158 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



480,000 in this way. Amplepuis, notwithstanding its 

 own factories of silks and its wonderful apricot culture, 

 remains one of the local centres for such muslins ; while 

 close by, Thizy is a centre for a variety of linings, flannels, 

 " peruvian serges," " oxfords," and other mixed woollen- 

 and-cotton stuffs which are woven in the mountains by 

 the peasants. No less than 3000 hand-looms are thus 

 scattered in twenty-two villages, and about 600,000 

 worth of various stuffs are woven every year by the 

 rural weavers in this neighbourhood alone; while 

 i 5,000 power-looms are at work in both Thizy and the 

 great city of Roanne, in which two towns all varieties 

 of cottons (linings, flannelettes, apron cloth) and silk 

 blankets are woven in factories by the million yards. 

 At Cours, 1600 workers are employed in making 

 " blankets," chiefly of the lowest sort (even such as are 

 sold at 2s. and even rod. a piece, for export to Brazil) ; 

 all possible and imaginable rags and sweepings from 

 all sorts of textile factories (jute, cotton, flax, hemp, wool 

 and silk) are used for that industry, in which the factory 

 is, of course, fully victorious. But even at Roanne, 

 where the fabrication of cottons has attained a great 

 degree of perfection and 9000 power-looms are at work, 

 producing every year more than 30,000,000 yards 

 even at Roanne one finds with astonishment that do- 

 mestic industries are not dead, but yield every year the 

 respectable amount of more than 10,000,000 yards of 

 stuffs. At the same time, in the neighbourhood of that 

 big city the industry of fancy-knitting has taken within 

 the last thirty years a sudden development. Only 2000 

 women were employed in it in 1864, but their numbers 

 are now estimated at 20,000; and, without abandoning 

 their rural work, they find time to knit, with the aid of 

 small knitting-machines, all sorts of fancy articles in 

 wool, the annual value of which is estimated at 

 360,000.* 



* Ardouin Dumazet, vol. viii., p. 266. 



