Fields, Factories and Workshops is a comprehensive examination of industrial and agricultural organisation, written by Peter Kropotkin during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The work draws upon statistical data, personal observations, and comparative international analysis to challenge prevailing assumptions about industrial concentration and agricultural decline. The book spans multiple editions, with the author incorporating updated figures and revisiting earlier predictions throughout its development.
The work is structured as a sustained argument about the relationship between industry, agriculture, and human labour. Kropotkin draws on evidence from across Europe, North America, and Asia, including detailed statistical tables, reports from government commissions, personal travel observations, and case studies of specific regions and industries. The book moves between macro-level analysis of international trade patterns and micro-level examinations of particular villages, workshops, and farming practices.
The author’s method combines economic analysis with practical observation. He cites official statistics from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, while also reporting on his own travels through agricultural districts and industrial regions. The work is notable for its detailed attention to specific localities—from the potato fields of Jersey to the watch-making villages of the French Jura—and for its attempt to synthesise these local examples into broader conclusions about economic organisation.
Context
The book emerges from a period of intense economic transformation and debate in Europe and North America. The late nineteenth century witnessed the consolidation of large-scale factory production, the expansion of international trade, and growing concerns about agricultural decline in industrialised nations. Britain, the first industrial power, faced increasing competition from Germany, the United States, and newly industrialising nations such as Russia and Japan. Agricultural depression, falling prices, and rural depopulation preoccupied policymakers and economists across Western Europe.
Kropotkin writes against the backdrop of several interconnected debates. The “crisis of 1886-1887” and subsequent economic fluctuations raised questions about the sustainability of industrial capitalism and the causes of periodic depressions. Parliamentary commissions in Britain investigated trade depression, the sweating system, and the condition of the poor. Meanwhile, the rise of protectionist tariffs and the expansion of colonial markets reshaped international trade patterns.
The author also engages with contemporary scientific and agricultural developments. The work of chemists like Liebig had transformed understanding of soil fertility, while experimental stations in America and Europe were developing new methods of intensive cultivation. The spread of technical education, the application of electricity to industry, and innovations in transportation and communication all feature in Kropotkin’s analysis of economic change.
The book reflects its author’s broader political commitments. Kropotkin, a prominent anarchist thinker, approaches economic questions from a perspective critical of both capitalist concentration and state centralisation. His analysis of small industries and intensive agriculture connects to wider arguments about decentralisation, mutual aid, and the possibilities of a society organised around human needs rather than profit. Yet the work itself is primarily economic and empirical in character, grounded in statistical evidence and practical observation rather than abstract theory.
Structure of the Book
The book is organised into nine chapters that develop its argument through successive stages. The opening chapters address the decentralisation of industries, examining how manufacturing has spread from its original centres in north-west Europe to new regions across the globe. The author traces this movement eastward and southward, documenting the rise of industry in Germany, Russia, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and beyond, as well as the emergence of the United States as a major manufacturing power.
The first chapter establishes the central phenomenon: industrial production, having originated in Britain, has spread to younger countries that begin where their predecessors arrived only after decades of experimentation. The author documents this process through detailed statistics on Russian industrial growth, showing how production per worker has trebled through improved machinery, and how domestic industries now occupy millions of peasants. The chapter also examines the implications of this decentralisation for Britain’s industrial supremacy, arguing that the monopoly of first comers has ceased to exist.
The second chapter continues this analysis, examining the growth of industry in Japan, China, and the United States, and considering the economic crises that have accompanied these changes. The author refutes the notion of over-production, arguing that apparent surpluses reflect inadequate purchasing power among workers rather than genuine excess. He also analyses the periodicity of trade fluctuations, showing that British exports have not permanently declined but have fluctuated around a relatively stable level.
The third, fourth, and fifth chapters turn to agriculture, examining what the author terms “the possibilities of agriculture.” These chapters document the decline of British agriculture, showing that the land has gone down “in all directions” rather than merely shifting from wheat to meat production. The author then presents extensive evidence of intensive cultivation methods, drawing on examples from France, Jersey, Belgium, and America. He describes the achievements of French market-gardeners, the potato culture of Jersey, the fruit-growing of Montreuil and the Rhône Valley, and the institutional supports for American agriculture.
The sixth and seventh chapters examine small industries and industrial villages, documenting the persistence and vitality of petty trades alongside large factories. Drawing on statistical data from Britain and detailed case studies from France and Germany, the author shows that small industries have not disappeared as predicted but continue to adapt, innovate, and in some cases thrive. He examines the organisation of these trades, their relationship to agriculture, and their capacity for technical development.
The eighth chapter addresses the relationship between brain work and manual work, arguing against the division between intellectual and manual labour. The final chapter presents the author’s conclusions, synthesising the evidence for decentralisation, intensive agriculture, and the combination of industry with agriculture.
Main Arguments
The book advances several interconnected arguments about the organisation of industry and agriculture. The central claim is that industrial production is decentralising rather than concentrating. The author demonstrates that manufacturing, which originated in north-west Europe, has spread eastward and southward, with younger countries beginning where their predecessors arrived only after decades of experimentation. Germany begins where Manchester arrived after a century of experiments; Russia begins where Manchester and Saxony have reached. This process continues regardless of protective duties, which may help birth new industries but always at the expense of other growing industries and checking improvement of existing ones.
The author argues that the monopoly of first comers in industry has ceased to exist. The United States has grown into a terrible competitor, and as technical education spreads, manufactures grow at an American speed. Japan, predicted in the first edition to develop its own shipbuilding and iron industries, has fulfilled that prediction entirely, now possessing over a thousand iron and machine works and building its own warships. China, though still slumbering, will likely succeed even more than Japan once it begins manufacturing with European machinery.
A related argument concerns the nature of economic crises. The author refutes the notion of over-production, arguing that the word is “utterly devoid of sense” unless it means that those in need lack the means to buy. No one would say there is too much furniture in crippled cottages, too many bedsteads in workmen’s dwellings, or too much cloth on shoulders. Over-production means merely a want of purchasing powers among workers. Low profits, which characterised the crisis period, lead employers to reduce wages, which in turn reduces worker consumption, further reducing profits in a downward spiral.
