SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 127 



soon forgot the bonds which formerly attached them to 

 the soil. And we, in our admiration of the prodigies 

 achieved under the new factory system, overlooked the 

 advantages of the old system under which the tiller 

 of the soil was an industrial worker at the same time. 

 We doomed to disappearance all those branches of in- 

 dustry which formerly used to prosper in the villages ; 

 we condemned as industry all that was not a big 

 factory. 



True, the results were grand as regards the increase 

 of the productive powers of man. But they proved 

 terrible as regards the millions of human beings who 

 were plunged into misery and had to rely upon precarious 

 means of living in our cities. Moreover, the system, as 

 a whole, brought about those abnormal conditions which 

 I have endeavoured to sketch in the two first chapters. 

 We are thus driven into a corner ; and while a thorough 

 change in the present relations between labour and 

 capital is becoming an imperious necessity, a thorough 

 remodelling of the whole of our industrial organisation 

 iias also become unavoidable. The industrial nations 

 are bound to revert to agriculture, they are compelled 

 to find out the best means of combining it with industry, 

 and they must do so without loss of time. 



To examine the special question as to the possibility 

 of such a combination is the aim of the following pages. 

 Is it possible, from a technical point of view ? Is it 

 desirable ? Are there, in our present industrial life, such 

 features as might lead us to presume that a change in 

 the above direction would find the necessary elements 

 for its accomplishment? Such are the questions which 

 rise before the mind. And to answer them, there is, 

 I suppose, no better means than to study that immense 

 but overlooked and underrated branch of industries 

 which are described under the names of rural industries, 

 domestic trades, and petty trades : to study them, not in 

 the works of the economists who are too much inclined 



