely chiefly upon home consumers.


  CHAPTER III. THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE                     79

  The development of agriculture--The over-population prejudice
  --Can the soil of Great Britain feed its inhabitants?--British
  agriculture--Compared with agriculture in France; in Belgium;
  in Denmark--Market-gardening: its achievements--Is it profitable
  to grow wheat in Great Britain?--American agriculture: intensive
  culture in the States.


  CHAPTER IV. THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE (_continued_)       158

  The doctrine of Malthus--Progress in wheat-growing--East
  Flanders--Channel Islands--Potato crops, past and present
  --Irrigation--Major Hallett’s experiments--Planted wheat.


  CHAPTER V. THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE (_continued_)        188

  Extension of market-gardening and fruit-growing: in France;
  in the United States--Culture under glass--Kitchen gardens
  under glass--Hothouse culture: in Guernsey and Jersey; in
  Belgium--Conclusion.


  CHAPTER VI. SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES             241

  Industry and agriculture--The small industries--Different
  types--_Petty trades in Great Britain_: Sheffield, Leeds,
  Lake District, Birmingham--Statistical data--_Petty trades
  in France_: weaving and various other trades--The Lyons
  region--Paris, emporium of petty trades--Results of the
  census of 1896.


  CHAPTER VII. SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES
  (_continued_)                                                    325

  _Petty trades in Germany_: discussions upon the subject and
  conclusions arrived at--Results of the census taken in 1882,
  1895, and 1907--_Petty trades in Russia_--Conclusions.


  CHAPTER VIII. BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK                         363

  Divorce between science and handicraft--Technical education
  --Complete education--The Moscow system; applied at Chicago,
  Boston, Aberdeen--Concrete teaching--Present waste of time
  --Science and technics--Advantages which science can derive
  from a combination of brain work with manual work.


  CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSION                                           410

  APPENDIX.

  A. BRITISH INVESTMENTS ABROAD                                    421

  B. FRENCH IMPORTS                                                422

  C. GROWTH OF INDUSTRY IN RUSSIA                                  423

  D. IRON INDUSTRY IN GERMANY                                      423

  E. MACHINERY IN GERMANY                                          424

  F. COTTON INDUSTRY IN GERMANY                                    425

  G. MINING AND TEXTILES IN AUSTRIA                                427

  H. COTTON MANUFACTURE IN INDIA                                   428

  I. THE COTTON INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED STATES                      430

  J. MR. GIFFEN’S AND MR. FLUX’S FIGURES CONCERNING THE
     POSITION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM IN INTERNATIONAL
     TRADE                                                         432

  K. MARKET-GARDENING IN BELGIUM                                   434

  L. THE CHANNEL ISLANDS--THE SCILLY ISLANDS                       435

  M. IRRIGATED MEADOWS IN ITALY                                    444

  N. PLANTED WHEAT; THE ROTHAMSTED CHALLENGE                       444

  O. REPLANTED WHEAT                                               445

  P. IMPORTS OF VEGETABLES TO THE UNITED KINGDOM                   447

  Q. FRUIT CULTURE IN BELGIUM                                      449

  R. CULTURE UNDER GLASS IN HOLLAND                                450

  S. PRICES OBTAINED IN LONDON FOR DESSERT GRAPES CULTIVATED
     UNDER GLASS                                                   451

  T. THE USE OF ELECTRICITY IN AGRICULTURE                         452

  U. PETTY TRADES IN THE LYONS REGION                              454

  V. SMALL INDUSTRIES AT PARIS                                     460

  W. RESULTS OF THE CENSUS OF THE FRENCH INDUSTRIES IN 1896        462

  X. THE SMALL INDUSTRIES IN GERMANY                               468

  Y. THE DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES IN SWITZERLAND                        475


[Illustration: (decorative icon)]




FIELDS, FACTORIES, AND WORKSHOPS.




CHAPTER I.

THE DECENTRALISATION OF INDUSTRIES.

  Division of labour and integration--The spread of industrial
  skill--Each nation its own producer of manufactured goods--The
  United Kingdom--France--Germany--Russia--“German competition.”


Who does not remember the remarkable chapter by which Adam Smith
opens his inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of
nations? Even those of our contemporary economists who seldom revert
to the works of the father of political economy, and often forget
the ideas which inspired them, know that chapter almost by heart, so
often has it been copied and recopied since. It has become an article
of faith; and the economical history of the century which has elapsed
since Adam Smith wrote has been, so to speak, an actual commentary
upon it.

“Division of labour” was its watchword. And the division and
subdivision--the permanent subdivision--of functions has been
pushed so far as to divide humanity into castes which are almost as
firmly established as those of old India. We have, first, the broad
division into producers and consumers: little-consuming producers
on the one hand, little-producing consumers on the other hand.
Then, amidst the former, a series of further subdivisions: the
manual worker and the intellectual worker, sharply separated from
one another to the detriment of both; the agricultural labourers
and the workers in the manufacture; and, amidst the mass of the
latter, numberless subdivisions again--so minute, indeed, that the
modern ideal of a workman seems to be a man or a woman, or even a
girl or a boy, without the knowledge of any handicraft, without any
conception whatever of the industry he or she is employed in, who is
only capable of making all day long and for a whole life the same
infinitesimal part of something: who from the age of thirteen to that
of sixty pushes the coal cart at a given spot of the mine or makes
the spring of a penknife, or “the eighteenth part of a pin.” Mere
servants to some machine of a given description; mere flesh-and-bone
parts of some immense machinery; having no idea how and why the
machinery performs its rhythmical movements.

Skilled artisanship is being swept away as a survival of a past
condemned to disappear. The artist who formerly found æsthetic
enjoyment in the work of his hands is substituted by the human
slave of an iron slave. Nay, even the agricultural labourer, who
formerly used to find a relief from the hardships of his life in
the home of his ancestors--the future home of his children--in his
love of the field and in a keen intercourse with nature, even he has
been doomed to disappear for the sake of division of labour. He is
an anachronism, we are told; he must be substituted, in a Bonanza
farm, by an occasional servant hired for the summer, and discharged
as the autumn comes: a tramp who will never again see the field he
has harvested once in his life. “An affair of a few years,” the
economists say, “to reform agriculture in accordance with the true
principles of division of labour and modern industrial organisation.”

Dazzled with the results obtained by a century of marvellous
inventions, especially in England, our economists and political
men went still farther in their dreams of division of labour. They
proclaimed the necessity of dividing the whole of humanity into
national workshops having each of them its own speciality. We were
taught, for instance, that Hungary and Russia are predestined by
nature to grow corn in order to feed the manufacturing countries;
that Britain had to provide the world-market with cottons, iron
goods, and coal; Belgium with woollen cloth; and so on. Nay, within
each nation, each region had to have its own speciality. So it has
been for some time since; so it ought to remain. Fortunes have been
made in this way, and will continue to be made in the same way. It
being proclaimed that the wealth of nations is measured by the amount
of profits made by the few, and that the largest profits are made by
means of a specialisation of labour, the question was not conceived
to exist as to whether human beings _would_ always submit to such a
specialisation; whether nations could be specialised like isolated
workmen. The theory was good for to-day--why should we care for
to-morrow? To-morrow might bring its own theory!

And so it did. The narrow conception of life which consisted in
thinking that _profits_ are the only leading motive of human society,
and the stubborn view which supposes that what has existed yesterday
would last for ever, proved in disaccordance with the tendencies of
human life; and life took another direction. Nobody will deny the
high pitch of production which may be attained by specialisation.
But, precisely in proportion as the work required from the individual
in modern production becomes simpler and easier to be learned, and,
therefore, also more monotonous and wearisome--the requirements
of the individual for varying his work, for exercising all his
capacities, become more and more prominent. Humanity perceives that
there is no advantage for the community in riveting a human being for
all his life to a given spot, in a workshop or a mine; no gain in
depriving him of such work as would bring him into free intercourse
with nature, make of him a conscious part of the grand whole, a
partner in the highest enjoyments of science and art, of free work
and creation.

Nations, too, refuse to be specialised. Each nation is a compound
aggregate of tastes and inclinations, of wants and resources, of
capacities and inventive powers. The territory occupied by each
nation is in its turn a most varied texture of soils and climates, of
hills and valleys, of slopes leading to a still greater variety of
territories and races. Variety is the distinctive feature, both of
the territory and its inhabitants; and that variety implies a variety
of occupations. Agriculture calls manufactures into existence, and
manufactures support agriculture. Both are inseparable; and the
combination, the integration of both brings about the grandest
results. In proportion as technical knowledge becomes everybody’s
virtual domain, in proportion as it becomes international, and can be
concealed no longer, each nation acquires the possibility of applying
the whole variety of her energies to the whole variety of industrial
and agricultural pursuits. Knowledge ignores artificial political
boundaries. So also do the industries; and the present tendency of
humanity is to have the greatest possible variety of industries
gathered in each country, in each separate region, side by side with
agriculture. The needs of human agglomerations correspond thus to
the needs of the individual; and while a _temporary_ division of
functions remains the surest guarantee of success in each separate
undertaking, the _permanent_ division is doomed to disappear, and to
be substituted by a variety of pursuits--intellectual, industrial,
and agricultural--corresponding to the different capacities of the
individual, as well as to the variety of capacities within every
human aggregate.

When we thus revert from the scholastics of our text-books, and
examine human life as a whole, we soon discover that, while all the
benefits of a temporary division of labour must be maintained, it is
high time to claim those of the _integration of labour_. Political
economy has hitherto insisted chiefly upon _division_. We proclaim
_integration_; and we maintain that the ideal of society--that is,
the state towards which society is already marching--is a society
of integrated, combined labour. A society where each individual
is a producer of both manual and intellectual work; where each
able-bodied human being is a worker, and where each worker works both
in the field and the industrial workshop; where every aggregation of
individuals, large enough to dispose of a certain variety of natural
resources--it may be a nation, or rather a region--produces and
itself consumes most of its own agricultural and manufactured produce.

Of course, as long as society remains organised so as to permit the
owners of the land and capital to appropriate for themselves, under
the protection of the State and historical rights, the yearly surplus
of human production, no such change can be thoroughly accomplished.
But the present industrial system, based upon a permanent
specialisation of functions, already bears in itself the germs of
its proper ruin. The industrial crises, which grow more acute and
protracted, and are rendered still worse and still more acute by the
armaments and wars implied by the present system, are rendering its
maintenance more and more difficult. Moreover, the workers plainly
manifest their intention to support no longer patiently the misery
occasioned by each crisis. And each crisis accelerates the day when
the present institutions of individual property and production will
be shaken to their foundations with such internal struggles as will
depend upon the more or less good sense of the now privileged classes.

But we maintain also that any socialist attempt at remodelling the
present relations between Capital and Labour will be a failure, if it
does not take into account the above tendencies towards integration.
These tendencies have not yet received, in our opinion, due attention
from the different socialist schools--but they must. A reorganised
society will have to abandon the fallacy of nations specialised for
the production of either agricultural or manufactured produce. It
will have to rely on itself for the production of food and many,
if not most, of the raw materials; it must find the best means of
combining agriculture with manufacture--the work in the field with a
decentralised industry; and it will have to provide for “integrated
education,” which education alone, by teaching both science and
handicraft from earliest childhood, can give to society the men and
women it really needs.

Each nation--her own agriculturist and manufacturer; each
individual working in the field and in some industrial art; each
individual combining scientific knowledge with the knowledge of a
handicraft--such is, we affirm, the present tendency of civilised
nations.

       *       *       *       *       *

The prodigious growth of industries in Great Britain, and the
simultaneous development of the international traffic which now
permits the transport of raw materials and articles of food on a
gigantic scale, have created the impression that a few nations of
West Europe were destined to become _the_ manufacturers of the world.
They need only--it was argued--to supply the market with manufactured
goods, and they will draw from all over the surface of the earth
the food they cannot grow themselves, as well as the raw materials
they need for their manufactures. The steadily increasing speed of
trans-oceanic communications and the steadily increasing facilities
of shipping have contributed to enforce the above impression. If we
take the enthusiastic pictures of international traffic, drawn in
such a masterly way by Neumann Spallart--the statistician and almost
the poet of the world-trade--we are inclined indeed to fall into
ecstasy before the results achieved. “Why shall we grow corn, rear
oxen and sheep, and cultivate orchards, go through the painful work
of the labourer and the farmer, and anxiously watch the sky in fear
of a bad crop, when we can get, with much less pain, mountains of
corn from India, America, Hungary, or Russia, meat from New Zealand,
vegetables from the Azores, apples from Canada, grapes from Malaga,
and so on?” exclaim the West Europeans. “Already now,” they say,
“our food consists, even in modest households, of produce gathered
from all over the globe. Our cloth is made out of fibres grown and
wool sheared in all parts of the world. The prairies of America and
Australia; the mountains and steppes of Asia; the frozen wildernesses
of the Arctic regions; the deserts of Africa and the depths of
the oceans; the tropics and the lands of the midnight sun are our
tributaries. All races of men contribute their share in supplying
us with our staple food and luxuries, with plain clothing and fancy
dress, while we are sending them in exchange the produce of our
higher intelligence, our technical knowledge, our powerful industrial
and commercial organising capacities! Is it not a grand sight, this
busy and intricate exchange of produce all over the earth which has
suddenly grown up within a few years?”

Grand it may be, but is it not a mere nightmare? Is it necessary? At
what cost has it been obtained, and how long will it last?

Let us turn a hundred years back. France lay bleeding at the end of
the Napoleonic wars. Her young industry, which had begun to grow
by the end of the 18th century, was crushed down. Germany, Italy
were powerless in the industrial field. The armies of the great
Republic had struck a mortal blow to serfdom on the Continent; but
with the return of reaction efforts were made to revive the decaying
institution, and serfdom meant no industry worth speaking of. The
terrible wars between France and England, which wars are often
explained by merely political causes, had a much deeper meaning--an
economical meaning. They were wars for the supremacy on the world
market, wars against French industry and commerce, supported by a
strong navy which France had begun to build--and Britain won the
battle. She became supreme on the seas. Bordeaux was no more a rival
to London; as to the French industries, they seemed to be killed in
the bud. And, aided by the powerful impulse given to natural sciences
and technology by a great era of inventions, finding no serious
competitors in Europe, Britain began to develop her manufactures. To
produce on a large scale in immense quantities became the watchword.
The necessary human forces were at hand in the peasantry, partly
driven by force from the land, partly attracted to the cities by
high wages. The necessary machinery was created, and the British
production of manufactured goods went on at a gigantic pace. In the
course of less than seventy years--from 1810 to 1878--the output of
coal grew from 10 to 133,000,000 tons; the imports of raw materials
rose from 30 to 380,000,000 tons; and the exports of manufactured
goods from 46 to 200,000,000 pounds. The tonnage of the commercial
fleet was nearly trebled. Fifteen thousand miles of railways were
built.

It is useless to repeat now at what a cost the above results were
achieved. The terrible revelations of the parliamentary commissions
of 1840-1842 as to the atrocious condition of the manufacturing
classes, the tales of “cleared estates,” and kidnapped children
are still fresh in the memory. They will remain standing monuments
for showing by what means the great industry was implanted in
this country. But the accumulation of wealth in the hands of
the privileged classes was going on at a speed never dreamed of
before. The incredible riches which now astonish the foreigner
in the private houses of England were accumulated during that
period; the exceedingly expensive standard of life which makes a
person considered rich on the Continent appear as only of modest
means in Britain was introduced during that time. The taxed
property alone doubled during the last thirty years of the above
period, while during the same years (1810 to 1878) no less than
£1,112,000,000--nearly £2,000,000,000 by this time--was invested
by English capitalists either in foreign industries or in foreign
loans.[1]

But the monopoly of industrial production could not remain with
England for ever. Neither industrial knowledge nor enterprise could
be kept for ever as a privilege of these islands. Necessarily,
fatally, they began to cross the Channel and spread over the
Continent. The Great Revolution had created in France a numerous
class of peasant proprietors, who enjoyed nearly half a century of
a comparative well-being, or, at least, of a guaranteed labour. The
ranks of homeless town workers increased slowly. But the middle-class
revolution of 1789-1793 had already made a distinction between the
peasant householders and the village _prolétaires_, and, by favouring
the former to the detriment of the latter, it compelled the labourers
who had no household nor land to abandon their villages, and thus to
form the first nucleus of working classes given up to the mercy of
manufacturers. Moreover, the peasant-proprietors themselves, after
having enjoyed a period of undeniable prosperity, began in their
turn to feel the pressure of bad times, and their children were
compelled to look for employment in manufactures. Wars and revolution
had checked the growth of industry; but it began to grow again
during the second half of our century; it developed, it improved;
and now, notwithstanding the loss of Alsace, France is no longer the
tributary to England for manufactured produce which she was sixty
years ago. To-day her exports of manufactured goods are valued at
nearly one-half of those of Great Britain, and two-thirds of them are
textiles; while her imports of the same consist chiefly of the finer
sorts of cotton and woollen yarn--partly re-exported as stuffs--and
a small quantity of woollen goods. For her own consumption France
shows a decided tendency towards becoming entirely a self-supporting
country, and for the sale of her manufactured goods she is tending
to rely, not on her colonies, but especially on her own wealthy home
market.[2]

Germany follows the same lines. During the last fifty years, and
especially since the last war, her industry has undergone a thorough
re-organisation. Her population having rapidly increased from forty
to sixty millions, this increment went entirely to increase the
urban population--without taking hands from agriculture--and in the
cities it went to increase the population engaged in industry.
Her industrial machinery has been thoroughly improved, and her
new-born manufactures are supplied now with a machinery which mostly
represents the last word of technical progress. She has plenty of
workmen and technologists endowed with a superior technical and
scientific education; and in an army of learned chemists, physicists
and engineers her industry has a most powerful and intelligent aid,
both for directly improving it and for spreading in the country
serious scientific and technical knowledge. As a whole, Germany
offers now the spectacle of a nation in a period of _Aufschwung_, of
a sudden development, with all the forces of a new start in every
domain of life. Fifty years ago she was a customer to England. Now
she is already a competitor in the European and Asiatic markets,
and at the present speedy rate of growth of her industries, her
competition will soon be felt even more acutely than it is already
felt.

At the same time the wave of industrial production, after having had
its origin in the north-west of Europe, spreads towards the east
and south-east, always covering a wider circle. And, in proportion
as it advances east, and penetrates into younger countries, it
implants there all the improvements due to a century of mechanical
and chemical inventions; it borrows from science all the help that
science can give to industry; and it finds populations eager to grasp
the last results of modern knowledge. The new manufactures of Germany
begin where Manchester arrived after a century of experiments and
gropings; and Russia begins where Manchester and Saxony have now
reached. Russia, in her turn, tries to emancipate herself from her
dependency upon Western Europe, and rapidly begins to manufacture all
those goods she formerly used to import, either from Britain or from
Germany.

Protective duties may, perhaps, sometimes help the birth of new
industries: always at the expense of some other growing industries,
and always checking the improvement of those which already exist;
but the decentralisation of manufactures goes on with or without
protective duties--I should even say, notwithstanding the protective
duties. Austria, Hungary and Italy follow the same lines--they
develop their home industries--and even Spain and Servia are going
to join the family of manufacturing nations. Nay, even India, even
Brazil and Mexico, supported by English, French, and German capital
and knowledge, begin to start home industries on their respective
soils. Finally, a terrible competitor to all European manufacturing
countries has grown up of late in the United States. In proportion
as technical education spreads more and more widely, manufactures
grow in the States; and they do grow at such a speed--an American
speed--that in a very few years the now neutral markets will be
invaded by American goods.

The monopoly of the first comers on the industrial field has ceased
to exist. And it will exist no more, whatever may be the spasmodic
efforts made to return to a state of things already belonging to the
domain of history. New ways, new issues must be looked for: the past
_has_ lived, and it will live no more.

       *       *       *       *       *

Before going farther, let me illustrate the march of industries
towards the east by a few figures. And, to begin with, let me take
the example of Russia. Not because I know it better, but because
Russia is one of the latest comers on the industrial field. Fifty
years ago she was considered as the ideal of an agricultural nation,
doomed by nature itself to supply other nations with food, and to
draw her manufactured goods from the west. So it was, indeed--but it
is so no more.

In 1861--the year of the emancipation of the serfs--Russia and Poland
had only 14,060 manufactories, which produced every year the value
of 296,000,000 roubles (about £36,000,000). Twenty years later the
number of establishments rose to 35,160, and their yearly production
became nearly four times the above, _i.e._, 1,305,000,000 roubles
(about £131,000,000); and in 1894, although the census left the
smaller manufactures and all the industries which pay excise duties
(sugar, spirits, matches) out of account, the aggregate production
in the Empire reached already 1,759,000,000 roubles, _i.e._,
£180,000,000. The most noteworthy feature of this increase is, that
while the number of workmen employed in the manufactures has not even
doubled since 1861 (it attained 1,555,000 in 1894, and 1,902,750
in 1910), the production per workman has more than trebled in the
leading industries. The average was less than £70 per annum in 1861;
it reaches now £219. The increase of production is thus chiefly due
to the improvement of machinery.[3]

If we take, however, separate branches, and especially the textile
industries and the machinery works, the progress appears still more
striking. Thus, if we consider the eighteen years which preceded 1879
(when the import duties were increased by nearly 30 per cent. and a
protective policy was definitely adopted), we find that even without
protective duties the bulk of production in cottons increased three
times, while the number of workers employed in that industry rose by
only 25 per cent. The yearly production of each worker had thus grown
from £45 to £117. During the next nine years (1880-1889) the yearly
returns were more than doubled, attaining the respectable figure of
£49,000,000 in money and 3,200,000 cwts. in bulk. Since that time,
from 1890 to 1900, it has doubled once more, the quantity of raw
cotton worked in the Russian factories having increased from 255,000
to 520,700 cwts., and the number of spindles having grown from
3,457,000 to 6,646,000 in 1900, and to 8,306,000 in 1910. It must
also be remarked that, with a population of 165,000,000 inhabitants,
the home market for Russian cottons is almost unlimited; while some
cottons are also exported to Persia and Central Asia.[4]

True, that the finest sorts of yarn, as well as sewing cotton, have
still to be imported. But Lancashire manufacturers will soon see
to that; they now plant their mills in Russia. Two large mills for
spinning the finest sorts of cotton yarn were opened in Russia in
1897, with the aid of English capital and English engineers, and
a factory for making thin wire for cotton-carding has lately been
opened at Moscow by a well-known Manchester manufacturer. Several
more have followed since. Capital is international and, protection or
no protection, it crosses the frontiers.

The same is true of woollens. In this branch Russia was for a certain
time relatively backward. However, wool-combing, spinning and weaving
mills, provided with the best modern plant, were built every year in
Russia and Poland by English, German and Belgian mill-owners; so that
now four-fifths of the ordinary wool, and as much of the finer sorts
obtainable in Russia, are combed and spun at home--one fifth part
only of each being sent abroad. The times when Russia was known as
an exporter of raw wool are thus irretrievably gone.[5]

In machinery works no comparison can even be made between nowadays
and 1861, or even 1870. Thanks to English and French engineers
to begin with, and afterwards to technical progress within the
country itself, Russia needs no longer to import any part of her
railway plant. And as to agricultural machinery, we know, from
several British Consular reports, that Russian reapers and ploughs
successfully compete with the same implements of both American
and English make. During the years 1880 to 1890, this branch of
manufactures has largely developed in the Southern Urals (as a
village industry, brought into existence by the Krasnoufimsk
Technical School of the local District Council, or _zemstvo_), and
especially on the plains sloping towards the Sea of Azov. About
this last region Vice-Consul Green reported, in 1894, as follows:
“Besides some eight or ten factories of importance,” he wrote, “the
whole of the consular district is now studded with small engineering
works, engaged chiefly in the manufacture of agricultural machines
and implements, most of them having their own foundries.... The
town of Berdyansk,” he added, “can now boast of the largest reaper
manufactory in Europe, capable of turning out three thousand machines
annually.”[6]

Let me add that the above-mentioned figures, including only those
manufactures which show a yearly return of more than £200, do not
include the immense variety of domestic trades which also have
considerably grown of late, side by side with the manufactures. The
domestic industries--so characteristic of Russia, and so necessary
under her climate--occupy now more than 7,500,000 peasants, and
their aggregate production was estimated a few years ago at more
than the aggregate production of all the manufactures. It exceeded
£180,000,000 per annum. I shall have an occasion to return later on
to this subject, so that I shall be sober of figures, and merely
say that even in the chief manufacturing provinces of Russia round
about Moscow domestic weaving--for the trade--shows a yearly return
of £4,500,000; and that even in Northern Caucasia, where the petty
trades are of a recent origin, there are, in the peasants’ houses,
45,000 looms showing a yearly production of £200,000.

As to the mining industries, notwithstanding over-protection, and
notwithstanding the competition of fuelwood and naphtha,[7] the
output of the coal mines of Russia has doubled during the years
1896-1904, and in Poland it has increased fourfold.[8] Nearly all
steel, three-quarters of the iron, and two-thirds of the pig-iron
used in Russia are home produce, and the eight Russian works for
the manufacture of steel rails are strong enough to throw on the
market over 10,000,000 cwts. of rails every year (10,068,000 cwts. in
1910).[9]

       *       *       *       *       *

It is no wonder, therefore, that the imports of manufactured goods
into Russia are so insignificant, and that since 1870--that is,
nine years before the general increase of duties--the proportion
of manufactured goods to the aggregate imports has been on a steady
decrease. Manufactured goods make now only one-fifth of the imports,
and only occasionally rise to one-third, as was the case in 1910--a
year of maximal imports. Besides, while the imports of Britain into
Russia were valued at £16,300,000 in 1872, they were only £6,884,500
to £11,320,000 in the years 1894 to 1909. Out of them, manufactured
goods were valued at a little more than £2,000,000--the remainder
being either articles of food or raw and half-manufactured goods
(metals, yarn and so on). They reached £15,300,000 in 1910--a year
of maximum, and consisted chiefly of machinery and coal. In fact,
the imports of British home produce have declined in the course of
ten years from £8,800,000 to £5,000,000, so as to reduce in 1910
the value of British manufactured goods imported into Russia to
the following trifling items: machinery, £1,320,000; cottons and
cotton yarn, £360,000; woollens and woollen yarn, £480,000; chemical
produce, £476,000; and so on. But the depreciation of British goods
imported into Russia is still more striking. Thus, in 1876 Russia
imported 8,000,000 cwts. of British metals, and they were paid
£6,000,000; but in 1884, although the same quantity was imported, the
amount paid was only £3,400,000. And the same depreciation is seen
for all imported goods, although not always in the same proportion.

It would be a gross error to imagine that the decline of foreign
imports is mainly due to high protective duties. The decline of
imports is much better explained by the growth of home industries.
The protective duties have no doubt contributed (together with other
causes) towards attracting German and English manufacturers to Poland
and Russia. Lodz--the Manchester of Poland--is quite a German city,
and the Russian trade directories are full of English and German
names. English and German capitalists, English engineers and foremen,
have planted within Russia the improved cotton manufactures of
their mother countries; they are busy now in improving the woollen
industries and the production of machinery; while Belgians have
rapidly created a great iron industry in South Russia. There is
now not the slightest doubt--and this opinion is shared, not only
by economists, but also by several Russian manufacturers--that a
free-trade policy would not check the further growth of industries in
Russia. It would only reduce the high profits of those manufacturers
who do not improve their factories and chiefly rely upon cheap labour
and long hours.

Moreover, as soon as Russia succeeds in obtaining more freedom, a
further growth of her industries will immediately follow. Technical
education--which, strange to say, was for a long time systematically
suppressed by the Government--would rapidly grow and spread; and in a
few years, with her natural resources and her laborious youth, which
even now tries to combine workmanship with science, Russia would
see her industrial powers increase tenfold. She _farà da sè_ in the
industrial field. She will manufacture all she needs; and yet she
will remain an agricultural nation.

At the present time only a little more than 1,500,000 men and women,
out of the 112,000,000 strong population of European Russia, work in
manufactures, and 7,500,000 combine agriculture with manufacturing.
This figure may treble without Russia ceasing to be an agricultural
nation; but if it be trebled, there will be no room for imported
manufactured goods, because an agricultural country can produce
them cheaper than those countries which live on imported food. Let
us not forget that in the United Kingdom 1,087,200 persons, all
taken, are employed in _all_ the textile industries of England,
Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and that _only_ 300,000 out of them
are males above eighteen years of age (311,000 in 1907); that these
workpeople keep going 53,000,000 spindles and more than 700,000
looms in the cotton factories only; and that the yearly production
of textiles during the last few years was so formidable that it
represented a value of £200,000,000, and that the average value of
textiles exported every year attained £136,257,500 in 1905-1910--to
say nothing of the £163,400,000 reached in the extraordinary year of
1911.[10]

       *       *       *       *       *

The same is still more true with regard to other European nations,
much more advanced in their industrial development, and especially
with regard to Germany. So much has been written about the
competition which Germany offers to British trade, even in the
British markets, and so much can be learned about it from a mere
inspection of the London shops, that I need not enter into lengthy
details. Several articles in reviews; the correspondence exchanged
on the subject in _The Daily Telegraph_ in August, 1886; numerous
consular reports, regularly summed up in the leading newspapers, and
still more impressive when consulted in originals; and, finally,
political speeches, have familiarised the public opinion of this
country with the importance and the powers of German competition.[11]
Moreover, the forces which German industry borrows from the technical
training of her workmen, engineers and numerous scientific men, have
been so often discussed by the promoters of technical education in
England that the sudden growth of Germany as an industrial power can
be denied no more.

Where half a century was required in olden times to develop an
industry, a few years are sufficient now. In the year 1864 only
160,000 cwts. of raw cotton were imported into Germany, and only
16,000 cwts. of cotton goods were exported; cotton spinning and
weaving were mostly insignificant home industries. Twenty years
later the imports of raw cotton were already 3,600,000 cwts., and
in another twenty years they rose to 7,400,000 cwts.; while the
exports of cottons and yarn, which were valued at £3,600,000 in
1883, and £7,662,000 in 1893, attained £19,000,000 in 1905. A great
industry was thus created in less than thirty years, and has been
growing since. The necessary technical skill was developed, and at
the present time Germany remains tributary to Lancashire for the
finest sorts of yarn only. However, it is very probable that even
this disadvantage will soon be equalised.[12] Very fine spinning
mills have lately been erected, and the emancipation from Liverpool,
by means of a cotton exchange established at Bremen, is in fair
progress.[13]

In the woollen trade we see the same rapid increase, and in 1910 the
value of the exports of woollen goods attained £13,152,500 (against
£8,220,300 in 1894), out of which £1,799,000 worth were sent on the
average to the United Kingdom during the years 1906-1910.[14] The
flax industry has grown at a still speedier rate, and as regards
silks Germany is second only to France.

The progress realised in the German chemical trade is well known,
and it is only too badly felt in Scotland and Northumberland; while
the reports on the German iron and steel industries which one finds
in the publications of the Iron and Steel Institute and in the
inquiry which was made by the British Iron Trade Association show how
formidably the production of pig-iron and of finished iron has grown
in Germany since 1871. (See Appendix D.) No wonder that the imports
of iron and steel into Germany were reduced by one-half during the
twenty years, 1874-1894, while the exports grew nearly four times.
As to the machinery works, if the Germans have committed the error
of too slavishly copying English patterns, instead of taking a new
departure, and of creating new patterns, as the Americans did, we
must still recognise that their copies are good and that they very
successfully compete in cheapness with the tools and machinery
produced in this country. (See Appendix E.) I hardly need mention the
superior make of German scientific apparatus. It is well known to
scientific men, even in France.

In consequence of the above, the imports of manufactured goods into
Germany are, as a rule, in decline. The aggregate imports of textiles
(inclusive of yarn) stand so low as to be compensated by nearly
equal values of exports. And there is no doubt that not only the
German markets for textiles will be soon lost for other manufacturing
countries, but that German competition will be felt stronger and
stronger both in the neutral markets and those of Western Europe.
One can easily win applause from uninformed auditories by exclaiming
with more or less pathos that German produce can _never_ equal the
English! The fact is, that it competes in cheapness, and sometimes
also--where it is needed--in an equally good workmanship; and this
circumstance is due to many causes.

The “cheap labour” cause, so often alluded to in discussions about
“German competition,” which take place in this country and in France,
must be dismissed by this time, since it has been well proved by
so many recent investigations that low wages and long hours do not
necessarily mean cheap produce. Cheap labour and protection simply
mean the possibility for a number of employers to continue working
with obsolete and bad machinery; but in highly developed staple
industries, such as the cotton and the iron industries, the cheapest
produce is obtained with high wages, short hours and the best
machinery. When the number of operatives which is required for each
1000 spindles can vary from seventeen (in many Russian factories)
to three (in England), and when one weaver can look either after
twenty Northrop machine-looms, as we see it in the United States, or
after two machine-looms only, as it is the case in backward mills,
then it is evident that no reduction of wages can compensate for
that immense difference. Consequently, in the best German cotton
mills and ironworks the wages of the worker (we know it directly for
the ironworks from the above-mentioned inquiry of the British Iron
Trade Association) are not lower than they are in Great Britain. All
that can be said is, that the worker in Germany gets more for his
wages than he gets in this country--the paradise of the middleman--a
paradise which it will remain so long as it lives chiefly on imported
food produce.

The chief reason for the successes of Germany in the industrial field
is the same as it is for the United States. Both countries have only
lately entered the industrial phase of their development, and they
have entered it with all the energy of youth. Both countries enjoy
a widely-spread scientifically-technical--or, at least, concrete
scientific--education. In both countries manufactories are built
according to the newest and best models which have been worked out
elsewhere; and both countries are in a period of awakening in all
branches of activity--literature and science, industry and commerce.
They enter now on the same phase in which Great Britain was in the
first half of the nineteenth century, when British workers took such
a large part in the invention of the wonderful modern machinery.

We have simply before us a fact of _the consecutive development of
nations_. And instead of decrying or opposing it, it would be much
better to see whether the two pioneers of the great industry--Britain
and France--cannot take a new initiative and do something new again;
whether an issue for the creative genius of these two nations must
not be sought for in a new direction--namely, the utilisation of both
the land and the industrial powers of man for securing well-being to
the whole nation instead of to the few.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Appendix A.

[2] See Appendix B.

[3] For the last few years, since the Japanese war, the figures
were uncertain. It appeared, however, in 1910, that there were in
the empire, including the industries paying an excise duty, 19,983
establishments, employing 2,253,790 persons, and showing a yearly
production of 4,565,400,000 roubles (£494,600,000). Out of them,
the industrial establishments under the factory inspectors in
European Russia proper, Poland, and the four northern provinces of
Caucasia numbered 15,720, employing 1,951,955 workpeople, out of whom
1,227,360 were men, 521,236 women, and 203,359 children.

[4] The yearly imports of raw cotton from Central Asia and
Transcaucasia represent, as a rule, about one-tenth part of the total
imports of raw cotton (£1,086,000, as against £11,923,000 in 1910).
They are quite a recent growth, the first plantations of the American
cotton tree having been introduced in Turkestan by the Russians, as
well as the first sorting and pressing establishments. The relative
cheapness of the plain cottons in Russia, and the good qualities
of the printed cottons, attracted the attention of the British
Commissioner at the Nijni Novgorod Exhibition in 1897, and are spoken
of at some length in his report.

[5] The yearly production of the 1,037 woollen mills of Russia and
Poland (149,850 workpeople) was valued at about £25,000,000 in 1910,
as against £12,000,000 in 1894.

[6] Report of Vice-Consul Green, _The Economist_, 9th June, 1894:
“Reapers of a special type, sold at £15 to £17, are durable and go
through more work than either the English or the American reapers.”
In the year 1893, 20,000 reaping machines, 50,000 ploughs, and so on,
were sold in that district only, representing a value of £822,000.
Were it not for the simply prohibitive duties imposed upon foreign
pig-iron (two and a half times its price in the London market), this
industry would have taken a still greater development. But in order
to protect the home iron industry--which consequently continued
to cling to obsolete forms in the Urals--a duty of 61s. a ton of
imported pig-iron was levied. The consequences of this policy for
Russian agriculture, railways and State’s budget have been discussed
in full in a work by A. A. Radzig, _The Iron Industry of the World_.
St. Petersburg, 1896 (Russian).

[7] Out of the 1,500 steamers which ply on Russian rivers one-quarter
are heated with naphtha, and one-half with wood; wood is also the
chief fuel of the railways and ironworks in the Urals.

[8] The output was, in 1910, 24,146,000 tons in European Russia, and
1,065,000 tons in Siberia.

[9] See Appendix C.

[10] Here are the figures obtained by the official census of 1908. In
all the cotton industry, only 220,563 men (including boys), 262,245
women, and 90,061 girls less than eighteen years old were employed.
They produced 6,417,798,000 yards of unbleached gray, and 611,824,000
yards of bleached white and coloured cottons--that is, 160 yards
per head of population--and 1,507,381,000 lb. of yarn, valued
£96,000,000. We have thus 12,271 yards of cotton, and 2,631 lb. of
yarn per person of workpeople employed. For woollens and worsted
there were 112,438 men and boys, 111,492 women, and 34,087 girls
under eighteen. The value (incomplete) of the woven goods was about
£40,250,000, and that of the yarn about £21,000,000. These figures
are most instructive, as they show how much man can produce with the
present machinery. Unfortunately, the real productivity in a modern
factory is not yet understood by the economists. Thus, we saw lately
Russian economists very seriously maintaining that it was necessary
to “proletarize” the peasants (about 100,000,000) in order to create
a great industry. We see now that if one-fourth, or even one-fifth,
part only of the yearly increase of the population took to industry
(as it has done in Germany), Russian factories would soon produce
such quantities of all sorts of manufactured goods, that they would
be able to supply with them 400 or 500 million people, in addition to
the population of the Russian Empire.

[11] Many facts in point have also been collected in a little book,
_Made in Germany_, by E. E. Williams. Unhappily, the facts relative
to the recent industrial development of Germany are so often used
in a partisan spirit in order to promote protection that their real
importance is often misunderstood.

[12] Francke, _Die neueste Entwickelung der Textil-Industrie in
Deutschland_.

[13] _Cf._ Schulze Gäwernitz, _Der Grossbetrieb_, etc.--See
Appendixes D, E, F.

[14] The imports of German woollen stuffs into this country have
steadily grown from £607,444 in 1890 to £907,569 in 1894, and
£1,822,514 in 1910. The British exports to Germany (of woollen stuffs
and yarns) have also grown, but not in the same proportion. They were
valued at £2,769,392 in 1890, £3,017,163 in 1894, and £4,638,000 in
1906-1910 (a five years’ average).




CHAPTER II.

THE DECENTRALISATION OF INDUSTRIES--(_continued_).

  Italy and Spain--India--Japan--The United States--The cotton,
  woollen, and silk trades--The growing necessity for each country
  to rely chiefly upon home consumers.


The flow of industrial growths spreads, however, not only east; it
moves also south-east and south. Austria and Hungary are rapidly
gaining ground in the race for industrial importance. The Triple
Alliance has already been menaced by the growing tendency of Austrian
manufacturers to protect themselves against German competition; and
even the dual monarchy has seen its two sister nations quarrelling
about customs duties. Austrian industries are a modern growth,
and still they already give occupation to more than 4,000,000
workpeople.[15] Bohemia, in a few decades, has grown to be an
industrial country of considerable importance; and the excellence and
originality of the machinery used in the newly reformed flour-mills
of Hungary show that the young industry of Hungary is on the right
road, not only to become a competitor to her elder sisters, but also
to add her share to our knowledge as to the use of the forces of
nature. Let me add, by the way, that the same is true to some extent
with regard to Finland. Figures are wanting as to the present state
of the aggregate industries of Austria-Hungary; but the relatively
low imports of manufactured goods are worthy of note. For British
manufacturers Austria-Hungary is, in fact, no customer worth speaking
of; but even with regard to Germany she is rapidly emancipating
herself from her former dependence. (See Appendix G.)

The same industrial progress extends over the southern peninsulas.
Who would have spoken in 1859 about Italian manufactures? And
yet--the Turin Exhibition of 1884 has shown it--Italy ranks already
among the manufacturing countries. “You see everywhere a considerable
industrial and commercial effort made,” wrote a French economist to
the _Temps_. “Italy aspires to go on without foreign produce. The
patriotic watchword is, Italy all by herself. It inspires the whole
mass of producers. There is not a single manufacturer or tradesman
who, even in the most trifling circumstances, does not do his best to
emancipate himself from foreign guardianship.” The best French and
English patterns are imitated and improved by a touch of national
genius and artistic traditions. Complete statistics are wanting, so
that the statistical _Annuario_ resorts to indirect indications. But
the rapid increase of imports of coal (9,339,000 tons in 1910, as
against 779,000 tons in 1871); the growth of the mining industries,
which have trebled their production during the fifteen years, 1870 to
1885; the increasing production of steel and machinery (£4,800,000
in 1900), which--to use Bovio’s words--shows how a country having
no fuel nor minerals of her own can have nevertheless a notable
metallurgical industry; and, finally, the growth of textile
industries disclosed by the net imports of raw cottons and the number
of spindles[16]--all these show that the tendency towards becoming
a manufacturing country capable of satisfying her needs by her own
manufactures is not a mere dream. As to the efforts made for taking
a more lively part in the trade of the world, who does not know the
traditional capacities of the Italians in that direction?

I ought also to mention Spain, whose textile mining and metallurgical
industries are rapidly growing; but I hasten to go over to countries
which a few years ago were considered as eternal and obligatory
customers to the manufacturing nations of Western Europe. Let us
take, for instance, Brazil. Was it not doomed by economists to grow
cotton, to export it in a raw state, and to receive cotton goods in
exchange? In 1870 its nine miserable cotton mills could boast only
of an aggregate of 385 spindles. But already in 1887 there were in
Brazil 46 cotton mills, and five of them had already 40,000 spindles;
while altogether their nearly 10,000 looms threw every year on the
Brazilian markets more than 33,000,000 yards of cotton stuffs.

Twenty five years later, in 1912, there were already 161 cotton
mills, with 1,500,000 spindles and 50,000 looms, employing over
100,000 operatives.[17] Even Vera Cruz, in Mexico, under the
protection of customs officers, has begun to manufacture cottons, and
boasted in 1887 its 40,200 spindles, 287,700 pieces of cotton cloth,
and 212,000 lb. of yarn. Since that year progress has been steady,
and in 1894 Vice-Consul Chapman reported that some of the finest
machines are to be found at the Orizaba spinning mills, while “cotton
prints,” he wrote, “are now turned out as good if not superior to
the imported article.”[18] In 1910, 32,000 workpeople were already
employed in 145 cotton mills, which had 703,000 spindles, and 25,000
power-looms.[19]

The flattest contradiction to the export theory has, however, been
given by India. She was always considered as the surest customer for
British cottons, and so she has been until quite lately. Out of the
total of cotton goods exported from Britain she used to buy more than
one-quarter, very nearly one-third (from £17,000,000 to £22,000,000,
out of an aggregate of about £75,000,000 in the years 1880-1890). But
things have begun to change, and in 1904-1907 the exports were only
from £21,680,000 to £25,680,000 out of an aggregate of £110,440,000.
The Indian cotton manufactures, which--for some causes not fully
explained--were so unsuccessful at their beginnings, suddenly took
firm root.

In 1860 they consumed only 23,000,000 lb. of raw cotton, but the
quantity was nearly four times as much in 1877, and it trebled again
within the next ten years: 283,000,000 lb. of raw cotton were used in
1887-1888. The number of cotton mills grew up from 40 in 1887 to 147
in 1895; the number of spindles rose from 886,100 to 3,844,300 in the
same years; and where 57,188 workers were employed in 1887, we found,
seven years later, 146,240 operatives. And now, in 1909-1910, we find
237 cotton mills at work, with 6,136,000 spindles, 80,000 looms, and
231,850 workpeople. As for the quality of the mills, the blue-books
praise them; the German chambers of commerce state that the best
spinning mills in Bombay “do not now stand far behind the best German
ones”; and two great authorities in the cotton industry, Mr. James
Platt and Mr. Henry Lee, agree in saying “that in no other country
of the earth except in Lancashire do the operatives possess such a
natural leaning to the textile industry as in India.”[20]

The exports of cotton twist from India more than doubled in five
years (1882-1887), and already in 1887 we could read in the
_Statement_ (p. 62) that “what cotton twist was imported was less
and less of the coarser and even medium kind, which indicates that
the Indian (spinning) mills are gradually gaining hold of the home
markets.” Consequently, while India continued to import nearly the
same amount of British cotton goods and yarn (from £16,000,000
to £25,700,000 in 1900-1908), she threw already in 1887 on the
foreign markets no less than £3,635,510 worth of her own cottons of
Lancashire patterns; she exported 33,000,000 yards of _gray cotton
piece goods_ manufactured in India by Indian workmen. And the export
has continued to grow since, so that in the year 1910-1911 the value
of the piece-goods and yarn exported from India reached the value of
£7,943,700.

The jute factories in India have grown at a still speedier rate, and
the once flourishing jute trade of Dundee was brought to decay, not
only by the high tariffs of continental powers, but also by Indian
competition.[21] Even woollen mills have lately been started; while
the iron industry took a sudden development in India, since the means
were found, after many experiments and failures, to work furnaces
with local coal. In a few years, we are told by specialists, India
will be self-supporting for iron. Nay, it is not without apprehension
that the English manufacturers see that the imports of Indian
manufactured textiles to this country are steadily growing, while
in the markets of the Far East and Africa India becomes a serious
competitor to the mother country.

Why should it not be so? What _might_ prevent the growth of Indian
manufactures? Is it the want of capital? But capital knows no
fatherland; and if high profits can be derived from the work of
Indian coolies whose wages are only one-half of those of English
workmen, or even less, capital will migrate to India, as it has gone
to Russia, although its migration may mean starvation for Lancashire
and Dundee. Is it the want of knowledge? But longitudes and latitudes
are no obstacle to its spreading; it is only the first steps that are
difficult. As to the superiority of workmanship, nobody who knows the
Hindoo worker will doubt about his capacities. Surely they are not
below those of the 36,000 children less than fourteen years of age,
or the 238,000 boys and girls less than eighteen years old, who are
employed in the British textile manufactories.

       *       *       *       *       *

Twenty years surely are not much in the life of nations. And yet
within the last twenty years another powerful competitor has grown
in the East. I mean Japan. In October, 1888, the _Textile Recorder_
mentioned in a few lines that the annual production of yarns in the
cotton mills of Japan had attained 9,498,500 lb., and that fifteen
more mills, which would hold 156,100 spindles, were in course of
erection.[22] Two years later, 27,000,000 lb. of yarn were spun in
Japan; and while in 1887-1888 Japan imported five or six times as
much yarn from abroad as was spun at home, next year two-thirds only
of the total consumption of the country were imported from abroad.[23]

From that date the production grew up regularly. From 6,435,000 lb.
in 1886 it reached 91,950,000 lb. in 1893, and 153,444,000 lb. in
1895. In nine years it had thus increased twenty-four times. Since
then it rose to 413,800,000 lb. in 1909; and we learn from the
_Financial Economical Annual_ for the years 1910 and 1911, published
at Tokio, that there were in Japan, in 1909, no less than 3,756
textile factories, with 1,785,700 spindles and 51,185 power-looms,
to which 783,155 hand-looms must be added. Japan is thus already
a serious competitor of the great industrial nations for tissues
altogether, and especially for cottons, in the markets of Eastern
Asia; and it took it only five-and-twenty years to attain this
position. The total production of tissues, valued at £1,200,000 in
the year 1887, rapidly rose to £14,270,000 in 1895 and to £22,500,000
in 1909--cottons entering into this amount to the extent of nearly
two-fifths. Consequently, the imports of foreign cotton goods from
Europe fell from £1,640,000 in 1884 to £849,600 in 1895, and to
£411,600 in 1910, while the exports of silk goods rose to nearly
£3,000,000.[24]

As to the coal and iron industries, I ventured in the first edition
of this book to predict that the Japanese would not long remain a
tributary to Europe for iron goods--that their ambition was also to
have their own shipbuilding yards, and that the previous year 300
engineers left the Elswick works of Mr. Armstrong in order to start
shipbuilding in Japan. They were engaged for five years only--the
Japanese expecting to have learned enough in five years to be their
own shipbuilders. This prediction has been entirely fulfilled.
Japan has now 1,030 iron and machine works, and she now builds her
own warships. During the last war, the progress realised in all
industries connected with war was rendered fully evident.[25]

All this shows that the much-dreaded invasion of the East upon
European markets is in rapid progress. The Chinese slumber still; but
I am firmly persuaded from what I saw of China that the moment they
will begin to manufacture with the aid of European machinery--and
the first steps have already been made--they will do it with more
success, and necessarily on a far greater scale, than even the
Japanese.

       *       *       *       *       *

But what about the United States, which cannot be accused of
employing cheap labour or of sending to Europe “cheap and nasty”
produce? Their great industry is of yesterday’s date; and yet the
States already send to old Europe constantly increasing quantities of
machinery. In 1890 they began even to export iron, which they obtain
at a very low cost, owing to admirable new methods which they have
introduced in metallurgy.

In the course of twenty years (1870-1890) the number of persons
employed in the American manufactures was more than doubled, and the
value of their produce was nearly trebled; and in the course of the
next fifteen years, the number of persons employed increased again
by nearly fifty per cent., while the value of the produce was nearly
doubled.[26] The cotton industry, supplied with excellent home-made
machinery, has been rapidly developing, so that the yearly production
of textiles attained in 1905 a value of 2,147,441,400 dollars, thus
being twice as large as the yearly production of the United Kingdom
in the same branch (which was valued at about £200,000,000); and
the exports of cottons of domestic manufacture attained in 1910 the
respectable figure of £8,600,000.[27] As to the yearly output of
pig-iron and steel, it is already in excess of the yearly output in
Britain;[28] and the organisation of that industry is also superior,
as Mr. Berkley pointed out, already in 1891, in his address to the
Institute of Civil Engineers.[29]

But all this has grown almost entirely within the last thirty or
forty years--whole industries having been created entirely since
1860.[30] What will, then, American industry be twenty years, hence,
aided as it is by a wonderful development of technical skill, by
excellent schools, a scientific education which goes hand in hand
with technical education, and a spirit of enterprise which is
unrivalled in Europe?

       *       *       *       *       *

Volumes have been written about the crisis of 1886-1887, a crisis
which, to use the words of the Parliamentary Commission, lasted since
1875, with but “a short period of prosperity enjoyed by certain
branches of trade in the years 1880 to 1883,” and a crisis, I shall
add, which extended over all the chief manufacturing countries of the
world. All possible causes of the crisis have been examined; but,
whatever the cacophony of conclusions arrived at, all unanimously
agreed upon one, namely, that of the Parliamentary Commission, which
could be summed up as follows: “The manufacturing countries do not
find such customers as would enable them to realise high profits.”
Profits being the basis of capitalist industry, low profits explain
all ulterior consequences.

Low profits induce the employers to reduce the wages, or the number
of workers, or the number of days of employment during the week, or
eventually compel them to resort to the manufacture of lower kinds
of goods, which, as a rule, are paid worse than the higher sorts. As
Adam Smith said, low profits ultimately mean a reduction of wages,
and low wages mean a reduced consumption by the worker. Low profits
mean also a somewhat reduced consumption by the employer; and both
together mean lower profits and reduced consumption with that immense
class of middlemen which has grown up in manufacturing countries, and
that, again, means a further reduction of profits for the employers.

A country which manufactures to a great extent for export, and
therefore lives to a considerable amount on the profits derived
from her foreign trade, stands very much in the same position as
Switzerland, which lives to a great extent on the profits derived
from the foreigners who visit her lakes and glaciers. A good “season”
means an influx of from £1,000,000 to £2,000,000 of money imported by
the tourists, and a bad “season” has the effects of a bad crop in an
agricultural country: a general impoverishment follows. So it is also
with a country which manufactures for export. If the “season” is bad,
and the exported goods cannot be sold abroad for twice their value at
home, the country which lives chiefly on these bargains suffers. Low
profits for the innkeepers of the Alps mean narrowed circumstances
in large parts of Switzerland; and low profits for the Lancashire
and Scotch manufacturers, and the wholesale exporters, mean narrowed
circumstances in Great Britain. The cause is the same in both cases.

