Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

There is no reason whatever why the mantles which are worn by English ladies should be sewn at Berlin and in Whitechapel, instead of in Devonshire or Derbyshire.

Why should the countless Whitechapel petty trades remain where they are, instead of being spread all over the country?

Why, in a rationally organised society, ought London to remain a great centre for the jam and preserving trade, and manufacture umbrellas for nearly the whole of the United Kingdom?

The industries will always find some advantages in being grouped, to some extent, according to the natural features of separate regions.

Art and science are no longer the monopoly of the great cities, and further progress will be in scattering them over the country.

The progress achieved of late in toy-making, as also the high perfection attained in the fabrication of mathematical and optical instruments, of furniture, of small luxury articles, of pottery and so on, are instances in point.

Even under the present conditions the leviathan factories offer great inconveniences, as they cannot rapidly reform their machinery according to the constantly varying demands of the consumers.

This is why the “concentration” so much spoken of is often nothing but an amalgamation of capitalists for the purpose of dominating the market, not for cheapening the technical process.

As to those countless descriptions of goods which derive their value chiefly from the intervention of skilled labour, they can be best fabricated in smaller factories which employ a few hundreds, or even a few scores of operatives.

But in both spheres the ideal of the centralisers badly needs revision.

The moral and physical advantages which man would derive from dividing his work between the field and the workshop are self-evident.

But under a more rational social organisation the factory would find no such obstacles: it would be a boon to the village.

There is no reason why the factory, with its motive force and machinery, should not belong to the community, as is already the case for motive power in the above-mentioned workshops and small factories in the French portion of the Jura…

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…

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?

But the question arises, Why should not the cottons, the woollen cloth, and the silks, now woven by hand in the villages, be woven by machinery in the same villages, without ceasing to remain connected with work in the fields?

But at the same time, handwork very probably will extend its domain in the artistic finishing of many things which are now made entirely in the factory; and it will always remain an important factor in the growth of thousands of young and…

Whenever a saving of human labour can be obtained by means of a machine, the machine is welcome and will be resorted to; and there is hardly one single branch of industry into which machinery work could not be introduced with great…

On the contrary, as soon as high taxation or the impoverishment during a crisis has compelled the domestic worker to abandon his last plot of land to the usurer, misery creeps into his house.

Even amidst the weavers of France or Moscow, who have to reckon with the competition of the factory, relative well-being prevails so long as they are not compelled to part with the soil.

In fact, the most prominent feature of the petty trades is that a relative well-being is found only where they are combined with agriculture: where the workers have remained in possession of the soil and continue to cultivate it.

Much more ought to be said with regard to the rural industries of Russia, especially to show how easily the peasants associate for buying new machinery, or for avoiding the middleman in their purchases of raw produce--as soon as misery is…

The silk hats which are sold in the best Moscow shops, and bear the stamp of Nouveautés Parisiennes, are made by the Moscow peasants; so also the “Vienna” furniture of the best “Vienna” shops, even if it goes to supply the palaces.

But many articles of luxury, too, are made in the villages, especially around Moscow, by peasants who continue to cultivate their allotments.

Therefore, all manufactured goods used by the Russian peasantry, save the printed cottons, are the production of the rural manufacturers.