For furniture, there are at Paris as many as 4,340 workshops, in which three or four operatives per workshop are employed on the average. In the watch trade we find 2,000 workshops with only 6,000 operatives, and their production, about £1,000,000, reaches nevertheless nearly one-third part of the total watch production in France. The maroquinerie gives the very high figure of £500,000, although it employs only 1,000 persons, scattered in 280 workshops, this high figure itself testifying to the high artistic value of the Paris leather fancy goods. The jewelry, both for articles of luxury, and for all descriptions of cheap goods, is again one of the specialities of the Paris petty trades; and another well-known speciality is the fabrication of artificial flowers. Finally, we must mention the carriage and saddlery trades, which are carried on in the small towns round Paris; the making of fine straw hats; glass cutting, and painting on glass and china; and numerous workshops for fancy buttons, attire in mother-of-pearl, and small goods in horn and bone.
W.—RESULTS OF THE CENSUS OF THE FRENCH INDUSTRIES IN 1896.
If we consult the results of the census of 1896, that were published in 1901, in the fourth volume of Résultats statistiques du recensement des industries et des professions, preceded by an excellent summary written by M. Lucien March, we find that the general impression about the importance of the small industries in France conveyed in the text is fully confirmed by the numerical data of the census.
It is only since 1896, M. March says in a paper read before the Statistical Society of Paris, that a detailed classification of the workshops and factories according to the number of their operatives became possible;[210] and he gives us in this paper, in a series of very elaborate tables, a most instructive picture of the present state of industry in France.
For the industries proper—including the industries carried on by the State and the Municipalities, but excluding the transport trades—the results of the census can be summed up as follows:—
There is, first of all, an important division of “heads of establishments (patrons) working alone, independent artisans, and working-men without a permanent employment,” which contains 1,530,000 persons. It has a very mixed character, as we find here, in agriculture, the small farmer, who works for himself; and the labourer, who works by the day for occasional farmers; and in industry the head of a small workshop, who works for himself (patron-ouvrier); the working-man, who on the day of the census had no regular employment; the dressmaker, who works sometimes in her own room and sometimes in a shop; and so on. It is only in an indirect way that M. March finds out that this division contains, in its industrial part, nearly 483,000 artisans (patrons-ouvriers); and independent working-men and women; and about 1,047,000 persons of both sexes, temporarily attached to some industrial establishment.
There are, next, 37,705 industrial establishments, of which the heads employ no hired workmen, but are aided by one or more members of their own families.
We have thus, at least, 520,000 workshops belonging to the very small industry.
Next to them come 575,530 workshops and factories, giving occupation to more than 3,000,000 persons. They constitute the bulk of French industry, and their subdivision into small, middle-sized, and great industry is what interests us at this moment.
The most striking point is the immense number of establishments having only from one to ten working-men each. No less than 539,449 such workshops and factories have been tabulated, which makes 94 per cent. of all the industrial establishments in France; and we find in them more than one-third of all workpeople of both sexes engaged in industry—namely, 1,134,700 persons.