SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 1$! 



and now the country is covered with small workshops 

 where agricultural machinery, chemical produce, and 

 pottery are fabricated ; " one ought to go as far as 

 Gue'rigny and Fourchambault to find the great in- 

 dustry ; " * while a number of small workshops for the 

 fabrication of a variety of hardware flourish by the side 

 of, and owing to the proximity of, the industrial centres. 

 Pottery makes the fortune of the valley of the Loire 

 about Nevers. High-class art pottery is made in this 

 town, while in the villages plain pottery is fabricated 

 and exported by merchants who go about with their 

 boats, selling it. At Gien a large factory of china buttons 

 (made out of felspar-powder cemented with milk) has 

 lately been established, and employs 1 500 workmen, who 

 produce from 3500 to 4500 Ib. of buttons every day. 

 And, as is often the case, part of the work is done in 

 the villages. For many miles on both banks of the 

 Loire, in all villages, old people, women and children sew 

 the buttons to the cardboard pieces. Of course, that 

 sort of work is wretchedly paid ; but it is resorted to 

 only because there is no other sort of industry in the 

 neighbourhood to which the peasants could give their 

 leisure time. 



In the same region of the Haute Marne, especially 

 in the neighbourhood of Nogent, we find cutlery as a 

 by-occupation to agriculture. Landed property is very 

 much subdivided in that part of France, and great 

 numbers of peasants own but from two to three acres 

 per family, or even less. Consequently, in thirty villages 

 round Nogent, about 5000 men are engaged in cutlery, 

 chiefly of the highest sort (artistic knives are occasion- 

 ally sold at as much as 20 a piece), while the lower sorts 

 are fabricated in the neighbourhoods of Thiers, in Puy- 

 de-D6me (Auvergne). The Nogent industry has de- 

 veloped spontaneously without any aid from without, 



* Ardouin Dumazet, vol. i., p. 52. 



