16 THE INDUSTRIAL UNIT: THE VILLAGE 



illiterate, who know nothing of the world beyond the 

 village, and who are for practical purposes imprisoned 

 in the narrow circle of familiar fields. Such men have 

 not the facilities to improve their position which are 

 accessible to every boy in London and in New York. 

 In respect of the most important factors governing 

 their material life they are helpless, and competition 

 is more often a name for the action of inimical forces 

 against which they are powerless to contend than of 

 their own endeavours to ameliorate their lot. 



Competition working in these conditions will in- 

 evitably bring about results dissimilar to those which 

 follow from its operation in the conditions of English 

 or American industry ; but this dissimilarity is no 

 ground for arguing that competition does not exist. 

 In dealing with rent, prices, and the indebtedness of 

 the peasantry, I shall have the opportunity of ex- 

 amining in detail the effects of competition in the 

 rural community. What I wish to emphasize here is 

 that economic forces operate in a circumscribed area, 

 that the industrial unit upon which attention must be 

 concentrated is the village, and that each village is 

 self-sufficient and economically independent to a 

 degree which surprises those who are familiar with 

 the plexus of interests by which the different pro- 

 vinces of European countries are united together. 



