298 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



producing a better article, we ought to have the pull, as growing 

 more spring wheat — which provides the best straw for the purpose — 

 than other nations. However, we grow so much on clay, which 

 yields " spotty " straw. There is a little rush plaiting and mat- 

 making. Why cannot we produce more handmade rugs after the 

 manner of people at Schmiedeberg in Silesia, and in places on the 

 Rhine, whose inhabitants have gone to the trouble and expense of 

 sending men to Smyrna to learn the craft ? There is a little osier 

 work, some chair-making, both joinered and wicker. Suffolk gun and 

 fire flints do not account for much. Bodicote haltermaking and 

 Banbury mohair work keep flickering on. " Smocking " or " f rock- 

 ing " is moribund. So is the old-fashioned framework knitting. 

 But tailoring, " seaming," " stockinging," with " gloving " to support 

 it, appear on the increase. And there is the " eternal feminine " 

 to cater for, which loves handwork. Cambridgeshire has its " Swans- 

 down " work. There is corset and stay making, to supply for the 

 upper body what is under modern fashions saved in the covering of 

 nether parts. " Beadwork," too, keeps a number of hands busy. 

 Take it all in all, it is not much ; and what in this connection 

 is peculiarly apt to strike one is, that in our British cottage industry 

 we can seemingly never rise beyond a not very elevated level. 

 Abroad, wherever forest abounds and, therefore, timber is cheap, 

 hand industry lays itself out for turning out more or less artistic 

 articles in the shape of carving, such as our tourists know from 

 Ammergau, or toys and the like, which require inventiveness and 

 skill. We do not appear to get much beyond plain articles — hoops, 

 trugs, wattles, clothes pegs. And yet our periodical exhibitions 

 show that we have as artistically minded workmen among us as any 

 foreign nation. 



The point now raised opens up a new issue. The industries 

 hitherto spoken of are in the main such as produce goods for ordinary, 

 general use, in which utility is the test of appropriateness, and for 

 which there is at practically all times a market with very wide 

 limits. What tells in these goods is not only the general utility, 

 but also their specifically local, typical character. Japanese goods 

 distinctly bear the specifically Japanese impress upon them. So 

 do, in as marked a manner, Russian, Hungarian, Indian — so far as 

 the latter can be classed as " useful." The feature is particularly 

 noticeable in goods of Hungarian manufacture. Apart from their 

 peculiar articles of clothing — the models of some of which, such as 

 the " Attilas," are said to have come down from the original " Huns " 

 — and from their plain embroideries, such as antimacassars, gay 



