SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 143 



considerably reduced within the last twenty years. 

 However, the slowness with which this change is being 

 accomplished is one of the most striking features of the 

 present industrial organisation of the textile trades of 

 France. 



The causes of this power of resistance of hand-loom- 

 weaving become especially apparent when one consults 

 such works as Reybaud's Le Colon, which was written 

 in 1863, more than thirty years ago that is, at a time 

 when the cottage industries were still fully alive. 

 Though an ardent admirer himself of the great industries, 

 Reybaud faithfully noted the striking superiority of 

 well-being in the weavers' cottages, as compared with the 

 misery of the factory hands in the cities. Already, then, 

 the cities of St Quentin, Lille, Roubaix and Amiens 

 were great centres for cotton-spinning mills and cotton- 

 weaving factories. But, at the same time, all sorts of 

 cottons were woven in hand-looms, in the very suburbs 

 of St Quentin and in a hundred villages and hamlets 

 around it, to be sold for finishing in the city. And 

 Reybaud remarked that the horrible dwellings in town, 

 and the general condition of the factory hands, stood 

 in a wonderful contrast with the relative welfare of the 

 rural weavers. Nearly every one of these last had his 

 own house and a small field which he continued to cul- 

 tivate.* 



Even in such a branch as the fabrication of plain 

 cotton velvets, in which the competition of the factories 

 was especially keenly felt, home-weaving was widely 

 spread, in 1863 and even in 1878, in the villages round 

 Amiens. Although the earnings of the rural weavers 

 were small, as a rule, the weavers preferred to keep 

 to their own cottages, to their own crops and to their own 

 cattle ; and only repeated commercial crises, as well as 

 several of the above-mentioned causes, rAQstile to the, 



* Le Colon, p. 170 



