ABSTRACT
Despite the continued importance of agriculture, by 1867 industry had come to be the predominant sector of the economy in the district as a whole. One long-time manufacturing center lay in and around city of Solingen. Nearly paralleling the growth of industry was that of population. Statistics for the Solingen industrial area alone are available only down to 1861. In the Kreis as a whole in 187.5 there were 4884 workshops in metal-working industry with five or fewer workers each and only 134 with more than five workers; not all of the latter were mechanized since there were only 126 motors of all kinds used in industry, 60 of them steam engines. Not a great deal is known about the textile workers or their employers, but from what was said above about income levels in the Kreis as a whole, presumably they, too, did not exhibit extremes of poverty or wealth to the extent that was common in other areas.
