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;210 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 proper — including the industries carried on by the State and the Municipalities, but excluding the transport trades — the results of the census can be summed up as follows:
There is, first of all, an important division of “heads of establishments ( patrons ) working alone, independent artisans, and working-men without a permanent employment,” which contains 1,530,000 persons. It has a very mixed character, as we find here, in agriculture, the small farmer, who works for himself; and the labourer, who works by the day for occasional farmers; and in industry the head of a small workshop, who works for himself ( patron-ouvrier ); the working-man, who on the day of the census had no regular employment; the dressmaker, who works sometimes in her own room and sometimes in a shop; and so on. It is only in an indirect way that M. March finds out that this division