Page:Alexander Jonas - Reporter and Socialist (1885).djvu/16

 shoes. The aggregate value of merchandise produced a wholesale, in factories etc. in this branch of industry during 1880 amounted to $166,050,354, but the production in small shops, so to speak, at retail, for customers etc., amounted to not more than $30,870,172 (which probably even included all repairs etc.); the production at wholesale employed 111,152, while the small fry production employed but 22,667 masters and journeymen in 16,613 shops.

This is surprising indeed.

And if you take any other branch of industry, be it simple or difficult, complicated work, you will find the same proportion everywhere. Moreover, if you take the statistics of less recent times, for instance the U.S. census of 1870, or even the official statistics of European countries, which are more complete and elaborate, you will be astonished to see how rapidly the number of articles is growing that are being produced at wholesale, and how small is the amount of commodities produced by the old method of handiwork. And this process, going on now upon the vast field of industry, is extending to that of agriculture and commerce also. More and more with every year it becomes more profitable to cultivate the soil by means of machinery, and the better the latter the larger is the yield of the soil. Therefore, we see, as for instance in the United States, gigantic farms developing themselves of whose dimensions those living in the cities have almost no conception, and whose owners in consequence of an advantageous division of labor and of smaller expenses in comparison to the farmer who has no machines, and finally by their being favored by reduced railway freight-rates, can throw their products upon the market at lower prices than the smaller farmer; and, it is but natural that the latter cannot stand such competition; he first mortgages his farm and then ends in ruin. I think it is needless to tell you, who lives in a large city, that the same process is going on upon the exciting field of commercial enterprise.

But is not this an advantage to the people at large? Are not all things becoming better, cheaper and more plentiful than they were formerly?