Significance of the Small Industries. 363 
with which all other forms of energy utilization are mere 
vanishing quantities) gets less and less as the size of the 
engines gets greater. So much so, that the cost of a horse 
power to the possessor of a 10-horse engine will be from 
five to ten times that of the cost of one horse power to the 
owner of a mill engine of 1000-horse power; while the 
power of still smaller engines will be proportionately more 
expensive, costing anywhere from ten to one hundred times 
as much as it ought and would if supplied by a large engine 
at a central generating station. 
It is thus obvious that such small employers cannot com- 
pete on anything like equal terms with mill-owners or large 
factories ; and that, in spite of their usually superior intelli- 
gence and their greater zeal and activity, fostered by self- 
interest, they cannot sell their commodities in the open 
market as cheaply as can the capitalist with bis cheaper 
power supply. 
Itis therefore essential for the encouragement and develop- 
ment of the small employer, who earns his own profits, and 
of the workman doing skilled labour in « workroom in his 
own house under every human incentive to industry, that 
efforts should be made to render this mechanical energy, 
which is so absolutely essential, equally at the service of 
all. And this must be done so that the power can be sup- 
plied to each isolated workman on equal terms and at the 
same rate as their at present much too favourably treated 
competitors, the capitalists, obtain it. 
If this can be done by any extension of technical possi- 
bilities, the writer sees no reason why a great part of the 
industry at present carried on in factories, with the profits 
all accruing to the capitalist, should not be transferred to 
small workshops managed each by its own independent 
workmen, on competitive equality with other modes of 
manufacture, and with all the beneficent results on the 
individual and to the nation at large which such a system 
has been shown to entail. 
That the work would be as quickly, and consequently 
cheaply, done there is no reason to doubt; and, that it would 
