the “sweating system.”
Now, the advantages offered by a large factory in comparison with hand work are self-evident as regards the economy of labour, and especially — this is the main point — the facilities both for sale and for having the raw produce at a lower price. How can we then explain the persistence of the petty trades? Many causes, however, most of which cannot be valued in shillings and pence, are at work in favour of the petty trades, and these causes will be best seen from the following illustrations. I must say, however, that even a brief sketch of the countless industries which are carried on on a small scale in this country, and on the Continent, would be far beyond the scope of this chapter. When I began to study the subject some thirty years ago, I never guessed, from the little attention devoted to it by the orthodox economists, what a wide, complex, important, and interesting organisation would appear at the end of a close inquiry. So I see myself compelled to give here only a few typical illustrations, and to indicate the chief lines only of the subject.
The Small Industries in the United Kingdom
We have not for the United Kingdom such statistical data as are obtained in France and Germany by periodical censuses of all the factories and workshops, and the numbers of the workpeople, foremen and clerks, employed on a given day n each industrial and commercial establishment. Consequently, up to the present time all the statements made by economists about the so-called “concentration:” of the industry in this country, and the consequent “unavoidable” disappearance of the small industries, have been based on mere impressions of the writers, — not on statistical data. Up till now we cannot give, as it is done future in these pages for France and Germany, the exact numbers of factories and workshops employing, let us say, from 1,000 to 2,000 persons, from 500 to 1,000, from 50 to 500, less than 50, and so on. It is only since factory inspection has been introduced by the Factory Act of