Industrial district

“ To achieve general solidarity among the workers in a given district, two or more industrial unions elect delegates to form a general industrial district council. Its function is to keep the different industrial unions of the district in touch with each other and to transact all business pertaining to the general welfare of the workers in the district. ”

“ It lies in the midst of an important coal-mining and industrial district, and is itself little more than a long and narrow row of manufactories and workmen’s houses. The largest factories are engaged in the production of iron, steel and cement. ”

“ Many of my readers will probably be astonished to learn that even in the cotton industry a great number of quite small factories continue to exist up to the present day. Even in the West Riding district, which is second only to Lancashire for the number of its cotton mills, and where we find nearly one-third of all the workpeople employed in the cotton industry (237,444 persons) , the average for all the 3,210 factories of this district is only seventy-three persons per factory. ”

“ The town is now the county borough of Bolton, with a population approaching 200,000, and with the district, according to a recent return, contains one hundred and twelve firms engaged in the cotton industry, working nearly seven and a half million spindles, and over twenty-four thousand looms. [486] In its commercial organisation the town stands as a witness to the world economy which has come into existence; in its industrial organisation, as a witness to the existence of the factory system. ”

“ The effect of this process is to make one locality dependent on another locality. Once, as we have seen, the family was adequate to its own needs; now, we perceive the industrial producers of one district have become dependent on each other, and on the products of other districts and nations, for the supply of their needs. This industrial division and concentration gives increased importance to commerce, without which there could be no industrial development. ”

“ If manufactures spring up spontaneously out of original strength, and by independent development, of course they “add value to land,” that is to say, the district has new industrial power and every interest in it is benefited; but if the manufactures have to be protected, paid for, and supported, they do not do any good as manufactures but only as a device for drawing capital from elsewhere, as tribute. ”

“ The variety of domestic industries carried on in the Lake District is much greater than might be expected,, but they still wait for careful explorers. I will only mention the hoop-makers, the basket trade, the charcoal-burners, the bobbin-makers, the small iron furnaces working with charcoal at Backbarrow, and so on.As a whole, we do not well know the petty trades of this country, and therefore we sometimes come across quite unexpected facts. ”

“ The local, district, divisional and world industrial units are the back-bone of the public machinery in a producers' society. For the purposes of facilitating the work of administration, these producers' groups are brought together, at various points, in local, district, divisional and in a world producers' federation, all of which federations derive their power directly from the industrial producers' groups. ”

“ Hence there would be, in each division, a division organization of transport workers, a division organization of agricultural workers, a division organization of those engaged in manufacturing and so on, making a divisional organization for each of the major industrial groups. A district might comprise only one branch of an industry such as textile manufacturing or electric transport. ”

“ Each new factory calls into existence a number of small workshops, partly to supply its own needs and partly to submit its produce to a further transformation. Thus, to quote but one instance, the cotton mills have created an immense demand for wooden bobbins and reels, and thousands of men in the Lake District set to manfuacture them-by hand first, and later on with the aid of some plain machinery. Only quite recently, after years had been spent in inventing and improving the machinery, the bobbins began to be made on a larger scale in factories. ”

“ The district was formerly celebrated for its scenery, but this has been considerably marred by industrial development which received its chief impetus from the construction in 1861 of a dock of 13 acres, the property of the Great Western Railway Company, and the opening up about the same time of the mining districts of Glyncorrwg and Maesteg by means of the South Wales mineral railway, which connects them with the dock and supplies it with its chief export, coal. Steel and tinplates are manufactured here on a large scale. There are also iron-works and a foundry. ”

“ In every big provincial town there was a local Industrial Committee, again presided over by the local political or industrial chiefs of capitalism, and consisting of the leading manufacturers of the district. ”

“ It happens under the present law, that a large portion of the population of rural districts are induced to move into the manufacturing; and it happens frequently, that the power, the labor, the best part of a man's life, who so removes, are consumed in that manufacturing district, and thus all the advantages of his strength and good conduct, and industry, are derived by the manufacturing districts during the period of his residence. ”

“ But the situation is still more unfavorable to the country if the fact is considered that 148 communities, with from 5,000 to 40,000 inhabitants, and aggregating a population of 1,281,000 strong, are included in the rural but really belong to the industrial districts. They are essentially proletarian villages, located near large cities. Furthermore, 647 communities, with from 2,000 to 5,000 inhabitants, and aggregating a population of 1,884,000, are likewise included in the rural, while, to a perceptible degree, they belong to the industrial districts. ”

“ Countless small workshops are busy besides, on the banks of the two streams, with the fabrication of all sorts of wooden things: match-boxes, beads, sheaths for spectacles, small things in horn, and so on, to say nothing of a rather large factory (200 workers) where metric measures are fabricated for the whole world. At the same time thousands of persons in St. Claude, in the neighbouring villages and in the smallest mountain hamlets, are busy in cutting diamonds (an industry only fifteen years old in this region) , and other thousands are busy in cutting various less precious stones. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Further production increases in these areas are to be attained through modernization of existing facilities and the introduction of more advanced technology. Special measures have also been adopted to promote economic growth in the relatively underdeveloped districts. In part, this program is implemented through the transfer of industrial activities, equipment, and labor from the congested cities and districts to rural areas. ”

