SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 139 



sands of sweaters, some of them having their own 

 workshops, and others merely distributing work to sub- 

 sweaters who distribute it again amidst the destitute, 

 supply those palaces and bazaars with goods made in 

 the slums or in very small workshops. The commerce 

 is centralised in those bazaars not the industry. The 

 furniture palaces and bazaars are thus merely playing 

 the part which the feudal castle formerly played in 

 agriculture : they centralise the profits not the pro- 

 duction. 



In reality the extension of the petty trades, side by 

 side with the great factories, is nothing to be wondered 

 at It is an economic necessity. The absorption of 

 the small industries by bigger concerns is a fact, but 

 there is another process which is going on parallel with 

 the former, and which consists in the continuous creation 

 of new industries, usually making their start on a small 

 scale. Each new factory calls into existence a number 

 of small workshops, partly to supply its own needs and 

 partly to submit its produce to a further transformation. 

 Thus, to quote but one instance, the cotton mills have 

 created an immense demand for wooden bobbins and 

 reels, and thousands of men in the Lake District set 

 to manufacture them by hand first, and later on with 

 the aid of some plain machinery. Only quite recently, 

 after years had been spent in inventing and improving 

 the machinery, the bobbins began to be made on a larger 

 scale in factories. And even yet, as the machines are 

 very costly, a great quantity of bobbins are made in 

 small workshops, with but little aid from machines, 

 while the factories themselves are relatively small, and 

 seldom employ more than fifty operatives chiefly chil- 

 dren. As to the reels of irregular shape, they are still 

 made by hand, or partly in small machines continually 

 invented by the workers. New industries thus grow up 

 to supplant the old ones; each of them passes through 

 a preliminary stage on a small scale before reaching 



