SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 141 



industry and the small ones, which last would thus 

 occupy about 1,500,000 workers and support 4,000,000 

 to 5,000,000 persons. A considerable number of 

 peasants who resort to small industries without aban- 

 doning agriculture would have to be added to the just- 

 mentioned items, and the additional earnings which these 

 peasants find in industry are so important that in several 

 parts of France peasant proprietorship could not be 

 maintained without the aid derived from the rural 

 industries. 



The small peasants know what they have to expect 

 the day they become factory hands in a town ; and 

 so long as they have not been dispossessed by the 

 money-lender of their lands and houses, and so long as 

 the village rights in the communal grazing grounds or 

 woods have not been lost, they cling to a combination 

 of industry with agriculture. Having, in most cases, 

 no horses to plough the land, they resort to an arrange- 

 ment which is widely spread, if not universal, among 

 small French landholders, even in purely rural districts 

 (I saw it even in Haute- Savoie). One of the peasants 

 who keeps a plough and a team of horses, tills all the 

 fields in turn. At the same time, owing to a wide 

 maintenance of the communal spirit, which I have de- 

 scribed elsewhere,* further support is found in the 

 communal shepherd, the communal wine-press, and 

 various forms of " aids " amongst the peasants. And 

 wherever the village-community spirit is maintained the 

 small industries persist, while no effort is spared to bring 

 the small plots under higher culture. 



Market-gardening and fruit culture often go hand 

 in hand with small industries. And wherever well- 

 being is found on a relatively unproductive soil, it is 

 nearly always due to a combination of the two sister 

 arts. 



* Nineteenth Century, March, 1896. 