The book argues that British agriculture has declined, not merely changed direction. Contrary to claims that agriculture shifted from wheat to meat and milk production, the author shows that green crops also declined, livestock did not increase correspondingly, and land left culture at a perilous rate. The cause is abandonment: nearly half the agricultural labourers have left since 1861, and the nation “does not work on her soil; she is prevented from doing so.”
Against this decline, the author presents evidence for the possibilities of intensive agriculture. He argues that soil fertility can be created through human labour and knowledge, citing the achievements of French market-gardeners who make soil itself and crop fifty to one hundred tons of vegetables per acre. He shows that meat production can be vastly increased through fodder crops, with examples of cattle-growers keeping four cattle per acre through beet and carrot cultivation. The Jersey potato culture, producing ten to eleven tons per acre against a national average of six, demonstrates what intensive methods can achieve.
The author argues that small industries have not disappeared and are not doomed. Statistical evidence from Britain shows that nearly one-fourth of all industrial workers are employed in small workshops. The prediction of small industries’ disappearance repeats a hasty early-nineteenth-century generalisation from cotton, which censuses have upset. Small industries show astonishing vitality, adapting to new conditions, adopting mechanical motors, and creating new branches as old ones decline. New industries pass through a small-scale preliminary stage, and the more inventive a nation, the more budding industries it will have.
The book also argues for the combination of industry with agriculture. The author presents numerous examples of regions where peasants combine farming with industrial work—the cutlery-makers of Haute Marne who own two to three acres each, the watch-makers of the French Jura who own houses, gardens, and bits of fields, the comb-makers of Oyonnax who work at home with electric power. This combination, the author suggests, offers a more humane and sustainable form of economic organisation than the concentration of workers in factories and cities.
Key Concepts
The book develops several distinctive concepts that organise its analysis. The “decentralisation of industries” refers to the spread of manufacturing from its original centres to new regions, a process the author documents across Europe, North America, and Asia. This concept challenges the assumption that industrial production necessarily concentrates in particular regions or nations.
“Intensive agriculture” describes methods of cultivation that maximise output per acre through careful soil management, crop rotation, and the application of knowledge and labour. The author contrasts this with “extensive” agriculture, which relies on large land areas with relatively low inputs per acre. The French culture maraîchère, or market-gardening, exemplifies intensive methods: gardeners create soil from decaying organic matter, treat each plant individually, and achieve six to nine crops per year from a single plot.
The “making of soil” is a recurring motif. The author emphasises that fertile soil is not a natural given but a product of human labour and knowledge. Paris maraîchers make soil from old forcing beds, and their rental contracts stipulate that they may carry away their soil when leaving. Jersey peasants make fertility partly from sea-weeds and partly from artificial manure fabricated from refuse. “In the hands of man there are no unfertile soils”—the most fertile soils are those made by human hands.
The “sweating system” describes the organisation of production through middlemen who distribute work to domestic labourers, often under exploitative conditions. The author shows how large commercial establishments, including the great bazaars and clothing palaces, are merely sample exhibitions supplied by thousands of sweaters and sub-sweaters working in slums. Commerce is centralised in bazaars, not industry; they play the feudal castle’s role, centralising profits rather than production.
“Petty trades” refers to small-scale industries carried on in workshops or homes, often combined with agriculture. The author documents their persistence and vitality across Europe, showing that they adapt to new conditions, adopt new technologies, and create new branches of production. The concept challenges the assumption that small industries are doomed to disappear before factory production.
The “combination of industry with agriculture” describes the integration of manufacturing with farming, whether through peasants pursuing industrial by-occupations or through workers maintaining gardens and fields. The author presents this combination as both an existing reality and a desirable alternative to the concentration of population in industrial cities.
“Collective intelligence” or “collective experience” describes the accumulation of knowledge and technique through the shared practice of a community. The author attributes the successes of Jersey potato culture, Evesham fruit-growing, and Nogent cutlery not to individual scientists or inventors but to the collective experience of the district. This concept connects to the author’s broader understanding of social development as a cooperative process.
Themes
The book develops several recurring themes that give it coherence and depth. The relationship between knowledge and production runs throughout the work. The author repeatedly shows that economic success depends on the application of intelligence to practical problems—whether in the experimental stations of American agriculture, the collective experience of Jersey potato growers, or the technical inventiveness of small industries. He argues against the division between brain work and manual work, suggesting that the separation of intellectual from manual labour is both artificial and harmful.
The theme of human capacity to transform natural conditions appears in the author’s treatment of soil, climate, and agriculture. The Paris gardener defies soil and climate, creating a Southern garden through walls that reflect light, frames that protect from wind, and careful cultivation. The author quotes the French peasant saying “tel seigneur, telle terre”—like master, like land—to suggest that the condition of the soil reflects the quality of its cultivation. This theme connects to a broader optimism about human possibilities when knowledge and labour are properly applied.
The critique of economic orthodoxy runs through the book. The author challenges the assumption that industrial concentration is inevitable, that small industries are doomed, that over-production explains economic crises, and that agricultural decline reflects natural limits. He argues that these assumptions often serve to justify unnecessary suffering, as when social democrats welcome the pauperisation of petty trade workers as a “necessary” step toward capitalist centralisation. Thorold Rogers considered these sufferings “of no necessity whatever.”
The theme of international competition and national development appears in the author’s analysis of industrial decentralisation. He shows how younger countries adopt the latest techniques, how capital crosses frontiers, and how the monopoly of first comers has ceased to exist. This analysis carries implications for Britain’s position: the nation that led the industrial revolution must find new ways in a world where others have caught up.
The relationship between town and country, industry and agriculture, is a persistent concern. The author documents the “compulsory exodus from the villages” that has concentrated population in cities, and he presents numerous examples of regions where industry and agriculture are successfully combined. He suggests that the separation of these activities is neither necessary nor desirable, and that their combination offers a more humane form of economic organisation.
