358 SMALL INDUSTRIES AND 



the spirit of invention, the capacity of adapta- 

 tion, political liberty, and so on which counts 

 for more than all others. 



That all the industries find an advantage in 

 being carried on in close contact with a great 

 variety of other industries the reader has seen 

 already from numerous examples. Every in- 

 dustry requires technical surroundings. But the 

 same is also true of agriculture. 



Agriculture cannot develop without the aid of 

 machinery, and the use of a perfect machinery 

 cannot be generalised without industrial sur- 

 roundings : without mechanical workshops, 

 easily accessible to the cultivator of the soil, 

 the use of agricultural machinery is not possible. 

 The village smith would not do. If the work 

 of a thrashing-machine has to be stopped for a 

 week or more, because one of the cogs in a 

 wheel has been broken, and if to obtain a new 

 wheel one must send a special messenger to the 

 next province then the use of a thrashing- 

 machine is not possible. But this is precisely 

 what I saw in my childhood in Central Russia ; 

 and quite lately I have found the very same 

 fact mentioned in an English autobiography 

 in the first half of the nineteenth century. 

 Besides, in all the northern part of the tem- 

 perate zone, the cultivators of the soil must 

 have some sort of industrial employment dur- 



