1 66 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



workers and the wreckage of all village industries are a 

 necessary step towards a higher form of industrial or- 

 ganisation would be, not only to affirm much more than 

 one is entitled to affirm under the present imperfect 

 state of economical knowledge, but to show an 

 absolute want of comprehension of the sense of both 

 natural and economic laws. Every one, on the con- 

 trary, who has studied the question of the growth of 

 great industries on its own merits, will undoubtedly 

 agree with Thorold Rogers, who considered the suffer- 

 ings inflicted upon the labouring classes for that purpose 

 as having been of no necessity whatever, and simply 

 having been inflicted to suit the temporary interests of 

 the few by no means those of the nation.* 



Moreover, every one knows to what extent the labour 

 of children and girls is resorted to even in the most 

 prosperous factories even in this country which stands 

 foremost in industrial development. Some figures rela- 

 tive to this subject were given in the preceding chapter. 

 And this fact is not an accident which might be easily 

 removed, as Maurice Block a great admirer, of course, 

 of the factory system tries to represent itt The low 

 wages paid to children and youths are one of the neces- 

 sary elements in the cheapness of the factory produce 

 in all textiles, and, consequently, of the very competi- 

 tion of the factory with the petty trades. I have men- 

 tioned besides, whilst speaking of France, what are the 

 effects of " concentrated " industries upon village life ; 

 and in Thun's work, and in many others as well, one may 

 find enough of ghastly instances of what are the effects 

 of accumulations of girls in the factories. To idealise 

 the modern factory, in order to depreciate the so-called 

 " mediaeval " forms of the small industries, is conse- 

 quently to say the least as unreasonable as to idealise 



* The Economic Interpretation of History. 



t Les Pt -ogres de la Science economique depuis Adam Smith, Paris 

 1890, t. i., pp. 460, 461. 



