286 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



of the East, where acquired habits among populations most con- 

 servative in their daily habits, if in nothing else, coupled in this case 

 with deficient development of modern machine industry, keeps old 

 methods, old implements, old utensils, old practices in vogue. The 

 same force of habit works in favour of cottage industries nearer 

 home still. It is largely answerable for the firm hold which small 

 or cottage industry, with its rather primitive products, still main- 

 tains on the French peasant population. It keeps the uncouth, 

 rudely-shaped hand-made couteavx flamands in fashion in Belgium. 

 On the other hand — among other places in that otherwise very pro- 

 gressive country, Belgium — the same retrospective habit endangers 

 some of the very trades which it seeks to protect, by refusing to 

 adopt new processes and implements, which would greatly cheapen, 

 or otherwise improve, the production of their wares. Such modern 

 innovations have been deliberately boycotted when provided, and 

 even actually made havoc of. 



Looking at our own case, straw-plaiting, indeed, is mostly on 

 the decline. Belgium still supplies a select number of firms in 

 the United States with a superior description of plaiting — holding 

 on to this, as M. Julin, Director of the Belgium Department of 

 Comme Labour, punningly states, by " the last straw," until the 

 Japanese with their cheaper labour will have found out how to pro- 

 duce the same article. It is receding elsewhere, in its erstwhile 

 favourite haunts, such as the Black Forest and the Vosges, whose 

 villages used to be kept lively with the groups of merrily chatting 

 maidens plying their trade with their wisps of straw dependent 

 from their girdles. In industry, as in love, il y a toujours un autre. 

 The Belgians affirm that we have been among those who have 

 undercut them by cheaper wages. Certainly the Swiss and the 

 Italians have. And still more, to the punishment of those intruders, 

 the Japanese and the Chinese. The same " yellow danger " is 

 telling in other trades. The Swiss and Tuscans still hold on to 

 straw-plaiting in virtue of superior wares — which one does not see 

 why we could not supply as well. China plaiting is cheap, but of 

 inferior quality. The Japanese, on the other hand, with their 

 wonted cuteness have learnt to compete also in some of the higher 

 grades. 



Other small industries have failed to give way. Thus 

 in Belgium, as the interesting inquiry recently conducted by 

 M. Beatse shows, even hand-weaving, a puny David to pit against 

 the power-Goliath, holds its own to such an extent that, although 

 crowded out in the province of wool, in the provinces of linen and 



