THE DECENTRALISATION OF INDUSTRIES. 29 



industry is of yesterday's date; and yet the States al- 

 ready send to old Europe constantly increasing quan- 

 tities of machinery, while this year they began even to 

 send iron. In the course of twenty years (1870-90) 

 the number of persons employed in the American 

 manufactures has more than doubled, and the value of 

 their produce has nearly trebled.* The cotton industry, 

 supplied with excellent home-made machinery.t is 

 rapidly developing, and the exports of cottons of do- 

 mestic manufacture attained last year about 2,800,000. 

 As to the yearly output of pig-iron and steel, it is already 

 in excess of the yearly output in Britain,? and the 

 organisation of that industry is also superior, as Mr. 

 Berkley pointed out in November, 1891, in his address 

 to the Institute of Civil Engineers. 



But all this has grown almost entirely within the 

 last twenty or thirty years whole industries having 

 been created entirely since 1860. H What will, then, 

 American industry be twenty years hence, aided as it 

 is by a wonderful development of technical skill, by 

 excellent schools, a scientific education which goes hand 

 in hand with technical education, and a spirit of enter- 

 prise which is unrivalled in Europe ? 



Volumes have been written about the crisis of 1886- 

 87, a crisis which, to use the words of the Parliament- 

 ary Commission, lasted since 1875, with but "a short 



* Workers employed in industries: 2,054,000 in 1870; 4,712,600 in 

 1890. Value of produce : 3,385,861,000 dollars in 1870, and 9,372,437,280 

 dollars in 1890. Yearly production per head of workers: 1648 dollars in 

 1870, and 1989 dollars in 1890. 



f Textile Recorder. 



I It was from 7,255,076 to 9,811,620 tons of pig-iron during the years 

 1890-94; 4,051,260 tons of "Bessemer and Clapp-Griffiths steel" were 

 obtained in 1890. 



" The largest output of one blast-furnace in Great Britain does not 

 exceed 750 tons in the week, while in America it had reached 2000 tons " 

 (Nature, igth Nov., 1891, p. 65). 



|| J. R. Dodge, Farm and Factory: Aids to Agriculture from other 

 Industries, New York and London, 1884, p. in. I can but highly 

 -recommend this little work to those interested in the question. 



