Science in Public Affairs 



in the long run to subserve the economic interests 

 of the world of consumers. 



It must not, however, be supposed that the 

 applied sciences of mechanics, chemistry, &c., 

 occupy or are destined to occupy the greater 

 part of the field of the wealth-producing energies 

 of man. The notion that all the manufactures 

 are being absorbed by the factory system and are 

 passing into the form of great industries, that all 

 the workers will gradually become employees of 

 huge joint-stock companies, employing the most 

 highly-evolved machinery and the most scientific 

 organisation, is a false generalisation which finds 

 no support from the current statistics of occupa- 

 tions. We may not accept fully the analysis of 

 modern tendencies presented by Kropotkin in his 

 volume, " Fields, Factories, and Workshops," in 

 which it is argued that centrifugal forces already 

 so far possess the upper hand that, not only in 

 agriculture but in most branches of manufacture, 

 the small business, intelligently ordered and com- 

 bining personal industry with the utilisation of 

 scientific resources, can outstrip great industry 

 alike in productivity and profit. But when, turn- 

 ing our eyes away from the dramatic rise of the 

 gigantic trusts and companies, we survey more 

 calmly the industrial field, we perceive not merely 

 the survival of large clusters of small businesses 

 in the older industries, but the growth of new 

 industries on a basis of small production. Those 

 who contemptuously dismiss the small or domestic 

 workshop as a morbid and obsolescent form, kept 



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