Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

Becker advised me, moreover, to subscribe to a cheap illustrated weekly, and its illustrations and short stories were a continual inducement to read a few lines or a column.

I translated and studied most thoroughly one page of a rather difficult poetical description of a thunderstorm; I learned by heart, as the professor had advised me, the conjugations, the adverbs, and the prepositions--and began to read.

My brother Alexander insisted so much in his letters upon my acquiring German, which possesses so rich a literature and into which every book of value is translated, that I set myself assiduously to learn it.

Thus, to teach the elements of algebra in the fourth form he invited a first-rate mathematician and a born teacher, Captain Sukhónin, and the form took at once to mathematics.

In his opinion, no professor was too good to teach the very beginnings of a subject to the youngest boys.

Instead of the indifferent teachers who formerly used to teach in the lower forms, he endeavoured to secure the best ones.

The head of the educational department, the inspector, Winkler, who was a well-educated colonel of artillery, a good mathematician, and a man of progressive opinions, hit upon an excellent plan for stimulating that spirit.

As by magic a number of men and women came to the front who have not only devoted their lives to education, but have proved to be remarkable practical pedagogists: their writings would occupy a place of honour in every civilized…

The whole school was disgusted at this Jesuitic speech.

At last the decision came: ‘Refuse, all of you, to keep the watch; and when they begin to beat you, which they are sure to do, go, as many of you as you can, in a block, and call in Girardot.

To shut his eyes to what was done by the first form was the foundation of his system of maintaining discipline.

He had a perfectly organized system of espionage, and nothing escaped his knowledge.

His system was to give them carte blanche; to pretend that he did not know even the horrors they were enacting; and to maintain through them a severe discipline.

It is true,” Dr. van der Borght says, “that the numbers of artisans working single-handed have diminished in numbers in most industries; but they still represent two-fifths of all industrial establishments, and even more than one-half in…

It is also retained wherever the value of labour exceeds very much the value of the raw produce; and finally, in all the branches devoted to articles which are rapidly changing with the seasons or the vagaries of fashion.

On the contrary, it proves to be possessed of a great life force in certain branches.

As to the very great industry, a closer analysis of what the German statisticians describe as giant establishments (Riesenbetriebe) shows that they belong chiefly to industries working for the State, or created in consequence of…

Such an individual mode of production by hand is naturally on the decrease, even many artisans resorting now to some sort of motive power and taking one or two hired aids; but this does not prove in the least that the small industries…

What appears quite distinctly from the last census is the rapid decrease in the numbers of artisans who work single-handed, mostly without the aid of machinery.

Here it is that the dying out of the small industries, their “absorption” by the great concerns, and the supposed “concentration of capital” ought to be seen in full.

These industries are a mere survival; and if we had data about the different classes of industry at different periods, we should see how rapidly the small industries are disappearing.

In all other branches the small trades are dominant, to such an extent that more than 95 per cent. of the employers employ less than fifty workmen each.

Economists have been too hasty in celebrating their death.

It is evident that in France, as everywhere, the petty trades represent a very important factor of the industrial life.

It destroys the peasant home, it renders the life of the town worker still more precarious on account of the competition it makes to him; and the trade itself is in a perpetual state of unsettledness.