132 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



or cotton trade ; and the workers perfectly well knew 

 it themselves. 



Whenever a crisis breaks out in some branch of 

 the petty trades there is no lack of writers to predict 

 that that trade is going to disappear. During the crisis 

 which I witnessed in 1877 amidst the Swiss watch- 

 makers, the impossibility of a recovery of the trade in 

 the face of the competition of machine-made watches 

 was a current topic in the press. The same was said in 

 1882 with regard to the silk trade of Lyons, and, in fact, 

 wherever a crisis has broken out in the petty trades. 

 And yet, notwithstanding the gloomy predictions, and 

 the still gloomier prospects of the workers, that form 

 of industry does not disappear. Nay, we find it endowed 

 with an astonishing vitality. It undergoes various modi- 

 fications, it adapts itself to new conditions, it struggles 

 without losing hope of better times to come. Anyhow, 

 it has not the characteristics of a decaying institution. 

 In some industries the factory is undoubtedly victorious ; 

 but there are other branches in which the petty trades 

 hold their own position. Even in the textile industries, 

 which offer so many advantages for the factory system, 

 the hand-loom still competes with the power-loom. 



As a whole, the transformation of the petty trades 

 into great industries goes on with a slowness which 

 cannot fail to astonish even those who are convinced 

 of its necessity. Nay, sometimes we may even see the 

 reverse movement going on occasionally, of course, and 

 only for a time. I cannot forget my amazement when 

 I saw at Verviers, some twenty years ago, that most of 

 the woollen cloth factories immense barracks facing the 

 streets by more than a hundred windows each were 

 silent, and their costly machinery was rusting, while 

 cloth was woven in hand-looms in the weavers' houses, 

 for the owners of those very same factories. Here we 

 have, of course, but a temporary fact, fully explained by 

 the spasmodic character of the trade and the heavy 



