We study the geography of industry. Great Britain: Changing the structure of the economy and the problems of old industries Countries with old industries

Fuel industry - includes all processes of extraction and primary processing of fuel. The structure includes: oil, gas, coal industries.

Stages of development:

1. coal stage (first half of the 20th century);
2. oil and gas stage (since the second half of the 20th century).
   

coal industry Mining places - China (field - Fu-Shun), USA, Russia (Kuzbass), Germany (Ruhr), Poland, Ukraine, Kazakhstan (Karaganda).
Exporters of coal - USA, Australia, South Africa.
Importers - Japan, Western Europe.
Oil industry. Oil is produced in 75 countries of the world, Saudi Arabia, Russia, USA, Mexico, UAE, Iran, Iraq, China are in the lead.
Gas industry. Gas is produced by 60 countries, Russia, the USA, Canada, Turkmenistan, the Netherlands, Great Britain are in the lead.

Fuel industry problems:

• depletion of mineral fuel reserves (coal reserves will last for about 240 years, oil - for 50 years, gas - 65);
• violation of the environment during the extraction and transportation of fuel;
  
• territorial gap between the main areas of production and areas of consumption.

Electric power industry of the world
Role
- providing electricity to other sectors of the economy.
Leaders in production - Norway (29,000 kWh), Canada (20), Sweden (17), USA (13), Finland (11,000 kWh), while the global average is 2,000 kWh. kW. h.
The lowest rates are in Africa, China and India.
Thermal power plants prevail in the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Romania, China, Mexico, and Italy.
Hydroelectric power stations - in Norway, Brazil, Canada, Albania, Ethiopia.
Nuclear power plants - in France, Belgium, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain.

The main problems of the electric power industry are:

• depletion of primary energy resources and their rise in price;
• environmental pollution.

The solution to the problem is to use non-traditional energy sources, such as:

• geothermal (already used in Iceland, Italy, France, Hungary, Japan, USA);
• solar (France, Spain, Italy, Japan, USA);
• tidal (France, Russia, China, jointly Canada and the USA);
• wind (Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands).

Metallurgical industry

Metallurgy is one of the basic industries that provides other industries with structural materials (ferrous and non-ferrous metals).
Composition- two branches: black and color.
Ferrous metallurgy. Iron ore is mined in 50 countries around the world.
Placement factors:
Natural resource (orientation to territorial combinations of coal and iron deposits);
Transport (orientation to the cargo flows of coking coal and iron ore);
Consumer (associated with the development of mini-factories and conversion metallurgy). China, Brazil, Australia, Russia, Ukraine, and India are leaders in iron ore mining. But in steelmaking - Japan, Russia, USA, China, Ukraine, Germany.

Non-ferrous metallurgy.

Placement factors:

• raw materials (smelting of heavy metals from ores with a low content of a useful component (1 - 2%) - copper, tin, zinc, lead);
• energy (smelting of light metals from rich ore - energy-intensive production - aluminum, titanium, magnesium, etc.);
• transport (delivery of raw materials);
• consumer (use of secondary raw materials).
  

The greatest development is Russia, China, USA, Canada, Australia, Brazil. In Japan and European countries - on imported raw materials.
The leaders in copper smelting are Chile, USA, Canada, Zambia, Peru, Australia. The main exporters of aluminum are Canada, Norway, Australia, Iceland, Switzerland. Tin is mined in East and Southeast Asia. Lead and zinc are smelted by the USA, Japan, Canada, Australia, Germany and Brazil.

Forestry and woodworking industry

Includes: logging, primary wood processing, pulp and paper industry and furniture production.

Placement factor- resource factor.

It is characterized by the presence of two forest belts.

Within the north, coniferous wood is harvested, which is processed into wood-based panels, cellulose, paper, and cardboard. For Russia, Canada, Sweden, Finland, this industry has become an industry of international specialization.

Deciduous tree species are harvested within the southern forest belt. Here you can highlight - Brazil, the countries of Southeast Asia and tropical Africa. For the manufacture of paper in the countries of the southern belt, non-timber raw materials are often used - jute, sisal, reed.
The main importers of wood are Japan, Western European countries, and partly the USA.

Light industry
The light industry provides the needs of the population for fabrics, clothing, footwear, and other industries with specialized materials.

Light industry includes 30 major industries that are combined into groups:
primary processing of raw materials;
textile industry;
clothing industry;
shoe industry.
The textile industry is the most important branch of light industry.

Main placement factors are:

• raw materials (for industries of primary processing of raw materials);
• consumer (for clothing and footwear);
• a combination of the first two (depending on the production stages of the textile industry).

In the first place is the production of cotton fabrics (China, India, Russia). The second place is the production of fabrics from chemical fiber (USA, India, Japan). In the production of silk fabrics, the USA, Japan, China are leading, and woolen - Russia, Italy.

The main exporters are Hong Kong, Pakistan, India, Egypt, Brazil.

mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering determines the sectoral and territorial structure of industry, provides machines and equipment for all sectors of the economy.
Main Industries- electronics, electrical engineering, computer engineering, precision engineering.

The production of many types of machines requires large labor costs, highly skilled workers. Particularly labor-intensive are instrument-making and computer production. And other emerging industries. These industries also require the constant introduction of the latest achievements of science, i.e. are science intensive.
Such productions are located in large cities or near them. Dependence on metal sources, in the era of the scientific and technological revolution, has significantly decreased. Mechanical engineering today is an almost ubiquitous industry.

The world has developed 4 large regions of mechanical engineering:
North America. It produces about 30% of all engineering products. Almost all types of products are present, but it is especially worth mentioning - the production of rocket and space technology, computers.
Foreign Europe. The volume of production is about the same as in North America. It produces mass products, machine tool and automotive products.
East and Southeast Asia. It stands out for precision engineering products and precision technology products.
CIS. 10% of the total, heavy engineering stands out.
Chemical industry
The chemical industry has a complex sectoral composition. She is includes:
mining and chemical industry (extraction of raw materials: sulfur, apatite, phosphorites, salts);
basic chemistry (production of salts, acids, alkalis, mineral fertilizers);
chemistry of organic synthesis (production of polymers - plastics, synthetic rubber, chemical fibers);
other industries (household chemicals, perfumery, microbiological, etc.).
Placement factors:

• For the mining and chemical industry, it is a natural resource factor that determines
• for basic and organic synthesis chemistry - consumer, water and energy.

stands out 4 major regions chemical industry:
Foreign Europe(leading Germany);
North America(USA);
East and Southeast Asia(Japan, China, Newly industrialized countries);
CIS(Russia · Ukraine · Belarus).

INDUSTRY

Industry- the first leading branch of material production. It accounts for a significant part of all costs, all research and development. Industrial products lead in world trade. This industry employs 350 million people worldwide.

Table 3. Periodization of the development of the industry of the world

	Periods:
Indicators:	From the second floor. 18th century to the second half of the 19th century	From the second half of the 19th century to ser. 20th century	Since the middle of the XX century. and to the present
Name of industrial productions	old	New	Newest
Type of scientific and technological progress	Industrial revolution (coup)	technical revolution	Scientific and technological revolution
main form of energy	Steam	Electrical	Electrical
Main types of machines (industrial symbols)	Steam engine	Electric motor and motor internal combustion	computer
Geography of the initial development of production	England	USA, Germany	USA, USSR, Western Europe, Japan

The pace of industrial development, although it has slowed down recently, remains quite high: since 1950, world industrial production has increased by about 6 times. In the era of scientific and technological revolution, important changes are also taking place in the sectoral structure of industry: the share of extractive industries is decreasing and the share of manufacturing industries is growing; in the manufacturing industry, science-intensive industries, primarily associated with the development of mechanical engineering and the chemical industry, have acquired the greatest importance.

Changes have also come in the geography of the world's industry. They are connected primarily with the changing ratio between the countries of the North and the South. The share of developing countries in world industrial production has grown from 5% in 1950 to up to 15-17% in the mid-90s. However, the leading positions remain with economically developed countries.

Table 4. Top ten countries in world industrial production

It should also be borne in mind that the countries of the North occupy an uncompetitive first place in the output of knowledge-intensive industries, while in the countries of the South (with the exception of the newly industrialized and three key developing countries), mining, oil refining, light and food industries predominate. Most of the industrial regions of the world, which determine the territorial structure of the world economy, are also located in the countries of the North. The countries of the South are dominated by industrial regions with the leading role of mining industries.

Table 5. Production of the most important types of industrial and agricultural products per capita in selected countries in the late 1990s*

Product types	Russia	Germany	France	Great Britain	USA	China	Japan
Electricity, kWh	5784	6730	8631	6066	136181	929	8229
	2086	36	29	2097	153	129	4
Natural gas, m 3	4044	267	37	1614	1991	19	18
Coal mining (commercial)	1705	2577	80	697	3749	984	24
Steel	352	537	342	292	365	91	740
Mineral fertilizers (in terms of 100% nutrients)	78	59	51	26	101	23	9
Chemical fibers and threads	0,9	13,2	4,3	6,8	17	4,1	14,5
Passenger cars (per 1000 population), pcs.	6,5	66,6	58,5	29,5	22,1	0,4	64
Paper and cardboard	31	194	146	109	322	26	64
Cement	195	446	331	209	310	409	643
Grain (in weight after finishing)	374	552	1208	1349	1299	406	96
Potato, beetroot	214	143	105	100	80	36	27
Fruits, berries, citrus fruits, grapes	16	61	185	153	119	43	35
Vegetables and gourds	89	41	133	159	129	189	108
Meat (slaughter weight)	29	71	111	109	129	44	24
Milk	221	347	416	296	264	6	68
*Russia - 1999, foreign countries - 1998

WORLD ENERGY

Energy belongs to the so-called "basic" industries: its development is an indispensable condition for the development of all other industries and the entire economy of any country. It also belongs to the "avant-garde trio".

Energy includes a set of industries that supply the economy with energy resources. It includes all the fuel industries and the electric power industry, including exploration, development, production, processing and transportation of sources of thermal and electrical energy and energy itself.

In the world economy, developing countries act mainly as suppliers, while developed countries act as consumers of energy.

The energy crisis of the early 1970s played a decisive role in the development of world energy.

The price of oil (1965-1973) was significantly below the world average for other energy sources. As a result, oil has displaced other types of fuel from the fuel and energy balance (FEB) in economically developed countries. The coal phase was replaced by the oil and gas phase, which continues to this day.

Table 6. Changes in the structure of the world's fuel and energy balance (in %)

This was made possible by the unequal exchange that has been practiced between developed and developing countries for many years. With the rise in oil prices in the early 1970s (which was controlled by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), already established in 1960), an energy crisis erupted; because the main reserves of this valuable raw material are concentrated in developing countries.

To mitigate the consequences of the crisis in the leading capitalist countries, national energy programs were developed, in which the main emphasis was placed on:
- saving energy;
- reducing the share of oil in the fuel and energy balance;
- bringing the structure of energy consumption in line with its own resource base, reducing dependence on energy imports.

As a result, energy consumption decreased, the structure of the fuel and energy balance changed: the share of oil began to decline, the importance of gas increased, and the reduction in the share of coal stopped, because. Coal developed countries have large reserves of coal. The energy crisis contributed to a gradual transition to a new, energy-saving type of development, which was made possible thanks to scientific and technological progress.

But the dependence of the leading capitalist countries on the import of energy raw materials continues to persist. Only Russia and China fully provide themselves with fuel and energy from their own resources and even export them. And since the main own energy resource of many developed countries is coal, it is no coincidence that in the last decade its importance has increased again in the fuel and energy balance.

Oil industry of the world

The oil industry is one of the most important and most rapidly developing branches of heavy industry until recently. The main part of its products is used for energy purposes, and therefore it belongs to the group of energy industries. Part of the oil and oil products goes to petrochemical processing.

The main feature of the geography of world oil resources is that most of them are in developing countries, primarily in the Middle East. 1/2 of the planet's oil wealth is concentrated in 19 giant fields of the Arabian Peninsula.

Region (country)	Oil reserves, million tons	Share in the world. reserves, %	Share in the world. production, %	Oil production (1994), million tons
World	136094	100,0	100,0	3000,0
Near and Middle East	89440	65,7	30,7	921,7
	6021	4,4	11,0	329,5
America	22026	16,2	26,8	804,0
Africa	8301	6,1	10,6	306,1
Western Europe	2254	1,7	93	277,6
CIS and Eastern Europe	8052	5,9	12,0	361,1
including: CIS**	7755	5,7	11,6	347,1
* Excluding the Near and Middle East **Data for the CIS include reliable and part of proven reserves.

Among the industrialized countries, two types of states can be distinguished: on the one hand, the USA, Russia, Canada, which have their own reserves and powerful oil production; on the other hand, European countries (excluding Norway and Great Britain), as well as Japan and South Africa, which are deprived of their own resources and whose economy is based entirely on imported oil. Nevertheless, the share of developed countries in world oil production is increasing (1970 - 12% of world production, 1994 - 45%, about 1.5 billion tons of oil). At the same time, OPEC countries account for 41% of world production (1.2 billion tons).

Table 8. Top ten countries in the world by oil production

The rise in oil prices in recent years has stimulated the development of deposits explored in areas with much more difficult conditions for oil production and transportation. The share of offshore oil fields is large (25% of explored reserves). In the seas, prospecting and exploration work is already underway at depths of up to 800 m at a distance of 200-500 km from the coast. The largest offshore oil fields have been explored in the Persian Gulf and off the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, in the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea (in the British and Norwegian sectors), off the northern coast of Alaska, off the coast of California, off the western coast of Africa, the islands of Southeast Asia. In some countries, the bulk of proven oil reserves are concentrated in offshore fields, for example, in the USA - more than 1/2, Brunei and Qatar - about 2/3, Angola and Australia - more than 4/5, Bahrain - 9/10, and in Norway and Great Britain - almost 100%.

The remaining territorial gap between the main areas of oil production and consumption (the main feature of the world's oil industry) leads to a colossal scale of long-distance oil transportation. It remains the world's number one maritime transport cargo.

The main directions of international oil transportation:
Persian Gulf -> Japan
Persian Gulf -> Foreign Europe
Caribbean Sea -> USA
Southeast Asia -> Japan
North Africa -> Overseas Europe

The main oil cargo flows of the world start from the largest oil ports of the Persian Gulf (Mina al-Ahmadi, Kharq, etc.) and go to Western Europe and Japan. The largest tankers follow the long route around Africa, the smaller ones through the Suez Canal. Smaller cargo flows go from Latin America (Mexico, Venezuela) to the USA and Western Europe.

The geography of oil imports has changed dramatically. The share of Canada, Mexico, Venezuela as oil suppliers to the USA has grown. The countries of the Middle East now account for about 5% of US oil imports.

Oil pipelines are laid not only on the territory of many countries of the world, but also on the bottom of the seas (in the Mediterranean, North).

Unlike oil production, the bulk of refining capacities are concentrated in the leading industrialized countries (about 70% of the world's refinery capacities, including the USA - 21.3%, Europe - 21.6%, the CIS - 16.6%, Japan - 6.2%).

There are such areas as the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the New York area in the USA, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Southern Italy, the coast of Tokyo Bay in Japan, the coast of the Persian Gulf, the coast of Venezuela, the Volga region in Russia.

There are two opposing trends in the location of the oil refining industry: one of them is a “market” one (separation of oil refining from production sites and the construction of refineries in oil product consuming countries), and the other is a “raw material” tendency to bring oil refining closer to oil production sites. Until recently, the first trend prevailed, which made it possible to import crude oil at low prices, and sell oil products obtained from it at prices many times higher.

But in recent years, there has been a trend towards the construction of refineries in some developing countries, especially at transport communications nodes, on important sea routes (for example, on the islands of Aruba, Curaçao - in the Caribbean Sea, in Singapore, Aden, in the city of Freeport in the Bahamas islands, in the city of Santa Cruz in the Virgin Islands).

The construction of refineries in developing countries is also stimulated by the adoption of more stringent environmental protection measures in economically developed countries (removal of "environmentally dirty" industries).

Gas industry of the world

The main reserves of natural gas are owned by the CIS countries (40%), incl. Russia (39.2%). The share of the countries of the Near and Middle East in world gas reserves is about 30%, North America about 5%, Western Europe 4% (1994).

The richest foreign countries in natural gas are Iran, Saudi Arabia, the USA, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, Norway, and Canada.

On the whole, the share of the industrially developed capitalist countries in the world's reserves of natural gas is much smaller than that of the developing countries. However, the bulk of production is concentrated in industrialized countries.

Table 9. Explored reserves, production, consumption of natural gas (as of January 1, 1995)

region (country)	share in world reserves (%)	production (billion m 3)	consumption (billion m 3)
World	100.0	2215	2215
North America	4.9	658	654
Latin America	5.1	97	101
Western Europe	3.8	244	335
Eastern Europe	40.2	795	720
including Russia	39.2	606	497
Africa	6.9	87	46
Bl. and Middle East	32.0	136	130
Rest of Asia*, Australia and Oceania	7.0	198	229
*Excluding the Near and Middle East.

World production of natural gas (GHG) is growing every year, and in 1994 it exceeded 2 trillion. m 3. The geography of GHG production is significantly different from oil production. More than 2/5 (40%) of it is mined on the territory of the CIS countries (of which 80% is in Russia, which is far ahead of all other countries in the world) and in the USA (25% of world production). Then, many times lagging behind the first two countries, are Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Indonesia, Algeria. All these states are the largest exporters of natural gas. The main part of the exported gas goes through gas pipelines, and is also transported in liquefied form (1/4).

