48 THE DECENTRALISATION 



a number of employers to continue working 

 with obsolete and bad machinery ; but in 

 highly developed staple industries, such as the 

 cotton and the iron industries, the cheapest pro- 

 duce is obtained with high wages, short hours 

 and the best machinery. When the number of 

 operatives which is required for each 1000 

 spindles can vary from seventeen (in many 

 Russian factories) to three (in England), and 

 when one weaver can look either after twenty 

 Northrop machine-looms, as we see it in the 

 United States, or after two machine-looms 

 only, as it is the case in backward mills, then 

 it is evident that no reduction of wages can 

 compensate for that immense difference. Con- 

 sequently, in the best German cotton mills and 

 ironworks the wages of the worker (we know 

 it directly for the ironworks from the above- 

 mentioned inquiry of the British Iron Trade 

 Association) are not lower than they are in 

 Great Britain. All that can be said is, that 

 the worker in Germany gets more for his wages 

 than he gets in this country the paradise of the 

 middleman a paradise which it will remain so 

 long as it lives chiefly on imported food produce. 

 The chief reason for the successes of Germany 

 in the industrial field is the same as it is for the 

 United States. Both countries have only lately 

 entered the industrial phase of their development, 



