258 SMALL INDUSTRIES AND 



velopment of small factories. The 2,755,460 

 workpeople who are employed in all the non- 

 textile branches, with the exception of mining, 

 are scattered in 79,059 factories, each of which has 

 only an average of thirty-five workers. More- 

 over, the Factory Inspectors had on their lists 

 676,776 workpeople employed in 88,814 work- 

 shops (without mechanical power), which makes 

 an average of eight persons only per workshop. 

 These last figures are, however, as we saw, below 

 the real ones, as another sixty thousand work- 

 shops occupying half a million more workpeople 

 were not yet tabulated. 



Such averages as ninety-three and thirty-five 

 workpeople per factory, and eight per workshop, 

 distributed over 178,756 industrial establish- 

 ments, destroy already the legend according to 

 which the big factories have already absorbed 

 most of the small ones. The figures show, on 

 the contrary, what an immense number of small 

 factories and workshops resist the absorption by 

 the big factories, and how they multiply by the 

 side of the great industry in various branches, 

 especially those of recent origin. 



If we had for the United Kingdom full 

 statistics, giving lists of all the factories, with 

 the number of workpeople employed in each 

 of them, as we have for France and Germany 

 (see below), it would have been easy to find the 



