We thus find in this class 1,348 small establishments, scattered both
in the villages and the suburbs of great cities, where nearly 14,000
persons make lace, knitting, embroidery, and weaving in hand-looms;
more than 100 small tanneries, more than 20,000 cartwrights, and 746
small bicycle makers. In cutlery, in the fabrication of tools and
small arms, nails and screws, and even anchors and anchor chains, we
find again many thousands of small workshops employing something
like 60,000 workmen. All that, let us remember, without counting
those workshops which employ no women or children, and therefore
are not submitted to the Factory Inspectors. As to the fabrication
of clothing, which gives work to more than 350,000 men and women,
distributed over nearly 45,000 workshops, let it be noted that
it is not small tailors that is spoken of here, but that mass of
_workshops_ which swarm in Whitechapel and the suburbs of all great
cities, and where we find from five to fifty women and men making
clothing for the tailor shops, big and small. In these shops the
measure is taken, and sometimes the cutting is made; but the clothing
is sewn in the small workshops, which are very often somewhere in
the country. Even parts of the commands of linen and clothing for
the army find their way to workshops in country places. As to the
underclothing and mercery which are sold in the great stores, they
are fabricated in small workshops, which must be counted by the
thousand.
The same is true of furniture, mattresses and cushions, hats,
artificial flowers, umbrellas, slippers, and even cheap jewelry. The
great shops, even the largest stores, mostly keep only an assortment
of samples. All is manufactured at a very low price, and _day by
day_, in thousands of small workshops.
It can thus be said that if we exclude from the class of workshops’
employees 100,000 or even 200,000 workpeople who do not work for
_industry_ properly speaking, and if we add on the other side the
nearly 500,000 workers who have not yet been tabulated by the
inspectors in 1897, we find a population of more than 1,000,000 men
and women who belong entirely to the domain of the small industry,
and so must be added to those whom we found working in the small
factories. The artisans who are working single-handed were not
included in this sketch.
We thus see that even in this country, which may be considered
as representing the highest development of the great industry,
the number of persons employed in the small trade continues to be
immense. The small industries are as much a distinctive feature of
the British industry as its few immense factories and ironworks.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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