branches immense numbers of small factories continue to prosper by the side of the great ones.
In all other branches the small trades are dominant, to such an extent that more than 95 per cent. of the employers employ less that fifty workmen each. In the quarries, in all branches of the alimentation, in the book trade, clothing, leather, wood, metallic goods, and even the brick-works, china and glass works, we hardly find one or two factories out of each hundred employing more than fifty workmen.
The three industries that make an exception to this rule are, we have said, metallurgy, the great works of the State, and the mines. In metallurgy two-thirds of the works have more than fifty men each, and it is here that we find some twenty great works employing each of them more than one thousand men. The works of the State, which include the great shipbuilding yards, are evidently in the same case. They contain thirty-four establishments, having more than 1,000. And finally, in the mines — one hardly would believe that — more than one-half of all establishments employ less that fifty workmen each; but 15 per cent. of them have more than 500 workmen; forty-one mines are worked by a staff of more than 1,000 persons each, and six out of them employ even more than 5,000 miners.
It is only in these three branches that one finds a rather strong “concentration”; and yet, the small industry continues to exist, as we saw it already in England, by the side of the great one, even in mining, and still more so in all branches of metallurgy.
As to the textile industries, they have exactly the same character as in England. We find here a certain number of very large establishments (forty establishments having each of them more than 1,000 work-people), and especially we see a great development of the middle-sized factories (1,300 mills having from 100 to 500 workpeople). But on the other side, the small industry is also very numerous.211