Chapter XI 

 VILLAGE INDUSTRIES 



Quite naturally, once the project of repeopling the countryside 

 by the creation of small holdings in large numbers and of the 

 systematic reconstruction of rural life came to occupy men's minds, 

 were thoughts directed to the encouragement and organisation, one 

 might say the revival, of rural industries. The main pursuit of 

 rural populations as a matter of course always will be agriculture. 

 But agriculture is a rather skittish calling, which sometimes leaves 

 those who practise it in the lurch, with an empty barn or a half -filled 

 pail. In the best of cases it is an intermittent industry, leaving 

 many idle days, when fields are inaccessible, and labour is uncalled 

 for, apart from the long months of winter, when the season leaves 

 the earth " to enjoy her sabbaths." Then why should hands rest ? 

 It is not every one who is content to be a cumber-ground. And life, 

 with its many needs, presses its calls upon the purse, which indus- 

 triously disposed people will wish to find additional means of filling. 

 In the practice of no calling is the value of a possible second string 

 to one's bow more clearly marked than in agriculture. And where 

 the holding is small, advisedly so measured as to provide occupation 

 for the members of only just one family, and that necessarily in 

 summer time only, or almost so, a by-occupation comes in as a 

 godsend. We know that there were times in our history when 

 loom and spindle, hammer and plane, carving scalpel and nail die, 

 made their working seen and heard in our villages, giving to men 

 and women — then still possessed of their own little homes, with the 

 allotments and common rights attaching to them — remunerative 

 work in idle hours. We read of the prosperity of the Japanese 

 peasants, with their diminutive little holdings, the cultivation of 

 which is in almost every case supplemented by some other calling — 

 most usually, owing to the peculiar configuration of the country, 

 fishing ; and where, under the fostering care of an observant and 

 wide-awake Government, small industries have entered upon a new 

 era of prosperity. Once more, we read of the small industries of 

 France — which, owing to the conservative disposition of the rural 

 population in social matters, and also owing to a wise selection of 

 the proper varieties of articles produced, maintain themselves with 

 almost surprising vitality — of its silk-woven ribbons, and of the 



