light, and a series of most interesting monographs dealing with this subject have been published. Let me name, therefore, some of them which could be consulted with profit: Dr. Fr. Zahn, Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, unter besonderer Berucksichtigung der Volkszahlung , 1905, sowie der Berufs und Betriebszahlung , 1907; Sonderabdruck aus der Anaalen des Deutschen Reichs , Munchen, 1910 and 1911; Dr. Josef Grunzel, System der Industriepolitik , Leipzig, 1905; and Der Sieg des Industrialismus , Leipzig, 1911; W. Sombart, “Verlagssystem (Hausindustrie)”, in Conrad, Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften , 3te Auflage, Bd. VIII.; R. van der Borght, Beruf, Gesselshaftliche Gliederung und Betrieb im Deutschen Reiche , in Vortrage der Gehe-Stiftung , Bd. II., 1910; and Heinrich Koch, Die Deutsche Hausindustrie , M. Gladbach, 1905. Many other works will be found mentioned by these authors.
In all these books the reader will find a further confirmation of the ideas about the small industries that are expressed in chapters vi. and vii. When I developed them in the first edition of this book, it was objected to me that, although the existence of a great number of small industries is out of question, and although their great extension in a country so far advanced in its industrial development as England was not known to economists, still the fact proves nothing. These industries are a mere survival; and if we had data about the different classes of industry at different periods, we should see how rapidly the small industries are disappearing.
Now we have such data for Germany, for a period of twenty-five years, in the three censuses of 1882, 1895, and 1907, and, what is till more valuable, these twenty-five years belong to a moment in the life of Germany when a powerful industry has developed on an immense scale with a great rapidity. Here it is that the dying out of the small industries, their “absorption” by the great concerns, and the supposes “concentration of capital” ought to be seen in full.