SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 179 



workshop are self-evident. But the difficulty is, we are 

 told, in the necessary centralisation of the modern in- 

 dustries. In industry, as well as in politics, centralisation 

 has so many admirers! But in both spheres the ideal 

 of the centralisers badly needs revision. In fact, if we 

 analyse the modern industries, we soon discover that 

 for some of them the co-operation of hundreds, or even 

 thousands, of workers gathered at the same spot is really 

 necessary. The great iron works and mining enter- 

 prises decidedly belong to that category; oceanic 

 steamers cannot be built in village factories. But very 

 many of our big factories are nothing else but agglomera- 

 tions under a common management, of several distinct 

 industries ; while others are mere agglomerations of 

 hundreds of copies of the very same machine ; such are 

 most of our gigantic spinning and weaving establish- 

 ments. The manufacture being a strictly private enter- 

 prise, its owners find it advantageous to have all the 

 branches of a given industry under their own manage- 

 ment; they thus cumulate the profits of the successive 

 transformations of the raw material. And when several 

 thousand power-looms are combined in one factory, the 

 owner finds his advantage in being able to hold the 

 command of the market But from a technical point 

 of view the advantages of such an accumulation are 

 trifling and often doubtful. Even so centralised an 

 industry as that of the cottons does not suffer at all from 

 the division of production of one given sort of goods 

 at its different stages between several separate factories : 

 we see it at Manchester and its neighbouring towns. 

 As to the petty trades, no inconvenience is experienced 

 from a still greater subdivision between the workshops 

 in the watch trade and very many others. 



We often hear that one horse-power costs so much 

 in a small engine, and so much less in an engine ten 

 times more powerful ; that the pound of cotton yarn 

 costs much less when the factory doubles the number of 