Table 10. Top ten countries in the world by natural gas production

The length of gas pipelines is growing rapidly (there are currently 900,000 km of gas pipelines in the world). The largest interstate gas pipelines operate in North America (between the Canadian province of Alberta and the USA); in Western Europe (from the largest Dutch field Groningen to Italy through the territory of Germany and Switzerland; from the Norwegian sector of the North Sea to Germany, Belgium and France). Since 1982, a gas pipeline has been operating from Algeria through Tunisia and further along the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea to Italy.

Almost all Eastern European countries (except Albania), as well as a number of Western European countries - Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Switzerland, Finland - receive gas from Russia through gas pipelines. Russia is the world's largest exporter of natural gas.

The interstate maritime transportation of natural gas in liquefied form (LNG) using special gas carriers is growing. The largest LNG suppliers are Indonesia, Algeria, Malaysia, Brunei. About 2/3 of all exported LNG is imported to Japan.

Coal industry of the world

The coal industry is the oldest and most developed of all branches of the fuel and energy complex in industrialized countries.

According to estimates, the total coal reserves around the world are determined at 13-14 trillion. tons (52% - hard coal, 48% - brown).

More than 9/10 of proven hard coal reserves, i.e. extracted using existing technologies, concentrated: in China, in the USA (more than 1/4); on the territory of the CIS countries (more than 1/5); in South Africa (more than 1/10 of world reserves). From other industrialized countries, coal reserves can be distinguished in the Federal Republic of Germany, Great Britain, Australia, Poland, Canada; from developing - in India, Indonesia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Colombia and Venezuela.

In recent decades, traditional coal mining in Western European countries has declined significantly, with China, the United States and Russia becoming the main centers of production. They account for almost 60% of the world's total coal production, which is 4.5 billion tons per year. Further, we can mention South Africa, India, Germany, Australia, Great Britain (production exceeds 100 million tons per year in each of these countries).

The qualitative composition of coals is also of significant importance, in particular, the proportion of coking coals used as raw materials for ferrous metallurgy. Their share is greatest in the coal reserves of Australia, Germany, China, and the USA.

In recent years, in many economically developed countries, the coal industry has become structurally in crisis. Coal mining was reduced in the main traditional areas (old industrial), for example, in the Ruhr - Germany, in the North of France, in the Appalachians - the USA (which led to social consequences, including unemployment).

The coal industry of Australia, South Africa and Canada differed in other development trends, where there was an increase in production with an export orientation. Thus, Australia overtook the largest exporter of coal - the United States (its share in world exports - 2/5). This is due to the demand for coal in Japan and the presence in Australia itself, not far from the coast, of large deposits suitable for open pit mining. Richards Bay is the largest dedicated coal port in South Africa (coal export). Powerful sea cargo flows of coal formed the so-called "coal bridges":
USA -> Western Europe
USA -> Japan
Australia -> Japan
Australia -> Western Europe
South Africa -> Japan

Canada and Colombia are becoming major exporters. The main part of foreign trade transportation of coal is carried out by sea. In recent years, more in demand than coking (technological) coal has been thermal coal (lower quality - for power generation).

The vast majority of the explored reserves of brown coal and its production are concentrated in industrialized countries. The United States, Germany, Australia, Russia are distinguished by the size of reserves.

The main part of brown coal (more than 4/5) is consumed at thermal stations located near its development. The cheapness of this coal is explained by the way it is mined - almost exclusively open-cast. This ensures the production of cheap electricity, which attracts electricity-intensive industries (non-ferrous metallurgy, etc.) to the areas of brown coal mining.

Power industry

In total, 15 billion tons of standard fuel are consumed annually in the world as energy resources. The total capacity of power plants around the world in the early 90s exceeded 2.5 billion kW, and electricity generation reached the level of 12 trillion. kWh per year.

More than 3/5 of all electricity is generated in industrialized countries, among which the United States, the CIS (Russia), Japan, Germany, Canada, and China stand out in terms of total generation.

Table 11. Top ten countries in the world in terms of electricity generation

Most industrialized countries have established unified energy systems, although they do not exist in the United States, Canada, China and Brazil. There are interstate (regional) energy systems.

Of all the electricity produced in the world (at the beginning of the 90s), about 62% is generated at thermal power plants, about 20% at hydroelectric power plants, about 17% at nuclear power plants and 1% at alternative sources.

In some countries, hydroelectric power plants generate a significantly larger part of electricity: in Norway (99%), Austria, New Zealand, Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala, Tanzania, Nepal, Sri Lanka (80-90% of total electricity generation). In Canada, Switzerland - more than 60%, in Sweden and Egypt 50-60%.

The degree of development of hydro resources in different regions of the world is different (in the whole world, only 14%). In Japan, water resources are used by 2/3, in the USA and Canada - by 3/5, in Latin America - by 1/10, and in Africa less than 1/20 of water resources are used.

Currently, out of 110 operating HPPs with a capacity of more than 1 million kW, more than 50% are located in industrialized countries with market economies (17 in Canada, 16 in the USA). The largest HPPs operating abroad in terms of capacity are: the Brazilian-Paraguayan "Itaipu" - on the Parana River - with a capacity of 12.6 million kW; the Venezuelan "Guri" on the Caroni River, and others. The largest hydroelectric power plants in Russia were built on the Yenisei River: the Krasnoyarskaya, Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power stations (with a capacity of more than 6 million kW).

In some countries, the possibilities of using the economic hydropower potential are almost exhausted (Sweden, Germany), in others, its use is just beginning.

About 1/2 of the capacity of the world's hydroelectric power plants and the generation of electricity from them falls on the USA, Canada and European countries.

However, in the whole world, the main role in the electricity supply is played by thermal power plants operating on mineral fuels, mainly coal, oil or gas.

The largest share of coal is in the thermal power industry of South Africa (almost 100%), Australia (about 75%), Germany and the USA (more than 50%).

The coal fuel and energy cycle is one of the most environmentally hazardous. Therefore, the use of "alternative" energy sources (sun, wind, tides and tides) is expanding. But the greatest practical application has received the use of nuclear energy.

Until the early 1990s, nuclear power developed at a faster pace than the entire power industry. The share of nuclear power plants increased especially rapidly in highly developed countries. economic terms countries and areas that are deficient in other energy resources.

However, due to the sharp reduction in the cost of oil and gas, i.e. a decrease in the cost advantages of nuclear power plants over thermal power plants, as well as in connection with the psychological impact of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (1986, in the former USSR) and the activation of opponents of nuclear energy, its growth rates have noticeably decreased.

Nevertheless, nuclear power plants operate in 29 countries of the world. The annual electricity generation has exceeded 1 trillion. kW/h The largest share of nuclear power plants in total electricity production is in France and Belgium. More than 2/3 of the total capacity of all nuclear power plants in the world is concentrated in the following countries: USA, France, Japan, Germany, Great Britain and Russia. In Lithuania, the share of nuclear power plants in total electricity generation is 78%, in France - 77%, in Belgium - 57%, in Sweden - 47%, while in the USA - 19%, in Russia - 11%.

The share of US nuclear power plants in the total capacity of nuclear power plants in the world accounts for about 40%.

The largest nuclear power complex - "Fukushima" is located on about. Honshu in Japan, it has 10 power units with a total capacity of more than 9 million kW.

Alternative sources so far provide only a very small part of the world's electricity demand. Only in some Central American countries, the Philippines and Iceland, geothermal power plants are of significant importance; in Israel, in Cyprus, solar energy is widely used.

MINING.

The mining industry ensures the extraction of mineral fuels, ores of ferrous, non-ferrous, rare and precious metals, as well as non-metallic raw materials. The nomenclature of this industry includes dozens of types of fuel and raw materials. But it is based on the extraction of such fuels as oil, natural gas and coal, such types of ore raw materials as iron, manganese, copper, polymetallic, aluminum ores, such types of non-metallic raw materials as table, potash salts, phosphorites. In terms of production, coal, oil, iron ore stand out, the world production of each of which has reached 1 billion tons. Over 100 million tons of bauxites and phosphorites are mined, more than 20 million tons of manganese ores, and much less other types of ore raw materials. . For example, the world production of gold in recent years has been at the level of 2.3 thousand tons.

Between the countries of the North and the South, the extraction of various types of mineral raw materials is distributed unequally.

The countries of the North fully or almost completely meet their needs in coal, natural gas, polymetals, uranium, a number of alloying metals, gold, platinum, and potash salts. Consequently, the cargo flows of these types of mineral raw materials are mainly within this group of countries. For example, uranium suppliers are Canada, Australia, South Africa, potassium salts - Canada, Germany.

Along with this, the countries of the North only half meet their needs for iron, copper, manganese ores, chromites, bauxites, diamonds, importing the missing raw materials from the countries of the South. An example of this kind is iron ore, the extraction of which is approximately equally distributed between economically developed (USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Sweden, Russia, Ukraine) and developing (China, Brazil, India, Venezuela, Liberia) countries. about 400 million tons of iron ore, and the same figure gives an idea of ​​the main "iron ore bridges" that have developed to date:
Australia -> Japan
Australia -> Western Europe
Brazil -> Japan
Brazil -> Western Europe
USA -> Western Europe.

Finally, a very strong dependence of the countries of the North on supplies from the countries of the South of oil, tin, cobalt and some other types of raw materials remains.

The international geographical division of labor in the mining industry has led to the formation of 6 main "mining powers" in the world, which account for more than 2/3 of the entire extraction of raw materials and fuel. Four of them belong to the economically developed countries of the West - the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, two - to the post-socialist and socialist countries - Russia and China. The mining industry has also developed in many other developed and developing countries. But for the most part they specialize in the extraction of one or two types of mineral raw materials: for example, Poland - coal, Chile - copper ore, Malaysia - tin ore.

Table 12. Russia's share in world reserves and production of certain types of natural resources in the late 90s.

Resource types	Reserves (explored)		Mining (production)
	share, %	place in the world	share, %	place in the world
Coal	12,0	3rd (after USA, China)	6,0	5th (after China, USA, India, Australia)
Oil (including gas condensate)	13,0	2nd (after Saudi Arabia)	9,0	3rd (after USA, Saudi Arabia)
Natural gas	35,0	1st	28,0	1st
Iron ores	32,0	1st	14,0	4th* (after China, Brazil, Australia)
Apatity	65,0	1st	55,0	1st
Water resources (river runoff), total	10,0	2nd (after Brazil)	…	4th** (after USA, Canada, Brazil)
Forest (timber reserves)	23,0	1st	…	8th*** (after USA, India, China, etc.)
Land (arable land)	7,0	3rd (after USA, India)	…	7th (after China, USA, India, France, etc.)
* Production of electricity at hydroelectric power stations. ** Export of timber. *** Gross production of cereals and leguminous crops.

FERROUS METALLURGY.

World steel production in the mid-90s reached 750 million tons. However, this figure either does not grow or grows very slowly, which is associated with a general decrease in metal intensity (ferrous metal consumption per unit of output) of production, the widespread use of plastics and other structural materials .

Steel smelting is distributed among major regions of the world as follows: foreign Asia - 38%, foreign Europe - 25%, North America - 15%, CIS countries - 12%. The rest is in Latin America, Africa and Australia. The order of individual countries included in the top ten countries of the world is inconsistent, changeable. Not so long ago, the first place in the world in steel smelting was occupied by the Soviet Union, then it passed to Japan, and in 1996 to China.

Table 13. World leading countries in steel production

Recently, in the geographical distribution of the world production of ferrous metals, there is a clear trend towards a decrease in the share of the countries of the North and an increase in the share of the countries of the South. This is explained, on the one hand, by the industrialization needs of the developing countries, and, on the other hand, by the transfer of "dirty" industries to these countries, including ferrous metallurgy. However, the developing countries produce mostly ordinary metal, while high-quality steel production is still concentrated in the countries of the North.

The geography of the world ferrous metallurgy has historically developed under the influence of different types orientation. For a century and a half, its focus on coal basins and coke production prevailed: this is how the main metallurgical bases arose in the USA, foreign Europe, Russia, China, and Ukraine. Albeit to a lesser extent, there was also an orientation towards iron ore basins. However, in the era of scientific and technological revolution, there was a weakening of such a fuel and raw material orientation of ferrous metallurgy. At first, the focus on cargo flows of coking coal and iron ore began to prevail. As a result, the ferrous metallurgy of Japan, the countries of Western Europe, and partly the United States began to gravitate more and more towards seaports. In recent years, the focus on the consumer has become especially strong. This is largely due to the transition from the construction of huge plants to the construction of specialized small, so-called mini-factories, the location of which is oriented towards metal consumers.

The world's largest exporters of steel (mainly in the form of rolled products and pipes) are Japan, Germany, the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg), France, Italy, the UK and South Korea.

NON-FERROUS METALLURGY.

This industry is about 20 times inferior to ferrous metallurgy in terms of metal production. However, its significance is very great. First of all, this applies to such leading branches of non-ferrous metallurgy as the aluminum and copper industries.

The location of non-ferrous metallurgy enterprises is formed under the influence of many natural and economic factors.

Previously, non-ferrous metallurgy enterprises were located mainly near sources of raw materials, since metallurgy of heavy metals (copper, tin, etc.) prevailed. heavy metal ores are distinguished by a low metal content in the ore.

In the middle of the 20th century, the metallurgy of light non-ferrous metals (especially the aluminum industry) developed rapidly. Therefore, the energy orientation in the location of the industry has increased. Therefore, factories are built near sources of cheap energy.

Since the 1979s, the importance of secondary raw materials has increased, so the focus on the consumer has increased.

96% of the weight of non-ferrous metals produced is aluminum, copper, zinc and lead.

World production aluminum in the mid-90s amounted to 20 million tons. At the same time, Europe (including Russia) produced 6.6 million tons. North America - 6.4 million tons, Latin America - 2.1 million tons, Asia - 1 .7 million tons, Australia and Oceania - 1.7 million tons and Africa - 0.9 million tons. Russia, Canada, Australia, Norway are among the leading aluminum exporters, and Japan, the USA, Germany are among the importers.

World smelting copper- about 10 million tons. Chile, the USA, Canada, the CIS countries, China, Australia, Zambia, Poland, Peru, Indonesia are among the main producers of this metal. The main exporters of refined copper are Chile, Zambia, Congo, and the importers are the USA, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan.

In the last two or three decades, there has been a shift in non-ferrous metallurgy from economically developed to developing countries, which already produce more than 4/5 of all copper and more than 1/3 of aluminum. This shift is only partly due to the needs of their industrialization. The main role is played by the policy of transferring "dirty" industries from the countries of the North to the countries of the South. But the main consumers of non-ferrous metals are still the countries of Europe, North America and Japan.

ENGINEERING.

Mechanical engineering is the leading branch of the world industry both in terms of the number of employees (80 million people) and in terms of the cost of manufactured products (more than 1/3 of all industrial production). Mechanical engineering includes dozens of different sub-sectors. But the main role is played by general engineering, transport engineering, electrical engineering and electronics. In total, more than 1 million metal-cutting machine tools and tractors, 50 million cars, 130 million television sets are produced annually in the world.

The geography of world engineering is very uneven: almost 9/10 of all production falls on the countries of the North. The main machine-building region of the world is North America, where almost all types of machine-building products are produced, from the highest to medium and low degree of complexity. The second region is foreign Europe, which mainly produces mass machine-building products, but retains its positions in some of the latest industries. The third region includes Japan, Korea and some NIS of Southeast Asia; it also combines the products of mass engineering with the production of products of the highest complexity. The fourth region is the CIS countries, especially Russia, Ukraine, Belarus.

In the last two or three decades, mechanical engineering has also developed in some countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. First of all, this applies to Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, India, NIS Asia. Some of them have already entered the "top ten" countries, for example, in the production of electronic products, including consumer electronics (radios, televisions, tape recorders, etc.), although many high-tech enterprises built in them, firstly, are branches of Western firms and Secondly, they are assembly plants. The vast majority of developing countries on the world map of mechanical engineering continues to be a "blank spot".

CHEMICAL INDUSTRY.

The 20th century was the century of rapid development of the chemical industry. Along with mechanical engineering, this is the most dynamic branch of modern industry, which largely determines scientific and technological progress.

In the era of scientific and technological revolution, production continues to grow in the "lower floors" of the chemical industry, producing sulfuric acid, mineral fertilizers, and various chemicals. For example, the world production of sulfuric acid exceeds 150 million tons (the leading countries are the USA, China, Russia, Japan), the production of mineral fertilizers is 160 million tons (the leading countries are the USA, China, Canada, India, Russia). But those branches of the "upper floors" that are associated with the production of products not of basic chemistry, but of organic synthesis chemistry, are developing at an even faster pace. Thus, the world production of plastics is already approaching 100 million tons (the leading countries are the USA, Japan, the FRG, France), the production of chemical fibers is 20 million tons (the leading countries are the USA, China, the Republic of Korea, Japan, the FRG).

In general, several large regions have developed in the world chemical industry - the USA, foreign Europe, Japan, China, the CIS countries, the NIS of Asia. In most of them, the mining and chemical industry, the production of mineral fertilizers, the main chemical products, but especially the products of organic synthesis and polymeric materials, have been developed. In developing countries, until recently, the chemical industry was represented mainly by the extraction of raw materials. However, after the global energy crisis in the mid-1970s, this industry began to grow quite rapidly in developing countries, especially those rich in oil and gas resources (the countries of the Persian Gulf, North Africa, Mexico, Venezuela).

TEXTILE INDUSTRY.

The textile industry is perhaps the oldest branch of world industrial production. For many centuries, it has been its main, defining industry. And now it remains the leading branch of light industry, the scale and significance of which is evidenced by the following indicator: annually 115-120 billion m of various types of fabrics are produced in the world. Approximately 70% of this amount falls on the countries of the "top ten".

