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Title: The Industrial Village of the Future
Author: Pëtr Kropotkin
Date: 1884
Language: en
Topics: industry, agriculture
Source: Nineteenth Century, 1888, pp. 513-530.  Online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=308.

Pëtr Kropotkin

The Industrial Village of the Future

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 far off, 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 medieval city was the cradle of those

industries which fringed 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; so it does until the present day in Russia.

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 enlarged with an astonishing rapidity; the fields were

deserted. Millions of laborers, compelled to leave their cottages,

gathered in the cities in search of labor, 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 an unprecedented, unheard-of misery in our

cities. The system, as a whole, brought about those quite abnormal

conditions which I have endeavored to expose in two preceding

articles.[1] We are thus driven into a corner; and while a thorough

change in the present relations between labor and capital is becoming an

imperious necessity, a thorough remodeling of the whole of our

industrial organization 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 over-looked 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.

Most of the petty trades, we must admit, are in a very precarious

condition. The wages of the workers are very low and the employment

uncertain; the day of labor is by two, three, or four hours longer than

in the factories; the crises are frequent, and they last for years. And

each time a crisis ravages some branch of the petty trades, there is no

lack of writers to predict the speedy disappearance of the trade. During

the crisis which I witnessed in 1877 amid the Swiss watch-makers, 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. Nay, we find

it endowed with an astonishing vitality. It undergoes various

modifications, it adapts itself to new conditions, it struggles without

altogether losing hope of better times to come. Anyhow, it has not the

characteristics of a decaying institution. In some industries the big

factory is undoubtedly victorious; but there are other branches in which

the petty trades hold their own position. Even in the textile industries

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 ten years ago, that most of the

woolen cloth factories -- immense barracks facing the streets, with more

than a hundred windows each -- were silent, and their costly machinery

was rusting, while cloth was woven in handlooms 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 cities, as we

now learn from the inquiry into the 'Sweating System.'

Now the advantages offered by a big factory in comparison with hand-work

are self-evident as regards the economy of labor, the facilities both

for sale and for having the raw produce at a lower price, and so on. How

can we then explain the persistence of the petty traders? Many causes,

most of which cannot be valued in shillings and pence, are at work in

favor 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 a

review article. When I began to study the subject some seven or eight

years ago, I never guessed, from the little attention devoted to it by

the orthodox economists, what a wide, complex, important, and

interesting organization would appear at the end of a closer inquiry. So

I see myself compelled to give here only a few typical illustrations,

and to prepare a separate work which will embody the bulk of the

materials which I have gathered in connection with the subject.

As far as I know, there are in this country no statistics as to the

exact numbers of workers engaged in the domestic trades, the rural

industries, and the petty trades. The whole subject has never received

the attention bestowed upon it in Germany, and especially in Russia. And

yet we can guess that even in this country of great industries, the

numbers of those who earn their livelihood in the petty trades most

probably equals, if it does not surpass, the numbers of those employed

in the big factories.[2] We know, at any rate, that the suburbs of

London, Glasgow, and other great cities swarm with small workshops, and

there are regions where the domestic industries 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

few 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 my friend, E. Carpenter, who kindly gathered

for me information about the Sheffield trade -- let out some part of the

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

series of small workshops. Some of them cover only 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 help, or two. In the upper stories 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 walking through

these workshops I easily imagined myself in a Russian cutlery village,

like Pavlovo or Vorsma. The Sheffield cutlery has thus maintained its

olden organization, and the fact is the more remarkable as the earnings

of the cutlers are very low as a rule; but, even when reduced to a few

shillings a week, the cutler prefers to vegetate on his small earnings

than to go as a waged laborer in a 'house.' The spirit of the old trade

organizations, which were so much spoken of five-and-twenty years ago,

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 Thomas Baines's Yorkshire, Past

and Present), most of the woolen cloth which was made in that region was

woven by hand.[3] 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

handlooms 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 organization: they rented a room,

or part of a room, and sometimes also the power-looms in a workshop, and

they worked independently -- a characteristic organization partly

maintained until now, and well intended 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 labor of the children. Cotton-warp became quite usual in

goods labeled 'pure wool,' and 'shoddy' -- i.e. wool combed out of old

rags gathered all over the Continent and formerly used only for blankets

fabricated for the Indians in America -- became of general use. In these

kinds of goods the factories excelled. And yet there are branches of the

woolen trade where hand-work is still the rule, especially in the fancy

goods which continually require new adaptations for temporary demands.