For many decades past we had not seen such a cheapness of wheat
and manufactured goods as we saw in 1883-1884, and yet in 1886 the
country was suffering from a terrible crisis. People said, of course,
that the cause of the crisis was over-production. But over-production
is a word utterly devoid of sense if it does not mean that those who
are in need of all kinds of produce have not the means for buying
them with their low wages. Nobody would dare to affirm that there is
too much furniture in the crippled cottages, too many bedsteads and
bedclothes in the workmen’s dwellings, too many lamps burning in the
huts, and too much cloth on the shoulders, not only of those who used
to sleep (in 1886) in Trafalgar Square between two newspapers, but
even in those households where a silk hat makes a part of the Sunday
dress. And nobody will dare to affirm that there is too much food in
the homes of those agricultural labourers who earn twelve shillings
a week, or of those women who earn from fivepence to sixpence a day
in the clothing trade and other small industries which swarm in the
outskirts of all great cities. Over-production means merely and
simply a want of purchasing powers amidst the workers. And the same
want of purchasing powers of the workers was felt everywhere on the
Continent during the years 1885-1887.

After the bad years were over, a sudden revival of international
trade took place; and, as the British exports rose in four years
(1886 to 1890) by nearly 24 per cent., it began to be said that
there was no reason for being alarmed by foreign competition; that
the decline of exports in 1885-1887 was only temporary, and general
in Europe; and that England, now as of old, fully maintained her
dominant position in the international trade. It is certainly true
that if we consider exclusively the money value of the exports for
the years 1876 to 1895, we see no permanent decline, we notice only
fluctuations. British exports, like commerce altogether, seem to
show a certain periodicity. They fell from £201,000,000 sterling in
1876 to £192,000,000 in 1879; then they rose again to £241,000,000
in 1882, and fell down to £213,000,000 in 1886; again they rose
to £264,000,000 in 1890, but fell again, reaching a minimum of
£216,000,000 in 1894, to be followed next year by a slight movement
upwards.

This periodicity being a fact, Mr. Giffen could make light in 1886 of
“German competition” by showing that exports from the United Kingdom
had not decreased. It can even be said that, per head of population,
they had remained unchanged until 1904, undergoing only the usual ups
and downs.[31] However, when we come to consider the _quantities_
exported, and compare them with the _money values_ of the exports,
even Mr. Giffen had to acknowledge that the prices of 1883 were
so low in comparison with those of 1873 that in order to reach the
same money value the United Kingdom would have had to export four
pieces of cotton instead of three, and eight or ten tons of metallic
goods instead of six. “The aggregate of British foreign trade, if
valued at the prices of ten years previously, would have amounted to
£861,000,000 instead of £667,000,000,” we were told by no less an
authority than the Commission on Trade Depression.

It might, however, be said that 1873 was an exceptional year, owing
to the inflated demand which took place after the Franco-German war.
But the same downward movement continued for a number of years. Thus,
if we take the figures given in the _Statesman’s Year-book_, we see
that while the United Kingdom exported, in 1883, 4,957,000,000 yards
of piece goods (cotton, woollen and linen) and 316,000,000 lb. of
yarn in order to reach an export value of £104,000,000, the same
country had to export, in 1895, no less than 5,478,000,000 yards
of the same stuffs and 330,000,000 lb. of yarn in order to realise
£99,700,000 only. And the figures would have appeared still more
unfavourable if we took the cottons alone. True, the conditions
improved during the last ten years, so that in 1906 the exports were
similar to those of 1873; and they were better still in 1911, which
was a year of an extraordinary foreign trade, when 7,041,000,000
yards of stuffs and 307,000,000 lb. of yarn were exported--the two
being valued at £163,400,000. However, it was especially the yarn
which kept the high prices, because it is the finest sorts of yarn
which are now exported. But the great profits of the years 1873-1880
are irretrievably gone.

We thus see that while the total value of the exports from the United
Kingdom, in proportion to its growing population, remains, broadly
speaking, unaltered for the last thirty years, the high prices which
could be got for the exports thirty years ago, and with them the
high profits, are gone. And no amount of arithmetical calculations
will persuade the British manufacturers that such is not the case.
They know perfectly well that the home markets grow continually
overstocked; that the best foreign markets are escaping; and that
in the neutral markets Britain is being undersold. This is the
unavoidable consequence of the development of manufactures all over
the world. (See Appendix J.)

Great hopes were laid, some time ago, in Australia as a market for
British goods; but Australia will soon do what Canada already does.
She will manufacture. And the colonial exhibitions, by showing to
the “colonists” what they are able to do, and how they must do, are
only accelerating the day when each colony _farà da sè_ in her turn.
Canada and India already impose protective duties on British goods.
As to the much-spoken-of markets on the Congo, and Mr. Stanley’s
calculations and promises of a trade amounting to £26,000,000 a
year if the Lancashire people supply the Africans with loin-cloths,
such promises belong to the same category of fancies as the famous
nightcaps of the Chinese which were to enrich England after the first
Chinese war. The Chinese prefer their own home-made nightcaps; and as
to the Congo people, four countries at least are already competing
for supplying them with their poor dress: Britain, Germany, the
United States, and, last but not least, India.

There was a time when this country had almost the monopoly in the
cotton industries; but already in 1880 she possessed only 55 per
cent. of all the spindles at work in Europe, the United States and
India (40,000,000 out of 72,000,000), and a little more than one-half
of the looms (550,000 out of 972,000). In 1893 the proportion was
further reduced to 49 per cent. of the spindles (45,300,000 out of
91,340,000), and now the United Kingdom has only 41 per cent. of
all the spindles.[32] It was thus losing ground while the others
were winning. And the fact is quite natural: it might have been
foreseen. There is no reason why Britain should always be the great
cotton manufactory of the world, when raw cotton has to be imported
into this country as elsewhere. It was quite natural that France,
Germany, Italy, Russia, India, Japan, the United States, and even
Mexico and Brazil, should begin to spin their own yarns and to weave
their own cotton stuffs. But the appearance of the cotton industry in
a country, or, in fact, of any textile industry, unavoidably becomes
the starting-point for the growth of a series of other industries;
chemical and mechanical works, metallurgy and mining feel at once
the impetus given by a new want. The whole of the home industries,
as also technical education altogether, _must_ improve in order to
satisfy that want as soon as it has been felt.

What has happened with regard to cottons is going on also with regard
to other industries. Great Britain, which stood in 1880 at the head
of the list of countries producing pig-iron, came in 1904 the third
in the same list, which was headed by the United States and Germany;
while Russia, which occupied the seventh place in 1880, comes now
fourth, after Great Britain.[33] Britain and Belgium have no longer
the monopoly of the woollen trade. Immense factories at Verviers
are silent; the Belgian weavers are misery-stricken, while Germany
yearly increases her production of woollens, and exports nine times
more woollens than Belgium. Austria has her own woollens and exports
them; Riga, Lodz, and Moscow supply Russia with fine woollen cloths;
and the growth of the woollen industry in each of the last-named
countries calls into existence hundreds of connected trades.

For many years France has had the monopoly of the silk trade.
Silkworms being reared in Southern France, it was quite natural
that Lyons should grow into a centre for the manufacture of silks.
Spinning, domestic weaving, and dyeing works developed to a great
extent. But eventually the industry took such an extension that home
supplies of raw silk became insufficient, and raw silk was imported
from Italy, Spain and Southern Austria, Asia Minor, the Caucasus and
Japan, to the amount of from £9,000,000 to £11,000,000 in 1875 and
1876, while France had only £800,000 worth of her own silk. Thousands
of peasant boys and girls were attracted by high wages to Lyons and
the neighbouring district; the industry was prosperous.

However, by-and-by new centres of silk trade grew up at Basel and in
the peasant houses round Zürich. French emigrants imported the trade
into Switzerland, and it developed there, especially after the civil
war of 1871. Then the Caucasus Administration invited French workmen
and women from Lyons and Marseilles to teach the Georgians and the
Russians the best means of rearing the silkworm, as well as the
whole of the silk trade; and Stavropol became a new centre for silk
weaving. Austria and the United States did the same; and what are now
the results?

During the years 1872 to 1881 Switzerland more than doubled the
produce of her silk industry; Italy and Germany increased it by
one-third; and the Lyons region, which formerly manufactured to the
value of 454 million francs a year, showed in 1887 a return of only
378 millions. The exports of Lyons silks, which reached an average
of 425,000,000 francs in 1855-1859, and 460,000,000 in 1870-1874,
fell down to 233,000,000 in 1887. And it is reckoned by French
specialists that at present no less than one-third of the silk stuffs
used in France are imported from Zurich, Crefeld, and Barmen. Nay,
even Italy, which has now 191,000 persons engaged in the industry,
sends her silks to France and competes with Lyons.

The French manufacturers may cry as loudly as they like for
protection, or resort to the production of cheaper goods of lower
quality; they may sell 3,250,000 kilogrammes of silk stuffs at the
same price as they sold 2,500,000 in 1855-1859--they will never
again regain the position they occupied before. Italy, Switzerland,
Germany, the United States and Russia have their own silk factories,
and will import from Lyons only the highest qualities of stuffs. As
to the lower sorts, a foulard has become a common attire with the St.
Petersburg housemaids, because the North Caucasian domestic trades
supply them at a price which would starve the Lyons weavers. The
trade has been decentralised, and while Lyons is still a centre for
the higher artistic silks, it will never be again the chief centre
for the silk trade which it was thirty years ago.

Like examples could be produced by the score. Greenock no longer
supplies Russia with sugar, because Russia has plenty of her own
at the same price as it sells at in England. The watch trade is no
more a speciality of Switzerland: watches are now made everywhere.
India extracts from her ninety collieries two-thirds of her annual
consumption of coal. The chemical trade which grew up on the banks of
the Clyde and Tyne, owing to the special advantages offered for the
import of Spanish pyrites and the agglomeration of such a variety of
industries along the two estuaries, is now in decay. Spain, with the
help of English capital, is beginning to utilise her own pyrites for
herself; and Germany has become a great centre for the manufacture
of sulphuric acid and soda--nay, she already complains about
over-production.

       *       *       *       *       *

But enough! I have before me so many figures, all telling the
same tale, that examples could be multiplied at will. It is time
to conclude, and, for every unprejudiced mind, the conclusion is
self-evident. Industries of all kinds decentralise and are scattered
all over the globe; and everywhere a variety, an integrated variety,
of trades grows, instead of specialisation. Such are the prominent
features of the times we live in. Each nation becomes in its turn a
manufacturing nation; and the time is not far off when each nation
of Europe, as well as the United States, and even the most backward
nations of Asia and America, will themselves manufacture nearly
everything they are in need of. Wars and several accidental causes
may check for some time the scattering of industries: they will not
stop it; it is unavoidable. For each new-comer the first steps only
are difficult. But, as soon as any industry has taken firm root,
it calls into existence hundreds of other trades; and as soon as
the first steps have been made, and the first obstacles have been
overcome, the industrial growth goes on at an accelerated rate.

The fact is so well felt, if not understood, that the race for
colonies has become the distinctive feature of the last twenty years.
Each nation will have her own colonies. But colonies will not help.
There is not a second India in the world, and the old conditions
will be repeated no more. Nay, some of the British colonies already
threaten to become serious competitors with their mother country;
others, like Australia, will not fail to follow the same lines. As
to the yet neutral markets, China will never be a serious customer
to Europe: she can produce much cheaper at home; and when she begins
to feel a need for goods of European patterns, she will produce them
herself. Woe to Europe, if on the day that the steam engine invades
China she is still relying on foreign customers! As to the African
half-savages, their misery is no foundation for the well-being of a
civilised nation.

Progress must be looked for in another direction. _It is in producing
for home use._ The customers for the Lancashire cottons and the
Sheffield cutlery, the Lyons silks and the Hungarian flour-mills,
are not in India, nor in Africa. The true consumers of the produce
of our factories must be our own populations. And they _can_ be
that, once we organise our economical life so that they might issue
from their present destitution. No use to send floating shops to
New Guinea with British or German millinery, when there are plenty
of would-be customers for British millinery in these very islands,
and for German goods in Germany. Instead of worrying our brains by
schemes for getting customers abroad, it would be better to try
to answer the following questions: Why the British worker, whose
industrial capacities are so highly praised in political speeches;
why the Scotch crofter and the Irish peasant, whose obstinate labours
in creating new productive soil out of peat bogs are occasionally
so much spoken of, are no customers to the Lancashire weavers, the
Sheffield cutlers and the Northumbrian and Welsh pitmen? Why the
Lyons weavers not only do not wear silks, but sometimes have no food
in their attics? Why the Russian peasants sell their corn, and for
four, six, and sometimes eight months every year are compelled to mix
bark and auroch grass to a handful of flour for baking their bread?
Why famines are so common amidst the growers of wheat and rice in
India?

Under the present conditions of division into capitalists and
labourers, into property-holders and masses living on uncertain
wages, the spreading of industries over new fields is accompanied
by the very same horrible facts of pitiless oppression, massacre of
children, pauperism, and insecurity of life. The Russian Fabrics
Inspectors’ Reports, the Reports of the Plauen Handelskammer, the
Italian inquests, and the reports about the growing industries of
India and Japan are full of the same revelations as the Reports
of the Parliamentary Commissions of 1840 to 1842, or the modern
revelations with regard to the “sweating system” at Whitechapel
and Glasgow, London pauperism, and York unemployment. The Capital
and Labour problem is thus universalised; but, at the same time,
it is also simplified. To return to a state of affairs where corn
is grown, and manufactured goods are fabricated, _for the use of
those very people who grow and produce them_--such will be, no
doubt, the problem to be solved during the next coming years of
European history. Each region will become its own producer and its
own consumer of manufactured goods. But that unavoidably implies
that, at the same time, it will be its own producer and consumer
of agricultural produce; and that is precisely what I am going to
discuss next.


FOOTNOTES:

[15] During the census of 1902, there were in Austria 1,408,000
industrial establishments, with 1,787,000 horse-power, giving
occupation to 4,049,300 workpeople; 1,128,000 workpeople were engaged
in manufactures in Hungary.

[16] The net imports of raw cotton reached 1,180,000 cwts. in 1885,
and 4,120,000 cwts. in 1908; the number of spindles grew from
880,000 in 1877 to 3,800,000 in 1907. The whole industry has grown
up since 1859. In 1910 no less than 358,200 tons of pig-iron and
671,000 tons of steel were produced in Italy. The exports of textiles
reached the following values in 1905-1910: Silks, from £17,800,000
to £24,794,000; cottons, £4,430,000 to £5,040,000; woollens, from
£440,000 to £1,429,000.

[17] _Times_, August 27, 1912.

[18] _The Economist_, 12th May, 1894, p. 9: “A few years ago the
Orizaba mills used entirely imported raw cotton; but now they use
home-grown and home-spun cotton as much as possible.”

[19] _Annuario Estadistico_, 1911. They consumed 34,700 tons of raw
cotton, and produced 13,936,300 pieces of cotton goods, and 554,000
cwts. of yarn.

[20] Schulze Gäwernitz, _The Cotton Trade_, etc., p. 123.

[21] In 1882 they had 5,633 looms and 95,937 spindles. Thirteen
years later these figures were already doubled--there being 10,600
looms and 216,000 spindles. Now, or rather in 1909-1910, we find
60 jute mills, with 31,420 looms, 645,700 spindles, and 204,000
workpeople. The progress realised in the machinery is best seen from
these figures. The exports of jute stuffs from India, which were
only £1,543,870 in 1884-1885, reached £11,333,000 in 1910-1911. (See
Appendix H.)

[22] _Textile Recorder_, 15th October, 1888.

[23] 39,200,000 lb. of yarn were imported in 1886 as against
6,435,000 lb. of home-spun yarn. In 1889 the figures were: 56,633,000
lb. imported and 26,809,000 lb. home-spun.

[24] In 1910 the imports of cotton and woollens were only £2,650,500,
while the exports of cotton yarn, cotton shirtings, and silk
manufactures reached a value of £8,164,800.

[25] The mining industry has grown as follows:--Copper extracted:
2,407 tons in 1875; 49,000 in 1909. Coal: 567,200 tons in 1875:
15,535,000 in 1909. Iron: 3,447 tons in 1875; 15,268 in 1887;
65,000 in 1909. (K. Rathgen, _Japan’s Volkwirthschaft und
Staatshaushaltung_, Leipzig, 1891; Consular Reports.)

[26] Workers employed in manufacturing industries: 2,054,000 in
1870, 4,712,600 in 1890, and 6,723,900 in 1905 (including salaried
officials and clerks). Value of produce: 3,385,861,000 dollars in
1870, 9,372,437,280 dollars in 1890, and 16,866,707,000 in 1905.
Yearly production per head of workers: 1,648 dollars in 1870, 1,989
dollars in 1890, and 2,514 dollars in 1905.

[27] About the cotton industry in the United States, see Appendix I.

[28] It was from 7,255,076 to 9,811,620 tons of pig-iron during
the years 1890-94, and 27,303,600 long tons in 1910 (£85,000,000
worth). The total value of products of the steel works and rolling
mills reached in 1909 the immense value of £197,144,500. In the
_Statesman’s Year-book_ for the years 1910-1912, the reader may
find most striking figures concerning the rapid growth of the iron
and steel industry in the States. We have nothing parallel to it in
Europe.

[29] “The largest output of one blast-furnace in Great Britain does
not exceed 750 tons in the week, while in America it had reached 2000
tons” (_Nature_, 19th Nov., 1891, p. 65). In 1909 the Bessemer steel
plants had 99 converters; total daily capacity of ingots or direct
castings, double turn, in 1909, 45,983 tons.

[30] J. R. Dodge, _Farm and Factory: Aids to Agriculture from other
Industries_, New York and London, 1884, p. 111. I can but highly
recommend this little work to those interested in the question.

[31] Per head of population the exports of British produce appear, in
shillings, as follows:--

  1876   =121s.=
  1877   119s.
  1878   114s.
  1879   _112s._
  1880   129s.
  1881   134s.
  1882   =137s.=
  1883   135s.
  1884   130s.
  1885   118s.
  1886   _117s._
  1887   121s.
  1888   127s.
  1889   134s.
  1890   =141s.=
  1891   131s.
  1892   119s.
  1893   114s.
  1894   _111s._
  1895   112s.
  1896   116s.
  1897   117s.
  1898   116s.
  1899   =130s.=
  1900   =142s.=
  1901   _135s._
  1902   _135s._
  1903   138s.
  1904   141s.
  1905   153s.
  1906   173s.
  1907   =194s.=
  1908   _171s._
  1909   192s.
  1910   =201s.=

[32] The International Federation of the Cotton Industry employers
gave, on March 1, 1909, the following numbers of spindles in the
different countries of the Old and New Worlds:--

  United Kingdom       53,472,000 =  41 per cent.
  United States        27,846,000 =  21    ”
  Germany               9,881,000 =   8    ”
  Russia                7,829,000 =   6    ”
  France                6,750,000 =   5    ”
  British India         5,756,000 =   4    ”
  Other nations        19,262,000 =  15    ”
                      -----------   ---
                      130,796,000 = 100    ”

[33] J. Stephen Jeans, _The Iron Trade of Great Britain_ (London,
Methuen), 1905, p. 46. The reader will find in this interesting
little work valuable data concerning the growth and improvement of
the iron industry in different countries.




CHAPTER III.

THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE.

  The development of agriculture--Over-population prejudice--Can
  the soil of Great Britain feed its inhabitants?--British
  agriculture--Compared with agriculture in France; in Belgium; in
  Denmark--Market-gardening; its achievements--Is it profitable to
  grow wheat in Great Britain?--American agriculture: intensive
  culture in the States.


The industrial and commercial history of the world during the last
fifty years has been a history of decentralisation of industry.
It was not a mere shifting of the centre of gravity of commerce,
such as Europe witnessed in the past, when the commercial hegemony
migrated from Italy to Spain, to Holland, and finally to Britain:
it had a much deeper meaning, as it excluded the very possibility
of commercial or industrial hegemony. It has shown the growth of
quite new conditions, and new conditions require new adaptations. To
endeavour to revive the past would be useless: a new departure must
be taken by civilised nations.

Of course, there will be plenty of voices to argue that the former
supremacy of the pioneers must be maintained at any price: all
pioneers are in the habit of saying so. It will be suggested that the
pioneers must attain such a superiority of technical knowledge and
organisation as to enable them to beat all their younger competitors;
that force must be resorted to if necessary. But force is reciprocal;
and if the god of war always sides with the strongest battalions,
those battalions are strongest which fight for new rights against
outgrown privileges. As to the honest longing for more technical
education--surely let us all have as much of it as possible: it
will be a boon for humanity; for humanity, of course--not for a
single nation, because knowledge cannot be cultivated for home use
only. Knowledge and invention, boldness of thought and enterprise,
conquests of genius and improvements of social organisation have
become international growths; and no kind of progress--intellectual,
industrial or social--can be kept within political boundaries;
it crosses the seas, it pierces the mountains; steppes are no
obstacle to it. Knowledge and inventive powers are now so thoroughly
international that if a simple newspaper paragraph announces
to-morrow that the problem of storing force, of printing without
inking, or of aerial navigation, has received a practical solution in
one country of the world, we may feel sure that within a few weeks
the same problem will be solved, almost in the same way, by several
inventors of different nationalities.[34] Continually we learn that
the same scientific discovery, or technical invention, has been made
within a few days’ distance, in countries a thousand miles apart; as
if there were a kind of atmosphere which favours the germination of a
given idea at a given moment. And such an atmosphere exists: steam,
print and the common stock of knowledge have created it.

Those who dream of monopolising technical genius are therefore
fifty years behind the times. The world--the wide, wide world--is
now the true domain of knowledge; and if each nation displays some
special capacities in some special branch, the various capacities of
different nations compensate one another, and the advantages which
could be derived from them would be only temporary. The fine British
workmanship in mechanical arts, the American boldness for gigantic
enterprise, the French systematic mind, and the German pedagogy, are
becoming international capacities. Sir William Armstrong, in his
works established in Italy and Japan, has already communicated to
Italians and Japanese those capacities for managing huge iron masses
which have been nurtured on the Tyne; the uproarious American spirit
of enterprise pervades the Old World; the French taste for harmony
becomes European taste; and German pedagogy--improved, I dare say--is
at home in Russia. So, instead of trying to keep life in the old
channels, it would be better to see what the new conditions are, what
duties they impose on our generation.

The characters of the new conditions are plain, and their
consequences are easy to understand. As the manufacturing nations of
West Europe are meeting with steadily growing difficulties in selling
their manufactured goods abroad, and getting food in exchange, they
will be compelled to grow their food at home; they will be bound to
rely on home customers for their manufactures, and on home producers
for their food. And the sooner they do so the better.

Two great objections stand, however, in the way against the general
acceptance of such conclusions. We have been taught, both by
economists and politicians, that the territories of the West European
States are so overcrowded with inhabitants that they cannot grow all
the food and raw produce which are necessary for the maintenance of
their steadily increasing populations. Therefore the necessity of
exporting manufactured goods and of importing food. And we are told,
moreover, that even if it were possible to grow in Western Europe all
the food necessary for its inhabitants, there would be no advantage
in doing so as long as the same food can be got cheaper from abroad.
Such are the present teachings and the ideas which are current in
society at large. And yet it is easy to prove that both are totally
erroneous: plenty of food could be grown on the territories of
Western Europe for much more than their present populations, and an
immense benefit would be derived from doing so. These are the two
points which I have now to discuss.

       *       *       *       *       *

To begin by taking the most disadvantageous case: is it possible that
the soil of Great Britain, which at present yields food for one-third
only of its inhabitants, could provide all the necessary amount and
variety of food for 41,000,000 human beings when it covers only
56,000,000 acres all told--forests and rocks, marshes and peat-bogs,
cities, railways and fields--out of which only 33,000,000 acres are
considered as cultivable?[35] The current opinion is, that it by no
means can; and that opinion is so inveterate that we even see men
of science, who are generally cautious when dealing with current
opinions, endorse that opinion without even taking the trouble of
verifying it. It is accepted as an axiom. And yet, as soon as we try
to find out any argument in its favour, we discover that it has not
the slightest foundation, either in facts or in judgment based upon
well-known facts.

Let us take, for instance, J. B. Lawes’ estimates of crops which were
published every year in _The Times_. In his estimate of the year 1887
he made the remark that during the eight harvest years 1853-1860
“nearly three-fourths of the aggregate amount of wheat consumed
in the United Kingdom was of home growth, and little more than
one-fourth was derived from foreign sources”; but five-and-twenty
years later the figures were almost reversed--that is, “during the
eight years 1879-1886, little more than one-third has been provided
by home crops and nearly two-thirds by imports.” But neither the
increase of population by 8,000,000 nor the increase of consumption
of wheat by six-tenths of a bushel per head could account for the
change. In the years 1853-1860 the soil of Britain nourished one
inhabitant on every two acres cultivated: why did it require three
acres in order to nourish the same inhabitant in 1887? The answer is
plain: merely and simply because agriculture had fallen into neglect.

In fact, the area under wheat had been reduced since 1853-1860 by
full 1,590,000 acres, and therefore the average crop of the years
1883-1886 was below the average crop of 1853-1860 by more than
40,000,000 bushels; and this deficit alone represented the food of
more than 7,000,000 inhabitants. At the same time the area under
barley, oats, beans, and other spring crops had also been reduced by
a further 560,000 acres, which, alone, at the low average of thirty
bushels per acre, would have represented the cereals necessary to
complete the above, for the same 7,000,000 inhabitants. It can thus
be said that if the United Kingdom imported cereals for 17,000,000
inhabitants in 1887, instead of for 10,000,000 in 1860, it was simply
because more than 2,000,000 acres had gone out of cultivation.[36]

These facts are well known; but usually they are met with the remark
that the character of agriculture had been altered: that instead of
growing wheat, meat and milk were produced in this country. However,
the figures for 1887, compared with the figures for 1860, show that
the same downward movement took place under the heads of green crops
and the like. The area under potatoes was reduced by 280,000 acres;
under turnips by 180,000 acres; and although there was an increase
under the heads of mangold, carrots, etc., still the aggregate area
under all these crops was reduced by a further 330,000 acres. An
increase of area was found only for permanent pasture (2,800,000
acres) and grass under rotation (1,600,000 acres); but we should look
in vain for a corresponding increase of live stock. The increase of
live stock which took place during those twenty-seven years was not
sufficient to cover even the area reclaimed from waste land.[37]

Since the year 1887 affairs went, however, from worse to worse. If
we take Great Britain alone, we see that in 1885 the area under
all corn crops was 8,392,006 acres; that is very small, indeed, in
comparison to the area which could have been cultivated; but even
that little was further reduced to 7,400,227 acres in 1895. The
area under wheat was 2,478,318 acres in 1885 (as against 3,630,300
in 1874); but it dwindled away to 1,417,641 acres in 1895, while
the area under the other cereals increased by a trifle only--from
5,198,026 acres to 5,462,184--the total loss on all cereals being
nearly 1,000,000 _acres in ten years_! Another 5,000,000 people were
thus compelled to get their food from abroad.

Did the area under green crops increase correspondingly, as it would
have done if it were only the character of agriculture that had
changed? Not in the least! This area was further reduced by nearly
500,000 acres (3,521,602 in 1885, 3,225,762 in 1895, and 3,006,000
in 1909-1911). Or was the area under clover and grasses in rotation
increased in proportion to all these reductions? Alas no! It also was
reduced (4,654,173 acres in 1885, 4,729,801 in 1895, and 4,164,000
acres in 1909-1911). In short, taking all the land that is under
crops in rotation (17,201,490 acres in 1885, 16,166,950 acres in
1895, 14,795,570 only in 1905, and 14,682,550 in 1909-1911), we see
that within the last twenty-six years another 2,500,000 acres went
out of cultivation, without any compensation whatever. It went to
increase that already enormous area of more than 17,000,000 acres
(17,460,000 in 1909-1911)--_more than one-half of the cultivable
area_--which goes under the head of “permanent pasture,” and hardly
suffices to feed one cow on each three acres!

Need I say, after that, that quite to the contrary of what we are
told about the British agriculturists becoming “meat-makers” instead
of “wheat-growers,” no corresponding increase of live stock took
place during the last twenty-five years. Far from devoting the land
freed from cereals to “meat-making,” the country further reduced its
live stock in 1885-1895, and began to show a slight increase during
the last few years only. It had 6,597,964 head of horned cattle in
1885, 6,354,336 in 1895, and 7,057,520 in 1909-1911; 26,534,600 sheep
in 1885, 25,792,200 in 1895, and from 26,500,000 to 27,610,000 in
1909-1911. True, the number of horses increased; every butcher and
greengrocer runs now a horse “to take orders at the gents’ doors” (in
Sweden and Switzerland, by the way, they do it by telephone). But
if we take the numbers of horses used in agriculture, unbroken, and
kept for breeding, we find only small oscillations between 1,408,790
in 1885 and 1,553,000 in 1909. But numbers of horses are imported, as
also the oats and a considerable amount of the hay that is required
for feeding them.[38] And if the consumption of meat has really
increased in this country, it is due to cheap imported meat, not to
the meat that would be produced in these islands.[39]

In short, agriculture has not changed its direction, as we are
often told; it simply went down in all directions. Land is going
out of culture at a perilous rate, while the latest improvements
in market-gardening, fruit-growing and poultry-keeping are but a
mere trifle if we compare them with what has been done in the same
direction in France, Belgium and America.

It must be said that during the last few years there was a slight
improvement. The area under all corn crops was slightly increasing,
and it fluctuated about 7,000,000 acres, the increase being
especially notable for wheat (1,906,000 acres in 1911 as against
1,625,450 in 1907), while the areas under barley and oats were
slightly diminished. But with all that, the surface under corn
crops is still nearly _one-and-a-half million acres_ below what it
was in 1885, and nearly _two-and-a-half million acres_ below 1874.
This represents, let us remember it, the bread-food of _ten million
people_.

The cause of this general downward movement is self-evident. It is
the desertion, the abandonment of the land. Each crop requiring
human labour has had its area reduced; and almost one-half of the
agricultural labourers have been sent away since 1861 to reinforce
the ranks of the unemployed in the cities,[40] so that far from being
over-populated, the fields of Britain are _starved of human labour_,
as James Caird used to say. The British nation does not work on her
soil; _she is prevented from doing so_; and the would-be economists
complain that the soil will not nourish its inhabitants!

I once took a knapsack and went on foot out of London, through
Sussex. I had read Léonce de Lavergne’s work and expected to find
a soil busily cultivated; but neither round London nor still less
further south did I see men in the fields. In the Weald I could walk
for twenty miles without crossing anything but heath or woodlands,
rented as pheasant-shooting grounds to “London gentlemen,” as the
labourers said. “Ungrateful soil” was my first thought; but then I
would occasionally come to a farm at the crossing of two roads and
see the same soil bearing a rich crop; and my next thought was _tel
seigneur, telle terre_, as the French peasants say. Later on I saw
the rich fields of the midland counties; but even there I was struck
by not perceiving the same busy human labour which I was accustomed
to admire on the Belgian and French fields. But I ceased to wonder
when I learnt that only 1,383,000 men and women in England and
Wales work in the fields, while more than 16,000,000 belong to the
“professional, domestic, indefinite, and unproductive class,” as
these pitiless statisticians say. One million human beings cannot
productively cultivate an area of 33,000,000 acres, unless they can
resort to the Bonanza farm’s methods of culture.

Again, taking Harrow as the centre of my excursions, I could walk
five miles towards London, or turning my back upon it, and I could
see nothing east or west but meadow land on which they hardly cropped
two tons of hay per acre--scarcely enough to keep alive one milch
cow on each two acres. Man is conspicuous by his absence from those
meadows; he rolls them with a heavy roller in the spring; he spreads
some manure every two or three years; then he disappears until the
time has come to make hay. And that--within ten miles from Charing
Cross, close to a city with 5,000,000 inhabitants, supplied with
Flemish and Jersey potatoes, French salads and Canadian apples. In
the hands of the Paris gardeners, each thousand acres situated within
the same distance from the city would be cultivated by at least 2,000
human beings, who would get vegetables to the value of from £50 to
£300 per acre. But here the acres which only need human hands to
become an inexhaustible source of golden crops lie idle, and they say
to us, “Heavy clay!” without even knowing that in the hands of man
there are no unfertile soils; that the most fertile soils are not in
the prairies of America, nor in the Russian steppes; that they are in
the peat-bogs of Ireland, on the sand downs of the northern sea-coast
of France, on the craggy mountains of the Rhine, where they have been
made by man’s hands.

The most striking fact is, however, that in some undoubtedly fertile
parts of the country things are even in a worse condition. My heart
simply ached when I saw the state in which land is kept in South
Devon, and when I learned to know what “permanent pasture” means.
Field after field is covered with nothing but grass, three inches
high, and thistles in profusion. Twenty, thirty such fields can
be seen at one glance from the top of every hill; and thousands
of acres are in that state, notwithstanding that the grandfathers
of the present generation have devoted a formidable amount of
labour to the clearing of that land from the stones, to fencing it,
roughly draining it and the like. In every direction I could see
abandoned cottages and orchards going to ruin. A whole population
has disappeared, and even its last vestiges must disappear if things
continue to go on as they have gone. And this takes place in a part
of the country endowed with a most fertile soil and possessed of a
climate which is certainly more congenial than the climate of Jersey
in spring and early summer--a land upon which even the poorest
cottagers occasionally raise potatoes as early as the first half of
May. But how can that land be cultivated when there is nobody to
cultivate it? “We have fields; men go by, but never go in,” an old
labourer said to me; and so it is in reality.[41]

Such were my impressions of British agriculture twenty years ago.
Unfortunately, both the official statistical data and the mass
of private evidence published since tend to show that but little
improvement took place in the general conditions of agriculture in
this country within the last twenty years. Some successful attempts
in various new directions have been made in different parts of the
country, and I will have the pleasure to mention them further on, the
more so as they show what a quite average soil in these islands can
give when it is properly treated. But over large areas, especially
in the southern counties, the general conditions are even worse than
they were twenty years ago.

Altogether one cannot read the mass of review and newspaper articles,
and books dealing with British agriculture that have been published
lately, without realising that the agricultural depression which
began in the “seventies” and the “eighties” of the nineteenth century
had causes much more deeply seated than the fall in the prices of
wheat in consequence of American competition. However, it would lie
beyond the scope of this book to enter here into such a discussion.
Moreover, anyone who will read a few review articles written from
the points of view of different parties, or consult such books as
that of Mr. Christopher Turnor,[42] or study the elaborate inquest
made by Rider Haggard in twenty-six counties of England--paying
more attention to the _data_ accumulated in this book than to
the sometimes biassed conclusions of the author--will soon see
himself what are the causes which hamper the development of British
agriculture.[43]

In Scotland the conditions are equally bad. The population described
as “rural” is in a steady decrease: in 1911 it was already less than
800,000; and as regards the agricultural labourers, their number has
decreased by 42,370 (from 135,970 to 93,600) in the twenty years,
1881 to 1901. _The land goes out of culture_, while the area under
“deer forests”--that is, under hunting grounds established upon what
formerly was _arable_ land for the amusement of the rich--increases
at an appalling rate. No need to say that at the same time the Scotch
population is emigrating, and Scotland is depopulated at an appalling
speed.

My chief purpose being to show here what _can and ought to be_
obtained from the land under a proper and intelligent treatment,
I shall only indicate one of the disadvantages of the systems of
husbandry in vogue in this country. Both landlords and farmers
gradually came of late to pursue other aims than that of obtaining
from the land the greatest amount of produce than can be obtained;
and when this problem of a maximum productivity of the land arose
before the European nations, and therefore a complete modification of
the methods of husbandry was rendered imperative, such a modification
was _not_ accomplished in this country. While in France, Belgium,
Germany and Denmark the agriculturists did their best to meet the
effects of American competition by rendering their culture more
intensive in all directions, in this country the already antiquated
method of reducing the area under corn crops and laying land for
grass continues to prevail, although it ought to be evident that
mere _grazing_ will pay no more, and that some effort in the right
direction would increase the returns of the corn crops, as also those
of the roots and plants cultivated for industrial purposes. The land
continues to go out of culture, while the problem of the day is to
render culture more and more intensive.

Many causes have combined to produce that undesirable result. The
concentration of land-ownership in the hands of big landowners; the
high profits obtained previously; the development of a class of both
landlords and farmers who rely chiefly upon other incomes than those
they draw from the land, and for whom farming has thus become a sort
of pleasant by-occupation or sport; the rapid development of game
reserves for sportsmen, both British and foreign; the absence of
men of initiative who would have shown to the nation the necessity
of a new departure; the absence of a desire to win the necessary
knowledge, and the absence of institutions which could widely spread
practical agricultural knowledge and introduce improved seeds and
seedlings, as the Experimental Farms of the United States and Canada
are doing; the dislike of that spirit of agricultural co-operation to
which the Danish farmers owe their successes, and so on--all these
stand in the way of the unavoidable change in the methods of farming,
and produce the results of which the British writers on agriculture
are complaining.[44] But it is self-evident that in order to compete
with countries where machinery is largely used and new methods of
farming are resorted to (including the industrial treatment of farm
produce in sugar works, starch works, and the drying of vegetables,
etc., connected with farming), the old methods cannot do; especially
when the farmer has to pay a rent of twenty, forty, and occasionally
fifty shillings per acre for wheat-lands.

       *       *       *       *       *

It may be said, of course, that this opinion strangely contrasts with
the well-known superiority of British agriculture. Do we not know,
indeed, that British crops average twenty-eight to thirty bushels
of wheat per acre, while in France they reach only from seventeen
to twenty bushels? Does it not stand in all almanacs that Britain
gets every year £200,000,000 sterling worth of animal produce--milk,
cheese, meat and wool--from her fields? All that is true, and there
is no doubt that in many respects British agriculture is superior to
that of many other nations. As regards obtaining the greatest amount
of produce with the least amount of labour, Britain undoubtedly took
the lead until she was superseded by America in the Bonanza farms
(now disappeared or rapidly disappearing). Again, as regards the fine
breeds of cattle, the splendid state of the meadows and the results
obtained in separate farms, there is much to be learned from Britain.
But a closer acquaintance with British agriculture as a whole
discloses many features of inferiority.

However splendid, a meadow remains a meadow, much inferior in
productivity to a corn-field; and the fine breeds of cattle appear
to be poor creatures as long as each ox requires three acres of land
to be fed upon. As regards the crops, certainly one may indulge in
some admiration at the average twenty-eight or thirty bushels grown
in this country; but when we learn that only 1,600,000 to 1,900,000
acres out of the cultivable 33,000,000 bear such crops, we are quite
disappointed. Anyone could obtain like results if he were to put all
his manure into one-twentieth part of the area which he possesses.
Again, the twenty-eight to thirty bushels no longer appear to us so
satisfactory when we learn that without any manuring, merely by means
of a good culture, they have obtained at Rothamstead an average of
14 bushels per acre from the same plot of land for forty consecutive
years;[45] while Mr. Prout, in his farm near Sawbridgeworth (Herts),
on a cold heavy clay, has obtained since 1861 crops of from thirty
to thirty-eight bushels of wheat, year after year, without any farm
manure at all, by good steam ploughing and artificial manure only.
(R. Haggard, I. 528.) Under the allotment system the crops reach
forty bushels. In some farms they occasionally attain even fifty and
fifty-seven bushels per acre.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Proportion of the cultivated area which is
given to cereals altogether, and to wheat, in Great Britain and
Ireland.]

If we intend to have a correct appreciation of British agriculture,
we must not base it upon what is obtained on a few selected and
well-manured plots; we must inquire what is done with the territory,
taken as a whole.[46] Now, out of each 1,000 acres of the aggregate
territory of England, Wales and Scotland, 435 acres are left under
wood, coppice, heath, buildings, and so on. We need not find fault
with that division, because it depends very much upon natural
causes. In France and Belgium one-third of the territory is in like
manner also treated as uncultivable, although portions of it are
continually reclaimed and brought under culture. But, leaving
aside the “uncultivable” portion, let us see what is done with the
565 acres out of 1,000 of the “cultivable” part (32,145,930 acres
in Great Britain in 1910). First of all, it is divided into two
parts, and one of them, the largest--308 acres out of 1,000--is left
under “permanent pasture,” that is, in most cases it is entirely
uncultivated. Very little hay is obtained from it,[47] and some
cattle are grazed upon it. More than one-half of the cultivable area
is thus left without cultivation, and only 257 acres out of each
1,000 acres are under culture. Out of these last, 124 acres are
under corn crops, twenty-one acres under potatoes, fifty-three acres
under green crops, and seventy-three acres under clover fields and
grasses under rotation. And finally, out of the 124 acres given to
corn crops, the best thirty-three, and some years only twenty-five
acres (one-fortieth part of the territory, one-twenty-third of the
cultivable area), are picked out and sown with wheat. They are
well cultivated, well manured, and upon them an average of from
twenty-eight to thirty bushels to the acre is obtained; and upon
these twenty-five or thirty acres out of 1,000 the world superiority
of British agriculture is based.

The net result of all that is, that on nearly 33,000,000 acres
of cultivable land the food is grown for one-third part only of
the population (more than two-thirds of the food it consumes
is imported), and we may say accordingly that, although nearly
two-thirds of the territory is cultivable, British agriculture
provides home-grown food for each 125 or 135 inhabitants only per
square mile (out of 466). In other words, nearly three acres of the
_cultivable area_ are required to grow the food for each person. Let
us then see what is done with the land in France and Belgium.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now, if we simply compare the average thirty bushels per acre of
wheat in Great Britain with the average nineteen to twenty bushels
grown in France within the last ten years, the comparison is all
in favour of these islands; but such averages are of little value
because the two systems of agriculture are totally different in
the two countries. The Frenchman also has his picked and heavily
manured “twenty-five to thirty acres” in the north of France and in
Ile-de-France, and from these picked acres he obtains average crops
ranging from thirty to thirty-three bushels.[48] However, he sows
with wheat, not only the best picked out acres, but also such fields
on the Central Plateau and in Southern France as hardly yield ten,
eight and even six bushels to the acre, without irrigation; and these
low crops reduce the average for the whole country.

The Frenchman cultivates much that is left here under permanent
pasture--and this is what is described as his “inferiority” in
agriculture. In fact, although the proportion between what we have
named the “cultivable area” and the total territory is very much the
same in France as it is in Great Britain (624 acres out of each 1,000
acres of the territory), the area under wheat crops is nearly _six
times_ as great, in proportion, as what it is in Great Britain (182
acres instead of twenty-five or thirty, out of each 1,000 acres): the
corn crops altogether cover nearly two-fifths of the cultivable area
(375 acres out of 1000), and large areas are given besides to green
crops, industrial crops, vine, fruit and vegetables.

Taking everything into consideration, although the Frenchman keeps
less cattle, and especially grazes less sheep than the Briton, he
nevertheless obtains from his soil nearly all the food that he and
his cattle consume. He imports, in an average year, but one-tenth
only of what the nation consumes, and he exports to this country
considerable quantities of food produce (£10,000,000 worth), not only
from the south, but also, and especially, from the shores of the
Channel (Brittany butter and vegetables; fruit and vegetables from
the suburbs of Paris, and so on).[49]

The net result is that, although one-third part of the territory is
also treated as “uncultivable,” the soil of France yields the food
for 170 inhabitants per square mile (out of 188), that is, for forty
persons more, per square mile, than this country.[50]

It is thus apparent that the comparison with France is not so much in
favour of this country as it is said to be; and it will be still less
favourable when we come, in our next chapter, to horticulture.

       *       *       *       *       *

The comparison with Belgium is even more striking--the more so
as the two systems of culture are similar in both countries. To
begin with, in Belgium we also find an average crop of over thirty
bushels of wheat to the acre; but the area given to wheat is five
times as big as in Great Britain, in comparison to the cultivable
area, and the cereals cover two-fifths of the land available for
culture.[51] The land is so well cultivated that the average crops
for the years 1890-1899 (the very bad year of 1891 being left out
of account) were from twenty-six and a half to twenty-eight and a
half bushels per acre for winter wheat, and reached an average of
thirty-three and a half bushels in 1900-1904; over fifty-four bushels
for oats (thirty-five to forty-one and a half in Great Britain),
and from forty to forty-three and a half bushels for winter barley
(twenty-nine to thirty-five in Great Britain); while on no less
than 475,000 acres catch crops of swedes (3,345,000 tons), carrots
(155,000 tons), and more than 500,000 of lucerne and other grasses
were obtained.[52]

As to extraordinarily heavy crops, Mr. Seebohm Rowntree mentions,
for instance, the wheat crop in the commune of Oirbeck, near Louvain,
which was, in 1906, on the average, fifty-seven bushels per acre,
while the average of the whole country was only thirty-four bushels,
or a yield of 111½ bushels of oats in the commune of Neuve-Eglise,
while the average for Belgium was fifty-four bushels, and so on,
the average crops of several communes for some cereals being
seventy-three per cent. in excess of the average for Belgium, and
from 106 to 153 per cent. for roots.[53]

All taken, they grow in Belgium more than 76,000,000 bushels of
cereals--that is, fifteen and seven-tenths bushels per acre of the
cultivable area--while the corresponding figure for Great Britain is
only eight and a half bushels; and they keep almost twice as many
cattle upon each cultivable acre as is kept in Great Britain.[54]

Moreover, they even export cattle and horses. Up to 1890 Belgium
exported from 36,000 to 94,000 head of cattle, from 42,000 to 70,000
sheep, and from 60,000 to 108,600 swine. In 1890 these exports
suddenly came to an end--probably in consequence of a prohibition of
such imports into Germany. Only horses continue to be exported to the
amount of about 25,000 horses and foals every year.

Large portions of the land are given besides to the culture of
industrial plants, potatoes for spirit, beet for sugar, and so on.

However, it must not be believed that the soil of Belgium is more
fertile than the soil of this country. On the contrary, to use the
words of Laveleye, “only one half, or less, of the territory offers
natural conditions which are favourable for agriculture”; the other
half consists of a gravelly soil, or sands, “the natural sterility of
which could be overpowered only by heavy manuring.” Man, not nature,
has given to the Belgium soil its present productivity. With this
soil and labour, Belgium succeeds in supplying nearly all the food
of a population which is denser than that of England and Wales, and
numbers 589 inhabitants to the square mile.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Proportion of the cultivated area which is
given to cereals altogether, and to wheat, in Belgium. The square
which encloses the wheat square represents the area given to both
wheat and a mixture of wheat with rye.]

If the exports and imports of agricultural produce from and into
Belgium be taken into account, we can ask ourselves whether
Laveleye’s conclusions are not still good, and whether only one
inhabitant out of each ten to twenty requires imported food. In the
years 1880-1885 the soil of Belgium supplied with home-grown food
no less than 490 _inhabitants per square mile_, and there remained
something for export--no less than £1,000,000 worth of agricultural
produce being exported every year to Great Britain. But it is not
possible to say with certitude whether the conditions are the same at
the present time.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Proportion of cultivated and uncultivated
areas in Great Britain, Belgium, and France. _a_, Wheat; _b_, wheat
and rye mixed; _c_, other cereals; _d′_, green crops; _d_, permanent
pasture; _e_, uncultivated.]

Since 1880, when the duties on imported cereals were abolished
(they were before that sixpence for each 220 lb.), and corn could be
imported free, “the importers were no more obliged to make special
declarations for merchandise which had to be re-exported; they
declared their imports as if they were destined to be used within
the country.”[55] The result was, that while in the year 1870 the
imports of cereals were 154 lb. per head of population, the same
imports rose to 286 lb. in 1880. But no one can say how much of these
286 lb. is consumed in Belgium itself; and if we deduct from the
total of the imports the quantities re-exported the same year, we
obtain figures which cannot be relied upon.[56] It is therefore safer
to consider the figures of the _annual production_ of cereals in
Belgium, such as they are given in the official _Annuaire_.

Now, if we take the figures given in the _Annuaire Statistique de la
Belgique_ for the year 1911, we come to the following results. The
annual agricultural census, which is being made since 1901, gives for
the year 1909 that 2,290,300,000 lb. of wheat, rye, and wheat mixed
with rye were obtained on all the farms of Belgium larger than two
and a half acres (2,002,000,000 lb. in 1895). Besides, 219,200,000
lb. of barley, 1,393,000,000 lb. of oats, and a considerable quantity
of oleaginous grains have been produced.

It is generally accepted that the average consumption of both winter
and spring cereals attains 502 lb. per head of population; and as the
population of Belgium was 7,000,000 on January 1, 1907, it appears
that no less than 3,524,400,000 lb. of cereals would have been
required to supply the annual food of the population. If we compare
this figure with that of the annual production just mentioned, we
see then that, notwithstanding the considerable decrease of the area
given to wheat since the abolition of the entrance duties, Belgium
still produces at least _two-thirds_ of the cereal food required for
its very dense population, which is nearly 600 persons per square
mile (596 in 1907).

It must be noticed that we should have come to a still higher figure
if we took into account the other cereals (to say nothing of the
leguminous plants and vegetables grown and consumed in Belgium),
and still more so if we took into account what is grown upon the
small holdings less than two and a half acres each. The number of
such small holdings was 554,041 in 1895, and the number of people
living upon them reached nearly 2,000,000. _They are not included in
the official statistics, and yet upon most of them some cereals are
grown_, in addition to vegetables and fodder for cattle.

If Belgium produces in cereals the food of more than two-thirds
of its very dense population, this is already a quite respectable
figure; but it must also be said that it exports every year
considerable quantities of products of the soil. Thus, in the year
1910 she exported 254,730 tons of vegetables (as against 187,000
imported), 40,000 tons of fruit, 34,000 tons of plants and flowers
(the whole nearly £3,000,000 worth), 256,000 of oleaginous grains,
18,500 tons of wool, nearly 60,000 tons of flax, and so on. I do not
mention the exports of butter, rabbits, skins, an immense quantity
of sugar (about 180,000 tons), the vegetable oils and the spirits,
because considerable quantities of beet and potatoes are imported. In
short, we have here _an export_ of agricultural produce grown in the
country itself attaining the figure of 48s. per head of population.

All taken, there is thus no possibility of contesting the fact, that
if the soil of Great Britain were cultivated only as the unfertile
soil of Belgium is cultivated--notwithstanding all the social
obstacles which stand in the way of an intensive culture, in Belgium
as elsewhere--a much greater part of the population of these islands
would obtain its food from the soil of its own land than is the case
nowadays.[57]

On the other side it must not be forgotten that Belgium is a
manufacturing country which exports, moreover, manufactured home-made
goods to the value of 198s. per head of population, and 150s. worth
of crude or half-manufactured produce, while the total exports from
the United Kingdom have only lately attained during the extraordinary
year of 1911 the value of 201s. per inhabitant. As to separate
parts of the Belgian territory, the small and naturally unfertile
province of West Flanders not only grew in 1890 the food of its 580
inhabitants on the square mile, but exported agricultural produce
to the value of 25s. per head of its population. And yet no one can
read Laveleye’s masterly work without coming to the conclusion that
Flemish agriculture would have realised still better results, were
it not hampered in its growth by the steady and heavy increase of
rent. In the face of the rent being increased each nine years, many
farmers have lately abstained from further improvements.

       *       *       *       *       *

Another example of what could be achieved by means of an effort of
the nation seconded by its educated classes is given by Denmark.
After the war of 1864, which ended in the loss of one of their
provinces, the Danes made an effort widely to spread education
amongst their peasants, and to develop at the same time an intensive
culture of the soil. The result of these efforts is now quite
evident. The rural population of Denmark, instead of flocking to
the towns, has been increasing: in five years, 1906-1911, it rose
from 1,565,585 to 1,647,350. Out of a total population of 2,775,100,
no less than 990,900 find their living in agriculture, dairy work,
and forestry. With a very poor soil, they have a cultivated area
a trifle below 7,000,000 acres, out of which 2,773,320 acres are
under cereals. Their wheat crops are on the average 40-6/10 bushels
per acre, and the value of the home-grown food-stuffs is estimated
at £40,000,000, which makes a little less than £6 per acre. As
to their exports of home-grown produce, they exceed the imports
by £14,483,000. The chief cause of these successes are: A highly
developed agricultural education, town markets accessible to all the
growers, and, above all, co-operation, which again is a result of the
effort that was made by the educated classes after the unfortunate
war of 1864.

Everyone knows that it is now Danish butter which rules the prices
in the London market, and that this butter is of a high quality,
which can only be attained in co-operative creameries with cold
storage and certain uniform methods in producing butter. But it is
not generally known that the Siberian butter, which is now imported
in immense quantities into this country, is also a creation of the
Danish co-operators. When they began to export their butter in large
quantities, they used to import butter for their own use from the
southern parts of the West Siberian provinces of Tobolsk and Tomsk,
which are covered with prairies very similar to those of Winnipeg in
Canada. At the outset this butter was of a most inferior quality,
as it was made by every peasant household separately. The Danes
began therefore to teach co-operation to the Russian peasants, and
they were rapidly understood by the intelligent population of this
fertile region. The co-operative creameries began to spread with an
astounding rapidity, without us knowing for some time wherefrom came
this interesting movement. At the present time a steamer loaded with
Siberian butter leaves every week one of the Baltic ports and brings
to London many thousands of casks of Siberian butter. If I am not
wrong, Finland has also joined lately in the same export.

