262 * SMALL INDUSTRIES AND 



spinning and weaving machinery, seeing that 

 they had no more orders coming, after they 

 had supplied this machinery to the great 

 factories, began to offer it at a reduced price 

 and on credit to the small weavers. These 

 last associated three, five, or more of them 

 to buy the machinery, and this is why we 

 have now in Lancashire quite a region where a 

 great number of small cotton mills continue to 

 exist till nowadays, without there being any 

 reason to foresee their disappearance. At times 

 they are even quite prosperous. 



On the other side, when we examine the 

 various branches of textile industry (cotton, 

 wool, silk, jute, etc.), we see that if the great 

 factories dominate in the spinning and weav- 

 ing of cotton, worsted and flax, as well as in 

 the spinning of silk (the result being that the 

 average for these branches reaches 150 workers 

 per factory for cotton, and 267 for the spinning 

 of flax), all other textile industries belong to the 

 domain of the middle-sized and the small in- 

 dustry. In other words, in the manufacture of 

 woollens, shoddy, hemp, hair, machine-made 

 lace, and mechanical knitting, as also in the 

 weaving of silks, there are, of course, large 

 factories ; but the majority of these estab- 

 lishments belong to the domain of the small 