The theme of human welfare and the purpose of economic activity underlies the book’s analysis. The author measures economic arrangements not only by their productivity but by their effects on human life. He criticises the Paris gardener who toils from three in the morning to late at night, knowing no leisure, and suggests that the ambition should be that he produce more with less labour and enjoy human life. He contrasts the “dreadful misery” of sweated textile workers with the conditions of Swiss watch-makers, which were “out of all comparison superior” to factory hands. The book’s economic analysis is consistently oriented toward the question of how production can serve human needs.
The Author’s Conclusions
The book concludes that the tendencies it has documented—the decentralisation of industries, the possibilities of intensive agriculture, the vitality of small industries, and the combination of industry with agriculture—point toward a fundamental reorganisation of economic life. The author argues that the concentration of industry in large factories and the separation of industry from agriculture are not inevitable outcomes of economic development but particular historical arrangements that can be changed.
The author concludes that the monopoly of first comers in industry has ceased to exist and that new ways must be looked for. The spread of manufacturing to younger countries, the growth of American competition, and the industrialisation of Japan and potentially China mean that no nation can rely on its early lead. The response to this situation must involve the full development of human capacities—technical education, scientific knowledge, and the intelligent application of labour to both industry and agriculture.
The possibilities of agriculture, the author argues, are far greater than commonly supposed. Through intensive methods, soil can be made fertile, crops can be multiplied, and nations can feed themselves on relatively small areas. The Jersey example shows an island of less than thirty thousand acres nourishing about two inhabitants per acre and exporting produce worth fifty pounds per acre of its aggregate surface. The French market-gardeners show that all food for millions of inhabitants could be grown on their own territory using existing methods. The author concludes that the decline of agriculture reflects not natural limits but social arrangements that starve the land of human labour.
Small industries, the author concludes, are not doomed but show “astonishing vitality.” They adapt to new conditions, adopt new technologies, and create new branches of production. The prediction of their disappearance repeats a hasty generalisation from the cotton industry that censuses have disproved. The author argues that the combination of industry with agriculture, as practised in many regions of Europe, offers a more humane and sustainable form of economic organisation than the concentration of workers in factories and cities.
The book concludes with a vision of decentralised production, intensive agriculture, and the combination of intellectual with manual labour. The author argues that the division between brain work and manual work is artificial and harmful, and that the full development of human capacities requires their integration. The possibilities of modern science and technology, applied through collective intelligence and mutual support, could create a society in which all can enjoy both the fruits of industry and the satisfactions of agricultural life. The book ends on a note of cautious optimism, suggesting that the tendencies it has documented point toward a future in which production is organised for human needs rather than for profit, and in which the separation of town and country, industry and agriculture, brain work and manual work, is overcome.
Significance
The book occupies an important place in the history of economic and social thought, offering a distinctive perspective on the industrial transformation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its significance lies partly in its empirical documentation of tendencies that ran counter to prevailing assumptions. At a time when orthodox economists and socialists alike assumed the inevitable concentration of industry, the author provided statistical evidence for the persistence and vitality of small industries. At a time when agricultural decline was widely attributed to natural limits, he documented the achievements of intensive cultivation.
The book’s significance also lies in its methodological approach. The author combines statistical analysis with personal observation, drawing on official reports, parliamentary commissions, and his own travels through agricultural and industrial regions. His detailed case studies—of Jersey potato culture, French market-gardening, the watch-making villages of the Jura, the cutlery trades of Sheffield and Nogent—provide a rich empirical foundation for his arguments. The book demonstrates the value of close attention to particular localities and practices for understanding broader economic processes.
The work has been influential in several intellectual traditions. Its analysis of decentralisation and small-scale production has informed debates about economic organisation and the possibilities of alternatives to large-scale capitalism. Its documentation of intensive agriculture has contributed to discussions of food production and land use. Its argument for the combination of industry with agriculture has resonated with later movements for decentralisation, localism, and sustainable development.
The book’s significance also lies in its challenge to the division between intellectual and manual labour. The author argues that this division is artificial and harmful, and that the full development of human capacities requires their integration. This argument connects to broader debates about education, work, and human flourishing that remain relevant today.
The work stands as a document of its time, reflecting the concerns and possibilities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet its central questions—about the organisation of production, the relationship between industry and agriculture, the possibilities of intensive cultivation, and the human purposes of economic activity—remain pertinent. The book offers both a historical record of economic transformation and a set of arguments that continue to inform debates about how societies might organise their economic life.
Detailed Section-by-Section Summary
The March of Industry Eastward
The industrial revolution, having established itself in the north-west of Europe, is now on a relentless march to the east and south-east. Germany does not have to repeat the century of experiments that Manchester endured; it begins where Manchester has only just arrived. Russia, in turn, begins where Manchester and Saxony have already reached. This younger industrial world is not merely copying; it is implanting the very latest mechanical and chemical improvements, and in doing so, it is emancipating itself from dependence on Western Europe. Russia now manufactures goods it once imported from Britain or Germany. Protective duties may help to birth new industries, but they always do so at the expense of other growing industries and by checking the improvement of existing ones. Decentralisation of industry proceeds with or without, and even notwithstanding, these duties. Austria, Hungary, and Italy are developing home industries; Spain and Servia are joining them; and India, Brazil, and Mexico, supported by European capital, are starting their own. A terrible competitor has grown in the United States, and as technical education spreads, its manufactures grow at an American speed, threatening to invade neutral markets. The monopoly of the first comers has ceased to exist, and new ways must be looked for.
