Fields, Factories, and Workshops

Appendix Y : The Domestic Industries in Switzerland
We have most interesting monographs dealing with separate branches of the small industries of Switzerland, but we have not yet such comprehensive statistical data as those which have been mentioned in the text in speaking of Germany and France. It was only in the year 1901 that the first attempt was made to get the exact numbers of work people employed in what the Swiss statisticians describe as Hausindustrie, or "the domestic industries' extension of the factory industries "(der hausindustrielle Anhang der Fabrikindustrie). Up till then these numbers remained "an absolutely unknown quantity." For many it was, therefore, a revelation when a first rough estimate, made by the factory inspectors, gave the figure of 52,291 work people belonging to this category, as against 243,200 persons employed in all the factories, large and small, of the same branches. A few years later, Schuler, in Zeitung für Schweizerische Statistik, 1904 (reprinted since as... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Appendix X : The Small Industries in Germany
The literature of the small industries in Germany being very bulky, the chief works upon this subject may be found, either in full or reviewed, in Schmoller’s Jahrbucher, and in Conrad’s Sammlung national-okonomischer und statistischer Abhandlungen. For a general review of the subject and rich bibliographical indications, Schonberg’s Volkwirthschaftslehre, vol. ii., which contains excellent remarks about the proper domain of small industries (p. 401 seq.) as well as the above-mentioned publication of K. Bucher (Untersuchungen uber dies Lage des Handwerks in Deutschland), will be found most valuable. The work of O. Schwarz, Die Betriebsformen der modernen Grossindustrie (in Zeitschrift fur Staatswissenschaft, vol. xxv., p. 535), is interesting by its analysis of the respective advantages of both the great and the small industries, which brings the author to formulate the following three factors in favor of the... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Appendix W : Results of the Census of the French Industries in 1896
If we consult the results of the census of 1896, that were published in 1901, in the fourth volume of Resultats statistiques du recensement des industries et des professions, preceded by an excellent summary written by M. Lucien March, we find that the general impression about the importance of the small industries in France conveyed in the text is fully confirmed by the numerical data of the census. It is only since 1896, M. March says in a paper read before the Statistical Society of Paris, that a detailed classification of the workshops and factories according to the number of their operatives became possible; Journal de la Societe de Statistique de Paris, June 1901, pp. 189-192, and “Resultats Generaux,” in vol. iv. Of the above-mentioned publication. and he gives us in this paper, in a series of very elaborate tables, a most instructive picture of the present state of industry in France. For the industries pro... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Appendix V : Small Industries at Paris
It would be impossible to enumerate here all the varieties of small industries which are carried on at Paris; nor would such an enumeration be complete because every year new industries are brought into life. I therefore will mention only a few of the most important industries. A great number of them are connected, of course, with ladies’ dress. The confections-that is, the making of various parts of ladies’ dress – occupy no less than 22,000 operatives at Paris, and their production attains £3,000,000 every year, while annual production is valued at £2,400,000. Linen, shoes, gloves, and so on, are as many important branches of the petty trades and the Paris domestic industries, while one-fourth part of the stays which are sewn in France (£500,000 out of £2,000,000) are made in Paris. Engraving, book-binding, and all kinds of fancy stationery, as well as the manufacture of musical and mathematical instruments,... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Appendix U : Petty Trades in the Lyons Region
The neighborhoods of St. Etienne are a great center for all sorts of industries, and among them the petty trades occupy still an important place. Ironworks and coal-mines with their smoking chimney, noisy factories, roads blackened with coal, and a poor vegetation give the country the well-known aspects of a “Black Country.” In certain towns, such as St. Chamond, one finds numbers of big factories in which thousands of women are employed in the fabrication of passementerie. But side by side with the great industry the petty trades also maintain a high development. Thus we have first the fabrication of silk ribbons, in which no less than 50,000 men and women were employed in the year 1885. Only 3,000 or 4,000 looms were located then in the factories; while the remainder- that is, from 1,200 to 1,400 looms- belonged to the workers themselves, both at St. Etienne and in the surrounding country. I am indebted for the following information to M.V. E... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Cotton Industry in Germany
Dr. G. Schulze-Gaewernitz, in his excellent work, The Cotton Trade in England and on the Continent (English translation by Oscar S. Hall, London, 1895), called attention to the fact that Germany had certainly not yet attained, in her cotton industry, the high technical level of development attained by England; but he showed also the progress realized. The cost of each yard of plain cotton, notwithstanding low wages and long hours, was still greater in Germany than in England, as seen from the following tables. Taking a certain quality of plain cotton in both countries, he gave (p. 151, German edition) the following comparative figures:- England. Germany. Hours of labor 9 hours 12 hours Average weekly earnings of the operatives 16s. 3d. 11s.... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Prices Obtained in London for Dessert Grapes Cultivated Under Glass
The Fruit and Market-Gardener gives every week the prices realized by horticultural and intensive gardening produce, as well as by flowers, at the great market of Covent Garden. The prices obtained for dessert grapes- Colmar and Hamburg- are very instructive. I took two years- 1907-1908- which differ from ordinary years by the winters having been foggy, which made the garden produce somewhat late. In the first days of January the Colmar grapes arriving from the Belgium hothouses were still sold at relatively low prices- from 6d. to 10d. the pound. But the prices slowly rose in January and February; the Hamburg grapes were late that year, and therefore in the middle of March and later on in April the Colmars fetched from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. T... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

French Imports
About one-tenth part of the cereals consumed in France is still imported; but, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, the progress in agriculture has lately been so rapid that even without Algeria France will soon have a surplus of cereals. Wine is imported, but nearly as much is exported. So that coffee and oil-seeds remain the only food articles of durable importance for import. For coal and coke France is still tributary to Belgium, to this country, and to Germany; but it is chiefly the inferiority of organization of coal extraction which stands in the way of the home supply. The other important items of imports are: raw cotton (from £12,440,000 to £18,040,000 in 1903-1910), raw wool (from £15,160,000 to £23,200... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Irrigated Meadows in Italy
In the Journal de l’Agriculture (2nd Feb., 1889) the following was said about the marcites of Milan:- “On part of these meadows water runs constantly, on others it is left running for ten hours every week. The former give six crops every year; since February, eighty to 100 tons of grass, equivalent to twenty and twenty-five tons of dry hay, being obtained from the hectare (eight to ten tons per acres). Lower down, thirteen tons of dry hay per acre is the regular crop. Taking eighty acres placed in average conditions, they will yield fifty-six tons of green grass per hectare – that is, fourteen tons of dry hay, or the food of three milch cows to the hectare (two and a half acres). The rent of such meadows is from £8 to &... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Planted Wheat; the Rothamsted Challenge
Sir A. Cotton delivered, in 1893, before the Balloon Society, a lecture on agriculture, in which lecture he warmly advocated deep cultivation and planting the seeds of wheat wide apart. He published it later on as a pamphlet (Lecture on Agriculture, 2nd edition, with Appendix. Dorking, 1893). He obtained, for the best of his sort of wheat, an average of “fifty-five ears per plant, with three oz. of grain of fair quality – perhaps sixty-three lbs. per bushel” (p. 10). This corresponded to ninety bushels per acre – that is, his result was very similar to those obtained at the Tomblaine and Capelle agricultural stations by Grandeau and F. Dessprez, whose work seems not to have been known to Sir A. Cotton. True, Sir A. Cotto... (From : Anarchy Archives.)