142 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



The most wonderful adaptations of the small indus- 

 tries to new requirements, and substantial technical 

 progress in the methods of production, can be noted 

 at the same time. It may even be said of France, as 

 it has been said of Russia, that when a rural industry 

 dies out, the cause of its decay is found much less in 

 the competition of rival factories in hundreds of 

 localities the small industry undergoes a complete modi- 

 fication, or it changes its character in such cases than 

 in the decay of the population as agriculturists. Con- 

 tinually we see that only when the small landholders 

 have been ruined, as such, by' a group of causes the 

 loss of communal meadows, or abnormally high rents, 

 or the havoc made in some locality by the marchands 

 de biens (swindlers enticing the peasants to buy land 

 for credit), or the bankruptcy of some shareholders' 

 company whose shares had been eagerly taken by the 

 peasants* do they abandon both the land and the 

 rural industry and emigrate towards the towns. Other- 

 wise, a new industry always grows up when the com- 

 petition of the factory becomes too acute a wonderful, 

 hardly suspected adaptability being displayed by the 

 small industries ; or else the rural artisans resort to some 

 form of intensive farming, gardening, etc., and in the 

 meantime some other industry makes its appearance. 



It is evident that in most textile industries the power- 

 loom supersedes the hand-loom, and the factory takes, 

 or has taken already, the place of the cottage industry. 

 Cottons, plain linen, and machine-made lace are now 

 produced at such a low cost by machinery, that hand- 

 weaving evidently becomes an anachronism for the 

 plainest descriptions of such goods. Consequently, 

 though there were in France, in the year 1876, 328,300 

 hand-looms as against 121,340 power-looms, it may 

 safely be taken that the number of the former has been 



* See Baudrillart's Les Populations agricoles dc la France : Normandit t 



