1 64 .FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



trades and the domestic industries are evidently doomed 

 to remain most unproductive. However, it is pleasant 

 to see that a considerable amount of most conscientious 

 work has been done for the investigation of the petty 

 trades in Germany ; and, by the side of such mono- 

 graphs, from which nothing can be learned but that the 

 petty trades' workers are in a miserable condition, and 

 nothing whatever can be gathered to explain why these 

 workers prefer their conditions to those of factory hands 

 there is no lack of such detailed monographs (such as 

 those of Thun, Emil Sax, Paul Voigt on the Berlin 

 cabinet-makers, etc.), in which one sees the whole of the 

 life of these classes of workers, the difficulties which they 

 have to cope with, and the technical conditions of the 

 trade, and finds all the elements for an independent 

 judgment upon the matter. 



It is evident that a number of petty trades are already 

 now doomed to disappear ; but there are others, on the 

 contrary, which are endowed with a great vitality, and 

 all chances are in favour of their continuing to exist* 

 and to take a further development for many years to 

 come. In the fabrication of such textiles as are woven 

 by millions of yards, and can be best produced with the 

 aid of a complicated machinery, the competition of the 

 hand-loom against the power-loom is evidently nothing 

 but a survival, which may be maintained for some time 

 by certain local conditions, but finally must die away. 

 The same is true with regard to many branches of the 

 iron industries, hardware fabrication, pottery, and so on. 

 But wherever the direct intervention of taste and in- 

 ventiveness are required, wherever new patterns of goods 

 requiring a continual renewal of machinery and tools 

 must continually be introduced in order to feed the 

 demand, as is the case with all fancy textiles, even 

 though they be fabricated to supply the millions ; wher- 

 ever a great variety of goods and the uninterrupted 

 invention of new ones goes on, as is the case in the toy 



