154 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



a new development since the last war through the inven- 

 tion of celluloid No less than 100 or 120 "masters" 

 employ from two to fifteen workers each, while over 

 1 200 persons work in their houses, making combs out of 

 Irish horn and French celluloid. Wheel-power was 

 formerly rented in small workshops, but electricity, 

 generated by a waterfall, has lately been introduced, 

 and is now distributed in the houses for bringing into 

 motion small motors of from one-quarter to twelve 

 horse-power. And it is remarkable to notice that as 

 soon as electricity gave the possibility to return to do- 

 mestic work 300 workers left at once the small work- 

 shops and took to work in their houses. Most of these 

 workers have their own cottages and gardens, and they 

 show a very interesting spirit of association. They have 

 also erected four workshops for making cardboard boxes, 

 and their production is valued at 2,000,000 fr. every year.* 

 At St. Claude, which is a great centre for briar pipes 

 (sold in large quantities in London with English trade- 

 marks, and therefore eagerly bought by those Frenchmen 

 who visit London, as a souvenir from the other side of 

 the Channel), big and small workshops, both supplied 

 by motive force from the Tacon streamlet, prosper by the 

 side of each other. Over 4000 men and women are 

 employed in this trade, while all sorts of small by-trades 

 have grown by its side (amber and horn mouth-pieces, 

 sheaths, etc.). Countless small workshops are busy 

 besides, on the banks of the two streams, with the fabri- 

 cation of all sorts of wooden things : match-boxes, beads, 

 sheaths for spectacles, small things in horn, and so on, 

 to say nothing of a large factory (200 workers) where 

 metric measures are fabricated for the whole world 

 At the same time thousands of persons in St. Claude, in 

 the neighbouring villages and in the smallest mountain 

 hamlets, are busy in cutting diamonds (an industry only 



*Ardouin Dumazet, vol. viii., p. 40. 