       *       *       *       *       *

Without going as far as China, I might quote similar examples from
elsewhere, especially from Lombardy. But the above will be enough to
caution the reader against hasty conclusions as to the impossibility
of feeding 46,000,000 people from 78,000,000 acres. They also will
enable me to draw the following conclusions: (1) If the soil of the
United Kingdom were cultivated only as it _was_ forty-five years ago,
24,000,000 people, instead of 17,000,000, could live on home-grown
food; and this culture, while giving occupation to an additional
750,000 men, would give nearly 3,000,000 wealthy home customers to
the British manufactures. (2) If the cultivable area of the United
Kingdom were cultivated as the soil is cultivated _on the average_ in
Belgium, the United Kingdom would have food for at least 37,000,000
inhabitants; and it might export agricultural produce without ceasing
to manufacture, so as freely to supply all the needs of a wealthy
population. And finally (3), if the population of this country came
to be doubled, all that would be required for producing the food
for 90,000,000 inhabitants would be to cultivate the soil as it is
cultivated in the best farms of this country, in Lombardy, and in
Flanders, and to utilise some meadows, which at present lie almost
unproductive, in the same way as the neighbourhoods of the big cities
in France are utilised for market-gardening. All these are not fancy
dreams, but mere realities; nothing but the modest conclusions from
what we see round about us, without any allusion to the agriculture
of the future.

       *       *       *       *       *

If we want, however, to know what agriculture _can be_, and what can
be grown on a given amount of soil, we must apply for information
to such regions as the district of Saffelare in East Flanders,
the island of Jersey, or the irrigated meadows of Lombardy, which
are mentioned in the next chapter. Or else we may apply to the
market-gardeners in this country, or in the neighbourhoods of Paris,
or in Holland, or to the “truck farms” in America, and so on.

While science devotes its chief attention to industrial pursuits, a
limited number of lovers of nature and a legion of workers whose very
names will remain unknown to posterity have created of late a quite
new agriculture, as superior to modern farming as modern farming is
superior to the old three-fields system of our ancestors. Science
seldom guided them, and sometimes misguided--as was the case with
Liebig’s theories, developed to the extreme by his followers, who
induced us to treat plants as glass recipients of chemical drugs, and
who forgot that the only science capable of dealing with life and
growth is physiology, not chemistry. Science seldom has guided them:
they proceeded in the empirical way; but, like the cattle-growers
who opened new horizons to biology, they have opened a new field
of experimental research for the physiology of plants. They have
created a totally new agriculture. They smile when we boast about the
rotation system, having permitted us to take from the field one crop
every year, or four crops each three years, because their ambition
is to have six and nine crops from the very same plot of land during
the twelve months. They do not understand our talk about good and bad
soils, because they make the soil themselves, and make it in such
quantities as to be compelled yearly to sell some of it: otherwise
it would raise up the level of their gardens by half an inch every
year. They aim at cropping, not five or six tons of grass on the
acre, as we do, but from 50 to 100 tons of various vegetables on the
same space; not £5 worth of hay but £100 worth of vegetables, of the
plainest description, cabbage and carrots, and more than £200 worth
under intensive horticultural treatment. This is where agriculture is
going now.

We know that the dearest of all varieties of our staple food is
meat; and those who are not vegetarians, either by persuasion or
by necessity, consume on the average 225 lb. of meat--that is,
roughly speaking, a little less than the third part of an ox--every
year. And we have seen that, even in this country, and Belgium, two
to three acres are wanted for keeping one head of horned cattle;
so that a community of, say, 1,000,000 inhabitants would have to
reserve somewhere about 1,000,000 acres of land for supplying it with
meat. But if we go to the farm of M. Goppart--one of the promoters
of _ensilage_ in France--we shall see him growing, on a drained
and well-manured field, no less than an average of 120,000 lb. of
corn-grass to the acre, which gives 30,000 lb. of dry hay--that is,
the food of one horned beast per acre. The produce is thus trebled.

As to beetroot, which is used also for feeding cattle, Mr. Champion,
at Whitby, succeeded, with the help of sewage, in growing 100,000
lb. of beet on each acre, and occasionally 150,000 and 200,000 lb.
He thus grew on each acre the food of, at least, two or three head
of cattle. And such crops are not isolated facts; thus, M. Gros, at
Autun, succeeds in cropping 600,000 lb. of beet and carrots, which
crop would permit him to keep four horned cattle on each acre. In
fact, crops of 100,000 lb. of beet occur in numbers in the French
competitions, and the success depends entirely upon good culture and
appropriate manuring. It thus appears that while under ordinary high
farming we need 2,000,000 acres, or more, to keep 1,000,000 horned
cattle, double that amount could be kept on one-half of that area;
and if the density of population required it, the amount of cattle
could be doubled again, and the area required to keep it might still
be one-half, or even one-third of what it is now.[58]

_French Gardening._--The above examples are striking enough, and
yet those afforded by the market-gardening culture are still more
striking. I mean the culture carried on in the neighbourhood of big
cities, and more especially the _culture maraîchère_ round Paris. In
this culture each plant is treated according to its age. The seeds
germinate and the seedlings develop their first four leaflets in
especially favourable conditions of soil and temperature; then the
best seedlings are picked out and transplanted into a bed of fine
loam, under a frame or in the open air, where they freely develop
their rootlets, and, gathered on a limited space, receive more than
the usual care. Only after this preliminary training are they bedded
in the open ground, where they grow till ripe. In such a culture the
primitive condition of the soil is of little account, because loam
is made out of the old forcing beds. The seeds are carefully tried,
the seedlings receive proper attention, and there is no fear of
drought, because of the variety of crops, the liberal watering with
the help of a steam engine, and the stock of plants always kept ready
to replace the weakest individuals. Almost each plant is treated
individually.

There prevails, however, with regard to market-gardening, a
misunderstanding which it would be well to remove. It is generally
supposed that what chiefly attracts market-gardening to the great
centres of population is the market. It must have been so; and so it
may be still, but to some extent only. A great number of the Paris
_maraîchers_, even of those who have their gardens within the walls
of the city and whose main crop consists of vegetables in season,
export the whole of their produce to England. What chiefly attracts
the gardener to the great cities is stable manure; and this is not
wanted so much for increasing the richness of the soil--one-tenth
part of the manure used by the French gardeners would do for that
purpose--but for keeping the soil at a certain temperature. Early
vegetables pay best, and in order to obtain early produce not only
the air but the soil as well must be warmed; and this is done by
putting great quantities of properly mixed manure into the soil;
its fermentation heats it. But it is evident that with the present
development of industrial skill, the heating of the soil could be
obtained more economically and more easily by hot-water pipes.
Consequently, the French gardeners begin more and more to make use
of portable pipes, or _thermosiphons_, provisionally established in
the cool frames. This new improvement becomes of general use, and
we have the authority of Barral’s _Dictionnaire d’Agriculture_ to
affirm that it gives excellent results. Under this system stable
manure is used mainly for producing loam.[59]

As to the different degrees of fertility of the soil--always the
stumbling-block of those who write about agriculture--the fact
is that in market-gardening the soil is always _made_, whatever
it originally may have been. Consequently--we are told by Prof.
Dybowski, in the article “Maraîchers” in Barral’s _Dictionnaire
d’Agriculture_--it is now a usual stipulation of the renting
contracts of the Paris _maraîchers_ that the gardener may carry
away his soil, down to a certain depth, when he quits his tenancy.
He himself makes it, and when he moves to another plot he carts his
soil away, together with his frames, his water-pipes, and his other
belongings.[60]

I could not relate here all the marvels achieved in market-gardening;
so that I must refer the reader to works--most interesting
works--especially devoted to the subject, and give only a few
illustrations.[61] Let us take, for instance, the orchard--the
_marais_--of M. Ponce, the author of a well-known work on the
_culture maraîchère_. His orchard covered only two and seven-tenths
acres. The outlay for the establishment, including a steam engine for
watering purposes, reached £1,136. Eight persons, M. Ponce included,
cultivated the orchard and carried the vegetables to the market, for
which purpose one horse was kept; when returning from Paris they
brought in manure, for which £100 was spent every year. Another
£100 was spent in rent and taxes. But how to enumerate all that was
gathered every year on this plot of less than three acres, without
filling two pages or more with the most wonderful figures? One must
read them in M. Ponce’s work, but here are the chief items: More
than 20,000 lb. of carrots; more than 20,000 lb. of onions, radishes
and other vegetables sold by weight; 6,000 heads of cabbage; 3,000
of cauliflower; 5,000 baskets of tomatoes; 5,000 dozen of choice
fruit; and 154,000 heads of salad; in short, a total of 250,000 lb.
of vegetables. The soil was made to such an amount out of forcing
beds that every year 250 cubic yards of loam had to be sold. Similar
examples could be given by the dozen, and the best evidence against
any possible exaggeration of the results is the very high rent paid
by the gardeners, which reaches in the suburbs of London from £10 to
£15 per acre, and in the suburbs of Paris attains as much as £32 per
acre. No less than 2,125 acres are cultivated round Paris in that
way by 5,000 persons, and thus not only the 2,000,000 Parisians are
supplied with vegetables, but the surplus is also sent to London.

The above results are obtained with the help of warm frames,
thousands of glass bells, and so on. But even without such costly
things, with only thirty-six yards of frames for seedlings,
vegetables are grown _in the open air_ to the value of £200 per
acre.[62] It is obvious, however, that in such cases the high selling
prices of the crops are not due to the high prices fetched by early
vegetables in winter; they are entirely due to the high crops of the
plainest ones.

Let me add also that all this wonderful culture has entirely
developed in the second half of the nineteenth century. Before that,
it was quite primitive. But now the Paris gardener not only defies
the soil--he would grow the same crops on an asphalt pavement--he
defies climate. His walls, which are built to reflect light and
to protect the wall-trees from the northern winds, his wall-tree
shades and glass protectors, his frames and _pépinières_ have made
a real garden, a rich Southern garden, out of the suburbs of Paris.
He has given to Paris the “two degrees less of latitude” after
which a French scientific writer was longing; he supplies his city
with mountains of grapes and fruit at any season; and in the early
spring he inundates and perfumes it with flowers. But he does not
only grow articles of luxury. The culture of plain vegetables on a
large scale is spreading every year; and the results are so good
that there are now practical _maraîchers_ who venture to maintain
that if all the food, animal and vegetable, necessary for 4,500,000
inhabitants of the departments of Seine and Seine-et-Oise had to be
grown on their own territory (3,250 square miles), it could be grown
without resorting to any other methods of culture than those already
in use--methods already tested on a large scale and proved to be
successful.

       *       *       *       *       *

And yet the Paris gardener is not our ideal of an agriculturist. In
the painful work of civilisation he has shown us the way to follow;
but the ideal of modern civilisation is elsewhere. He toils, with
but a short interruption, from three in the morning till late in the
night. He knows no leisure; he has no time to live the life of a
human being; the commonwealth does not exist for him; his world is
his garden, more than his family. He cannot be our ideal; neither
he nor his system of agriculture. Our ambition is, that he should
produce even _more_ than he does with _less_ labour, and should enjoy
all the joys of human life. And this is fully possible.

As a matter of fact, if we put aside those gardeners who chiefly
cultivate the so-called _primeurs_--strawberries ripened in January,
and the like--if we take only those who grow their crops in the
open field, and resort to frames exclusively for the earlier days
of the life of the plant, and if we analyse their system, we see
that its very essence is, first, to create for the plant a nutritive
and porous soil, which contains both the necessary decaying organic
matter and the inorganic compounds; and then to keep that soil and
the surrounding atmosphere at a temperature and moisture superior
to those of the open air. The whole system is summed up in these
few words. If the French _maraîcher_ spends prodigies of labour,
intelligence, and imagination in combining different kinds of
manure, so as to make them ferment at a given speed, he does so for
no purpose but the above: a nourishing soil, and a desired equal
temperature and moisture of the air and the soil. All his empirical
art is devoted to the achievement of these two aims. But both can
also be achieved in another and much easier way. The soil can be
_improved_ by hand, but it need not be _made_ by hand. Any soil, of
any desired composition, can be made by machinery. We already have
manufactures of manure, engines for pulverising the phosphorites, and
even the granites of the Vosges; and we shall see manufactures of
loam as soon as there is a demand for them.

It is obvious that at present, when fraud and adulteration are
exercised on such an immense scale in the manufacture of artificial
manure, and the manufacture of manure is considered as a chemical
process, while it ought to be considered as a physiological one,
the gardener prefers to spend an unimaginable amount of labour
rather than risk his crop by the use of a pompously labelled and
unworthy drug. But that is a social obstacle which depends upon a
want of knowledge and a bad social organisation, not upon physical
causes.[63]

Of course, the necessity of creating for the earlier life of the
plant a warm soil and atmosphere will always remain, and sixty years
ago Léonce de Lavergne foretold that the next step in culture would
be to warm the soil. But heating pipes give the same results as the
fermenting manures at a much smaller expense of human labour. And
already the system works on a large scale, as will be seen from the
next chapter. Through it the productive powers of a given area of
land are increased more than a hundred times.

It is obvious that now, when the capitalist system makes us pay for
everything three or four times its labour value, we often spend
about £1 for each square yard of a heated conservatory. But how many
middlemen are making fortunes on the wooden sashes imported from
Drontheim? If we only could reckon our expenses in labour, we should
discover to our amazement that, thanks to the use of machinery, the
square yard of a conservatory does not cost more than half a day of
human labour; and we will see presently that the Jersey and Guernsey
average for cultivating one acre under glass is only three men
working ten hours a day. Therefore the conservatory, which formerly
was a luxury, is rapidly entering into the domain of high culture.
And we may foresee the day when the glass conservatory will be
considered as a necessary appendix to the field, both for the growth
of those fruits and vegetables which cannot succeed in the open air,
and for the preliminary training of most cultural plants during the
earlier stages of their life.

Home-grown fruit is always preferable to the half-ripe produce which
is imported from abroad, and the additional work required for keeping
a young plant under glass is largely repaid by the incomparable
superiority of the crops. As to the question of labour, when we
remember the incredible amount of labour which has been spent on the
Rhine and in Switzerland for making the vineyards, their terraces,
and stone walls, and for carrying the soil up the stony crags, as
also the amount of labour which is spent every year for the culture
of those vineyards and fruit gardens, we are inclined to ask, which
of the two, all taken, requires less of human labour--a vinery (I
mean the cold vinery) in a London suburb, or a vineyard on the
Rhine, or on Lake Leman? And when we compare the prices realised by
the grower of grapes round London (not those which are paid in the
West-end fruit shops, but those received by the grower for his grapes
in September and October) with those current in Switzerland or on
the Rhine during the same months, we are inclined to maintain that
nowhere in Europe, beyond the forty-fifth degree of latitude, are
grapes grown at less expense of human labour, both for capital outlay
and yearly work, than in the vineries of the London and Brussels
suburbs.

At any rate, let us not overrate the productivity of the exporting
countries, and let us remember that the vine-growers of Southern
Europe drink themselves an abominable _piquette_; that Marseilles
fabricates wine for home use out of dry raisins brought from Asia;
and that the Normandy peasant who sends his apples to London, drinks
real cider only on great festivities. Such a state of things will
not last for ever; and the day is not far when we shall be compelled
to look to our own resources to provide many of the things which we
now import. And we shall not be the worse for that. The resources of
science, both in enlarging the circle of our production and in new
discoveries, are inexhaustible. And each new branch of activity calls
into existence more and more new branches, which steadily increase
the power of man over the forces of nature.

If we take all into consideration; if we realise the progress made
of late in the gardening culture, and the tendency towards spreading
its methods to the open field; if we watch the cultural experiments
which are being made now--experiments to-day and realities
to-morrow--and ponder over the resources kept in store by science,
we are bound to say that _it is utterly impossible to foresee at the
present moment the limits as to the_ maximum _number of human beings
who could draw their means of subsistence from a given area of land_,
or as to what a variety of produce they could advantageously grow in
any latitude. Each day widens former limits, and opens new and wide
horizons. All we can say now is, that, _even now_, 600 persons could
easily live on a square mile; and that, with cultural methods already
used on a large scale, 1,000 human beings--not idlers--living on
1,000 acres could easily, without any kind of overwork, obtain from
that area a luxurious vegetable and animal food, as well as the flax,
wool, silk, and hides necessary for their clothing. As to what may
be obtained under still more perfect methods--also known but not yet
tested on a large scale--it is better to abstain from any forecast:
so unexpected are the recent achievements of intensive culture.

We thus see that the over-population fallacy does not stand the very
first attempt at submitting it to a closer examination. Those only
can be horror-stricken at seeing the population of this country
increase by one individual every 1,000 seconds who think of a human
being as a mere claimant upon the stock of material wealth of
mankind, without being at the same time a contributor to that stock.
But we, who see in each new-born babe a future _worker_ capable of
producing much more than his own share of the common stock--we greet
his appearance.

We know that a crowded population is a necessary condition for
permitting man to increase the productive powers of his labour. We
know that highly productive labour is impossible so long as men are
scattered, few in numbers, over wide territories, and are thus unable
to combine together for the higher achievements of civilisation. We
know what an amount of labour must be spent to scratch the soil with
a primitive plough, to spin and weave by hand; and we know also how
much less labour it costs to grow the same amount of food and weave
the same cloth with the help of modern machinery.

We also see that it is infinitely easier to grow 200,000 lb. of food
on one acre than to grow them on ten acres. It is all very well
to imagine that wheat grows by itself on the Russian steppes; but
those who have seen how the peasant toils in the “fertile” black
earth region will have one desire: that the increase of population
may permit the use of the steam-digger and gardening culture in the
steppes; that it may permit those who are now the beasts of burden of
humanity to raise their backs and to become at last men.

       *       *       *       *       *

We must, however, recognise that there are a few economists fully
aware of the above truths. They gladly admit that Western Europe
could grow much more food than it does; but they see no necessity nor
advantage in doing so, as long as there are nations which can supply
food in exchange for manufactured goods. Let us then examine how far
this view is correct.

It is obvious that if we are satisfied with merely stating that it is
cheaper to bring wheat from Riga than to grow it in Lincolnshire, the
whole question is settled in a moment. But is it so in reality? Is it
really cheaper to have food from abroad? And, supposing it is, are we
not yet bound to analyse that compound result which we call price,
rather than to accept it as a supreme and blind ruler of our actions?

We know, for instance, how French agriculture is burdened by
taxation. And yet, if we compare the prices of articles of food in
France, which herself grows most of them, with the prices in this
country, which imports them, we find no difference in favour of the
importing country. On the contrary, the balance is rather in favour
of France, and it decidedly was so for wheat until the new protective
tariff was introduced. As soon as one goes out of Paris, one finds
that every _home produce_ is cheaper in France than it is in England,
and that the prices decrease further when we go farther East on the
Continent.

There is another feature still more unfavourable for this country:
namely, the enormous development of the class of middlemen who
stand between the importer and the home producer on the one side
and the consumer on the other. We have lately heard a good deal
about the quite disproportionate part of the prices we pay which
goes into the middleman’s pockets. We have all heard of the East-end
clergyman who was compelled to become butcher in order to save his
parishioners from the greedy middleman. We read in the papers that
many farmers of the midland counties do not realise more than 9d.
for a pound of butter, while the customer pays from 1s. 6d. to 1s.
8d.; and that from 1½d. to 2d. for the quart of milk is all that the
Cheshire farmers can get, while we pay 4d. for the adulterated, and
5d. for the unadulterated milk. An analysis of the Covent Garden
prices and a comparison of the same with retail prices, which is
being made from time to time in the daily papers, proves that the
customer pays for vegetables at the rate of 6d. to 1s., and sometimes
more, for each penny realised by the grower. But in a country of
imported food it _must_ be so: the grower who himself sells his own
produce disappears from its markets, and in his place appears the
middleman.[64] If we move, however, towards the East, and go to
Belgium, Germany, and Russia, we find that the cost of living is
more and more reduced, so that finally we find that in Russia, which
remains still agricultural, wheat costs one-half or two-thirds of its
London prices, and meat is sold throughout the provinces at about
ten farthings (kopecks) the pound. And we may therefore hold that it
is not yet proved at all that it is cheaper to live on imported food
than to grow it ourselves.

But if we analyse _price_, and make a distinction between its
different elements, the disadvantage becomes still more apparent.
If we compare, for instance, the costs of growing wheat in this
country and in Russia, we are told that in the United Kingdom the
hundredweight of wheat cannot be grown at less than 8s. 7d.; while
in Russia the costs of production of the same hundredweight are
estimated at from 3s. 6d. to 4s. 9d.[65] The difference is enormous,
and it would still remain very great even if we admit that there is
some exaggeration in the former figure. But why this difference? Are
the Russian labourers paid so much less for their work? Their money
wages surely are much lower, but the difference is equalised as soon
as we reckon their wages in produce. The twelve shillings a week
of the British agricultural labourer represents the same amount of
wheat in Britain as the six shillings a week of the Russian labourer
represents in Russia. As to the supposed prodigious fertility of
the soil in the Russian prairies, it is a fallacy. Crops of from
sixteen to twenty-three bushels per acre are considered good crops
in Russia, while the average hardly reaches thirteen bushels, even
in the corn-exporting parts of the empire. Besides, the amount
of labour which is necessary to grow wheat in Russia with no
thrashing-machines, with a plough dragged by a horse hardly worth
the name, with no roads for transport, and so on, is certainly much
greater than the amount of labour which is necessary to grow the same
amount of wheat in Western Europe.

When brought to the London market, Russian wheat was sold in 1887
at 31s. the quarter, while it appeared from the same _Mark Lane
Express_ figures that the quarter of wheat could not be grown in
this country at less than 36s. 8d., even if the straw be sold, which
is not always the case. But the difference of the land rent in both
countries would alone account for the difference of prices. In the
wheat belt of Russia, where the average rent stood at about 12s.
per acre, and the crop was from fifteen to twenty bushels, the rent
amounted to from 3s. 6d. to 5s. 8d. in the costs of production of
each quarter of Russian wheat; while in this country, where the rent
and taxes are valued (in the _Mark Lane Express_ figures) at no less
than 40s. per each wheat-growing acre, and the crop is taken at
thirty bushels, the rent amounts to 10s. in the costs of production
of each quarter.[66] But even if we take only 30s. per acre of rent
and taxes, and an average crop of twenty-eight bushels, we still have
8s. 8d. out of the sale price of each quarter of wheat, which goes to
the landlord and the State. If it costs so much more in money to grow
wheat in this country, while the amount of labour is so much less in
this country than in Russia, it is due to the very great height of
the land rents attained during the years 1860-1880. But this growth
itself was due to the facilities for realising large profits on the
sale of manufactured goods abroad. The false condition of British
rural economy, not the infertility of the soil, is thus the chief
cause of the Russian competition.

Twenty-five years have passed since I wrote these lines--the
agricultural crisis provoked by the competition of cheap American
wheat being at that time at its climax, and, I am sorry to say, I
must leave these lines such as they were written. I do not mean,
of course, that no adaptation to the new conditions created by
the fall in the prices of wheat should have taken place during
the last quarter of a century, in the sense of a more intensive
culture and a better utilisation of the land. On the contrary, I
mention in different parts of this book the progress accomplished
of late in the development of separate branches of intensive
culture, such as fruit-culture, market-gardening, culture under
glass, French gardening, and poultry farming, and I also indicate
the different steps taken to promote further improvements, such as
better conditions of transport, co-operation among the farmers, and
especially the development of small holdings.

However, after having taken into account all these improvements,
one cannot but see with regret that the same regressive movement in
British agriculture, which began in the ’seventies, continues still;
and while more and more of the land that was once under the plough
goes out of culture, no corresponding increase in the quantities of
live stock is to be seen. And if we consult the mass of books and
review articles which have been dealing lately with this subject, we
see that all the writers recognise that British agriculture _must_
adapt itself to the new conditions by a thorough reform of its
general character; and yet the same writers recognise that only a
few steps were taken till now in the proper direction, and none of
them was taken with a sufficient energy. Society at large remains
indifferent to the needs of British agriculture.

It must not be forgotten that the competition of American wheat
has made the same havoc in the agriculture of most European
countries--especially in France and Belgium; but in the last two
countries the adaptations which were necessary to resist the
effects of the competition have already taken place to a great
extent. Both in Belgium and in France the American imports gave a
new impetus toward a more intensive utilisation of the soil, and
this impetus was strongest in Belgium, where no attempt was made
to protect agriculture by an increase of the import duties, as was
the case in France. On the contrary, the duties upon imported wheat
were abolished in Belgium precisely at the time when the American
competition began to be felt--that is, between 1870 and 1880.

It was not only in England that the fall in the prices of wheat was
felt acutely by the farmers. In France, the hectolitre of wheat (very
nearly three bushels), which was sold at 18s. 10d. in 1871-1875,
fell to 15s. 5d. in 1881-1885, and to 12s. 6d. in 1893; and the same
must have been in Belgium, the more so as the protective duties were
abolished. But here is what Mr. Seebohm Rowntree says about the
effect of the prices in his admirable book on land and labour in
Belgium:--

  “For a time the Belgian agriculturist was hardly hit, but
  gradually he adjusted himself to the new conditions. His
  cultivation became more intensive, he made more and more use of
  co-operation in various directions, and he devoted himself to new
  branches of agriculture, especially the raising of live stock
  and garden produce. He began to realise the value of artificial
  manures, and to acknowledge that science could help him.”--_Land
  and Labour_, p. 147.

These words by Mr. Rowntree are fully confirmed by the change in
the general aspects of the Belgian agriculture, as they appear from
the official statistical data. The same must be said of France. The
above-mentioned fall in prices induced agriculturists to intensify
their methods of culture. I have mentioned already the rapid
spreading of agricultural machinery among the French peasants during
the last twenty years; and I must mention also the equally remarkable
increase in the amounts of chemical manure used by the peasants;
the sudden development of agricultural syndicates since 1884; the
extension taken by co-operation; the new organisation of transport
with cool storage, or in heated cars, for the export of fruit and
flowers; the development taken by special industrial cultures; and
still more so the immense development of gardening in the South of
France and market-gardening in the North. All these adaptations were
introduced on such a scale that one is bound to recognise that the
crisis has had the effect of giving quite a new aspect to French
agriculture, taken as a whole.

       *       *       *       *       *

Much more ought to be said with regard to the American competition,
and therefore I must refer the reader to the remarkable series
of articles dealing with the whole of the subject which
Schaeffle published in 1886 in the _Zeitschrift für die gesammte
Staatswissenschaft_, and to the most elaborate article on the costs
of growing wheat all over the world which appeared in April, 1887, in
the _Quarterly Review_. These articles were written at the time when
American competition was something new and made much havoc in English
agriculture, causing a fall of from 30 to 50 per cent. in the rents
of land for agricultural purposes. But the conclusions of these two
writers were fully corroborated by the yearly reports of the American
Board of Agriculture, and Schaeffle’s previsions were fully confirmed
by the subsequent reports of Mr. J. R. Dodge. It appeared from these
works that the fertility of the American soil had been grossly
exaggerated, as the masses of wheat which America sent to Europe from
its north-western farms were grown on a soil the natural fertility of
which is not higher, and often lower, than the average fertility of
the unmanured European soil. The Casselton farm in Dakota, with its
twenty bushels per acre, was an exception; while the average crop of
the chief wheat-growing States in the West was only eleven to twelve
bushels. In order to find a fertile soil in America, and crops of
from thirty to forty bushels, one must go to the old Eastern States,
where the soil is made by man’s hands.[67]

The same applies to the American supplies of meat. Schaeffle pointed
out that the great mass of live stock which appeared in the census
of cattle in the States was not reared in the prairies, but in
the stables of the farms, in the same way as in Europe; as to the
prairies, he found on them only one-eleventh part of the American
horned cattle, one-fifth of the sheep and one-twenty-first of the
pigs.[68] “Natural fertility” being thus out of question, we must
look for social causes; and we have them, for the Western States,
in the cheapness of land and a proper organisation of production;
and for the Eastern States in the rapid progress of _intensive_ high
farming.

It is evident that the methods of culture must vary according to
different conditions. In the vast prairies of North America, where
land could be _bought_ from 8s. to 40s. the acre, and where spaces
of from 100 to 150 square miles in one block could be given to wheat
culture, special methods of culture were applied and the results were
excellent. Land was bought--not rented. In the autumn, whole studs
of horses were brought, and the tilling and sowing were done with
the aid of formidable ploughs and sowing machines. Then the horses
were sent to graze in the mountains; the men were dismissed, and one
man, occasionally two or three, remained to winter on the farm. In
the spring the owners’ agents began to beat the inns for hundreds of
miles round, and engaged labourers and tramps, both freely supplied
by Europe, for the crop. Battalions of men were marched to the wheat
fields, and were camped there; the horses were brought from the
mountains, and in a week or two the crop was cut, thrashed, winnowed,
put in sacks, by specially invented machines, and sent to the next
elevator, or directly to the ships which carried it to Europe.
Whereupon the men were disbanded again, the horses were sent back to
the grazing grounds, or sold, and again only a couple of men remained
on the farm.

The crop from each acre was small, but the machinery was so
perfected that in this way 300 days of one man’s labour produced
from 200 to 300 quarters of wheat; in other words--the area of land
being of no account--every man produced in one day his yearly bread
food (eight and a half bushels of wheat); and taking into account
all subsequent labour, it was calculated that the work of 300 men in
one single day delivered to the consumer at Chicago the flour that
is required for the yearly food of 250 persons. Twelve hours and a
half of work are thus required in Chicago to supply one man with his
yearly provision of wheat-flour.

Under the special conditions offered in the Far West this certainly
was an appropriate method for increasing all of a sudden the wheat
supplies of mankind. It answered its purpose when large territories
of unoccupied land were opened to enterprise. But it could not
answer for ever. Under such a system of culture the soil was soon
exhausted, the crop declined, and _intensive_ agriculture (which
aims at high crops on a limited area) had soon to be resorted to.
Such was the case in Iowa in the year 1878. Up till then, Iowa was
an emporium for wheat-growing on the lines just indicated. But the
soil was already exhausted, and when a disease came the wheat plants
had no force to resist it. In a few weeks nearly all the wheat crop,
which was expected to beat all previous records, was lost; eight to
ten bushels per acre of bad wheat were all that could be cropped.
The result was that “mammoth farms” had to be broken up into small
farms, and that the Iowa farmers (after a terrible crisis of short
duration--everything is rapid in America) took to a more intensive
culture. Now, they are not behind France in wheat culture, as they
already grow an average of sixteen and a half bushels per acre on an
area of more than 2,000,000 acres, and they will soon win ground.
Somehow, with the aid of manure and improved methods of farming, they
compete admirably with the mammoth farms of the Far West.

In fact, over and over again it was pointed out, by Schaeffle,
Semler, Oetken, and many other writers, that the force of “American
competition” is not in its mammoth farms, but in the countless small
farms upon which wheat is grown in the same way as it is grown
in Europe--that is, with manuring--but with a better organised
production and facilities for sale, and without being compelled
to pay to the landlord a toll of one-third part, or more, of the
selling price of each quarter of wheat. However, it was only after
I had myself made a tour in the prairies of Manitoba in 1897, and
those of Ohio in 1901, that I could realise the full truth of
the just-mentioned views. The 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 bushels
of wheat, which are exported every year from Manitoba, are grown
almost entirely in farms of one or two “quarter-sections”--that is,
of 160 and 320 acres. The ploughing is made in the usual way, and
in an immense majority of cases the farmers buy the reaping and
binding machines (the “binders”) by associating in groups of four.
The thrashing machine is rented by the farmer for one or two days,
and the farmer carts his wheat to the elevator with his own horses,
either to sell it immediately, or to keep it at the elevator if he is
in no immediate need of money and hopes to get a higher price in one
month or two. In short, in Manitoba one is especially struck with the
fact that, even under a system of keen competition, the middle-size
farm has completely beaten the old mammoth farm, and that it is not
manufacturing wheat on a grand scale which pays best. It is also most
interesting to note that thousands and thousands of farmers produce
mountains of wheat in the Canadian province of Toronto and in the
Eastern States, although the land is not prairie-land at all, and the
farms are, as a rule, small.

The force of “American competition” is thus not in the possibility
of having hundreds of acres of wheat in one block. It lies in the
ownership of the land, in a system of culture which is appropriate
to the character of the country, in a widely developed spirit of
association, and, finally, in a number of institutions and customs
intended to lift the agriculturist and his profession to a high level
which is unknown in Europe.

In Europe we do not realise at all what is done in the States and
Canada in the interests of agriculture. In every American State, and
in every distinct region of Canada, there is an experimental farm,
and all the work of preliminary experiment upon new varieties of
wheat, oats, barley, fodder and fruit, which the farmer has mostly to
make himself in Europe, is made under the best scientific conditions
at the experimental farms, on a small scale first and on a large
scale next. The results of all these researches and experiments are
not merely rendered accessible to the farmer who would like to know
them, but they are brought to his knowledge, and, so to speak, are
forced upon his attention by every possible means. The “Bulletins” of
the experimental stations are distributed in hundreds of thousands
of copies; visits to the farms are organised in such a way that
thousands of farmers should inspect the stations every year, and be
shown by specialists the results obtained, either with new varieties
of plants or under various new methods of treatment. Correspondence
is carried on with the farmers on such a scale that, for instance,
at Ottawa, the experimental farm sends out every year a hundred
thousand letters and packets. Every farmer can get, free of charge
and postage, five pounds of seed of any variety of cereals, out of
which he can get next year the necessary seed for sowing several
acres. And, finally, in every small and remote township there are
held farmers’ meetings, at which special lecturers, who are sent
out by the experimental farms or the local agricultural societies,
discuss with the farmers in an informal way the results of last
year’s experiments and discoveries relative to every branch of
agriculture, horticulture, cattle-breeding, dairying and agricultural
co-operation.[69]

American agriculture really offers an imposing sight--not in the
wheat fields of the Far West, which soon will become a thing of
the past, but in the development of rational agriculture and the
forces which promote it. Read the description of an agricultural
exhibition, “the State’s fair,” in some small town of Iowa, with
its 70,000 farmers camping with their families in tents during the
fair’s week, studying, learning, buying, and selling, and enjoying
life. You see a _national_ fête, and you feel that you deal with a
nation in which agriculture is in respect. Or read the publications
of the scores of experimental stations, whose reports are distributed
broadcast over the country, and are read by the farmers and discussed
at countless “farmers’ meetings.” Consult the “Transactions” and
“Bulletins” of the countless agricultural societies, not royal but
popular; study the grand enterprises for irrigation; and you will
feel that American agriculture is a real force, imbued with life,
which no longer fears mammoth farms, and needs not to cry like a
child for protection.

“Intensive” agriculture and gardening are already by this time as
much a feature of the treatment of the soil in America as they are
in Belgium. As far back as the year 1880, nine States, among which
were Georgia, Virginia and the two Carolinas, bought £5,750,000
worth of artificial manure; and we are told that by this time the
use of artificial manure has immensely spread towards the West. In
Iowa, where mammoth farms used to exist twenty years ago, sown grass
is already in use, and it is highly recommended by both the Iowa
Agricultural Institute and the numerous local agricultural papers;
while at the agricultural competitions the highest rewards are given,
not for extensive farming, but for high crops on small areas. Thus,
at a recent competition in which hundreds of farmers took part, the
first ten prizes were awarded to ten farmers who had grown, on three
acres each, from 262 to 346¾ bushels of Indian corn, in other words
_from 87 to 115 bushels to the acre_. This shows where the ambition
of the Iowa farmer goes. In Minnesota, prizes were given already for
crops of 300 to 1,120 bushels of potatoes to the acre--that is, from
eight and a quarter to thirty-one tons to the acre--while the average
potato crop in Great Britain is only six tons.

At the same time market-gardening is immensely extending in America.
In the market-gardens of Florida we see such crops as 445 to 600
bushels of onions per acre, 400 bushels of tomatoes, 700 bushels of
sweet potatoes, which testify to a high development of culture. As
to the “truck farms” (market-gardening for export by steamer and
rail), they covered, in 1892, 400,000 acres, and the fruit farms in
the suburbs of Norfolk, in Virginia, were described by Prof. Ch.
Baltet[70] as real _models_ of that sort of culture--a very high
testimony in the mouth of a French gardener who himself comes from
the model _marais_ of Troyes.

And while people in London continue to pay almost all the year
round twopence for a lettuce (very often imported from Paris), they
have at Chicago and Boston those unique establishments in the world
where lettuces are grown in immense greenhouses with the aid of
electric light; and we must not forget that although the discovery of
“electric” growth is European (it is due to Siemens), it was at the
Cornell University that it was proved by a series of experiments that
electric light is an admirable aid for forwarding the growth of the
_green_ parts of the plant.

In short, America, which formerly took the lead in bringing
“extensive” agriculture to perfection, now takes the lead in
“intensive,” or forced, agriculture as well. In this adaptability
lies the real force of American competition.


FOOTNOTES:

[34] I leave these lines on purpose as they were written for the
first edition of this book.

[35] Twenty-three per cent. of the total area of England, 40 per
cent. in Wales, and 75 per cent. in Scotland are now under wood,
coppice, mountain heath, water, etc. The remainder--that is,
32,777,513 acres--which were under culture and permanent pasture
in the year 1890 (only 32,094,658 in 1911), may be taken as the
“cultivable” area of Great Britain.

[36] Average area under wheat in 1853-1860, 4,092,160 acres; average
crop, 14,310,779 quarters. Average area under wheat in 1884-1887,
2,509,055 acres; average crop (good years), 9,198,956 quarters.
See Professor W. Fream’s _Rothamstead Experiments_ (London, 1888),
page 83. I take in the above Sir John Lawes’ figure of 5·65 bushels
per head of population every year. It is very close to the yearly
allowance of 5·67 bushels of the French statisticians. The Russian
statisticians reckon 5·67 bushels of winter crops (chiefly rye) and
2·5 bushels of spring crops (sarrazin, barley, etc.).

[37] There was an increase of 1,800,000 head of horned cattle, and
a decrease of 4¼ million sheep (6⅔ millions, if we compare the year
1886 with 1868), which would correspond to an increase of 1¼ million
of units of cattle, because eight sheep are reckoned as equivalent
to one head of horned cattle. But five million acres having been
reclaimed upon waste land since 1860, the above increase should
hardly do for covering that area, so that the 2¼ million acres which
were cultivated no longer remained fully uncovered. They were a pure
loss to the nation.

[38] According to a report read by Mr. Crawford before the
Statistical Society in October, 1899, Britain imports every year
4,500,000 tons of hay and other food for its cattle and horses. Under
the present system of culture, 6,000,000 acres could produce these
food-stuffs. If another 6,000,000 acres were sown with cereals, all
the wheat required for the United Kingdom could have been produced at
home with the methods of culture now in use.

[39] No less than 5,877,000 cwts. of beef and mutton, 1,065,470 sheep
and lambs, and 415,565 pieces of cattle were imported in 1895. In
1910 the first of these figures rose to 13,690,000 cwts. Altogether,
it is calculated (_Statesman’s Year-book_, 1912) that, in 1910,
21 lb. of imported beef, 13½ lb. of imported mutton, and 7 lb. of
other sorts of meat, per head of population, were retained for home
consumption; in addition to 11 lb. of butter, 262 lb. of wheat, 25
lb. of flour, and 20 lb. of rice and rice-flour, imported.

[40] Agricultural population (farmers and labourers) in England and
Wales: 2,100,000 in 1861; 1,383,000 in 1884; 1,311,720 in 1891;
1,152,500 (including fishing population) in 1901.

[41] Round the small hamlet where I stayed for two summers, there
were: One farm, 370 acres, four labourers and two boys; another,
about 300 acres, two men and two boys; a third, 800 acres, five men
only and probably as many boys. In truth, the problem of cultivating
the land with the least number of men has been solved in this spot
by not cultivating at all as much as two-thirds of it. Since these
lines were written, in 1890, a movement in favour of intensive
market-gardening has begun in this country, and I read in November,
1909, that they were selling at the Covent Garden market asparagus
that had been grown in South Devon in November. They begin also to
grow early potatoes in Cornwall and Devon. Formerly, nobody thought
of utilising this rich soil and warm climate for growing early
vegetables.

[42] _Land Problems and National Welfare_, London, 1911.

[43] _Rural England_, two big volumes, London, 1902.

[44] See H. Rider Haggard’s _Rural Denmark and its Lessons_, London,
1911, pp. 188-212.

[45] The _Rothamstead Experiments_, 1888, by Professor W. Fream, p.
35 _seq._ It is well worth noting that Mr. Hall, who was the head
of Rothamstead for many years, maintained from his own experience
that growing wheat in England is more profitable than rearing live
stock. The same opinion was often expressed by the experts whose
testimonies are reproduced by Rider Haggard. In many places of his
_Rural England_ one finds also a mention of high wheat crops, up to
fifty-six bushels per acre, obtained in many places in this country.

[46] The figures which I take for these calculations are given in
_Agricultural Returns of the Board of Agriculture and Agricultural
Statistics for 1911_, vol xlvi., pt. 1. They are as follows for the
year 1910:--

                                           Acres.
  Total area (Great Britain)             56,803,000
  Uncultivable area                      24,657,070
                                        (23,680,000 in 1895)
  Cultivable area                        32,145,930
  Out of it, under the plough            14,668,890
  Out of it, under permanent pasture     17,477,040

(During the last ten years, since the census of 1901, the cultivable
area decreased by 323,000 acres, while the urban area increased by
166,710 acres, thus reaching now 4,015,700 acres. Since 1901, 942,000
acres were withdrawn from the plough, 661,000 acres in England,
158,000 in Wales, and 123,000 in Scotland.)

The distribution of the area which is actually under the plough
between the various crops varies considerably from year to year.
Taking 1910 (an average year) we have the following:--

                                           Acres.
  Corn crops                             7,045,530
  Clover and mature grasses              4,157,040
  Green crops and orchards               2,994,890
  Hops                                      32,890
  Small fruit                               84,310
  Flax                                         230
  Bare fallow, etc.                        354,000
  Total under culture (including that
    part of permanent pasture which
    gives hay)                          14,668,890
                         (In 1901       15,610,890)
                         (In 1895       16,166,950)

Out of the 7,045,530 acres given to corn crops, 1,808,850 acres were
under wheat (nearly 200,000 acres less than in 1899 and 100,000 acres
less than in 1911), 1,728,680 acres under barley (only 1,597,930 in
1911), 3,020,970 acres under oats, about 300,000 under beans, and
about 52,000 acres under rye and buckwheat. From 540,000 to 570,000
acres were given to potatoes. The area under clover and sown grasses
is steadily declining since 1898, when it was 4,911,000 acres.

[47] Only from each 52 acres, out of 308 acres, hay is obtained. The
remainder are grazing grounds.

[48] That is, thirty to thirty-three bushels on the average; forty
bushels in good farms, and fifty in the best. The area under
wheat was 16,700,000 acres in 1910, all chief corn crops covering
33,947,000 acres; the cultivated area is 90,300,000 acres, and
the aggregate superficies of France, 130,800,000 acres. About
agriculture in France, see Lecouteux, _Le blé, sa culture extensive
et intensive_, 1883; Risler, _Physiologie et culture du blé_, 1886;
Boitet, _Herbages et prairies naturelles_, 1885; Baudrillart,
_Les populations agricoles de la Normandie_, 1880; Grandeau,
_La production agricole en France_, and _L’agriculture et les
institutions agricoles du monde au commencement du vingtième siècle_;
P. Compain, _Prairies et paturages_; A. Clément, _Agriculture
moderne_, 1906; Augé Laribé, _L’évolution de la France agricole_,
1912; Léonce de Lavergne’s last edition; and so on.

[49] The exports from France in 1910 (average year) attained: Wine,
222,804,000 fr.; spirits, 54,000,000 fr.; cheese, butter and sugar,
114,000,000 fr. To this country France sent, same year, £2,163,200
worth of wine, £1,013,200 worth of refined sugar, £2,116,000 worth
of butter, and £400,000 worth of eggs, all of French origin only, in
addition to £12,206,700 worth of manufactured silks, woollens, and
cottons. The exports from Algeria are not taken in the above figures.

[50] Each 1,000 acres of French territory are disposed of as follows:
379 acres are under woods and coppices (176), buildings, communal
grazing grounds, mountains, etc., and 621 acres are considered as
“cultivable.” Out of the latter, 130 are under meadows, now irrigated
to a great extent, 257 acres under cereals (124 under wheat, and 26
under wheat mixed with rye), 33 under vineyards, 83 under orchards,
green crops, and various industrial cultures, and the remainder is
chiefly under permanent pasture or bare fallow. As to cattle, we
find in Great Britain, in 1910, which was an average year, 7,037,330
head of cattle (including in that number about 1,400,000 calves
under one year), which makes _twenty-two head_ per each 100 acres
of the cultivable area, and 27,103,000 sheep--that is, _eighty-four
sheep_ per each 100 acres of the same area. In France we find, in
the same year, 14,297,570 cattle (_nineteen_ head per each 100 acres
of cultivable area), and only 17,357,640 sheep (_twenty-one_ sheep
per 100 acres of the same). In other words, the proportion of horned
cattle is nearly the same in both countries (twenty-two head and
nineteen head per 100 acres), a considerable difference appearing in
favour of this country only as to the number of sheep (eighty-four
as against twenty-one). The heavy imports of hay, oil-cake, oats,
etc., into this country must, however, not be forgotten, because,
for each head of cattle which lives on imported food, eight sheep
can be grazed, or be fed with home-grown fodder. As to horses, both
countries stand on nearly the same footing.

[51] Out of each 1000 acres of territory, 673 are cultivated, and
327 are left as uncultivable, and part of them are now used for
afforestation. Out of the 673 cultivated acres, 273 are given to
cereals, out of which 61 are under pure wheat, 114 under _méteil_ (a
mixture of ⅔ of wheat and ⅓ of rye) and pure rye, and 98 under other
cereals; 18 to potatoes, 45 to roots and fodder, and 281 to various
industrial cultures (beet for sugar, oleaginous grains, etc.); 27 are
under gardens, kitchen gardens and parks, 177 under woods, and 57 are
cultivated periodically. On the other hand, each 65 acres out of 1000
give catch-crops of carrots, mangolds, etc.

[52] _Annuaire Statistique de la Belgique pour_ 1910, Bruxelles,
1911. In Mr. Seebohm Rowntree’s admirable work, _Land and Labour:
Lessons from Belgium_, published 1910 (London, Macmillan), the reader
will find all concerning Belgian agriculture dealt with in detail on
the basis of the author’s personal scrupulous inquiries on the spot,
and all available statistical information.

[53] _Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium_, pp. 178, 179.

[54] Taking all horses, cattle and sheep in both countries, and
reckoning eight sheep as equivalent to one head of horned cattle, we
find that Belgium has _twenty-four_ cattle units and horses upon each
100 acres of territory, as against _twenty_ same units and horses in
Great Britain. If we take cattle alone, the disproportion is much
greater, as we find _thirty-six_ cattle units on each 100 acres of
cultivable area, as against _nineteen_ in Great Britain. The annual
value of animal produce in Belgium is estimated by the _Annuaire
Statistique de la Belgique_ (1910, p. 302) at £66,040,000, including
milk (£4,000,000), poultry (£1,600,000), and eggs (£1,400,000).

[55] I take these lines from a letter which the Rural Office of the
Belgian Ministry of Agriculture had been kind enough to write to me
on January 28, 1910, in reply to some questions which I had addressed
to that Office in order to explain the striking oscillations of the
Belgian exports between the years 1870 and 1880. A Belgian friend,
having kindly taken new information upon this point, had the same
opinion confirmed from another official source.

[56] If we take the figures of imports and exports, which I also
owe to the Belgian Rural Office, we find that the _net_ imports
of wheat, rye, and wheat mixed with rye (_méteil_) reached 3,011
million lb. in 1907 (3,374 million in 1910), which would give 429 lb.
_per capita_ for a population of 7,000,000 inhabitants. But if this
amount be added to the local production of the same cereals, which
reached the same year 2,426 million lb., we arrive at the figure of
776 lb. per head of population. But such a figure is much too high,
because the annual _per capita_ consumption _of both the winter
and the spring cereals_ is generally estimated to be 502 lb. There
must be, therefore, either an error in the weight of the imports,
which is improbable, or the figures of re-exported cereals are not
complete. Let me add that in France the average annual consumption
_per capita_ of _all_ cereals, including oats, has been in the
course of twenty-nine years (1880-1908) 525 lb., which confirms the
above-mentioned figure. And in France people eat as much bread as in
Belgium.

[57] See Appendix K.

[58] Assuming that 9,000 lb. of dry hay are necessary for keeping one
head of horned cattle every year, the following figures (taken from
Toubeau’s _Répartition métrique des impôts_) will show what we obtain
now under usual and under intensive culture:--

  +-----------------------+--------------+-------------+----------+
  |                       |              |             |Number of |
  |                       |Crop per acre.|Equivalent in|cattle fed|
  |                       |    Eng. lb.  |   dry hay.  |from each |
  |                       |              |   Eng. lb.  |100 acres.|
  +-----------------------+--------------+-------------+----------+
  | Pasture               |      --      |     1,200   |     13   |
  | Unirrigated meadows   |      --      |     2,400   |     26   |
  | Clover, cut twice     |      --      |     4,800   |     52   |
  | Swedish turnips       |    38,500    |    10,000   |    108   |
  | Rye-grass             |    64,000    |    18,000   |    180   |
  | Beet, high farming    |    64,000    |    21,000   |    210   |
  | Indian corn, ensilage |   120,000    |    30,000   |    330   |
  +-----------------------+--------------+-------------+----------+

[59] I saw thermosiphons used by the market-gardeners at Worthing.
They said that they found them quite satisfactory. As to the cost
of heating the soil, let me mention the experiments of H. Mehner,
described in _Gartenflora_, fascicules 16 and 17 of the year
1906. He considers the cost quite small, in comparison with the
increased value of the crops. With £100 per _Morgen_, spent for the
installation, and £10 every spring for heating, the author estimates
the increase in the value of crops (earlier vegetables) at £100 every
year. (Report to the German _Landwirthschafts Gesellschaft_, 1906.)

[60] “Portable soil” is not the latest departure in agriculture. The
last one is the watering of the soil with special liquids containing
special microbes. It is a fact that chemical manures, without organic
manure, seldom prove to be sufficient. On the other hand, it was
discovered lately that certain microbes in the soil are a necessary
condition for the growth of plants. Hence the idea of _sowing_ the
beneficent microbes, which rapidly develop in the soil and fertilise
it. We certainly shall soon hear more of this new method, which is
experimented upon on a large scale in Germany, in order to transform
peat-bogs and heavy soils into rich meadows and fields.

[61] Ponce, _La culture maraîchère_, 1869; Gressent, _Le potager
moderne_, 7th edition in 1886; Courtois-Gérard, _Manuel pratique
de culture maraîchère_, 1863; L. G. Gillekens, _Cours pratique
de culture maraîchère_, Bruxelles, 1895; Vilmorin, _Le bon
jardinier_ (almanac). The general reader who cares to know about
the productivity of the soil will find plenty of examples, well
classified, in the most interesting work _La Répartition métrique des
impôts_, by A. Toubeau, 2 vols., 1880. I do not quote many excellent
English manuals, but I must remark that the market-gardening culture
in this country has also obtained results very highly prized by the
Continental gardeners, and that the chief reproach to be addressed
to it is its relatively small extension. French market-gardening
having been lately introduced into England, several manuals have been
published for that purpose. The little work, _French Gardening_, by
Thomas Smith, London (Utopia Press), 1909, deserves special mention,
as it contains the results of one year’s observation of the work
of a French gardener, specially invited to England by Mr. Joseph
Fels, and gives (with illustrations) a mass of practical indications
and numerical data as to the cost and the value of the produce.
A subsequent work of the same author, _The Profitable Culture of
Vegetables for Market Gardeners, Small Holders, and Others_, London
(Longmans, Green), 1911, deals in detail with the ordinary culture of
vegetables and the intensive culture of the French gardeners.

[62] _Manuel pratique de culture maraîchère_, by Courtois-Gérard, 4th
edit., 1868.

[63] Already it is partly removed in France and Belgium, owing to the
public laboratories where analyses of seeds and manure are made free.
The falsifications discovered by these laboratories exceed all that
could have been imagined. Manures, containing only one-fifth part of
the nutritious elements they were supposed to contain, were found to
be quite common; while manures containing injurious matters, and no
nutritious parts whatever, were not unfrequently supplied by firms of
“respectable” repute. With seeds, things stand even worse. Samples
of grass seeds which contained 20 per cent. of injurious grasses, or
20 per cent. of grains of sand, so coloured as to deceive the buyer,
or even 10 per cent. of a deadly poisonous grass, passed through the
Ghent laboratory.