Most of the world's production cotton fabrics. This industry is increasingly shifting from the countries of the North to the countries of the South: China and India provide about 1/2 of the world production of such fabrics, although the role of the USA, Japan, and Russia also remains significant.

In second place is the production of fabrics from chemical fiber. The United States is the leader in their production, from other economically developed countries one can name Japan, Germany, France, the Republic of Korea, Russia, and from developing countries, first of all, India, China and Brazil.

Third place - production silk fabrics, it is concentrated mainly in economically developed countries, especially in the USA and Japan. Of the developing countries, only India and China are in the top ten.

The fourth place is taken by the release woolen fabrics, in the production of which the economically developed countries also play the main role, but China has come out on top, overtaking Italy, Russia and Japan.

In general, the textile industry in the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America is now developing much faster than in the economically developed countries of foreign Europe and Russia, where it is in crisis. Therefore, the share of developing countries in the world production of fabrics is constantly increasing.

GEOGRAPHY OF AGRICULTURE

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

Agriculture is the second leading branch of material production. This is not only the oldest, but also the most common occupation of people: there is not a single country in the world whose inhabitants would not be engaged in agriculture and related industries - forestry, hunting, fishing. Worldwide, they employ more than 1.1 billion people.

The ubiquity of agriculture is combined with its very great diversity. Scientists distinguish about 50 of its types. But all these types can be combined into large groups: intense and extensive, commodity and consumer agriculture. In this regard, very large differences remain between developed and developing countries.

In economically developed countries, the majority commodity(i.e., primarily for sale) agriculture, which in turn includes both intensive crop rotation agriculture, intensive livestock farming with forage, horticulture and horticulture, and extensive farming and grazing.

The agriculture of the most developed post-industrial countries has reached a particularly high level of marketability. The share of the economically active population employed in agriculture in these countries is only 2-5%, but labor productivity and marketability are very high. This is due to the high level of mechanization, chemicalization, electrification, the introduction of microelectronics into this industry, the achievements of genetics and biotechnology. This is also due to the narrow specialization of most farms, the merging of agriculture with industry, which has led to the fact that the agro-industrial complex in this group of countries has taken the form of the so-called agribusiness. Along with the production of agricultural products proper, it includes its processing, storage, transportation and marketing, as well as the production of machinery, fertilizers, etc. As a result, the yield of grain crops in these countries is usually 40-50 centners per hectare, but often rises even higher. In general, these countries play a leading role in world agriculture, being not only the largest producers, but also exporters of many products.

The post-socialist countries, including Russia, are also major producers of food and agricultural raw materials, but the overall level of marketability and intensity of agriculture is still noticeably lower in them. For example, the average yield of grain crops in most of these countries ranges from 10 to 20 q/ha.

Agriculture is very different in developing countries. Although approximately 1/2 of all inhabitants are employed in this industry (and even up to 80-90% in the countries of Tropical Africa), and its role in world agricultural production is quite significant, in general, in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The traditional consumer or low-commodity(i.e. intended primarily for personal consumption) agriculture. The small commodity sector is represented by many millions of small peasant allotments. Hoe farming dominates with little use of technology, nomadic cattle breeding. At least 20 million families practice even more primitive slash-and-burn agriculture. As a result, dozens of developing countries cannot provide themselves with the food they need and depend on food imports.

However, against this background, separate pockets of high-value agriculture were formed, represented by plantations some tropical and subtropical crops (coffee, cocoa, tea, sugar cane, bananas, etc.). These plantations occupy the best land and provide products for export. But usually they do not belong to the countries where they are located, but to firms, monopolies of Western countries. Closely connected with such a plantation economy is the concept of a very narrow, monocultural specialization individual developing countries, especially African. For example, Uganda can serve as an example of a country with a monoculture of coffee, Ghana - cocoa, Gambia - peanuts, Mauritius - sugar cane.

The concept of the "green revolution". This concept became widespread in the 60s, when, following the economically developed countries, the "green revolution" began in developing countries. "Green Revolution" is the transformation of agriculture based on modern agricultural technology, which is one of the forms of manifestation of NTR. The "Green Revolution" includes three main components: 1) the cultivation of new varieties of crops, primarily cereals, 2) the expansion of irrigated land, 3) the wider use of modern technology and fertilizers.

As a result of the "Green Revolution", the yield of grain crops has increased two to three times. Some of the developing countries, such as India, began to meet their grain needs through their own production. Nevertheless, the "green revolution" did not fully justify the hopes placed on it. Firstly, it has a pronounced focal character and is most widespread in Mexico, a number of countries in South and Southeast Asia. Secondly, it affected only the lands owned by large owners and foreign companies, changing almost nothing in the traditional low-commodity, consumer sector.

PLANT PRODUCTION

Cereal crops. Cereal crops occupy 750 million hectares, or about 12 of all cultivated land in the world. The area of ​​their distribution actually coincides with the area of ​​human settlement. World grain production in the second half of the 20th century. increased significantly: from 800 million tons in 1950 to 1850 million tons in 1995. However, recently this growth has slowed down and the level of world production has stabilized. More than 3/4 of the total world grain production is accounted for by ten leading countries.

Table 14. The top ten countries in the world in the production of cereals

However, it is more correct to judge the availability of their grain not by the size of the gross harvest, but by production per capita. The "record holder" of the world for this indicator is Canada (almost 1700 kg). More than 1000 kg of grain per capita is produced by the USA and France, while in India and Indonesia this figure is only 250 kg, and in China in recent years it has risen to 400 kg.

Table 15. Structure of the gross harvest of grain crops in the world (%)

Wheat	Rice	Corn	Barley	oats	Rye	Other
28	26	25	10	2	2	7

The grain economy of the world, figuratively speaking, rests on three breads - wheat, rice and corn, which together provide 4/5 of the gross harvest of grain crops. Wheat, which is grown in 70 countries, harvesting 530-560 million tons annually, is the main bread for about half of humanity. Rice (530 million tons) is the staple food for the other half of humanity. Corn (470 million tons) also plays an important role as a food and fodder crop. However, the main features of their location on the globe are quite different.

There are two large wheat belts- northern and southern. The northern belt covers the USA, Canada, countries of foreign Europe, CIS countries, China, India, Pakistan, and some other countries. The southern belt, much smaller in size, consists of three separate parts: Argentina, South Africa and Australia. The geography of corn cultivation as a whole resembles the geography of the world wheat economy and also makes it possible to distinguish between the northern and southern belts, with the difference that 40% of the world corn harvest comes from one country - the United States. But the distribution of rice crops and harvests in the world is completely different: 1/10 of its world harvest falls on the countries of East, Southeast and South Asia, especially China, India and Indonesia.

Approximately 200 million tons of grain enter the world market annually, mainly wheat and corn. Its main exporters are the USA, Canada, Australia, Argentina, France. Its main importers are some countries of foreign Europe, Southwest and East Asia, Latin America, as well as Russia and a number of other CIS countries.

Other food and non-food crops. In addition to grains, many other crops are used to provide people with food. Among oilseeds the most important are soybeans (the main producers are the USA, Brazil, China), sunflower (Ukraine, Russia, Balkan countries), peanuts (India, West African countries), olive (Mediterranean countries). From tubers potatoes are harvested the most (the main producers are China, Russia, Poland, and the USA). Sugar is obtained from sugar cane(2/3) and sugar beet(1/3). Brazil, Cuba, India, China stand out in terms of sugarcane harvesting, and Ukraine, Russia, France, Germany, and the USA stand out in terms of sugar beet harvesting. As tonic cultures tea is usually consumed (the main producers are India, China, Sri Lanka), coffee (Brazil, Colombia, West African countries), cocoa (Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Brazil).

Of the fibrous crops, the most important is cotton. The world production of cotton fiber is 18-20 million tons. The main harvest is provided by China, the USA, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, some countries of Africa and Latin America. Production natural rubber 85% is concentrated in the countries of Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand).

ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

Like cereal crops, animal husbandry is almost ubiquitous, with meadows and pastures occupying three times as much land as arable land. The geography of world animal husbandry is primarily determined by the distribution of livestock, the total number of which is approximately 4 billion heads. The main role is played by the breeding of cattle, sheep and pigs.

The world number of cattle is 1300 million heads. The "top ten" countries in this indicator include both economically developed and developing countries.

Table 16. Top ten countries in the world by size of cattle population

However, the types of management in these countries are very different. Intensive dairy and meat-and-dairy animal husbandry is most common in the forest and forest-steppe zones of the temperate zone (USA, Russia, Ukraine, France). The content of livestock here is stall or pasture-stall. Beef cattle are bred mainly in the drier regions of the temperate and subtropical zones, where extensive transhumance and pasture cattle breeding predominates (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico). In some areas of the USA, Argentina, Australia, large-scale commodity farms (ranches) arose - real "meat factories". As for India, the very large number of cattle in this country is primarily a consequence of the dogma of Hinduism, which prohibits the killing of "sacred cows"; livestock here is unproductive, low-bred.

Sheep breeding (1200 million heads) of meat and wool direction has become widespread within the temperate zone of Europe and North America. Sheep breeding of the fine-fleeced and semi-fine-fleeced direction is typical for the more arid regions of South-Western and Central Asia, the steppe and semi-desert regions of Australia and Argentina. Australia also holds the world championship in terms of the number of sheep (140 million heads).

Pig breeding (800 million heads) is the source of 2/5 of all meat products. More than half of the total number of pigs is in Asia, primarily in China (400 million heads). It is followed by the United States, Brazil, Russia, Germany, and Spain by a very large margin.

FISHING

Fishing is one of the oldest crafts of mankind. The significance of fishing today is determined primarily by the fact that fish and fish products are the most important element of a balanced diet, a source of valuable proteins. During the second half of the XX century. the catch of fish and seafood (they account for a little more than 1/10 of the total catch) gradually increased, reaching a level of 100 million tons by the beginning of the 90s. But then this figure stabilized, which is due to many reasons, but primarily the threat depletion of fish resources. Between the oceans, the fish catch and seafood production are distributed as follows: the Pacific Ocean accounts for 64%, the Atlantic - 27% and the Indian - 9%.

The main fishing areas of the world are located within the continental shelf of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

In the Pacific Ocean, these are its northwestern and northeastern marginal parts, to which the territories of Russia, Japan, China, Korea, the USA, Canada, as well as the coastal regions of South America. In the Atlantic Ocean, it is also the northwestern part, located off the coast of the United States and Canada, and the northeastern part, located off the coast of Western Europe. It is within these zones that the main fishing countries of the world are located.

Table 17. Top ten countries in the world in terms of fish catches and seafood production

Recently, aquaculture, which also includes mariculture, that is, the cultivation of aquatic organisms in the marine environment, has begun to play an increasingly important role in world fisheries. In the early 90s, world aquaculture production already exceeded 15 million tons. Approximately 4/5 of it is provided by Asian countries - China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, the Philippines, where mainly carp are bred in freshwater reservoirs, and on marine farms and plantations - fish, shellfish, shrimp, crabs, mussels, algae. Aquaculture has also gained some development in Europe and North America.

GEOGRAPHY OF WORLD TRANSPORT

World transport system. All means of communication, transport enterprises and vehicles together form a global transport system, the scale of which is very large. More than 100 million people are employed in world transport. The total length of the transport network of the world, without sea routes, is 36 million km. Every year, more than 100 billion tons of cargo and more than 1 trillion passengers are transported in the world by all modes of transport. More than 650 million cars, 40,000 ships, 10,000 regular aircraft, and 200,000 locomotives are involved in these transportations.

Table 18. The length of the transport network of the world (in thousand km)

Scientific and technological revolution has had a great impact on the "division of labor" between the individual modes of transport. In the world passenger turnover, the uncompetitive first place (about 3/4) now belongs to road transport, in the world freight turnover - to sea transport (almost 2/3). However, there are large differences between individual regions and countries in this respect.

Therefore, it is customary to single out also regional transport systems, each of which has its own characteristics. We can talk about the transport systems of North America, foreign Europe, the CIS countries, South, East and Southwest Asia, Latin America, Australia, Tropical Africa, etc.

LAND TRANSPORT.

This concept includes three types of transport: rail, road and pipeline.

Railway transport, despite the decline in its share in freight and especially in passenger traffic, remains an important mode of land transport. There are railways in 140 countries of the world, but more than half of their total length is

Skills: be able to analyze and explain the nature of the location of the sectors of the world economy, using knowledge about the factors and principles of location, technical and economic features of the industry, industries of international specialization; to systematize, compare and generalize according to the materials of the topic; to characterize the industry according to the plan, to characterize the natural prerequisites for the development of industry and agriculture of the country (region) according to the plan.

Industry is the first leading branch of material production. Approximately 500 million people are employed in the global industry. Over the past century, industrial production has grown more than 50 times, with 3/4 of this growth occurring in the second half of the 20th century. (see table 20 in the "Appendices"), Depending on the time of occurrence, all industries are usually divided into three groups.
The first group includes the so-called old industries that arose during the industrial revolutions - coal, iron ore, metallurgical, production of railway rolling stock, shipbuilding, textiles. As a rule, these industries are growing at a slow pace these days. But their impact on the geography of global industry is still significant.
The second group includes the so-called new industries that determined scientific and technological progress in the first half of the 20th century - the automotive industry, aluminum smelting, the production of plastics, and chemical fibers. As a rule, they are growing at a faster pace (about 200,000 cars leave the assembly lines worldwide every day), although recently not as fast as before. Being concentrated mainly in economically developed, but already quite widespread in developing countries, they continue to have a great impact on the geography of world industry.
Finally, the third group is formed by the newest industries that emerged already in the era of the scientific and technological revolution and are mostly related to science-intensive industries, or, as they are often called, high-tech industries. These are microelectronics, computer engineering, robotics, computer science industry, atomic and aerospace production, chemistry of organic synthesis, microbiological industry - the true "catalysts" of scientific and technological revolution. As a rule, these days they are growing at the fastest and most sustainable rate. An example of countries with a high share of knowledge-intensive, high-tech industries in the gross output of the manufacturing industry is the USA, Germany and Japan. Their impact on the geography of world industry is increasing all the time, although so far it has been limited mainly to economically developed and newly industrialized countries.
The main shifts in the sectoral structure of industry in the era of scientific and technological revolution are associated with a decrease in the share of old and an increase in the share of new and especially the latest industries. Its territorial proportions are also changing. As a result of industrialization, the share of developing countries is growing quite rapidly: at the beginning
21st century it reached 35-40% (with China). Now some countries of the South are already in the top ten, and even more so in the top twenty countries of the world (see table 21 in the Annexes),
However, the industrial production of high-tech industries is still concentrated mainly in the countries of the North.
The territorial structure of world industry is primarily determined by the location of large industrial regions. There are more than a hundred of them in the world. In terms of the number of such regions, foreign Europe, North America, the CIS, East Asia stand out, but they also exist in South, Southwest and Southeast Asia, Latin America, Australia, and Africa. Fuel and energy industry: growth in production and consumption of fuel, three stages of development. You imagine that the whole history of human civilization is connected with the development of various types of fuel and energy. And in the era of scientific and technological revolution, energy has a huge impact on the development and location of production. In this sense, it is sometimes even said that she "governs the world."
World production and consumption of primary energy resources is growing all the time: from less than I billion tce. In 1900, it increased to 15 billion tons in 2005. The rate of this growth was especially high until the mid-1970s, when the global energy crisis, primarily the oil crisis, occurred. After the crisis, they slowed down.
But behind these global trends lie large geographic differences. Firstly, between North and South, secondly, between individual large regions (ahead of all is foreign Asia), and thirdly, between individual countries.
Most of the energy resources, primarily oil produced in developing countries, are exported to the USA, Western Europe and Japan; their dependence on imports, despite attempts to reduce it, remains high. As a result, stable "energy bridges" have been formed between many countries and continents.
Over the past two centuries, the world fuel and energy industry has gone through two main stages in its development. Throughout the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. the coal phase continued, when coal fuel sharply prevailed in the structure of the world fuel and energy balance. Then came the second, oil and gas stage. This is due to the many advantages of oil and gas as the most efficient energy carriers over solid fuels.
It was assumed that the energy crisis of the mid-70s. will lead to the beginning of the third stage in the development of world energy - to a fairly rapid transition from mineral fuels to nuclear energy, renewable and non-traditional energy sources. But contrary to expectations, this did not happen - largely due to the fact that oil prices fell again. And although at the beginning of the XXI century. its price has risen sharply again, in the short term, there will apparently not be any radical changes in the structure of world energy consumption. (Task 1.) The oil, gas, and coal industries are the basis of world energy. The oil industry is of particular importance.

Oil has been known to man since ancient times. Its use for lighting, heating, making medicines was mentioned by Herodotus and Plutarch. In the 19th century the invention of the kerosene lamp, and then the internal combustion engine, was the impetus for the growth of its production. In the XX century. no other type of primary energy resources has had such a great impact on the economic and social development of mankind as oil.

