Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen · 1900
Schullern’s review assesses the first volume of the Belgian Office du Travail’s investigation of home industry, published in 1899. Its principal interest is methodological: how can a common research programme produce comparable accounts while capturing differences among trades and workers? The volume contains studies by Maurice Ansiaux on the arms industry in Leiden, Eugène Tardieu on men’s clothing in Brussels, and Charles Génart on cutlery in Gembloux. Schullern praises their empirical ambition but distinguishes carefully between observed earnings, hypothetical budgets, and general estimates.
The review first reconstructs the official programme. It moves from geography, population, and local economic conditions through the historical development of home industry to recruitment, advancement, capital, credit, markets, production, and labour organization. This breadth makes home industry intelligible through the relationships among its participants:
Sehr erschöpfend werden dann im einzelnen die Functionen und gegenseitigen Beziehungen der in der Hausindustrie beschäftigten und der daran betheiligten Individuen analysiert.
English translation: Very exhaustively, then, the functions and mutual relations of the individuals employed in the domestic industry and of those participating in it are analysed in detail.
Schullern pays particular attention to the questions about wages and workers’ budgets. An income account for a worker of average ability is useful only if the inquiry also establishes how representative that worker is, how far other earnings diverge, and how frequently such deviations occur. Since the statistical templates supplied to the investigators are not printed, he cannot fully assess whether the programme meets these requirements. His concern is thus not merely to obtain averages, but to establish their evidentiary meaning.
The programme also covers working time, involuntary interruptions, workplace safety, associations, and protective legislation. Schullern commends the contributors for preserving comparability without sacrificing coherent, readable accounts. Ansiaux’s study especially interests him because it distinguishes relatively successful home workers from those driven by falling product prices into excessive hours without adequate subsistence. Yet the proposed limit on legislative intervention receives a conspicuous mark of doubt:
Trotzdem werde es nicht die Gesetzgebung sein dürfen, durch welche die Heimarbeit verboten würde; das könne nur geschehen durch das Dazwischentreten des Capitals. (?)
English translation: Nevertheless it will not be legislation by which home work is to be prohibited; that can only come about through the intervention of capital. (?)
The parenthetical question mark registers Schullern’s reservation without developing an alternative policy. His account preserves the tension between workers’ differing experiences of home production and the disputed means of transforming it.
The treatment of Tardieu’s shorter study sharpens the review’s distinction between prescribed arrangements and actual conditions. The Brussels tailors’ piece-rate tariff was not universally accepted, and a budget calculated from it therefore provides insecure evidence of workers’ lives:
Das auf Grund desselben entworfene Arbeiterbudget dürfte wohl etwas gar zu theoretisch gedacht sein, um einen höheren Wert als den einer sehr beiläufigen Orientierung beanspruchen zu können.
English translation: The workers' budget drawn up on the basis of it is probably conceived somewhat too theoretically to be able to claim a higher value than that of a very approximate orientation.
An appended workshop regulation offers a better basis for comparison, Schullern suggests, but only if it is actually observed. Both judgments insist that formal rules cannot simply stand in for practice.
Génart’s cutlery study supplies the kind of evidence Schullern finds more instructive: workers’ own records of receipts and business expenses, even though these cover only short periods.
Die Messerindustrie in Gembloux (Provinz Namur) wird gleichfalls ziemlich gedrängt dargestellt; hier finden wir eine Anzahl von Aufschreibungen einzelner Arbeiter über ihr Einkommen und ihre Betriebsauslagen, die zwar nur kurze Zeitperioden umfassen, aber doch viel instructiver sind, als allgemeine Schätzungen für Durchschnittsverhältnisse.
English translation: The cutlery industry in Gembloux (Province of Namur) is likewise presented fairly concisely; here we find a number of records by individual workers concerning their income and their operating expenses which, although they cover only short periods of time, are nevertheless far more instructive than general estimates for average conditions.
The review concludes by assigning the publication methodological value for a wider readership and substantive value for specialists. Its relevance rests on the growing urgency of home industry as an object of social policy. Schullern’s distinctive contribution is to make that urgency a demand for better evidence: comparable investigations must retain differences among workers, test regulations against practice, and ground income estimates in recorded economic experience.
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