[64] During the winter of 1890 a friend of mine, who lived in a
London suburb, used to get his butter from Bavaria _per parcel post_.
It cost him 10s. the eleven pounds in Bavaria, parcel post inclusive
(2s. 2d.), 6d. for the money order, and 2½d. the letter; total, less
than 11s. Butter of an inferior quality (out of comparison), with 10
to 15 per cent. of water inclusive, was sold in London at 1s. 6d. the
lb. at the same time.

[65] The data for the calculation of the cost of production of wheat
in this country are those given by the _Mark Lane Express_; they
will be found in a digestible form in an article on wheat-growing in
the _Quarterly Review_ for April, 1887, and in W. E. Bear’s book,
_The British Farmer and his Competitors_, London (Cassell), 1888.
Although they are a little above the average, the crop taken for
the calculations is also above the average. A similar inquiry has
been made on a large scale by the Russian Provincial Assemblies,
and the whole was summed up in an elaborate paper, in the _Vyestnik
Promyshlennosti_, No. 49, 1887. To compare the paper kopecks with
pence I took the rouble at 63/100 of its nominal value: such was its
average quotation during the year 1886. I took 475 English lb. in the
quarter of wheat.

[66] The rents have declined since 1887, but the prices of wheat also
went down. It must not be forgotten that as the best acres only are
selected for wheat-growing, the rent for each acre upon which wheat
is grown must be taken higher than the average rent per acre in a
farm of from 200 to 300 acres.

[67] L. de Lavergne pointed out as far back as fifty years ago that
the States were at that time the chief importers of guano. Already in
1854 they imported it almost to the same amount as this country, and
they had, moreover, sixty-two manufactories of guano which supplied
it to the amount of sixteen times the imports. Compare also Ronna’s
_L’agriculture aux Etats Unis_, 1881; Lecouteux, _Le blé_; and J. R.
Dodge’s _Annual Report of the American Department of Agriculture_ for
1885 and 1886. Schaeffle’s work was also summed up in Schmoller’s
_Jahrbuch_.

[68] See also J. R. Dodge’s _Farm and Factory_, New York, 1884.

[69] Some additional information on this subject will be found in the
articles of mine: “Some Resources of Canada,” and “Recent Science,”
in the _Nineteenth Century_, January, 1898, and October, 1897. I see
from the _Experimented Farms’ Reports_ for 1909 that on the average
38,000 samples of seeds are sent in this way to the farmers every
year; in 1909 more than 38,000 farmers united in experiments as to
the relative merits of the different sorts of wheat, oats, and barley
under trial. I think that my friend, Dr. William Saunders, is quite
right in saying that this system of supplying a great number of
farmers with small quantities of choice seeds has contributed notably
to increase the yield of corn in Canada.

[70] _L’Horticulture dans les cinq Parties du Monde._ Paris, 1895.




CHAPTER IV.

THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE--(_continued_).

  The doctrine of Malthus--Progress in wheat-growing--East
  Flanders--Channel Islands--Potato crops, past and
  present--Irrigation--Major Hallet’s experiments--Planted wheat.


Few books have exercised so pernicious an influence upon the general
development of economic thought as Malthus’s _Essay on the Principle
of Population_ exercised for three consecutive generations. It
appeared at the right time, like all books which have had any
influence at all, and it summed up ideas already current in the
minds of the wealth-possessing minority. It was precisely when the
ideas of equality and liberty, awakened by the French and American
revolutions, were still permeating the minds of the poor, while the
richer classes had become tired of their amateur excursions into the
same domains, that Malthus came to assert, in reply to Godwin, that
no equality is possible; that the poverty of the many is not due to
institutions, but is a natural _law_. Population, he wrote, grows too
rapidly and the new-comers find no room at the feast of nature; and
that law cannot be altered by any change of institutions. He thus
gave to the rich a kind of scientific argument against the ideas of
equality; and we know that though all dominion is based upon force,
force itself begins to totter as soon as it is no longer supported by
a firm belief in its own rightfulness. As to the poorer classes--who
always feel the influence of ideas circulating at a given time
amid the wealthier classes--it deprived them of the very hope of
improvement; it made them sceptical as to the promises of the social
reformers; and to this day the most advanced reformers entertain
doubts as to the possibility of satisfying the needs of all, in case
there should be a claim for their satisfaction, and a temporary
welfare of the labourers resulted in a sudden increase of population.

Science, down to the present day, remains permeated with Malthus’s
teachings. Political economy continues to base its reasoning upon
a tacit admission of the impossibility of rapidly increasing the
productive powers of a nation, and of thus giving satisfaction to
all wants. This postulate stands, undiscussed, in the background
of whatever political economy, classical or socialist, has to say
about exchange-value, wages, sale of labour force, rent, exchange,
and consumption. Political economy never rises above the hypothesis
of a _limited and insufficient supply of the necessaries of life_;
it takes it for granted. And all theories connected with political
economy retain the same erroneous principle. Nearly all socialists,
too, admit the postulate. Nay, even in biology (so deeply interwoven
now with sociology) we have recently seen the theory of variability
of species borrowing a quite unexpected support from its having
been connected by Darwin and Wallace with Malthus’s fundamental
idea, that the natural resources must inevitably fail to supply the
means of existence for the rapidly multiplying animals and plants.
In short, we may say that the theory of Malthus, by shaping into a
pseudo-scientific form the secret desires of the wealth-possessing
classes, became the foundation of a whole system of practical
philosophy, which permeates the minds of both the educated and
uneducated, and reacts (as practical philosophy always does) upon the
theoretical philosophy of our century.

True, the formidable growth of the productive powers of man in the
industrial field, since he tamed steam and electricity, has somewhat
shaken Malthus’s doctrine. Industrial wealth _has_ grown at a rate
which no possible increase of population could attain, and it _can_
grow with still greater speed. But agriculture is still considered
a stronghold of the Malthusian pseudo-philosophy. The recent
achievements of agriculture and horticulture are not sufficiently
well known; and while our gardeners defy climate and latitude,
acclimatise sub-tropical plants, raise several crops a year instead
of one, and themselves make the soil they want for each special
culture, the economists nevertheless continue saying that the surface
of the soil is limited, and still more its productive powers; they
still maintain that a population which should double each thirty
years would soon be confronted by a lack of the necessaries of life!

       *       *       *       *       *

A few data to illustrate what _can_ be obtained from the soil were
given in the preceding chapter. But the deeper one goes into the
subject, the more new and striking data does he discover, and the
more Malthus’s fears appear groundless.

To begin with an instance taken from culture in the open
field--namely, that of wheat--we come upon the following interesting
fact. While we are so often told that wheat-growing does not pay,
and England consequently reduces from year to year the area of its
wheat fields, the French peasants steadily increase the area under
wheat, and the greatest increase is due to those peasant families
which themselves cultivate the land they own. In the course of the
nineteenth century they have nearly doubled the area under wheat, as
well as the returns from each acre, so as to increase almost fourfold
the amount of wheat grown in France.[71]

At the same time the population has only increased by 41 per cent.,
so that the ratio of increase of the wheat crop has been six
times greater than the ratio of increase of population, although
agriculture has been hampered all the time by a series of serious
obstacles--taxation, military service, poverty of the peasantry, and
even, up to 1884, a severe prohibition of all sorts of association
among the peasants.[72] It must also be remarked that during
the same hundred years, and even within the last fifty years,
market-gardening, fruit-culture and culture for industrial purposes
have immensely developed in France; so that there would be no
exaggeration in saying that the French obtain now from their soil at
least six or seven times more than they obtained a hundred years ago.
The “means of existence” drawn from the soil have thus grown about
fifteen times quicker than the population.

But the ratio of progress in agriculture is still better seen from
the rise of the standard of requirement as regards cultivation of
land. Some thirty years ago the French considered a crop very good
when it yielded twenty-two bushels to the acre; but with the same
soil the present requirement is at least thirty-three bushels,
while in the best soils the crop is good only when it yields from
forty-three to forty-eight bushels, and occasionally the produce
is as much as fifty-five bushels to the acre.[73] There are whole
countries--Hesse, for example--which are satisfied only when the
_average_ crop attains thirty-seven bushels, or Denmark, where the
average crop (1908-1910) is forty-one bushels per acre (forty-four
bushels in 1910).[74] As to the experimental farms of Central France,
they produce from year to year, over large areas, forty-one bushels
to the acre; and a number of farms in Northern France regularly
yield, year after year, from fifty-five to sixty-eight bushels to the
acre. Occasionally even so much as eighty bushels have been obtained
upon limited areas under special care.[75] In fact, Prof. Grandeau
considers it proved that by combining a series of such operations
as the selection of seeds, sowing in rows, and proper manuring, the
crops can be largely increased over the best present average, while
the cost of production can be reduced by 50 per cent. by the use of
inexpensive machinery; to say nothing of costly machines, like the
steam digger, or the pulverisers which make the soil required for
each special culture. They are now occasionally resorted to here and
there, and they surely will come into general use as soon as humanity
feels the need of largely increasing its agricultural produce.

In fact, a considerable progress has already been realised in
French agriculture by labour-saving machinery during the last
twenty-five years; but there still remains an immense field for
further improvement. Thus, in 1908, France had already in use 25,000
harvesting machines and 1,200 binders as against 180 only of the
former and sixty of the second, which were used in 1882; but it is
calculated that no less than 375,000 more harvesting machines and
300,000 mowing machines are required to satisfy the needs of French
agriculture. The same must be said as regards the use of artificial
manure, irrigation, pumping machinery, and so on.

       *       *       *       *       *

When we bear in mind the very unfavourable conditions in which
agriculture stands now all over the world, we must not expect to find
considerable progress in its methods realised over wide regions; we
must be satisfied with noting the advance accomplished in separate,
especially favoured spots, where, for one cause or another, the
tribute levied upon the agriculturist has not been so heavy as to
stop all possibility of progress.

One such example may be seen in the district of Saffelare in East
Flanders. Thirty years ago, on a territory of 37,000 acres, all
taken, a population of 30,000 inhabitants, all peasants, not only
used to find its food, but managed, moreover, to keep no less than
10,720 horned cattle, 3,800 sheep, 1,815 horses and 6,550 swine, to
grow flax, and to export various agricultural produce.[76] And during
the last thirty years it has continued steadily to increase its
exports of agricultural produce.

Another illustration of this sort may be taken from the Channel
Islands, whose inhabitants have happily not known the blessings of
Roman law and landlordism, as they still live under the common law
of Normandy. The small island of Jersey, eight miles long and less
than six miles wide, still remains a land of open-field culture;
but, although it comprises only 28,707 acres, rocks included, it
nourishes a population of about two inhabitants to each acre, or
1,300 inhabitants to the square mile, and there is not one writer
on agriculture who, after having paid a visit to this island, did
not praise the well-being of the Jersey peasants and the admirable
results which they obtain in their small farms of from five to twenty
acres--very often less than five acres--by means of a rational and
intensive culture.

Most of my readers will probably be astonished to learn that the soil
of Jersey, which consists of decomposed granite, with no organic
matter in it, is not at all of astonishing fertility, and that its
climate, though more sunny than the climate of these isles, offers
many drawbacks on account of the small amount of sun-heat during the
summer and of the cold winds in spring. But so it is in reality, and
at the beginning of the nineteenth century the inhabitants of Jersey
lived chiefly on imported food. (See Appendix L.) The successes
accomplished lately in Jersey are entirely due to the amount of
labour which a dense population is putting in the land; to a system
of land-tenure, land-transference and inheritance very different from
those which prevail elsewhere; to freedom from State taxation; and
to the fact that communal institutions have been maintained, down to
quite a recent period, while a number of communal habits and customs
of mutual support, derived therefrom, are alive to the present time.
As to the fertility of the soil, it is made partly by the sea-weeds
gathered free on the sea-coast, but chiefly by artificial manure
fabricated at Blaydon-on-Tyne, out of all sorts of refuse--inclusive
of bones shipped from Plevna and mummies of cats shipped from Egypt.

It is well known that for the last thirty years the Jersey peasants
and farmers have been growing early potatoes on a great scale, and
that in this line they have attained most satisfactory results. Their
chief aim being to have the potatoes out as early as possible, when
they fetch at the Jersey Weigh-Bridge as much as £17 and £20 the ton,
the digging out of potatoes begins, in the best sheltered places, as
early as the first days of May, or even at the end of April. Quite
a system of potato-culture, beginning with the selection of tubers,
the arrangements for making them germinate, the selection of properly
sheltered and well situated plots of ground, the choice of proper
manure, and ending with the box in which the potatoes germinate and
which has so many other useful applications,--quite a system of
culture has been worked out in the island for that purpose by the
collective intelligence of the peasants.[77]

In the last weeks of May and in June, when the export is at its
height, quite a fleet of steamers runs between the small island
of Jersey and various ports of England and Scotland. Every day
eight to ten steamers enter the harbour of St. Hélier, and in
twenty-four hours they are loaded with potatoes and steer for
London, Southampton, Liverpool, Newcastle, and Scotland. From 50,000
to 60,000 tons of potatoes, valued at from £260,000 to £500,000,
according to the year, are thus exported every summer; and, if the
local consumption be taken into account, we have at least 60,000 to
70,000 tons that are obtained, although no more than from 6,500 to
7,500 acres are given to all potato crops, early and late--early
potatoes, as is well known, never giving as heavy crops as the later
ones. Ten to eleven tons per acre is thus the average, while in this
country the average is only six tons per acre.

As soon as the potatoes are out, the second crop of mangold or of
“three months’ wheat” (a special variety of rapidly growing wheat)
is sown. Not one day is lost in putting it in. The potato-field may
consist of one or two acres only, but as soon as one-fourth part of
it is cleared of the potatoes it is sown with the second crop. One
may thus see a small field divided into four plots, three of which
are sown with wheat at five or six days’ distance from each other,
while on the fourth plot the potatoes are being dug out.

The admirable condition of the meadows and the grazing land in the
Channel Islands has often been described, and although the aggregate
area which is given in Jersey to green crops, grasses under rotation,
and permanent pasture--both for hay and grazing--is less than 11,000
acres, they keep in Jersey over 12,300 head of cattle and over 2,300
horses solely used for agriculture and breeding.

Moreover, about 100 bulls and 1,600 cows and heifers are exported
every year,[78] so that by this time, as was remarked in an American
paper, there are more Jersey cows in America than in Jersey Island.
Jersey milk and butter have a wide renown, as also the pears which
are grown in the open air, but each of which is protected on the tree
by a separate cap, and still more the fruit and vegetables which are
grown in the hothouses. In a word, it will suffice to say that on the
whole they obtain agricultural produce to the value of £50 to each
acre of the aggregate surface of the island.

       *       *       *       *       *

Fifty pounds’ worth of agricultural produce from each acre of
the land is sufficiently good. But the more we study the modern
achievements of agriculture, the more we see that the limits
of productivity of the soil are not attained, even in Jersey.
New horizons are continually unveiled. For the last fifty years
science--especially chemistry--and mechanical skill have been
widening and extending the industrial powers of man upon organic
and inorganic dead matter. Prodigies have been achieved in that
direction. Now comes the turn of similar achievements with living
plants. Human skill in the treatment of living matter, and
science--in its branch dealing with living organisms--step in with
the intention of doing for the art of food-growing what mechanical
and chemical skill have done in the art of fashioning and shaping
metals, wood and the dead fibres of plants. Almost every year brings
some new, often unexpected improvement in the art of agriculture,
which for so many centuries had been dormant.

We just saw that while the average potato crop in the country is six
tons per acre, in Jersey it is nearly twice as big. But Mr. Knight,
whose name is well known to every horticulturist in this country, has
once dug out of his fields no less than 1,284 bushels of potatoes, or
thirty-four tons and nine cwts. in weight, on one single acre; and
at a recent competition in Minnesota 1,120 bushels, or thirty tons,
could be ascertained as having been grown on one acre.

These are undoubtedly extraordinary crops, but quite recently the
French Professor Aimé Girard undertook a series of experiments in
order to find out the best conditions for growing potatoes in his
country.[79] He did not care for show-crops obtained by means of
extravagant manuring, but carefully studied all conditions: the best
variety, the depth of tilling and planting, the distance between the
plants. Then he entered into correspondence with some 350 growers
in different parts of France, advised them by letters, and finally
induced them to experiment. Strictly following his instructions,
several of his correspondents made experiments on a small scale, and
they obtained--instead of the three tons which they were accustomed
to grow--such crops as would correspond to twenty and thirty-six tons
to the acre. Moreover, ninety growers experimented on fields more
than one-quarter of an acre in size, and more than twenty growers
made their experiments on larger areas of from three to twenty-eight
acres. The result was that _none of them obtained less than twelve
tons_ to the acre, while some obtained twenty tons, and the average
was, for the 110 growers, fourteen and a half tons per acre.

However, industry requires still heavier crops. Potatoes are largely
used in Germany and Belgium for distilleries; consequently, the
distillery owners try to obtain the greatest possible amounts of
starch from the acre. Extensive experiments have lately been made for
that purpose in Germany, and the crops were: Nine tons per acre for
the poor sorts, fourteen tons for the better ones, and thirty-two and
four-tenths tons for the best varieties of potatoes.

Three tons to the acre and more than thirty tons to the acre are thus
the ascertained limits; and one necessarily asks oneself: Which of
the two requires _less labour_ in tilling, planting, cultivating and
digging, and less expenditure in manure--thirty tons grown on ten
acres, or the same thirty tons grown on one acre or two? If labour
is of no consideration, while every penny spent in seeds and manure
is of great importance, as is unhappily very often the case with the
peasant--he will perforce choose the first method. But is it the most
economic?

       *       *       *       *       *

Again, I just mentioned that in the Saffelare district and Jersey
they succeed in keeping one head of horned cattle to each acre of
green crops, meadows and pasture land, while elsewhere two or three
acres are required for the same purpose. But better results still can
be obtained by means of irrigation, either with sewage or even with
pure water. In England, farmers are contented with one and a half and
two tons of hay per acre, and in the part of Flanders just mentioned,
two and a half tons of hay to the acre are considered a fair crop.
But on the irrigated fields of the Vosges, the Vaucluse, etc., in
France, six tons of dry hay become the rule, even upon ungrateful
soil; and this means considerably more than the annual food of one
milch cow (which can be taken at a little less than five tons) grown
on each acre. All taken, the results of irrigation have proved so
satisfactory in France that during the years 1862-1882 no less than
1,355,000 acres of meadows have been irrigated,[80] which means that
the annual meat-food of at least 1,500,000 full-grown persons, or
more, has been added to the yearly income of the country; home-grown,
not imported. In fact, in the valley of the Seine, the value of the
land was doubled by irrigation; in the Saône valley it was increased
five times, and ten times in certain _landes_ of Brittany.[81]

The example of the Campine district, in Belgium, is classical. It was
a most unproductive territory--mere sand from the sea, blown into
irregular mounds which were only kept together by the roots of the
heath; the acre of it used to be sold, not rented, at from 5s. to 7s.
(15 to 20 francs per hectare). But now it is capable, thanks to the
work of the Flemish peasants and to irrigation, to produce the food
of one milch cow per acre--the dung of the cattle being utilised for
further improvements.

The irrigated meadows round Milan are another well-known example.
Nearly 22,000 acres are irrigated there with water derived from
the sewers of the city, and they yield crops of from eight to ten
tons of hay as a rule; occasionally some separate meadows will
yield the fabulous amount--fabulous to-day, but no longer fabulous
to-morrow--of eighteen tons of hay per acre, that is, the food of
nearly four cows to the acre, and nine times the yield of good
meadows in this country.[82] However, English readers need not go
so far as Milan for ascertaining the results of irrigation by sewer
water. They have several such examples in this country, in the
experiments of Sir John Lawes, and especially at Craigentinny, near
Edinburgh, where, to use Ronna’s words, “the growth of rye grass is
so activated that it attains its full development in one year instead
of in three to four years. Sown in August, it gives a first crop in
autumn, and then, beginning with next spring, a crop of four tons
to the acre is taken every month; which represents in the fourteen
months more than fifty-six tons (of green fodder) to the acre.”[83]
At Lodge Farm they grow forty to fifty-two tons of green crops per
acre, after the cereals, without new manuring. At Aldershot they
obtain excellent potato crops; and at Romford (Breton’s Farm) Colonel
Hope obtained, in 1871-1872, quite extravagant crops of various roots
and potatoes.[84]

It can thus be said that while at the present time we give two and
three acres for keeping one head of horned cattle, and only in a few
places one head of cattle is kept on each acre given to green crops,
meadows and pasture, man has already in irrigation (which very soon
repays when it is properly made) the possibility of keeping twice
and even thrice as many head of cattle to the acre over parts of his
territory. Moreover, the very heavy crops of roots which are now
obtained (seventy-five to 110 tons of beetroot to the acre are not
infrequent) give another powerful means for increasing the number of
cattle without taking the land from what is now given to the culture
of cereals.

       *       *       *       *       *

Another new departure in agriculture, which is full of promises and
probably will upset many a current notion, must be mentioned in this
place. I mean the almost horticultural treatment of our corn crops,
which is widely practised in the far East, and begins to claim our
attention in Western Europe as well.

At the First International Exhibition, in 1851, Major Hallett, of
Manor House, Brighton, had a series of very interesting exhibits
which he described as “pedigree cereals.” By picking out the best
plants of his fields, and by submitting their descendants to a
careful selection from year to year, he had succeeded in producing
new prolific varieties of wheat and barley. Each grain of these
cereals, instead of giving only two to four ears, as is the usual
average in a corn-field, gave ten to twenty-five ears, and the best
ears, instead of carrying from sixty to sixty-eight grains, had an
average of nearly twice that number of grains.

In order to obtain such prolific varieties Major Hallett naturally
could not sow his picked grains broadcast; he planted them, each
separately, in rows, at distances of from ten to twelve inches from
each other. In this way he found that each grain, having full room
for what is called “tillering” (_tallage_ in French[85]), would
produce ten, fifteen, twenty-five, and even up to ninety and 100
ears, as the case may be; and as each ear would contain from 60
to 120 grains, crops of 500 to 2,500 grains, or more, could be
obtained from each separately planted grain. He even exhibited at
the Exeter meeting of the British Association three plants of wheat,
barley, and oats, each from a single grain, which had the following
number of stems: wheat, ninety-four stems; barley, 110 stems; oats,
eighty-seven stems.[86] The barley plant which had 110 stems thus
gave something like 5,000 to 6,000 grains from one single grain. A
careful drawing of that wonderful stubble was made by Major Hallett’s
daughter and circulated with his pamphlets.[87] Again, in 1876, a
wheat plant, with “105 heads growing on one root, on which more than
8,000 grains were growing at once,” was exhibited at the Maidstone
Farmers’ Club.[88]

Two different processes were thus involved in Hallett’s experiments:
a process of selection, in order to create new varieties of cereals,
similar to the breeding of new varieties of cattle; and a method
of immensely increasing the crop from each grain and from a given
area, by planting each seed separately and wide apart, so as to have
room for the full development of the young plant, which is usually
suffocated by its neighbours in our corn-fields.[89]

The double character of Major Hallett’s method--the breeding of
_new prolific varieties_, and the method of culture by _planting
the seeds wide apart_--seems, however, so far as I am entitled to
judge, to have been overlooked until quite lately. The method was
mostly judged upon its results; and when a farmer had experimented
upon “Hallett’s Wheat,” and found out that it was late in ripening
in his own locality, or gave a less perfect grain than some other
variety, he usually did not care more about the method.[90] However,
Major Hallett’s successes or non-successes in breeding such or
such varieties are quite distinct from what is to be said about the
method itself of selection, or the method of planting wheat seeds
wide apart. Varieties which were bred, and which I saw grown still
at Manor Farm, on the windy downs of Brighton may be, or may not be,
suitable to this or that locality. Latest physiological researches
give such an importance to evaporation in the bringing of cereals
to maturity that where evaporation is not so rapid as it is on the
Brighton Downs, other varieties must be resorted to and bred on
purpose.[91] I should also suggest that quite different wheats than
the English ought to be experimented upon for obtaining prolific
varieties; namely, the quickly-growing Norwegian wheat, the Jersey
“three months’ wheat,” or even Yakutsk barley, which matures with an
astonishing rapidity. And now that horticulturists, so experienced in
“breeding” and “crossing” as Vilmorin, Carter, Sherif, W. Saunders
in Canada and many others are, have taken the matter in hand, we
may feel sure that future progress will be made. But breeding is
one thing; and the planting wide apart of seeds of an appropriate
variety of wheat is quite another thing.

This last method was lately experimented upon by M. Grandeau,
Director of the Station Agronomique de l’Est, and by M. Florimond
Dessprèz at the experimental station of Capelle; and in both cases
the results were most remarkable. At this last station a method which
is in use in France for the choice of seeds was applied. Already
now some French farmers go over their wheat fields before the crop
begins, choose the soundest plants which bear two or three equally
strong stems, adorned with long ears, well stocked with grains, and
take these ears. Then they crop off with scissors the top and the
bottom of each ear and keep its middle part only, which contains
the biggest seeds. With a dozen quarts of such selected grains
they obtain next year the required quantity of seeds of a superior
quality.[92]

The same was done by M. Dessprèz. Then each seed was planted
separately, eight inches apart in a row, by means of a specially
devised tool, similar to the _rayonneur_ which is used for planting
potatoes; and the rows, also eight inches apart, were alternately
given to the big and to the smaller seeds. One-fourth part of an
acre having been planted in this way, with seeds obtained from both
early and late ears, crops corresponding to 83·8 bushels per acre
for the first series, and 90·4 bushels for the second series, were
obtained; even the small grains gave in this experiment as much as
70·2 and 62 bushels respectively.[93]

The crop was thus more than doubled by the choice of seeds and by
planting them separately eight inches apart. It corresponded in
Dessprèz’s experiments to _600 grains obtained on the average from
each grain sown_; and one-tenth or one-eleventh part of an acre was
sufficient in such case to grow the eight and a half bushels of wheat
which are required on the average for the annual bread food per head
of a population which would chiefly live on bread.

Prof. Grandeau, Director of the French Station Agronomique de l’Est,
has also made, since 1886, experiments on Major Hallett’s method,
and he obtained similar results. “In a proper soil,” he wrote, “one
single grain of wheat can give as much as fifty stems (and ears), and
even more, and thus cover a circle thirteen inches in diameter.”[94]
But as he seems to know how difficult it often is to convince people
of the plainest facts, he published the photographs of separate wheat
plants grown in different soils, differently manured, including pure
river sand enriched by manure.[95] He concluded that under proper
treatment 2,000 and even 4,000 grains could be easily obtained from
each planted grain. The seedlings, growing from grains planted ten
inches apart, cover the whole space, and the experimental plot
takes the aspect of an excellent cornfield, as may be seen from a
photograph given by Grandeau in his _Etudes agronomiques_.[96]

[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Wheat Plants. _a_, Has given 17 ears from
each planted grain. Soil manured with chemical manure only. _b_, Has
given 25 ears from each planted grain. Soil manured with both stable
and chemical manure.]

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Squares at Professor Grandeau’s experimental
station, planted with grains of wheat, in three different soils: _a_,
pure sand; _b_ and _c_, manured arable soil; each grain 12 inches
apart.]

In fact, the eight and a half bushels required for one man’s annual
food were actually grown at the Tomblaine station on a surface of
2,250 square feet, or forty-seven feet square--that is, on very
nearly one-twentieth part of an acre.

Again, we may thus say, that where we require now three acres, one
acre would be sufficient for growing the same amount of food, if
planting wide apart were resorted to. And there is, surely, no more
objection to planting wheat than there is to sowing in rows, which
is now in general use, although at the time when the system was
first introduced, _in lieu_ of the formerly usual mode of sowing
broadcast, it certainly was met with great distrust. While the
Chinese and the Japanese used for centuries to sow wheat in rows,
by means of a bamboo tube adapted to the plough, European writers
objected, of course, to this method under the pretext that it would
require too much labour. It is the same now with planting each seed
apart. Professional writers sneer at it, although all the rice that
is grown in Japan is planted _and even replanted_. Everyone, however,
who will think of the labour which must be spent for ploughing,
harrowing, fencing, and keeping free of weeds three acres instead of
one, and who will calculate the corresponding expenditure in manure,
will surely admit that all advantages are in favour of the one acre
as against the three acres, to say nothing of the possibilities of
irrigation, or of the planting machine-tool, which will be devised
as soon as there is a demand for it.[97]

More than that, there is full reason to believe that even this
method is liable to further improvement by means of _replanting_.
Cereals in such cases would be treated as vegetables are treated in
horticulture. Such is, at least, the idea which began to germinate
since the methods of cereal culture that are resorted to in China and
Japan became better known in Europe. (See Appendix O.)

The future--a near future, I hope--will show what practical
importance such a method of treating cereals may have. But we need
not speculate about that future. We have already, in the facts
mentioned in this chapter, an experimental basis for quite a number
of means of improving our present methods of culture and of largely
increasing the crops. It is evident that in a book which is not
intended to be a manual of agriculture, all I can do is to give only
a few hints to set people thinking for themselves upon this subject.
But the little that has been said is sufficient to show that we have
no right to complain of over-population, and no need to fear it in
the future. Our means of obtaining from the soil whatever we want,
under _any_ climate and upon _any_ soil, have lately been improved
at such a rate that we cannot foresee yet what is the limit of
productivity of a few acres of land. The limit vanishes in proportion
to our better study of the subject, and every year makes it vanish
further and further from our sight.


FOOTNOTES:

[71] The researches of Tisserand may be summed up as follows:

  +---------+----------+-----------+------------+-------------+
  |         |Population|Acres under|Average crop|Wheat crop in|
  |  Year.  |    in    |   wheat.  | in bushels |   bushels.  |
  |         | millions.|           |  per acre. |             |
  +---------+----------+-----------+------------+-------------+
  | 1789    |   27·0   |  9,884,000|      9     |  87,980,000 |
  | 1831-41 |   33·4   | 13,224,000|     15     | 194,225,000 |
  | 1882-88 |   38·2   | 17,198,000|     18     | 311,619,000 |
  +---------+----------+-----------+------------+-------------+

[72] In a recent evaluation, M. Augé-Laribé (_L’évolution de la
France agricole_, Paris, 1912) arrives at the following figures:--

  +--------+-----------------+
  | Years. |Area under wheat.|
  |        |     Acres.      |
  +--------+-----------------+
  |  1862  |    18,430,000   |
  |  1882  |    17,740,000   |
  |  1892  |    17,690,000   |
  |  1900  |    16,960,000   |
  |  1910  |    16,190,000   |
  +--------+-----------------+

The average crops for each ten years since 1834 are given as
follows:--

  +----------+-----------------+
  |  Years.  |Crops in bushels.|
  +----------+-----------------+
  | 1834-43  |   190,800,000   |
  | 1856-65  |   272,900,000   |
  | 1876-85  |   279,800,000   |
  | 1884-95  |   294,700,000   |
  | 1896-1905|   317,700,000   |
  | 1906-09  |   333,400,000   |
  +----------+-----------------+

The wheat crop has thus increased in seventy-five years by 74 per
cent., while the population increased only by 20 per cent. For
potatoes, the increase is still greater: while 198,800,000 cwt. of
potatoes were grown in 1882, the crop of 1909 was already 328,300,000
cwt., the average yield of the acre growing from 148 cwt. in 1882 to
212 cwt. in 1909.

[73] Grandeau, _Etudes agronomiques_, 2^e série. Paris, 1888.

[74] Although 36 per cent. of the cultivable area is under cereals,
there were in Denmark, in 1910, 2,253,980 head of cattle, as against
1,238,900 in 1871, and 1,470,100 in 1882.

[75] Risler, _Physiologie et Culture du Blé_. Paris, 1886. Taking the
whole of the wheat crop in France, we see that the following progress
has been realised. In 1872-1881 the average crop was 16½ bushels per
acre. In 1882-1890 it attained 17-9/10 bushels per acre. Increase by
14 per cent. in ten years (Prof. C. V. Garola, _Les Céréales_, p. 70
_seq._).

[76] O. de Kerchove de Denterghen, _La petite Culture des Flandres
belges_, Gand, 1878.

[77] One could not insist too much on the collective character of
the development of that branch of husbandry. In many places of the
South coast of England early potatoes can also be grown--to say
nothing of Cornwall and South Devon, where potatoes are obtained by
separate labourers in small quantities as early as they are obtained
in Jersey. But so long as this culture remains the work of isolated
growers, its results must necessarily be inferior to those which the
Jersey peasants obtain through their collective experience. For the
technical details concerning potato-culture in Jersey, see a paper
by a Jersey grower in the _Journal of Horticulture_, 22nd and 29th
May, 1890. Considerable progress has been made lately in Cornwall,
especially in the neighbourhood of Penzance, in the development of
potato-growing and intensive market-gardening, and one may hope that
the successes of these growers will incite others to imitate their
example.

[78] See Appendix L.

[79] See the _Annales agronomiques_ for 1892 and 1893; also _Journal
des Economistes_, février, 1893, p. 215.

[80] Barral in _Journal d’Agriculture pratique_, 2 février, 1889;
Boitel, _Herbages et Prairies naturelles_, Paris, 1887.

[81] The increase of the crops due to irrigation is most instructive.
In the most unproductive Sologne, irrigation has increased the hay
crop from two tons per hectare (two and a half acres) to eight tons;
in the Vendée, from four tons of bad hay to ten tons of excellent
hay. In the Ain, M. Puris, having spent 19,000 francs for irrigating
ninety-two and a half hectares (about £2 10s. per acre), obtained an
increase of 207 tons of excellent hay. In the south of France, a net
increase of over four bushels of wheat per acre is easily obtained
by irrigation; while for market gardening the increase was found
to attain £30 to £40 per acre. (See H. Sagnier, “Irrigation,” in
Barral’s _Dictionnaire d’Agriculture_, vol. iii., p. 339.) I hardly
need mention the striking results obtained lately by irrigation in
Egypt and on the dry plateaus of the United States.

[82] _Dictionnaire d’Agriculture_, same article. See also Appendix M.

[83] Ronna, _Les Irrigations_, vol. iii., p. 67. Paris, 1890.

[84] Prof. Ronna gives the following figures of crops per acre:
Twenty-eight tons of potatoes, sixteen tons of mangolds, 105 tons of
beet, 110 tons of carrots, nine to twenty tons of various cabbage,
and so on.--Most remarkable results seem also to have been obtained
by M. Goppart, by growing green fodder for ensilage. See his work,
_Manuel de la Culture des Maïs et autres Fourrages verts_, Paris,
1877.

[85] “Shortly after the plant appears above ground it commences to
throw out new and distinct stems, upon the first appearance of which
a correspondent root-bud is developed for its support; and while
the new stems grow out flat over the surface of the soil, their
respective roots assume a corresponding development beneath it. This
process, called ‘tillering,’ will continue until the season arrives
for the stems to assume an upright growth.” The less the roots have
been interfered with by overcrowding the better will be the ears
(Major Hallett, “Thin Seeding,” etc.).

[86] Paper on “Thin Seeding and the Selection of Seed,” read before
the Midland Farmers’ Club, 4th June, 1874.

[87] “Pedigree Cereals,” 1889. Paper on “Thin Seeding,” etc., just
mentioned. Abstracts from _The Times_, etc., 1862. Major Hallett
contributed, moreover, several papers to the _Journal of the Royal
Agricultural Society_, and one to _The Nineteenth Century_.

[88] _Agricultural Gazette_, 3rd January, 1876. Ninety ears, some of
which contained as many as 132 grains each, were also obtained in New
Zealand.

[89] It appears from many different experiments (mentioned in Prof.
Garola’s excellent work, _Les Céréales_, Paris, 1892) that when
tested seeds (of which no more than 6 per cent. are lost on sowing)
are sown broadcast, to the amount of 500 seeds per square metre (a
little more than one square yard), _only 148 of them give plants_.
Each plant gives in such case from two to four stems and from two to
four ears; but nearly 360 seeds are entirely lost. When sown in rows,
the loss is not so great, but it is still considerable.

[90] See Prof. Garola’s remarks on “Hallett’s Wheat,” which, by the
way, seems to be well known to farmers in France and Germany (_Les
Céréales_, p. 337).

[91] Besides, Hallett’s wheat must not be sown later than the first
week of September. Those who may try experiments with planted wheat
must be especially careful to make the experiments in open fields,
not in a back garden, and to sow early.

[92] Upon this method of selecting seeds opinions are, however, at
variance amongst agriculturists.

[93] The straw was eighty-three and seventy-seven cwts. per acre in
the first case; fifty-nine and forty-nine cwts. in the second case
(Garola, _Les Céréales_). In his above-mentioned paper on “Thin
Seeding,” Major Hallett mentions a crop at the rate of 108 bushels to
the acre, obtained by planting nine inches apart.

[94] L. Grandeau, _Etudes agronomiques_, 3^e série, 1887-1888, p. 43.
This series is still continued by one volume every year.

[95] On one of these photographs one sees that in a soil improved by
chemical manure only, seventeen stems from each grain are obtained;
with organic manure added to the former, twenty-five stems were
obtained.

[96] Most interesting experiments for obtaining new sorts of wheat,
combining the qualities of Canadian wheat with those of the best
British sorts, are being carried on now at the Cambridge University.
Similar experiments have been made in Germany by F. von Lochow, at
Petkno, in order to produce new races of rye rich in gluten and
prolific. These last experiments were made on Mr. Hallett’s method,
and the results were satisfactory, as it appears from a report
published in Fuehling’s _Landwirthschaftliche Zeitung_, Leipzig,
January and February, 1900, pp. 29 and 45.

[97] See Appendix N.




CHAPTER V.

THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE--(_continued_).

  Extension of market-gardening and fruit growing: in France;
  in the United States--Culture under glass--Kitchen gardens
  under glass--Hothouse culture: in Guernsey and Jersey: in
  Belgium--Conclusion.


One of the most interesting features of the present evolution
of agriculture is the extension lately taken by intensive
market-gardening of the same sort as has been described in the
third chapter. What formerly was limited to a few hundreds of small
gardens, is now spreading with an astonishing rapidity. In this
country the area given to market-gardens, after having more than
doubled within the years 1879 to 1894, when it attained 88,210 acres,
has continued steadily to increase.[98] But it is especially in
France, Belgium, and America that this branch of culture has lately
taken a great development. (See Appendix P.)

At the present time no less than 1,075,000 acres are given in France
to market-gardening and intensive fruit culture, and a few years ago
it was estimated that the _average_ yield of every acre given to
these cultures attains £33, 10s.[99] Their character, as well as the
amount of skill displayed in, and labour given to, these cultures,
will best appear from the following illustrations.

About Roscoff, which is a great centre in Brittany for the export to
England of such potatoes as will keep till late in summer, and of
all sorts of vegetables, a territory, twenty-six miles in diameter,
is entirely given to these cultures, and the rents attain and exceed
£5 per acre. Nearly 300 steamers call at Roscoff to ship potatoes,
onions and other vegetables to London and different English ports, as
far north as Newcastle. Moreover, as much as 4,000 tons of vegetables
are sent every year to Paris.[100] And although the Roscoff peninsula
enjoys a specially warm climate, small stone walls are erected
everywhere, and rushes are grown on their tops in order to give still
more protection and heat to the vegetables.[101] The climate is
improved as well as the soil.

In the neighbourhoods of Cherbourg it is upon land conquered from
the sea that the best vegetables are grown--more than 800 acres of
that land being given to potatoes exported to London; another 500
acres are given to cauliflower; 125 acres to Brussels sprouts; and
so on. Potatoes grown under glass are also sent to the London market
from the middle of April, and the total export of vegetables from
Cherbourg to England attains 300,000 cwts., while from the small port
of Barfleur another 100,000 cwts. are sent to this country, and about
60,000 cwts. to Paris. Nay, in a quite small commune, Surtainville,
near Cherbourg, £2,800 are made out of 180 acres of market-gardens,
three crops being taken every year: cabbage in February, early
potatoes next, and various crops in the autumn--to say nothing of the
catch crops.

At Plougastel one hardly believes that he is in Brittany. Melons used
to be grown at that spot, long since, in the open fields, with glass
frames to protect them from the spring frost, and green peas were
grown under the protection of rows of furze which sheltered them from
the northern winds. Now, whole fields are covered with strawberries,
roses, violets, cherries and plums, down to the very sea beach.[102]
Even the _landes_ are reclaimed, and we are told that in five years
or so there will be no more _landes_ in that district (p. 265). Nay,
the marshes of the Dol--“The Holland of Brittany”--protected from the
sea by a wall (5,050 acres), have been turned into market-gardens,
covered with cauliflowers, onions, radishes, haricot beans and so on,
the acre of that land being rented at from £2, 10s. to £4.

The neighbourhoods of Nantes could also be mentioned. Green peas are
cultivated there on a very large scale. During the months of May and
June quite an army of working people, especially women and children,
are picking them. The roads leading to the great preserving factories
are covered at certain hours with rows of carts, upon which the
peas and onions are carted one way, while another row of carts are
carrying the empty pods which are used for manure. For two months the
children are missing in the schools; and in the peasant families of
the neighbourhood, when the question comes about some expenditure to
be made, the usual saying is, “Wait till the season of the green peas
has come.”

About Paris no less than 50,000 acres are given to the field culture
of vegetables and 25,000 acres to the forced culture of the same.
Sixty years ago the yearly rent paid by market-gardeners attained
already as much as £18 and £24 per acre, and yet it has been
increased since, as well as the gross receipts, which were valued by
Courtois Gérard at £240 per acre for the larger market-gardeners,
and twice as much for the smaller ones in which early vegetables are
grown in frames.

The fruit culture in the neighbourhoods of Paris is equally
wonderful. At Montreuil, for instance, 750 acres, belonging to 400
gardeners, are literally covered with stone walls, specially erected
for growing fruit, and having an aggregate length of 400 miles.
Upon these walls, peach trees, pear trees and vines are spread, and
every year something like 12,000,000 peaches are gathered, as well
as a considerable amount of the finest pears and grapes. The acre
in such conditions brings in £56. This is how a “warmer climate”
was made, at a time when the greenhouse was still a costly luxury.
All taken, 1,250 acres are given to peaches (25,000,000 peaches
every year) in the close neighbourhood of Paris. Acres and acres
are also covered with pear trees which yield three to five tons of
fruit per acre, such crop being sold at from £50 to £60. Nay, at
Angers, on the Loire, where pears are eight days in advance of the
suburbs of Paris, Baltet knows an orchard of five acres, covered with
pears (pyramid trees), which brings in £400 every year; and at a
distance of thirty-three miles from Paris one pear plantation brings
in £24 per acre--the cost of package, transport and selling being
deducted. Likewise, the plantations of plums, of which 80,000 cwts.
are consumed every year at Paris alone, give an annual money income
of from £29 to £48 per acre every year; and yet, pears, plums and
cherries are sold at Paris, fresh and juicy, at such a price that the
poor, too, can eat fresh home-grown fruit.

In the province of Anjou one may see how a heavy clay, improved with
sand taken from the Loire and with manure, has been turned, in the
neighbourhoods of Angers, and especially at Saint Laud, into a soil
which is rented at from £2, 10s. to £5 the acre, and upon that soil
fruit is grown which a few years ago was exported to America.[103]
At Bennecour, a quite small village of 850 inhabitants, near Paris,
one sees what man can make out of the most unproductive soil. Quite
recently the steep slopes of its hills were only _mergers_ from which
stone was extracted for the pavements of Paris. Now these slopes
are entirely covered with apricot and cherry trees, black-currant
shrubs, and plantations of asparagus, green peas and the like. In
1881, £5,600 worth of apricots alone was sold out of this village,
and it must be borne in mind that competition is so acute in the
neighbourhoods of Paris that a delay of twenty-four hours in
the sending of apricots to the market will often mean a loss of
8s.--one-seventh of the sale price on each hundred-weight.[104]

At Perpignan, green artichokes--a favourite vegetable in France--are
grown, from October till June, on an area covering 2,500 acres, and
the net revenue is estimated at £32 per acre. In Central France,
artichokes are even cultivated in the open fields, and nevertheless
the crops are valued (by Baltet) at from £48 to £100 per acre. In
the Loiret, 1,500 gardeners, who occasionally employ 5,000 workmen,
obtain from £400,000 to £480,000 worth of vegetables, and their
yearly expenditure for manure is £60,000. This figure alone is the
best answer to those who are fond of talking about the extraordinary
fertility of the soil, each time they are told of some success
in agriculture. At Lyons, a population of 430,000 inhabitants is
entirely supplied with vegetables by the local gardeners. The same
is in Amiens, which is another big industrial city. The districts
surrounding Orléans form another great centre for market-gardening,
and it is especially worthy of notice that the shrubberies of Orléans
supply even America with large quantities of young trees.[105]

It would take, however, a volume to describe the chief centres of
market-gardening and fruit-growing in France; and I will mention
only one region more, where vegetables and fruit-growing go hand in
hand. It lies on the banks of the Rhône, about Vienne, where we find
a narrow strip of land, partly composed of granite rocks, which has
now become a garden of an incredible richness. The origin of that
wealth, we are told by Ardouin Dumazet, dates from some thirty years
ago, when the vineyards, ravaged by phylloxera, had to be destroyed
and some new culture had to be found. The village of Ampuis became
then renowned for its apricots. At the present time, for a full 100
miles along the Rhône, and in the lateral valleys of the Ardèche and
the Drôme, the country is an admirable orchard, from which millions’
worth of fruit is exported, and the land attains the selling price
of from £325 to £400 the acre. Small plots of land are continually
reclaimed for culture upon every crag. On both sides of the roads
one sees the plantations of apricot and cherry trees, while between
the rows of trees early beans and peas, strawberries, and all sorts
of early vegetables are grown. In the spring the fine perfume of the
apricot trees in bloom floats over the whole valley. Strawberries,
cherries, apricots, peaches and grapes follow each other in rapid
succession, and at the same time cartloads of French beans, salads,
cabbages, leeks, and potatoes are sent towards the industrial cities
of the region. It would be impossible to estimate the quantity and
value of all that is grown in that region. Suffice it to say that a
tiny commune, Saint Désirat, exported during Ardouin Dumazet’s visit
about 2,000 cwts. of cherries every day.[106]

       *       *       *       *       *

The results of this development are simply striking. Thus it appears,
from an inquest made in 1906 by the French professors of agriculture,
that the yearly export of fresh flowers from the _département_ of the
Alpes Maritimes attains as much as £400,000, and that of the flowers
used for perfumes gives from £280,000 to £320,000 in addition to the
just mentioned sum.[107] From the _département_ of the Var, 3,475
tons of flowers, valued from £160,000 to £200,000, were exported in
1902.

       *       *       *       *       *

I must refer the reader to the work of Charles Baltet if he will
know more about the extension taken by market-gardening in different
countries, and will only mention Belgium and America.

       *       *       *       *       *

The exports of vegetables from Belgium have increased twofold within
the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, and whole regions,
like Flanders, claim to be now the market-garden of England, even
seeds of the vegetables preferred in this country being distributed
free by one horticultural society in order to increase the export.
Not only the best lands are appropriated for that purpose, but even
the sand deserts of the Ardennes and peat-bogs are turned into rich
market-gardens, while large plains (namely at Haeren) are irrigated
for the same purpose. Scores of schools, experimental farms, and
small experimental stations, evening lectures, and so on, are opened
by the communes, the private societies, and the State, in order to
promote horticulture, and hundreds of acres of land are covered with
thousands of greenhouses.

Here we see one small commune exporting 5,500 tons of potatoes and
£4,000 worth of pears to Stratford and Scotland, and keeping for
that purpose its own line of steamers. Another commune supplies the
north of France and the Rhenish provinces with strawberries, and
occasionally sends some of them to Covent Garden as well. Elsewhere
early carrots, which are grown amidst flax, barley and white poppies,
give a considerable addition to the farmer’s income. In another place
we learn that land is rented at £24 and £27 the acre, not for grapes
or melon-growing but for the modest culture of onions; or that the
gardeners have done away with such a nuisance as natural soil in
their frames, and prefer to make their loam out of wood sawings,
tannery refuse and hemp dust, “animalised” by various composts.[108]

In short, Belgium, which is one of the chief manufacturing countries
of Europe, is now becoming one of the chief centres of horticulture.
(See Appendix R.)

       *       *       *       *       *

The other country which must especially be recommended to the
attention of horticulturists is America. When we see the mountains
of fruit imported from America we are inclined to think that fruit
in that country grows by itself. “Beautiful climate,” “virgin
soil,” “immeasurable spaces”--these words continually recur in the
papers. The reality, however, is that horticulture--that is, both
market-gardening and fruit culture--has been brought in America to
a high degree of perfection. Prof. Baltet, a practical gardener
himself, originally from the classical _marais_ (market-gardens) of
Troyes, describes the “truck farms” of Norfolk in Virginia as real
“model farms.” A highly complimentary appreciation from the lips of
a practical _maraîcher_ who has learned from his infancy that only
in fairyland do the golden apples grow by the fairies’ magic wand.
As to the perfection to which apple-growing has been brought in
Canada, the aid which the apple-growers receive from the Canadian
experimental farms, and the means which are resorted to, on a truly
American scale, to spread information amongst the farmers and to
supply them with new varieties of fruit trees--all this ought to be
carefully studied in this country, instead of inducing Englishmen to
believe that the American supremacy is due to the golden fairies’
hands. If one tenth part of what is done in the States and in Canada
for favouring agriculture and horticulture were done in this country,
English fruit would not have been so shamefully driven out of the
market as it was a few years ago.

The extension given to horticulture in America is immense. The “truck
farms” alone--that is, the farms which work for export by rail or
steam--covered in the States in 1892 no less than 400,000 acres. At
the very doors of Chicago one single market-gardening farm covers 500
acres, and out of these, 150 acres are given to cucumbers, 50 acres
to early peas, and so on. During the Chicago Exhibition a special
“strawberry express,” composed of thirty waggons, brought in every
day 324,000 quarts of the freshly gathered fruit, and there are
days that over 10,000 bushels of strawberries are imported in New
York--three-fourths of that amount coming from the “truck farms” of
Virginia by steamer.[109]

This is what can be achieved by an intelligent combination of
agriculture with industry, and undoubtedly will be applied on a still
larger scale in the future.

       *       *       *       *       *

However, a further advance is being made in order to emancipate
horticulture from climate. I mean the glasshouse culture of fruit and
vegetables.

Formerly the greenhouse was the luxury of the rich mansion. It was
kept at a high temperature, and was made use of for growing, under
cold skies, the golden fruit and the bewitching flowers of the South.
Now, and especially since the progress of technics allows of making
cheap glass and of having all the woodwork, sashes and bars of a
greenhouse made by machinery, the glasshouse becomes appropriated for
growing fruit for the million, as well as for the culture of common
vegetables. The aristocratic hothouse, stocked with the rarest fruit
trees and flowers, remains; nay, it spreads more and more for growing
luxuries which become more and more accessible to the great number.
But by its side we have the plebeian greenhouse, which is heated for
only a couple of months in winter and the still more economically
built “cool greenhouse,” which is a simple glass shelter--a big “cool
frame”--and is stuffed with the humble vegetables of the kitchen
garden: the potatoes, the carrots, the French beans, the peas and the
like. The heat of the sun, passing through the glass, but prevented
by the same glass from escaping by radiation, is sufficient to keep
it at a very high temperature during spring and early summer. A
new system of horticulture--the market-garden under glass--is thus
rapidly gaining ground.

The greenhouse for commercial purposes is essentially of British,
or perhaps Scottish, origin. Already in 1851, Mr. Th. Rivers had
published a book, _The Orchard Houses and the Cultivation of Fruit
Trees in Pots under Glass_; and we were told by Mr. D. Thomson, in
the _Journal of Horticulture_ (31st January, 1889), that nearly fifty
years ago grapes in February were sold at 25s. the pound by a grower
in the north of England, and that part of them was sent by the buyer
to Paris for Napoleon III.’s table, at 50s. the pound. “Now,” Mr.
Thomson added, “they are sold at the tenth or twentieth part of the
above prices. Cheap coal--cheap grapes; that is the whole secret.”

Large vineries and immense establishments for growing flowers under
glass are of an old standing in this country, and new ones are
continually built on a grand scale. Entire fields are covered with
glass at Cheshunt, at Broxburn (fifty acres), at Finchley, at Bexley,
at Swanley, at Whetstone, and so on, to say nothing of Scotland.
Worthing is also a well-known centre for growing grapes and tomatoes;
while the greenhouses given to flowers and ferns at Upper Edmonton,
at Chelsea, at Orpington, and so on, have a world-wide reputation.
And the tendency is, on the one side, to bring grape culture to the
highest degree of perfection, and, on the other side, to cover acres
and acres with glass for growing tomatoes, French beans and peas,
which undoubtedly will soon be followed by the culture of still
plainer vegetables. This movement, as will be seen further on, has
been steadily continuing for the last twenty years.

