ABSTRACT
Whatever the neglected significance of family farms and other kinds of smallscale household business in the process of economic change, it remains true that no cases of development exist in which the factory did not emerge as the increasingly dominant form of industrial organisation. The direction which technical change in manufacturing industry has taken over the period since the first Industrial Revolution, involving, as it has done, subdivision and specialisation in the stages of production, the application of mechanicallygenerated power, and the use of ever larger-scale equipment, has necessitated larger units of production, employing greater numbers of workers and requiring increasingly specialised management.