Thus, in 1881 the handlooms of Leeds were pretty well occupied with the

fabrication of woolen imitations of sealskins.

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.[4] 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 nails are still made by hand by

thousands of men, women, and children in the Black Country of South

Staffordshire, as also in Derbyshire.[5] Chains are also made by hand at

Dudley and Cradley, and although the press is periodically moved to

speak of the wretched condition of the chain-makers, the trade still

maintains itself; while nearly 7,000 men are busy 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. Nay, Mr. Bevan tells us that even needles are

largely made by hand at Redditch.

The Birmingham gun and rifle trades 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 and lace made by hand in South Devon, as also 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 in the villages of Sussex and

Hampshire. Woolen 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

shoe-making is a widely spread domestic occupation, or is carried on in

small workshops; even at Norwich it remains a petty trade to a great

extent, notwithstanding the competition of the factories.

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 much less of 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 is the compulsory

exodus from the villages and the accumulation of immense numbers of

destitute in the cities. The work-shops, much more even than the

factories, multiply wherever they find cheap labor; and the specific

feature of this country is, that the cheapest labor -- that is, the

greatest number of destitutes -- is 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 economical life of England

and Scotland; and the painstaking researches made by Mr. Booth and

communicated to the Statistical Society have shown that one-quarter of

the population of London -- that is, 1,000,000 out of 3,800,000 -- would

be happy if the heads of their families could have regular earnings of

less than 1*l.* a week all the year round. Half of them would be

satisfied with much less than that. Cheap labor is offered in such

quantities at Whitechapel and Southwark, at Shawlands and other suburbs

of the great cities, 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 realize 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 cloth

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 amid the destitutes, supply those palaces and

bazaars with goods made in the slums or in very small workshops. The

commerce is centralized 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 centralize the

profits -- not the production.

In reality the extension of the petty trades, side by side with the big

factories, is nothing to be wondered at. The absorption of the small

industries is a fact, 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 large scale in factories. And even yet, as

the machines are very costly, a great quantity of bobbins are made in

small work- shops, 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 in small machines

continually invented by the workers. New industries thus grow to

supplant the old ones; each of them passes through a preliminary stage

on a small scale before reaching the factory stage; and the more active

the inventive genius of a nation is, the more it has of these auxiliary

industries.

Besides, the factory stimulates the birth of new petty trades by

creating new wants. The cheapness of cottons and woolens, of paper and

brass, have 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 factory,

all have passed through the small workshop stage before the demand was

great enough to require the factory organization. The more we may have

of new inventions, the more shall we have of such small industries; and

again, the more we shall have of them, the more shall we have of the

inventive genius, the want of which is so justly complained of by

William Armstrong [first baron]. 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.

The variety of petty trades carried on in France, both in the villages

and the cities, is very great, and it would be most instructive to have

a general description of those small industries, and to show their

importance in the national economy. Let me only say that the very

maintenance of the small peasant proprietorship in several parts of

France is due, to a great extent, to the additional incomes which many

peasants derive from the rural manufactures. In fact, it is estimated

that while one-half of the population of France is living upon

agriculture and one-fourth part upon industry, this fourth part is

equally distributed between the great industry and the petty trades,

which thus give the means of existence to no less than 1,500,000 workers

-- more than 4,000,000 persons, families included. As to the rural folk

who resort to domestic trades without abandoning agriculture, we only

can see that their numbers are very considerable, without knowing the

exact figures.