However, the Channel Islands and Belgium still hold the lead in the
development of glasshouse culture. The glory of Jersey is, of course,
Mr. Bashford’s establishment. When I visited it in 1890, it contained
490,000 square feet under glass--that is, nearly thirteen acres--but
seven more acres under glass have been added to it since. A long
row of glasshouses, interspersed with high chimneys, covers the
ground--the largest of the houses being 900 feet long and forty-six
feet wide; this means that about one acre of land, in one piece, is
under glass. The whole is built most substantially; granite walls,
great height, thick “twenty-seven oz. glass” (of the thickness of
three pennies),[110] ventilators which open upon a length of 200
and 300 feet by working one single handle; and so on. And yet the
most luxurious of these greenhouses was said by the owners to have
cost less than 1s. the square foot of glass (13d. the square foot
of ground), while the other houses have cost much less than that.
From 5d. to 9d. the square foot of glass[111] is the habitual cost,
without the heating apparatus--6d. being a current price for the
ordinary glasshouses.

But it would be hardly possible to give an idea of all that is grown
in such glasshouses, without producing photographs of their insides.
In 1890, on the 3rd of May, exquisite grapes began to be cut in
Mr. Bashford’s vineries, and the crop was continued till October.
In other houses, cartloads of peas had already been gathered, and
tomatoes were going to take their place after a thorough cleaning of
the house. The 20,000 tomato plants, which were going to be planted,
had to yield no less than eighty tons of excellent fruit (eight to
ten pounds per plant). In other houses melons were grown instead
of the tomatoes. Thirty tons of early potatoes, six tons of early
peas, and two tons of early French beans had already been sent away
in April. As to the vineries, they yielded no less than twenty-five
tons of grapes every year. Besides, very many other things were grown
in the open air, or as catch crops, and all that amount of fruit
and vegetables was the result of the labour of thirty-six men and
boys only, under the supervision of one single gardener--the owner
himself; true that in Jersey, and especially in Guernsey, everyone is
a gardener. About 1,000 tons of coke were burnt to heat these houses.
Mr. W. Bear, who had visited the same establishment in 1886, was
quite right to say that from these thirteen acres they obtained money
returns equivalent to what a farmer would obtain from 1,300 acres of
land.

I hardly need say that Mr. Rider Haggard, who visited Jersey and
Guernsey in 1901, gave of these two islands the same enthusiastic
description as his predecessors. “I can only state in conclusion,”
he wrote, “that for my part, here (in Jersey) as in Guernsey, I was
amazed at the prosperity of the place. That so small an area of
land can produce so much wealth is nothing short of astonishing. It
is true, as I have shown, that the inquirer hears some grumblings
and fears for the future; but when on the top of them he sees a
little patch of twenty-three and one-third acres of land, such as I
have instanced, and is informed that quite recently it sold at an
auction for £5,760, to be used, not for building sites but for the
cultivation of potatoes, he is perhaps justified in drawing his own
conclusions.” It need not be added that, like all his predecessors,
Mr. Haggard disposes of the legend of extraordinary natural fertility
of the soil, and shows at what a considerable expenditure the heavy
crops of potatoes are obtained.[112]

However, it is in the small “vineries” that one sees, perhaps,
the most admirable results. As I walked through such glass-roofed
kitchen gardens, I could not but admire this recent conquest of man.
I saw, for instance, three-fourths of an acre heated for the first
three months of the year, from which about eight tons of tomatoes
and about 200 lb. of French beans had been taken as a first crop
in April, to be followed by two crops more. In these houses one
gardener was employed with two assistants, a small amount of coke was
consumed, and there was a gas engine for watering purposes, consuming
only 13s. worth of gas during the quarter. I saw again, in cool
greenhouses--simple plank and glass shelters--pea plants covering the
walls, for the length of one quarter of a mile, which already had
yielded by the end of April 3,200 lb. of exquisite peas and were yet
as full of pods as if not one had been taken off.

I saw potatoes dug from the soil in a cool greenhouse, in April, to
the amount of five bushels to the twenty-one feet square. And when
chance brought me, in 1896, in company with a local gardener, to a
tiny, retired “vinery” of a veteran grower, I could see there, and
admire, what a lover of gardening can obtain from so small a space as
the two-thirds of an acre. Two small “houses” about forty feet long
and twelve feet wide, and a third--formerly a pigsty, twenty feet
by twelve--contained vine trees which many a professional gardener
would be happy to have a look at; especially the whilom pigsty,
fitted with “Muscats”! Some grapes (in June) were already in full
beauty, and one fully understands that the owner could get in 1895,
from a local dealer, £4 for three bunches of grapes (one of them
was a “Colmar,” 13¾ lb. weight). The tomatoes and strawberries in
the open air, as well as the fruit trees, all on tiny spaces, were
equal to the grapes; and when one is shown on what a space half a ton
of strawberries can be gathered under proper culture, it is hardly
believable.

It is especially in Guernsey that the simplification of the
greenhouse must be studied. Every house in the suburbs of St. Peter
has some sort of greenhouse, big or small. All over the island,
especially in the north, wherever you look, you see greenhouses.
They rise amid the fields and from behind the trees; they are piled
upon one another on the steep crags facing the harbour of St.
Peter; and with them a whole generation of practical gardeners has
grown up. Every farmer is more or less of a gardener, and he gives
free scope to his inventive powers for devising some cheap type of
greenhouses. Some of them have almost no front and back walls--the
glass roofs coming low down and the two or three feet of glass in
front simply reaching the ground; in some houses the lower sheet of
glass was simply plunged into a wooden trough standing on the ground
and filled with sand. Many houses have only two or three planks, laid
horizontally, instead of the usual stone wall, in the front of the
greenhouse.

The large houses of one big company are built close to each
other, and have no partitions between. But this system cannot be
recommended. Altogether, when I revisited Guernsey in 1903, I saw
that the system of greenhouses which prevailed was that of long
two-roofed glass “tents,” placed by the side of each other, but
separated from each other by partitions preventing the circulation of
the air over the whole block. As to the extensive _cool_ greenhouses
on the Grande Maison estate, which are built by a company and are
rented to gardeners for so much the 100 feet, they are simply made of
thin deal board and glass. They are on the “lean to” or “one roof”
system, and the back wall, ten feet high, and the two side walls are
in simple grooved boards, standing upright. The whole is supported by
uprights inserted into concrete pillars. They are said to cost not
more than 5d. the square foot, of glass-covered ground. And yet, even
such plain and cheap houses yield excellent results. The potato crop
which had been grown in some of them was excellent, as also the green
peas.[113]

In Jersey I even saw a row of five houses, the walls of which were
made of corrugated iron, for the sake of cheapness. Of course, the
owner himself was not over-sanguine about his houses. “They are too
cold in winter and too hot in summer.” But although the five houses
cover only less than one-fifth of an acre, 2,000 lb. of green peas
had already been sold as a first crop; and, in the first days of
June, the second crop (about 1,500 plants of tomatoes) was already in
good progress.

It is always difficult, of course, to know what are the money returns
of the growers, first of all because Thorold Rogers’ complaint about
modern farmers keeping no accounts holds good, even for the best
gardening establishments, and next because when the returns are known
to me in all details, it would not be right for me to publish them.
“Don’t prove too much; beware of the landlord!” a practical gardener
once wrote to me. Roughly speaking, I can only confirm Mr. Bear’s
estimate to the effect that under proper management even a cool
greenhouse, which covers 4,050 square feet, can give a gross return
of £180.

As a rule, the Guernsey and Jersey growers have only three crops
every year from their greenhouses. They will start, for instance,
potatoes in December. The house will, of course, not be heated,
fires being made only when a sharp frost is expected at night; and
the potato crop (from eight to ten tons per acre) will be ready
in April or May before the open-air potatoes begin to be dug out.
Tomatoes will be planted next and be ready by the end of the summer.
Various catch crops of peas, radishes, lettuce and other small things
will be taken in the meantime. Or else the house will be “started”
in November with melons, which will be ready in April. They will
be followed by tomatoes, either in pots, or trained as vines, and
the last crop of tomatoes will be in October. Beans may follow and
be ready for Christmas. I need not say that every grower has his
preference method for utilising his houses, and it entirely depends
upon his skill and watchfulness to have all sorts of small catch
crops. These last begin to have a greater and greater importance, and
one can already foresee that the growers under glass will be forced
to accept the methods of the French _maraîchers_, so as to have five
and six crops every year, so far as it can be done without spoiling
the present high quality of the produce.

All this industry is of a relatively recent origin. One may see it
still working out its methods. And yet the exports from Guernsey
alone are already represented by quite extraordinary figures. It was
estimated some years ago that they were as follows: Grapes, 502 tons,
£37,500 worth at the average price of 9d. the pound; tomatoes, 1,000
tons, about £30,000; early potatoes (chiefly in the fields), £20,000;
radishes and broccoli, £9,250; cut flowers, £3,000; mushrooms, £200;
total, £99,950--to which total the local consumption in the houses
and hotels, which have to feed nearly 30,000 tourists, must be added.
Since then these figures have grown considerably. In June, 1896, I
saw the Southampton steamers taking every day from 9,000 to 12,000,
and occasionally more, baskets of fruit (grapes, tomatoes, French
beans and peas), each basket representing from twelve to fourteen
pounds of fruit. Taking into account what was sent by other channels,
one could say that from 400 to 500 tons of tomatoes, grapes, beans
and peas, worth from £20,000 to £25,000, were exported there every
week in June.

When I returned to Guernsey in 1903, I found that the industry of
fruit-growing under glass had grown immensely since 1896, so that
the whole system of export had to be reorganised. In 1896 it was
the tourists’ boats which transported the fruit and vegetables to
Southampton, and the gardeners paid one shilling for each basket
taken at Guernsey and delivered at the Covent Garden market. In 1903
there was already a Guernsey Growers’ Association, which had its own
boats keeping, during the summer, a regular daily service direct from
Guernsey to London. The Association had its own storehouses on the
quay and its own cranes, which lifted immense cubic boxes containing
on their shelves twenty or even a hundred baskets, and carrying
them to the boats. The cost of transport was thus reduced to 4d.
per basket. All this crop is sold every morning at Covent Garden to
the London dealers and greengrocers. The importance of this export
is seen from the fact that a special steamer has to leave Guernsey
every morning with its cargo of fruit and vegetables. As to the
total exports of fresh flowers, plants and shrubs, various fruit
and vegetables (including £555,275 worth of potatoes), they reached
£1,115,650 in 1910.

All this is obtained from an island whose total area, rocks and
barren hill-tops included, is only 16,000 acres, of which only 9,884
acres are under culture, and 5,189 acres are given to green crops and
meadows. An island, moreover, on which 1,480 horses, 7,260 head of
cattle and 900 sheep find their existence. How many men’s food is,
then, grown on these 10,000 acres?

Belgium has also made, within the last few years, an immense progress
in the same direction. While no more than 250 acres, all taken, were
covered with glass some thirty years ago, more than 800 acres are
under glass by this time.[114] In the village of Hoeilaert, which is
perched upon a stony hill, nearly 200 acres are under glass, given up
to grape-growing. One single establishment, Baltet remarks, has 200
greenhouses and consumes 1,500 tons of coal for the vineries.[115]
“Cheap coal--cheap grapes,” as the editor of the _Journal of
Horticulture_ wrote. Grapes in Brussels are certainly not dearer in
the beginning of the summer than they are in Switzerland in October.
Even _in March_, Belgian grapes were sold in Covent Garden at from
4d. and 6d. the pound.[116] This price alone shows sufficiently how
small are the amounts of labour which are required to grow grapes in
our latitudes with the aid of glass. _It certainly costs less labour
to grow grapes in Belgium than to grow them on the coasts of Lake
Leman._[117]

I will not conclude this chapter without casting a glance on the
progress that has been made in this country since the first edition
of this book was published, in 1898, by fruit and flower farming, as
also by culture under glass, and on the attempts recently made to
introduce in different parts of England “French Gardening,”--that is,
the _culture maraîchère_ of the French gardeners.

There is not the slightest doubt that fruit-growing has notably
increased--the area under fruit orchards having grown in Great
Britain from 200,000 acres in 1888 to 250,000 acres in 1908; while
the area under small fruit (gooseberries, currants, strawberries)
has grown from 75,000 acres in 1901 to 85,000 in 1908.[118] In fact,
in some counties the acreage has trebled.[119] Large plantations
of fruit have grown lately round London and all the large cities,
and the counties of Kent, Devon, Hereford, Somerset, Worcester and
Gloucester have now more than 20,000 acres each under fruit orchards,
a great proportion of them being of a recent origin. Not only was
the area of fruit-growing considerably increased, but, owing to the
experiments carried on since 1894 at the Woburn Experimental Farm,
where different sorts of fruit-trees and small fruit are tested,
new varieties have been introduced; and the system is spreading of
growing fruit trees of the pyramidal or “bush” form (instead of
the old-fashioned standards)--a step the advantages of which I was
enabled fully to appreciate in 1897 at the Agassiz Experimental Farm
in British Columbia.

At the same time the culture of small fruit--gooseberries,
raspberries, currants, and especially strawberries--took an immense
development. Enormous quantities of strawberries are now grown in
Mid and South Kent, where we find the culture of fruit combined with
large jam factories. One of such factories is connected with great
fruit farms covering 2,000 acres at Swanley, and its yearly output
attains 3,500 tons of jam, 850 tons of candied peel, and more than
100,000 bottles of bottled fruit. An extensive horticulture has also
developed of late in Cambridgeshire, wherefrom fruit is sent partly
fresh to London and Manchester, and partly is transformed on the
spot in the jam factory at Histon. No less than 250 workpeople were
employed at this factory at the time of Rider Haggard’s visit in
1900, and no less than 7,600 tons were exported; the most interesting
result of this industry combined with agriculture being that quite
a number of small farmers, renting from three to twenty acres each,
have grown round the jam factory. “Altogether,” Mr. Haggard wrote,
“fruit and flower culture has increased enormously; so that, in
1901, from 4,000 to 5,000 acres in the neighbourhood of Wisbech
were devoted to this trade. Plums, apples, pears, small fruit, as
also cauliflowers, asparagus, rhubarb, narcissi, pansies and other
flowers were grown here on a grand scale, and as much as from 130
to 140 tons of gooseberries and from 60 to 70 tons of strawberries
were despatched from Wisbech in one single day.” “The result of this
industry,” Mr. Haggard adds, “was that the population of Wisbech and
the number of houses in this little town have rapidly increased; the
land has increased in value considerably in the past twenty years,
and as much as £200 an acre had been given for choice land-holdings
suitable for fruit culture.” (_Rural England_, vol. ii., pp. 52,
54, 55.) In other words, the net result of the labour spent by the
farmers and of the intelligent enterprise of the industrials was,
as everywhere, immensely to increase the value of the land for
the benefit of the landlords. Mr. Haggard’s conclusion is worth
mentioning, as he writes as follows: “Broadly, however, I may say
that where the farms are large and corn is chiefly grown, there is
little or no prosperity, while where they are small and assisted by
pastures or fruit culture, both owners and tenants are doing fairly
well.”[120] A recognition well worth mentioning, as it comes from an
explorer who took at the outset of his inquest a most pessimistic
view on unprotected agriculture.

I also ought to mention Essex, where fruit-growing has taken of
late a notable development, and Hampshire, where the acreage under
fruit has trebled since 1880, according to the testimony of the
author of the already mentioned _Britannica_ article. The same
must be said of Worcestershire, and especially of the Evesham
district. This last is a most instructive region. Owing to certain
peculiarities of its soil, which render it very profitable for
growing asparagus and plum trees, and partly owing to the maintenance
in this region of the old “Evesham custom” (according to which
from times immemorial the ingoing tenant had to pay the outgoing
tenant, not the landlord, for the agricultural improvements)--a
custom maintained till nowadays[121]--the small-holdings system and
the culture of vegetables and fruit have developed to a remarkable
extent. The result is that out of a rural area of 10,000 acres,
7,000 have already been taken in small holdings of under fifty acres
each, and the demand for them, far from being satisfied, is still on
the increase, so that in 1911 there were still nearly four hundred
farmers waiting for 2,000 acres. A new town has grown at Evesham,
its population of 8,340 persons being almost entirely composed of
gardeners and gardeners’ labourers; its markets, held twice a week,
remind one of markets in the south of France; and the export traffic
on the railways radiating from that little town is as lively as if it
were a busy industrial spot.

One cannot read the pages given by Mr. Rider Haggard to the Bewdley
and Evesham districts without being impressed by what can be obtained
from the soil in England, and by what has to be done by the nation
and all those who care for its well-being in obtaining from the soil
what it is ready to give, if only _labour_ be applied to it.

In the Bewdley district we see very well how the efforts of a
Small Holdings Society are giving the opportunity to a number
of small farmers to transform an indifferent and sometimes very
poor or stony land into a fertile soil which yields rich crops of
fruit, and upon which the keeping of milch-cows is combined with
fruit-growing. We see also how in the big farms, as well as in the
small ones, fruit-growing is carried on with knowledge and care--and,
consequently, with a substantial profit for both the community and
the farmers--which makes the author exclaim: “How different in most
counties! In Norfolk, for instance (and I may add in Devonshire), the
ordinary farm orchard is stocked as a rule with faggot-headed trees
pruned only by the wind. Even the dead wood is left uncut; yet it is
common to hear farmers complain of the quality of the fruit, and
that it will not pay to grow” (vol. i., p. 338).

Speaking of Catshill, Mr. Haggard gives also a very interesting
instance of how a colony of people called “Nailers,” who lived
formerly by making nails by hand, and compelled to abandon this trade
when machine-made nails were introduced, took to agriculture, and how
they succeed with it. Some intelligent people having bought a farm of
140 acres and divided it into small farms, from 2½ to 8 acres, these
small holdings were offered to the nailers; and at the time of Mr.
Haggard’s visit “every instalment which was due had been paid up.” No
able-bodied man out of them has gone on to the rates.

But the vale of Evesham is still more interesting. Suffice it to say,
that while in most rural parishes the population is decreasing, _it
rose in the six parishes of the Evesham Union_ from 7,327 to 9,012 in
the ten years, 1891 to 1901.

Although the soil of this district offers nothing extraordinary,
and the conditions of sale are as bad as anywhere, owing to the
importance acquired by the middlemen, we see that an extremely
important industry of fruit-growing has developed; so important that
in the year 1900 about 20,000 tons of fruit and vegetables were sent
from the Evesham stations, in addition to large quantities exported
from the small stations within a radius of ten miles round Evesham
(vol. i., p. 350). The soil, of course, is improved by digging into
it large quantities of all sorts of manure--soot, fish guano, leather
dust for cabbage (chamois dust being the best), and so on--and the
most profitable sorts of fruit-trees and vegetables are continually
tested; all this being, of course, not the work of some scientist or
of one single man, but the product of the collective experience of
the district.

It must not be thought, however, that fruit-growing has been
overdone. On the contrary, the imports of fruit into the United
Kingdom, both for food and for jam-making, continue to be enormous,
and to increase every year. Suffice it to say, that this country
imports every year about £1,000,000 of tomatoes and £2,000,000 of
apples, half a million worth of pears, nearly £730,000 worth of
grapes--giving thus a total of £4,200,000 worth of all fruit. And
at the same time we learn that immense quantities of land go every
year out of culture, to be transformed into game reserves for rich
Englishmen and foreigners.

Finally, I also ought to mention the recent development of fruit
culture near the Broads of Norfolk, and especially in Ireland; but
the examples just given will do to show what is obtained from the
land in England where no obstacle is laid to the development of
horticulture, and what amount of food can be obtained in the climate
and from the soil of this country whenever it is properly cultivated.
Let me only add that a similar development of fruit culture has
taken place within the last thirty years everywhere in the civilised
countries; and that in France, in Belgium, and in Germany the
extension taken by horticulture during the last twenty or thirty
years has been much greater than in this country.[122]

As regards _market-gardening_, it has undoubtedly made remarkable
progress in the United Kingdom within recent years. However, accurate
data are failing, and those who have travelled over this country with
the special purpose of studying its agriculture have not yet given
sufficient attention to the recent developments of market-gardening;
but it is quite certain that within the last five-and-twenty years
it has taken a great development, especially in Ireland, but also in
several parts of England, Scotland, and Wales.

Such are, for instance, the neighbourhoods of Penzance, in
Cornwall; those of St. Neots, in Huntingdonshire; Scotter, in
Lincolnshire, where the agricultural depression--we are told by Mr.
Rider Haggard--was not so badly felt as elsewhere on account of
market-gardening; Benington, in the same county, where the soil is
a rich loam with silty subsoil, and where all sorts of vegetables,
potatoes, and flower-bulbs are grown on a large scale, together with
wheat.[123] Orpington is a well-known centre for market-gardening, as
well as for fruit-growing, and in this district culture under glass
has also taken lately some extension.

There are many other interesting centres of market-gardening,
especially in the neighbourhoods of all large cities, but I will
mention only one more--namely, Potton, in Huntingdonshire. It is--we
are told by Mr. Haggard--“a stronghold of small cultivators who
grow vegetables upon holdings of land varying in size from one up
to twenty acres, or even more.” It has thus become an important
centre for market-gardening, “120 trucks of produce leaving Potton
daily during the season for London, in addition to fifty trucks
which pass over the Great Northern line from Sandy station, together
with much more from sidings and other stations.” This is the more
interesting as within a short distance from this animated centre
“thousands of acres are quite or very nearly derelict, and the
farmhouses, buildings, and cottages are slowly rotting down.” The
worst is that “all this land was cultivated, and grew crops up to the
’eighties.”[124]

Another oasis of market-gardening is offered by the county of
Bedfordshire. “Being a county of natural small-holdings, carved out
before the passing of the 1907 Act,” it is rapidly becoming--we are
told by Mr. F. E. Green--“a county of market-gardens.” The fertility
of its soil, the fact that it can easily be worked at any time of the
year, and that a race of skilled gardeners has developed there long
since, have contributed to that growth; but, of course, the whole
is hampered by the heavy rents, which have grown up to £4 an acre
for the sites near the station, where manure is received in large
quantities from London.[125] Happily enough, the Bedfordshire County
Council has been eager to acquire land for small holdings, and, after
having spent £40,000 in the acquisition of land, they have, up to
30th June, 1911, provided one-third of the applicants with 2,759
acres--the total demand, by a thousand applicants, having already
attained 12,350 acres.

And yet all this progress still appears insignificant by the
side of the demand for vegetables which grows every year (and
necessarily _must_ grow, as is seen by comparing the low consumption
of vegetables in this country with the consumption of home-grown
vegetables in Belgium, indicated by Mr. Rowntree in his _Lessons
from Belgium_). The result is a steadily increasing importation
of vegetables to this country, which has attained now more than
£8,000,000.[126]

A branch of horticulture which has increased enormously since the
first edition of this book was published, is the _growing of fruit
and vegetables in greenhouses_, in the same way as it is done in the
Channel Islands. All round London--we are told by Mr. John Weathers
in the last edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_--the hothouse
culture has taken a great development, and, in fact, along the
railways which radiate from London in all directions the glass-houses
have already become a familiar feature of the landscape. Immense
quantities of grapes, tomatoes, figs, and of all sorts of early
vegetables are grown at Worthing, where eighty-two acres are covered
now with glass-houses, as also in the parish of Cheshunt, in Herts,
where the area under hothouses is already 130 acres; while a careful
estimate put in 1908 the area of individual hothouses in England at
about 1,200 acres (_Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. xi., p. 266). The
elements of this culture having been developed by the experience
of the Channel Islands growers, and by the wide extension which
hothouses for the growing of flowers had taken long since in this
country, it may be concluded from the various evidence we have at
hand that on the whole this sort of culture is finding its reward,
and is now firmly established.

The same, however, cannot yet be said of the _culture maraîchère_
of the French market-gardeners which is being introduced now into
this country. Many attempts have been made in this direction in
different parts of the country with varied degrees of success; but
little or nothing is known about the results. An attempt on a large
scale was made, as is known, by some Evesham gardeners. Having read
about this sort of culture in France, and the wonderful results
obtained by it, some of the Evesham gardeners went to Paris with
the intention of learning that culture from the Paris _maraîchers_.
Finding that impossible, they invited a French gardener to Evesham,
gave him three-quarters of an acre, and, after he had brought from
his Paris _marais_ his glass-bells, frames and lights, and, above
all, his knowledge, he began gardening under the eyes of his Evesham
colleagues. “Happily enough,” he said to an interviewer, “I do not
speak English; otherwise I should have had to talk all the time
and give explanations, instead of working. So I show them my black
trousers, and tell them in signs: ‘Begin by making the soil as
black as these trousers, then everything will be all right.’” Of
course, to be profitable, immense quantities of stable manure are
required, as also immense numbers of glass-bells and glass-frames,
which represent a very costly outlay, and plenty of watering, to say
nothing of the powers of observation required for developing a new
branch of gardening in new surroundings.

What were the results obtained at Evesham it is difficult to say, the
more so as the money results which, according to some papers, were
obtained the first year (_brutto_ income of £750 from three-quarters
of an acre) seem to have been exaggerated for a first-year crop,
and thus awakened scepticism with regard to that sort of culture
altogether.

Another experiment in the same direction was made on the estate of
Mayland, in Essex, which was bought by Mr. Joseph Fels in order
to promote small farming in England. It must be said that, apart
from the cold, damp climate of this part of England, the heavy clay
of Essex represents the least appropriate soil for spade culture.
In England, as everywhere, this sort of culture has always been
developing in preference _on a light loam_, or in such places, like
Jersey, where a meagre granitic soil could easily be manured--in this
special case by sea-weeds.

Nevertheless, the aim of Mr. Fels having been chiefly educational,
this aim has certainly been achieved, as we have now, in three
different works of Mr. Thomas Smith, the manager of the farm,
practical manuals teaching the would-be gardener the essentials of
“French Gardening.”[127]

A French _maraîcher_ having been invited for this purpose, and 2,500
glass-bells, 1,000 lights for frames, a windmill pump, etc., having
been bought at a considerable cost, the work of the French gardener
on two acres of land was carefully followed by the manager of the
farm, Mr. T. Smith, day by day, to be afterwards described and
illustrated by photographs for the use of those who would like to try
their hand at the same work.

Most of my readers will probably ask first of all: What were the
money results of this venture? But it would have been foolish to
expect that in this first experiment everything should have run as
smoothly as it runs, let us say, in the Channel Islands, where the
many years’ practice of a whole population has worked out the best
methods of culture.

Thus the frames were not ready in time for giving an early crop of
melons; and although the melons grown at Mayland were excellent, and
gave the first year as much as £188, they would have given much more
than that had they been ready in the middle of June, which would have
been possible if the frames and lights had been supplied in time.

With all that, the results obtained during the first year were
really striking. All taken, Mr. Smith shows that if the gardener
has a one-acre garden, and if £494 (say, £550) be spent for 1,000
glass-bells, 300 lights and 100 frames, 500 mats, the water-supply,
the packing-shed, the fencing, the cart, horse and harness, etc.,
and £413 (say, £450) for 500 tons of manure, the rent, rates and
water, and the wages and salaries (£250), the gross returns for the
first year would reach £300 (making full allowance for “inexperience
in this _special_ work”). They would reach from £400 to £450 during
the second year, there being greater productiveness and a lower
expenditure after the loam has been _made_ by heavy manuring, and
personal experience has been won, as well as experience for a given
locality.

Taking a one-acre farm, of which only one-third is used for a French
garden, the first year’s expenditure for bells, lights, fencing,
horse manure, water, and rent and taxes would be a little less than
£300, and the returns by the end of the first year would be about
£150. “Afterwards the returns ought to reach from £200 to £250 each
year,” Mr. Smith writes.

All that need be added to these words is, that Mr. Smith is extremely
cautious in his estimates, and that, seeing the high crops obtained
at Mayland, and fully dealt with in Mr. Smith’s works, one is
entitled to expect even better money results.

Unfortunately, after having worked at the farm for one year, the
experienced French gardener, who had obtained the just-mentioned
results, left Mayland. Two young French gardeners, far less
experienced, were invited instead, and they began to undo what their
predecessor had done, in order to carry on the work on the lines they
had learned themselves. So that it is impossible to know yet what the
results of these new methods will be.

Every pioneer work has its unforeseen difficulties. But, so far
as can be judged from the facts I have at my disposal, the two
ventures have proved that the climate of England is no obstacle
to French gardening. Of course, the small amount of sunshine is
a great obstacle for ripening the produce as early as it can be
ripened in France, even in the suburbs of Paris. But home-grown
fruit and vegetables have always many advantages in comparison with
imported produce. Another disadvantage--the lack of horse manure--a
disadvantage which will go on increasing with the spread of motor
cars--is felt in France as well. This is why the French growers
are eagerly experimenting with the direct heating of the soil with
_thermosiphons_.

Let me add to these remarks that a decided awakening is to be noticed
in this country for making a better use of the land than has been
made for the last fifty years. There are a few counties where the
County Councils, and still more so, the Parish Councils, are doing
their best to break at last the land monopoly, and to permit those
small farmers who intend to cultivate the soil to do so. Here and
there we see a few timid attempts at imparting to the farmers and
their children some knowledge of agriculture and horticulture. But
all this is being made on too small a scale, and without a sincere
desire to learn from other European nations, and still more so from
the United States and Canada, what is being done in these countries
to give to agriculture the new character of intensive culture
combined with industry, which is imposed upon it by the recent
progress of civilisation.

       *       *       *       *       *

The various data which have been brought together on the preceding
pages make short work of the over-population fallacy. It is
precisely in the most densely populated parts of the world that
agriculture has lately made such strides as hardly could have been
guessed twenty years ago. A dense population, a high development of
industry, and a high development of agriculture and horticulture,
go hand in hand: they are inseparable. As to the future, the
possibilities of agriculture are such that, in truth, we cannot yet
foretell what would be the limit of the population which could live
from the produce of a given area. Recent progress, already tested on
a great scale, has widened the limits of agricultural production to
a quite unforeseen extent; and recent discoveries, now tested on a
small scale, promise to widen those limits still farther, to a quite
unknown degree.[128]

The present tendency of economical development in the world is--we
have seen--to induce more and more every nation, or rather every
region, taken in its geographical sense, to rely chiefly upon a home
production of all the chief necessaries of life. Not to reduce, I
mean, the world-exchange: it may still grow in bulk; but to limit it
to the exchange of what really _must_ be exchanged, and, at the same
time, immensely to increase the exchange of novelties, produce of
local or national art, new discoveries and inventions, knowledge and
ideas. Such being the tendency of present development, there is not
the slightest ground to be alarmed by it. There is not one nation in
the world which, being armed with the present powers of agriculture,
could not grow on its cultivable area all the food and most of the
raw materials derived from agriculture which are required for its
population, even if the requirements of that population were rapidly
increased as they certainly ought to be. Taking the powers of man
over the land and over the forces of nature--_such as they are at
the present day_--we can maintain that two to three inhabitants to
each cultivable acre of land would not yet be too much. But neither
in this densely populated country nor in Belgium are we yet in such
numbers. In this country we have, roughly speaking, one acre of the
cultivable area per inhabitant.

Supposing, then, that each inhabitant of Great Britain were compelled
to live on the produce of his own land, all he would have to do
would be, first, to consider the land of this country as a common
inheritance, which must be disposed of to the best advantage of each
and all--this is, evidently, an absolutely necessary condition. And
next, he would have to cultivate his soil, not in some extravagant
way, but no better than land is already cultivated upon thousands
and thousands of acres in Europe and America. He would not be bound
to invent some new methods, but could simply generalise and widely
apply those which have stood the test of experience. He can do it;
and in so doing he would save an immense quantity of the work which
is now given for buying his food abroad, and for paying all the
intermediaries who live upon this trade. Under a rational culture,
those necessaries and those luxuries which must be obtained from
the soil, undoubtedly _can_ be obtained with much less work than is
required now for buying these commodities. I have made elsewhere (in
_The Conquest of Bread_) approximate calculations to that effect, but
with the data given in this book everyone can himself easily test the
truth of this assertion. If we take, indeed, the masses of produce
which are obtained under rational culture, and compare them with
the amount of labour which must be spent for obtaining them under
an irrational culture, for collecting them abroad, for transporting
them, and for keeping armies of middlemen, we see at once how few
days and hours need be given, under proper culture, for growing man’s
food.

For improving our methods of culture to that extent, we surely
need not divide the land into one-acre plots, and attempt to grow
what we are in need of by everyone’s separate individual exertions,
on everyone’s separate plot with no better tools than the spade;
under such conditions we inevitably should fail. Those who have
been so much struck with the wonderful results obtained in the
_petite culture_, that they go about representing the small culture
of the French peasant, or _maraîcher_, as an ideal for mankind,
are evidently mistaken. They are as much mistaken as those other
extremists who would like to turn every country into a small number
of huge Bonanza farms, worked by militarily organised “labour
battalions.” In Bonanza farms human labour is certainly reduced, but
the crops taken from the soil are far too small, and the whole system
is robbery-culture, taking no heed of the exhaustion of the soil.
This is why the Bonanza farms have disappeared from their former
home, Ohio; and when I crossed part of this State in 1901 I saw its
plains thickly dotted with medium-sized farms, from 100 to 200 acres,
and with windmills pumping water for the orchards and the vegetable
gardens. On the other side, in the spade culture, on isolated small
plots, by isolated men or families, too much human labour is wasted,
even though the crops are heavy; so that real economy--of both space
and labour--requires different methods, representing a combination of
machinery work with hand work.

In agriculture, as in everything else, associated labour is the only
reasonable solution. Two hundred families of five persons each,
owning five acres per family, having no common ties between the
families, and compelled to find their living, each family on its
five acres, almost certainly would be an economical failure. Even
leaving aside all _personal_ difficulties resulting from different
education and tastes and from the want of knowledge as to what has
to be done with the land, and admitting for the sake of argument
that these causes do not interfere, the experiment would end in
a failure, merely for _economical_, for _agricultural_ reasons.
Whatever improvement upon the present conditions such an organisation
might be, that improvement would not last; it would have to undergo a
further transformation or disappear.

But the same two hundred families, if they consider themselves, say,
as tenants of the nation, and treat the thousand acres as a common
tenancy--again leaving aside the _personal_ conditions--would have,
economically speaking, from the point of view of the agriculturist,
every chance of succeeding, _if they know what is the best use to
make of that land_.

In such case they probably would first of all associate for
permanently improving the land which is in need of immediate
improvement, and would consider it necessary to improve more
of it every year, until they had brought it all into a perfect
condition. On an area of 340 acres they could most easily grow all
the cereals--wheat, oats, etc.--required for both the thousand
inhabitants and their live stock, without resorting for that purpose
to replanted or planted cereals. They could grow on 400 acres,
properly cultivated, and irrigated if necessary and possible, all
the green crops and fodder required to keep the thirty to forty
milch cows which would supply them with milk and butter, and, let us
say, the 300 head of cattle required to supply them with meat. On
twenty acres, two of which would be under glass, they would grow more
vegetables, fruit and luxuries than they could consume. And supposing
that half an acre of land is attached to each house for hobbies
and amusement (poultry keeping, or any fancy culture, flowers, and
the like)--they would still have some 140 acres for all sorts of
purposes: public gardens, squares, manufactures and so on. The labour
that would be required for such an intensive culture would not be
the hard labour of the serf or slave. It would be accessible to
everyone, strong or weak, town bred or country born; it would also
have many charms besides. And its total amount would be far smaller
than the amount of labour which every thousand persons, taken from
this or from any other nation, have now to spend in getting their
present food, much smaller in quantity and of worse quality. I mean,
of course, the technically necessary labour, without even considering
the labour which we now have to give in order to maintain all our
middlemen, armies, and the like. The amount of labour required to
grow food under a rational culture is so small, indeed, that our
hypothetical inhabitants would be led necessarily to employ their
leisure in manufacturing, artistic, scientific, and other pursuits.

From the technical point of view there is no obstacle whatever for
such an organisation being started to-morrow with full success. The
obstacles against it are not in the imperfection of the agricultural
art, or in the infertility of the soil, or in climate. They are
entirely in our institutions, in our inheritances and survivals from
the past--in the “Ghosts” which oppress us. But to some extent they
lie also--taking society as a whole--in our phenomenal ignorance. We,
civilised men and women, know everything, we have settled opinions
upon everything, we take an interest in everything. We only know
nothing about whence the bread comes which we eat--even though we
pretend to know something about that subject as well--we do not know
how it is grown, what pains it costs to those who grow it, what is
being done to reduce their pains, what sort of men those feeders of
our grand selves are ... we are more ignorant than savages in this
respect, and we prevent our children from obtaining this sort of
knowledge--even those of our children who would prefer it to the
heaps of useless stuff with which they are crammed at school.


FOOTNOTES:

[98] Charles Whitehead, _Hints on Vegetable and Fruit Farming_,
London (J. Murray), 1890. _The Gardener’s Chronicle_, 20th April,
1895.

[99] Charles Baltet, _L’Horticulture dans les cinq Parties du Monde.
Ouvrage couronné par la Société Nationale d’Horticulture._ Paris
(Hachette), 1895.

[100] Charles Baltet, _loc. cit._

[101] Ardouin Dumazet, _Voyage en France_, vol. v., p. 10.

[102] Ardouin Dumazet, _Voyage en France_, vol. v., p. 200.

[103] Baudrillart, _Les Populations agricoles de la France: Anjou_,
pp. 70, 71.

[104] The total production of dessert fruit as well as dried or
preserved fruit in France was estimated, in 1876, at 84,000 tons, and
its value was taken at about 3,000,000,000 fr. (£120,000,000)--more
than one-half of the war contribution levied by Germany. It must have
largely increased since 1876.

[105] Ardouin Dumazet, i., 204.

[106] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. vii., pp. 124, 125.

[107] M. Augé-Laribé, _L’évolution de la France agricole_, Paris
(Armand Colin), 1912, p. 74. Professor Fontgalland estimates that the
total exports of flowers, living plants, fruit and vegetables, both
in season and out of season (_primeurs_), from the Alpes Maritimes,
reach the enormous sum of £1,188,000, the gross income from an acre
reaching as much as £200.

[108] Charles Baltet, _L’Horticulture_, etc.

[109] Charles Baltet, _L’Horticulture_, etc.

[110] “Twenty-one oz.” and even “fifteen oz.” glass is used in the
cheaper greenhouses.

[111] It is reckoned by measuring the height of the front and back
walls and the length of the two slopes of the roof.

[112] _Rural England_, i., p. 103.

[113] Growing peas along the wall seems, however, to be a bad system.
It requires too much work in attaching the plants to the wall. This
system, however, excellent though it may be for a provisory start for
gardeners who have not much capital to spend, is not profitable in
the long run. The gardeners with whom I spoke in 1903, after having
made some money with these light greenhouses, preferred to build more
substantial ones, which could be heated from January to March or
April.

[114] I take these figures from the notes which a Belgian professor
of agriculture was kind enough to send me. The greenhouses in Belgium
are mostly with iron frames.

[115] A friend, who has studied practical horticulture in the Channel
Islands, writes me of the vineries about Brussels: “You have no idea
to what an extent it is done there. Bashford is nothing against it.”

[116] A quotation which I took at random, in 1895, from a London
daily, was: “Covent Garden, 19th March, 1895. Quotations: Belgian
grapes, 4d. to 6d.; Jersey ditto, 6d. to 10d.; Muscats, 1s. 6d. to
2s.; and tomatoes, 3d. to 5d. per lb.”

[117] See Appendix S.

[118] Out of them, 27,000 acres are grown in the fruit orchards,
between the apple and cherry tree, so that the total area under fruit
orchards and small fruit was reckoned at 308,000 acres in 1908.

[119] “Fruit and Flower Farming,” in _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 11th
edition, article by J. Weathers.

[120] _Rural England_, 2 vols., London (Longmans, Green), 1902, vol.
ii., p. 57.

[121] F. E. Green, _The Awakening of England_, London (Nelson’s),
1911, pp. 49, 50. Speaking of a certain farmer, Mr. Green says: “In
the autumn of 1910, when I visited him, he was offered £100 an acre
for his standing crops, and £100 _for the tenant rights_. He refused
the offer. _His rent still stands at £2 an acre._”

[122] According to the researches made by the French Ministry of
Agriculture, the yearly produce of the French horticulturists attains
the value of £16,000,000.

[123] _Rural England_, ii., pp. 76, 212. Spalding, also in
Lincolnshire, is another centre for the trade in spring flowers, as
well as for intensive farming, co-operative small-holding having been
introduced there by the Provident and Small-Holdings Club (same work,
ii., pp. 238-240). More than 1,000 acres are now given to the growing
of flowers--an industry which was introduced only fifteen years ago,
when it came from Holland. On p. 242 of the same work the reader will
find some interesting information about a new “mutualist” venture,
the Lincoln Equitable Co-operative Society.

[124] _Rural England_, ii., 59.

[125] F. E. Green, _The Awakening of England_, pp. 116, 117.

[126] The imports of fruit and vegetables, fresh and preserved, were
£12,900,000 in 1909, and £14,193,000 in 1911, out of which fruit
alone must have figured for at least £4,000,000. Potatoes alone,
imported and retained for home consumption in the United Kingdom,
figure in this item for the sums of from £6,908,550 in 1908 to
£3,314,200 in 1910. The industry of dried fruit, and especially of
dried vegetables, has not yet developed in this country, the result
being that during the Boer War Britain paid a weekly tribute to
Germany for dried vegetables, which attained many thousands of pounds
every week. A nation cannot let its land be transformed into hunting
reserves at the rate it is being done in this country without having
to send the best and the most enterprising portion of its population
overseas, and without relying for its daily food upon its neighbours
and commercial rivals.

[127] Thomas Smith, _French Gardening_, London (Utopia Press), 1909,
128 pp.; _Profitable Culture of Vegetables, for Market Gardeners,
Small Holders, and Others_, London (Longmans, Green), 1911, 452 pp.;
and a short summing up of the first of these works.

[128] See Appendix T.




CHAPTER VI.

SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES.

  Industry and agriculture--The small industries--Different
  types--_Petty trades in Great Britain_: Sheffield, Leeds, Lake
  District, Birmingham--Statistical data--_Petty trades in France_:
  Weaving and various other trades--The Lyons region--Paris,
  emporium of petty trades--Results of the census of 1896.


The two sister arts of agriculture and industry were not always so
estranged from one another as they are now. There was a time, and
that time is not so far back, when both were thoroughly combined;
the villages were then the seats of a variety of industries, and the
artisans in the cities did not abandon agriculture; many towns were
nothing else but industrial villages. If the mediæval city was the
cradle of those industries which bordered upon art and were intended
to supply the wants of the richer classes, still it was the rural
manufacture which supplied the wants of the million, as it does until
the present day in Russia, and to a very great extent in Germany and
France. But then came the water-motors, steam, the development of
machinery, and they broke the link which formerly connected the farm
with the workshop. Factories grew up and they abandoned the fields.
They gathered where the sale of their produce was easiest, or the raw
materials and fuel could be obtained with the greatest advantage.
New cities rose, and the old ones rapidly enlarged; the fields were
deserted. Millions of labourers, driven away by sheer force from the
land, gathered in the cities in search of labour, and soon forgot
the bonds which formerly attached them to the soil. And we, in our
admiration of the prodigies achieved under the new factory system,
overlooked the advantages of the old system under which the tiller
of the soil was an industrial worker at the same time. We doomed to
disappearance all those branches of industry which formerly used to
prosper in the villages; we condemned in industry all that was not a
big factory.

True, the results were grand as regards the increase of the
productive powers of man. But they proved terrible as regards the
millions of human beings who were plunged into misery and had to rely
upon precarious means of living in our cities. Moreover, the system,
as a whole, brought about those abnormal conditions which I have
endeavoured to sketch in the two first chapters. We were thus driven
into a corner; and while a thorough change in the present relations
between labour and capital is becoming an imperious necessity, a
thorough remodelling of the whole of our industrial organisation has
also become unavoidable. The industrial nations are bound to revert
to agriculture, they are compelled to find out the best means of
combining it with industry, and they must do so without loss of time.

To examine the special question as to the possibility of such a
combination is the aim of the following pages. Is it possible, from a
technical point of view? Is it desirable? Are there, in our present
industrial life, such features as might lead us to presume that a
change in the above direction would find the necessary elements
for its accomplishment? Such are the questions which rise before
the mind. And to answer them, there is, I suppose, no better means
than to study that immense but overlooked and underrated branch of
industries which are described under the names of rural industries,
domestic trades, and petty trades: to study them, not in the works of
the economists who are too much inclined to consider them as obsolete
types of industry, but in their life itself, in their struggles,
their failures and achievements.

       *       *       *       *       *

The variety of forms of organisation which is found in the small
industries is hardly suspected by those who have not made them a
subject of special study. There are, first, two broad categories:
those industries which are carried on in the villages, in connection
with agriculture; and those which are carried on in towns or in
villages, with no connection with the land--the workers depending for
their earnings exclusively upon their industrial work.

In Russia, in France, in Germany, in Austria, and so on, millions
and millions of workers are in the first case. They are owners or
occupiers of the land, they keep one or two cows, very often horses,
and they cultivate their fields, or their orchards, or gardens,
considering industrial work as a by-occupation. In those regions,
especially, where the winter is long and no work on the land is
possible for several months every year, this form of small industries
is widely spread. In this country, on the contrary, we find the
opposite extreme. Few small industries have survived in England
in connection with land-culture; but hundreds of petty trades are
found in the suburbs and the slums of the great cities, and large
portions of the populations of several towns, such as Sheffield and
Birmingham, find their living in a variety of petty trades. Between
these two extremes there is evidently a mass of intermediate forms,
according to the more or less close ties which continue to exist
with the land. Large villages, and even towns, are thus peopled with
workers who are engaged in small trades, but most of whom have a
small garden, or an orchard, or a field, or only retain some rights
of pasture on the commons, while part of them live exclusively upon
their industrial earnings.

With regard to the sale of the produce, the small industries offer
the same variety of organisation. Here again there are two great
branches. In one of them the worker sells his produce directly to the
wholesale dealer; cabinet-makers, weavers, and workers in the toy
trade are in this case. In the other great division the worker works
for a “master” who either sells the produce to a wholesale dealer, or
simply acts as a middleman who himself receives his orders from some
big concern. This is the “sweating system,” properly speaking, under
which we find a mass of small trades. Part of the toy trade, the
tailors who work for large clothing establishments--very often for
those of the State--the women who sew and embroider the “uppers” for
the boot and shoe factories, and who as often deal with the factory
as with an intermediary “sweater,” and so on, are in this case. All
possible gradations of feudalisation and sub-feudalisation of labour
are evidently found in that organisation of the sale of the produce.

Again, when the industrial, or rather technical aspects of the
small industries are considered, the same variety of types is soon
discovered. Here also there are two great branches: those trades,
on the one side, which are purely domestic--that is, those which
are carried on in the house of the worker, with the aid of his
family, or of a couple of wage-workers; and those which are carried
on in separate workshops--all the just-mentioned varieties, as
regards connection with land and the divers modes of disposing
of the produce, being met with in both these branches. All
possible trades--weaving, workers in wood, in metals, in bone, in
india-rubber, and so on--may be found under the category of purely
domestic trades, with all possible gradations between the purely
domestic form of production and the workshop and the factory.

Thus, by the side of the trades which are carried on entirely at
home by one or more members of the family, there are the trades in
which the master keeps a small workshop attached to his house and
works in it with his family, or with a few “assistants”--that is,
wage-workers. Or else the artisan has a separate workshop, supplied
with wheel-power, as is the case with the Sheffield cutlers. Or
several workers come together in a small factory which they maintain
themselves, or hire in association, or where they are allowed to
work for a certain weekly rent. And in each of these cases they
work either directly for the dealer or for a small master, or for a
middleman.

A further development of this system is the big factory, especially
of ready-made clothes, in which hundreds of women pay so much for
the sewing-machine, the gas, the gas-heated irons, and so on, and
are paid themselves so much for each piece of the ready-made clothes
they sew, or each part of it. Immense factories of this kind exist in
England, and it appeared from testimony given before the “Sweating
Committee” that women are fearfully “sweated” in such workshops--the
full price of each slightly spoiled piece of clothing being deducted
from their very low piecework wages.

And, finally, there is the small workshop (often with hired
wheel-power) in which a master employs three to ten workers, who
are paid in wages, and sells his produce to a bigger employer or
merchant--there being all possible gradations between such a workshop
and the small factory in which a few time workers (five, ten to
twenty) are employed by an independent producer. In the textile
trades, weaving is often done either by the family or by a master who
employs one boy only, or several weavers, and after having received
the yarn from a big employer, pays a skilled workman to put the yarn
in the loom, invents what is necessary for weaving a given, sometimes
very complicated pattern, and after having woven the cloth or the
ribbons in his own loom or in a loom which he hires himself, he is
paid for the piece of cloth according to a very complicated scale of
wages agreed to between masters and workers. This last form, we shall
see presently, is widely spread up to the present day, especially in
the woollen and silk trades; it continues to exist by the side of
big factories in which 50, 100, or 5,000 wage-workers, as the case
may be, are working with the employers’ machinery and are paid in
time-wages so much the day or the week.

The small industries are thus quite a world,[129] which, remarkable
enough, continues to exist even in the most industrial countries,
side by side with the big factories. Into this world we must now
penetrate to cast a glimpse upon it: a glimpse only, because it
would take volumes to describe its infinite variety of pursuits and
organisation, and its infinitely varied connection, with agriculture
as well as with other industries.

       *       *       *       *       *

Most of the petty trades, except some of those which are connected
with agriculture, are, we must admit, in a very precarious position.
The earnings are very low, and the employment is often uncertain.
The day of labour is by two, three, or four hours longer than it is
in well-organised factories, and at certain seasons it reaches an
almost incredible length. The crises are frequent and last for years.
Altogether, the worker is much more at the mercy of the dealer or the
employer, and the employer is at the mercy of the wholesale dealer.
Both are liable to become enslaved to the latter, running into debt
to him. In some of the petty trades, especially in the fabrication
of the plain textiles, the workers are in dreadful misery. But those
who pretend that such misery is the rule are totally wrong. Anyone
who has lived among, let us say, the watch-makers in Switzerland and
knows their inner family life, will recognise that the condition of
these workers was out of all comparison superior, in every respect,
material and moral, to the conditions of millions of factory hands.
Even during such a crisis in the watch trade as was lived through
in 1876-1880, their condition was preferable to the condition of
factory hands during a crisis in the woollen or cotton trade; and
the workers perfectly well knew it themselves.

Whenever a crisis breaks out in some branch of the petty trades,
there is no lack of writers to predict that that trade is going to
disappear. During the crisis which I witnessed in 1877, living amidst
the Swiss watchmakers, the impossibility of a recovery of the trade
in the face of the competition of machine-made watches was a current
topic in the press. The same was said in 1882 with regard to the silk
trade of Lyons, and, in fact, wherever a crisis has broken out in the
petty trades. And yet, notwithstanding the gloomy predictions, and
the still gloomier prospects of the workers, that form of industry
does not disappear. Even when some branch of it disappears, there
always remains something of it; some portions of it continue to exist
as small industries (watchmaking of a high quality, best sorts of
silks, high quality velvets, etc.), or new connected branches grow
up instead of the old ones, or the small industry, taking advantage
of a mechanical motor, assumes a new form. We thus find it endowed
with an astonishing vitality. It undergoes various modifications, it
adapts itself to new conditions, it struggles without losing hope of
better times to come. Anyhow, it has not the characteristics of a
decaying institution. In some industries the factory is undoubtedly
victorious; but there are other branches in which the petty trades
hold their own position. Even in the textile industries--especially
in consequence of the wide use of the labour of children and
women--which offer so many advantages for the factory system, the
hand-loom still competes with the power-loom.

As a whole, the transformation of the petty trades into great
industries goes on with a slowness which cannot fail to astonish even
those who are convinced of its necessity. Nay, sometimes we may even
see the reverse movement going on--occasionally, of course, and only
for a time. I cannot forget my amazement when I saw at Verviers, some
thirty years ago, that most of the woollen cloth factories--immense
barracks facing the streets by more than a hundred windows each--were
silent, and their costly machinery was rusting, while cloth was
woven in hand-looms in the weavers’ houses, for the owners of those
very same factories. Here we have, of course, but a temporary fact,
fully explained by the spasmodic character of the trade and the heavy
losses sustained by the owners of the factories when they cannot run
their mills all the year round. But it illustrates the obstacles
which the transformation has to comply with. As to the silk trade,
it continues to spread over Europe in its rural industry shape;
while hundreds of new petty trades appear every year, and when they
find nobody to carry them on in the villages--as is the case in this
country--they shelter themselves in the suburbs of the great cities,
as we have lately learned from the inquiry into the “sweating system.”