Today, oil is produced in almost 100 countries of the world. Between economically developed and developing countries, world production (which reached 3.9 billion tons) is distributed in the proportion of 35:65. About 40% of it is accounted for by the OPEC countries, and foreign Asia stands out among certain large regions, primarily due to the countries of the Persian Gulf.
Example. The countries of the Persian Gulf account for 2/3 of the world's proven oil reserves and about 1/3 of its world production.
! Four countries in this region produce more than 100 million tons of oil per year each (Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE, Kuwait).
The rest of the regions in terms of oil production are distributed in the following order: the CIS, Latin America, Africa, North America, foreign Europe, Australia and Oceania. If we keep in mind individual countries, then in 2005 the top three included Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States. From 150 to 200 million tons were also mined by Iran, Mexico, China, and Venezuela (Fig. 24).
AT international trade 40-45% of the total production

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Table 4
World production of major fuels and energy in 2005

Production	Whole world				In	including
		CIS	zaru fugitive Europe	abroad naya Asia	Af rica	North naya America	Latin skye America	australia liya and Oceania
Oil, mmt	3900	575	265	1570	467	455	518	30
Natural gas.
bcm	2760	765	300	615	160	705	175	40
Coal, mt	5865	465	685	2900	255	1100	85	375
Electricity
GIA,
billion kWh	18 200	1280	3660	6320	550	4840	1260	280

washing oil. In the world economy, a huge territorial gap has formed between the areas of its production and consumption. To overcome it, powerful, primarily oceanic, cargo flows arose - real "oil bridges". (Task 2.)
The global gas industry has also developed significantly. This is due to three main reasons: the presence of large proven reserves of natural gas, the relative cheapness of its transportation, and the fact that gas is an environmentally "cleaner" fuel than coal and oil. That is why since the middle of the XX century. world natural gas production increased by almost 14 times, exceeding the level of 2.7 trillion m3 (see table 4).
Not so long ago, almost all natural gas was produced in the countries of the North, primarily in the USA and Canada, in foreign Europe and the CIS.
But recently some countries of the South have also become major producers, mainly in Southeast and Southwest Asia, North Africa and Latin America.
About 30% of produced natural gas enters world trade. Most of it is exported via main gas pipelines - from Russia, Turkmenistan, the Netherlands, Canada, Algeria and other countries. . The rest sends
for export in liquefied form in special methane tankers. Liquefied natural gas is mainly exported by developing countries, which has already led to the formation of marine "gas bridges". Example. First back in the 70s. began to export liquefied natural gas to Western Europe Algeria. Then began its deliveries from the UAE to Japan. But in the 90s. Indonesia and Malaysia took the first place, also supplying Japan, which was and remains its main importer.
Judging by the forecasts, the production and consumption of natural gas will continue to grow. (Task 3.)
The coal industry, despite the competition of oil and gas, retains its importance, and the level of world production has already approached 6 billion tons. From certain regions of the world, foreign Asia, North America, foreign Europe, the countries of the SNE stand out, and from individual countries - China, USA, India, Australia, Russia.
Coal is consumed mainly in the same countries where it is mined, but still about 10% of it goes to the world market. Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, Colombia, China, the USA, and Canada were the most specialized in the export of hard coal. As a result, this industry has formed its own

stable sea "coal bridges". Russia is also among the exporters of hard coal, but the volume of exports is not as large as before. (Task 4.)
4. The power industry is one of the branches of the "vanguard troika". In the era of scientific and technological revolution, especially with the development of electronization, complex automation, informatization, world electricity production is growing at a high and steady pace and in 2005 exceeded 18 trillion kWh. Accordingly, the electrification of the fuel and energy balance of the world is also increasing.
Approximately 55% of world electricity generation comes from the countries of the North and 35% - from the countries of the South (with China). The top ten countries in this indicator include seven countries in the North and three countries in the South. But in terms of per capita electricity generation, the differences between them, as a rule, remain very large. Example. With an average global indicator of per capita electricity generation of 3 thousand kWh in economically developed countries, it usually ranges from 5 to 15 thousand kWh, while in most countries in Asia and Africa it does not reach 1 thousand kWh (in India - 700 kWh). .
The structure of electricity generation - both in the world and in most individual countries - is dominated by thermal power plants (TPPs), operating
running on coal, fuel oil, natural gas. In the world electricity production, their share is 63%. The United States, China, Japan, Russia, India, Germany are leading in terms of electricity generation at thermal power plants. But other countries stand out in terms of the share of thermal power plants in total electricity generation.
Example. The focus on thermal power plants is most pronounced in such "coal" countries as Poland or South Africa, and in such "oil" countries as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, where thermal power plants provide all or almost all electricity.
Approximately 19% of the world's electricity production is provided by hydroelectric power plants (HPPs). Canada, the USA, Brazil, Russia, and China stand out in terms of the total amount of electricity generation at HPPs. But the focus on hydropower is more pronounced in those countries where the share of hydropower is especially high. Example. Of the economically developed countries of the world, almost all electricity at hydroelectric power plants is obtained in Norway. . Among developing countries, there are many more such examples. The brightest of them is Brazil, where hydroelectric power plants provide 95% of electricity. Of the CIS countries, this group includes Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

In most countries of the North, the economic hydro potential has already been largely or even completely used. Therefore, the main prospects

development of world hydropower is now associated with the countries of the South, and primarily with Brazil and China. .
Third place belongs to nuclear power plants (NPPs), which provide 17% of the world's electricity generation; they are already operating in 31 countries of the world. The United States and France produce the most electricity at nuclear power plants. Japan, Russia, Germany, and in terms of the share of nuclear power plants in the total output, Lithuania, France, and Belgium stand out. . Nuclear energy is fully provided with the necessary raw materials. The main producers of uranium concentrate (U308) are Canada, Australia, Niger, Namibia, Russia, Kazakhstan. After the accident in 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in former USSR growth rates of the world nuclear power industry slowed down significantly. Many countries have declared a moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants. But in China, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the construction of nuclear power plants did not stop, and recently it has resumed in Russia and the United States.

Non-traditional (alternative) energy sources account for only about 1% of global electricity generation. We are talking primarily about geothermal power plants (GeoTPP), which generate a large part of electricity in the countries of Central America, the Philippines, Iceland; Iceland is also an example of a country where thermal waters are widely used for heating, heating. . Tidal power plants (TPP) are still available only in a few countries - France, Great Britain, Canada, Russia, India, China. Solar power plants (SPP) operate in more than 30 countries. Recently, many countries are expanding the use of wind power plants (WPPs). Most of them are in the countries of Western Europe (Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands), in the USA (California), in India, China. . The prospects for the use of alternative energy sources are largely related to their environmental friendliness.

International transportation of electricity using main transmission lines is most typical for the countries of foreign Europe, for the USA and Canada. Russia also participates in it. (Task 5.) Mining industry. Although the share of the mining industry in world industrial production is gradually decreasing, it continues to have a very large impact on the international geographical division of labor and the geography of the world economy.
It is the mining industry that is primarily associated with overcoming the territorial gap between mining areas and consumption areas, the formation of intercontinental cargo flows, and the development of new resource areas.

In total, in the world, excluding the CIS countries, approximately 10 thousand large and medium-sized deposits of fuel, ore and non-metallic raw materials are being developed. The range of the mining industry includes dozens of items, but they vary greatly in their weight categories. As you already know, more than 1 billion tons of coal and oil are produced annually in the world, and iron ore production has also surpassed this level. Hundreds of millions of tons measure the annual production of bauxites, phosphorites, tens of millions of manganese ore, sulfur, copper (in terms of a useful component), millions of polymetals, hundreds of thousands of tin, nickel, tens of thousands of uranium, cobalt, thousands of tons of gold. .

Until the mid 70s. the main suppliers of mineral raw materials for the economically developed countries of the West were developing countries. But after the onset in the 70s. world raw material crisis, the entire concept of the mineral resource economy of the West has undergone a radical revision. He began to focus on saving raw materials and mainly his own resources. As a result, the role of Canada, Australia and South Africa increased, where a real commodity boom began.
Today, the countries of Western Europe, the USA, and Japan satisfy approximately 1/3 of their needs in mineral raw materials through supplies from developing countries, and they provide the rest of their needs with their own production and supplies from Canada, Australia and South Africa.
Example. Every year, 650 million tons of iron ore enter the world market. Its largest exporters are, on the one hand, Brazil, India, Venezuela, and on the other - Australia, Canada, South Africa. The formation of stable "iron ore bridges" is primarily associated with them.
As a result of the international geographical division of labor in the world economy, eight "great mining powers" were formed. From economically developed countries, this eight includes the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, from developing countries - China, Brazil, India, from countries with economies in transition - Russia. To some extent, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mexico, and some other countries with a developed mining industry are approaching them. And the "third echelon" is formed by countries that stand out for any one major industry of international specialization.
Example. For Chile, Peru and Zambia, this is the copper industry, for Malaysia - tin, for Guinea and Jamaica - the extraction of bauxite, for Morocco - phosphorites.
The scientific and technological revolution has made increased demands on the concentration of reserves, on the EGP of basins and fields, and on the opportunities for open mining. But at the same time, the negative impact of open mining on the environment must also be taken into account. (Task 6.) Metallurgical industry: types of orientation. On the
For a long time, the size of metal smelting almost primarily determined the economic power of any country.
In the 70s. under the influence of the energy and raw material crises, the pace of development of metallurgy, as one of the typical old industries, slowed down rather sharply.
First of all, this applies to ferrous metallurgy. Until the mid 70s. this industry has grown rapidly. . Then they slowed down dramatically. Such a slowdown is due to many reasons: a decrease in the metal intensity of production in the era of the scientific and technological revolution, measures to protect the environment from pollution, etc. At the beginning of the 21st century. global steel production still reached 1300 million tons.
At the same time, the proportion between the countries of the North and the South began to change. Today, already 1/2 of the entire world steel production falls on the countries of the South (with China). Such a "migration" of ferrous metallurgy to developing countries is explained, on the one hand, by the needs of their industrialization, and on the other hand, by the policy of transferring "dirty" industries from Japan, Western Europe, and the USA to these countries.
Of the individual regions of the world, foreign Asia stands out in terms of steel production, where such large steel producers as China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and India are located.
Example. Ferrous metallurgy is developing especially rapidly in China. By the time the People's Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949, there was practically no ferrous metallurgy in the country at all. In 1970, steel production reached 18 million tons, in 2000 - 128 million tons. And in 2006 it reached 420 million tons. Today, China ranks first in the world in this indicator.
Foreign Europe (especially FRE, Italy, France, Great Britain), North America (USA, Canada), and the CIS countries (Russia, Ukraine) also have a large steel production.
The geography of the world ferrous metallurgy has historically developed under the influence of different types of orientation. For a century and a half, its orientation towards the Carboniferous basins prevailed; this is how the main metallurgical bases arose in the USA, foreign Europe, Russia, Ukraine, and China. The second place in terms of "force of attraction" was occupied by the orientation towards iron ore basins. But in the era of scientific and technological revolution there is a general weakening of the former fuel and raw material orientation of the industry. At first, the focus on cargo flows of coking coal and iron ore began to prevail. As a result, the ferrous metallurgy of Japan, the countries of Western Europe, and partly the United States began to gravitate more and more towards seaports. In recent years, the focus on the consumer has become especially strong. This is largely due to the transition from the construction of huge plants to the construction of specialized mini-factories with more free location.
More than 350 million tons of rolled ferrous metals enter the world market annually. Russia, Japan, China, Germany, Ukraine are its main exporters, while China and the USA are its importers. (Task 7.)
Non-ferrous metallurgy is inferior to ferrous metallurgy in terms of production by about 20 times. At the same time, the metallurgy of heavy non-ferrous, alloying and noble metals, in the ore of which, as a rule, a very low content of a useful component, is usually “tied” to the countries and areas of their production. This, in particular, explains the fact that in a number of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, non-ferrous metallurgy arose long ago, back in the colonial period.
Example. One of the major areas of the copper industry has developed in Central Africa. This is the so-called Copper Belt, it stretches across the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia for 500 km - along the coastline of the ancient sea, where copper deposits were formed 600 million years ago. Copper ore is mined here and blister and refined copper is smelted (see Figure 30).
Unlike heavy ores of light non-ferrous metals, and primarily aluminum, in terms of the content of a useful component, they resemble iron ore and are quite transportable. That is why the aluminum industry is another striking example of an industry with a strong territorial gap between the extraction of raw materials and the consumption of the finished product. More than 1/3 of the bauxite mined in the world is exported, and the average distance of their sea transportation exceeds 7 thousand km.
Example. The world's largest bauxite mining area is located in Northern Australia, on the York Peninsula. Bauxite mined here by cheap open-pit mining is processed into alumina and exported to other countries.
In the last two or three decades in the USA, Western Europe, and Japan, the development of non-ferrous metallurgy, as well as ferrous metallurgy, has sharply slowed down. In developing countries, this industry, on the contrary, began to grow quite rapidly. The emergence of a number of areas of new development is also associated with it, which is one of the signs of the industrialization of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. But this is also the result of a more stringent environmental policy in the economically developed countries of the West, which in this way are trying to reduce the environmentally harmful impact of "dirty" industries. (Task 8.) Mechanical engineering: shifts in the sectoral and territorial structure. From the history course, you know that engineering as an industry arose more than 200 years ago during the industrial revolution in England. Nowadays, in terms of the number of employees (100 million people), the cost of production, it ranks first among the branches of world industry. Mechanical engineering accounts for more than 1/3 of the value of all world industrial output.
In the sectoral structure of mechanical engineering, the division of all industries into old, new and latest is especially clearly visible. Accordingly, their growth rates are very different. Old industries have either stabilized in their development or are in decline. Example. The world's shipbuilding industry boomed in the 1960s. - the first half of the 70s. After the beginning of the energy crisis and a sharp reduction in oil transportation, this industry entered a period of prolonged stagnation.
New industries tend to show some growth in production. An example of such an industry is the automotive industry. . But the newest industries, which are the main "catalysts" of scientific and technological revolution, demonstrate particularly rapid and stable growth. Example. In the mid 50s. the world electronics industry produced products worth 10 billion dollars, and at the beginning of the 21st century. - by 1.5 trillion dollars. Now, in the structure of mechanical engineering, it has come out on top.
Significant changes are also taking place in the territorial structure of the world engineering industry. Until recently, more than 9/10 of the industry's products were produced by the countries of the North, and primarily by the members of the "big seven", especially the USA, Germany and Japan. Then the share of the South began to increase - primarily the new industrial countries, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina. Now it has already exceeded 1/4.
On the economic map of the world, in the most general terms, four machine-building regions can be distinguished. The first region is North America, where almost all types of engineering products are produced, from the highest to medium and low complexity. The second region is foreign Europe, which mainly produces mass machine-building products, but also retains its positions in some of the latest industries. The third region - East and Southeast Asia - is dominated by Japan, which also combines mass engineering products with high-tech products. It includes the "Asian tigers", specializing primarily in the production of consumer electronics, and China. Example. Already in the mid-90s. the countries of East and South-East Asia provided more than 15% of the world's products of the electronics industry, and in 2005 - about 50%. The Republic of Korea and Taiwan are among the world leaders in the production of personal computers. The Republic of Korea ranked second after Japan in the production of VCRs. China ranked first in the production of televisions and radios.
The fourth region is the Commonwealth of Independent States. For most countries in this region, mechanical engineering is one of the main branches of international specialization.
In the USA, Germany, mechanical engineering provides approximately 1/2 of all exports, in Japan - 2/3. Almost all consumer electronics produced in the newly industrialized countries of Asia are also exported. (Task 9.)

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30
Table 6
Production of some types of engineering products in 2005

	Cars, million units	The whole world and the countries of the "top ten"	TV sets, million units
The whole world	66,5	Total	150,0
USA	12,0	China	58,0
Japan	10,8	Turkey	12,5
Germany	5,8	Malaysia	9,6
China	5,7	Rep. Korea	9,2
Rep. Korea	3,7	Poland	7,8
France	3.5	USA	7,6
Spain	2,8	Spain	6,0
Canada	2,8	France	5,4
Brazil	2,5	Brazil	5,4
Great Britain	1,8	Japan	5,3

Chemical industry: main regions. 20th century
became a century of rapid development of the chemical industry. Along with mechanical engineering, this is the most dynamic branch of modern industry.
In the world chemical industry, as well as in mechanical engineering, the main regions have developed: foreign Europe, North America, East and Southeast Asia. In each of them, the mining and chemical industry, the production of mineral fertilizers, the main chemical products, but especially organic synthesis and polymeric materials, have been developed. In developing countries, until recently, this industry was represented mainly by the extraction of raw materials. After the energy crisis, the chemical industry began to grow much faster in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, rich in oil and gas resources. Large petrochemical complexes were put into operation in the countries of the Persian Gulf, North Africa, Mexico and Venezuela.
With such a division of labor, the production of products of basic organic synthesis and polymeric materials is increasingly concentrated in developing countries, while the production of complex, science-intensive products is concentrated in the USA, Western Europe, and Japan. (Task 10.) Forestry and woodworking industry: two belts. The geography of the world's forestry and woodworking industries is largely determined by the distribution of forest resources.
Within the northern forest belt, mainly coniferous wood is harvested, which is then processed into sawlogs, wood boards, cellulose, paper, and cardboard. For Russia, Canada, Sweden, Finland, the timber and woodworking industries are important branches of international specialization.
Hardwood is harvested within the southern forest belt. Three main areas of the timber industry have developed here: Brazil, Tropical Africa, and Southeast Asia. The wood harvested in them is exported by sea to Japan, Western Europe, and the rest is mainly used for firewood.
For the manufacture of paper in the countries of the southern belt, non-wood raw materials are often used: bamboo (India), bagasse (Peru), sisal (Brazil, Tanzania), jute (Bangladesh). Nevertheless, in terms of its production, especially on a per capita basis, these countries lag especially far behind. . Light industry: shifts in geography. Geographical shifts in the light industry were most clearly manifested in its leading industry - the textile industry. At the beginning of the XXI century. More than 130 billion m2 of fabrics from natural and chemical fibers were produced in the world. If we take into account handicraft production, then this industry is represented in all countries.
Five main regions have developed in the global textile industry: East Asia, South Asia, the CIS, foreign Europe and the USA. In each of them, the production of cotton fabrics and fabrics from chemical fibers predominates, while the rest of the sub-sectors (woolen, linen, silk) are of lesser importance. However, the ratio between these regions has recently changed markedly. Since the 50s. the share of the economically developed countries of the West in the world production of fabrics and clothing is constantly decreasing; many old industrial textile districts fell into disrepair. The UK, previously ranked number one in the world in textile production, is now at the bottom of the top ten producing countries. From the largest exporter of fabrics, it has become their importer.
In contrast to the countries of the North, the textile industry of the countries of the South, which focuses primarily on cheap labor, is experiencing a real boom. The uncompetitive first place in the production of cotton fabrics is occupied by China, the second place is India. A significant part of the fabrics produced in the countries of the South is exported to the countries of the West. To an even greater extent, this applies to ready-made clothing. Stores in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan sell cheap clothes and knitwear from China (with Hong Kong), India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Mexico, and other developing countries. (Task 11.) Industry and the environment. The industrial activity of mankind is very closely connected with the environment. It is industry that is the main consumer of most natural resources. It was she who brought to life anthropogenic landscapes - mining and largely urban. Along with this, the growth of industry exacerbates many problems of environmental management. First of all, this refers to "dirty" industries.
The thermal power industry emits a huge amount of harmful substances into the environment, changes the gas composition of the atmosphere, and increases the temperature of the waters. The advent of nuclear energy has given rise to the complex problem of radioactive waste disposal. An even greater danger to the environment are accidents at nuclear power plants, especially on such a scale as in Chernobyl (Ukraine). They sharpened the understanding that the peaceful atom also requires a cautious approach. Hydropower is much cleaner, but the hydrotechnical structures associated with it, especially large dams and reservoirs, often lead to other ecological imbalances.
The development of the mining industry disturbs the soil cover, “eats up” entire natural landscapes, causing the need for high costs for their reclamation. Offshore mining poses a great environmental threat to the oceans. During logging, the soil cover is also destroyed. The development of metallurgy is accompanied by atmospheric pollution, an increase in the content of iron, lead, tin, copper, mercury, arsenic and other metals in the environment, which can create a real threat to human health. The development of the chemical and petrochemical industry often leads to air, water, and soil contamination; major accidents at such enterprises are especially dangerous. . The same applies to the pulp and paper industry.
But we must not forget that scientists and engineers have responded to the above problems by developing not only environmental technologies, but also location principles that better take into account the environmental factor. First of all, this refers to the location of "dirty" industries.

