Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin: “But since the great factory has been enthroned, the worker, depressed by the monotony of his work, invents no more.”

The small bicycle workshops, with the hundreds of small improvements which they introduced, have been under our very eyes the primary cells out of which the great industry of the motor cars, and later on of the aeroplanes, has grown up.

Cottons, plain linen, and machine-made lace are now produced at such a low cost by machinery that hand-weaving evidently becomes an anachronism for the plainest descriptions of such goods.

Every farmer is more or less of a gardener, and he gives free scope to his inventive powers for devising some cheap type of greenhouses.

The small industries are as much a distinctive feature of the British industry as its few immense factories and ironworks.