The most characteristic feature of the French petty trades is, that they

still hold so important a position in the textile manufactures. Thus, it

was reckoned during the last exhibition (1878) that there were in France

328,000 handlooms, as against 120,000 power-looms, and although a great

number of the former are now silent, still the handlooms at work number

much more than a quarter of a million. It is not my intention to enter

here into a detailed description of the French petty trades, and I will

mention only four chief centers -- Tarare, the North, Lyons, and Paris

-- as four different and characteristic types of small industries. In

the manufacture of muslins, Tarare holds the same position as Leeds

formerly held in the clothiers' trade. Its factories prepare the

materials for weaving the muslins, and they finish the stuffs which are

woven in the villages. Each peasant's house, each farm and métairie

[smallholding], all round Tarare, are so many workshops, and Eeybaud

says that you often see a lad of twenty who embroiders fine muslins

after having cleaned his stables. The great variety of stuffs woven and

the continuous invention of new designs, too often changed to be

profitably made by machinery, are the real key to the maintenance of

that rural manufacture. As to the results of its combination with

agriculture, all descriptions agree in recognizing that it is beneficial

for the maintenance of agriculture, and that without it the peasantry

could hardly resist the depressing agencies which are at work against

them. The same is true with regard to northern France, where we have

widely spread manufactures, side by side with such important

manufacturing centers as Amiens, Lille, Eoubaix, Eouen, and so on. Even

cotton velvets and plain cottons are woven to a very considerable amount

in the villages of the Nord and Normandy.[6] In the valley of the

Audelle, in the départment of the Eure, each village and hamlet are

industrial beehives, and everywhere agriculture thrives best where it is

combined with industry. The comparison between the weavers' cottages in

the country and the weavers' slums in the industrial cities is striking,

and it is still more to the advantage of the country if the village

keeps a communal factory, as is the case occasionally in Normandy. The

attachment of the weavers to the soil is so strong, that the clothiers

of Elbeuf, who cannot keep enough livestock to till the soil themselves,

resort to a custom which I saw also in Haute-Savoie, and noticed at

Clairvaux, namely, that of having one householder in the village who

keeps the necessary team of horses, and tills the soil for all the

others, the turn being always kept with a scrupulous equity, as it is

also kept for the thrashing machine, or, in wine-growing districts, for

the pressoir.

The importance of the silk trade, for which Lyons is a center, is best

seen from the fact that it occupies no less than 110,000 looms in the

departement of the Ehone and seven neighboring départments. Great

advance has been made of late as regards weaving the most complicated

designs in the power-loom; stuffs formerly reputed unfeasible by

machinery are now made by the iron-worker. Yet silk-weaving still

remains chiefly a domestic trade, and the factory penetrates into it

very slowly. The number of power-looms in the Lyons region was from

6,000 to 8,000 in 1865, and it was expected that they would rapidly

multiply; but twenty years later they numbered only from 20,000 to

25,000, out of the 110,000 looms which were at work. The slowness of the

progress astonishes even those manufacturers who are persuaded that the

power-looms must supplant most of the handlooms.[7] The organization of

the trade still remains the same as before -- that is, the Lyons weaver

is more of an artist who executes in silk the designs vaguely suggested

by the merchant -- while in the surrounding region all kinds of silks,

even to the plainest ones, are woven in the houses of the workers. The

conditions of the French silk-weavers have been most precarious during

the last few years, partly because France has no longer the monopoly of

the trade, and partly because of the competition of the factory, which

now manufactures all cheap descriptions of silks which formerly were

resorted to even by the best hand-weavers when orders for higher sorts

were not forthcoming. Nevertheless the hand fabrication of silk spreads

in France; it has extended over the neighboring départements as far as

Upper Savoy, and gone over to Switzerland; as to Lyons, the industry

abandons it, and it becomes more and more a mere center for the best

weavers who are capable of promptly executing any order for new and

complicated stuffs which may be received by the merchants.

The new factories have been built chiefly in the villages, and there we

can see how they ruin the peasantry. The French peasants, overburdened

as they are with taxes and mortgages, are compelled to seek an

additional income in industry; their lads and lasses are thus ready to

take work in the silk or ribbon manufacture, however low the salaries.

But their homes being scattered in the country at considerable distances

from the factory, and the hours of labor being long, they are mostly

compelled to stay in barracks at the factory, and to return home only on

Saturday. On Monday, at sunrise, a van is sent round the villages to

bring them back to the looms. In this way they will soon have totally

abandoned agriculture, and as soon as they are compelled to settle

separately from their parents they will find it impossible to live on

the present low wages. Then some of the factories depending on low wages

will perish, and their operatives will be compelled to migrate to the

cities. One easily sees all the mischief which the vicious organization

is thus doing in the villages, instead of being a source of well-being,

as it ought to be under different conditions.

I ought here to mention the lace trade, which gives occupation to nearly

70,000 women in Normandy, and to nearly 200,000 persons in France

altogether; the cutlery of the Haute-Marne, a trade of recent origin,

which has reached a high degree of perfection, and now has spread though

thirty villages in the nieghbourhood of Nogent; the knitting trade about

Troyes, where 20,000 persons, using a variety of small machines, are

making knitted goods of every description; the well-known watch,

jewelry, and turning trades of the Jura; and the variety of petty

trades--silk ribbons, ribbons with woven inscriptions, hardware, arms,

and so on--in the region of St. Etienne.[8] But I economize my space, as

I have to say a few words more about the petty trades of Paris.