The contrast between our large industrial cities, filled with the noise of numerous factories and blackened by smoke, and the small quiet towns where the artisans and merchants of old times worked leisurely, nowhere stands out more strikingly than in England.

The fact is that they can be compared here even now, without even crossing that ideal boundary, which, according to the apt remark of one writer, seems to divide England into a shepherd's half and a manufactory half. Not far from Manchester, and only a few leagues from Liverpool, lies Chester, with its massive city walls, the foundations of which were laid down by the Romans, with its irregular picturesque streets, old houses with ledges, with facades, scribbled beams and shops under two-story arches. But these cities of former times retain, like fossils, only the imprint of the functions of which they were once living organs: with the exception of some remote and poor districts, or some backward crafts, the forms and techniques of the old industry have disappeared. Meanwhile, they must be known in order to be able to compare them with the conditions of economic life in the subsequent period and to appreciate the importance of the changes that marked the end of the 18th century. the emergence of modern large-scale industry.

The woolen industry is in England the most characteristic and complete type of the old industry. Its distribution in almost all provinces, its close connection with agriculture, the antiquity and strength of its traditions, give the examples taken from it a general significance. From time immemorial, long before her industrial activity arose, England, a country of pastures, fed herds of sheep and benefited from their wool. This wool was mostly sold abroad: it was exchanged for the wines of southern France, it fed the weavers in the busy cities of Flanders. Since the time of the Norman conquest, the Flemish artisans who crossed the strait had taught the English how to extract their own profits from this source of wealth. Their immigration was encouraged by the royal power, which repeatedly, especially at the beginning of the fourteenth century, makes efforts to establish, with the help of these foreign initiators, a national English industry. And we see that, starting from the reign of Edward III, this latter does not cease to develop and flourish: it spreads through towns and villages and becomes the main source of subsistence for their entire population. Moreover: if it is true, as it was claimed in the 17th century. the theoreticians of mercantilism, that every nation is rich in proportion to the amount of precious metal coins in its possession, and that in order to enrich itself, it must export goods abroad, receiving metal money for them in payment - if this position, I say, is true, then the woolen industry is the property of England. Exclusively English, both in raw materials and in their processing, it borrows nothing from outside: all the gold and silver pumped out by it go to increase the general treasury, this necessary instrument of national greatness.

The prestige that this industry enjoyed almost until the end of the 18th century, and its peculiar hegemony over all other industrial branches, is confirmed by one expression that received the right of citizenship: the industry is usually called "the staple trade, the great staple trade of the kingdom", - an expression, difficult to translate accurately and meaning approximately: "the predominant, main, main industry of the kingdom."

Compared to her interests, all others are considered secondary. "Wool," writes Arthur Jung in 1767, "has been so long regarded as a sacred object, as the basis of all our wealth, that it is somewhat dangerous to express an opinion that would not tend to its exclusive advantage"51. The patronage of this industry, its maintenance, the maintenance of the high quality of its products and the high level of its profits, has been the object of a long series of laws and regulations. She besieged parliament with her complaints, petitions, eternal demands for intervention, which, however, did not surprise anyone: she was recognized as having the right to demand everything and receive everything.

The best proof of this intrusive domination is the voluminous heap of writings relating to the wool industry and the wool trade. As you know, English economic literature of the 17th and 18th centuries. replete with polemical works written day after day on topical issues: the so-called pamphlets, treatises and up to one-page leaflets, in those days when the periodical press was still in its infancy, this was the way in which they addressed the public and individuals and groups of individuals who wished to highlight this or that fact or cause this or that intervention in their favor to parliament. There is not a single question of any importance that has not been brought to general attention in this way, that has not been discussed in this farm in the form of a practical solution to it. In this huge library of pamphlets, the woolen industry is entitled to claim a very large shelf for its share. They do not forget a single circumstance concerning her; here its successes are praised, its decline lamented, thousands of contrary petitions are crossed here, in which reliable facts are mixed with selfish fictions: the question is discussed whether the export of wool should be allowed or prohibited, whether the development of manufactures in Ireland should be encouraged or discouraged, should whether to increase the severity of the old rules on fabrication or to abolish them, whether to establish new penalties for business practices that are considered harmful to this privileged, sacred, inviolable branch of industry. As to the place it occupies in parliamentary documents, the innumerable petitions from employers, laborers, and merchants, preserved for posterity in the minutes of the Houses of Commons and the House of Lords, only a sorting of these impressive collections can give a correct idea of ​​it. The woolen industry early had its historians52 and even its own poets: the "Fleece" sung by Dyer53 is not the legendary golden fleece of the Argonauts, but the fleece of the English rams, from which Leeds cloth and Exeter twills are made. The sack of wool (woolsack), placed in front of the royal canopy, under the gilded ceiling of the House of Lords and serving as a seat for the Lord Chancellor of England, is not only an empty symbol.

In the eyes of the English, right up to the day when the new system of production transformed everything and changed ideas along with things, the prosperity of the country depended essentially on the woolen industry. Proud of centuries of tradition, flourishing when England's maritime trade barely existed, this industry embodied the labor and acquisitions of a long past. Characteristic features, which in 1760 she still retained almost intact and which still existed in part in 1800, were bequeathed to her by the past; its evolution took place, so to speak, alongside them and without destroying them. To define these features and explain this evolution means to describe in its main features the old economic order.

Let us first consider it from the outside, as would be done, for example, by a traveler who, on the way, would inquire about the products of each region and about the occupations of its inhabitants. At the same time, we will be struck by a purely external fact: this is the multiplicity of industrial centers and their dispersion, or, better, spillage throughout the entire territory. We will be all the more paranoid about this phenomenon because in our day, under the dominance of large-scale industry, the opposite phenomenon occurs: each branch of industry, highly concentrated, reigns in a limited area where its production power accumulates. Cotton spinning and weaving now occupy two districts in Great Britain, closely adjoining the two centres. On the one hand we have Manchester, surrounded by a belt of ever-expanding cities, which perform the same functions, have the same needs, and form in their totality one factory and one market. On the other, we have Glasgow, whose suburbs stretch along the valley of the River Clyde, from Lanark to Pasley and Greenock. Outside of these two areas, there is nothing that could compare with them or deserve to be mentioned after them. Let us now follow Daniel de Foe in his Journey Through the Whole Island of Great Britain,54 and travel with him through the provinces of England in the narrowest sense of the word. In the villages of the county of Kent the yeomen, these farmers and at the same time the landowners, weave a thin cloth known as Kentish broadcloth, which, however, is also made, despite its name, in the county of Surrey. In Essex, a region now purely agricultural, the old town of Colchester is famous for its thick cloths, "of which the clothes of monks and nuns in foreign countries are made"56; some neighboring villages, which have since become unknown backwaters, are considered very lively at the time described. In the county of Suffolk, in Sedbury and Levenham, coarse woolen fabrics are made, known as says and calimancoes. As soon as you get to Norfelk, “you notice something troublesome spilling all over the district”59. Indeed, the city of Norwich is here, and around it a dozen trading places60 and many villages, "so large and populated that they can be compared with the trading cities of other countries." Here they use varieties of wool with a long fiber, which are combed with combs, instead of carded. In the counties of Lincoln, Nottingham, and Leicester, the inhabitants are engaged in the production of woolen stockings, hand or loom, and these products are the subject of a rather extensive trade.

We are approaching a region where the woolen industry has become more and more concentrated in our time. The western district of Yorkshire, along the Pennines, is already inhabited by spinners and weavers, grouped around several towns: Wakefield, "a large, beautiful and rich cloth-making city, full of people and business"63; Halifax, where the coarse fabrics known as kersey (karaseya) and shalloon (chalon twill) are made; Leeds, the main market of the whole area65; Geddersfield * and Bradford, whose products had not yet reached their later fame66. Farther north are Richmond and Darlington, in County Dorham67; to the east lies the old ecclesiastical metropolis of York, to which an unjustified proverb foretold that it would one day outshine London itself. Moving on to another hillside, in the county of Lancaster, from where cotton almost drove out wool, we find in Kendal, and as far as the mountains of Westmorland, the manufacture of drogets and ratins,69 in Rochdale imitation of Colchester textiles. To the south, around Manchester, Oldham, and Bury, wool was being spun and woven long before there was cotton in England.

Industry was less developed in the central counties. ° F arng e m

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4 tf-tW P^=========^udyt^ THE MAIN CENTERS OF THE WOOLEN INDUSTRY IN THE EARLY 18TH CENTURY However, de Foet mentions Stafford as "a real old city, enriched by the cloth trade"72. In the direction of Wales are Shrewsbury,73 Leominster, Kidderminsger, Stourbridge,74 and Worcester, where "the number of workers employed in this industry, in the city and in the neighboring villages, is almost unbelievable"75. In the county of Warwick, picturesque Coventry, the city of three bell towers, produces not only ribbons, but also woolen fabrics. In the counties of Gloucester and Oxfaird, between the mouth of the Severn and the head of the Thames, the Stroudwater valley is famous for its fine scarlet fabrics, which are made in Strode and Sicester,77 and Whitney's blankets are even exported to America.

We come to the southwestern counties, and here we have to stop at almost every step. In the Salisbury Plain and along the Avon, numerous cloth-making towns follow closely one after another: Mumsbury, Chippenham, Calne, Trowbridge, Devise, Salisbury is a country of flannels and fine cloths. In the county of Somerset—leaving aside Taunton and the great port city of Bristol80—the industrial centers of Glastonbury, Brewton, Shepton Mallet, and Frome, which, in the opinion of many, were destined to become "one of the largest and richest cities in England, are crowding in a direction south and east »81. This industrial district stretches further, through Shaftesbury and Blandford, through the whole of Dorset,82 and through Andover and Winchester into the depths of Hampshire. Finally, in Devonshire, the manufacture of various types of twill dominates and flourishes. Irish wool is imported into Barnstaple, which is necessary for the work of weavers. Production is carried out in small towns like Crediton, Goniton, Tiverton85, which between 1700 and 1740. famous and prospered to the same extent that they are now little known and neglected. Exeter is the market where products are brought for sale86. And de Foe ends his description

Devonshire with the statement: "This is a region unparalleled in England and perhaps even in all of Europe."

We see from this that the woolen industry is the least localized; it is impossible to travel any considerable space without meeting her; it is, as it were, spilled over the entire surface of England. Nevertheless, three main groups are distinguished: Yorkshire, with Leeds and Halifax; nor |> olkskaya, with Norwich; southwest, between the English Channel and the Bristol Canal87. But each of them is more or less scattered; secondary centers serve as connecting links between one and the other. These are not isolated industrial areas: their activity radiates far, or rather, is only a local manifestation of a general activity in which all England participates.

If, instead of the whole country, we consider each of the districts that have just passed before our eyes, then we will find the same characteristic spillage in detail. Let's take Norfolk: its main city Norwich is considered to be in the 18th century. a very significant city: since the revolution it was the third in the kingdom and the rival of Bristol. Contemporaries describe it to us in pompous terms, with its circumference of 3 miles, with its six bridges, and marvel at the silence of its streets, while from its industrious houses one hears the clatter of working machines. Meanwhile, Norwich, at the time of its greatest prosperity, had a maximum of 30-40 thousand. residents89. How, then, to trust the testimony, according to which Norwich industry employed between 70,000 and 80,000 persons90. This is explained by the fact that it is not contained in Norwich alone, but overflows for a long distance into all the surrounding areas and causes the growth of that dense "cluster of villages"91 (a throng of villages) that amazes the traveler. We observe the same picture in the southwest, with the only difference that there we would search in vain for a single center. "The county of Devon," writes de Foe, "is full of great cities, and these cities are full of inhabitants who are entirely employed in trade and manufactures." This text means almost the opposite of what it actually says. We know very well that there have never been large cities in Dzvonshire93, except for the port city of Plymouth, which is not mentioned here. The completely unknown names of most of these "big cities" would have been enough in themselves to dispel any misconceptions on this score94: they were all, at best, small prosperous cities. Often these were only small towns or large villages, all the more numerous because the larger centers95 did not even then attract the population. Often even less significant settlements form an almost continuous chain. “The distance separating them from each other,” writes de Foe, “is marked, as if by milestones, by a large, I would say, almost innumerable villages, hamlets and dwellings standing apart, where spinning is usually done”96.

In Yorkshire, industry seems to be more closely localized, for almost all of it is enclosed in a limited space stretching from Leeds to Wakefield, Gaddersfield and Halifax. Already a few miles north of Leeds, the gray steppe begins, barren, almost deserted. But this relative concentration does not change the general law, which is once again justified within this limited area. The population of the West Riding was very dense: in 1700 it reached approximately 240 thousand people, in 1750 - up to 360 thousand, in 1801 - up to 582 thousand97, meanwhile the cities contained only a very small part of this population: Leeds had in the middle of the XVIII century. no more than 15 thousand inhabitants, Halifax - 6 thousand, Geddersfield less than 5 thousand, and Bradford consisted of three streets surrounded by meadows98. The countryside, on the other hand, was very populated, only villages and villages did not stretch here in a continuous line, as in the southwest®. Sometimes the dispersion went even further: the villages themselves fell apart, so to speak, and merged into widely spread settlements.

The parish of Halifax was one of the most extensive in the EU of England: in 1720 it had about 50 thousand souls, and the picture that it represented was described in the famous place in de Foe's book: “After passing the second hill, we went down again into the valley. As we approached Halifax, we met houses at ever closer distances from each other, and in the depths, ever larger villages. Moreover, the slopes of the hills, very steep on each side, were completely dotted with houses ... The area was divided into small fenced plots of 2-7 acres each, rarely more, and every 3-4 such plots a house was visible ... Having passed the third hill, we could make sure that the whole area forms, as it were, a continuous village, although the surface was rather mountainous; it is unlikely that there was at least one house that was more distant from the others than at the distance of a human voice. Soon we also recognized the occupation of the inhabitants: the sun was rising, and in the light of its first rays we noticed in front of almost every house a frame for stretching fabrics, and on each frame a piece of ordinary cloth, karazei or twill99 - three items made in this area. The play of light on these materials, shining white in the sun, was the most pleasant spectacle that one can imagine ... The slopes of the hills now rose, then fell, the valleys opened now to the right, then to the left, reminiscent a little of the intersection of streets near St. Giles, called the Seven corners: wherever our eyes were directed, from the sole to the top of the hills, everywhere the picture was the same: many houses and frames, and on each frame a piece of white matter.

This is the extreme degree of the dispersion, which we have stated everywhere, without yet giving an explanation for it. It is only an outward expression of the general conditions of production: in order to understand it, it is necessary to become familiar with the organization of industry.

III The concentration of various branches of modern industry is connected with a certain number of facts explaining it. This includes, first of all, the division of labor, infinitely increased by the use of machines: the diversity and complexity of the parts of the economic whole require their close interdependence; if these parts were not exactly adjusted to each other and were not in constant contact with each other, then the loss of time and effort resulting from this would negate all the benefits of their combination. This is followed by an ever more pronounced specialization of functions: like people and workshops, the districts themselves specialize, and each of them tends to become the exclusive center of one industry. Another reason for the same result is the increase in the size of production: a few powerful factories, grouped in a limited area, can satisfy the needs of a vast market, which is expanding even thanks to the development of communications. Finally, together with the progressive accumulation of capital, absorbing or uniting small capitals, extensive enterprises arise in solidarity with each other, which crowd out local small-scale production; the latter becomes somewhat useless, and then impossible. However, England in the 18th century these now omnipotent forces still exerted little influence.

