17O FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



defeat of a number of small trades, artisan work and 

 domestic industries came through their being incapable 

 of organising the sale of their produce not from the 

 -production itself. The same thing recurs at every page 

 of economical history. The incapacity of organising the 

 sale, without being enslaved by the merchant, was the 

 leading feature of the mediaeval cities, which gradually 

 fell under the economical and political yoke of the 

 Guild-Merchant, simply because they were not able to 

 maintain the sale of their manufactures by the com- 

 munity as a whole, or to organise the sale of a new 

 produce in the interest of the community. When the 

 markets for such commodities came to be Asia on the 

 one side and the New World on the other side, such was 

 fatally the case. Even nowadays, when we see the 

 co-operative societies beginning to succeed in their pro- 

 ductive workshops, while twenty years ago they invari- 

 ably failed in their capacity of producers, we may con- 

 clude that the cause of their previous failures was not in 

 their incapacity of properly and economically organising 

 production, but in their inability of acting as sellers and 

 exporters of the produce they had fabricated. Their 

 present successes, on the contrary, are fully accounted for 

 by the network of distributive societies which they have 

 at their command. The sale has been simplified and 

 production has been rendered possible by first organising 

 the market. 



Such are a few conclusions which may be drawn from 

 a study of the small industries in Germany and else- 

 where. And it may be safely said, with regard to 

 Germany, that if measures are not taken for driving 

 the peasants from the land on the same scale as they 

 have been taken in this country; if, on the contrary, 

 the numbers of small landholders multiply, they neces- 

 sarily will turn to various small trades, in addition to 

 agriculture, as they have done, and are doing in France. 

 Every step that may be taken, either for awakening 