The capital of France is an emporium for petty trades and domestic

industries, and while it has a considerable number of great factories,

the small workshops prevail to such an extent that the average number of

operatives in the nearly 65,000 factories and workshops of Paris is only

nine. In fact, nearly five-sixths of the Paris workers are connected

with the domestic trades, and they fabricate the most astonishing

variety of goods requiring skill, taste, and invention. Most of the

petty trades of Paris are connected with dress,[9] but jewelry,

artificial flowers, stationery, bookbinding, morocco leather goods

(500,000*l.* every year), carriage-making, basket-making, and many

others, are very important branches, each of which is distinguished by

the high perfection of its produce. It is worthy of note that while the

Paris industries are mostly characterized by artistic workmanship, they

are remarkable also for the variety of handy and inexpensive machines

which are invented every year by the workmen, for the purpose of

facilitating production. The 'Galerie du Travail' [Work Gallery] of the

Exhibition of 1878 was exceedingly instructive on that account, as it

displayed in a thousand varieties the inventive genius of the masses;

and, when walking through it, one asked oneself if all that genius

really must be killed by the factory, instead of becoming a new fertile

source of progress under a better organization of production.

The petty trades and domestic industries of Germany are perhaps still

more important than those of France. Ninety-seven percent of all the

industrial establishments of Germany employ less than five operatives,

and much more than one-half of the 5,500,000 persons connected with

industry are at work in those small workshops; while they are, on the

whole, less than 10,000 factories which employ more than fifty workers.

Moreover, 545,000 persons are engaged in domestic trades -- that is,

they manufacture for the trade in their own houses or rooms -- and

two-thirds of them belong to the textile industries. There are whole

regions, such as the Black Forest, parts of Saxony, Bavaria, Silesia,

and the Rhine provinces, where the domestic trades, partly connected

with agriculture, are the chief means of existence for numerous

populations. Let me add also that we have, in the works of Thun, Engel,

and many others, excellent descriptions of several branches of the

German petty trades. It would be impossible to examine here the German

petty and domestic trades without entering into technical details, so

let me merely mention that one of the most prominent features of the

German trades is, so to say, their remarkable plasticity. The progress

realized in some of them -- as, for instance, in the cutlery of Solingen

or the toy trade of the Black Forest -- is striking. The former has been

totally reformed in order to respond to the new demands of the market,

and the latter has made a rapid start in the production of artistic and

scientific toys, under the influence of schools for modeling in clay and

general education spread amid the workers. The organization of some of

these industries (especially of the knitting trade) offers most

suggestive illustrations of successful combination in order to struggle

against the big capitalists, and adapt themselves to the new conditions

of production, among thousands of peasants who are spread over a very

wide area -- from Switzerland to Saxony. But I must refrain from

entering here into that most interesting subject, as I have to add a few

words about other countries.

In Hungary, no less than six percent of the population -- that is,

801,600 persons -- are engaged in domestic industries, the textiles

alone giving employment to more than 680,000 workers. Switzerland,

Italy, and even the United States, have also considerably developed

domestic industries; and there are parts of Belgium of which we may say

with full safety that if agriculture continues to thrive there,

notwithstanding so many hostile influences, it is chiefly because the

peasants have the possibility of adding to their incomes the earnings in

a variety of industries. But it is especially in Russia that we can

fully appreciate the importance of the rural industries, and the loss

which the country would sustain if they were to disappear.

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. The house-to-house

inquiry embraces nearly one million of peasants' houses all over Russia;

and in the fifteen volumes published by the Petty Trades' Committee, and

nearly all the chief provincial assemblies, we find the 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

productions, his earnings from the technical, economical, and sanitary

points of view.

The results obtained from these inquiries are really imposing, as it

appears that out of the 80,000,000 population of European Russia no less

than 7,500,000 persons are engaged in the domestic trades, and that

their production reaches, at the lowest estimates, more than

150,000,000*l., and most probably 200,000,000*l. (2,000,000,000 rubles

every year).[10] It thus equals the total production of the great

industry. As to the relative importance of both 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. But the most striking feature of the Russian

domestic trades is that the sudden state which was made of late by the

factories are growing up fastest. Another most suggestive feature is the

following: although the most unfertile provinces of Central Russia have

been from time to time immemorial the seat of all kinds of petty trades,

several domestic industries of modern origin are developing In those

provinces which are best favored by soil and climate. Thus, the

Stavropol government of North Caucasus, where the peasantry have plenty

of fertile soil, has suddenly becomes 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.

