INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 275 



done in other small workshops, and even steel 

 is cast in a small foundry, the working staff of 

 which consists only of five or six men. 



When I walked through these workshops I 

 easily imagined myself in a Russian cutlery 

 village, like Pavlovo or Vorsma. The Sheffield 

 cutlery has thus maintained its olden organisa- 

 tion, and the fact is the more remarkable as the 

 earnings of the cutlers are low as a rule ; but, 

 even when they are reduced to a few shillings a 

 week, the cutler prefers to vegetate on his small 

 earnings than to enter as a waged labourer in a 

 " house." The spirit of the old trade organisa- 

 tions, which were so much spoken of in the 'sixties 

 of the nineteenth century, is thus still alive. 



Until lately, Leeds and its environs were also 

 the seat of extensive domestic industries. When 

 Edward Baines wrote, in 1857, his first account of 

 the Yorkshire industries (in Th. Baines's York- 

 shire, Past and Present], most of the woollen cloth 

 which was made in that region was woven by 

 hand.* Twice a week the hand-made cloth was 

 brought to the Clothiers' Hall, and by noon it 

 was sold to the merchants, who had it dressed 

 in their factories. Joint-stock mills were run 

 by combined clothiers in order to prepare and 



* Nearly one-half of the 43,000 operatives who were employed 

 at that time in the woollen trade of this country were weaving 

 in hand-looms. So also one-fifth of the 79,000 persons employed 

 in the worsted trade. 



