SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 153 



between the Swiss frontier and Besangon in the year 

 1878, I was struck by the high degree of relative well- 

 being which I could observe, even though I was perfectly 

 well acquainted with the Swiss villages in the Val de 

 Saint Imier. It is very probable that the machine-made 

 watches have brought about a crisis in French watch- 

 making as they have in Switzerland. But it is known 

 that part, at least, of the Swiss watch-makers have strenu- 

 ously fought against the necessity of being enrolled in 

 the factories, and that while watch factories grew up 

 at Geneva and elsewhere, considerable numbers of the 

 watch-makers have taken to divers other trades which 

 continue to be carried on as domestic or small industries. 

 I must only add that in the French Jura great numbers 

 of watch-makers were at the same time owners of their 

 houses and gardens, very often of bits of fields, and 

 especially of communal meadows, and that the communal 

 fruitieres, or creameries for the common sale of butter 

 and cheese, are widely spread in that part of France. 



So far as I could ascertain, the development of the 

 machine-made watch industry has not destroyed the 

 small industries of the Jura hills. The watch-makers 

 have taken to new branches, and, as in Switzerland, they 

 have created various new industries. From Ardouin 

 Dumazet's travels we can, at any rate, borrow an insight 

 into the present state of the southern part of this region. 

 In the neighbourhoods of Nantua and Cluse silks are 

 woven in nearly all villages, the peasants giving to 

 weaving their spare time from agriculture, while quite a 

 number of small workshops (mostly less than twenty 

 looms, one of 100 looms) are scattered in the little 

 villages, on the streamlets running from the hills. 

 Scores of small saw-mills have also been built along the 

 streamlet Merloz, for the fabrication of all sorts of little 

 pretty things in wood. At Oyonnax, a small town on 

 the Ain, we have a big centre for the fabrication of 

 combs, an industry more than 200 years old, which took 