The capacities of the Russian domestic industrial workers for

cooperative organization 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 labor and the starvation wages, because overwork (twelve

to sixteen hours of labor) 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 labor at any price.

Therefore, all manufactured ware used by the Russian peasantry, save a

few printed cottons, is a produce of the rural manufactures. 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

'Nouveautès Parisiennes,' [New Parisians] are made by the Moscow

peasants; so also the 'Vienna' furniture of the best 'Vienna' shops,

even if it foes 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.

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 this the more,

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 and the poverty of the

peasants, who were ruined by high taxation and redemption taxes. But as

soon as the allotments are reasonable and the peasants are less

overtaxed they continue to cultivate the land; their fields are kept in

better order, and the average numbers of livestock are higher where

agriculture goes hand in hand 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, and the other

continues to till the soil -- could be quoted as striking instance for

such a comparison.[11]

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 middlemen 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 more interesting

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.

The facts which we have briefly reviewed will also 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 capitalist factory, but in the shape of a socially

organized industrial production. In fact, the most prominent feature of

the petty trades is that a relative welfare is found only where they are

combined with agriculture. Apart from a few artistic trades which give a

comparative well-being to the workers in the cities, everywhere we find

but a long record of overwork, exploitation of children's labor, and

misery. But even amid the general misery there are oases of relative

well-being, and these oases invariably appear where the workers have

remained in possession of the soil and continue to cultivate it. Even

amid the cotton-weavers of the north of France of Moscow, who have to

reckon with the competition of the factory, relative welfare prevails as

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, although the competition of the

factory may be of no moment in his trade (as in the toy trade). 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, 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 labor can be obtained by means of a machine, the machine is

welcome and will be resorted to; and there is hardly a single branch of

industry into which machinery work could not be introduced with great

advantage, at least in some of the preliminary stages of fabrication. In

the present chaotic state of industry we can make nails and penknives by

hand, or weave plain cottons in the hand-loom; but such a chaos will not

last. The machine will supersede hand-work in the manufacture of plain

goods, while hand-work probably will extend its domain in the artistic

finishing of many things which are now made entirely in the factory. But

the question arises, why should not the cottons, the woolen 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 labor-saving machines as they already do in

the knitting trade? There is no reason why the small motor should not be

of much more general use than now, wherever there is no need to have a

factory; and there is no reason why the village should not have its

factory wherever factory work is useful, as we already see it

occasionally in Normandy. It is evident that now, under the capitalist

system, the factory i the curse of the village, as it comes to make

paupers out of its inhabitants; and it is quite natural that it is

opposed by all means by the workers, if they have succeeded in

maintaining their olden trades' organizations (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 organization the factory

would find no such obstacles: it would be a boon to the village.

The moral and physical advantages which man would derive from dividing

his work between the field and the factory are self-evident. But the

difficulty is, we are told, in the necessary centralization of the

modern industries. In industry, as well as in politics, centralization

has so many admirers! But in both spheres the ideal of the centralizers

badly needs revision. In fact, if we analyze the modern industries, we

soon discover that for some of them the cooperation of hundreds, or even

thousands, or workers gathered at the same spot is really necessary. The

great iron-works and mining enterprises decidedly belong to that

category; oceanic steamers could not be made 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

merely 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 auxiliary

industries. But, from a technical point of view, the advantages of such

accumulation are trifling and doubtful. Even so centralized an industry

as that of the cottons does not suffer at all from the division of

production between several separate factories: we see it at Manchester

and the neighboring towns. As to the petty trades, no inconvenience is

experienced from a still greater subdivision between the workshops in

the watch trade and many others.

We often hear that one horsepower 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 such calculations are good only for those industries which

prepare the half-manufactured produce for further transformations. As to

those countless descriptions of ware which derive their value chiefly

from the intervention of skilled labor, they can be best fabricated in

smaller factories which employ a few hundreds, or even a few scores, of

operatives. 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.

As to the new branches of industry which I mentioned at the beginning of

this article, they 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 Germany in

those villages which are busy in toy-making, as also the high perfection

attained in the fabrication of mathematical and optical instruments, 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.

As to the natural conditions upon which depends the geographical

distribution of industries in a given country, it is obvious that there

are some spots which are most 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 a limited extent,

according to the natural features of separate regions. But we must

recognize that not they are not grouped according to those features.