Now, the advantages offered by a large factory in comparison with
hand work are self-evident as regards the economy of labour, and
especially--_this is the main point_--the facilities both for sale
and for having the raw produce at a lower price. How can we then
explain the persistence of the petty trades? Many causes, however,
most of which cannot be valued in shillings and pence, are at work in
favour of the petty trades, and these causes will be best seen from
the following illustrations. I must say, however, that even a brief
sketch of the countless industries which are carried on on a small
scale in this country, and on the Continent, would be far beyond
the scope of this chapter. When I began to study the subject some
thirty years ago, I never guessed, from the little attention devoted
to it by the orthodox economists, what a wide, complex, important,
and interesting organisation would appear at the end of a closer
inquiry. So I see myself compelled to give here only a few typical
illustrations, and to indicate the chief lines only of the subject.


_The Small Industries in the United Kingdom._

We have not for the United Kingdom such statistical data as are
obtained in France and Germany by periodical censuses of all
the factories and workshops, and the numbers of the workpeople,
foremen and clerks, employed on a given day in each industrial and
commercial establishment. Consequently, up to the present time all
the statements made by economists about the so-called “concentration”
of the industry in this country, and the consequent “unavoidable”
disappearance of the small industries, have been based on mere
impressions of the writers,--not on statistical data. Up till now
we cannot give, as it is done further in these pages for France and
Germany, the exact numbers of factories and workshops employing, let
us say, from 1,000 to 2,000 persons, from 500 to 1,000, from 50 to
500, less than 50, and so on. It is only since factory inspection has
been introduced by the Factory Act of 1895 that we begin to find, in
the Reports published since 1900 by the Factory Inspectors (_Annual
Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops for the year
1898_: London, 1900), information which permits us to get a general
idea about the distribution of working men in factories of different
sizes, and the extension that the petty trades have retained in this
country up till now.[130] One may see it already from the following
little table for the year 1897, which I take from the just-mentioned
Report. These figures are not yet complete, especially as regards the
workshops, but they contain already the greater part of the English
industries.

  +---------------------+-------------+--------------+--------------+
  |                     |  Number of  |  Number of   |    Average   |
  |        1897.        |factories and|  operatives  |   number of  |
  |                     |  workshops. |of both sexes.|operatives per|
  |                     |             |              |establishment.|
  +---------------------+-------------+--------------+--------------+
  |Textile factories    |    10,883   |   1,051,564  |      97      |
  |Non-textile factories|    79,059   |   2,755,460  |      35      |
  |Various workshops    |    88,814   |     676,776  |       8      |
  |                     +-------------+--------------+--------------+
  |      Total          |   178,756   |   4,483,800  |      25      |
  +---------------------+-------------+--------------+--------------+

Let me remark that the Factory Inspectors consider as a _workshop_
every industrial establishment which has no mechanical motive power,
and as a _factory_ every establishment provided with steam, gas,
water, or electric power.

These figures, however, are not complete, because only those
workshops are included where women and children are employed, as
also all the bakeries. The others were not submitted to inspection
at the time when this table was compiled. There is, nevertheless, a
means to find out the approximate numbers of workpeople employed in
the workshops. The number of women and female children employed in
the workshops in 1897 was 356,098, and the number of men and boys was
320,678. But, as the proportion of male workers to the female in all
the factories was 2,654,716 males to 1,152,308 females, we may admit
that the same proportion prevails in the workshops. This would give
for the latter something like 820,000 male workers, and 1,176,000
persons of both sexes, employed in 147,000 workshops. At the same
time, the grand total of persons employed in industry (exclusive of
mining) would be 4,983,000.

We can thus say that _nearly one-fourth (24 per cent.) of all the
industrial workers of this country are working in workshops having
less than eight to ten workers per establishment_.[131]

It must also be pointed out that out of the 4,483,800 workpeople
registered in the above-mentioned tables nearly 60,000 were children
who were working half-days only, 401,000 were girls less than
eighteen years old, 463,000 were boys from thirteen to eighteen
who were making full working days like the adults, and 1,077,115
were considered as _women_ (more than eighteen years old). In other
words, one-fifth part of all the industrial workers of this country
were girls and boys, and more than two-fifths (41 per cent.) were
either women or children. All the industrial production of the
United Kingdom, with its immense exports, was thus _giving work to
less than three million adult men_--2,983,000 out of a population
of 42,000,000, to whom we must add 972,200 persons working in the
mines. As to the textile industry, which supplies almost one-half of
the English exports, _there are less than_ 300,000 _adult men who
find employment in it_. The remainder is the work of children, boys,
girls, and women.

A fact which strikes us is that the 1,051,564 workpeople--men, women
and children--who worked in 1897 in the textile industries of the
United Kingdom were distributed over 10,883 factories, which gives
only an average of ninety-three persons per factory in all this
great industry, notwithstanding the fact that “concentration” has
progressed most in this industry, and that we find in it factories
employing as many as 5,000 and 6,000 persons.

It is true that the Factory Inspectors represent each separate branch
of a given industry as a special establishment. Thus, if an employer
or a society owns a spinning mill, a weaving factory, and a special
building for dressing and finishing, the three are represented as
separate factories. But this is precisely what is wanted for giving
us an exact idea about the degree of concentration of a given
industry. Besides, it is also known that, for instance, in the
cotton industry, in the neighbourhood of Manchester, the spinning,
the weaving, the dressing and so on belong very often to different
employers, who send to each other the stuffs at different degrees of
fabrication; those factories which combine under the same management
all the three or four consecutive phases of the manufacture are an
exception.

But it is especially in the division of the non-textile industries
that we find an enormous development of small factories. The
2,755,460 workpeople who are employed in all the non-textile
branches, with the exception of mining, are scattered in 79,059
factories, each of which has only an average of thirty-five workers.
Moreover, the Factory Inspectors had on their lists 676,776
workpeople employed in 88,814 workshops (without mechanical power),
which makes an average of eight persons only per workshop. These last
figures are, however, as we saw, below the real ones, as another
sixty thousand workshops occupying half a million more workpeople
were not yet tabulated.

Such averages as _ninety-three and thirty-five workpeople per
factory, and eight per workshop_, distributed over 178,756 industrial
establishments, destroy already the legend according to which the big
factories have already absorbed most of the small ones. The figures
show, on the contrary, what an immense number of small factories
and workshops resist the absorption by the big factories, and how
they multiply by the side of the great industry in various branches,
especially those of recent origin.

If we had for the United Kingdom full statistics, giving lists of
all the factories, with the number of workpeople employed in each
of them, as we have for France and Germany (see below), it would
have been easy to find the exact number of factories employing more
than 1,000, 500, 100, and 50 workmen. But such lists are issued
only for the mining industry. As to the statistics published by the
Factory Inspectors, they do not contain such data, perhaps because
the inspectors have no time to tabulate their figures, or have not
the right to do so. Be it as it may, the Report of Mr. Whitelegge
for 1897 gives the number of factories (textile and non-textile) and
workshops for each of the 119 counties of the United Kingdom and for
each of the nearly hundred sub-divisions of all the industries, as
well as the number of workpeople in each of these more than 10,000
sub-divisions. So I was enabled to calculate the _averages_ of
persons employed in the factories and workshops for each separate
branch of industry in each county. Besides, Mr. Whitelegge has had
the kindness to give me two very important figures--namely, the
number of factories employing more than 1,000 workpeople, and the
number of those _factories_ where less than ten workers are employed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Let us take, first of all, the TEXTILE industries, which include
cotton, wool, silk, linen, jute, and hemp, as well as machine-made
lace and knitting. Many of my readers will probably be astonished
to learn that even in the cotton industry a great number of quite
small factories continue to exist up to the present day. Even in the
West Riding district, which is second only to Lancashire for the
number of its cotton mills, and where we find nearly one-third of all
the workpeople employed in the cotton industry (237,444 persons),
the average for all the 3,210 factories of this district is only
seventy-three persons per factory. And even in Lancashire, where we
find nearly one-half of all the workpeople employed in the textiles,
these 434,609 men, women, and children are scattered in 3,132
factories, each of which has thus an average of only 139 workers. If
we remember that in this number there are factories employing from
2,000 to 6,000 persons, one cannot but be struck by the quantity of
small factories employing less than 100 persons, and which continue
to exist by the side of the great cotton mills. But we shall just see
that the same is true for all industries.

As to Nottinghamshire, which is a centre for machine-made lace and
knitting, its 18,434 workpeople are, most of them, working in small
factories. The average for the 386 establishments of this county is
only forty-eight persons per factory. The great industry is thus very
far from having absorbed the small one.

The distribution of the textile factories in the other counties of
the United Kingdom is even more instructive. We learn that there are
nearly 2,000 textile factories in forty-nine counties, and everyone
of these factories has much less than 100 workpeople; while a very
considerable number of them employ only from forty to fifty, from ten
to twenty, and even less than ten persons.[132]

This could have been foreseen by everyone who has some practical
knowledge of industry, but it is overlooked by the theorists, who
know industry mostly from books. In every country of the world there
are by the side of the large factories a great number of small ones,
the success of which is due to the variety of their produce and the
facilities they offer to follow the vagaries of fashion. This is
especially true with regard to the woollens and the mixed stuffs made
of wool and cotton.

Besides, it is well known to British manufacturers that at the
time when the big cotton mills were established, the manufacturers
of spinning and weaving machinery, seeing that they had no more
orders coming, after they had supplied this machinery to the great
factories, began to offer it at a reduced price and on credit to
the small weavers. These last associated--three, five, or more of
them--to buy the machinery, and this is why we have now in Lancashire
quite a region where a great number of small cotton mills continue to
exist till nowadays, without there being any reason to foresee their
disappearance. At times they are even quite prosperous.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the other side, when we examine the various branches of textile
industry (cotton, wool, silk, jute, etc.), we see that if the great
factories dominate in the spinning and weaving of cotton, worsted
and flax, as well as in the spinning of silk (the result being that
the average for these branches reaches 150 workers per factory
for cotton, and 267 for the spinning of flax), _all other textile
industries belong to the domain of the middle-sized and the small
industry_. In other words, in the manufacture of woollens, shoddy,
hemp, hair, machine-made lace, and mechanical knitting, as also
in the weaving of silks, there are, of course, large factories;
but the majority of these establishments belong to the domain of
the small industry. Thus, for the 3,274 woollen factories, the
average is only from twenty to fifty workers per factory; it is also
from twenty-seven to thirty-eight for shoddy, and thirty-seven to
seventy-six for the other branches. Only for knitting do the averages
rise to ninety-three persons per factory; but we are just going to
see that the small industry reappears in this branch in force under
the name of workshops.

All these important branches of the British textile industry, which
give work to more than 240,000 men and women, have thus remained up
till now at the stage of a small and middle-sized industry.

If we take now the NON-TEXTILE industries, we find, on the one side,
an immense number of small industries which have grown up around
the great ones, and owing to them; and, on the other side, a large
part of the fundamental industries have remained in the stage of
small establishments. The average for all these branches, which give
occupation to three-fourths of all the industrial workers of the
United Kingdom--that is, 2,755,460 workers--hardly attains, we saw,
thirty-five persons per factory--the workshops being not yet included
in this division. However, it is especially when we go into details,
and analyse the figures which I have calculated for each separate
branch, that we fully realise the importance of the petty trades
in England. This is what we are going to do, mentioning first what
belongs here to the great industry, and studying next the small one.

Following the classification adopted by the Factory Inspectors, we
see first that the gas-works belong to the domain of the fairly
big establishments (seventy-eight people on the average). The
india-rubber factories belong to the same category (125 workers
on the average); and amidst the 456 glass-works of the United
Kingdom there must be some big ones, as the average is eighty-seven
workpeople.

Next come mining and metallurgy, which are carried on, as a rule,
on a great scale; but already in the iron foundries we find a great
number of establishments belonging to the middle-sized and small
industry. Thus at Sheffield I saw myself several foundries employing
only from five to six workmen. For the making of huge machinery
there is, of course, a number of very large works, such as those of
Armstrong, Whitworth, or those of the State at Woolwich. But it is
very instructive to see how very small works prosper by the side of
big ones; they are numerous enough to reduce the average to seventy
workers per establishment for the 5,318 works of this category.

Shipbuilding and the manufacture of metallic tubes evidently
belong to the great industry (averages, 243 and 156 persons per
establishment); and the same applies to the two great metallurgical
works of the State, which employ between them 23,455 workmen.

Going over to the chemical works, we find again a great industry in
the fabrication of alkalies and of matches (only twenty-five works);
but, on the contrary, the fabrication of soap and candles, as well
as manures and all other sorts of chemical produce, which represents
nearly 2,000 factories, belongs almost entirely to the domain of
the small industry. The average is only twenty-nine workpeople per
factory. There are, of course, half a dozen of very large soap
works--one knows them only too well by their advertisements on the
cliffs and in the fields; but the low average of twenty-nine workmen
proves how many small factories must exist by the side of the soap
kings. The 2,500 works engaged in the fabrication of furniture, both
in wood and in iron, belong again chiefly to the small industry.
The small and very small factories swarm by the side of a few great
ones, to say nothing of the thousands of the still smaller workshops.
The great storehouses of our cities are for the most part mere
exhibitions of furniture made in very small factories and workshops.

In the fabrication of food produce we find several great sugar,
chocolate, and preserves works; but by their side we find also a very
great number of small establishments, which seem not to complain
of the proximity of the big ones, as they occupy nearly two-thirds
of the workers employed in this branch. I do not speak, of course,
of the village windmills, but one cannot fail to be struck by the
immense number of small breweries (2,076 breweries have on the
average only twenty-four workmen each) and of the establishments
engaged in the fabrication of aerated waters (they number 3,365, and
have on the average only eleven operatives per establishment).

In calico-printing we enter once more the domain of great factories;
but by their side we find a pretty large number of small ones;
so that the average for all this category is 144 workpeople per
factory. We find also fourteen great factories, having an average
of 394 workpeople each, for dyeing in Turkey red. But we find also
by their side more than 100,000 working-men employed in 2,725 small
establishments of this class--bleaching, dressing, packing, and
so on--and this gives us one more illustration of numerous small
industries growing round the main ones.

In the making of ready-made clothing and the fabrication of hats,
linen, boots and shoes, and gloves, we see the averages for the
factories of this description going up to 80, 100, and 150 persons
per factory. But it is here also that countless small workshops come
in. It must also be noticed that most of the factories of ready-made
clothing have their own special character. The factory buys the cloth
and makes the cutting by means of special machinery; but the sewing
is done by women, who come to work in the factory. They pay so much
the sewing-machine, so much the motor power (if there is one), so
much the gas, so much the iron, and so on, and they are on piece
work. Very often this becomes a “sweating system” on a large scale.
Round the big factories a great number of small workshops are centred.

And, finally, we find great factories for the fabrication of
gunpowder and explosives (they employ less than 12,000 workpeople),
stuff buttons, and umbrellas (only 6,000 employees). But we find also
in the table of workshops that in these last two branches there are
thousands of them by the side of a few great factories.

All taken, Mr. Whitelegge writes to me that of factories employing
more than 1,000 workpeople each, he finds _only sixty-five in the
textile industries_ (102,600 workpeople) and only 128 (355,208
workpeople) _in all non-textile industries_.

In this brief enumeration we have gone over all that belongs to
the great industry. The remainder belongs almost entirely to the
domain of the small, and often the very small industry. Such are all
the factories for woodwork, which have on the average only fifteen
men per establishment, but represent a contingent of more than
100,000 workmen and more than 6,000 employers. The tanneries, the
manufacture of all sorts of little things in ivory and bone, and even
the brick-works and the potteries, representing a total of 260,000
workpeople and 11,200 employers, belong, with a very few exceptions,
to the small industry.

Then we have the factories dealing with the burnishing and enamelling
of metals, which also belong chiefly to the small industry--the
average being only twenty-eight workpeople per factory. But what is
especially striking is the development of the small and very small
industry in the fabrication of agricultural machinery (thirty-two
workers per factory), of all sorts of tools (twenty-two on the
average), needles and pins (forty-three), ironmongery, sanitary
apparatus, and various instruments (twenty-five), even of boilers
(forty-eight per factory), chains, cables, and anchors (in many
districts this work, as also the making of nails, is made by hand by
_women_).

Needless to say that the fabrication of furniture, which occupies
nearly 64,000 operatives, belongs chiefly--more than three-fourths
of it--to the small industry. The average for the 1,979 factories of
this branch is only twenty-one workpeople, the workshops not being
included in this number. The same is true of the factories for the
curing of fish, machine-made pastry, and so on, which occupy 38,030
workpeople in more than 2,700 factories, having thus an average of
fourteen operatives each.

Jewelry and the manufacture of watches, photographic apparatus, and
all sorts of luxury articles, again belong to the small and very
small industry, and give occupation to 54,000 persons.

All that belongs to printing, lithography, bookbinding, and
stationery again represents a vast field occupied by the small
industry, which prospers by the side of a small number of very large
establishments. More than 120,000 are employed in these branches in
more than 6,000 factories (workshops not yet included).

And, finally, we find a large domain occupied by saddlery,
brush-making, the making of sails, basket-making, and the fabrication
of a thousand little things in leather, paper, wood, metal, and so
on. This class is certainly not insignificant, as it contains more
than 4,300 employers and nearly 130,000 workpeople, employed in a
mass of very small factories by the side of a few very great ones,
the average being only from twenty-five to thirty-five persons per
factory.

In short, in the different non-textile industries, the inspectors
have tabulated _32,042 factories employing, each of them, less than
ten workpeople_.

All taken, we find 270,000 workpeople employed in small factories
having less than fifty and even twenty workers each, the result being
that the very great industry (the factories employing more than
1,000 workpeople per factory) and the very small one (less than ten
workers) employ nearly the same number of operatives.

       *       *       *       *       *

The important part played by the small industry in this country
fully appears from this rapid sketch. And I have not yet spoken of
the workshops. The Factory Inspectors mentioned, as we saw, in their
first report, 88,814 workshops, in which 676,776 workpeople (356,098
women) were employed in 1897. But, as we have already seen, these
figures are incomplete. The number of workshops is about 147,000, and
there must be about 1,200,000 persons employed in them (820,000 men
and about 356,000 women and children).

It is evident that this class comprises a very considerable number
of bakers, small carpenters, tailors, cobblers, cartwrights, village
smiths, and so on. But there is also in this class an immense number
of workshops belonging to industry, properly speaking--that is,
workshops which manufacture for the great commercial market. Some of
these workshops may of course employ fifty persons or more, but the
immense majority employ only from five to twenty workpeople each.

We thus find in this class 1,348 small establishments, scattered both
in the villages and the suburbs of great cities, where nearly 14,000
persons make lace, knitting, embroidery, and weaving in hand-looms;
more than 100 small tanneries, more than 20,000 cartwrights, and 746
small bicycle makers. In cutlery, in the fabrication of tools and
small arms, nails and screws, and even anchors and anchor chains, we
find again many thousands of small workshops employing something
like 60,000 workmen. All that, let us remember, without counting
those workshops which employ no women or children, and therefore
are not submitted to the Factory Inspectors. As to the fabrication
of clothing, which gives work to more than 350,000 men and women,
distributed over nearly 45,000 workshops, let it be noted that
it is not small tailors that is spoken of here, but that mass of
_workshops_ which swarm in Whitechapel and the suburbs of all great
cities, and where we find from five to fifty women and men making
clothing for the tailor shops, big and small. In these shops the
measure is taken, and sometimes the cutting is made; but the clothing
is sewn in the small workshops, which are very often somewhere in
the country. Even parts of the commands of linen and clothing for
the army find their way to workshops in country places. As to the
underclothing and mercery which are sold in the great stores, they
are fabricated in small workshops, which must be counted by the
thousand.

The same is true of furniture, mattresses and cushions, hats,
artificial flowers, umbrellas, slippers, and even cheap jewelry. The
great shops, even the largest stores, mostly keep only an assortment
of samples. All is manufactured at a very low price, and _day by
day_, in thousands of small workshops.

It can thus be said that if we exclude from the class of workshops’
employees 100,000 or even 200,000 workpeople who do not work for
_industry_ properly speaking, and if we add on the other side the
nearly 500,000 workers who have not yet been tabulated by the
inspectors in 1897, we find a population of more than 1,000,000 men
and women who belong entirely to the domain of the small industry,
and so must be added to those whom we found working in the small
factories. The artisans who are working single-handed were not
included in this sketch.

We thus see that even in this country, which may be considered
as representing the highest development of the great industry,
the number of persons employed in the small trade continues to be
immense. The small industries are as much a distinctive feature of
the British industry as its few immense factories and ironworks.

       *       *       *       *       *

Going over now to what is known about the small industries of this
country from direct observation, we find that the suburbs of London,
Glasgow, and other great cities swarm with small workshops, and
that there are regions where the petty trades are as developed as
they are in Switzerland or in Germany. Sheffield is a well-known
example in point. The Sheffield cutlery--one of the glories of
England--is _not_ made by machinery: it is chiefly made by hand.
There are at Sheffield a number of firms which manufacture cutlery
right through from the making of steel to the finishing of tools,
and employ wage-workers; and yet even these firms--I am told by
Edward Carpenter, who kindly collected for me information about
the Sheffield trade--let out some part of their work to the “small
masters.” But by far the greatest number of the cutlers work in their
homes with their relatives, or in small workshops supplied with
wheel-power, which they rent for a few shillings a week. Immense
yards are covered with buildings, which are subdivided into numbers
of small workshops. Some of these cover but a few square yards, and
there I saw smiths hammering, all the day long, blades of knives
on a small anvil, close by the blaze of their fires; occasionally
the smith may have one helper, or two. In the upper storeys scores
of small workshops are supplied with wheel-power, and in each of
them, three, four, or five workers and a “master” fabricate, with
the occasional aid of a few plain machines, every description of
tools: files, saws, blades of knives, razors, and so on. Grinding and
glazing are done in other small workshops, and even steel is cast in
a small foundry, the working staff of which consists only of five or
six men.

When I walked through these workshops I easily imagined myself in
a Russian cutlery village, like Pavlovo or Vorsma. The Sheffield
cutlery has thus maintained its olden organisation, and the fact is
the more remarkable as the earnings of the cutlers are low as a rule;
but, even when they are reduced to a few shillings a week, the cutler
prefers to vegetate on his small earnings than to enter as a waged
labourer in a “house.” The spirit of the old trade organisations,
which were so much spoken of in the ’sixties of the nineteenth
century, is thus still alive.

Until lately, Leeds and its environs were also the seat of extensive
domestic industries. When Edward Baines wrote, in 1857, his first
account of the Yorkshire industries (in Th. Baines’s _Yorkshire,
Past and Present_), most of the woollen cloth which was made in that
region was woven by hand.[133] Twice a week the hand-made cloth
was brought to the Clothiers’ Hall, and by noon it was sold to the
merchants, who had it dressed in their factories. Joint-stock mills
were run by combined clothiers in order to prepare and spin the
wool, but it was woven in the hand-looms by the clothiers and the
members of their families. Twelve years later the hand-loom was
superseded to a great extent by the power-loom; but the clothiers,
who were anxious to maintain their independence, resorted to a
peculiar organisation: they rented a room, or part of a room, and
sometimes also the power-looms, and they worked independently--a
characteristic organisation partly maintained until now, and well
adapted to illustrate the efforts of the petty traders to keep their
ground, notwithstanding the competition of the factory. And it must
be said that the triumphs of the factory were too often achieved only
by means of the most fraudulent adulteration and the underpaid labour
of the children.

The variety of domestic industries carried on in the Lake District is
much greater than might be expected, but they still wait for careful
explorers. I will only mention the hoop-makers, the basket trade,
the charcoal-burners, the bobbin-makers, the small iron furnaces
working with charcoal at Backbarrow, and so on.[134] As a whole, we
do not well know the petty trades of this country, and therefore
we sometimes come across quite unexpected facts. Few continental
writers on industrial topics would guess, indeed, that twenty-five
years ago nails were made by hand by thousands of men, women, and
children in the Black Country of South Staffordshire, as also in
Derbyshire,[135] and that some of this industry remains still in
existence, or that the best needles are made by hand at Redditch.
Chains are also made by hand at Dudley and Cradley, and although the
Press is periodically moved to speak of the wretched conditions of
the chain-makers, men and women, the trade still maintains itself;
while nearly 7,000 men were busy in 1890 in their small workshops
in making locks, even of the plainest description, at Walsall,
Wolverhampton, and Willenhall. The various ironmongeries connected
with horse-clothing--bits, spurs, bridles, and so on--are also
largely made by hand at Walsall.

The Birmingham gun and rifle trades, which also belong to the same
domain of small industries, are well known. As to the various
branches of dress, there are still important divisions of the United
Kingdom where a variety of domestic trades connected with dress
is carried on on a large scale. I need only mention the cottage
industries of Ireland, as also some of them which have survived in
the shires of Buckingham, Oxford, and Bedford; hosiery is a common
occupation in the villages of the counties of Nottingham and Derby;
and several great London firms send out cloth to be made into
dress in the villages of Sussex and Hampshire. Woollen hosiery is
at home in the villages of Leicester, and especially in Scotland;
straw-plaiting and hat-making in many parts of the country; while at
Northampton, Leicester, Ipswich, and Stafford shoemaking was, till
quite lately, a widely spread domestic occupation, or was carried
on in small workshops; even at Norwich it remains a petty trade to
some extent, notwithstanding the competition of the factories. It
must also be said that the recent appearance of large boot and shoe
factories has considerably increased the number of girls and women
who sew the “uppers” and embroider the slippers, either in their own
houses or in sweaters’ workshops, while new small factories have
developed of late for the making of heels, card-boxes, and so on.

The petty trades are thus an important factor of industrial life even
in Great Britain, although many of them have gathered into the towns.
But if we find in this country so many fewer rural industries than on
the Continent, we must not imagine that their disappearance is due
only to a keener competition of the factories. The chief cause was
the compulsory exodus from the villages.

As everyone knows from Thorold Rogers’ work, the growth of the
factory system in England was intimately connected with that enforced
exodus. Whole industries, which prospered till then, were killed
downright by the forced clearing of estates.[136] The workshops,
much more even than the factories, multiply wherever they find
cheap labour; and the specific feature of this country is, that
the cheapest labour--that is, the greatest number of destitute
people--is to be found in the great cities. The agitation raised
(with no result) in connection with the “Dwellings of the Poor,” the
“Unemployed,” and the “Sweating System,” has fully disclosed that
characteristic feature of the economic life of England and Scotland;
and the painstaking researches made by Mr. Charles Booth have shown
that one-quarter of the population of London--that is, 1,000,000 out
of the 3,800,000 who entered within the scope of his inquest--would
be happy if the heads of their families could have regular earnings
of something like £1 a week all the year round. Half of them would
be satisfied with even less than that. The same state of things was
found by Mr. Seebohm Rowntree at York.[137] Cheap labour is offered
in such quantities in the suburbs of all the great cities of Great
Britain, that the petty and domestic trades, which are scattered on
the Continent in the villages, gather in this country in the cities.

Exact figures as to the small industries are wanting, but a simple
walk through the suburbs of London would do much to realise the
variety of petty trades which swarm in the metropolis, and, in fact,
in all chief urban agglomerations. The evidence given before the
“Sweating System Committee” has shown how far the furniture and
ready-made clothing palaces and the “Bonheur des Dames” bazaars of
London are mere exhibitions of samples, or markets for the sale of
the produce of the small industries. Thousands of sweaters, some
of them having their own workshops, and others merely distributing
work to sub-sweaters who distribute it again amidst the destitute,
supply those palaces and bazaars with goods made in the slums or
in very small workshops. The commerce _is_ centralised in those
bazaars--not the industry. The furniture palaces and bazaars are thus
merely playing the part which the feudal castle formerly played in
agriculture: they centralise the profits--not the production.

In reality, the extension of the petty trades, side by side with the
great factories, is nothing to be wondered at. It is an economic
necessity. The absorption of the small workshops by bigger concerns
is a fact which had struck the economists in the ’forties of the last
century, especially in the textile trades. It is continued still in
many other trades, and is especially striking in a number of very
big concerns dealing with metals and war supplies for the different
States. But there is another process which is going on parallel with
the former, and which consists in the continuous creation of new
industries, usually making their start on a small scale. Each new
factory calls into existence a number of small workshops, partly to
supply its own needs and partly to submit its produce to a further
transformation. Thus, to quote but one instance, the cotton mills
have created an immense demand for wooden bobbins and reels, and
thousands of men in the Lake District set to manufacture them--by
hand first, and later on with the aid of some plain machinery. Only
quite recently, after years had been spent in inventing and improving
the machinery, the bobbins began to be made on a larger scale in
factories. And even yet, as the machines are very costly, a great
quantity of bobbins are made in small workshops, with but little aid
from machines, while the factories themselves are relatively small,
and seldom employ more than fifty operatives--chiefly children. As
to the reels of irregular shape, they are still made by hand, or
partly with the aid of small machines, continually invented by the
workers. New industries thus grow up to supplant the old ones; each
of them passes through a preliminary stage on a small scale before
reaching the great factory stage; and the more active the inventive
genius of a nation is, the more it has of these budding industries.
The countless small bicycle works which have lately grown up in
this country, and are supplied with ready-made parts of the bicycle
by the larger factories, are an instance in point. The domestic
and small workshops fabrication of boxes for matches, boots, hats,
confectionery, grocery and so on is another familiar instance.

Besides, the large factory stimulates the birth of new petty trades
by creating new wants. The cheapness of cottons and woollens, of
paper and brass, has created hundreds of new small industries. Our
households are full of their produce--mostly things of quite modern
invention. And while some of them already are turned out by the
million in the great factory, all have passed through the small
workshop stage, before the demand was great enough to require the
great factory organisation. The more we may have of new inventions,
the more shall we have of such small industries; and again, the more
we have of them, the more shall we have of the inventive genius,
the want of which is so justly complained of in this country (by W.
Armstrong, amongst many others). We must not wonder, therefore, if
we see so many small trades in this country; but we must regret that
the great number have abandoned the villages in consequence of the
bad conditions of land tenure, and that they have migrated in such
numbers to the cities, to the detriment of agriculture.

In England, as everywhere, the small industries are an important
factor in the industrial life of the country; and it is chiefly
in the infinite variety of the small trades, which utilise the
half-fabricated produce of the great industries, that inventive
genius is developed, and the rudiments of the future great industries
are elaborated. The small bicycle workshops, with the hundreds
of small improvements which they introduced, have been under our
very eyes the primary cells out of which the great industry of the
motor cars, and later on of the aeroplanes, has grown up. The small
village jam-makers were the precursors and the rudiments of the great
factories of preserves which now employ hundreds of workers. And so
on.

Consequently, to affirm that the small industries are doomed to
disappear, while we see new ones appear every day, is merely to
repeat a hasty generalisation that was made in the earlier part of
the nineteenth century by those who witnessed the absorption of
hand-work by machinery work in the cotton industry--a generalisation
which, as we saw already, and are going still better to see on the
following pages, finds no confirmation from the study of industries,
great and small, and is upset by the censuses of the factories and
workshops. Far from showing a tendency to disappear, the small
industries show, on the contrary, a tendency towards making a further
development, since the municipal supply of electrical power--such
as we have, for instance, in Manchester--permits the owner of a
small factory to have a cheap supply of motive power, exactly in the
proportion required at a given time, and to pay only for what is
really consumed.


_Petty Trades in France._

Small industries are met with in France in a very great variety,
and they represent a most important feature of national economy.
It is estimated, in fact, that while one-half of the population of
France live upon agriculture, and one-third upon industry, this
third part is equally distributed between the great industry and
the small one.[138] This last occupies about 1,650,000 workers
and supports from 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 persons. A considerable
number of peasants who resort to small industries without abandoning
agriculture would have to be added to the just-mentioned items, and
the additional earnings which these peasants find in industry are
so important that in several parts of France peasant proprietorship
could not be maintained without the aid derived from the rural
industries.

The small peasants know what they have to expect the day they
become factory hands in a town; and so long as they have not been
dispossessed by the money-lender of their lands and houses, and
so long as the village rights in the communal grazing grounds or
woods have not been lost, they cling to a combination of industry
with agriculture. Having, in most cases, no horses to plough the
land, they resort to an arrangement which is widely spread, if not
universal, among small French landholders, even in purely rural
districts (I saw it even in Haute-Savoie). One of the peasants who
keeps a plough and a team of horses tills all the fields in turn. At
the same time, owing to a wide maintenance of the communal spirit,
which I have described elsewhere,[139] further support is found in
the communal shepherd, the communal wine-press, and various forms
of “aids” amongst the peasants. And wherever the village-community
spirit is maintained, the small industries persist, while no effort
is spared to bring the small plots under higher culture.

Market-gardening and fruit culture often go hand in hand with
small industries. And wherever well-being is found on a relatively
unproductive soil, it is nearly always due to a combination of the
two sister arts.

The most wonderful adaptations of the small industries to new
requirements, and substantial technical progress in the methods
of production, can be noted at the same time. It may even be
said of France, as it has been said of Russia, that when a rural
industry dies out, the cause of its decay is found much less in
the competition of rival factories--in hundreds of localities the
small industry undergoes a complete modification, or it changes
its character in such cases--than in the decay of the population
_as agriculturists_. Continually we see that only when the small
landholders have been ruined, as such, by a group of causes--the loss
of communal meadows, or abnormally high rents, or the havoc made
in some locality by the _marchands de biens_ (swindlers enticing
the peasants to buy land on credit), or the bankruptcy of some
shareholders’ company whose shares had been eagerly taken by the
peasants[140]--only then do they abandon both the land and the rural
industry and emigrate towards the towns.

Otherwise, a new industry always grows up when the competition of the
factory becomes too acute--a wonderful, hardly suspected adaptability
being displayed by the small industries; or else the rural artisans
resort to some form of intensive farming, gardening, etc., and in the
meantime some other industry makes its appearance. A closer study of
France under this aspect is instructive in a high degree.

It is evident that in most textile industries the power-loom
supersedes the hand-loom, and the factory takes, or has taken
already, the place of the cottage industry. Cottons, plain linen, and
machine-made lace are now produced at such a low cost by machinery
that hand-weaving evidently becomes an anachronism for the plainest
descriptions of such goods. Consequently, though there were in
France, in the year 1876, 328,300 hand-looms as against 121,340
power-looms, it may safely be taken that the number of the former has
been considerably reduced within the next twenty years. However, the
slowness with which this change is being accomplished is one of the
most striking features of the present industrial organisation of the
textile trades of France.

The causes of this power of resistance of hand-loom-weaving become
especially apparent when one consults such works as Reybaud’s _Le
Coton_, which was written in 1863, nearly half a century ago--that
is, at a time when the cottage industries were still fully alive.
Though an ardent admirer himself of the great industries, Reybaud
faithfully noted the striking superiority of well-being in the
weavers’ cottages as compared with the misery of the factory hands
in the cities. Already then, the cities of St. Quentin, Lille,
Roubaix and Amiens were great centres for cotton-spinning mills and
cotton-weaving factories. But, at the same time, all sorts of cottons
were woven in hand-looms, in the very suburbs of St. Quentin and in a
hundred villages and hamlets around it, to be sold for finishing in
the city. And Reybaud remarked that the horrible dwellings in town,
and the general condition of the factory hands, stood in a wonderful
contrast with the relative welfare of the rural weavers. Nearly
every one of these last had his own house and a small field which he
continued to cultivate.[141]

Even in such a branch as the fabrication of plain cotton velvets, in
which the competition of the factories was especially keenly felt,
home-weaving was widely spread, in 1863 and even in 1878, in the
villages round Amiens. Although the earnings of the rural weavers
were small, as a rule, the weavers preferred to keep to their own
cottages, to their own crops and to their own cattle; and only
repeated commercial crises, as well as several of the above-mentioned
causes, hostile to the small peasant, compelled most of them to give
up the struggle, and to seek employment in the factories, while part
of them have, by this time, again returned to agriculture or taken to
market-gardening.

Another important centre for rural industries was in the
neighbourhood of Rouen, where no less than 110,000 persons were
employed, in 1863, in weaving cottons for the finishing factories of
that city. In the valley of the Andelle, in the department of Eure,
each village was at that time an industrial bee-hive; each streamlet
was utilised for setting into work a small factory. Reybaud described
the condition of the peasants who combined agriculture with work at
the rural factory as most satisfactory, especially in comparison with
the condition of the slum-dwellers at Rouen, and he even mentioned a
case or two in which the village factories belonged to the village
communities.

Seventeen years later, Baudrillart[142] depicted the same region in
very much the same words; and although the rural factories had had to
yield to a great extent before the big factories, the rural industry
was still valued as showing a yearly production of 85,000,000 francs
(£2,400,000).

At the present time, the factories must have made further progress;
but we still see from the excellent descriptions of M. Ardouin
Dumazet, whose work will have in the future almost the same value
as Arthur Young’s _Travels_,[143] that a considerable portion of
the rural weavers has still survived; while at the same time one
invariably meets, even nowadays, with the remark that relative
well-being is prominent in the villages in which weaving is connected
with agriculture.

Up to the present time, M. Ardouin Dumazet writes, “there is an
industry which gives work to many hand-looms in the villages; it
is the weaving of various stuffs for umbrellas and ladies’ boots.”
Amiens is the chief centre for this weaving.[144] In other places
they are making dresses out of Amiens velvet and various stuffs woven
at Roubaix. It is a new industry; it has taken the place of the old
one, which was making of Amiens a second Lyons.

In the district of Le Thelle, to the south of Beauvais, there
is “a multitude of petty trades, of which one hardly imagines
the importance. I have seen,” M. Dumazet says, “small factories
of buttons made from bone, ivory, or mother-of-pearl, brushes,
shoe-horns, keys for pianos, dominoes, counters and dice,
spectacle-cases, small articles for the writing-table, handles for
tools, measures, billiard keys--what not!... There is not one single
village, however small, the population of which should not have its
own industry.”[145] At the same time it must not be forgotten that
thousands of small articles for the writing-table and for draughtsmen
are fabricated on a large scale in the small factories in the same
region. Some of the workshops are situated in private houses, and in
some of them artistic work is made; but most of them are located in
special houses, where the necessary power is hired by the owner of
the workshop. You see here “a fantastic activity”--the word is M.
Dumazet’s; the division of labour is very great, and everywhere they
invent new machine-tools.

Finally, in the villages of the Vermandois district (department of
the Aisne), we find a considerable number of hand-looms (more than
3,000) upon which mixed stuffs made of cotton, wool and silk are
woven.[146]

Of course, it must be recognised that, as a rule, in northern France,
where cottons are fabricated on a large scale in factory towns,
hand-weaving in the villages is nearly gone. But, as is seen already
from the preceding, new small industries have grown up instead, and
this is also the case in many other parts of France.

Taking the region situated between Rouen in the north-east, Orléans
in the south-east, Rennes in the north-west, and Nantes in the
south-west--that is, the old provinces of Normandy, Perche and
Maine, and partly Touraine and Anjou, as they were seen by Ardouin
Dumazet in 1895--we find there quite a variety of domestic and petty
industries, both in the villages and in the towns.

At Laval (to the south-east of Rennes), where drills (_coutils_) were
formerly woven out of flax in hand-looms, and at Alençon, formerly
a great centre for the cottage-weaving of linen, as well as for
hand-made lace, Ardouin Dumazet found both the house and the factory
linen industry in a lingering state. Cotton takes the lead. Drills
are now made out of cotton in the factories, and the demand for flax
goods is very small. Both domestic and factory weaving of flax goods
are accordingly in a poor condition. The cottagers abandoned that
branch of weaving, and the large factories, which had been erected
at Alençon with the intention of creating a flax and hemp-cloth
industry, had to be closed. Only one factory, occupying 250 hands,
remains; while nearly 23,000 weavers, who found occupation at Mans,
Fresnay and Alençon in hemp cloths and fine linen, had to abandon
that industry. Those who worked in factories have emigrated to other
towns, while those who had not broken with agriculture reverted to
it. In this struggle of cotton _versus_ flax and hemp, the former was
victorious.

As to lace, it is made in such quantities by machinery at Calais,
Caudry, St. Quentin and Tarare that only high-class artistic
lace-making continues on a small scale at Alençon itself, but it
still remains a by-occupation in the surrounding country. Besides, at
Flers, and at Ferté Macé (a small town to the south of the former),
hand-weaving is still carried on in about 5,400 hand-looms, although
the whole trade, in factories and villages alike, is in a piteous
state since the Spanish markets have been lost. Spain has now plenty
of her own cotton mills. Twelve big spinning mills at Condé (where
4,000 tons of cotton were spun in 1883) were abandoned in 1893, and
the workers were thrown into a most miserable condition.[147]

On the contrary, in an industry which supplies the home
market--namely, in the fabrication of linen handkerchiefs, which
itself is of a quite recent growth--we see that cottage-weaving is,
even now, in full prosperity. Cholet (in Maine-et-Loire, south-west
of Angers) is the centre of that trade. It has one spinning mill
and one weaving mill, but both employ considerably fewer hands than
domestic weaving, which is spread over no less than 200 villages of
the surrounding region.[148] Neither at Rouen nor in the industrial
cities of Northern France are so many linen handkerchiefs fabricated
as in this region in hand-looms, we are told by Ardouin Dumazet.

Within the curve made by the Loire as it flows past Orléans we find
another prosperous centre of domestic industries connected with
cottons. “From Romorantin [in Loire-et-Cher, south of Orléans] to
Argenton and Le Blanc,” the same writer says, “we have one immense
workshop where handkerchiefs are embroidered, and shirts, cuffs,
collars and all sorts of ladies’ linen are sewn or embroidered.
There is not one house, even in the tiniest hamlets, where the women
would not be occupied in that trade ... and if this work is a mere
_passe-temps_ in vine-growing regions, here it has become the chief
resource of the population.”[149] Even at Romorantin itself, where
400 women and girls are employed in one factory, there are more than
1,000 women who sew linen in their houses.

The same must be said of a group of industrial villages peopled with
clothiers in the neighbourhood of another Normandy city, Elbœuf.
When Baudrillart visited them in 1878-1880, he was struck with
the undoubted advantages offered by a combination of agriculture
with industry. Clean houses, clean dresses, and a general stamp of
well-being were characteristic of these villages.

Happily enough, weaving is not the only small industry of both
this region and Brittany. On the contrary, scores of other small
industries enliven the villages and burgs. At Fougères (in
Ille-et-Vilaine, to the north-east of Reims) one sees how the
factory has contributed to the development of various small and
domestic trades. In 1830 this town was a great centre for the
domestic fabrication of the so-called _chaussons de tresse_. The
competition of the prisons killed, however, this primitive industry;
but it was soon substituted by the fabrication of soft socks in
felt (_chaussons de feutre_). This last industry also went down,
and then the fabrication of boots and shoes was introduced, this
last giving origin, in its turn, to the boot and shoe factories,
of which there are now thirty-three at Fougères, employing 8,000
workers[150] (yearly production about 5,000,000 pairs). But at the
same time domestic industries took a new development. Thousands of
women are employed now in their houses in sewing the “uppers” and
in embroidering fancy shoes. Moreover, quite a number of smaller
workshops grew up in the neighbourhood, for the fabrication of
cardboard boxes, wooden heels, and so on, as well as a number of
tanneries, big and small. And M. Ardouin Dumazet’s remark is, that
one is struck to find, owing to these industries, an undoubtedly
higher level of well-being in the villages--quite unforeseen in the
centre of this purely agricultural region.[151]

In Brittany, in the neighbourhood of Quimperlé, a great number of
small workshops for the fabrication of the felt hats which are worn
by the peasants is scattered in the villages; and rapidly improving
agriculture goes hand in hand with that trade. Well-being is a
distinctive feature of these villages.[152] At Hennebont (on the
southern coast of Brittany) 1,400 workers are employed in an immense
factory in the fabrication of tins for preserves, and every year
twenty-two to twenty-three tons of iron are transformed into steel,
and next into tins, which are sent to Paris, Bordeaux, Nantes, and so
on. But the factory has created “quite a world of tiny workshops” in
this purely agricultural region: small tin-ware workshops, tanneries,
potteries, and so on, while the slags are transformed in small
factories into manure.

Agriculture and industry are thus going here hand in hand, the
importance of not severing the union being perhaps best seen at
Loudéac, a small town in the midst of Brittany (department of
Côtes-du-Nord). Formerly the villages in this neighbourhood were
industrial, all hamlets being peopled with weavers who fabricated
the well-known Brittany linen. Now, this industry having gone down
very much, the weavers have simply returned to the soil. Out of an
industrial town, Loudéac has become an agricultural market town;[153]
and, what is most interesting, these populations conquer new lands
for agriculture and turn the formerly quite unproductive _landes_
into rich corn fields; while on the northern coast of Brittany,
around Dol, on land which began to be conquered from the sea in the
twelfth century, market-gardening is now carried on to a very great
extent for export to England.

Altogether, it is striking to observe, on perusing M. Ardouin
Dumazet’s little volumes, how domestic industries go hand in hand
with all sorts of small industries in agriculture--gardening,
poultry-farming, fabrication of fruit preserves, and so on--and how
all sorts of associations for sale and export are easily introduced.
Mans is, as known, a great centre for the export of geese and all
sorts of poultry to England.

Part of Normandy (namely, the departments of Eure and Orne) is
dotted with small workshops where all sorts of small brass goods and
hardware are fabricated in the villages. Of course, the domestic
fabrication of pins is nearly gone, and as for needles, polishing
only, in a very primitive form, has been maintained in the villages.
But all sorts of small hardware, including nails, lockets, etc.,
in great variety, are fabricated in the villages, especially round
Laigle. Stays are also sewn in small workshops in many villages,
notwithstanding the competition of prison work.[154]

Tinchebrai (to the west of Flers) is a real centre for a great
variety of smaller goods in iron, mother-of-pearl and horn. All
sorts of hardware and locks are fabricated by the peasants during
the time they can spare from agriculture, and real works of art,
some of which were much admired at the exhibition of 1889, are
produced by these humble peasant sculptors in horn, mother-of-pearl
and iron. Farther south, the polishing of marble goods is carried on
in numbers of small workshops, scattered round Solesmes and grouped
round one central establishment where marble pieces are roughly
shaped with the aid of steam, to be finished in the small village
workshops. At Sablé the workers in that branch, who all own their
houses and gardens, enjoy a real well-being especially noticed by our
traveller.[155]

In the woody regions of the Perche and the Maine we find all sorts of
wooden industries which evidently could only be maintained owing to
the communal possession of the woods. Near the forest of Perseigne
there is a small burg, Fresnaye, which is entirely peopled with
workers in wood.

  “There is not one house,” Ardouin Dumazet writes, “in which
  wooden goods would not be fabricated. Some years ago there was
  little variety in their produce; spoons, salt-boxes, shepherds’
  boxes, scales, various wooden pieces for weavers, flutes and
  hautboys, spindles, wooden measures, funnels, and wooden bowls
  were only made. But Paris wanted to have a thousand things in
  which wood was combined with iron: mouse-traps, cloak-pegs,
  spoons for jam, brooms.... And now every house has a workshop
  containing either a turning-lathe, or some machine-tools for
  chopping wood, for making lattice-work, and so on.... Quite a
  new industry was born, and the most coquettish things are now
  fabricated. Owing to this industry the population is happy. The
  earnings are not high, but each worker owns his house and garden,
  and occasionally a bit of field.”[156]

At Neufchâtel wooden shoes are made, and the hamlet, we are told,
has a most smiling aspect. To every house a garden is attached, and
none of the misery of big cities is to be seen. At Jupilles and in
the surrounding country other varieties of wooden goods are produced:
taps, boxes of different kinds, together with wooden shoes; while at
the forest of Vibraye two workshops have been erected for turning
out umbrella handles by the million for all France. One of these
workshops having been founded by a worker sculptor, he has invented
and introduced in his workshop the most ingenious machine-tools.
About 150 men work at this factory; but it is evident that half
a dozen smaller workshops, scattered in the villages, would have
answered equally well.

       *       *       *       *       *

Going now over to a quite different region--the Nièvre, in the centre
of France, and Haute Marne, in the east--we find that both regions
are great centres for a variety of small industries, some of which
are maintained by associations of workers, while others have grown up
in the shadow of factories. The small iron workshops which formerly
covered the country have not disappeared: they have undergone a
transformation; and now the country is covered with small workshops
where agricultural machinery, chemical produce, and pottery are
fabricated; “one ought to go as far as Guérigny and Fourchambault to
find the great industry;”[157] while a number of small workshops for
the fabrication of a variety of hardware flourish by the side of, and
owing to the proximity of, the industrial centres.

Pottery makes the fortune of the valley of the Loire about Nevers.
High-class art pottery is made in this town, while in the villages
plain pottery is fabricated and exported by merchants who go about
with their boats selling it. At Gien a large factory of china buttons
(made out of felspar-powder cemented with milk) has lately been
established, and employs 1,500 workmen, who produce from 3,500 to
4,500 lb. of buttons every day. And, as is often the case, part of
the work is done in the villages. For many miles on both banks of
the Loire, in all villages, old people, women and children sew the
buttons to the cardboard pieces. Of course, that sort of work is
wretchedly paid; but it is resorted to only because there is no other
sort of industry in the neighbourhood to which the peasants could
give their leisure time.

In the same region of the Haute Marne, especially in the
neighbourhood of Nogent, we find cutlery as a by-occupation to
agriculture. Landed property is very much subdivided in that part
of France, and great numbers of peasants own but from two to three
acres per family, or even less. Consequently, in thirty villages
round Nogent, about 5,000 men are engaged in cutlery, chiefly of
the highest sort (artistic knives are occasionally sold at as
much as £20 a piece), while the lower sorts are fabricated in the
neighbourhoods of Thiers, in Puy-de-Dôme (Auvergne). The Nogent
industry has developed spontaneously, with no aid from without, and
in its technical part it shows considerable progress.[158] At Thiers,
where the cheapest sorts of cutlery are made, the division of labour,
the cheapness of rent for small workshops supplied with motive power
from the Durolle river, or from small gas motors, the aid of a
great variety of specially invented machine-tools, and the existing
combination of machine-work with hand-work have resulted in such a
perfection of the technical part of the trade that it is considered
doubtful whether the factory system could further economise
labour.[159] For twelve miles round Thiers, in each direction, all
the streamlets are dotted with small workshops, in which peasants,
who continue to cultivate their fields, are at work.

Basket-making is again an important cottage industry in several
parts of France, namely in Aisne and in Haute Marne. In this last
department, at Villaines, everyone is a basket-maker, “and all the
basket-makers belong to a co-operative society,” Ardouin Dumazet
remarks.[160] “There are no employers; all the produce is brought
once a fortnight to the co-operative stores and there it is sold for
the association. About 150 families belong to it, and each owns a
house and some vineyards.” At Fays-Billot, also in Haute Marne, 1,500
basket-makers belong to an association; while at Thiérache, where
several thousand men are engaged in the same trade, no association
has been formed, the earnings being in consequence extremely low.

       *       *       *       *       *

Another very important centre of petty trades is the French Jura,
or the French part of the Jura Mountains, where the watch trade
has attained, as known, a high development. When I visited these
villages between the Swiss frontier and Besançon in the year 1878,
I was struck by the high degree of relative well-being which I
could observe, even though I was perfectly well acquainted with
the Swiss villages in the Val de Saint Imier. It is very probable
that the machine-made watches have brought about a crisis in French
watch-making as they have in Switzerland. But it is known that
part, at least, of the Swiss watch-makers have strenuously fought
against the necessity of being enrolled in the factories, and that
while watch factories grew up at Geneva and elsewhere, considerable
numbers of the watch-makers have taken to divers other trades which
continue to be carried on as domestic or small industries. I must
only add that in the French Jura great numbers of watch-makers were
at the same time owners of their houses and gardens, very often of
bits of fields, and especially of communal meadows, and that the
communal _fruitières_, or creameries, for the common sale of butter
and cheese, are widely spread in that part of France.

