VILLAGE INDUSTRIES 301 



home employment. However, if domestic workers were " sweated," 

 they were also very amenable to official influence and guidance. 

 As domestic workers they could not join trade unions and so swell 

 the ranks of " subversive " elements in the country. And Govern- 

 ments held it to be to their interest to keep them so — not " sweated," 

 of course, there was a remedy for that ; but beyond the reach of 

 '' subversive " influence. The Governments' aim accordingly was, 

 at all costs to keep these rural workers beyond trade union reach, 

 and at the same time to bind them securely to their own chariot 

 wheels by real or ostensible benefits. Accordingly they laid them- 

 selves out for paternally favouring industries which keep workers 

 in rural isolation, in a condition in which trade unionism was out of 

 the question for them ; and, once more, to proclaim themselves the 

 peculiar benefactors of these people by services which in some cases 

 have gone to the length of including the actual sale of the goods 

 produced, difficult to be disposed of otherwise, at a sufficiently high 

 price — sale being the crucial point in the whole process. The action 

 initiated a decade or two ago by various Governments of the Con- 

 tinent, and liberally supported by them with funds, in support of 

 the " Middle Classes Movement " was distinctly designed as a 

 countermove to the dreaded Socialist advance. It is at " Middle 

 Class Congresses " that the subject of promoting and strengthening 

 rural and other small industries has been chiefly debated. This was 

 favourable ground for the Governments. For in it they met and 

 could work hand in hand with the Liberal and economically pro- 

 gressive sections of the community, with whom they were otherwise 

 at something like permanent war. These sections have gladly 

 joined with the several Governments in their general policy of 

 support to small industries, although generally combating the 

 spoon-feeding measures already alluded to, initiated to bribe the 

 small industrialists for anti-socialist politics. The Germans have 

 a proverb which says : " Whose bread I eat, his song I sing." And 

 the song was to be the Governments'. 



The second point to be borne in mind is this, that all this carefully 

 studied assistance to small trade, often enough amounting to 

 coddling, has not by any means in all cases proved effective. Very 

 much of it has turned out to be ill directed. Even the 666 Hungarian 

 schools already spoken of are freely admitted to have failed in 

 achieving their object. Dr. von Szury, of the Hungarian Ministry 

 of Commerce, has publicly stated this. The Austrian Government 

 some time ago, with a view to pushing basket work, established 

 about fifty technical schools for instruction in the craft, at public 



