Industrial Organization Continued.
The Concentration of Specialized Industries in Particular Localities 1.In an early stage of civilization every place had to depend on its own resources for most of the heavy wares which it consumed; unless indeed it happened to have special facilities for water carriage.But wants and customs changed slowly: and this made it easy for producers to meet the wants even of consumers with whom they had little communication; and it enabled comparatively poor people to buy a few expensive goods from a distance, in the security that they would add to the pleasure of festivals and holidays during a life-time, or perhaps even during two or three lifetimes.Consequently the lighter and more expensive articles of dress and personal adornment, together with spices and some kinds of metal implements used by all classes, and many other things for the special use of the rich, often came from astonishing distances.Some of these were produced only in a few places, or even only in one place; and they were diffused all over Europe partly by the agency of fairs(1*) and professional pedlers, and partly by the producers themselves, who would vary their work by travelling on foot for many thousand miles to sell their goods and see the world.These sturdy travellers took on themselves the risks of their little businesses; they enabled the production of certain classes of goods to be kept on the right track for satisfying the needs of purchasers far away; and they created new wants among consumers, by showing them at fairs or at their own houses new goods from distant lands.An industry concentrated in certain localities is commonly, though perhaps not quite accurately, described as a localized industry.(2*)This elementary localization of industry gradually prepared the way for many of the modern developments of division of labour in the mechanical arts and in the task of business management.
Even now we find industries of a primitive fashion localized in retired villages of central Europe, and sending their simple wares even to the busiest haunts of modern industry.In Russia the expansion of a family group into a village has often been the cause of a localized industry; and there are an immense number of villages each of which carries on only one branch of production, or even only a part of one.(3*)2.Many various causes have led to the localization of industries; but the chief causes have been physical conditions;such as the character of the climate and the soil, the existence of mines and quarries in the neighbourhood, or within easy access by land or water.Thus metallic industries have generally been either near mines or in places where fuel was cheap.The iron industries in England first sought those districts in which charcoal was plentiful, and afterwards they went to the neighbourhood of collieries.(4*) Staffordshire makes many kinds of pottery, all the materials of which are imported from a long distance; but she has cheap coal and excellent clay for making the heavy "saggars" or boxes in which the pottery is placed while being fired.Straw plaiting has its chief home in Bedfordshire, where straw has just the right proportion of silex to give strength without brittleness; and Buckinghamshire beeches have afforded the material for the Wycombe chairmaking.The Sheffield cutlery trade is due chiefly to the excellent grit of which its grindstones are made.
Another chief cause has been the patronage of a court.The rich folk there assembled make a demand for goods of specially high quality, and this attracts skilled workmen from a distance, and educates those on the spot.When an Eastern potentate changed his residence -- and, partly for sanitary reasons, this was constantly done -- the deserted town was apt to take refuge in the development of a specialized industry, which had owed its origin to the presence of the court.But very often the rulers deliberately invited artisans from a distance and settled them in a group together.Thus the mechanical faculty of Lancashire is said to be due to the influence of Norman smiths who were settled at Warrington by Hugo de Lupus in William the Conqueror's time.
