294 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



generations back Normandy apple growers have shown that they 

 were well aware of the richness of apple juice in sugar — which is 

 just Sir J. Green's point — by converting it on a large scale into 

 sucre de po?n?nes, which is valued as a delicacy and sold in large 

 quantities as a speciality of Rouen. Why, with such an example 

 to demonstrate to them what might be done, our apple growers 

 should have gone on complaining, as they often did before the War, 

 that they must allow their apples to rot under the trees, or else 

 feed their pigs with them — as Spaniards at one time, for want of a 

 market, did their raisins — because they would not bear the cost of 

 carriage to market at the prevailing high railway rates, is just a 

 little surprising. It shows how one may — just as did the Africanders, 

 before an English traveller quite by chance detected the valuable 

 substance concealed in their rubble, walk on gold without being 

 aware of it. During the War, surely, English sucre de pommes would 

 have been welcome and fetched a good price. The method of 

 manufacture is simple, just like that of barley sugar. Aliquando 

 bonum dormitat Whitehall Place. 



If by-industries are to be successfully organised, as supporting 

 buttresses to small cultivation of land, it is evident that descrip- 

 tions of such industries must be chosen, the products of which are 

 pretty certain to find a remunerative market. This point is not 

 always sufficiently borne in mind. The question is rather asked : 

 What can our people produce ? That point is likewise of importance, 

 and likewise often enough too lightly treated. And unquestionably 

 it presents its difficulties — more particularly in our country, in which, 

 unlike what obtains in neighbouring countries on the Continent, 

 not a few old-established hand industries have been so completely 

 rooted out as to leave no stump in the soil from which they might 

 be expected to send out new shoots. In Belgium, in Switzerland, 

 in Germany, in Austria, not to speak of Hungary and countries 

 further east, there is the old habit, the national and instinctive 

 aptitude, for certain trades, bred by their practice through genera- 

 tions, still alive. We could not think of reviving nail making on 

 the old lines, or straw plaiting or hand-weaving — the last-named 

 nowhere except in such cases of peculiar machine-proof specialities 

 as Harris tweeds. No more could we dive into the glass industry, 

 such as that of Bohemia, which still continues to flourish. Abroad, 

 wherever such domestic industries have been long practised — in 

 not a few cases for centuries — they have effectually established 

 the habits and capabilities of the people concerned. Mendel or 

 no Mendel, their particular work has come to be practically part 



