INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 243 



and while a thorough change in the present 

 relations between labour and capital is becoming 

 an imperious necessity, a thorough remodelling 

 of the whole of our industrial organisation has also 

 become unavoidable. The industrial nations are 

 bound to revert to agriculture, they are com- 

 pelled to find out the best means of combining it 

 with industry, and they must do so without loss 

 of time. 



To examine the special question as to the 

 possibility of such a combination is the aim of the 

 following pages. Is it possible, from a technical 

 point of view ? Is it desirable ? Are there, in 

 our present industrial life, such features as might 

 lead us to presume that a change in the above 

 direction would find the necessary elements for 

 its accomplishment ? Such are the questions 

 which rise before the mind. And to answer them, 

 there is, I suppose, no better means, than to study 

 that immense but overlooked and underrated 

 branch of industries which are described under 

 the names of rural industries, domestic trades, 

 and petty trades : to study them, not in the 

 works of the economists who are too much 

 inclined to consider them as obsolete types 

 of industry, but in their life itself, in their 

 struggles, their failures and achievements. 



The variety of forms of organisation which is 



