ABSTRACT
On average, Parisian firms were m uch smaller than those of either Berlin or London. Nearly 94 per cent of industrial workshops in Paris employed fewer than 20 workers (row J); the figure was even higher in the service sector at 97 per cent. The London figures are not directly comparable because they refer to firms rather than places of work, bu t they do suggest that the small firm was less dominant than in Paris. T he Berlin statistics present other problems in that they refer only to the central districts, where the artisanal trades were concentrated, and not to the outlying industrial suburbs with their massive engineering and metalworking plants. This explains why such a high proportion of firms (94 per cent, as in Paris) had fewer than 20 workers. It should be noted, however, that even central Berlin had a higher proportion of its industrial workforce employed in large factories than either Paris or London (row I). There was probably some convergence in the size of firms in the three cities between the Paris census of 1906 and the outbreak of war, b u t not sufficient to transform the essentially artisanal character of Parisian industry, especially in the central districts.7
