Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin: “It was a terrible thing to see, and to think what it meant.”

At Oyonnax, a small town on the Ain, we have a big centre for the fabrication of combs, an industry more than 200 years old, which took a new development since the last war through the invention of celluloid.

But the appearance of the cotton industry in a country, or, in fact, of any textile industry, unavoidably becomes the starting-point for the growth of a series of other industries; chemical and mechanical works, metallurgy and mining feel…

There is not a single manufacturer or tradesman who, even in the most trifling circumstances, does not do his best to emancipate himself from foreign guardianship.” The best French and English patterns are imitated and improved by a touch…

And at the same time we learn that immense quantities of land go every year out of culture, to be transformed into game reserves for rich Englishmen and foreigners.