So far as I could ascertain, the development of the machine-made
watch industry has not destroyed the small industries of the
Jura hills. The watch-makers have taken to new branches, and, as
in Switzerland, they have created various new industries. From
Ardouin Dumazet’s travels we can, at anyrate, borrow an insight
into the present state of the southern part of this region. In the
neighbourhoods of Nantua and Cluses silks are woven in nearly all
villages, the peasants giving to weaving their spare time from
agriculture, while quite a number of small workshops (mostly less
than twenty looms, one of 100 looms) are scattered in the little
villages, on the streamlets running from the hills. Scores of
small saw-mills have also been built along the streamlet Merloz,
for the fabrication of all sorts of little pretty things in wood.
At Oyonnax, a small town on the Ain, we have a big centre for the
fabrication of combs, an industry more than 200 years old, which
took a new development since the last war through the invention of
celluloid. No less than 100 or 120 “masters” employ from two to
fifteen workers each, while over 1,200 persons work in their houses,
making combs out of Irish horn and French celluloid. Wheel-power was
formerly rented in small workshops, but electricity, generated by
a waterfall, has lately been introduced, and is now distributed in
the houses for bringing into motion small motors of from one-quarter
to twelve horse-power. And it is remarkable to notice that as soon
as electricity gave the possibility to return to domestic work, 300
workers left at once the small workshops and took to work in their
houses. Most of these workers have their own cottages and gardens,
and they show a very interesting spirit of association. They have
also erected four workshops for making cardboard boxes, and their
production is valued at 2,000,000 fr. every year.[161]

At St. Claude, which is a great centre for briar pipes (sold in large
quantities in London with English trade-marks, and therefore eagerly
bought by those Frenchmen who visit London, as a _souvenir_ from the
other side of the Channel), both big and small workshops, supplied by
motive force from the Tacon streamlet, prosper by the side of each
other. Over 4,000 men and women are employed in this trade, while
all sorts of small by-trades have grown by its side (amber and horn
mouth-pieces, sheaths, etc.). Countless small workshops are busy
besides, on the banks of the two streams, with the fabrication of all
sorts of wooden things: match-boxes, beads, sheaths for spectacles,
small things in horn, and so on, to say nothing of a rather large
factory (200 workers) where metric measures are fabricated for the
whole world. At the same time thousands of persons in St. Claude,
in the neighbouring villages and in the smallest mountain hamlets,
are busy in cutting diamonds (an industry only fifteen years old in
this region), and other thousands are busy in cutting various less
precious stones. All this is done in quite small workshops supplied
by water-power.[162]

The extraction of ice from some lakes and the gathering of oak-bark
for tanneries complete the picture of these busy villages, where
industry joins hands with agriculture, and modern machines and
appliances are so well put in the service of the small workshops.

On the other side, at Besançon, which was, in 1878, when I visited
it, a great centre for watch-making, “all taken, nothing has yet
been changed in the habits of the working-class,” M. Dumazet wrote
in 1901. The watch-makers continued to work in their houses or in
small workshops.[163] Only there was no complete fabrication of the
watch or the clock. Many important parts--the wheels, etc.--were
imported from Switzerland or from different towns of France. And, as
is always the case, numerous small secondary workshops for making the
watch-cases, the hands, and so on, grew up in that neighbourhood.

The same has to be said of Montbéliard--another important centre of
the watch trade. By the side of the manufactures, where all the parts
of the mechanism of the watch are fabricated by machinery, there is
quite a number of workshops where various parts of the watch are made
by skilled workmen; and this industry has already given birth to a
new branch--the making of various tools for these workshops, as also
for different other trades.

In other parts of the same region, such as Héricourt, a variety of
small industries has grown by the side of the great ironmongery
factories. The city spreads into the villages, where the population
are making coffee-mills, spice-mills, machines for crushing the grain
for the cattle, as well as saddlery, small ironmongery, or even
watches. Elsewhere the fabrication of different small parts of the
watch having been monopolised by the factories, the workshops began
to manufacture the small parts of the bicycles, and later on of the
motor-cars. In short, we have here quite a world of industries of
modern origin, and with them of inventions made to simplify the work
of the hand.

Finally, omitting a mass of small trades, I will only name the
hat-makers of the Loire, the stationery of the Ardèche, the
fabrication of hardware in the Doubs, the glove-makers of the
Isère, the broom and brush-makers of the Oise (valued at £800,000
per annum), and the house machine-knitting in the neighbourhoods of
Troyes. But I must say a few words more about two important centres
of small industries: the Lyons region and Paris.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the present time the industrial region of which Lyons is the
centre[164] includes the departments of Rhône, Loire, Drôme,
Saône-et-Loire, Ain, the southern part of the Jura department, and
the western part of Savoy, as far as Annecy, while the silkworm
is reared as far as the Alps, the Cévennes Mountains, and the
neighbourhoods of Mâcon. It contains, besides fertile plains,
large hilly tracks, also very fertile as a rule, but covered with
snow during part of the winter, and the rural populations are
therefore bound to resort to some industrial occupation in addition
to agriculture; they find it in silk-weaving and various small
industries. Altogether it may be said that the _région lyonnaise_ is
characterised as a separate centre of French civilisation and art,
and that a remarkable spirit of research, discovery and invention has
developed there in all directions--scientific and industrial.

The Croix Rousse at Lyons, where the silk-weavers (_canuts_) have
their chief quarters, is the centre of that industry, and in 1895 the
whole of that hill, thickly covered with houses, five, six, eight
and ten storeys high, resounded with the noise of the looms which
were busily going in every department of that big agglomeration.
Electricity has lately been brought into the service of this
domestic industry, supplying motive power to the looms.

To the south of Lyons, in the city of Vienne, hand-weaving is
disappearing. “Shoddy” is now the leading produce, and twenty-eight
concerns only remain out of the 120 _fabriques_ which existed thirty
years ago. Old woollen rags, rags of carpets, and all the dust
from the carding and spinning in the wool and cotton factories of
Northern France, with a small addition of cotton, are transformed
here into cloth which flows from Vienne to all the big cities of
France--20,000 yards of “shoddy” every day--to supply the ready-made
clothing factories. Hand-weaving has evidently nothing to do in that
industry, and in 1890 only 1,300 hand-looms were at work out of the
4,000 which were in motion in 1870. Large factories, employing a
total of 1,800 workers, have taken the place of these hand-weavers,
while “shoddy” has taken the place of cloth. All sorts of flannels,
felt hats, tissues of horse-hair, and so on, are fabricated at the
same time. But while the great factory thus conquered the city of
Vienne, its suburbs and its nearest surroundings became the centre
of a prosperous gardening and fruit culture, which has already been
mentioned in chapter iv.

The banks of the Rhône, between Ampuis and Condrieu, are one of
the wealthiest parts of all France, owing to the shrubberies and
nurseries, market-gardening, fruit-growing, vine-growing, and
cheese-making out of goats’ milk. House industries go there hand in
hand with an intelligent culture of the soil; Condrieu, for instance,
is a famous centre for embroidery, which is made partly by hand, as
of old, and partly by machinery.

In the west of Lyons, at l’Arbresles, factories have grown up for
making silks and velvets; but a large part of the population still
continue to weave in their houses; while farther west, Panissières is
the centre of quite a number of villages in which linen and silks are
woven as a domestic industry. Not all these workers own their houses,
but those, at least, who own or rent a small piece of land or garden,
or keep a couple of cows, are said to be well off, and the land, as a
rule, is said to be admirably cultivated by these weavers.

The chief industrial centre of this part of the Lyons region
is certainly Tarare. At the time when Reybaud wrote his
already-mentioned work, _Le Coton_, it was a centre for the
manufacture of muslins and it occupied in this industry the same
position as Leeds formerly occupied in this country in the woollen
cloth trade. The spinning mills and the large finishing factories
were at Tarare, while the weaving of the muslins and the embroidery
of the same were made in the surrounding villages, especially in the
hilly tracts of the Beaujolais and the Forez. Each peasant house,
each farm and _métayerie_ were small workshops at that time, and
one could see, Reybaud wrote, the lad of twenty embroidering fine
muslin after he had finished cleaning the farm stables, without the
work suffering in its delicacy from a combination of two such varied
pursuits. On the contrary, the delicacy of the work and the extreme
variety of patterns were a distinctive feature of the Tarare muslins
and a cause of their success. All testimonies agreed at the same time
in recognising that, while agriculture found support in the industry,
the agricultural population enjoyed a relative well-being.

By this time the industry has undergone a thorough transformation,
but still no less than 60,000 persons, representing a population of
about 250,000 souls, work for Tarare in the hilly tracts, weaving all
sorts of muslins for all parts of the world, and they earn every year
£480,000 in this way.

Amplepuis, notwithstanding its own factories of silks and blankets,
remains one of the local centres for such muslins; while close by,
Thizy is a centre for a variety of linings, flannels, “peruvian
serges,” “oxfords,” and other mixed woollen-and-cotton stuffs which
are woven in the mountains by the peasants. No less than 3,000
hand-looms are thus scattered in twenty-two villages, and about
£600,000 worth of various stuffs are woven every year by the rural
weavers in this neighbourhood alone; while 15,000 power-looms are at
work in both Thizy and the great city of Roanne, in which two towns
all varieties of cottons (linings, flannelettes, apron cloth) and
silk blankets are woven in factories by the million yards.

At Cours, 1,600 workers are employed in making “blankets,” chiefly of
the lowest sort (even such as are sold at 2s. and even 10d. a piece,
for export to Brazil); all possible and imaginable rags and sweepings
from all sorts of textile factories (jute, cotton, flax, hemp, wool
and silk) are used for that industry, in which the factory is, of
course, fully victorious. But even at Roanne, where the fabrication
of cottons has attained a great degree of perfection and 9,000
power-looms are at work, producing every year more than 30,000,000
yards--even at Roanne one finds with astonishment that domestic
industries are not dead, but yield every year the respectable amount
of more than 10,000,000 yards of stuffs. At the same time, in the
neighbourhood of that big city the industry of fancy-knitting has
taken within the last thirty years a sudden development. Only 2,000
women were employed in it in 1864, but their numbers were estimated
by M. Dumazet at 20,000; and, without abandoning their rural work,
they find time to knit, with the aid of small knitting-machines, all
sorts of fancy articles in wool, the annual value of which, attains
£360,000.[165]

It must not be thought, however, that textiles and connected trades
are the only small industries in this locality. Scores of various
rural industries continue to exist besides, and in nearly all of
them the methods of production are continually improved. Thus, when
the rural making of plain chairs became unprofitable, articles of
luxury and stylish chairs began to be fabricated in the villages, and
similar transformations are found everywhere.

More details about this extremely interesting region will be
found in the Appendix, but one remark must be made in this place.
Notwithstanding its big industries and coal mines, this part of
France has entirely maintained its rural aspect, and is now one
of the best cultivated parts of the country. What most deserves
admiration is--not so much the development of the great industries,
which, after all, here as elsewhere, are to a great extent
international in their origins--as the creative and inventive powers
and capacities of adaptation which appear amongst the great mass of
these industrious populations. At every step, in the field, in the
garden, in the orchard, in the dairy, in the industrial arts, in the
hundreds of small inventions in these arts, one sees the creative
genius of the folk. In these regions one best understands why France,
taking the mass of its population, is considered the richest country
of Europe.[166]

The chief centre for petty trades in France is, however, Paris. There
we find, by the side of the large factories, the greatest variety
of petty trades for the fabrication of goods of every description,
both for the home market and for export. The petty trades at Paris so
much prevail over the factories that the average number of workmen
employed in the 98,000 factories and workshops of Paris is less than
_six_, while the number of persons employed in workshops which have
less than five operatives is almost twice as big as the number of
persons employed in the larger establishments.[167] In fact, Paris
is a great bee-hive where hundreds of thousands of men and women
fabricate in small workshops all possible varieties of goods which
require skill, taste and invention. These small workshops, in which
artistic finish and rapidity of work are so much praised, necessarily
stimulate the mental powers of the producers; and we may safely
admit that if the Paris workmen are generally considered, and really
are, more developed intellectually than the workers of any other
European capital, this is due to a great extent to the character of
the work they are engaged in--a work which implies artistic taste,
skill, and especially inventiveness, always wide awake in order
to invent new patterns of goods and steadily to increase and to
perfect the technical methods of production. It also appears very
probable that if we find a highly developed working population in
Vienna and Warsaw, this depends again to a very great extent upon
the very considerable development of similar small industries, which
stimulate invention and so much contribute to develop the worker’s
intelligence.

The _Galerie du travail_ at the Paris exhibitions is always a most
remarkable sight. One can appreciate in it both the variety of the
small industries which are carried on in French towns and the skill
and inventing powers of the workers. And the question necessarily
arises: Must all this skill, all this intelligence, be swept
away by the factory, instead of becoming a new fertile source of
progress under a better organisation of production? must all this
independence and inventiveness of the worker disappear before the
factory levelling? and, if it must, would such a transformation be a
progress, as so many economists who have only studied figures and not
human beings are ready to maintain?

At anyrate, it is quite certain that even if the absorption of the
French petty trades by the big factories were possible--which seems
extremely doubtful--the absorption would not be accomplished so soon
as that. The small industry of Paris fights hard for its maintenance,
and it shows its vitality by the numberless machine-tools which are
continually invented by the workers for improving and cheapening the
produce.

The numbers of motors which were exhibited at the last exhibitions in
the _Galerie du travail_ bear a testimony to the fact that a cheap
motor, for the small industry, is one of the leading problems of the
day. Motors weighing only forty-five lb., including the boiler, were
exhibited in 1889 to answer that want. Small two-horse-power engines,
fabricated by the engineers of the Jura (formerly watch-makers) in
their small workshops, were at that time another attempt to solve the
problem--to say nothing of the water, gas and electrical motors.[168]
The transmission of steam-power to 230 small workshops which was made
by the _Société des Immeubles industriels_ was another attempt in the
same direction, and the increasing efforts of the French engineers
for finding out the best means of transmitting and subdividing power
by means of compressed air, “tele-dynamic cables,” and electricity
are indicative of the endeavours of the small industry to retain its
ground in the face of the competition of the factories. (See Appendix
V.)

Such are the small industries in France, as they have been described
by observers who saw them on the spot. Is is, however, most
interesting to have exact statistical items concerning the extension
of the small industries, and to know their importance, in comparison
with the great industry. Fortunately enough, a general census of the
French industries was made in the year 1896; its results have been
published in full, under the title of _Résultats statistiques du
recensement des industries et des professions_, and in the fourth
volume of this capital work we find an excellent summing up of the
main results of the census, written by M. Lucien March. I give a
_résumé_ of these results in the Appendix, as otherwise I should have
been compelled, in speaking of the distribution of great and small
industry in France, to repeat very much what I have said in this same
chapter, speaking of the United Kingdom. There is so much in common
in the distribution of small and large factories in the different
branches of industry in both countries that it would have been a
tedious repetition. So I give here only the main items and refer the
reader to Appendix W.

The general distribution of the workers’ population in large,
middle-sized, and small factories in the year 1896 was as follows.
First of all there was the great division of independent artisans
who worked single-handed, and working men and women who were without
permanent employment on the day of the census. Part of this large
division belongs to agriculture; but, after having deducted the
agricultural establishments, M. March arrives at the figures of
483,000 establishments belonging to this category in industry, and
1,047,000 persons of both sexes working in these establishments, or
temporarily attached to some industrial establishment. To these we
must add 37,705 industrial establishments, where no hired workmen are
employed, but the head of the establishment works with the aid of
the members of his own family. We have thus, in these two divisions,
about 520,700 establishments and 1,084,700 persons which I inscribe
in the following table under the head of “No hired operatives.” The
table then appears as follows:--

  +-----------------------------+---------------+--------------------+
  |                             |   Number of   |Number of operatives|
  |                             |establishments.|     and clerks.    |
  +-----------------------------+---------------+--------------------+
  |    No hired operatives      |    520,700    |      1,084,700     |
  +-----------------------------+---------------+--------------------+
  | From 1 to 10 employees      |    539,449    |      1,134,700     |
  | From 11 to 50    ”          |     28,626    |        585,000     |
  | From 51 to 100   ”          |      3,865    |        268,000     |
  | From 101 to 500  ”          |      3,145    |        616,000     |
  | From 501 to 1000 ”          |        295    |        195,000     |
  | More than 1000   ”          |        149    |        313,000     |
  +-----------------------------+---------------+--------------------+
  |                             |    575,529    |      3,111,700     |
  |                             +---------------+--------------------+
  | Total (with first division).|  1,096,229    |      4,196,400     |
  +-----------------------------+---------------+--------------------+

These figures speak for themselves and show what an immense
importance the small industry has in France. More details, showing
the distribution of the great, middle-sized and small industry in
different branches will be found in the Appendix, and there the
reader will also see what a striking resemblance is offered under
this aspect by the industry of France and that of the United Kingdom.
In the next chapter it will be seen from a similar census that
Germany stands in absolutely the same position.

It would have been very interesting to compare the present
distribution of industries in France with what it was previously.
But M. Lucien March tells us that “_no statistics previous to 1896
have given us a knowledge of that distribution_.” Still, an inquest
made between 1840 and 1845, and which M. March considers “very
complete for the more important establishments which employed more
than fifty workmen,” was worked out by him, and he found that such
establishments numbered 3,300 in 1840; in 1896 they had already
attained the number of 7,400, and they occupied more than fifty-five
per cent. of all the workpeople employed in industry. As to the
establishments which employed more than 500 persons and which
numbered 133 in 1840 (six per cent. of all the workpeople), they
attained the number of 444 in 1896, and sixteen per cent. of all the
workpeople were employed in them.

The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is thus worded by
M. March: “To sum up, during the last fifty years a notable
concentration of the factories took place in the big establishments;
but the just-mentioned results, supported by the statistics of the
patents, permit us to recognise that _this concentration does not
prevent the maintenance of a mass of small enterprises, the average
sizes of which increase but very slowly_.” This last is, in fact,
what we have just seen from our brief sketch for the United Kingdom,
and we can only ask ourselves whether--such being the facts--the
word “concentration” is well chosen. What we see in reality is, the
appearance, _in some branches of industry_, of a certain number of
large establishments, and especially of middle-sized factories. But
this does not prevent in the least that very great numbers of small
factories should continue to exist, either in other branches, or
in the very same branches where large factories have appeared (the
textiles, work in metal), or in branches connected with the main
ones, which take their origin in these main ones, as the industry of
clothing takes its origin from that of the textiles.

This is the only conclusion which a serious analysis permits
us to draw from the facts brought to light by the census of
1896 and subsequent observations. As to the large deductions
about “concentration” made by certain economists, they are mere
_hypotheses_--useful, of course, for stimulating research, but
becoming quite noxious when they are represented _as economical
laws_, when in reality they are not confirmed at all by the testimony
of carefully observed facts.


FOOTNOTES:

[129] This is why the German economists find such difficulties
in delimiting the proper domain of the domestic trades
(_Hausindustrie_), and now identify this word with _Verlagssystem_,
which means “working either directly or through the intermediary of
a middleman employer (or buyer) for a dealer or employer, who pays
the small producer for the goods he has produced, before they have
reached the consumer.”

[130] For more details about this subject, see an article of mine in
the _Nineteenth Century_, August, 1900.

[131] The Chief Inspector, Mr. Whitelegge, wrote to me in 1900 that
the workshops which did not enter into his reports represented about
one-half of all the workshops. Since that time Mr. Whitelegge has
continued to publish his interesting reports, adding to them new
groups of workshops. However, they still remain incomplete to some
extent as regards this last point. In the last Report, published
in 1911, we see that 147,000 workshops were registered at the
end of 1907, and returns were received from 105,000 of them. But
as in 32,000 workshops no women or young persons (below 18) were
employed, their returns were not published. The Report for 1907
gives, therefore, only 91,249 workshops in which 638,335 persons
were employed (186,064 male and 282,324 female adults, 54,605 male
and 113,728 female young persons--that is, full-timers from 14 to 18
years old--and 863 male and 751 female children under 14).

[132] From the curve that I computed it appears that all the textile
factories are distributed as to their size as follows:--Not less than
500 operatives, 200 factories, 203,100 operatives; from 499 to 200,
660 factories, 231,000 operatives; from 199 to 100, 2,955 factories,
443,120 operatives; from 99 to 50, 1,380 factories, 103,500
operatives; less than 50, 1,410 factories, 42,300 operatives; total,
6,605 factories, 1,022,020 operatives.--_Nineteenth Century_, August,
1900, p. 262.

[133] Nearly one-half of the 43,000 operatives who were employed
at that time in the woollen trade of this country were weaving in
hand-looms. So also one-fifth of the 79,000 persons employed in the
worsted trade.

[134] E. Roscoe’s notes in the _English Illustrated Magazine_, May,
1884.

[135] Bevan’s _Guide to English Industries_.

[136] Thorold Rogers, _The Economic Interpretation of History_.

[137] _Poverty: a Study of Town Life_, London (Macmillan), 1901.

[138] These figures, which were found during the census of 1866,
have not changed much since, as may be seen from the following table
which gives the proportional quantities of the different categories
of the _active_ population of both sexes (employers, working men, and
clerks) in 1866 and 1896:--

  +---------------------+--------------+--------------+
  |                     |     1866.    |     1896.    |
  +---------------------+--------------+--------------+
  |Agriculture          | 52 per cent. | 47 per cent. |
  |Industry             | 34    ”      | 35    ”      |
  |Commerce             |  4    ”      |  5    ”      |
  |Transport and various|  3    ”      |  5    ”      |
  |Liberal professions  |  7    ”      |  8    ”      |
  +---------------------+--------------+--------------+

As has been remarked by M. S. Fontaine who worked out the results of
the last census, “the number of persons employed in industry properly
speaking, although it has increased, _has nevertheless absorbed
a smaller percentage_ of the loss sustained by the agricultural
population than the other categories.”--_Résultats statistiques du
recensement des professions_, t. iv., p. 8.

[139] _Mutual Aid: a Factor of Evolution._ London (Heinemann), 1902.

[140] See Baudrillart’s _Les Populations agricoles de la France:
Normandie_.

[141] _Le Coton: son régime, ses problèmes._ Paris, 1863, p. 170.

[142] _Les Populations agricoles de la France: Normandie._

[143] _Voyage en France._ Paris, 1893-1910 (Berget-Levreau,
publishers), 56 volumes already published.

[144] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. xvii., p. 242.

[145] _Ibid._, vol. xvii., pp. 100, 101.

[146] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. xix., p. 10.

[147] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. ii., p. 167.

[148] In Maine-et-Loire, la Vendée, Loire Inférieure, and
Deux-Sèvres. The same revival takes place in Ireland, where the
weaving of handkerchiefs in hand-looms is growing in the shape of a
small village industry.

[149] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. i., p. 117 _et seq._

[150] Twelve thousand in 1906.

[151] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. v., p. 270.

[152] _Ibid._, vol. v., p. 215.

[153] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. v., pp. 259-266.

[154] I gave some information about French prison work in a book, _In
Russian and French Prisons_, London, 1888.

[155] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. ii., p. 51.

[156] _Ibid._, vol. i., pp. 305, 306.

[157] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. i., p. 52.

[158] Prof. Issaieff in the Russian _Memoirs of the Petty Trades
Commission_ (_Trudy Kustarnoi Kommissii_), vol. v.

[159] Knives are sold at from 6s. 4d. to 8s. per gross, and razors at
3s. 3d. per gross--“for export.”

[160] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. i., p. 213 _et seq._

[161] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. viii., p. 40.

[162] Interesting details about the small industries of this region
will be found in the articles of Ch. Guieysse, in _Pages libres_,
1902, Nos. 66 and 71.

[163] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. xxiii., pp. 105, 106.

[164] For further details see Appendix U.

[165] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. viii., p. 266.

[166] Some further details about the Lyons region and St. Etienne are
given in Appendix U.

[167] In 1873, out of a total population of 1,851,800 inhabiting
Paris, 816,040 (404,408 men and 411,632 women) were living on
industry, and out of them only 293,691 were connected with the
factories (_grande industrie_), while 522,349 were living on the
petty trades (_petite industrie_).--Maxime du Camp, _Paris et ses
Organes_, vol. vi. It is interesting to note that of late the small
workshops where some of the finest work is made in metals, wood, and
so on, have begun to be scattered round Paris.

[168] Everyone knows what an immense progress has been realised
since by the motors used in motor cars and aeroplanes, and what is
achieved now by the transmission of electrical power. But I leave
these lines as they were written, as a testimony of the way in which
the conquest of air began, and of the part taken in it by the French
small industry.




CHAPTER VII.

SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES (_continued_).

  _Petty trades in Germany_: Discussions upon the subject and
  conclusions arrived at--Results of the census taken in 1882,
  1895, and 1907--_Petty trades in Russia_--Conclusions.


_Petty Trades in Germany._

The various industries which still have retained in Germany the
characters of petty and domestic trades have been the subject of
many exhaustive explorations, especially by A. M. Thun and Prof.
Issaieff, on behalf of the Russian Petty Trades Commission, Emanuel
Hans Sax, Paul Voigt, and very many others. By this time the subject
has a bulky literature, and such impressive and suggestive pictures
have been drawn from life for different regions and trades that I
felt tempted to sum up these life-true descriptions. However, as in
such a summary I should have to repeat much of what has already been
said and illustrated in the preceding chapter, it will probably more
interest the general reader to know something about the conclusions
which can be drawn from the works of the German investigators,[169]
and to know the conclusions that may be drawn from the three censuses
of industries which have been made in Germany in the years 1882,
1895, and 1907. This is what I am going to do.

Unhappily, the discussion upon this important subject has often
taken in Germany a passionate and even a personally aggressive
character.[170] On the one hand the ultra-conservative elements of
German politics tried, and succeeded to some extent, in making of the
petty trades and the domestic industries an arm for securing a return
to the “olden good times.” They even passed a law intended to prepare
a re-introduction of the old-fashioned, closed and patriarchal
corporations which could be placed under the close supervision and
tutorship of the State, and they saw in such a law a weapon against
social democracy. On the other hand, the social democrats, justly
opposed to such measures, but themselves inclined, in their turn, to
take too abstract a view of economical questions, bitterly attack all
those who do not merely repeat the stereotyped phrases to the effect
that “the petty trades are in decay,” and “the sooner they disappear
the better,” as they will give room to capitalist centralisation,
which, according to the social democratic creed, “will soon achieve
its own ruin.” In this dislike of the small industries they are, of
course, at one with the economists of the orthodox school, whom they
combat on nearly all other points.[171]

Under such conditions, the polemics about the petty trades and the
domestic industries are evidently doomed to remain most unproductive.
However, it is pleasant to see that a considerable amount of most
conscientious work has been made for the investigation of the
petty trades in Germany; and, by the side of such monographs, from
which nothing can be learned but that the petty trades’ workers
are in a miserable condition, and nothing whatever can be gathered
to explain why these workers prefer their conditions to those of
factory hands--there is no lack of very detailed monographs (such as
those of Thun, Em. H. Sax, Paul Voigt on the Berlin cabinet-makers,
etc.), in which one sees the whole of the life of these classes of
workers, the difficulties which they have to cope with, and the
technical conditions of the trade, and finds all the elements for an
independent judgment upon the matter.

It is evident that a number of petty trades are already now doomed
to disappear; but there are others, on the contrary, which are
endowed with a great vitality, and all chances are in favour of their
continuing to exist and to take a further development for many years
to come. In the fabrication of such textiles as are woven by millions
of yards, and can be best produced with the aid of a complicated
machinery, the competition of the hand-loom against the power-loom is
evidently nothing but a survival, which may be maintained for some
time by certain local conditions, but finally must die away.

The same is true with regard to many branches of the iron industries,
hardware fabrication, pottery, and so on. But wherever the direct
intervention of taste and inventiveness are required, wherever new
patterns of goods requiring a continual renewal of machinery and
tools must continually be introduced in order to feed the demand, as
is the case with all fancy textiles, even though they be fabricated
to supply the millions; wherever a great variety of goods and the
uninterrupted invention of new ones goes on, as is the case in the
toy trade, in instrument making, watch-making, bicycle making, and
so on; and finally, wherever the artistic feeling of the individual
worker makes the best part of his goods, as is the case in hundreds
of branches of small articles of luxury, there is a wide field for
petty trades, rural workshops, domestic industries, and the like.
More fresh air, more ideas, more general conceptions, and more
co-operation are evidently required in those industries. But where
the spirit of initiative has been awakened in one way or another, we
see the petty industries taking a new development in Germany, as we
have just seen that being done in France.

Now, in nearly all the petty trades in Germany, the position of
the workers is unanimously described as most miserable, and the
many admirers of centralisation which we find in Germany always
insist upon this misery in order to predict, and to call for, the
disappearance of “those mediæval survivals” which “capitalist
centralisation” must supplant for the benefit of the worker. The
reality is, however, that when we compare the miserable conditions
of the workers in the petty trades with the conditions of the wage
workers in the factories, in the same regions and in the same trades,
we see that the very same misery prevails among the factory workers.
They live upon wages of from nine to eleven shillings a week, in town
slums instead of the country. They work eleven hours a day, and they
also are subject to the extra misery thrown upon them during the
frequently recurring crises. It is only after they have undergone all
sorts of sufferings in their struggles against their employers that
some factory workers succeed, more or less, here and there, to wrest
from their employers a “living wage”--and this again only in certain
trades.

To welcome all these sufferings, seeing in them the action of
a “natural law” and a _necessary_ step towards the _necessary_
concentration of industry, would be simply absurd. While to maintain
that the pauperisation of all workers and the wreckage of all village
industries are a _necessary_ step towards a higher form of industrial
organisation would be, not only to affirm much more than one is
entitled to affirm under the present imperfect state of economical
knowledge, but to show an absolute want of comprehension of the sense
of both natural and economic laws. Everyone, on the contrary, who has
studied the question of the growth of great industries on its own
merits, will undoubtedly agree with Thorold Rogers, who considered
the sufferings inflicted upon the labouring classes for that purpose
as having been of _no necessity whatever_, and simply having been
inflicted to suit the temporary interests of the few--by no means
those of the nation.[172]

Moreover, everyone knows to what extent the labour of children and
girls is resorted to, even in the most prosperous factories--even
in this country which stands foremost in industrial development.
Some figures relative to this subject were given in the preceding
chapter. And this fact is not an accident which might be easily
removed, as Maurice Block--a great admirer, of course, of the
factory system--tries to represent it.[173] The low wages paid to
children and youths are now one of the _necessary_ elements in the
cheapness of the factory produced textiles, and, consequently, of
the very competition of the factory with the petty trades. I have
mentioned besides, whilst speaking of France, what are the effects
of “concentrated” industries upon village life; and in Thun’s work,
and in many others as well, one may find enough of ghastly instances
of what are the effects of accumulations of girls in the factories.
To idealise the modern factory, in order to depreciate the so-called
“mediæval” forms of the small industries, is consequently--to say the
least--as unreasonable as to idealise the latter and try to bring
mankind back to isolated home-spinning and home-weaving in every
peasant house.

One fact dominates all the investigations which have been made into
the conditions of the small industries. We find it in Germany, as
well as in France or in Russia. In an immense number of trades it
is not the superiority of the _technical_ organisation of the trade
in a factory, nor the economies realised on the prime-motor, which
militate against the small industry in favour of the factories,
but the more advantageous conditions for _selling_ the produce
and for _buying_ the raw produce which are at the disposal of big
concerns. Wherever this difficulty has been overcome, either by
means of association, or in consequence of a market being secured
for the sale of the produce, it has always been found--first, that
the conditions of the workers or artisans immediately improved; and
next, that a rapid progress was realised in the technical aspects of
the respective industries. New processes were introduced to improve
the produce or to increase the rapidity of its fabrication; new
machine-tools were invented; or new motors were resorted to; or the
trade was reorganised so as to diminish the costs of production.

On the contrary, wherever the helpless, isolated artisans and
workers continue to remain at the mercy of the wholesale buyers, who
always--since Adam Smith’s time--“openly or tacitly” agree to act as
one man to bring down the prices almost to a starvation level--and
such is the case for the immense number of the small and village
industries--their condition is so bad that only the longing of the
workers after a certain relative independence, and their knowledge of
what awaits them in the factory, prevent them from joining the ranks
of the factory hands. Knowing that in most cases the advent of the
factory would mean no work at all for most men, and the taking of the
children and girls to the factory, they do the utmost to prevent it
from appearing at all in the village.

As to combinations in the villages, co-operation and the like, one
must never forget how jealously the German, the French, the Russian
and the Austrian Governments have hitherto prevented the workers,
_and especially the village workers_, from entering into any sort of
combination for economical purposes. In France the peasant syndicates
were permitted only by the law of 1884. To keep the peasant at the
lowest possible level, by means of taxation, serfdom, and the like,
has been, and is still, the policy of most continental States. It
was only in 1876 that some extension of the association rights was
granted in Germany, and even now a mere co-operative association
for the sale of the artisans’ work is soon reported as a “political
association” and submitted as such to the usual limitations, such as
the exclusion of women and the like.[174] A striking example of that
policy as regards a village association was given by Prof. Issaieff,
who also mentioned the severe measures taken by the wholesale buyers
in the toy trade to prevent the workers from entering into direct
intercourse with foreign buyers.

When one examines with more than a superficial attention the life
of the small industries and their struggles for life, one sees
that when they perish, they perish--not because “an economy can be
realised by using a hundred horse-power motor, instead of a hundred
small motors”--this inconveniency never fails to be mentioned,
although it is easily obviated in Sheffield, in Paris, and many
other places by hiring workshops with wheel-power, supplied by
a central machine, and, still more, as was so truly observed by
Prof. W. Unwin, by the electric transmission of power. They do not
perish because a substantial economy can be realised in the factory
production--in many more cases than is usually supposed, the fact
is even the reverse--but because the capitalist who establishes a
factory emancipates himself from the wholesale and retail dealers in
raw materials; and especially, because he emancipates himself from
the buyers of his produce and can deal directly with the wholesale
buyer and exporter; or else he concentrates in one concern the
different stages of fabrication of a given produce. The pages which
Schulze-Gäwernitz gave to the organisation of the cotton industry in
England, and to the difficulties which the German cotton-mill owners
had to contend with, so long as they were dependent upon Liverpool
for raw cotton, are most instructive in this direction. And what
characterises the cotton trade prevails in all other industries as
well.

If the Sheffield cutlers who now work in their tiny workshops, in
one of the above-mentioned buildings supplied with wheel-power,
were incorporated in one big factory, the chief advantage which
would be realised in the factory would _not_ be an economy in the
costs of production, in comparison to the quality of the produce;
with a shareholders’ company the costs might even increase. And yet
the profits (including wages) probably would be greater than the
aggregate earnings of the workers, in consequence of the reduced
costs of purchase of iron and coal, and the facilities for the sale
of the produce. The great concern would thus find its advantages not
in such factors as are imposed by the _technical_ necessities of the
trade at the time being, but in such factors as could be eliminated
by co-operative organisation. All these are elementary notions among
practical men.

It hardly need be added that a further advantage which the factory
owner has is, that he can find a sale even for produce of the most
inferior quality, provided there is a considerable quantity of it to
be sold. All those who are acquainted with commerce know, indeed,
what an immense bulk of the world’s trade consists of “shoddy,”
_patraque_, “Red Indians’ blankets,” and the like, shipped to distant
countries. Whole cities--we just saw--produce nothing but “shoddy.”

Altogether, it may be taken as one of the fundamental facts of the
economical life of Europe that the defeat of a number of small
trades, artisan work and domestic industries, came through their
being incapable of organising the _sale_ of their produce--not from
the _production_ itself. The same thing recurs at every page of
economical history. The incapacity of organising the sale, without
being enslaved by the merchant, was the leading feature of the
Mediæval cities, which gradually fell under the economical and
political yoke of the Guild-Merchant, _simply because they were not
able to maintain the sale of their manufactures by the community as
a whole_, or to organise the sale of a new produce in the interest
of the community. When the markets for such commodities came to be
Asia on the one side, and the New World on the other side, such was
fatally the case; since commerce had ceased to be _communal_, and had
become _individual_, the cities became a prey for the rivalries of
the chief merchant families.

Even nowadays, when we see the co-operative societies beginning to
succeed in their productive workshops, while fifty years ago they
invariably failed in their capacity of producers, we may conclude
that the cause of their previous failures was not in their incapacity
of properly and economically organising _production_, but in their
inability of acting as _sellers_ and exporters of the produce they
had fabricated. Their present successes, on the contrary, are fully
accounted for by the network of distributive societies which they
have at their command. The sale has been simplified, and production
has been rendered possible _by first organising the market_.

Such are a few conclusions which may be drawn from a study of the
small industries in Germany and elsewhere. And it may be safely
said, with regard to Germany, that if measures are not taken for
driving the peasants from the land on the same scale as they have
been taken in this country; if, on the contrary, the numbers of
small landholders multiply, they necessarily will turn to various
small trades, in addition to agriculture, as they have done, and are
doing, in France. Every step that may be taken, either for awakening
intellectual life in the villages, or for assuring the peasants’ or
the country’s rights upon the land, will necessarily further the
growth of industries in the villages.

In this light it is extremely interesting to see the figures as to
the distribution of the German industries into a small, middle-sized,
and great industry, which are given by three industrial censuses
taken during the last thirty years. But for these figures I refer the
reader to the Appendix.[175]


_Petty Trades in other Countries._

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

Belgium would offer an equal interest. Belgium is certainly a country
of centralised industry, and a country in which the productivity of
the worker stands at a high level, the average annual productivity
of each industrial workman--men, women, and children--attaining
now the high figure of at least £250 per head. Coal mines in which
more than a thousand workers are employed are numerous, and there
is a fair number of textile factories in each of which from 300 to
700 workers are occupied. And yet, if we exclude from the industrial
workers’ population of Belgium, which numbered 823,920 persons in
1896 (1,102,240 with the clerks, travellers, supervisors and so
on), the 116,300 workpeople who are employed in the coal mines, and
nearly 165,000 artisans working single or with the aid of their
families, we find that out of the remaining 565,200 workers very
nearly one-half--that is, 270,200 persons--work in establishments
in which less than fifty persons are employed, while 95,000 persons
out of these last are employed in 54,500 workshops, which thus have
an average of less than three workers per workshop.[177] We may thus
say that--taking the mines out of account--more than one-sixth part
of the Belgian industrial workers are employed in small workshops
which have, on the average, less than three workers each, besides
the master, and that four-tenths of all the workpeople are employed
in factories and workshops having on the average less than thirteen
workpeople each.[178]

What is still more remarkable is, that the number of small workshops,
in which from one to four aids only are employed by the master,
attains the considerable figure of 1,867 (2,293 in 1880) in the
textile industries, notwithstanding the high concentration of a
certain portion[179] of these industries. As to the machinery works
and hardware trades, the small workshops in which the master works
with from two to four assistants or journeymen are very numerous
(more than 13,300), to say nothing of the gun trade which is a petty
trade _par excellence_, and the furniture trade which has lately
taken a great development. A highly concentrated industry, and a
high productivity, as well as a considerable export trade, which all
testify to a high industrial development of the country, thus go hand
in hand with a high development of the domestic trades and small
industries altogether.

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

The results obtained from these inquiries were really imposing, as
it appeared that out of the 80 or 90 million population of European
Russia proper, no less than 7,500,000 persons were engaged in the
domestic trades, and that their production reached, at the lowest
estimate, more than £150,000,000, and most probably £200,000,000
(2,000,000,000 roubles) every year.[181] It thus exceeded the total
production of the great industry. As to the relative importance of
the two for the working classes suffice it to say that even in the
government of Moscow, which is the chief manufacturing region of
Russia (its factories yield upwards of one-fifth in value of the
aggregate industrial production of European Russia), the aggregate
incomes derived by the population from the domestic industries are
three times larger than the aggregate wages earned in the factories.

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

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

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

As to the relations between agriculture and industry, one cannot
peruse the documents accumulated by the Russian statisticians without
coming to the conclusion that, far from damaging agriculture, the
domestic trades, on the contrary, are the best means for improving
it, and the more so, as for several months every year the Russian
peasant has nothing to do in the fields. There are regions where
agriculture has been totally abandoned for the industries; but
these are regions where it was rendered impossible by the very
small allotments granted to the liberated serfs, the bad quality
or the want of meadows in the land allotted to the peasants, and by
the general impoverishment of the peasants, following a very high
taxation and very high redemption taxes for the land. But wherever
the allotments are reasonable and the peasants are less over-taxed,
they continue to cultivate the land, and their fields are kept in
better order; besides, the average numbers of live stock are higher
where agriculture is carried on in association with the domestic
trades. Even those peasants whose allotments are small, find the
means of renting more land if they earn some money from their
industrial work. As to the relative welfare, I need hardly add that
it always stands on the side of those villages which combine both
kinds of work. Vorsma and Pavlovo--two cutlery villages, one of which
is purely industrial, while the inhabitants of the other continue
to till the soil--could be quoted as a striking instance for such a
comparison.[183]

Much more ought to be said with regard to the rural industries
of Russia, especially to show how easily the peasants associate
for buying new machinery, or for avoiding the middleman in their
purchases of raw produce--as soon as misery is no obstacle to the
association. Belgium, and especially Switzerland, could also be
quoted for similar illustrations, but the above will be enough to
give a general idea of the importance, the vital powers, and the
perfectibility of the rural industries.


_Conclusions._

The facts which we have briefly passed in review show, to some
extent, the benefits which could be derived from a combination of
agriculture with industry, if the latter could come to the village,
not in its present shape of a capitalist factory, but in the shape
of a socially organised industrial production, with the full aid
of machinery and technical knowledge. In fact, the most prominent
feature of the petty trades is that a relative well-being is found
only where they are combined with agriculture: where the workers
have remained in possession of the soil and continue to cultivate
it. Even amidst the weavers of France or Moscow, who have to reckon
with the competition of the factory, relative well-being prevails
so long as they are not compelled to part with the soil. On the
contrary, as soon as high taxation or the impoverishment during a
crisis has compelled the domestic worker to abandon his last plot of
land to the usurer, misery creeps into his house. The sweater becomes
all-powerful, frightful overwork is resorted to, and the whole trade
often falls into decay.

Such facts, as well as the pronounced tendency of the factories
towards migrating to the villages, which becomes more and more
apparent nowadays, and found of late its expression in the ‘Garden
Cities’ movement, are very suggestive. Of course, it would be a
great mistake to imagine that industry ought to return to its
hand-work stage in order to be combined with agriculture. Whenever
a saving of human labour can be obtained by means of a machine, the
machine is welcome and will be resorted to; and there is hardly one
single branch of industry into which machinery work could not be
introduced with great advantage, at least at some of the stages of
the manufacture. In the present chaotic state of industry, nails and
cheap pen-knives can be made by hand, and plain cottons be woven
in the hand-loom; but such an anomaly will not last. The machine
will supersede hand-work in the manufacture of plain goods. But at
the same time, handwork very probably will extend its domain in the
artistic finishing of many things which are now made entirely in the
factory; and it will always remain an important factor in the growth
of thousands of young and new trades.

But the question arises, Why should not the cottons, the woollen
cloth, and the silks, now woven by hand in the villages, be woven by
machinery in the same villages, without ceasing to remain connected
with work in the fields? Why should not hundreds of domestic
industries, now carried on entirely by hand, resort to labour-saving
machines, as they already do in the knitting trade and many others?
There is no reason why the small motor should not be of a much more
general use than it is now, wherever there is no need to have a
factory; and there is no reason why the village should not have its
small factory, wherever factory work is preferable, as we already see
it occasionally in certain villages in France.

More than that. There is no reason why the factory, with its motive
force and machinery, should not belong to the community, as is
already the case for motive power in the above-mentioned workshops
and small factories in the French portion of the Jura hills. It is
evident that now, under the capitalist system, the factory is the
curse of the village, as it comes to overwork children and to make
paupers out of its male inhabitants; and it is quite natural that it
should be opposed by all means by the workers, if they have succeeded
in maintaining their olden trades’ organisations (as at Sheffield,
or Solingen), or if they have not yet been reduced to sheer misery
(as in the Jura). But under a more rational social organisation the
factory would find no such obstacles: it would be a boon to the
village. And there is already unmistakable evidence to show that a
move in this direction _is being made_ in a few village communities.

       *       *       *       *       *

The moral and physical advantages which man would derive from
dividing his work between the field and the workshop are
self-evident. But the difficulty is, we are told, in the necessary
centralisation of the modern industries. In industry, as well as in
politics, centralisation has so many admirers! But in both spheres
the ideal of the centralisers badly needs revision. In fact, if we
analyse the modern industries, we soon discover that for some of
them the co-operation of hundreds, or even thousands, of workers
gathered at the same spot is really necessary. The great iron works
and mining enterprises decidedly belong to that category; oceanic
steamers cannot be built in village factories. But very many of our
big factories are nothing else but agglomerations under a common
management, of several distinct industries; while others are mere
agglomerations of hundreds of copies of the very same machine; such
are most of our gigantic spinning and weaving establishments.

The manufacture being a strictly private enterprise, its owners
find it advantageous to have all the branches of a given industry
under their own management; they thus cumulate the profits of the
successive transformations of the raw material. And when several
thousand power-looms are combined in one factory, the owner finds his
advantage in being able to hold the command of the market. But from a
_technical_ point of view the advantages of such an accumulation are
trifling and often doubtful. Even so centralised an industry as that
of the cottons does not suffer at all from the division of production
of one given sort of goods at its different stages between several
separate factories: we see it at Manchester and its neighbouring
towns. As to the petty trades, no inconvenience is experienced from
a still greater subdivision between the workshops in the watch trade
and very many others.

We often hear that one horse-power costs so much in a small engine,
and so much less in an engine ten times more powerful; that the
pound of cotton yarn costs much less when the factory doubles the
number of its spindles. But, in the opinion of the best engineering
authorities, such as Prof. W. Unwin, the hydraulic, and especially
the electric, distribution of power from a central station sets
aside the first part of the argument.[184] As to its second part,
calculations of this sort are only good for those industries which
prepare the half-manufactured produce for further transformations.
As to those countless descriptions of goods which derive their value
chiefly from the intervention of skilled labour, they can be best
fabricated in smaller factories which employ a few hundreds, or even
a few scores of operatives. This is why the “concentration” so much
spoken of is often nothing but an amalgamation of capitalists for the
purpose of _dominating the market_, not for cheapening the technical
process.

Even under the present conditions the leviathan factories offer
great inconveniences, as they cannot rapidly reform their machinery
according to the constantly varying demands of the consumers. How
many failures of great concerns, too well known in this country
to need to be named, were due to this cause during the crisis of
1886-1890. As for the new branches of industry which I have mentioned
at the beginning of the previous chapter, they always must make a
start on a small scale; and they can prosper in small towns as well
as in big cities, if the smaller agglomerations are provided with
institutions stimulating artistic taste and the genius of invention.
The progress achieved of late in toy-making, as also the high
perfection attained in the fabrication of mathematical and optical
instruments, of furniture, of small luxury articles, of pottery
and so on, are instances in point. Art and science are no longer
the monopoly of the great cities, and further progress will be in
scattering them over the country.

The geographical distribution of industries in a given country
depends, of course, to a great extent upon a complexus of natural
conditions; it is obvious that there are spots which are best suited
for the development of certain industries. The banks of the Clyde
and the Tyne are certainly most appropriate for shipbuilding yards,
and shipbuilding yards must be surrounded by a variety of workshops
and factories. The industries will always find some advantages in
being grouped, to some extent, according to the natural features of
separate regions. But we must recognise that now they are _not at
all_ grouped according to those features. Historical causes--chiefly
religious wars and national rivalries--have had a good deal to do
with their growth and their present distribution; still more so the
employers were guided by considerations as to the facilities for sale
and export--that is, by considerations which are already losing their
importance with the increased facilities for transport, and will lose
it still more when the producers produce for themselves, and not for
customers far away.

Why, in a rationally organised society, ought London to remain a
great centre for the jam and preserving trade, and manufacture
umbrellas for nearly the whole of the United Kingdom? Why should the
countless Whitechapel petty trades remain where they are, instead
of being spread all over the country? There is no reason whatever
why the mantles which are worn by English ladies should be sewn at
Berlin and in Whitechapel, instead of in Devonshire or Derbyshire.
Why should Paris refine sugar for almost the whole of France? Why
should one-half of the boots and shoes used in the United States
be manufactured in the 1,500 workshops of Massachusetts? There is
absolutely no reason why these and like anomalies should persist. The
industries must be scattered all over the world; and the scattering
of industries amidst all civilised nations will be necessarily
followed by a further scattering of factories over the territories of
each nation.

In the course of this evolution, the natural produce of each region
and its geographical conditions certainly will be _one_ of the
factors which will determine the character of the industries going
to develop in this region. But when we see that Switzerland has
become a great exporter of steam-engines, railway engines, and
steam-boats--although she has no iron ore and no coal for obtaining
steel, and even has no seaport to import them; when we see that
Belgium has succeeded in being a great exporter of grapes, and that
Manchester has managed to become a seaport--we understand that in the
geographical distribution of industries, the two factors of local
produces and of an advantageous position by the sea are not yet the
dominant factors. We begin to understand that, all taken, it is the
_intellectual_ factor--the spirit of invention, the capacity of
adaptation, political liberty, and so on--which counts for more than
all others.

That all the industries find an advantage in being carried on in
close contact with a great variety of other industries the reader
has seen already from numerous examples. Every industry requires
_technical surroundings_. But the same is also true of agriculture.

Agriculture cannot develop without the aid of machinery, and the
use of a perfect machinery cannot be generalised without industrial
surroundings: without mechanical workshops, easily accessible to
the cultivator of the soil, the use of agricultural machinery is
not possible. The village smith would not do. If the work of a
thrashing-machine has to be stopped for a week or more, because one
of the cogs in a wheel has been broken, and if to obtain a new wheel
one must send a special messenger to the next province--then the
use of a thrashing-machine is not possible. But this is precisely
what I saw in my childhood in Central Russia; and quite lately I
have found the very same fact mentioned in an English autobiography
in the first half of the nineteenth century. Besides, in all the
northern part of the temperate zone, the cultivators of the soil
must have some sort of industrial employment during the long winter
months. This is what has brought about the great development of rural
industries, of which we have just seen such interesting examples. But
this need is also felt in the soft climate of the Channel Islands,
notwithstanding the extension taken by horticulture under glass. “We
need such industries. Could you suggest us any?” wrote to me one of
my correspondents in Guernsey.

But this is not yet all. Agriculture is so much in need of aid from
those who inhabit the cities, that every summer thousands of men
leave their slums in the towns and go to the country for the season
of crops. The London destitutes go in thousands to Kent and Sussex
as hay-makers and hop-pickers, it being estimated that Kent alone
requires 80,000 additional men and women for hop-picking; whole
villages in France and their cottage industries are abandoned in
the summer, and the peasants wander to the more fertile parts of
the country; hundreds of thousands of human beings are transported
every summer to the prairies of Manitoba and Dacota. Every summer
many thousands of Poles spread at harvest time over the plains of
Mecklenburg, Westphalia, and even France; and in Russia there is
every year an exodus of several millions of men who journey from the
north to the southern prairies for harvesting the crops; while many
St. Petersburg manufacturers reduce their production in the summer,
because the operatives return to their native villages for the
culture of their allotments.

Agriculture cannot be carried on without additional hands in the
summer; but it still more needs temporary aids for _improving_ the
soil, for tenfolding its productive powers. Steam-digging, drainage,
and manuring would render the heavy clays in the north-west of London
a much richer soil than that of the American prairies. To become
fertile, those clays want only plain, unskilled human labour, such
as is necessary for digging the soil, laying in drainage tubes,
pulverising phosphorites, and the like; and that labour would be
gladly done by the factory workers if it were properly organised in a
free community for the benefit of the whole society. The soil claims
that sort of aid, and it would have it under a proper organisation,
even if it were necessary to stop many mills in the summer for that
purpose. No doubt the present factory owners would consider it
ruinous if they had to stop their mills for several months every
year, because the capital engaged in a factory is expected to pump
money every day and every hour, if possible. But that is the
capitalist’s view of the matter, not the community’s view.

As to the workers, who ought to be the real managers of industries,
they will find it healthy _not_ to perform the same monotonous work
all the year round, and they will abandon it for the summer, if
indeed they do not find the means of keeping the factory running by
relieving each other in groups.

The scattering of industries over the country--so as to bring the
factory amidst the fields, to make agriculture derive all those
profits which it always finds in being combined with industry
(see the Eastern States of America) and to produce a combination
of industrial with agricultural work--is surely the next step to
be made, as soon as a reorganisation of our present conditions is
possible. It is being made already, here and there, as we saw on
the preceding pages. This step is imposed by the very necessity
of _producing for the producers themselves_; it is imposed by the
necessity for each healthy man and woman to spend a part of their
lives in manual work in the free air; and it will be rendered the
more necessary when the great social movements, which have now
become unavoidable, come to disturb the present international
trade, and compel each nation to revert to her own resources for
her own maintenance. Humanity as a whole, as well as each separate
individual, will be gainers by the change, and the change will take
place.

However, such a change also implies a thorough modification of our
present system of education. It implies a society composed of men and
women, each of whom is able to work with his or her hands, as well as
with his or her brain, and to do so in more directions than one. This
“integration of capacities” and “integral education” I am now going
to analyse.