The march east is illustrated by Russian figures. In 1861, the year of serf emancipation, Russia and Poland had 14,060 manufactories producing £36,000,000. Twenty years later, 35,160 establishments produced £131,000,000, and by 1894, production reached £180,000,000. While the number of workmen did not double, production per workman more than trebled, from less than £70 per annum in 1861 to £219, chiefly due to improved machinery. In cottons, production increased three times in the eighteen years before 1879, while workers rose only 25 per cent. From 1880 to 1889, returns more than doubled, and from 1890 to 1900, they doubled again, with spindles increasing from 3,457,000 to 8,306,000 by 1910. The home market is almost unlimited with 165,000,000 inhabitants, and some cottons are even exported to Persia and Central Asia. The finest yarns are still imported, but Lancashire manufacturers are planting mills in Russia, proving that capital is international and crosses frontiers. In woollens, Russia was backward, but mills built by English, German, and Belgian owners now mean four-fifths of the wool is combed and spun at home. In machinery, Russia no longer imports railway plant, and agricultural machinery from the Southern Urals competes with American and English. Domestic industries occupy over 7,500,000 peasants, with production exceeding £180,000,000 per annum. Imports of manufactured goods into Russia are now insignificant, and the decline is not mainly due to protective duties but to the growth of home industries. Duties attracted German and English manufacturers to Poland and Russia; Lodz, the Manchester of Poland, is quite a German city.
The Rise of New Competitors
The author’s prediction that Japan would not remain a tributary to Europe for iron goods has been entirely fulfilled. Japan now has over a thousand iron and machine works and builds its own warships. China still slumbers, but the author is persuaded that once it begins manufacturing with European machinery, it will succeed on a far greater scale than Japan. The United States cannot be accused of cheap labour. Its great industry is of yesterday’s date, yet it already sends increasing quantities of machinery to old Europe. In twenty years, persons employed in American manufactures more than doubled, and the value of produce nearly trebled. Its cotton industry, with excellent home-made machinery, developed rapidly, and its yearly pig-iron and steel output already exceeds Britain’s. All this grew almost entirely within the last thirty or forty years, and the author asks what American industry will be in twenty years, aided by technical skill and unrivalled enterprise.
The Crisis of Low Profits
Volumes were written on the crisis of 1886-1887, which, per the Parliamentary Commission, had lasted since 1875. All agreed on one conclusion: the manufacturing countries do not find such customers as would enable them to realise high profits. Profits being the basis of capitalist industry, low profits explain all ulterior consequences. Low profits induce employers to reduce wages, which in turn reduces worker consumption, which further reduces profits. A country manufacturing for export is like Switzerland living on tourist profits: a bad season has effects like a bad crop. In 1883-1884 there was great cheapness of wheat and goods, yet 1886 saw a terrible crisis. People said over-production, but the word is utterly devoid of sense unless it means those in need lack the means to buy. No one would say there is too much furniture in crippled cottages or too much cloth on shoulders. Over-production merely means a want of purchasing powers among workers.
The Fluctuations of British Trade
After bad years, a revival of international trade took place, and British exports rose by nearly 24 per cent. in four years, leading to claims that foreign competition was not alarming. Considering the money value of exports for 1876-1895, there is no permanent decline, only fluctuations. Mr. Giffen could make light of German competition by showing exports had not decreased. But comparing quantities with money values, even he acknowledged that prices of 1883 were so low versus 1873 that to reach the same money value, the U.K. would have to export four pieces of cotton instead of three, and eight or ten tons of metallic goods instead of six.
The Decline of British Agriculture
The claim that British agriculture merely changed direction from wheat to meat is rebutted by figures showing green crops also declined. Potatoes were down 280,000 acres, and turnips down 180,000 acres. Only permanent pasture and rotation grass increased, but livestock did not rise correspondingly. For Great Britain alone, the corn-crop area fell from 8,392,006 acres in 1885 to 7,400,227 in 1895, compelling another 5,000,000 people to seek food abroad. Green crops fell by nearly 500,000 acres, and the total rotation-crop land lost another 2,500,000 acres in twenty-six years, going to permanent pasture, which hardly suffices to feed one cow on each three acres. Livestock did not increase correspondingly, and increased meat consumption comes from cheap imports, not home production. Agriculture simply went down in all directions. The cause is self-evident: abandonment. Nearly half the agricultural labourers have left since 1861 for city unemployment. The nation does not work on her soil; she is prevented from doing so.
The Deserted Fields
The author walked from London through Sussex, expecting busy cultivation, but saw no men in fields. In the Weald he walked twenty miles through heath and woodland rented as pheasant-shooting grounds. Only 1,383,000 men and women work the fields in England and Wales, while over 16,000,000 belong to the unproductive class. One million cannot cultivate 33,000,000 acres without Bonanza-farm methods. From Harrow, he saw only meadow land yielding under two tons of hay per acre, within ten miles of a city of 5,000,000 supplied with Flemish potatoes and French salads. Paris gardeners would put 2,000 workers per thousand acres, yielding £50–£300 per acre. The land lies idle, blamed on heavy clay, though in the hands of man there are no unfertile soils. South Devon is worse, with fields of grass three inches high and thistles, abandoned cottages and ruined orchards everywhere.
The New Agriculture
A new agriculture has been created by lovers of nature and anonymous workers, surpassing the old three-fields system. Science seldom guided these innovators and sometimes misled them, but these empirical workers opened new experimental fields for plant physiology. These gardeners aim for six to nine crops per year from one plot, making soil themselves. They crop 50–100 tons of vegetables per acre, yielding £100–£200+ worth versus £5 of hay. Meat is the dearest staple food, but M.
American Competition Reconsidered
The passage opens by challenging the popular notion that America’s agricultural might rests on its mammoth farms. Writers such as Schaeffle, Semler, and Oetken had repeatedly pointed out that the real competitive force lay elsewhere: in the countless small farms that grew wheat in a manner similar to Europe—with manuring—but with superior organisation of production and sale, and crucially, without paying landlords a toll of one-third or more of the selling price per quarter of wheat. The author confirms this through his own tours of the prairies of Manitoba in 1897 and Ohio in 1901. Manitoba’s vast annual wheat exports, some 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 bushels, come almost entirely from farms of one or two “quarter-sections” (160 and 320 acres). Ploughing is done in the usual way, and most farmers buy their reaping and binding machines by associating in groups of four. Threshing machines are rented for a day or two, and farmers cart their wheat to the elevator with their own horses, either selling immediately or storing it in hopes of higher prices. The middle-size farm, it is clear, has completely beaten the old mammoth farm, even under keen competition; manufacturing wheat on a grand scale does not pay best.
