SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. l8l 



variety of workshops and factories. The industries will 

 always find some advantages in being grouped, to a 

 limited extent, according to the natural features of sepa- 

 rate regions. But we must recognise that now they are 

 not grouped according to those features. Historical 

 causes chiefly religious wars and national rivalries 

 have had a good deal to do with their growth and their 

 present distribution, and still more considerations as to 

 the facilities for sale and export ; that is, considerations 

 which are already losing their importance with the 

 increased facilities for transport, and will lose it still 

 more when the producers produce for themselves, 

 and not for customers far away. Why, in a rationally 

 organised society, ought London to remain a great centre 

 for the jam and preserving trade, and manufacture 

 umbrellas for nearly the whole of the United Kingdom ? 

 Why should the countless Whitechapel petty trades re- 

 main where they are, instead of being spread all over 

 the country ? There is no reason whatever why the 

 mantles which are worn by English ladies should be 

 sewn at Berlin and in Whitechapel instead of in Devon- 

 shire or Derbyshire. Why should Paris refine sugar for 

 almost the whole of France ? Why should one-half of 

 the boots and shoes used in the United States be manu- 

 factured in the 1500 workshops of Massachusetts? 

 There is absolutely no reason why these and like 

 anomalies should persist. The industries must scatter 

 themselves all over the world, and the scattering of 

 industries amidst all civilised nations will be necessarily 

 followed by a further scattering of factories over the 

 territories of each nation. 



Agriculture is so much in need of aid from those 

 who inhabit the cities, that every summer thousands 

 of men leave their slums in the towns and go to the 

 country for the season of crops. The London desti- 

 tutes go in thousands to Kent and Sussex as hay- 

 makers and hop-pickers, it being estimated that Kent 



