is manufactured at a very low price, and day by day, in thousands of small workshops.
It can thus be said that if we exclude from the class of workshops’ employees 100,000 or even 200,000 workpeople who do not work for industry properly speaking, and if we add on the other side the nearly 500,000 workers who have not yet been tabulated by the inspectors in 1897, we find a population of more than 1,000,000 men and women who belong entirely to the domain of the small industry, and so must be added to those whom we found working in the small factories. The artisans who are, working single-handed were not included in this sketch.
We thus see that even in this country, which may be considered as representing the highest development of the great industry, the number of persons employed in the small trade continues to be immense. The small industries are as much a distinctive feature of the British industry as its few immense factories and ironworks.
Going over now to what is known about the small industries of this country from direct observation, we find that the suburbs of London, Glasgow, and other great cities swarm with small workshops, and that there are regions where the petty trades 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 number of firms which manufacture cutlery right through from the making of steel to the finishing of tools, and employ wageworkers; and yet even these firms — I am told by Edward Carpenter, who kindly collected for me information about the Sheffield trade — let out some part of their 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