318 SMALL INDUSTRIES ATS T D 



The Galerie du travail at the Paris exhibitions 

 is always a most remarkable sight. One can 

 appreciate in it both the variety of the small 

 industries which are carried on in French 

 towns and the skill and inventing powers of the 

 workers. And the question necessarily arises : 

 Must all this skill, all this intelligence, be swept 

 away by the factory, instead of becoming a 

 new fertile source of progress under a better 

 organisation of production ? must all this 

 independence and inventiveness of the worker 

 disappear before the factory levelling ? and, 

 if it must, would such a transformation be a 

 progress, as so many economists who have 

 only studied figures and not human beings 

 are ready to maintain ? 



At anyrate, it is quite certain that even if the 

 absorption of the French petty trades by the 

 big factories were possible which seems ex- 

 tremely doubtful the absorption would not be 

 accomplished so soon as that. The small in- 

 dustry of Paris fights hard for its maintenance, 

 and it shows its vitality by the numberless 

 machine-tools which are continually invented by 

 the workers for improving and cheapening the 

 produce. 



The numbers of motors which were exhibited 

 at the last exhibitions in the Galerie du travail 

 bear a testimony to the fact that a cheap motor, 