The Real Sources of American Strength
The true sources of American strength lie not in vast acreage but in land ownership, a culture appropriate to the country’s character, a widely developed spirit of association, and institutions that lift the agriculturist to a level unknown in Europe. Every American State and distinct Canadian region has an experimental farm where preliminary experiments on new varieties of wheat, oats, barley, and fruit are conducted under the best scientific conditions. The results are forced upon farmers’ attention through “Bulletins” distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies, organised visits so thousands of farmers can inspect the stations yearly, and a correspondence so extensive that Ottawa’s experimental farm sends out a hundred thousand letters and packets annually. Every farmer can get, free and postage-paid, five pounds of seed of any cereal variety. Even small remote townships hold farmers’ meetings where special lecturers informally discuss the results of experiments in agriculture, horticulture, cattle-breeding, and dairying.
The Imposing Sight of American Agriculture
It is not the Far West wheat fields, soon to be a thing of the past, but the development of rational agriculture that impresses. An Iowa “State’s fair” draws 70,000 farmers who camp with their families in tents for the week, studying, learning, buying, selling, and enjoying life—a national fête that shows agriculture held in respect. Scores of experimental stations’ reports are broadcast and discussed at countless meetings. The “Transactions” and “Bulletins” of countless agricultural societies—not royal but popular—along with grand irrigation enterprises, show American agriculture as a real force that no longer fears mammoth farms and does not cry for protection.
Intensive Agriculture and Gardening
By 1880, nine States, including Georgia, Virginia, and the two Carolinas, had bought £5,750,000 worth of artificial manure, and its use has since spread immensely westward. In Iowa, where mammoth farms existed twenty years ago, sown grass is now used. Agricultural competitions award the highest rewards not for extensive farming but for high crops on small areas. At a recent competition with hundreds of farmers, the first ten prizes went to those growing on three acres each from 262 to 346¾ bushels of Indian corn—87 to 115 bushels per acre. In Minnesota, prizes were given for crops of 300 to 1,120 bushels of potatoes per acre, while Britain’s average is only six tons. Market-gardening extends immensely, with Florida producing 445 to 600 bushels of onions per acre, and “truck farms” covering 400,000 acres in 1892. While Londoners pay twopence year-round for lettuce, Chicago and Boston have unique establishments growing lettuces in immense greenhouses with electric light, a discovery whose application was proven by Cornell University. America, formerly leading in “extensive” agriculture, now leads in “intensive” or forced agriculture, and in this adaptability lies its real competitive force.
French Agricultural Progress
Considerable progress has been made in French agriculture through labour-saving machinery over the last twenty-five years, but an immense field for improvement remains. In 1908, France had 25,000 harvesting machines and 1,200 binders, compared to only 180 and sixty respectively in 1882. However, it is calculated that 375,000 more harvesting machines and 300,000 mowing machines are required to satisfy French needs. Given the unfavourable conditions of agriculture worldwide, progress is noted only in specially favoured spots. Thirty years ago, in the district of Saffelare in East Flanders, a territory of 37,000 acres supported a population of 30,000 peasants who not only found their food but kept over 10,000 horned cattle, 3,800 sheep, and 6,550 swine, and grew flax for export, steadily increasing its agricultural exports ever since.
The Channel Islands and Jersey
Another illustration is the Channel Islands, whose inhabitants live under the common law of Normandy, not Roman law or landlordism. The small island of Jersey, only 28,707 acres including rocks, nourishes about two inhabitants per acre. Writers praise the well-being of Jersey peasants and their results on small farms of five to twenty acres via rational, intensive culture. The soil is decomposed granite with no organic matter, and the climate has drawbacks, yet at the beginning of the nineteenth century the inhabitants lived chiefly on imported food. Their success is due to the amount of labour from a dense population, a land-tenure system very different from elsewhere, freedom from State taxation, and maintained communal institutions. Soil fertility is made partly by sea-weeds gathered free on the coast, but chiefly by artificial manure fabricated at Blaydon-on-Tyne from refuse, including bones shipped from Plevna and mummies of cats shipped from Egypt.
Jersey Potato Culture and Meadows
For the last thirty years, Jersey peasants have grown early potatoes on a great scale, aiming to have them out early to fetch £17 and £20 a ton. A whole system of culture has been worked out by the collective intelligence of the peasants, involving selection of tubers, arrangements for germination, and choice of sheltered plots. In late May and June, a fleet of steamers runs between Jersey and English and Scottish ports, with eight to ten steamers entering St. Hélier daily. From 50,000 to 60,000 tons of potatoes, valued at £260,000 to £500,000, are exported every summer, with an average of ten to eleven tons per acre. As soon as potatoes are out, a second crop of mangold or “three months’ wheat” is sown; not a day is lost. The meadows are admirable, and though the area given to green crops and pasture is less than 11,000 acres, Jersey keeps over 12,300 head of cattle and over 2,300 horses. About 100 bulls and 1,600 cows and heifers are exported yearly. On the whole, they obtain agricultural produce worth £50 to each acre of the island’s aggregate surface.
Limits of Productivity and Potato Experiments
The text argues that even Jersey’s £50 per acre is not the limit. For fifty years, science and mechanical skill have extended industrial powers over dead matter; now comes the turn of living plants. While the average potato crop in the country is six tons per acre, in Jersey it is nearly twice as big. Mr. Knight dug out 1,284 bushels from one acre, and a recent competition in Minnesota saw 1,120 bushels grown on one acre. French Professor Aimé Girard undertook experiments to find the best conditions for growing potatoes, not caring for show-crops. He studied variety, depth of tilling, and distance between plants, corresponding with 350 growers in France. Several obtained crops corresponding to twenty and thirty-six tons to the acre instead of their usual three tons, with ninety growers experimenting on fields more than one-quarter acre and more than twenty on areas of three to twenty-eight acres.
