SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 177 



Conclusions. 



The facts which we have briefly reviewed show, to 

 some extent, the benefits which could be derived from a 

 combination of agriculture with industry, if the latter 

 could come to the village, not in its present shape of 

 a capitalist factory, but in the shape of a socially or- 

 ganised industrial production, with the full aid of 

 machinery and technical knowledge. In fact, the most 

 prominent feature of the petty trades is that a relative 

 well-being is found only where they are combined with 

 agriculture : where the workers have remained in pos- 

 session of the soil and continue to cultivate it Even 

 amidst the weavers of France or Moscow, who have to 

 reckon with the competition of the factory, relative 

 well-being prevails so long as they are not compelled \ 

 to part with the soil On the contrary, as soon as high \ 

 taxation or the impoverishment during a crisis has com- 

 pelled the domestic worker to abandon his last plot of / 

 land to the usurer, misery creeps into his house. The / 

 sweater becomes all-powerful, frightful overwork is re- / 

 sorted to, and the whole trade often falls into decay. 



Such facts, as well as the pronounced tendency of 

 the factories towards migrating to the villages, are very 

 suggestive. Of course, it would be a great mistake to 

 imagine that industry ought to return to its hand-work 

 stage in order to be combined with agriculture. When- 

 ever a saving of human labour can be obtained by means 

 of a machine, the machine is welcome and will be re- 

 sorted to, and there is hardly one single branch of industry 

 into which machinery work could not be introduced with 

 great advantage, at least at some of the stages of the 

 fabrication. In the present chaotic state of industry, 

 nails and cheap pen-knives can be made by hand, and 

 plain cottons be woven in the hand-loom ; but such an 

 anomaly will not last. The machine will supersede 

 hand-work in the manufacture of plain goods, while hand- 



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