178 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



work probably will extend its domain in the artistic 

 finishing of many things which are now made entirely 

 in the factory, as well as in thousands of young and 

 new trades. 



But the question arises, Why should not the cottons, 

 the woollen cloth, and the silks, now woven by hand 

 in the villages, be woven by machinery in the same 

 villages, without ceasing to remain connected with work 

 in the fields? Why should not hundreds of domestic 

 industries, now carried on entirely by hand, resort to 

 labour-saving machines, as they already do in the knit- 

 ting trade and many others? There is no reason why 

 the small motor should not be of much more general 

 use than it is now, wherever there is no need to have a 

 factory; and there is no reason why the village should 

 not have its small factory wherever factory work is pre- 

 ferable, as we already see it occasionally in certain 

 villages in France. More than that. There is no 

 reason why the factory, with its motive force and ma- 

 chinery, should not belong to the community, as is already 

 the case for motive power in the above-mentioned work- 

 shops and small factories in the French portion of the 

 Jura hills. It is evident that now, under the capitalist 

 system, the factory is the curse of the village, as it comes 

 to overwork children and to make paupers out of its 

 male inhabitants ; and it is quite natural that it should 

 be opposed by all means by the workers, if they have 

 succeeded in maintaining their olden trades' organisa- 

 tions (as at Sheffield, or Solingen), or if they have not 

 yet been reduced to sheer misery (as in the Jura). But 

 under a more rational social organisation the factory 

 would find no such obstacles : it would be a boon to the 

 village. And there is already unmistakable evidence to 

 show that a move in this direction is being made in a 

 few village communities. 



The moral and physical advantages which man would 

 derive from dividing his work "between the field and the 