The Persistence of Small Industries in Britain
Kropotkin begins by contrasting two industrial extremes. In Russia, France, Germany, and Austria, millions of workers own or occupy land, keep cows and horses, and treat industrial work as a by-occupation, especially where winters are long. In England, however, few small industries survive that are tied to the land; instead, petty trades flourish in city suburbs and slums, as seen in Sheffield and Birmingham. Between these extremes lie intermediate forms—workers with gardens, orchards, fields, or pasture rights, some living entirely on industrial earnings.
The organisation of sale and production in these small trades takes two main branches. In the first, the worker sells directly to a wholesale dealer, as with cabinet-makers, weavers, and the toy trade. In the second, the worker labours for a “master” who sells to a wholesaler or acts as a middleman for a big concern—this is the “sweating system,” found in part of the toy trade, among tailors for large clothing establishments, and women sewing “uppers” for boot and shoe factories. All gradations of what Kropotkin calls the “feudalisation and sub-feudalisation of labour” exist. Technically, there are two branches: purely domestic trades carried on in the worker’s house, and trades in separate workshops. Both show all varieties of land connection and produce disposal. Examples include a master with a workshop attached to his house, an artisan with a separate workshop (like Sheffield cutlers with wheel-power), and workers in a small factory they maintain or hire, each working for a dealer, small master, or middleman.
A further development is seen in big ready-made clothes factories where hundreds of women pay for their sewing-machine, gas, and gas-heated irons, and are paid per piece. Testimony before the “Sweating Committee” showed these women were “fearfully sweated,” with the full price deducted for slightly spoiled pieces. Small workshops, often with hired wheel-power, employ three to ten wage-workers and sell to a bigger employer, with gradations leading to small factories with five to twenty time-workers. In textiles, weaving is done by a family or a master employing one boy or several weavers; the master receives yarn from a big employer, pays a skilled workman to set the loom, invents patterns, and is paid per piece on a complicated wage scale—a system widely spread in the woollen and silk trades, alongside factories with fifty to five thousand workers.
These petty trades are precarious: earnings are low, employment uncertain, working days two to four hours longer than in factories, and crises frequent and long. Workers are at the mercy of dealers, and employers at the mercy of wholesalers, both liable to debt. Plain textile workers are in “dreadful misery,” but this is not the rule. Kropotkin notes that Swiss watch-makers, among whom he lived, had conditions “out of all comparison superior” to factory hands, even during the 1876–1880 crisis. Predictions of the disappearance of small industries are wrong: the press predicted the end of Swiss watchmaking in 1877 and the Lyons silk trade in 1882, but small industries persist—some branches vanish, others remain (high-quality watches, silks, velvets), and new branches grow. Small industry adapts, uses mechanical motors, and shows “astonishing vitality.” Hand-looms still compete with power-looms in textiles. The transformation to great industry is slow, and sometimes a reverse movement occurs. At Verviers, thirty years prior, woollen cloth factories stood silent with rusting machinery while cloth was woven on hand-looms in weavers’ houses for the factory owners—a temporary fact due to spasmodic trade and losses from idle mills. The silk trade spreads in rural industry shape, and new petty trades appear yearly, sheltering in city suburbs.
Factories offer advantages in economy of labour, facilities for sale, and cheaper raw produce, but many causes favour petty trades that are not valued in shillings and pence. Kropotkin admits he never guessed the wide, complex organisation that closer inquiry revealed, and he gives only typical illustrations.
Statistical Data for the United Kingdom
Unlike France and Germany, the UK lacked periodical censuses of industry; statements on “concentration” were based on impressions. Factory inspection began with the Factory Act of 1895, and Reports since 1900 provide data. A table for 1897 shows: Textile factories—10,883 establishments, 1,051,564 operatives, average 97 per establishment. Non-textile factories—79,059 establishments, 2,755,460 operatives, average 35. Various workshops—88,814 establishments, 676,776 operatives, average 8. The total is 178,756 establishments and 4,483,800 operatives, averaging 25. A “workshop” is defined as having no mechanical motive power, while a “factory” uses steam, gas, water, or electric power. The figures are incomplete, covering only workshops with women or children and bakeries. Women and female children in workshops numbered 356,098; men and boys, 320,678. Using the factory proportion of males to females, workshops would have about 820,000 male workers and roughly 1,176,000 total, in about 147,000 workshops. The grand total in industry, exclusive of mining, is 4,983,000. The key conclusion is that nearly one-fourth—24 per cent—of all industrial workers are in small industry.
Sheffield Cutlery
Sheffield cutlery, “one of the glories of England,” is chiefly made by hand, not machinery. Edward Carpenter supplied information showing that even integrated firms let work to “small masters.” Most cutlers work at home with relatives or in rented workshops with wheel-power. Kropotkin visited and saw smiths hammering knife blades on small anvils, workshops with three to five workers plus a “master” making files, saws, blades, and razors; grinding and glazing are done separately, and even steel is cast in a five- or six-man foundry. The scene reminded him of Russian cutlery villages like Pavlovo or Vorsma. Cutlers prefer low earnings to wage labour in a “house”; the spirit of the old trade organisations from the 1860s survives.
Leeds and Yorkshire
Edward Baines wrote in 1857 that most woollen cloth was hand-woven. Twice weekly, clothiers brought cloth to Clothiers’ Hall, selling to merchants by noon. Joint-stock mills prepared and spun wool, but weaving was domestic. Twelve years later, power-looms largely superseded hand-looms, but clothiers rented rooms and power-looms to work independently—a partial survival. Kropotkin adds that factory triumphs often came through fraudulent adulteration and underpaid child labour.
Lake District and Other Trades
Domestic industries include hoop-makers, basket trade, charcoal-burners, bobbin-makers, and small charcoal iron furnaces at Backbarrow. Twenty-five years ago, nails were hand-made in South Staffordshire’s Black Country and Derbyshire; the best needles are hand-made at Redditch. Chains are hand-made at Dudley and Cradley. Nearly 7,000 men in 1890 made locks at Walsall, Wolverhampton, and Willenhall. Horse-clothing ironmongery—bits, spurs, bridles—is largely hand-made at Walsall. Birmingham’s gun and rifle trades are well known.
