Fields, factories and workshops

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:—

Twelve years later the industries, as they appeared in the next census, made in 1907, were distributed as follows:—

For the sake of comparison, I give also (in round figures) the numbers of establishments obtained by the three censuses:—

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.