Chapter II: Relative Importance of Different Industries

“The greatest number”—Protected industries and labour.

I shall first examine the relative importance of different industries, to see whether Protection is an advantage to the majority. According to the 1896 census of persons employed in professions and industry in seventeen out of eighty-seven departments, more than 40 per cent. of the population is employed in industry. In order of diminishing proportion they are: The Nord, Belfort, Rhône, Loire, Seine, Ardennes, Vosges, Bouches du Rhône, Meurthe et Moselle, Seine Inférieure, Somme, Pas de Calais, l’Oise, l’Aisne, l’Aube, Seine et Oise, Marne. Taking a hundred as the total of industry properly so called, the order of importance relative to the number of persons employed is as follows:—

In France the extractive industries, e.g., coalmining and quarrying, are relatively small; the metal trade, which produces the raw material for ironworkers, engineers, and smiths, stands only seventeenth out of twenty-one; spinning and weaving is 30 per cent. below the cloth trade. The industries which produce raw materials or goods for further manufacture are protected at the expense of those which employ skilled labour.