In the year 1866, for every hundred workers engaged as weavers in cotton factories, there were 70 weavers working at home; in the years 1894-5, for every hundred factory workers there were only 8 home workers. In Russia the growth of large-scale production was extraordinarily rapid because foreign capital undertook its direct organisation. By the year 1902, large enterprises were already employing nearly half (40 per cent.) of all the Russian industrial workers.
In 1903, in European Russia, the factories employing more than 100 workers numbered 17 per cent. of all factories and workshops; and of the total number of workers engaged in factories and workshops 76.6 per cent. worked in these large factories.
The victory of large-scale production all over the world entails much suffering upon small producers. Sometimes whole occupations perish and entire districts are depopulated (e.g. the Silesian weavers in Germany, the Indian weavers, etc.).
(b) The struggle between small-scale and large-scale capital in agriculture. The same struggle between small-scale and large-scale production which is carried on in industry, occurs also under capitalism in agriculture. The landlord, who administers his estate just as the capitalist administers his factory; the rich peasant, grasping and usurious; the middle peasant; the poor peasant, who often accepts a job from the landlord or the rich peasant; and the agricultural labourer — we may compare this agricultural series with the industrial series of great capitalist, small capitalist, independent artisan, home worker, wage worker. In the country, as in the town, extensive possessions give an advantage when compared with small.
On a large farm, it is comparatively easy to introduce up-to-date methods. Agricultural machinery (electric or steam ploughs, harvesters, cutters and binders, drillers, threshers, steam threshers, etc.) is almost