Dress Trades and Footwear
Cottage industries survive in Ireland and in Buckingham, Oxford, and Bedford shires. Hosiery is made in Nottingham and Derby villages; London firms send cloth to Sussex and Hampshire villages. Woollen hosiery is made in Leicester villages and Scotland, and straw-plaiting and hat-making are widespread. Shoemaking was domestic at Northampton, Leicester, Ipswich, Stafford, and partly at Norwich. Boot and shoe factories increased the number of women sewing “uppers” and embroidering slippers in homes or sweaters’ workshops; new small factories make heels and card-boxes.
The Intellectual Factor in Industry
The natural produce of a region and its geographical position are but one factor in determining what industries will flourish there, and they are by no means the dominant one. Switzerland, possessing no iron ore, no coal, and no seaport, nevertheless exports steam-engines, railway engines, and steam-boats. Belgium exports grapes, and Manchester, an inland city, became a seaport through its own enterprise. The intellectual factor—the spirit of invention, the capacity for adaptation, and political liberty—counts for far more than local produce or a favourable position on the map.
The Need for Technical Surroundings
Every industry benefits from close contact with a great variety of other industries; each requires what might be called a “technical surroundings.” Agriculture is no exception. It cannot develop without machinery, and the use of machinery requires an industrial environment where mechanical workshops are accessible to the cultivator. A village smith is not enough. If a thrashing-machine stands idle for a week because a cog has broken, and a new wheel requires sending a messenger to the next province, the machine is effectively useless. Kropotkin recalls witnessing this very problem in his childhood in Central Russia and found the same fact recorded in an English autobiography from the first half of the nineteenth century. In the northern temperate zone, cultivators need industrial employment during the long winters, which is precisely what produced the rural industries of the past. Even in the Channel Islands, despite their advanced horticulture under glass, a correspondent from Guernsey wrote, “We need such industries. Could you suggest us any?”
The Seasonal Demands of Agriculture
The seasonal demands of agriculture are immense. Every summer, thousands leave the town slums for the crops. London’s destitute go to Kent and Sussex as hay-makers and hop-pickers, with Kent alone requiring 80,000 additional men and women for the hop-picking. French villages and cottage industries are abandoned in summer as peasants wander to more fertile parts. Hundreds of thousands are transported every summer to the prairies of Manitoba and Dacota. Many thousands of Poles spread out at harvest time over Mecklenburg, Westphalia, and even France. In Russia, several millions journey annually from the north to the southern prairies for the harvest, and St. Petersburg manufacturers reduce their summer production because their operatives return to their villages for their allotments.
Soil Improvement and the Organisation of Labour
Agriculture also needs temporary aids for the improving of the soil, which could tenfold its productive powers. Steam-digging, drainage, and manuring would make the clays of north-west London richer than the American prairies. These clays need only plain, unskilled labour: digging, laying drainage tubes, and pulverising phosphorites. Factory workers would gladly do this if properly organised in a free community; even stopping the mills in summer would be acceptable. Factory owners would find this ruinous because capital must pump money daily—but that is the capitalist’s view, not the community’s. Workers, as real managers, will find it healthy not to do monotonous work year-round; they may keep the factories running by relieving each other in groups.
Scattering Industries Over the Country
Bringing factories amidst the fields would allow agriculture to derive profits from its combination with industry, as seen in the Eastern States of America. This is the next step once reorganisation is possible, and it is already happening here and there. It is imposed by the necessity of producing for the producers themselves and by the necessity for each healthy person to spend part of their life in manual work in the free air. It will become more necessary when great social movements disturb international trade, compelling each nation to revert to her own resources. Humanity and each individual will gain, and the change will take place.
Education Must Be Modified
This change implies a thorough modification of education: a society of men and women able to work with both hands and brain, and in more than one direction. This “integration of capacities” and “integral education” is the subject to which the analysis now turns.
The Waste of Current Science Teaching
The abstract teaching of science is condemned. Arithmetic is taught via rote rules without impressing upon the pupil the arbitrary nature of the unit—whether it be a match, a box, a dozen, a gross, a metre, or a centimetre. This hinders the understanding of decimal fractions. In England, the United States, and Russia, non-decimal weights and measures torture children, wasting two years and causing endless, fatiguing calculations in mechanics and physics, breeding a dislike for exact science. Even where decimal measures exist, time is lost because teachers ignore that every measure is only approximate; calculating to the exactitude of one gramme or metre is absurd when the measurement lacks such precision. In France, where decimal measures and money are part of daily life, workers write “zero twenty-five” for twenty-five centimes, whereas English readers recall being puzzled by a leading zero. Algebra is made unintelligible; children spend a year learning mere abbreviations which could be taught alongside arithmetic.
The Revolting Waste in Physics
The teaching of physics is “revolting.” Children grasp chemistry and its formulae through simple experiments, but they struggle with the mechanical introduction to physics due to their ignorance of geometry and because they are shown costly machines instead of being allowed to make plain apparatus. They learn the laws of force abstractly from drawings rather than building an Atwood’s machine from a broomstick and a clock wheel, or verifying falling bodies with a key on an inclined string. Teachers often cannot explain the principle of the apparatus and give irrelevant details.
Teaching Handicraft and the Aim of School
Apprenticeship wastes years, and technical schools err by teaching special handicrafts instead of systematic fundamentals. Reuleaux’s Theoretische Kinematik shows a philosophy of machinery: all machines reduce to elements (plates, cylinders, discs, cones) and tools (chisels, saws, rollers, hammers); movements decompose into modifications of motion, such as circular to rectilinear. Each handicraft decomposes similarly. Knowing how to make primary elements in wood, manage the chief tools, and transform motions is the basis for all mechanical handicraft—one good half of all trades. The school’s chief aim is not to make a specialist but to teach the elements of knowledge and good methods of work, giving a general inspiration: a longing for truth, a liking for beauty, and the feeling of being a useful unit amidst humanity. To avoid monotony, the Moscow method utilised everything the pupils made. A planed plank became part of a machine; a quadrangular iron block, after verification, was given to an advanced pupil to make a handle, painted, and sold as a paper-weight. This gave systematical teaching its attractiveness.