Historical causes -- chiefly religious wars and national rivalries --

have had a good deal to do with their growth and geographical

distribution, and still more considerations as to the facilities for

sale and export; that is, considerations which are already losing their

importance with the increased facilities of transport, and will lose it

still more when the producers produce for themselves, and nor for

customers far away. But why, in a rationally organized society, ought

London to remain a great center for the jam and preserving trade, and

manufacture umbrellas for nearly the whole of the United Kingdom? Why

should the Whitechapel petty trades remain where they are, instead of

being spread all over the country? Why should Paris refine sugar for

almost the whole of France and Greenock for Russia? Why should one-half

of the boots and shoes used in United States be manufactured in the

1,500 workshops of Massachusetts? There is absolutely no reason why

these and like anomalies should persist; and the scattering of

industries amid all civilized nations will be necessarily followed by a

further scattering of factories over the territories of each nation.

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; whole

villages in France abandon their homes and their cottage industries in

the summer and wander to the more fertile parts of the country; and in

Russia there is every year an exodus of many hundreds of thousands 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. Extensive agricultures

cannot be carried on without additional hands in the summer; but it

still more needs a temporary aid for improving the soil, for tenfolding

its productive powers. Steam-digging, drainage, and manuring would

render the heavy clays to 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 labor, such as is necessary for digging the

soil, laying in drainage tubes, pulverizing phosphates, and the like;

and that labor would be gladly done by the factory workers if it were

properly organized in a free community for the benefit of the whole

society. The soil claims that aid, and it would have it under a proper

organization, 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 amid the fields, and to make agriculture derive all those

profits which it always finds in being combined with industry (see the

Eastern States of America) -- and the combination of industrial with

agricultural work are surely the next step to be made, as soon as a

reorganization of our present conditions is possible. That step is

imposed by the very necessities 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 free 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. But 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.

[1] Nineteenth Century, April and June, 1888.

[2] We find it stated in various economical works that there are nearly

1,000,000 workers employed in the big factories of England alone, and

1,047,000 employed in the petty trades -- the various trades connected

with food (bakers, butchers, and so on), and the building trades being

included in the last figure. But I do not know how far these figures are

reliable.

[3] Nearly one-half of the 43,000 operatives who were employed at that

time in the woolen trade of this country were weaving in handlooms. So

also one-fifth of the 79,000 persons employed in the worsted trade.

[4]

E. Roscoe's notes in the English Illustrated Magazine, May 1884.

[5] Bevan's Guide to English Industries.

[6] According to Baudrillart, 2,500,000*l.* worth of plain cottons were

woven in 1880 in the villages around Rouen.

[7] Out of the 110,000 looms, only from 15,000 to 18,000 handlooms have

remained at Lyons, as against 25,000 to 28,000 in 1865. I am indebted

for these figures to the President of the Lyons Chamber of Commerce, who

kindly gave me, in a letter dated April 25, 1885, all kinds of

information about the petty trades of the Lyons region and to whom I am

glad to express my full gratitude, as also to the President of the

Chamber of Commerce of St. Etienne who supplied me with most interesting

data with regard to the various trades of the St. Etienne region.

[8] Out of the 15,000 to 18,000 looms engages in the weaving of ribbons

at St. Etienne and its neighborhood, no less than from 12,000 to 14,000

belong to the workers themselves. The trade was once prosperous, so that

most of the houses in the suburbs of St. Etienne were built by the

weavers, but for several years since its prospects have been very

gloomy. The manufacture of arms occupies from 5,000 to 6,000 workers. As

to hardware, it is fabricated in a great number of small workshops all

round St. Etienne, Le Chambon, Firminy, Rive de Giers, and so on. Of

other petty trades, some of which have a considerable importance, let me

mention the silk-growing of the Ardèche, the wire trades of the Doubs,

the clothiers and the glove-makers of the Isère, the stay-makers, the

broom and brush makers of the Oise (800,000*l.* every year), the

button-makers, the shoe-makers of the Drôme, and so on.

[9] The ready-made cloth and mantles alone are valued at 5,400,000*l.*

every year; ladies' stays are made to the value of 400,000*l.* at Paris,

and 2,000,000*l.* in France altogether.

[10] 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*l.* (the ruble at 24*d.), that is, an

average of nearly 25*l. per worker. An average of 20*l.* for the

7,500,000 persons engaged in domestic industries would already give

150,000,000*l.* for their aggregate production; but the most

authoritative investigators consider that figure as below the reality.

[11] Purgavin, in the Vyestnik Promyshlennosti, June 1884.