SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 159 



It must not be thought, however, that textiles and 

 connected trades are the only small industries in this 

 locality. Scores of various rural industries continue 

 to exist besides, and in nearly all of them the methods 

 of production are continually improved. Thus, when 

 the rural making of plain chairs became unprofitable, 

 articles of luxury and stylish chairs began to be fabri- 

 cated in the villages, and similar transformations are 

 found everywhere. 



More details about this extremely interesting region 

 will be found in the Appendix, but one remark must be 

 made in this place. Notwithstanding its big industries 

 and coal mines this part of France has entirely main- 

 tained its rural aspect, and is now one of the best cul- 

 tivated parts of the country. What most deserves 

 admiration is not so much the development of the great 

 industries, which, after all, here as elsewhere, are to a 

 great extent international in their origins as the creative 

 and inventive powers and capacities of adaptation which 

 appear amongst the great mass of these industrious popu- 

 lations. At every step, in the field, in the garden, in the 

 orchard, in the dairy, in the industrial arts, in the hun- 

 dreds of small inventions in these arts, one sees the 

 creative genius of the folk. In these regions one best 

 understands why France, taking the mass of its popula- 

 tion, is considered the richest country of Europe.* 



The chief centre for petty trades in France is, how- 

 ever, Paris. There we find, by the side of the large 

 factories, the greatest variety of petty trades for the 

 fabrication of goods of every description, both for the 

 home market and for export. The petty trades at 

 Paris so much prevail over the factories that the average 

 number of workmen employed in the 98,000 factories and 

 workshops of Paris is less than six, while the number of 



* Some further details about the Lyons region and St. Etienne are 

 given in Appendix O. 



