Chapter VI (2)

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.