The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1878-05-29
MISCELLANY.
SMALL INDUSTRIES.
[From the st. louis Post. |


One of the causes of the great commercial
and financial prosperity of France is said to be
the enormous multiplication and diversity of
small industries. Very often family carries
on complete little mandatory within itself
Every department of work is special trade
here. Making dolls eyes or doll shoes, glue
lug together little fancy boxes, carving toys
making pin-cushions and fans, and a hundred
such employments that require little or no
capital, abound everywhere among the poor
Ell classes. Again, the industries of baking
bread and cakes, raising and selling flowers,
making candy and ice cream, and selling milk
and cream, are there distributed among
thousand small shop keepers diffusng comfort
4 and independence among them and causing
the French trades-people to he noted above
all others for their cheerfulness and thrift and
enjoyment of life
The tendency in our country has been just
the reverse of this, and the results are seen
in the swallowing up of nearly all small indus.
tries by greater ones to the disadvantage of
the working classes. Everything in our great
country has a tendency to overgrowth. Our
mills must be SO great that no ltt1o min can
! live under the shadow of its competition our
large stories aim to become magazines of ev-
cry article that can be gathered in from all
lands under the sun, and if smaller stories
cannot be frightened out of existence by the
superior grandeur of such establishments they
must be overborne and crushed 10y their more
preponderance in size.
We have lately had an explosion by which
the largest Touring mill in the country per-
haps in the world, was blown to fragments
and there are not wanting those who attrib-
ute the catastrophe to an immense accumula-
tion of gas that would not have been possible
in less enormous structure and who, there
fore, deprecate the attempt to build again on
so largo a scale. There is such a thing as
OVERRIDING in all human enterprises they all
have a reasonable limit. Overgrown things
are abnormal whether in nature or in organ
lied society. Cities get to large too be well
governed schools get to large for the good of
their pupils corporations get too large for the
good of their stockholders, and become detri-
mental to the public in general manufactor-
les and stores which obtain an abnormal size
become sources of evil to their owners and TO
society around them. 0yergrowth is every
where and in all things to he deprecated and
guarded against
The history OF the most prosperous coun-
tries and communities shows us that a great
diversity of industries of size and on scale
that can be easily controlled and managed by
the directing skill of the individual gives us
] the most favorable conditions for prosper
GUS and happy society. The lesson is an OBJ
vious one to thoughtful citizens and lovers of
/ their country. 1t is the encouragement by all
practicable methods of small industries and
the Encouragement Of ali enterprises that aim
to be too gigantic in their proportions, whetll-
eff such enterprises be the building of such
4 monsters as the Great Eastern " or opal
| ace Hotel" with miles of gas and steam pipes
as in San Francisco, whether ofenormous cor
porations or of enormous manufactures En-
courage rather by patronage and capital the
man who would start good mill or store or
manufactory on small scale. The man who
is farming one hundred acres of land well is to
be commended rather than the land specua-
tor who is ambitious to own whole countries
Let the mill tradesman have share of your
patronage the benefit will be mutual. En-
courage the people who i'll the general crash
Of things have lost all, and are compelled to
begin at the bottom to build up again. For
tunate will it be for the community which has
known disaster through the failure of great
industries if these shall be replaced by the Or.
ganization and successful operation of many
small industries.
4 The organization and division of labor is
the great fact in the civilization Of to-day, but
all organizations have their proper limit in the
directing power and skill of the individual
Here is the fundamental error in the doctrine
of the Communist. He would merge all Or
CARNATIONS into one vast, cumbrous unman-
ageble, impracticable whole, to be run by the
Government. The only possible result would
be the paralysiug of all individual skill and
interest. The province of the Government is
only to protect the innumerable small and in
dividual organizations which tend each in its
sphere, to the general good of the whole
And experience teaches that a proper limit to
these Is one of the conditions of success.
When these conditions are properly under