It would, however, be erroneous to believe that they did not act at all. As we have seen, the distribution and density of the industrial population was not the same in different areas. This diversity corresponded to differences in organization. The path from an almost primitive workshop of a craftsman to a manufactory, which had more than one similarity with a modern factory, was marked by a number of intermediate stages. Yes, the evolution already beginning, which, after a period of almost imperceptible progress, was soon to lead to a decisive change, was, as it were, marked by the alternation of economic forms, which developed one from the other, with the oldest continuing to exist alongside the newer ones.

Precisely where the concentration is weakest, we must expect to find the most complete independence of the producers, the simplest methods of production, the most rudimentary division of labour. Let us return to the houses in the Halifax valley mentioned earlier, which, each in the middle of their plot of land, outwardly give the impression of small estates. But, instead of considering their surroundings, this time we will penetrate one of them in order to get acquainted with its inhabitants and its life. Undoubtedly, he answered very little to those seductive descriptions of him that were given to us by gullible admirers of the past. It was a hut in an often unhealthy place, with few and narrow windows. Little furniture, even less decorations. The main and often the only room served as both a kitchen and a workshop. In it stood the loom of the weaver, the owner of the dwelling. This loom, which is still to be seen today in our French villages, has changed little since antiquity. The threads that formed the basis of the fabric were stretched here in parallel, on a double frame, both parts of which (“shaddle”), each with its own row of threads, were alternately raised and lowered with the help of two pedals, and each time the weaver, in order to pull between two rows of threads warp weft thread, passed the shuttle with this thread from one hand to the other. From 1733 an ingenious contrivance102 made it possible to throw a canoe back and forth with one hand, but this improvement spread rather slowly103. The rest of the equipment was even better. For carding, they used hand-held cards, of which one, motionless, was mounted on a wooden stand104. For spinning, they used a self-spinning wheel, common as far back as the 16th century,105 set in motion by hand or foot, often even a simple spinner and Yereteno, as ancient as spinning itself. A small manufacturer could easily acquire all these inexpensive tools. The water needed for degreasing wool and washing cloth, he had at his very feet. If he wanted to dye the fabric he woven himself, then one or two vats were enough for this. As for operations that could not be performed without special installations, involving too high costs, they were the subject of individual enterprises: for example, for felting and napping cloth, there were water mills, where ice cross weavers carried their pieces; they were called "Schestgen mills", since anyone could use them for an agreed fee106.

The simplicity of the equipment was offset by the simplicity of the organization of labor. If the weaver's family had enough gelkka, then she could handle Esya's work herself and distributed minor operations among her members: the wife and daughters at the spinning wheel, the boys were busy combing the wool, while the head of the family pulled the shuttle back and forth, - such is the classic picture of this patriarchal state of industry. In reality, however, such extremely simple conditions were very rare. They were complicated by the often-represented need to look for yarn on the side: it was calculated that one regularly operated loom provided work for 5 or 6 spinners107. In order to find them, the weaver was sometimes forced to go quite far: he went from house to house until he distributed his wool to ESIA108. In this way the first specialization took place. There were houses where only spinning was done. On the contrary, in others several looms were assembled; In these cases, the owner, continuing to work with his hands himself, as a worker, had several paid assistants under his command. Thus, the weaver in the village house, which serves him both as a dwelling and a workshop, is the master of production. It does not depend on the capitalist. He owns not only the instruments of production, but also the raw materials. Having woven a piece, he himself goes to sell it in the market of the nearest city; the mere appearance of this market was enough to show the fragmentation of the means of production among many independent small producers. In Leeds this market, before the construction of two covered cloth stalls,1 was set up along the great Briggate street. The goats placed on both sides formed, as it were, two large continuous counters. “The cloth-makers,” we read in de Foe, “come early in the morning, bringing their products: rarely one of them brings more than one piece at a time.” At 7 o'clock. in the morning the bell rings. The street fills up, the stalls are covered with goods: “behind every bite This class of small industrialists constituted, if not the majority, then at least a conspicuous part of the population. There were more than 3,500 of them in the vicinity of Leeds in 18064. They were all about the same income. If someone had 4 or 5 machines, then he was already pointed out as an exception110. The difference between them and their workers was only very small; the worker who received grub and often also placed in the owner's house, who worked next to him, did not look at him as a person belonging to a different social class. In some localities, the number of owners exceeded the number of workers. In essence, the latter constituted only a kind of reserve from which a class of small producers was recruited. "A young man with a good name always finds credit to buy the wool he needs and to get a job as a master artisan." This combination of words is almost a definition: in this era, a manufacturer is understood not as the head of an industry: a prisoner * of an enterprise, but, on the contrary, an artisan, a person working with his own hands112. The Yorkshire producer represents both capital and labour, united and almost merged.

At the same time he is - and this last feature is not without significance - a landowner. Around his house extends a fenced area of ​​several acres. “Each manufacturer needs to have one or two horses to go to the city for raw materials and provisions, then to take the wool to the spinner and the woven cloth to the fuller; finally, when production is over, to take the pieces to the market for sale. In addition, each of them usually has one or two cows, and sometimes more, to supply his family with milk. The fields surrounding his house serve to feed them”113 (de Foe). the witnesses heard by the parliamentary commission of 1806 express themselves in almost the same terms. This small landed property increases the wealth of such a craftsman. He cannot cultivate it; if he tries to turn it into arable land, he risks losing in this business what he earned by selling his cloth115, but he can breed birds on it, some livestock, he can graze a horse on it, which serves him to transport his goods or for trips through neighboring villages in search of spinners. Not being a farmer, he lives partly on the land: this is an extra condition that contributes to his independence.

3 Mantoux The system of production described was given the name of the domestic system, and an 1806 report gives a definition of it, which summarizes what we have said above quite well: “In the domestic system,” we read here, “the system adopted in Yorkshire, industry is in the hands of many craftsmen, each of whom owns very little capital. They buy wool from a merchant; then, with the help of a wife, children, and a few workers, they dye the wool in their own houses, if necessary, and carry it through the various stages of fabrication to the state of an undressed cloth. It is still the same medieval industry, which remained almost untouched until the threshold of the 19th century.

And she didn't give the impression of an industry about to leave the stage. For all the fragmentation of production among many small workshops, it was, in general, very significant. In 1740, the western district of Yorkshire, where domestic industry flourished, produced about 100,000 pieces of cloth; in 1750, about 140 thousand; in 1760 this figure, due to the war with France and its trade consequences, fell to 120 thousand, but in 1770. rose again to 178,000, a relatively slow progress, if compared with the progress of the subsequent period, but nevertheless progress, noticeable, continuous and corresponding to the gradual expansion of the market. For it would be a mistake to think that this petty industry was purely local in character and had no foreign markets. From the covered markets of Leeds and Halifax, where the master himself brought a piece woven with his own hands, Yorkshire cloth dispersed throughout England, they were exported to the Dutch ports and to the ports of the Baltic countries, and outside Europe they went to the seaside cities of the Levant and the American colonies. It was this expansion of trade that made the transformation of industry inevitable.

As soon as the production of domestic industry begins to exceed the needs of local consumption, its continued existence is possible only under one condition: the producer, who cannot sell his goods himself, must enter into relations with a merchant who buys them for resale either on the domestic market or abroad. . This merchant is an indispensable assistant, holding in his hands the whole fate of the industry. In his person, a new element enters into action, the power of which is soon reflected in production itself. A sukontzik merchant is a capitalist. Often he is limited to the role of an intermediary between the small producer, on the one hand, and the small shopkeeper, on the other; his capital retains its purely commercial function. However, from the very beginning the custom is established to leave some minor details of production to the care of the merchant. A piece of cloth, in the form in which the weaver gives it to the merchant, is usually undressed and undyed; the trader must take care of its finishing, before the cloth goes to the final sale. To do this, he needs to hire workers, he needs to become, one way or another, an industrial entrepreneur. This is the first stage in the gradual transformation of commercial capital into industrial capital,

In the southwestern counties, the cloth merchant, or, as he is sometimes characteristically called, the industrial merchant,119 enters the scene at the very beginning of production. He buys raw wool and gives it at his own expense for combing, spinning, weaving, felting and dressing. He is the owner of the raw material, and consequently of the product in all its successive forms; the persons through whose hands this product, being transformed, passes, are, despite their seeming independence, only workers, in the service of the owner.

Nevertheless, there is a still greater difference between these workers and the workers of the manufacture or factory. Most of them live in the country and, to an even greater extent than the small Yorkshire producers, derive part of their livelihood from agriculture. Industry is often only a secondary occupation for them: the husband works in the field, while the wife spins wool, which is delivered to her by a merchant living in a neighboring city.121 In 1770, a village near Stockport (in Lancaster County) 50 and 60 farmers, whose rent did not exceed 10 shillings per acre of land. Of these 50 or 60 individuals, only 6 or 7 derived their entire income from the produce of their farms, all the rest added to it earnings from some kind of industrial labor: they spun or wove wool, cotton or flax. Around Leeds "there was not a single farmer who earned his livelihood by farming alone, all worked for the city clothiers"123.

Agriculture and industry were sometimes so closely connected with each other that any increase in activity in one of them presupposed a corresponding weakening in the other. In winter, when field work was interrupted, the diligent buzzing of a self-spinning wheel was heard in all the huts near the hearth. On the contrary, during the harvest, the self-spinning wheel was inactive, and, due to the lack of yarn, the looms also stopped working. “From time immemorial,” we read in the introductory part of a law of 1662, “it has been the custom to suspend weaving work every year for the time of harvest because of the spinners, from whom the weavers stock up on yarn and who at this time of the year are busy with all field work”124 .

If a merchant was rich and bought wool in large quantities, then in order to turn it cheaply into yarn, he was forced to send it over long distances, sometimes up to 15 or 20 leagues. He had his own correspondents who took over the distribution of work: sometimes some farmer, often a local tavern keeper. This system, however, had its disadvantages: the innkeeper turned to his ordinary customers, and since it was in his interests not to incur their discontent, he did not show excessive exactingness about the quality of work, a circumstance that sometimes caused complaints from the clothiers. As we saw above, even the small industrialist was forced to outsource his work; as the influence of capital makes itself felt, this first division of labor is repeated and takes on a more pronounced character.

After passing through the hands of spinners and spinners, the wool is passed to the weaver. This latter retains all the outward signs of independence. He works in his own house and on his own machine. He even plays the role of an entrepreneur and takes over the management of the production process: often at his own expense he gives wool to combing and spinning, delivers tools and some of the secondary materials of production. Moreover, he is not bound by the service of one master: he often has work given by 4 or 5 cloth makers. In such conditions, he naturally tends to look at himself not as a worker, but as a supplier who negotiates amicably with a wealthy customer.

But he is poor, and when he subtracts from the amount received the wages which he himself must pay to the workers, he is left with very little129; it takes a bad year and an insufficient harvest to put him in a difficult position. He is trying to find a job somewhere, and in this case, who should he turn to, if not the clothier who gives him work? This latter will willingly agree to lend, but he needs security: this security will be the weaver's loom, a loom that has already become an instrument of paid labor, and now ceases to be the property of the manufacturer. In this way, following the raw materials, the instruments of production fall into the hands of the capitalist. This process of taking possession, slow and imperceptible, has been going on since the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. almost everywhere where the home system took the first hit; in the end, in the hands of the cloth maker are wool, and yarn, and a loom, and matter, along with a fuller, where felting of cloth takes place, and a shop where it is sold. In certain branches of the woolen industry, where the equipment was more complex and, consequently, more expensive, the capitalist takeover took place more rapidly and more comprehensively. Stocking knitters in London and Nottingham paid a certain wage for the use of their knitting machines, the so-called frame rent, and when they had any reason to be dissatisfied with their masters, one of their methods of struggle was to break the machines. Thus the producer, who has gradually lost all ownership of the instruments of production, can henceforth sell only his labor and can live only on his wages.

His position becomes even more precarious if, instead of living in a village where agriculture still helps him to exist, he lives in a city where a cloth merchant has settled. In this case, he finds himself directly dependent on the latter: he will count on him alone from now on in order to get the job that he lives on. In 1765, a wealthy cloth merchant died in Tiverton without an heir, and this circumstance caused extreme anxiety among the local weavers: they already saw themselves deprived of a piece of bread. They went in droves to the city mayor and demanded that he attract a merchant from Exeter to Tiverton by offering him a place in the municipality. This death was for them what the sudden closure of the factory where he works is for the current worker. To complete the resemblance, only one feature is missing: the worker is still working at home, not being subject to factory discipline; the owner is content with taking measures that ensure the consistent order and combination of various technical operations, without yet assuming the task of managing them. In some places, however, a rough outline of the manufacture is already emerging. The cloth trader assembles looms in his house, and instead of placing 3 or 4 looms in the same workshop, as the master craftsman did, he combines 10 or 12 looms. Along with this, he continues to distribute work at home132. Thus, by imperceptible stages, the transition is made from a merchant who appears in the building of the cloth market to buy cloth woven by a small manufacturer, to the owner of the manufactory, who is preparing to become a major industrialist of the next era.

This form of industry, which occupies an intermediate position between the domestic system and manufacture, is therefore almost always connected with work at home. That is why Geld often designates it with the name Hausindustrie133. But this term has the disadvantage that it is ambiguous. In fact, is the industry. small producer is not also domestic, and, moreover, in a much fuller sense of the word? Doesn't that name suit her best? The real characteristic feature of the described system is not work at home, but the role played here by the capitalist, the merchant, who gradually turned from a simple buyer into the owner of all production.

The economic strength of the merchant-manufacturer developed especially in the southwestern counties. Its centers were small towns like Frome or Tiverton; from here it extended its influence to the surrounding villages and to the whole region. But we do not mean to say by this that the south-west occupied a very special position in the indicated respect: in Yorkshire, for example, we see that at an insignificant distance from the parish of Halifax, where the independence of small producers was almost completely preserved, the district of Bradford was , on the contrary, in the power of cloth merchants. This coexistence of the two forms of production has been given a fairly plausible explanation in the literature136. In Bradford they wove from combed wool, while in Halifax they wove from carded wool. Both industries differed not only in technical details, but also in the prices of raw materials and the degree of professional skill required of the workers. The worsted industry uses long varieties of wool, of superior quality and more expensive. The carding industry uses short and curled varieties, which are cheaper but more difficult to profitably use. The first is in particular need of capital, while the second is in need of experimental and thorough work. The latter can thrive in small, independent workshops, the former gets along best with a system in which the commercial element has a greater place.

In the east of England, especially in Norfolk, the production of worsted fabrics predominated, and therefore it was there that the most favorable conditions for the formation of capitalist enterprises were met. However, the process of their development did not seem to show much greater swiftness or comprehensiveness there than in the southwestern counties. We notice only there the presence of a very special class of intermediaries: master combers, "rich and capable people" living in cities, especially in the big city of Norwich. The very name indicates their main function, which is that they organize the combing of wool, a rather delicate operation entrusted to skilled workers. When the wool is combed, the role of the carding master is not yet over. He has agents "who drive around the countryside in canvas-covered carts, distribute the wool to the spinners, and the next time they take back the yarn, paying money for the work done"137. The remaining yutadias of production are, as in the West, in the hands of cloth merchants, and the importance of the latter can be judged by their social position. In Norwich they form a real aristocracy: they imitate gentlemen in all their appearance, they carry a sword. Their trade links extend to Spanish America, India and China138. If they bear some resemblance to the great industrialists of our time, they are still more reminiscent of the great clothiers of the Middle Ages, those merchants of Ypres and Ghent, who ruled their rich and riotous towns like colossal trading houses.

Although they are called industrialists, they are, first of all, merchants, engaged not in production, but in buying and selling. And it should be noted that in the woolen industry, the most important industry of old England, the existence of manufactories in the narrow sense of the word, that is, large workshops placed under the real control of the capitalists, remains until the end of the 18th century. an absolutely exceptional phenomenon. They were not encouraged, they were not called to life by the royal power, as was the case in France, but, on the contrary, they were condemned from the very beginning as a dangerous innovation. If the legislation hostile to them did not completely forbid them, then it at least slowed down their development, strengthening existing traditions and interests. Small-scale industry not only continued to exist, but even where the manufacturer had lost his independence, the old forms of domestic industry did not disappear, and, together with almost unchanged techniques, they maintain the illusion that nothing has changed.

To these various states of industry, in which the results of a gradual transformation are visible, corresponded the same number of steps in the position of the industrial classes. Least of all corresponded to reality any monochromatic picture, even drawn without the preconceived intention of embellishing it or giving a deliberately gloomy image.

Comparing the condition of workers in former times with their present condition, one has often been tempted to exaggerate the contrast between them. With a tendentious intention either to expose more forcefully the abuses and ills of the present, or to return imaginations and hearts to the institutions of the past, the old industry was described in idyllic terms. It was supposedly the "golden age of industry"141. The craftsman in the village or in the small town led a simpler and healthier life than in our modern big cities. The preservation of the family way of life protected his morality. He worked at home, at hours convenient to him and in proportion to his strength. Cultivation of several acres of land, whether owned or rented, filled his spare hours. Living among his own, he led a peaceful existence. “He was a respectable member of society, a good father, a good husband and a good son.”142 It would be difficult to pronounce the commendable funeral word in a more touched and edifying tone.

