nd silk-workers from Lucca, whereby
the industry reached its zenith. The commercial element came more and
more to the fore; the merchants became the organizers of production,
providing the master craftsman with raw materials which he worked up."
So we read in Broglio d'Ajano. We are told a similar tale about the silk
industry in Genoa, which received an enormous impetus when the Berolerii
began to employ craftsmen from Lucca. In 1341 what was probably the
first factory for silk manufacture was erected by one Bolognino di
Barghesano, of Lucca. Even in Lyons tradition asserts that Italians
introduced the making of silk, and, when in the sixteenth century the
industry was placed on a capitalist basis, the initiative thereto came
once more from aliens. It was the same in Switzerland, where the silk
industry was introduced by the Pelligari in 1685. In Austria likewise we
hear the same tale.

Silk-making in these instances is but one example; there were very many
others. Here one industry was introduced, there another; here it was by
Frenchmen or Germans, there by Italians or Dutchmen. And always the new
establishments came at the moment when the industries in question were
about to become capitalistic in their organization.

Individual migrations, then, were not without influence on the economic
development of society. But much more powerful was the effect of the
wanderings of large groups from one land to another. From the sixteenth
century onward migrations of this sort may be distinguished under three
heads: (1) Jewish migrations; (2) the migration of persecuted
Christians, more especially of Protestants; and (3) the colonizing
movement, particularly the settlement in America.

We come, then, to the general question, Is it not a fact that the
"stranger," the immigrant, was possessed of a specially developed
capitalist spirit, and this quite apart from his environment, and, to a
lesser degree, his religion or his nationality? We see it in the old
states of Europe no less than in the new settlements beyond; in Jews and
Gentiles alike; in Protestants and Catholics (the French in Louisiana
were, by the middle of the nineteenth century, not a whit behind the
Anglo-Saxons of the New England states in this respect). The assumption
therefore forces itself upon us that this particular social
condition--migration or change of habitat--was responsible for the
unfolding of the capitalist spirit. Let us attempt to show how.

If we