APPENDIX. 465 



petty trades represent a very important factor of the 

 industrial life. Economists have been too hasty in 

 celebrating their death. And this conclusion becomes 

 still more apparent when one analyses the different 

 industries separately, taking advantage of the tables 

 given in Re'sultats Statistiques. A very important fact 

 appears from this analysis namely, that there are 

 only three branches of industry in which one can speak 

 of a strong " concentration " the mines, metallurgy, 

 and the State's industries, to which one may add the 

 textiles and ironmongery, but always remembering that 

 in these two branches immense numbers of small fac- 

 tories continue to prosper by the side of the great ones. 



In all other branches the small trades are dominant, 

 to such an extent that more than 95 per cent, of the 

 employers employ less than fifty workmen each. In the 

 quarries, in all branches of the alimentation, in the 

 book trade, clothing, leather, wood, metallic goods, 

 and even the brick-works, china and glass works, we 

 hardly find one or two factories out of each hundred 

 employing more than fifty workmen. 



The three industries that make an exception to this 

 rule are, we have said, metallurgy, the great works of 

 the State, and the mines. In metallurgy two-thirds 

 of the works have more than fifty men each, and it is 

 here that we find some twenty great works employing 

 each of them more than one thousand men. The works 

 of the State, which include the great shipbuilding 

 yards, are evidently in the same case. They contain 

 thirty-four establishments, having more than 500 men 

 each, and fourteen employing more than 1,000. And 

 finally, in the mines one hardly would believe that 

 more than one-half of all establishments employ less 

 than fifty workmen each ; but 15 per cent, of them 

 have more than 500 workmen ; forty-one mines are 