But even if we were to suppose that this laudable word was well deserved, it would at any rate apply only to domestic industry in the narrow sense of the word, to that industry of which we found the most perfect type in the Halifax area. Indeed, the Yorkshire master manufacturerr, who was both a worker and a master, a small industrialist and a small landowner, enjoyed comparative prosperity. large oxen, costing him 8 or 10l. Art. each"143. Add to this a few head of cattle which he grazes on his small plot of land, or sends out to graze in the public pasture, and he is already provided with beef for the whole winter. But this is a wonderful sign of prosperity at a time when "the English growth of the good old days" was still a luxurious dish for many villagers, and when the unfortunate Scottish peasants were forced to bleed their cows in lean years in order to drink their blood. The Yorkshire weaver brewed his own beer. His clothes were made at home, and buying a dress in the city seemed to him a sign of swagger and extravagance. Therefore, for all its simplicity, the weaver's way of life was quite comfortable, and it is not surprising that he was very attached to it4. The workers employed by the weaver constituted a class not much different from his own class. Often the worker lived in the owner's house and at his grub; besides this he received from 8 to 10l. Art. an annual salary, like a laborer on a farm. He remained in the service of one and the same master almost indefinitely147, if he did not acquire a household himself in some neighboring village. But such an order of things was possible only where there existed, with all its characteristic features, small-scale home production.

As soon as, however, the separation of capital and labor is clearly indicated, the situation changes to the detriment of the producer. Since from now on he is no more than a hired worker, his position depends on the height of his wages. Meanwhile, in the economic writings of the XVIII century. it is often said that the worker is always too well paid. “In order for industry to progress, there is no better means than poverty: a worker who, after three days of work, sees that his existence is secured for a whole week, will spend the rest of it in idleness and walking around taverns ... In industrial districts, the poor class will never work more than is needed to feed and roam for a week. We are justified in asserting that a lowering of wages in the woolen industry would be a boon and a blessing to the country, and would not cause any real injury to the poor class. It would make it possible to support our trade, raise our rents, and, in addition, improve morals still more. Since these good advices were often repeated, they were, of course, willingly followed.

Spinning, usually performed by women and children, belonged to the most poorly paid types of work. According to figures collected by Arthur Young between 1767 and 1770, the daily wage of a spinner varied, depending on the district and year, between 4 and 6d. True, this was only an auxiliary source of income in the ordinary budget of a peasant family. Moreover, there was nothing difficult in working conditions. In the Bradford Valley, "the women of Allerton, Thornton, Wildsen, and all the surrounding villages, took their favorite place and gathered there on sunny days, each bringing her spinning wheel... At Buck Lane, north of West Gate , one could see such long rows of spinning wheels in the summer afternoons”150. The position of spinners and spinners becomes truly precarious only when they are forced to live solely on a spindle and a spinning wheel, when they are thrown from agriculture to industry.

As the transition is made from the elementary operations of production to operations more complex, more subtle, requiring greater perseverance and acquired dexterity, specialization is more and more clearly indicated. The weaver who stoops over his loom for long hours tends more and more to be only a weaver. As long as he lives in the countryside, he undoubtedly remains a peasant and farmer, but farming is already receding into the background for him; it becomes, in turn, only an ancillary occupation. income from which supplements the daily wages. But if the weaver lives in Norwich or Tiverton, then he is no more than a worker whose existence is provided for by industry alone. To what extent he then becomes dependent on the master who gives him work, we have already been able to form a judgment on this from the facts stated earlier. And the closer this dependence becomes, the more the owner knows that the worker cannot do without the work he gives him, the lower wages fall.

In the villages of the West, weavers, still tied to the land, made a pretty good living. In 1757 a Gloucestershire weaver could earn, if he had the help of his wife and the work was profitable, from 13 to 18s. per week, i.e. 2-3s. in a day; however, this was much more than the average fee, probably approaching 11-12 shillings, the figure noted by Arthur Jung a few years later. In the Leeds area, where the industrial population was more dense, a good worker earned about 10s. 6 p. a week, but frequent unemployment reduced this to an average of 8s.152. In Norfolk, where the worsted industry gave the capitalist a predominant role, wages sank even lower, and in Norwich itself were 6s., i.e., barely 1s. per day153. Thus, as we pass from a scattered industry, still mixed with agriculture, to an industry that has reached a higher degree of concentration and organization, not only the independence of the worker decreases, but also his means of subsistence: the reason is, on the one hand, the abundance of workers. hands, on the other hand, the circumstance that it becomes more and more difficult for the worker to find a livelihood outside his trade. Only certain categories of workers, whose special task required greater professional dexterity, such as carders and shearers of cloth, were better rewarded and more easily able to defend the level of their wages.

Most of the evils that the workers of large-scale industry complain about today were already known to the English workers of the early eighteenth century. Let us run through the endless list of grievances presented to Parliament by tailors. They complain about insufficient wages155. They complain about unemployment: “the owners give them work only for half, or at most two-thirds of the year; it is clear to any impartial person that family people cannot exist for a whole year with a wife and children on such an unreliable income, not exceeding an average of 15-16 pence a day. They complain about the competition of artisan apprentices recruited by the masses in the villages: “In order to provide themselves with cheap labor, master tailors invite young lads from the villages, unskilled beginners, who are very happy when they can receive at least a small salary”157. They complain about the excessive length of the working day: “in most other crafts, they work from 6 hours. morning until 6 o'clock. evenings, meanwhile, the working day of apprentice tailors is 2 hours longer158. In winter, they work for several hours by candlelight: from 6 o'clock. morning until 8 o'clock. and later... and from 4 o'clock. up to 8 o'clock. in the evening... From sitting for so many hours in a row, bent almost double over the table, from such a long inclined position at work by candlelight, their energy is depleted, their strength wears out, their health soon deteriorates and their eyesight weakens159. And most of them had just as little chance of breaking out of their position as * the present worker.

The situation described was not, however, worse than in the previous century, rather it improved. This undeniable progress has been greatly facilitated solely by food prices, which have been low for 50 years160. Almost everywhere, wheat bread replaced rye and barley bread, "which they began to look at with a certain disgust"161. Meat consumption, though limited, was still more widespread than in any other European country. One could even observe that such a luxury item - or at least considered such - as tea, which was brought from the Far East by the ships of the East India Company, appeared in peasant houses. But the relative prosperity that these facts undoubtedly testify to was extremely precarious. It only took a few crop failures, with the accompanying rise in the price of the necessities of life, to make this prosperity disappear. In many localities, it was enough to divide the communal lands, forever destroying the traditional combination of small landed property with small industry, to make the position of rural workers impossible and to push them en masse into the cities.

Most of the workers worked at their homes or in small master workshops. This circumstance gave rise to peculiar misconceptions. According to the common and rather natural, though erroneous, view, it is customary to consider work at home less difficult, healthier, and, in particular, freer than factory work, which takes place under the watchful supervision of the master and in time with the hurried rhythm of the steam engine. And yet it is precisely in certain household trades that the most ruthless methods of exploitation continue to exist today. It is here that the art of squeezing the maximum amount of labor out of a human being for the merest wages is perfected. The manufacture of cheap ready-made dress in East London has often been cited as an example of an industry where the most typical examples of this regime of economic oppression, known as the sweating system, flourish. Meanwhile, this production is not concentrated in large enterprises. It almost does not use machines at all: ridiculously low wages make machines almost useless. These facts are now too well known to need insisting on them; the descriptions of the terrible slums in which the workers of the sweatshop live and work constitute the best apologia for the manufactory and factory. It is precisely in the domestic industry that the old abuses persist for the longest time: for example, paying workers in kind instead of money, prohibited by an act of parliament already in 1701, continued, however, for almost 80 years to exist in the lace industry, and a new law was needed. threatening violators with severe penalties to put an end to this practice of abuse that deprives lacemakers of part of their earnings165.

Modern large-scale industry has not created a wholly industrial proletariat, just as it has not created a wholly capitalist organization of production. It only accelerated and completed the evolution that had already begun long ago. From the small producer, who simultaneously combines master and worker in his person, to the paid worker in manufacture, one can find all the intermediate steps between economic independence and subordination, between the extreme fragmentation of capital and enterprise and their already developed concentration. Moreover, side by side with domestic industry, there were still remnants of an older state of affairs, to which it is more difficult to ascribe imaginary virtues. When serfdom was abolished in France by the Constituent Assembly, it barely had time to disappear in Great Britain. The workers of the Scottish coal and salt mines remained until 1775 serfs in the fullest sense of the word. Attached for life to the land of coal and salt mines, they could be sold along with them. They even wore the outward sign of their slavery: a collar on which the name of their master was carved. The law that put an end to this remnant of the barbarian past was not fully put into practice until the last years of the 18th century.

The best understanding of the economic evolution that preceded the era of large-scale industry comes from the history of the clashes between capital and labor. These conflicts did not wait for machine production and factories, they did not even wait for manufactories to flare up often, and, moreover, in very sharp forms. As soon as the means of production cease to belong to the producer, as soon as a class of people who sell their labor and a class of people who buy it are formed, we immediately observe the manifestation of inevitable antagonism. The essential fact, on which it will never be superfluous to insist, is the separation of the producer and the means of production. The concentration of workers in the factory and the growth of large industrial centers later gave this fact of the first order all its social consequences and all its historical significance; but the fact itself preceded them, and its first results made themselves felt much earlier than it was completed by the technical revolution.

Here we face one objection: in order to get to the beginning of these conflicts, do we not have to go infinitely far into the past? Isn't the history of coalitions and strikes as old as the history of industry itself? The Webbs had to face the same difficult question at the beginning of their History of Trade Unionism, and the solution they gave him confirms our previous remarks. For them, the question was put in a somewhat different form: it was necessary to unravel the true origin of the English trade union movement. In the opinion of the Webbs, no reliable example of any trade union can be cited before the 18th century. All the facts cited in support of the opposite thesis refer either to guilds or workshops, which in reality were something quite different from trade unions, or to ephemeral associations formed in connection with some private conflict. As long as the difference between master and worker working side by side in small workshops is small, as long as the apprentice retains the hope of becoming a master, so long as quarrels or indignations remain single facts that do not have of great importance. Only when we have before us two classes of people sharply different from each other, on the one hand the class of capitalists, on the other the class of wage-workers, the vast majority of whom are doomed to never leave their position, only then is the opposite tends to become a permanent and normal phenomenon, only then do temporary coalitions turn into permanent alliances and strikes follow one after another, like episodes of one continuous struggle.

Dominion [merchants-owners of manufactories, especially in southwestern counties of England, early Eevoked the resistance of the workers. Among the documents testifying to this is a curious folk song composed, apparently, in the reign of William of Orange. It is called "The Clothmaker's Delight"169 and puts into the mouth of the owner himself the confession of what the workers reproached him for:

“Of all the industries that exist in England, there is not one that would feed its people more fat than ours. Through our trade we are as well-dressed as knights, we have leisure and a merry life. By robbing and oppressing the poor, we are accumulating treasures, amassing great wealth. This is how we fill our purse, not without curses falling on us for it.

“In the whole kingdom, in the villages, as well as in the city, our industry is not in danger of decline, as long as the wool comber can work with his comb and the weaver can use his loom. The fuller and the spinner, who sits at her spinning wheel all year, we will make them pay dearly for the wages they receive ...

“... And first of all, we will reduce the carders of wool from eight groats for twenty pounds to half a crown170. And if they begin to grumble and say that this is too little, then we will give them the choice of either taking this payment or being left without any work. We will convince them that commerce is at a complete standstill. They've never been so sad, but what do we care?...

“We will force the poor weavers to work cheaply. We will find flaws in their work, real or imaginary, so as to further cut their wages. If things go badly, they will immediately feel it, but if things get better, they will never know it. We will tell them that the cloth is no longer going to overseas countries and that we have no desire to continue trading in it ...

“Then it will be the turn of the spinners. We'll make them spin three pounds of wool instead of two. When they bring us their work, they complain and say that they cannot live on their wages. But if they don't have even one ounce of yarn, we won't hesitate to drop three pence...

“If the weight is good and they beg us to pay them, “we don’t have money,” we say to them, “what do you want in return?” We have bread, corned beef, and good butter, oatmeal, and salt to make a delicious dinner. We have soap and candles to shine for you, so that you can work by their light as long as your eyesight is preserved...171.

“When we go to the market, our workers are happy. But when we return from there, we put on a sad look. We sit in a corner as if our hearts were in pain. We tell them that we have to count every penny. We plead poverty before we really need that excuse, and thus swindle them superbly.

“If they are habitues of some tavern, then we try to come to an agreement with the innkeeper: we keep a common account with her, we demand 2 pence from a shilling for our share and we will be able to get them. By these ingenious means we increase our wealth. For everything that gets into our nets is fish for us...

“This is how we acquire our own money and land, thanks to the poor who work day and night. If it were not for them to work with all their might, then we could, without a long word, hang ourselves. Wool combers, weavers, fullers, then spinners, overworking themselves for meager wages - thanks to the work of all of them we fill our purse - not without curses falling on us for this ... ”We considered it appropriate to quote most of this song, despite its length, its repetitions, the clumsiness of its expressions, which are so characteristic, however, and bearing such a clear stamp of the people. One can hear in it the language of people who are in the miserable taverns where they gathered at the end of their day's work, dreaming for the first time of uniting in order to resist the master's oppression, and these secret meetings were the embryo of trade unions.

Among the workers who managed to organize: earlier than others, wool combers should be noted. It should be noted that movements aimed at systematic resistance to employers do not usually begin among the most oppressed categories of workers, but, on the contrary, among those who, having retained more independence, are more impatient to endure coercion and also have greater forces to resist it. The combers occupied a special position in the woolen industry: the special operations of their craft required a certain acquired dexterity. It was quite difficult to replace them, due to their small number174, and since they used to look for work, moving from city to city175, they did not depend entirely on the mercy of one master or a small group of masters* These circumstances also explain the relatively high level of their wages176 and the fact of their early organization.

As early as 1700, the Tiverton wool carders formed a mutual aid society, which at the same time had the features of a permanent coalition. After a little while, this movement, which began perhaps in several places at once, became more widespread due to the nomadic habits of wool carders: soon this "corporation without a charter" (woolcombers) had its ramifications throughout England and considered itself strong enough to try regulate their production. “No one was to take work for less than a known rate; no craftsman was to employ carders who were not of their society; if he did, then all the other workers en masse refused to work for him; if he had, for example, a dozen workers, then all twenty left at once, and often, not content with the cessation of work, they showered abuse on an honest man who remained in the workshop, beat him and broke his tools.

Some of these strikes were in no way inferior to the most violent conflicts of the 19th century. In 1720, the Tiverton clothiers wanted to bring to Ireland the combed wool necessary for the manufacture of different varieties of twill: the carders, whose interests were directly threatened by this, tried to forcefully prevent this import, which ruined them. They broke into the cloth shops, took away the wool of Irish origin, burned some of it, and hung the rest from the signs of the shops "as trophies of victory." Several houses were attacked, and the owners, defending themselves, shot at the attackers; the constables managed to restore order only after a uniform battle179. The same strife resumed in 1749. A long and violent strike broke out: the carders swore to hold fast until the complete capitulation of the clothers and weavers who used Irish combed wool. At first they behaved quite calmly, but when their strike fund dried up, the plight pushed them to violence, to threats of arson and murder. There were bloody skirmishes, and the intervention of the troops was required. The merchants then made some concessions, offering to restrict imports, but the combers were adamant and began to talk about the massive abandonment of the city; many carried out their threat, to great detriment to local industry.

The weavers were not slow to follow the example of the carders, and although their alliances were not so well armed for the fight, nevertheless they soon proved strong enough to cause serious trouble to the clothiers. Again, and this time we find the oldest traces of their existence and activity in the southwestern counties: in 1717 and 1718. several petitions brought to Parliament the permanent coalition formed by the weavers in Devon and Somerset. The royal proclamation solemnly denounced "these illegal associations and clubs, which allowed themselves, contrary to law, to use the common seal and to act like real corporations (bodies corporate), issuing and trying to impose certain rules by which they have the pretense to determine who has the right to practice their trade, how many apprentices and workers each master must take into his service, and also fix the prices of all goods, the quality of raw materials and methods of production. The effect of this proclamation turned out, as one might expect, to be absolutely equal to zero, therefore, after a few years, Parliament, at the request of the clothiers, resorts more vigorously to repressive measures. In 1725, a law was passed by the chambers, which forbade the weavers from any coalition "arranged for the purpose of regulating industry or for the purpose of seeking higher wages"; for strikes, as for crimes, severe punishments threatened, which, in the event of an invasion of private homes, the destruction of goods or threats against persons, reached exile in hard labor colonies and even the death penalty. Despite the fear that these punishments were supposed to inspire, the coalitions of weavers did not break up and continued to exist further. On the contrary, in Yorkshire, where the "home system" is still preserved, they appeared only together with machine production.

In this category of facts, as in those we have considered before, the woolen industry presents but one example among many others. We have already cited the complaints of the tailor workers, preserved in a large number of pamphlets and petitions. Already in 1720, these workers united in London "in the amount of more than seven thousand" in order to achieve an increase in wages and a reduction in the working day. Parliament repeatedly intervenes in the matter, especially in 1721 and 1768. For the first time, the measures taken managed to intimidate the workers, who, out of fear of hard labor (hard labor) or forced surrender to the soldiers, for a long time did not dare to resume their agitation. Then the movement revived and strikes became more frequent. One of these strikes is depicted in a comedy staged in 1767 on the stage of the royal theater in Haymarket. Here we first see how apprentice tailors gather to squabble among themselves at the Pig in Armor or the Goose and Roast Inn; in the next act, we are present at the battle between strikers and non-strikeers in the very middle of the embankment. No less interesting is the history of knitwear (framework-knitters). The existence of the guild, which received a charter of incorporation in 1663 and embraced workers and owners at the same time,186 was powerless to prevent the manifestation of antagonism between the one and the other from the very beginning. The reason for this is known to us: knitting machines did not belong to the workers, but to the owners. One of the most frequent squabbles was the issue of apprentices: the owners employed a lot of apprentices, who were recruited from among the children cared for by the parishes, as a result of which the demand for the labor of adult workers was correspondingly reduced and their wages were lowered. In 1710 the London stockers, after protesting in vain against this abuse of apprenticeship, went on strike, and in order to take revenge on their masters, the first thing they did was smash the looms. Noisy strikes also broke out among the stockers of Leicester and Nottingham. They have not yet thought about organizing themselves, for in most cases they are accustomed to turning to the authority of the shop for help. But as this authority waned more and more, like the carders and weavers of the south-western counties of England, they ended by founding a real trade union.