FOOTNOTES:

[169] The remarks of Prof. Issaieff--a thorough investigator of petty
trades in Russia, Germany and France--(see _Works of the Commission
for the Study of Petty Trades in Russia_ (Russian), St. Petersburg,
1879-1887, vol. i.) were for me a valuable guide when I prepared
the first edition of this book. Since that time the two industrial
censuses of 1895 and 1907 have yielded such a valuable material,
that there are quite a number of German works which came to the same
conclusions. I shall mention them further on.

[170] See K. Buecher’s Preface to the _Untersuchungen über die Lage
des Handwerks in Deutschland_, vol. iv.

[171] The foundation for this creed is contained in one of the
concluding chapters of Marx’s _Kapital_ (the last but one), in
which the author spoke of the concentration of capital and saw in
it the “fatality of a natural law.” In the “forties,” this idea of
“concentration of capital,” originated from what was going on in the
textile industries, was continually recurring in the writings of
all the French socialists, especially Considérant, and their German
followers, and it was used by them as an argument in favour of the
necessity of a social revolution. But Marx was too much of a thinker
that he should not have taken notice of the subsequent developments
of industrial life, which were not foreseen in 1848; if he had lived
now, he surely would _not_ have shut his eyes to the formidable
growth of the numbers of small capitalists and to the middle-class
fortunes which are made in a thousand ways under the shadow of the
modern “millionaires.” Very likely he would have noticed also the
extreme slowness with which the wrecking of small industries goes
on--a slowness which could not be predicted fifty or forty years ago,
because no one could foresee at that time the facilities which have
been offered since for transport, the growing variety of demand, nor
the cheap means which are now in use for the supply of motive power
in small quantities. Being a thinker, he would have studied these
facts, and very probably he would have mitigated the absoluteness
of his earlier formulæ, as in fact he did once with regard to the
village community in Russia. It would be most desirable that his
followers should rely less upon abstract formulæ--easy as they may
be as watchwords in political struggles--and try to imitate their
teacher in his analysis of _concrete_ economical phenomena.

[172] _The Economic Interpretation of History._

[173] _Les Progrès de la Science économique depuis Adam Smith_,
Paris, 1890, t. i., pp. 460, 461.

[174] See the discussions in the Reichstag in January, 1909, on
the Polish Syndicates, and the application that is made to them of
the paragraph of the law of the associations relative to language
(_Sprachenparagraph_).

[175] See Appendix X.

[176] See Appendix Y.

[177] Here is the distribution of workpeople in all the industries,
according to the _Annuaire Statistique_ for the year 1909: Artisans
working single-handed or with the aid of their families, 165,000
establishments; very small industry, from one to four workpeople,
54,000 establishments, 95,000 workpeople; small industry, from five
to forty-nine workpeople per factory, 14,800 establishments, 177,000
employees; middle-sized and great industry, from 50 to 499 workpeople
per factory, 1,500 establishments, 250,000 employees; very great
industry, above 500 workpeople per factory, 200 establishments,
160,000 employees. Total, 236,000 employers great and small; or
71,000 employers out of 7,000,000 inhabitants if we do not count the
independent artisans.

[178] When shall we have for the United Kingdom a census as
complete as we have it for France, Germany, and Belgium? that is,
a census in which the employed and the employers will be counted
separately--instead of throwing into one heap the owner of the
factory, the managers, the engineers, and the workers--and their
distribution in factories of different sizes will be given.

[179] _Textile Industries_: Artisans working single or with the
aid of their families, 1,437; from one to four workmen, 430
establishments, 949 workpeople; from five to forty-nine workpeople,
774 establishments, 14,051 workers; above fifty, 379 establishments,
66,103 workers.

[180] Since 1907 the Russian Government has inaugurated this policy,
and has begun to destroy by violence the village community in the
interest of the landlord and the protected industries.

[181] It appears from the house-to-house inquiry, which embodies
855,000 workers, that the yearly value of the produce which they
use to manufacture reaches £21,087,000 (the rouble at 24d.),
that is, an average of £25 per worker. An average of £20 for the
7,500,000 persons engaged in domestic industries would already
give £150,000,000 for their aggregate production; but the most
authoritative investigators consider that figure as below the reality.

[182] Some of the produces of the Russian rural industries have
lately been introduced in this country, and find a good sale.

[183] Prugavin, in the _Vyestnik Promyshlennosti_, June, 1884.
See also the excellent work of V. V. (Vorontsoff) _Destinies of
Capitalism in Russia_, 1882 (Russia).

[184] I may add from my own experience that such is also the opinion
of several Manchester employers: “I am saving a great deal by using
municipal electric power in my factory, instead of the steam-engine.”
I was told by one of the most respected members of the Manchester
community: “I pay for motive power according to the number of persons
I employ--two hundred at certain times, and fifty in other parts of
the year. I need not buy coal and stock it in advance for all the
year; I have saved the room that was occupied by the steam-engine;
and the room above it is not heated and shaken by the engine as it
used to be.”




CHAPTER VIII.

BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK.

  Divorce between science and handicraft--Technical
  education--Complete education--The Moscow system: applied at
  Chicago, Boston, Aberdeen--Concrete teaching--Present waste of
  time--Science and technics--Advantages which science can derive
  from a combination of brain work with manual work.


In olden times men of science, and especially those who have done
most to forward the growth of natural philosophy, did not despise
manual work and handicraft. Galileo made his telescopes with his own
hands. Newton learned in his boyhood the art of managing tools; he
exercised his young mind in contriving most ingenious machines, and
when he began his researches in optics he was able himself to grind
the lenses for his instruments, and himself to make the well-known
telescope, which, for its time, was a fine piece of workmanship.
Leibnitz was fond of inventing machines: windmills and carriages to
be moved without horses preoccupied his mind as much as mathematical
and philosophical speculations. Linnæus became a botanist while
helping his father--a practical gardener--in his daily work. In
short, with our great geniuses handicraft was no obstacle to abstract
researches--it rather favoured them. On the other hand, if the
workers of old found but few opportunities for mastering science,
many of them had, at least, their intelligences stimulated by the
very variety of work which was performed in the then unspecialised
workshops; and some of them had the benefit of familiar intercourse
with men of science. Watt and Rennie were friends with Professor
Robinson; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his fourteenpence-a-day
wages, enjoyed intercourse with educated men, and thus developed his
remarkable engineering faculties; the son of a well-to-do family
could “idle” at a wheel-wright’s shop, so as to become later on a
Smeaton or a Stephenson.

We have changed all that. Under the pretext of division of labour, we
have sharply separated the brain worker from the manual worker. The
masses of the workmen do not receive more scientific education than
their grandfathers did; but they have been deprived of the education
of even the small workshop, while their boys and girls are driven
into a mine or a factory from the age of thirteen, and there they
soon forget the little they may have learned at school. As to the men
of science, they despise manual labour. How few of them would be able
to make a telescope, or even a plainer instrument! Most of them are
not capable of even designing a scientific instrument, and when they
have given a vague suggestion to the instrument-maker, they leave it
with him to invent the apparatus they need. Nay, they have raised
the contempt of manual labour to the height of a theory. “The man
of science,” they say, “must discover the laws of nature, the civil
engineer must apply them, and the worker must execute in steel or
wood, in iron or stone, the patterns devised by the engineer. He must
work with machines invented for him, not by him. No matter if he does
not understand them and cannot improve them: the scientific man and
the scientific engineer will take care of the progress of science and
industry.”

It may be objected that nevertheless there is a class of men who
belong to none of the above three divisions. When young they have
been manual workers, and some of them continue to be; but, owing
to some happy circumstances, they have succeeded in acquiring some
scientific knowledge, and thus they have combined science with
handicraft. Surely there are such men; happily enough there is a
nucleus of men who have escaped the so-much-advocated specialisation
of labour, and it is precisely to them that industry owes its
chief recent inventions. But in old Europe, at least, they are the
exceptions; they are the irregulars--the Cossacks who have broken
the ranks and pierced the screens so carefully erected between the
classes. And they are so few, in comparison with the ever-growing
requirements of industry--and of science as well, as I am about to
prove--that all over the world we hear complaints about the scarcity
of precisely such men.

What is the meaning, in fact, of the outcry for technical education
which has been raised at one and the same time in England, in France,
in Germany, in the States, and in Russia, if it does not express a
general dissatisfaction with the present division into scientists,
scientific engineers, and workers? Listen to those who know industry,
and you will see that the substance of their complaints is this: “The
worker whose task has been specialised by the permanent division of
labour has lost the intellectual interest in his labour, and it is
especially so in the great industries: he has lost his inventive
powers. Formerly, he invented very much. Manual workers--not men
of science nor trained engineers--have invented, or brought to
perfection, the prime motors and all that mass of machinery which
has revolutionised industry for the last hundred years. But since
the great factory has been enthroned, the worker, depressed by the
monotony of his work, invents no more. What can a weaver invent who
merely supervises four looms, without knowing anything either about
their complicated movements or how the machines grew to be what they
are? What can a man invent who is condemned for life to bind together
the ends of two threads with the greatest celerity, and knows nothing
beyond making a knot?

“At the outset of modern industry, three generations of workers
_have_ invented; now they cease to do so. As to the inventions of
the engineers, specially trained for devising machines, they are
either devoid of genius or not practical enough. Those ‘nearly to
nothings,’ of which Sir Frederick Bramwell spoke once at Bath, are
missing in their inventions--those nothings which can be learned
in the workshop only, and which permitted a Murdoch and the Soho
workers to make a practical engine of Watt’s schemes. None but he
who knows the machine--not in its drawings and models only, but in
its breathing and throbbings--who unconsciously thinks of it while
standing by it, can really improve it. Smeaton and Newcomen surely
were excellent engineers; but in their engines a boy had to open the
steam valve at each stroke of the piston; and it was one of those
boys who once managed to connect the valve with the remainder of the
machine, so as to make it open automatically, while he ran away to
play with other boys. But in the modern machinery there is no room
left for naïve improvements of that kind. Scientific education on
a wide scale has become necessary for further inventions, and that
education is refused to the workers. So that there is no issue out
of the difficulty, unless scientific education and handicraft are
combined together--unless integration of knowledge takes the place of
the present divisions.”

Such is the real substance of the present movement in favour of
technical education. But, instead of bringing to public consciousness
the, perhaps, unconscious motives of the present discontent, instead
of widening the views of the discontented and discussing the problem
to its full extent, the mouthpieces of the movement do not mostly
rise above the shopkeeper’s view of the question. Some of them
indulge in jingo talk about crushing all foreign industries out of
competition, while the others see in technical education nothing but
a means of somewhat improving the flesh-machine of the factory and of
transferring a few workers into the upper class of trained engineers.

Such an ideal may satisfy them, but it cannot satisfy those who keep
in view the combined interests of science and industry, and consider
both as a means for raising humanity to a higher level. We maintain
that in the interests of both science and industry, as well as of
society as a whole, every human being, without distinction of birth,
ought to receive such an education as would enable him, or her, to
combine a thorough knowledge of science with a thorough knowledge of
handicraft. We fully recognise the necessity of specialisation of
knowledge, but we maintain that specialisation must follow general
education, and that general education must be given in science and
handicraft alike. To the division of society into brain workers and
manual workers we oppose the combination of both kinds of activities;
and instead of “technical education,” which means the maintenance of
the present division between brain work and manual work, we advocate
the _éducation intégrale_, or complete education, which means the
disappearance of that pernicious distinction.

Plainly stated, the aims of the school under this system ought to
be the following: To give such an education that, on leaving school
at the age of eighteen or twenty, each boy and each girl should be
endowed with a thorough knowledge of science--such a knowledge as
might enable them to be useful workers in science--and, at the same
time, to give them a general knowledge of what constitutes the bases
of technical training, and such a skill in some special trade as
would enable each of them to take his or her place in the grand world
of the manual production of wealth.[185] I know that many will find
that aim too large, or even impossible to attain, but I hope that if
they have the patience to read the following pages, they will see
that we require nothing beyond what can be easily attained. In fact,
_it has been attained_; and what has been done on a small scale could
be done on a wider scale, were it not for the economical and social
causes which prevent any serious reform from being accomplished in
our miserably organised society.

The experiment has been made at the Moscow Technical School for
twenty consecutive years with many hundreds of boys; and, according
to the testimonies of the most competent judges at the exhibitions of
Brussels, Philadelphia, Vienna, and Paris, the experiment has been a
success. The Moscow school admitted boys not older than fifteen,[186]
and it required from boys of that age nothing but a substantial
knowledge of geometry and algebra, together with the usual knowledge
of their mother tongue; younger pupils were received in the
preparatory classes. The school was divided into two sections--the
mechanical and the chemical; but as I personally know better the
former, and as it is also the more important with reference to the
question before us, so I shall limit my remarks to the education
given in the mechanical section.

After a five or six years’ stay at the school, the students left
it with a thorough knowledge of higher mathematics, physics,
mechanics, and connected sciences--so thorough, indeed, that it was
not second to that acquired in the best mathematical faculties of
the most eminent European universities. When myself a student of
the mathematical faculty of the St. Petersburg University, I had
the opportunity of comparing the knowledge of the students at the
Moscow Technical School with our own. I saw the courses of higher
geometry some of them had compiled for the use of their comrades; I
admired the facility with which they applied the integral calculus
to dynamical problems, and I came to the conclusion that while we,
University students, had more knowledge of a general character
(for instance, in mathematical astronomy), they, the students of
the Technical School, were much more advanced in higher geometry,
and especially in the applications of higher mathematics to the
intricate problems of dynamics, the theories of heat and elasticity.
But while we, the students of the University, hardly knew the use
of our hands, the students of the Technical School fabricated _with
their own hands_, and without the help of professional workmen,
fine steam-engines, from the heavy boiler to the last finely turned
screw, agricultural machinery, and scientific apparatus--all for the
trade--and they received the highest awards for the work of their
hands at the international exhibitions. They were scientifically
educated skilled workers--workers with university education--highly
appreciated even by the Russian manufacturers who so much distrust
science.

Now, the methods by which these wonderful results were achieved were
these: In science, learning from memory was not in honour, while
independent research was favoured by all means. Science was taught
hand in hand with its applications, and what was learned in the
schoolroom was applied in the workshop. Great attention was paid
to the highest abstractions of geometry as a means for developing
imagination and research.

As to the teaching of handicraft, the methods were quite different
from those which proved a failure at the Cornell University, and
differed, in fact, from those used in most technical schools. The
student was not sent to a workshop to learn some special handicraft
and to earn his existence as soon as possible; but the teaching
of technical skill was prosecuted in the same systematical way as
laboratory work is taught in the universities, according to a scheme
elaborated by the founder of the school, M. Dellavos, and now applied
at Chicago and Boston. It is evident that drawing was considered as
the first step in technical education. Then the student was brought,
first, to the carpenter’s workshop, or rather laboratory, and there
he was thoroughly taught to execute all kinds of carpentry and
joinery. They did not teach the pupil to make some insignificant work
of house decoration, as they do in the system of the _slöjd_--the
Swedish method, which is taught especially at the Nääs school--but
they taught him, to begin with, to make very accurately a wooden
cube, a prism, a cylinder (with the planing jack), and then--all
fundamental types of joining. In a word, he had to study, so to say,
the philosophy of joinery by means of manual work. No efforts were
spared in order to bring the pupil to a certain perfection in that
branch--the real basis of all trades.

Later on, the pupil was transferred to the turner’s workshop, where
he was taught to make in wood the patterns of those things which he
would have to make in metal in the following workshops. The foundry
followed, and there he was taught to cast those parts of machines
which he had prepared in wood; and it was only after he had gone
through the first three stages that he was admitted to the smith’s
and engineering workshops. Such was the system which English readers
will find described in full in a work by Mr. Ch. H. Ham.[187] As for
the perfection of the mechanical work of the students, I cannot do
better than refer to the reports of the juries at the above-named
exhibitions.

In America the same system has been introduced, in its technical
part, first, in the Chicago Manual Training School, and later on in
the Boston Technical School--the best, I am told, of the sort--and
finally at Tuskegee, in the excellent school for coloured young men.
In this country, or rather in Scotland, I found the system applied
with full success, for some years, under the direction of Dr. Ogilvie
at Gordon’s College in Aberdeen. It is the Moscow or Chicago system
on a limited scale. While receiving substantial scientific education,
the pupils are also trained in the workshops--but not for one special
trade, as it unhappily too often is the case. They pass through the
carpenter’s workshop, the casting in metals, and the engineering
workshop; and in each of these they learn the foundations of each of
the three trades sufficiently well for supplying the school itself
with a number of useful things. Besides, as far as I could ascertain
from what I saw in the geographical and physical classes, as also
in the chemical laboratory, the system of “through the hand to the
brain,” and _vice versâ_, is in full swing, and it is attended with
the best success. The boys _work_ with the physical instruments, and
they study geography in the field, instruments in hands, as well as
in the class-room. Some of their surveys filled my heart, as an old
geographer, with joy.[188]

The Moscow Technical School surely was not an ideal school.[189]
It totally neglected the humanitarian education of the young men.
But we must recognise that the Moscow experiment--not to speak of
hundreds of other partial experiments--has perfectly well proved
the possibility of combining a scientific education of a very high
standard with the education which is necessary for becoming an
excellent skilled workman. It has proved, moreover, that the best
means for producing really good skilled labourers is to seize the
bull by the horns, and to grasp the educational problem in its great
features, instead of trying to give some special skill in some
handicraft, together with a few scraps of knowledge in a certain
branch of some science. And it has shown also what can be obtained,
without over-pressure, if a rational economy of the scholar’s time
is always kept in view, and theory goes hand in hand with practice.
Viewed in this light, the Moscow results do not seem extraordinary at
all, and still better results may be expected if the same principles
are applied from the earliest years of education.

Waste of time is the leading feature of our present education. Not
only are we taught a mass of rubbish, but what is not rubbish is
taught so as to make us waste over it as much time as possible.
Our present methods of teaching originate from a time when the
accomplishments required from an educated person were extremely
limited; and they have been maintained, notwithstanding the immense
increase of knowledge which must be conveyed to the scholar’s mind
since science has so much widened its former limits. Hence the
over-pressure in schools, and hence, also, the urgent necessity of
totally revising both the subjects and the methods of teaching,
according to the new wants and to the examples already given here and
there, by separate schools and separate teachers.

It is evident that the years of childhood ought not to be spent
so uselessly as they are now. German teachers have shown how the
very plays of children can be made instrumental in conveying to
the childish mind some concrete knowledge in both geometry and
mathematics. The children who have made the squares of the theorem
of Pythagoras out of pieces of coloured cardboard, will not look at
the theorem, when it comes in geometry, as on a mere instrument of
torture devised by the teachers; and the less so if they apply it
as the carpenters do. Complicated problems of arithmetic, which so
much harassed us in our boyhood, are easily solved by children seven
and eight years old if they are put in the shape of interesting
puzzles. And if the _Kindergarten_--German teachers often make of it
a kind of barrack in which each movement of the child is regulated
beforehand--has often become a small prison for the little ones, the
idea which presided at its foundation is nevertheless true. In fact,
it is almost impossible to imagine, without having tried it, how
many sound notions of nature, habits of classification, and taste
for natural sciences can be conveyed to the children’s minds; and,
if a series of concentric courses adapted to the various phases of
development of the human being were generally accepted in education,
the first series in all sciences, save sociology, could be taught
before the age of ten or twelve, so as to give a general idea of
the universe, the earth and its inhabitants, the chief physical,
chemical, zoological, and botanical phenomena, leaving the discovery
of the _laws_ of those phenomena to the next series of deeper and
more specialised studies.

On the other side, we all know how children like to make toys
themselves, how they gladly imitate the work of full-grown people if
they see them at work in the workshop or the building-yard. But the
parents either stupidly paralyse that passion, or do not know how to
utilise it. Most of them despise manual work and prefer sending their
children to the study of Roman history, or of Franklin’s teachings
about saving money, to seeing them at a work which is good for the
“lower classes only.” They thus do their best to render subsequent
learning the more difficult.

And then come the school years, and time is wasted again to an
incredible extent. Take, for instance, mathematics, which every one
ought to know, because it is the basis of all subsequent education,
and which so few really learn in our schools. In geometry, time
is foolishly wasted by using a method which merely consists in
committing geometry to memory. In most cases, the boy reads again
and again the proof of a theorem till his memory has retained the
succession of reasonings. Therefore, nine boys out of ten, if
asked to prove an elementary theorem two years after having left
the school, will be unable to do it, unless mathematics is their
speciality. They will forget which auxiliary lines to draw, and they
never have been taught to _discover_ the proofs by themselves. No
wonder that later on they find such difficulties in applying geometry
to physics, that their progress is despairingly sluggish, and that so
few master higher mathematics.

There is, however, the other method which permits the pupil to
progress, as a whole, at a much speedier rate, and under which he who
once has learned geometry will know it all his life long. Under this
system, each theorem is put as a problem; its solution is never given
beforehand, and the pupil is induced to find it by himself. Thus, if
some preliminary exercises with the rule and the compass have been
made, there is not one boy or girl, out of twenty or more, who will
not be able to find the means of drawing an angle which is equal to
a given angle, and to prove their equality, after a few suggestions
from the teacher; and if the subsequent problems are given in a
systematic succession (there are excellent text-books for the
purpose), and the teacher does not press his pupils to go faster than
they can go at the beginning, they advance from one problem to the
next with an astonishing facility, the only difficulty being to bring
the pupil to solve the first problem, and thus to acquire confidence
in his own reasoning.

Moreover, each abstract geometrical truth must be impressed on the
mind in its concrete form as well. As soon as the pupils have solved
a few problems on paper, they must solve them in the playing-ground
with a few sticks and a string, and they must apply their knowledge
in the workshop. Only then will the geometrical lines acquire a
concrete meaning in the children’s minds; only then will they see
that the teacher is playing no tricks when he asks them to solve
problems with the rule and the compass without resorting to the
protractor; only then will they _know_ geometry.

“Through the eyes _and_ the hand to the brain”--this is the true
principle of economy of time in teaching. I remember, as if it were
yesterday, how geometry suddenly acquired for me a new meaning, and
how this new meaning facilitated all ulterior studies. It was as
we were mastering at school a Montgolfier balloon, and I remarked
that the angles at the summits of each of the twenty strips of paper
out of which we were going to make the balloon must cover less than
the fifth part of a right angle each. I remember, next, how the
sinuses and the tangents ceased to be mere cabalistic signs when
they permitted us to calculate the length of a stick in a working
profile of a fortification; and how geometry in space became plain
when we began to make on a small scale a bastion with embrasures
and barbettes--an occupation which obviously was soon prohibited on
account of the state into which we brought our clothes. “You look
like navvies,” was the reproach addressed to us by our intelligent
educators, while we were proud precisely of being navvies, and of
discovering the use of geometry.

By compelling our children to study real things from mere graphical
representations, instead of _making_ those things themselves, we
compel them to waste the most precious time; we uselessly worry
their minds; we accustom them to the worst methods of learning; we
kill independent thought in the bud; and very seldom we succeed in
conveying a real knowledge of what we are teaching. Superficiality,
parrot-like repetition, slavishness and inertia of mind are the
results of our method of education. We do not teach our children how
to learn.

The very beginnings of science are taught on the same pernicious
system. In most schools even arithmetic is taught in the abstract
way, and mere rules are stuffed into the poor little heads. The idea
of a unit, which is arbitrary and can be changed at will in our
measurement (the match, the box of matches, the dozen of boxes, or
the gross; the metre, the centimetre, the kilometre, and so on),
is not impressed on the mind, and therefore when the children come
to the decimal fractions they are at a loss to understand them. In
this country, the United States and Russia, instead of accepting the
decimal system, which is the system of our numeration, they still
torture the children by making them learn a system of weights and
measures which ought to have been abandoned long since. The pupils
lose at that full two years, and when they come later on to problems
in mechanics and physics, schoolboys and schoolgirls spend most
of their time in endless calculations which only fatigue them and
inspire in them a dislike of exact science. But even there, where the
decimal measures have been introduced, much time is lost in school
simply because the teachers are not accustomed to the idea that every
measure is only approximate, and that it is absurd to calculate with
the exactitude of one gramme, or of one metre, when the measuring
itself does not give the elements of such an exactitude. Whereas in
France, where the decimal system of measures and money is a matter
of daily life, even those workers who have received the plainest
elementary education are quite familiar with decimals. To represent
twenty-five centimes, or twenty-five centimetres, they write “zero
twenty-five,” while most of my readers surely remember how this same
zero at the head of a row of figures puzzled them in their boyhood.
We do all that is possible to render algebra unintelligible, and our
children spend one year before they have learned what is not algebra
at all, but a mere system of abbreviations, which can be learned by
the way, if it is taught together with arithmetic.[190]

The waste of time in physics is simply revolting. While young people
very easily understand the principles of chemistry and its formulæ,
as soon as they themselves make the first experiments with a few
glasses and tubes, they mostly find the greatest difficulties in
grasping the mechanical introduction into physics, partly because
they do not know geometry, and especially because they are merely
shown costly machines instead of being induced to make themselves
plain apparatus for illustrating the phenomena they study.

Instead of learning the laws of force with plain instruments which a
boy of fifteen can easily make, they learn them from mere drawings,
in a purely abstract fashion. Instead of making themselves an
Atwood’s machine with a broomstick and the wheel of an old clock,
or verifying the laws of falling bodies with a key gliding on an
inclined string, they are shown a complicated apparatus, and in
most cases the teacher himself does not know how to explain to them
the principle of the apparatus, and indulges in irrelevant details.
And so it goes on from the beginning to the end, with but a few
honourable exceptions.[191]

If waste of time is characteristic of our methods of teaching
science, it is characteristic as well of the methods used for
teaching handicraft. We know how years are wasted when a boy serves
his apprenticeship in a workshop; but the same reproach can be
addressed, to a great extent, to those technical schools which
endeavour at once to teach some special handicraft, instead of
resorting to the broader and surer methods of systematical teaching.
Just as there are in science some notions and methods which are
preparatory to the study of all sciences, so there are also some
fundamental notions and methods preparatory to the special study of
any handicraft.

Reuleaux has shown in that delightful book, the _Theoretische
Kinematik_, that there is, so to say, a philosophy of all possible
machinery. Each machine, however complicated, can be reduced to
a few elements--plates, cylinders, discs, cones, and so on--as
well as to a few tools--chisels, saws, rollers, hammers, etc.;
and, however complicated its movements, they can be decomposed
into a few modifications of motion, such as the transformation of
circular motion into a rectilinear, and the like, with a number of
intermediate links. So also each handicraft can be decomposed into a
number of elements. In each trade one must know how to make a plate
with parallel surfaces, a cylinder, a disc, a square, and a round
hole; how to manage a limited number of tools, all tools being mere
modifications of less than a dozen types; and how to transform one
kind of motion into another. This is the foundation of all mechanical
handicrafts; so that the knowledge of how to make in wood those
primary elements, how to manage the chief tools in wood-work, and
how to transform various kinds of motion ought to be considered as
the very basis for the subsequent teaching of all possible kinds of
mechanical handicraft. The pupil who has acquired that skill already
knows one good half of all possible trades.

Besides, none can be a good worker in science unless he is in
possession of good methods of scientific research; unless he has
learned to observe, to describe with exactitude, to discover mutual
relations between facts seemingly disconnected, to make inductive
hypotheses and to verify them, to reason upon cause and effect,
and so on. And none can be a good manual worker unless he has been
accustomed to the good methods of handicraft altogether. He must grow
accustomed to conceive the subject of his thoughts in a concrete
form, to draw it, or to model, to hate badly kept tools and bad
methods of work, to give to everything a fine touch of finish, to
derive artistic enjoyment from the contemplation of gracious forms
and combinations of colours, and dissatisfaction from what is ugly.
Be it handicraft, science, or art, the chief aim of the school is not
to make a specialist from a beginner, but to teach him the elements
of knowledge and the good methods of work, and, above all, to give
him that general inspiration which will induce him, later on, to put
in whatever he does a sincere longing for truth, to like what is
beautiful, both as to form and contents, to feel the necessity of
being a useful unit amidst other human units, and thus to feel his
heart at unison with the rest of humanity.

As for avoiding the monotony of work which would result from the
pupil always making mere cylinders and discs, and never making full
machines or other useful things, there are thousands of means for
avoiding that want of interest, and one of them, in use at Moscow, is
worthy of notice. It was, not to give work for mere exercise, but to
utilise everything which the pupil makes, from his very first steps.
Do you remember how you were delighted, in your childhood, if your
work was utilised, be it only as a part of something useful? So they
did at Moscow. Each plank planed by the pupils was utilised as a part
of some machine in some of the other workshops. When a pupil came to
the engineering workshop, and was set to make a quadrangular block
of iron with parallel and perpendicular surfaces, the block had an
interest in his eyes, because, when he had finished it, verified its
angles and surfaces, and corrected its defects, the block was not
thrown under the bench--it was given to a more advanced pupil, who
made a handle to it, painted the whole, and sent it to the shop of
the school as a paper-weight. The systematical teaching thus received
the necessary attractiveness.[192]

It is evident that celerity of work is a most important factor in
production. So it might be asked if, under the above system, the
necessary speed of work could be obtained. But there are two kinds
of celerity. There is the celerity which I saw in a Nottingham
lace-factory: full-grown men, with shivering hands and heads,
were feverishly binding together the ends of two threads from the
remnants of cotton-yarn in the bobbins; you hardly could follow their
movements. But the very fact of requiring such kind of rapid work
is the condemnation of the factory system. What has remained of the
human being in those shivering bodies? What will be their outcome?
Why this waste of human force, when it could produce ten times the
value of the odd rests of yarn? This kind of celerity is required
exclusively because of the cheapness of the factory slaves; so let us
hope that no school will ever aim at this kind of quickness in work.

But there is also the time-saving celerity of the well-trained
worker, and this is surely achieved best by the kind of education
which we advocate. However plain his work, the educated worker makes
it better and quicker than the uneducated. Observe, for instance,
how a good worker proceeds in cutting anything--say a piece of
cardboard--and compare his movements with those of an improperly
trained worker. The latter seizes the cardboard, takes the tool
as it is, traces a line in a haphazard way, and begins to cut;
half-way he is tired, and when he has finished his work is worth
nothing; whereas, the former will examine his tool and improve it
if necessary; he will trace the line with exactitude, secure both
cardboard and rule, keep the tool in the right way, cut quite easily,
and give you a piece of good work.

This is the true time-saving celerity, the most appropriate for
economising human labour; and the best means for attaining it is an
education of the most superior kind. The great masters painted with
an astonishing rapidity; but their rapid work was the result of a
great development of intelligence and imagination, of a keen sense
of beauty, of a fine perception of colours. And that is the kind of
rapid work of which humanity is in need.

       *       *       *       *       *

Much more ought to be said as regards the duties of the school, but
I hasten to say a few words more as to the desirability of the kind
of education briefly sketched in the preceding pages. Certainly, I do
not cherish the illusion that a thorough reform in education, or in
any of the issues indicated in the preceding chapters, will be made
as long as the civilised nations remain under the present narrowly
egotistic system of production and consumption. All we can expect, as
long as the present conditions last, is to have some microscopical
attempts at reforming here and there on a small scale--attempts which
necessarily will prove to be far below the expected results, because
of the impossibility of reforming on a small scale when so intimate
a connection exists between the manifold functions of a civilised
nation. But the energy of the constructive genius of society depends
chiefly upon the depths of its conception as to what ought to be
done, and how; and the necessity of re-casting education is one of
those necessities which are most comprehensible to all, and are most
appropriate for inspiring society with those ideals, without which
stagnation or even decay are unavoidable.

So let us suppose that a community--a city, or a territory which has,
at least, a few millions of inhabitants--gives the above-sketched
education to all its children, without distinction of birth (and we
_are_ rich enough to permit us the luxury of such an education),
without asking anything in return from the children but what they
will give when they have become producers of wealth. Suppose such an
education is given, and analyse its probable consequences.

I will not insist upon the increase of wealth which would result
from having a young army of educated and well-trained producers; nor
shall I insist upon the social benefits which would be derived from
erasing the present distinction between the brain workers and the
manual workers, and from thus reaching the concordance of interest
and harmony so much wanted in our times of social struggles. I shall
not dwell upon the fulness of life which would result for each
separate individual, if he were enabled to enjoy the use of both
his mental and bodily powers; nor upon the advantages of raising
manual labour to the place of honour it ought to occupy in society,
instead of being a stamp of inferiority, as it is now. Nor shall I
insist upon the disappearance of the present misery and degradation,
with all their consequences--vice, crime, prisons, price of blood,
denunciation, and the like--which necessarily would follow. In short,
I will not touch now the great social question, upon which so much
has been written and so much remains to be written yet. I merely
intend to point out in these pages the benefits which science itself
would derive from the change.

Some will say, of course, that to reduce men of science to the
_rôle_ of manual workers would mean the decay of science and genius.
But those who will take into account the following considerations
probably will agree that the result ought to be the reverse--namely,
such a revival of science and art, and such a progress in industry,
as we only can faintly foresee from what we know about the times of
the Renaissance. It has become a commonplace to speak with emphasis
about the progress of science during the nineteenth century; and it
is evident that our century, if compared with centuries past, has
much to be proud of. But, if we take into account that most of the
problems which our century has solved already had been indicated, and
their solutions foreseen, a hundred years ago, we must admit that
the progress was not so rapid as might have been expected, and that
something hampered it.

The mechanical theory of heat was very well foreseen in the last
century by Rumford and Humphry Davy, and even in Russia it was
advocated by Lomonosoff.[193] However, much more than half a century
elapsed before the theory reappeared in science. Lamarck, and even
Linnæus, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Erasmus Darwin, and several others
were fully aware of the variability of species; they were opening the
way for the construction of biology on the principles of variation;
but here, again, half a century was wasted before the variability
of species was brought again to the front; and we all remember
how Darwin’s ideas were carried on and forced on the attention of
university people, chiefly by persons who were not professional
scientists themselves; and yet in Darwin’s hands the theory of
evolution surely was narrowed, owing to the overwhelming importance
given to only one factor of evolution.

For many years past astronomy has been needing a careful revision of
the Kant and Laplace’s hypothesis; but no theory is yet forthcoming
which would compel general acceptance. Geology surely has made
wonderful progress in the reconstitution of the palæontological
record, but dynamical geology progresses at a despairingly slow
rate; while all future progress in the great question as to the laws
of distribution of living organisms on the surface of the earth is
hampered by the want of knowledge as to the extension of glaciation
during the Quaternary epoch.[194]

In short, in each branch of science a revision of the current
theories as well as new wide generalisations are wanted. And if the
revision requires some of that inspiration of genius which moved
Galileo and Newton, and which depends in its appearance upon general
causes of human development, it requires also an increase in the
number of scientific workers. When facts contradictory to current
theories become numerous, the theories must be revised (we saw it
in Darwin’s case), and thousands of simple intelligent workers in
science are required to accumulate the necessary facts.

Immense regions of the earth still remain unexplored; the study of
the geographical distribution of animals and plants meets with
stumbling-blocks at every step. Travellers cross continents, and
do not know even how to determine the latitude nor how to manage a
barometer. Physiology, both of plants and animals, psycho-physiology,
and the psychological faculties of man and animals are so many
branches of knowledge requiring more data of the simplest
description. History remains a _fable convenue_ chiefly because it
wants fresh ideas, but also because it wants scientifically thinking
workers to reconstitute the life of past centuries in the same way as
Thorold Rogers or Augustin Thierry have done it for separate epochs.

In short, there is not one single science which does not suffer
in its development from a want of men and women endowed with a
philosophical conception of the universe, ready to apply their
forces of investigation in a given field, however limited, and
having leisure for devoting themselves to scientific pursuits. In a
community such as we suppose, thousands of workers would be ready to
answer any appeal for exploration. Darwin spent almost thirty years
in gathering and analysing facts for the elaboration of the theory of
the origin of species. Had he lived in such a society as we suppose,
he simply would have made an appeal to volunteers for facts and
partial exploration, and thousands of explorers would have answered
his appeal. Scores of societies would have come to life to debate and
to solve each of the partial problems involved in the theory, and
in ten years the theory would have been verified; all those factors
of evolution which only now begin to receive due attention would
have appeared in their full light. The rate of scientific progress
would have been tenfold; and if the individual would not have the
same claims on posterity’s gratitude as he has now, the unknown mass
would have done the work with more speed and with more prospect for
ulterior advance than the individual could do in his lifetime. Mr.
Murray’s dictionary is an illustration of that kind of work--the work
of the future.

However, there is another feature of modern science which speaks
more strongly yet in favour of the change we advocate. While
industry, especially by the end of the last century and during the
first part of the present, has been inventing on such a scale as to
revolutionise the very face of the earth, science has been losing its
inventive powers. Men of science invent no more, or very little. Is
it not striking, indeed, that the steam-engine, even in its leading
principles, the railway-engine, the steam-boat, the telephone, the
phonograph, the weaving-machine, the lace-machine, the lighthouse,
the macadamised road, photography in black and in colours, and
thousands of less important things, have _not_ been invented by
professional men of science, although none of them would have refused
to associate his name with any of the above-named inventions? Men
who hardly had received any education at school, who had merely
picked up the crumbs of knowledge from the tables of the rich,
and who made their experiments with the most primitive means--the
attorney’s clerk Smeaton, the instrument-maker Watt, the brakesman
Stephenson, the jeweller’s apprentice Fulton, the millwright Rennie,
the mason Telford, and hundreds of others whose very names remain
unknown, were, as Mr. Smiles justly says, “the real makers of modern
civilisation”; while the professional men of science, provided
with all means for acquiring knowledge and experimenting, have
invented little in the formidable array of implements, machines, and
prime-motors which has shown to humanity how to utilise and to manage
the forces of nature.[195] The fact is striking, but its explanation
is very simple: those men--the Watts and the Stephensons--knew
something which the _savants_ do not know--they knew the use of their
hands; their surroundings stimulated their inventive powers; they
knew machines, their leading principles, and their work; they had
breathed the atmosphere of the workshop and the building-yard.

We know how men of science will meet the reproach. They will say: “We
discover the laws of nature, let others apply them; it is a simple
division of labour.” But such a rejoinder would be utterly untrue.
The march of progress is quite the reverse, because in a hundred
cases against one the mechanical invention comes before the discovery
of the scientific law. It was not the dynamical theory of heat which
came before the steam-engine--it followed it.

When thousands of engines already were transforming heat into motion
under the eyes of hundreds of professors, and when they had done
so for half a century, or more; when thousands of trains, stopped
by powerful brakes, were disengaging heat and spreading sheaves
of sparks on the rails at their approach to the stations; when
all over the civilised world heavy hammers and perforators were
rendering burning hot the masses of iron they were hammering and
perforating--then, and then only, Séguin, senior, in France, and
a doctor, Mayer, in Germany, ventured to bring out the mechanical
theory of heat with all its consequences: and yet the men of science
ignored the work of Séguin and almost drove Mayer to madness by
obstinately clinging to their mysterious caloric fluid. Worse than
that, they described Joule’s first determination of the mechanical
equivalent of heat as “unscientific.”

When thousands of engines had been illustrating for some time the
impossibility of utilising all the heat disengaged by a given amount
of burnt fuel, then came the second law of Clausius. When all over
the world industry already was transforming motion into heat, sound,
light, and electricity, and each one into each other, then only came
Grove’s theory of the “correlation of physical forces”; and Grove’s
work had the same fate before the Royal Society as Joule’s. The
publication of his memoir was refused till the year 1856.

It was not the theory of electricity which gave us the telegraph.
When the telegraph was invented, all we knew about electricity
was but a few facts more or less badly arranged in our books; the
theory of electricity is not ready yet; it still waits for its
Newton, notwithstanding the brilliant attempts of late years. Even
the empirical knowledge of the laws of electrical currents was in
its infancy when a few bold men laid a cable at the bottom of the
Atlantic Ocean, despite the warnings of the authorised men of science.

The name of “applied science” is quite misleading, because, in the
great majority of cases, invention, far from being an application
of science, on the contrary creates a new branch of science. The
American bridges were no application of the theory of elasticity;
they came before the theory, and all we can say in favour of science
is, that in this special branch, theory and practice developed
in a parallel way, helping one another. It was not the theory of
the explosives which led to the discovery of gunpowder; gunpowder
was in use for centuries before the action of the gases in a gun
was submitted to scientific analysis. And so on. One could easily
multiply the illustrations by quoting the great processes of
metallurgy; the alloys and the properties they acquire from the
addition of very small amounts of some metals or metalloids; the
recent revival of electric lighting; nay, even the weather forecasts
which truly deserved the reproach of being “unscientific” when
they were started for the first time by that excellent observer
of shooting stars, Mathieu de la Drôme, and by an old Jack tar,
Fitzroy--all these could be mentioned as instances in point.

Of course, we have a number of cases in which the discovery, or the
invention, was a mere application of a scientific law (cases like
the discovery of the planet Neptune), but in the immense majority of
cases the discovery, or the invention, is unscientific to begin with.
It belongs much more to the domain of art--art taking the precedence
over science, as Helmholtz has so well shown in one of his popular
lectures--and only after the invention has been made, science comes
to interpret it. It is obvious that each invention avails itself of
the previously accumulated knowledge and modes of thought; but in
most cases it makes a start in advance upon what is known; it makes
a leap in the unknown, and thus opens a quite new series of facts
for investigation. This character of invention, which is to make a
start in advance of former knowledge, instead of merely applying a
law, makes it identical, as to the processes of mind, with discovery;
and, therefore, people who are slow in invention are also slow in
discovery.

In most cases, the inventor, however inspired by the general state
of science at a given moment, starts with a very few settled
facts at his disposal. The scientific facts taken into account for
inventing the steam-engine, or the telegraph, or the phonograph were
strikingly elementary. So that we can affirm that what we presently
know is already sufficient for resolving any of the great problems
which stand in the order of the day--prime-motors without the use
of steam, the storage of energy, the transmission of force, or the
flying-machine. If these problems are not yet solved, it is merely
because of the want of inventive genius, the scarcity of educated
men endowed with it, and the present divorce between science and
industry.[196] On the one side, we have men who are endowed with
capacities for invention, but have neither the necessary scientific
knowledge nor the means for experimenting during long years; and, on
the other side, we have men endowed with knowledge and facilities
for experimenting, but devoid of inventive genius, owing to their
education, too abstract, too scholastic, too bookish, and to the
surroundings they live in--not to speak of the patent system,
which divides and scatters the efforts of the inventors instead of
combining them.[197]

The flight of genius which has characterised the workers at the
outset of modern industry has been missing in our professional men
of science. And they will not recover it as long as they remain
strangers to the world, amidst their dusty bookshelves; as long
as they are not workers themselves, amidst other workers, at the
blaze of the iron furnace, at the machine in the factory, at the
turning-lathe in the engineering workshop; sailors amidst sailors on
the sea, and fishers in the fishing-boat, wood-cutters in the forest,
tillers of the soil in the field.

Our teachers in art--Ruskin and his school--have repeatedly told
us of late that we must not expect a revival of art as long as
handicraft remains what it is; they have shown how Greek and mediæval
art were daughters of handicraft, how one was feeding the other. The
same is true with regard to handicraft and science; their separation
is the decay of both. As to the grand inspirations which unhappily
have been so much neglected in most of the recent discussions about
art--and which are missing in science as well--these can be expected
only when humanity, breaking its present bonds, shall make a new
start in the higher principles of solidarity, doing away with the
present duality of moral sense and philosophy.

It is evident, however, that all men and women cannot equally enjoy
the pursuit of scientific work. The variety of inclinations is such
that some will find more pleasure in science, some others in art, and
others again in some of the numberless branches of the production of
wealth. But, whatever the occupations preferred by everyone, everyone
will be the more useful in his own branch if he is in possession of a
serious scientific knowledge. And, whosoever he might be--scientist
or artist, physicist or surgeon, chemist or sociologist, historian
or poet--he would be the gainer if he spent a part of his life in
the workshop or the farm (the workshop _and_ the farm), if he were
in contact with humanity in its daily work, and had the satisfaction
of knowing that he himself discharges his duties as an unprivileged
producer of wealth.

How much better the historian and the sociologist would understand
humanity if they knew it, not in books only, not in a few of its
representatives, but as a whole, in its daily life, daily work, and
daily affairs! How much more medicine would trust to hygiene, and
how much less to prescriptions, if the young doctors were the nurses
of the sick and the nurses received the education of the doctors of
our time! And how much the poet would gain in his feeling of the
beauties of nature, how much better would he know the human heart,
if he met the rising sun amidst the tillers of the soil, himself a
tiller; if he fought against the storm with the sailors on board
ship; if he knew the poetry of labour and rest, sorrow and joy,
struggle and conquest! _Greift nur hinein in’s volle Menschenleben!_
Goethe said; _Ein jeder lebt’s--nicht vielen ist’s bekannt._ But how
few poets follow his advice!

The so-called “division of labour” has grown under a system which
condemned the masses to toil all the day long, and all the life long,
at the same wearisome kind of labour. But if we take into account
how few are the real producers of wealth in our present society, and
how squandered is their labour, we must recognise that Franklin was
right in saying that to work five hours a day would generally do for
supplying each member of a civilised nation with the comfort now
accessible for the few only.

But we have made some progress since Franklin’s time, and
some of that progress in the hitherto most backward branch of
production--agriculture--has been indicated in the preceding
pages. Even in that branch the productivity of labour can be
immensely increased, and work itself rendered easy and pleasant.
If everyone took his share of production, and if production were
socialised--as political economy, if it aimed at the satisfaction of
the ever-growing needs of all, would advise us to do--then more than
one half of the working day would remain to everyone for the pursuit
of art, science, or any hobby he or she might prefer; and his work in
those fields would be the more profitable if he spent the other half
of the day in productive work--if art and science were followed from
mere inclination, not for mercantile purposes. Moreover, a community
organised on the principles of all being workers would be rich
enough to conclude that every man and woman, after having reached
a certain age--say of forty or more--ought to be relieved from the
moral obligation of taking a direct part in the performance of the
necessary manual work, so as to be able entirely to devote himself
or herself to whatever he or she chooses in the domain of art, or
science, or any kind of work. Free pursuit in new branches of art and
knowledge, free creation, and free development thus might be fully
guaranteed. And such a community would not know misery amidst wealth.
It would not know the duality of conscience which permeates our
life and stifles every noble effort. It would freely take its flight
towards the highest regions of progress compatible with human nature.


FOOTNOTES:

[185] In their examination of the causes of unemployment in York,
based not on economists’ hypotheses, but on a close study of the
real facts in each individual case (_Unemployment: a Social Study_,
London, 1911), Seebohm Rowntree and Mr. Bruno Lasker have come to the
conclusion that the chief cause of unemployment is that young people,
after having left the school (where they learn no trade), find
employment in such professions as greengrocer boy, newspaper boy, and
the like, which represent “a blind alley.” When they reach the age of
eighteen or twenty, they must leave, because the wages are a boy’s
wages,--and they know no trade whatever!

[186] Unfortunately, I must already say “admitted” instead of
“admits.” With the reaction which began after 1881, under the reign
of Alexander III., this school was “reformed”; that means that all
the spirit and the system of the school were destroyed.

[187] _Manual Training: the Solution of Social and Industrial
Problems._ By Ch. H. Ham. London: Blackie & Son, 1886. I can add that
like results were achieved also at the Krasnoufimsk _Realschule_, in
the province of Orenburg, especially with regard to agriculture and
agricultural machinery. The achievements of the school, however, are
so interesting that they deserve more than a short mention.

[188] It is evident that the Gordon’s College industrial department
is not a mere copy of any foreign school; on the contrary, I cannot
help thinking that if Aberdeen has made that excellent move towards
combining science with handicraft, the move was a natural outcome
of what has been practised long since, on a smaller scale, in the
Aberdeen daily schools.

[189] What this school is now, I don’t know. In the first years
of Alexander III.’s reign it was wrecked, like so many other good
institutions of the early part of the reign of Alexander II. But the
system was not lost. It was carried over to America.

[190] To those readers who are really interested in the education of
children, M. Leray, the French translator of this book, recommended
a series of excellent little works “conceived,” he wrote, “in the
very spirit of the ideas developed in this chapter. Their leading
principle is that ‘in order to be soundly educative, all teaching
must be objective, especially at the outset,’ and that ‘systematical
abstraction, if it be introduced into the teaching without an
objective (concrete) preparation, is noxious.’” M. Leray meant the
series of initiations published by the French publishers, Hachette:
_Initiation mathématique_, by C. A. Laisant, a book completed by the
_Initiateur mathématique_, which is a game with small cubes, very
ingenious and giving in a concrete form the proofs of arithmetics,
the metric system, algebra and geometry; _Initiation astronomique_,
by C. Flammarion; _Initiation chimique_, by Georges Darzens;
_Initiation à la mécanique_, by Ch. Ed. Guillaume; and _Initiation
zoologique_, by E. Brucker. The authors of these works had--it
would not be just not to mention it--predecessors in Jean Mace’s
_L’Arithmétique du grand-papa_, and René Leblanc, “whose excellent
manual, _Les Sciences physiques à l’Ecole primaire_”--M. Leray says
that from his own experience upon pupils from eleven to thirteen
years old--“gives even to the dullest children the taste or even the
passion for physical experiment.”

[191] Take, for instance, the description of Atwood’s machine in any
course of elementary physics. You will find very great attention
paid to the wheels on which the axle of the pulley is made to lie;
hollow boxes, plates and rings, the clock, and other accessories will
be mentioned before one word is said upon the leading idea of the
machine, which is to slacken the motion of a falling body by making
a falling body of small weight move a heavier body which is in the
state of inertia, gravity acting on it in two opposite directions.
That was the inventor’s idea; and if it is made clear, the pupils
see at once that to suspend two bodies of equal weight over a
pulley, and to make them move by adding a small weight to one of
them, is one of the means (and a good one) for slackening the motion
during the falling; they see that the friction of the pulley must
be reduced to a minimum, either by using the two pairs of wheels,
which so much puzzle the text-book makers, or by any other means;
that the clock is a luxury, and the “plates and rings” are mere
accessories: in short, that Atwood’s idea can be realised with the
wheel of a clock fastened, as a pulley, to a wall, or on the top of
a broomstick secured in a vertical position. In this case the pupils
will understand the _idea_ of the machine and of its inventor, and
they will accustom themselves to separate the leading idea from the
accessories; while in the other case they merely look with curiosity
at the tricks performed by the teacher with a complicated machine,
and the few who finally understand it spend a quantity of time in the
effort. In reality, all _apparatus used to illustrate the fundamental
laws of physics ought to be made by the children themselves_.

[192] The sale of the pupils’ work was not insignificant, especially
when they reached the higher classes, and made steam-engines.
Therefore the Moscow school, when I knew it, was one of the cheapest
in the world. It gave boarding and education at a very low fee. But
imagine such a school connected with a farm school, which grows
food and exchanges it at its cost price. What will be the cost of
education then?

[193] In an otherwise also remarkable memoir on the Arctic Regions.

[194] The rate of progress in the recently so popular Glacial Period
question was strikingly slow. Already Venetz in 1821 and Esmarck
in 1823 had explained the erratic phenomena by the glaciation of
Europe. Agassiz came forth with the glaciation of the Alps, the Jura
mountains, and Scotland, about 1840; and five years later, Guyot had
published his maps of the routes followed by Alpine boulders. But
forty-two years elapsed after Venetz wrote before one geologist of
mark (Lyell) dared timidly to accept his theory, even to a limited
extent--the most interesting fact being that Guyot’s maps, considered
as irrelevant in 1845, were recognised as conclusive after 1863. Even
now--more than half a century after Agassiz’s first work--Agassiz’s
views are not yet either refuted or generally accepted. So also
Forbes’s views upon the plasticity of ice. Let me add, by the way,
that the whole polemics as to the viscosity of ice is a striking
instance of how facts, scientific terms, and experimental methods
quite familiar to building engineers, were ignored by those who took
part in the polemics. If these facts, terms and methods were taken
into account, the polemics would not have raged for years with no
result. Like instances, to show how science suffers from a want of
acquaintance with facts and methods of experimenting both well known
to engineers, florists, cattle-breeders, and so on, could be produced
in numbers.

[195] Chemistry is, to a great extent, an exception to the rule. Is
it not because the chemist is to such an extent a manual worker?
Besides, during the last ten years we see a decided revival in
scientific inventiveness, especially in physics--that is, in a branch
in which the engineer and the man of science meet so much together.

[196] I leave on purpose these lines as they were in the first
edition. All these desiderata are already accomplished facts.

[197] The same remark ought to be made as regards the sociologists,
and still more so the economists. What are most of them, including
the socialists, doing, but studying chiefly the books previously
written and the systems, instead of studying the _facts_ of the
economical life of the nations, and the thousands of attempts at
giving to agriculture and industry new forms of organisation and new
methods, which are now made everywhere in Europe and America?




CHAPTER IX.

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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