150 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



is a small burg, Fresnaye, which is entirely peopled with 

 workers in wood. 



" There is not one house," Ardouin Dumazet writes, " in which 

 wooden goods would not be fabricated. Some years ago there was little 

 variety in their produce ; spoons, salt-boxes, shepherds' boxes, scales, 

 various wooden pieces for weavers, flutes and hautboys, spindles, wooden 

 measures, funnels, and wooden bowls were only made. But Paris wanted 

 to have a thousand things in which wood was combined with iron : 

 mouse-traps, cloak-pegs, spoons for jam, brooms. . . . And now every 

 house has a workshop containing either a turning-lathe, or some machine- 

 tools for chopping wood, for making lattice- work, and so on. . . . Quite 

 a new industry was born, and the most coquettish things are now 

 fabricated. Owing to this industry the population is happy. The earn- 

 ings are not high, but each worker owns his house and garden, and 

 occasionally a bit of field." * 



At Neufcha'tel wooden shoes are made, and the hamlet, 

 we are told, has a most smiling aspect. To every house 

 a garden is attached, and none of the misery of big cities 

 is to be seen. At Jupilles and in the surrounding country 

 other varieties of wooden goods are produced : tapes, 

 boxes of different kinds, together with wooden shoes ; 

 while at the forest of Vibraye two workshops have been 

 erected for turning out umbrella handles by the million 

 for all France. One of these workshops having been 

 founded by a worker sculptor, he has invented and intro- 

 duced in his workshop the most ingenious machine-tools. 

 About 150 men work at this factory; but it is evident 

 that half a dozen smaller workshops, scattered in the 

 villages, would have answered equally well. 



Going now over to a quite different region the 

 Nievre, in the centre of France, and Haute Marne, in 

 the east we find that both regions are great centres 

 for a variety of small industries, some of which are 

 maintained by associations of workers, while others have 

 grown up in the shadow of factories. The small iron 

 workshops which formerly covered the country have not 

 disappeared : they have undergone a transformation ; 



V9i. .. pp. 35. 30$. 



