VILLAGE INDUSTRIES 283 



ample remuneration which women there earn by lace-making 

 and the like, but above all things by the tasteful embroidery, in 

 which the " cunning " of the deft hand most effectively tells. We 

 read of the widespread and the activity of the Russian kustars, 

 keeping millions of people in food, housing and clothing, and of 

 those myriads of handlooms which have stepped in most helpfully 

 to fill the gaps caused by Soviet suppression of factory work. In the 

 place of the 24,000,000 yards of hand-woven stuff turned out in 1918 

 by co-operative societies organised in their Centrosoyus, there were 

 in 1919 70,000,000 yards. And there are not a few amongst us 

 whose appetentia alieni must have been whetted by the evidence of 

 picturesque, if not always highly remunerative, cottage handicrafts 

 to be observed on our travels abroad, say, the clicking of the many 

 busy looms in the cottages scattered over the romantic hillsides of 

 the Foudai, or the contagious mirth of the chatting and laughing 

 trecciajuole plaiting their straw in Tuscany, or of their craft-mates in 

 the valleys of the Black Forest, the persuasive lace-makers of Porto 

 Fino, the nimble finger play of the hosiery workers of the Conqueror's 

 Falaise, or the artistic handling of their delicate material by the 

 meerschaum workers of the Thuringian Forest. The lacemakers of 

 Lorraine, Belgium, Italy and Austria, eastwards to Dalmatia, the 

 seeming antics of the uncouthly picturesque Slovaks, deftly fingering 

 their wire and wood, issuing from their hands in the shapes of mouse- 

 traps and other primitive domestic implements still largely in use in 

 their part of the world, and the like. There is something peculiarly 

 attractive about all these humble crafts ; and there is so much 

 interesting history attaching to them. Time was when the world 

 was dependent upon what was manufactured — really " manu "- 

 factured, for the " hand " was the producing agent — in such way. 

 But the main point for us in this matter now is that there is money 

 in this work — money on the top of what agriculture will yield, money 

 for the needy, money which will make the home brighter and more 

 comfortable and supply means for the raising of the growing 

 generation. 



Much of all this — for ourselves probably the main part — has died 

 out. Incoming factory work has driven it off the ground. How- 

 ever, there are influences at work now to make it once more desirable 

 and practically possible — just as we are setting up old things with 

 a new face to bring back our rural districts to their former populous- 

 ness and prosperity. The shortened hours of exactable wage 

 labour, now authorised also for agricultural occupations, come in 

 as an additional ground for desiring to see home industries more 