The Two Kinds of Celerity
There are two kinds of celerity in work. The first, seen in a Nottingham lace-factory, involves shivering men feverishly binding thread ends—a condemnation of the factory system, wasting human force for cheapness. No school should aim for this. The second is the time-saving celerity of the well-trained worker, achieved by superior education. A good worker examines tools, traces lines exactly, secures work, and cuts easily; the improper worker is haphazard and produces worthless work. The great masters painted rapidly due to their intelligence, imagination, and perception—the rapid work humanity needs.
The Reform of Education and Its Benefits to Science
A thorough reform is unlikely under the present egotistic system; only microscopical attempts are possible. The energy of constructive genius depends on the depth of conception of what ought to be done. Suppose a community—a city or territory of millions—gives this education to all children without distinction of birth, asking nothing in return. The author will not dwell on the increased wealth, the erasing of the brain/manual worker distinction, or social harmony, but on the benefit to science. Reducing men of science to manual workers would not decay science but revive it, akin to the Renaissance. Nineteenth-century progress, though praised, was hampered; many problems were foreseen a century earlier. The mechanical theory of heat was foreseen by Rumford, Humphry Davy, and in Russia by Lomonosoff, yet half a century passed before it reappeared.
The St. Etienne Region: Petty Trades Amidst Heavy Industry
The region around St. Etienne, a major industrial centre of ironworks and coal-mines, still harbours a vast network of petty trades. In St. Chamond, large factories employ thousands of women in the passementerie trade, but the silk ribbon industry remains largely a domestic one. In 1885, while 50,000 people were employed in the trade, only 3,000 to 4,000 looms were in factories, with a further 1,200 to 1,400 owned by the workers themselves. The typical family division of labour saw women and girls spin or wind the silk, while the father and sons did the weaving. The author observed small workshops in St. Etienne’s suburbs producing complicated, artistic ribbons on just three or four looms, with the wife managing household duties nearby. Wages had once been high, over ten francs a day, and it was noted that half of the suburban houses had been built by these passementiers. However, after the crisis of 1884, weavers were forced to sell looms that had cost thousands of francs for a few hundred, and the author lacked recent information on the trade’s subsequent fate.
Arms, Hardware, and the Persistence of Small Workshops
The arms manufacture employs 5,000 to 6,000 workers, half in St. Etienne and the rest in the neighbouring county. With the exception of the State’s great arm factory, which employs between 2,000 and 15,000 men depending on demand, all work is carried out in small workshops. Hardware is similarly made in small workshops across St. Etienne, Le Chambon, Firminy, Rive de Giers, and St. Bonnet le Château. Though the work is regular, earnings are low, yet peasants cling to these trades because they need industrial work for part of the year to supplement their agricultural income.
The Lyons Silk Industry: A Study in Contrasts
In 1881, France produced 7,558,000 kilogrammes of silk stuffs, and most of the 5 to 6 million kilogrammes of raw silk manufactured in the Lyons region was made by hand. As late as 1865, there were only 6,000 to 8,000 power-looms. The President of the Lyons Chamber of Commerce noted that while power-looms increased yearly, their growth was slow, reaching only 20,000 to 25,000 out of a total of 100,000 to 110,000 looms. The preparatory work of winding and warping is done in small workshops, chiefly at Lyons, while dyeing and finishing are concentrated in great factories. The dyeing trade alone occupies 4,000 to 5,000 hands and serves markets as distant as London, Manchester, Vienna, and Moscow. Weaving itself uses 20,000 to 25,000 power-looms and 75,000 to 90,000 hand-looms, partly at Lyons—which had 15,000 to 18,000 hand-looms in 1885—but chiefly in the villages. The old workshops with several compagnons are disappearing, replaced by families working two or three hand-looms. The fabricant provides indications, but the workman must weave the patterns, creating something new; many improvements have come from these unknown workers. Lyons weavers are the élite of artistic silk work, and the finest brocades, satins, and velvets are woven in the smallest workshops. Unsettled demand causes misery. Formerly, weavers could turn to foulards, crêpes, and tulles, which were Lyons’ European monopoly, but now these commoner goods are made by factories in Lyons, Saxony, Russia, Great Britain, and by peasants in French departments, Swiss villages, the Rhine provinces, Italy, and Russia.
Emigration to Villages and the Factory’s Destructive Impact
The silk industry’s move from towns to villages began around 1817 and accelerated in the 1860s. By 1872, nearly 90,000 hand-looms were scattered across the departments of Rhône, Ain, Isère, Loire, Saône-et-Loire, Drôme, Ardèche, and Savoie. Most of these looms were bought by the weavers themselves, and women and girls worked them in their free hours. Since 1835, however, great factories have been erected in the villages, making havoc among the rural populations. A new factory attracts village girls and boys seeking independence from family control, so wages are extremely low. Girls often cannot return home daily, staying in barracks all week and returning only on Saturday evening, with a waggon bringing them back Monday at sunrise. This barrack life renders them unable to work in the fields, and when they grow up, they can neither maintain themselves on their low wages nor return to peasant life. The factory thus destroys the peasant home, makes town workers’ lives more precarious, and leaves the trade perpetually unsettled.
Small Industries at Paris
Many Paris industries relate to ladies’ dress. Confections occupy 22,000 operatives, producing £3,000,000 yearly, while gowns occupy 15,000 women, producing £2,400,000. One-fourth of French stays, worth £500,000 of the £2,000,000 total, are made in Paris. Engraving, book-binding, fancy stationery, and musical and mathematical instruments are branches where Paris workmen excel. The finest sorts of basket-making are made in Paris, while the plainest are made in Haute Marne, Aisne, and other departments. Brushes are made in small workshops, valued at £800,000 in Paris and the Oise department. Furniture has 4,340 workshops averaging three to four operatives each. The watch trade has 2,000 workshops with 6,000 operatives, producing £1,000,000, nearly one-third of French watch production. Maroquinerie, or leather goods, produces £500,000 with only 1,000 persons in 280 workshops. Jewelry and artificial flowers are specialities, and the carriage and saddlery trades are also significant.