Facts of this kind abound in the period immediately preceding the Industrial Revolution. From 1763 to 1773 the silk weavers in east London waged an ongoing struggle with their masters. In 1763 they offered the owners a quotation, which they rejected; in response to this, two thousand weavers left the workshops, breaking tools and destroying materials before leaving. A battalion of guards was brought into the Spitalfield quarter. When in 1765 the question arose of allowing the importation of French silk fabrics, the weavers, despite the prohibition, staged a demonstrative procession to Westminster with banners and drumming190. In 1768 wages were reduced by 4d per yard; the workers were indignant, began defiling noisily through the streets, smashing houses; the Tower garrison was called in to help, the workers used clubs and knives, and as a result, dead and wounded were found at the scene of the clash. In 1769, the rebellious state does not stop: like a smoldering fire, the rebellion flares up again every minute. In the month of March the silk-throwsters hold "noisy meetings", in August the handkerchief weavers conspire to pay 6d per loom to raise a strike fund, and force their comrades to sign. In September and October the situation deteriorated: as the military wanted to clear the tavern by force, which served as a collection point for weavers, a uniform battle ensued, and on both sides there were several killed. It was with a view to putting an end to these constant disturbances that Parliament passed in 1773 the famous Spitalfields Act. This law established a number of rules and rates, placed under the periodic control of justices of the peace; the weavers were satisfied with it and formed a trade union only to enforce the law.

Let us take a last example outside the textile industry, which has provided us with all the preceding examples. The miners and miners of Newcastle have been working since the 17th century. fought against the mine owners and against the powerful guild of hoastmen, to whom the charter of Queen Elizabeth granted the right to monopoly trade in coal. In 1654, the port baroques (keelmen) went on strike to get higher wages. In 1709 there was a new conflict, which lasted several months and during which the traffic on the Tyne was completely stopped. The riots of 1740, which were of a very serious nature, had as their main cause the high cost of living supplies196 and resembled the famine riots caused by crop failures in France of the old regime. But in 1750, 1761 and 1765. the activity of the mines and the port is suspended for many weeks already because of strikes in the narrow sense of the word. And in 1763, a permanent coalition of baroques was formed, the purpose of which was to force the owners to use official measures established by an act of parliament when loading coal.

The fact is that the Newcastle miners, like the Spitalfield weavers of silk, like the stockers and carders of wool, were workers in the modern sense of the word already before the advent of the era of machine production. The raw materials did not belong to them, but as for the tools of labor, they could only have the simplest and cheapest of them, for all the tools of labor that had any significant value were in the hands of merchants or capitalist entrepreneurs. The antagonism between capital and labor was only waiting for the consummation of this seizure of the means of production to take its final form. Everything that tended to increase the complexity, vastness, and price of equipment must necessarily contribute to this result: the technical revolution is only the normal completion of economic evolution.

VII All the facts we have considered above testify to the gradual transformation of the old industry. It remains for us now to see what facts have tended to hinder or slow down this transformation. This effect was exerted not only by the mass of acquired interests and the severity of the routine: we observe here the influence of an entire tradition, an entire system established by custom and consecrated by law. From all economic history 17th and 18th centuries the most frequently studied and the best studied is the guardianship of state power over industry. And there is nothing surprising in this: it is much easier to study legislation, the texts of which we have in our hands, than scattered, vague facts, traces of which can hardly be found again. Perhaps it was for this reason that researchers tended to exaggerate the significance of such a study. Toynbee goes so far in this direction that he recognizes the transition from an era of patronizing regulation to an era of freedom and competition as a fundamental fact of the industrial revolution. In our opinion, this means taking the effect for the cause, confusing economic phenomena with their legal aspect. We shall see, on the contrary, how the new organization and the new methods of industry have of themselves smashed the too narrow limits in which the legislation of another century had enclosed them.

The origin of these laws was twofold. Some of them date back to the Middle Ages: what in France is called Colbertism originated much earlier than the era in which Colbert lived. The idea of ​​industrial regulation is a medieval idea: the state or, in an earlier period, the guilds associated with municipal life, considered themselves, as it were, the holders of the right to control in the common interest of the producer and consumer. The former had to be guaranteed the amount of profits that would reward him, the latter the good quality of the goods. Hence the vigilant supervision of hero-production and sale, and the petty prescriptions, which became more and more complicated until they were no longer observed at all. The idea of ​​trade patronage also had its roots in the Middle Ages,201 but it only acquired its full strength from the moment when the rise of foreign trade awakened in the national groups a clear consciousness of their economic rivalry. It was then that urban economy, as Karl Bucher calls it, gave way to economy national202, uniting the interests of each state into one bundle in order to oppose them to the interests of neighboring states, in relation to which they could not imagine any other possible relationship, except for constant antagonism. In England, this transformation took place during the Tudor era. The system of mercantilism, which received its theoretical expression only much later, actually dates back to this era. Since wealth was mixed with specie, the whole commercial policy was reduced to two rules, strongly reminiscent of the old Cato's rule: always sell and never buy; reduce as far as possible the number of imports, the payment of which causes a certain amount of gold and silver coin to flow out of the country, and to develop, on the contrary, exports, thanks to which foreign gold flows into the country. Hence the extreme protectionism, with the help of which they tried not only to encourage various branches of domestic industry, but also to preserve for them a real monopoly inside and outside the country. The woolen industry, one of the oldest and at the same time the most important branch of English industry, was patronized and regulated more than any other. Numerous Acts of Parliament contain prescriptions concerning “the length, width, and weight of pieces of fabric, the manner in which they are stretched and dyed, the preparation of wool by means of certain substances, the use of which is permitted or prohibited, the finishing of cloth, the folding and packaging of it for sale, the use of tufting machines ( gig mills), etc. etc.”204. These rules were very similar to those in force in old France. It was forbidden to produce pieces of cloth that did not have legal sizes and legal weight; it was forbidden to lay them out to dry in such a way that their threads could stretch; it was forbidden to finish them by the method called dry calendering; it was forbidden to use for dyeing any substances that, in the opinion of the authors of these rules, could spoil the quality of the fabric. It goes without saying that these measures, established in principle with the aim of ensuring excellent quality of dressing, indiscriminately prohibited unscrupulous methods of falsification and necessary improvements. In order to ensure the observance of this complex system of prescriptions, constantly renewed and constantly violated,205 England, like France, put on its feet a whole army of special officials who were charged with the duty of measuring, supervising, checking, weighing, counting the threads; they put their seal on each piece, which, moreover, had to have a brand name on it. Justices of the peace were placed above them, in whose competence one of the main functions was to supervise compliance with industrial regulations and impose penalties prescribed by law on their violators.

The inconveniences of this system have been exposed many times. The manufacturers impatiently endured this petty and tyrannical guardianship and used all their ingenuity to deceive the supervision, about which they constantly complained. Despite the threats of the law, falsification reappeared every time the authorities seemed to have succeeded in eradicating it. Sometimes the agents of state power themselves were her accomplices. Pieces of cloth, properly weighed in the marketplace, became, miraculously, lighter as the water with which they were soaked evaporated; or else, when they were deployed—which the indulgent controller refrained from doing—they were ballasted with bricks or lead. Thus, the main goal of all these regulations - the protection of the interests of the consumer - was not achieved. But on the other hand, any progress in technology became almost impossible. In 1765, on the eve of the great inventions that were to completely transform machinery, it was forbidden, under penalty of fine, to use cards with metal teeth instead of the tufting cones still used in most branches of the textile industry.

But while we observe during the XVIII century. a marked decline in this medieval legislation, the system of mercantilism, of a more recent origin, was still in full force when Adam Smith dealt it the first blows in 1776. It was this regime of overprotectiveness that constituted the strongest obstacle to any improvement in the traditional technical processes in the woolen industry: privilege has always been the death of initiative and progress. It seemed that the whole fate of England was connected with the woolen industry, it was “the subject of the same cares and jealousy as the golden apples of the Hesperides”207. Domestically, it claimed primacy over all branches of industry that could compete with it. We shall have occasion to recount in detail the fierce struggle waged by the woolen manufacturers not only against the importation of cotton goods from the East Indies, but also against the imitation of these fabrics in England with the help of English laborers and at a profit for English capital; and if the business depended only on them, then this nascent branch of large-scale industry would be stopped in its development and irrevocably would perish. They wanted to impose on the consumer a real monopoly, extending even to the dead: a law issued in the reign of Charles I prescribed that every person who died on English territory should be buried in a shroud of wool. In external relations we see the same claims, although it was more difficult to support them. In countries that depended on England, it was very easy to eliminate competition: for this it was enough to prevent production there. Characteristic is the policy that has been adopted regarding Ireland209. Around the end of the 17th century The success of Irish industry alarmed English manufacturers: they demanded and achieved the establishment of a system of export duties that closed colonial and foreign markets for Ireland. A real blockade was established around the island, the reality of which was maintained by the cruising of a small fleet, consisting of two warships and eight armed boats.

But to prevent the development of the woolen industry on the Continent was obviously impossible. Meanwhile, the British were undertaking to achieve this. Proud of the excellent quality of their raw materials, they convinced themselves that only coarse fabrics could be made without it. Consequently, foreign industry, compelled to make do with its own resources, is doomed to perpetual inferiority, and, being unable to obtain English wool, the French, Dutch, Germans will have to buy English cloth, willy or not. To this illusion, so pleasing to national vanity, was added the chimerical fear that the importation of a small bale of this marvelous wool into a neighboring country would be enough to bring about the most terrible competition for English industry. It is not difficult to see that this double argument should have led to a complete ban on the export of wool in any form other than completely thot fabric. With all the more reason, it was forbidden to export live sheep that could acclimatize abroad; came to the point that they forbade the shearing of sheep at a distance of less than 5 miles from the seashore213! The industry, so jealously guarded, felt no need for innovation. Like a real darling of Parliament, she thought only of never ceasing to demand new laws in her favor, and raised a cry as soon as there was talk of softening the severity of the old laws. An example is the controversy that flared up between 1781 and 1788. regarding the export of raw wool214. As sheep-breeding assumed ever greater proportions, the sheep-breeders, for whom the English market was becoming too small, began to demand that they be allowed to export wool; meanwhile, active smuggling, despite all prohibitions, exported part of their product abroad. But the woolen manufacturers trembled before the specter of foreign competition: they wanted the barriers erected against it not only not to be made lower, but to be further strengthened, and smuggling to be suppressed more severely than ever. Both sides defended their interests, or thought they defended them: but while the manufacturers called for privilege to help routine, the sheep breeders, having at their head a great school of agronomists, then preoccupied with the reform of English agriculture, spoke the language of the new political economy.

The most eminent of them, Arthur Jung, wrote: "It is in the interests of industry itself that an end must be put to the excessive patronage which it demands." And he compared it with industries of more recent origin, the rapid successes of which were the subject of general astonishment and delight. “In vain you will look here (i.e., in the woolen industry) for that ardent enterprise, that energy, that spirit of initiative, which are the noble trait of the English industrial genius when he directs his efforts to iron, cotton, glass or porcelain. Here everything is sleepy, inert, dead... Such are the disastrous actions of the monopoly. Do you want a black cloud hanging over the ever-increasing prosperity of Manchester? Give him the monopoly of cotton production. Or perhaps the marvelous development of Birmingham is jarring to your eye? In this case, the monopoly, like an epidemic, will depopulate its streets ... "1. However, the factory workers gained the upper hand over the sheep breeders. The old prohibitions were renewed, and the export of wool was made a felony. The news of the adoption of this law caused the liveliest joy in the district of Leeds and Norwich: the event was celebrated with fireworks and bell ringing, like a victory over the enemy.

Meanwhile, Jung was right. The means by which the woolen industry stubbornly wanted to maintain its preeminence made it immobile, or at least retarded its development. Listening to the eternal complaints with which the manufacturers filled their petitions to the state power, one would think that it is in decline. In fact, it did not stop developing4. But its progress—with the exception of one district to which the future belonged, namely, the western district of Yorkshire5—has been slow and uneven; if the centers of production were numerous, they were often insignificant: many of them, starting from the beginning 1

Annals of Agriculture, VII, 164-169. 2

Law 28 Geo. Ill, p. 38. Some of its provisions are borrowed from the law of the Restoration (13-14, ch. II, p. 18). 3

“On Friday morning, at the news that the Wool Export Bill was passed in the House of Lords, all the bells of Leeds and the surrounding villages rang, and their chime sounded intermittently throughout the day; in the evening the illumination was burning, and other popular amusements were arranged. Quite similar manifestations of joy took place in Norwich. Letters to the Lincolnshire graziers, on the subject of the wool trade (1788), p. fourteen

This is a very fair conclusion by J. Smith, Memoirs of Wool, II, 409-411. 5

See F. Eden, State of the poor, III, CCCLXIII, for production statistics; A. Anderson, Chronological history and deduction of the origin of commerce, IV, 146-149; Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, IV, 525; Bischoff, Hist, of the woollen manufacture, I, 328. - Production of West Reading in 1740: 41 thousand pieces of wide cloth, 58 thousand pieces of narrow cloth; "in 1750: 60 thousand and 78 thousand ; in 1760: 49 thousand and 69 thousand (the period of the naval war); in 1770: 93 thousand and 85 thousand; in 1780: 94 thousand and 87 thousand

XVIII century, barely vegetated215. They vegetated, but did not disappear: in this respect they were, as it were, symbols of the old economic organization, which gradually changed due to slow internal evolution, but still retained its old forms, supported by centuries of routine. The woolen industry was too conservative, too heavy with privilege and prejudice, to complete its own transformation by updating its technique. The Industrial Revolution had to start outside of it.

This revolution, however, was only a continuation of a movement that gradually changed the old economic order. We have already indicated the curve of this movement above. The history of the woolen industry shows us its successive phases, as if fixed in a certain number of industrial types, connected with each other by almost imperceptible transitions. First we see the industry of independent small producers, which flourished especially in the Halifax area; then the industry of merchant-manufacturers, which was more scattered in the villages of the south-west, and more concentrated around the big city of Norwich; finally, the industry of manufactories, the industry of large workshops, which, however, made less progress than might be expected, judging by its brilliant start in the 16th century. To ascertain this diversity means to restore the economic movement in its complexity and continuity. Marx, who analyzed it with all the power of his abstract genius, reduced it to too simple terms and too sharply defined periods. Moreover, by no means should a strictly descriptive meaning be attributed to what in Marx's mind had a predominantly explanatory meaning. Thus, for example, we would fall into error if we thought that manufacture216 was the characteristic, predominant phenomenon of the period preceding the period of large-scale industry. If it is logically the necessary antecedent of the factory system, it is historically untrue that it has become so widespread as to leave its stamp on the whole of industry. As much as its appearance in the Renaissance is an important and significant phenomenon, so its role in subsequent centuries, at least in England, remains secondary. It is possible to speak precisely of the manufacturing system, for the purpose of comparing it with the system of modern large-scale industry, but at the same time we must certainly remember that this system was never predominant, that side by side with it there were still very tenacious remnants of previous industrial regimes.

The continuity of the movement in question is due to the fact that, up to the moment we are considering, it remained purely economic, and not technical; that it affects the organization and not the material side of production. It is not inventions suddenly born in individual minds, but the slow progress of collective agreements that defines and modifies it. One fact in particular deserves our attention. The capitalists, in whose favor the gradual concentration of the means of production is taking place, scarcely deserve the title of industrialists. They willingly leave all the care of fabrication to the small producers, who are gradually losing their independence. They do not yet take upon themselves the task of improving it, they do not even undertake to manage it. These are merchants: industry for them is only a form of trade. They strive for only one goal, the goal of any commercial enterprise: to get in their favor the difference between the purchase and sale price. Precisely in order to increase this difference, in order to realize savings on the purchase price, they first become masters of raw materials, then of the implements of production, and finally of industrial premises. It is as merchants that they come to the point where they take over all production.

And again, it is trade, the development of British trade, that draws them more and more on this path. In addition to their consciousness, there is a law that relates the division of industrial labor to the vastness of the commercial market, a law formulated a few years later by Adam Smith. To the superficial observer, the outward-directed activity of English commerce threatened to harm the internal development of England, the industrious and patient expansion of her domestic industry. “Really,” we read in a French book218, published in 1773, “England wants to become like Holland and henceforth have at the heart of her wealth only trade, freight business and large-scale shipping? .. It is difficult to think that England has managed with great success than Holland, to support the withering manufactories ... ”An amazing prophecy inside out! On the contrary, it was out of trade and commercial spirit that a new industry was soon to be born.

According to the time of occurrence, all industries are divided into three groups: Newest industries. New industries. old industries. - coal - iron ore metallurgy - textile, etc. These industries are growing at a slow pace. - automotive industry - aluminum smelting - plastics production These industries are growing at a faster pace. microelectronics - robotics, aerospace production, microbiology, etc. These industries are growing at the fastest pace. The old industries arose during the industrial revolution. New industries determined scientific and technological progress in the first half of the twentieth century. The newest industries were generated by the scientific and technological revolution (NTR) of the second half of the twentieth century. The listed groups of industries have different growth rates. The main shifts in the sectoral structure are associated with a decrease in the share of old and an increase in the share of new industries.

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