Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONthe intermediary of the richest bankers acting as guarantors', whichthey vainly submitted to the new French government in 1830. 11As in Britain, consumer goods—generally textiles, but also sometimesfoodstuffs—led these bursts of industrialization; but capital goods—iron,steel, coal, etc.—were already more important than in the first Britishindustrial revolution: in 1846 17 per cent of Belgian industrial employmentwas in capital goods industries as against between 8 and 9per cent in Britain. By 1850 three-quarters of all Belgian industrialsteam-power was in mining and metallurgy. 12 As in Britain, the averagenew industrial establishment—factory, forge or mine—was rather small,surrounded by a great undergrowth of cheap, technically unrevolutionizeddomestic, putting-out or sub-contracted labour, which grewwith the demands of the factories and the market and would eventuallybe destroyed by the further advances of both. In Belgium (1846) theaverage number in a woollen, linen and cotton factory establishmentwere a mere 30, 35 and 43 workers, in Sweden (1838) the average pertextile 'factory' was a mere 6 to 7. 18 On the other hand there are signsof rather heavier concentration than in Britain, as indeed one mightexpect where industry developed later, sometimes as an enclave inagrarian environments, using the experience of the earlier pioneers,based on a more highly developed technology, and often enjoyinggreater planned support from governments. In Bohemia (1841) threequartersof all cotton-spinners were employed in mills with over 100workers each, and almost half in fifteen mills with over 200 each. 14(On the other hand virtually all weaving until the 1850s was done onhandlooms.) This was naturally even more so in the heavy industrieswhich now came to the fore: the average Belgian foundry (1838) had80 workers, the average Belgian coal-mine (1846) something like 150; 16not to mention the industrial giants like CockerilFs of Seraing, whichemployed 2,000.The industrial landscape was thus rather like a series of lakes studdedwith islands. If we take the country in general as the lake, the islandsrepresent industrial cities, rural complexes (such as the networks ofmanufacturing villages so common in the central German and Bohemianmountains) or industrial areas: textile towns like Mulhouse, Lilleor Rouen in France, Elberfeld-Barmen (the home of Frederick Engels'pious cotton-master family) or Krefeld in Prussia, southern Belgium orSaxony. If we take the broad mass of independent artisans, peasantsturning out goods for sale in the winter season, and domestic or puttingoutworkers as the lake, the islands represent the mills, factories, minesand foundries of various sizes. The bulk of the landscape was still verymuch water; or—to adapt the metaphor a little more closely to reality174