“ Every factory, mine, and mill should have its special workers' council, separate from and independent of the shop committee, for the purpose of familiarizing the workers with the various phases of their particular industry, including the sources of raw material, the consecutive processes of manufacture, by-products, and manner of distribution. This industrial council should be permanent, but its membership must rotate in such a manner as to take in practically all the employees of a given factory or mill. ”

“ The small peasants know what they have to expect the day they become factory hands in a town; and so long as they have not been dispossessed by the money-lender of their lands and houses, and so long as the village rights in the communal grazing grounds or woods have not been lost, they cling to a combination of industry with agriculture. ”

“ Listen still more closely, and we hear the dwarf voices in the hum of machines in a garment factory, in the steady turn of metal rolls in a laundry, and even in the clip of the stogy roller's knife in the tiny workroom of a tenement loft. Side by side with the men, the women workers have found a place in the industry of the steel district in the Alleghenies. In a district that calls pre-eminently for strength in its workmen, and if not for strength, for a high degree of training and skill, there is yet place in the congregate activity of factories and shops for women. ”

“ In short, in the different non-textile industries, the inspectors have tabulated 32,042 factories employing, each of them, less than ten workpeople.
All taken, we find 270,000 workpeople employed in small factories having less than fifty and even twenty workers each, the result being that the very great industry (the factories employing more than 1,000 workpeople per factory) and the very small one (less than ten workers) employ nearly the same number of operatives. ”

“ It is no longer possible for different factories to receive separate orders, as all orders must be transmitted through the Central Production Council, which assigns the order to the factories best fitted to fill them. The organization of a separate raw material department has become necessary, as it is a most difficult thing to furnish small establishments without the district distribution centre, and this is the only efficent method of rationing and controlling production. ”

“ It will not stand comparison with Atlanta or New Orleans or Richmond. Strictly speaking, it is not a city, but an agglomeration of industrialism. Nevertheless, the factories which surround it are owned by companies of vast resources, and it is claimed that in the steel industry there are some of the most extensive industrial plants in the world. Business is little disturbed by strikes. On the gates of the vast factory estates is written: We do not want you unless you are able to look after yourself. Careless men are always liable to accident. ”

“ Why should not hundreds of domestic industries, now carried on. entirely by hand, resort to labour-saving machines, as they already do in the knitting trade and many others? There is no reason why the small motor should not be of a much more general use than it is now, wherever there is no need to have a factory; and there is no reason why the village should not have its small factory, wherever factory work is preferable, as we already see it occasionally in certain villages in France. ”

“ Four banks, a silk mill, pants factory, flour mills, foundry and machine works, sumac mills, pickle factory, buggy, wagon and wood-working plants, cigar factories, extract works, plow manufactories, brick yards, ice factories, bark mills, bone mills, granite works, mattress factory, excelsior mills, two daily and two tri-weekly newspapers, telegraph, mail, express and freight facilities unexcelled, all help to make Fredericksburg an industrial center of the present generation. ”

“ Thus, by the side of the trades which are carried on entirely at home by one or more members of the family, there are the trades in which the master keeps a small workshop attached to his house and works in it with his family, or with a few "assistants" -- that is, wage-workers. Or else the artisan has a separate workshop, supplied with wheel-power, as is the case with the Sheffield cutlers. Or several workers come together in a small factory which they maintain themselves, or hire in association, or where they are allowed to work for a certain weekly rent. ”

“ It is true that the Factory Inspectors represent each separate branch of a given industry as a special establisment. Thus, if an employer or a society owns a spinning mill, a weaving factory, and a special building for dressing and finishing, the three are represented as separate factories. But this is precisely what is wanted for giving us an exact idea about the degree of concentration of a given industry. ”

“ We ought also to observe, that the effect of driving any establishment into a new district, where similar works have not previously existed, is not merely to place it out of the reach of such combinations; but, after a few years, the example of its success will most probably induce other capitalists in the new district to engage in the same manufacture: and thus, although one establishment only should be driven away, the workmen, through whose combination its removal is effected, will not merely suffer by the loss of that portion of demand for their labour which the factory caused ”

“ We were much struck with the busy look of Qŭerētărŏ, which has quite the air of a manufacturing district. More than half the houses contain shops, and the whole population is engaged either in small trades, or in the wool manufactories, which are still very numerous. ”

“ If these districts have not already reached the point at which the complaint of scarcity of hands ceases, they are not remote from it, and are approaching fast toward it; and having, perhaps, fewer attractions to agriculture than some other parts of the Union, they exhibit a proportionably stronger tendency toward other kinds of industry. In these districts may be discerned no inconsiderable maturity for manufacturing establishments. ”

“ But very many of our big factories are nothing else but agglomerations under a common management, of several distinct industries; while others are mere agglomerations of hundreds of copies of the very same machine; such are most of our gigantic spinning and weaving establishments. ”