290 SMALL INDUSTRIES AND 



less than 110,000 persons were employed, in 

 1863, in weaving cottons for the finishing fac- 

 tories of that city. In the valley of the Andelle, 

 in the department of Eure, each village was at 

 that time an industrial bee-hive ; each stream- 

 let was utilised for setting into work a small 

 factory. Reybaud described the condition of 

 the peasants who combined agriculture with 

 work at the rural factory as most satisfactory, 

 especially in comparison with the condition of 

 the slum-dwellers at Rouen, and he even men- 

 tioned a case or two in which the village fac- 

 tories belonged to the village communities. 



Seventeen years later, Baudrillart * depicted 

 the same region in very much the same words ; 

 and although the rural factories had had to 

 yield to a great extent before the big fac- 

 tories, the rural industry was still valued as 

 showing a yearly production of 85,000,000 

 francs (2,400,000). 



At the present time, the factories must have 

 made further progress ; but we still see from 

 the excellent descriptions of M. Ardouin Du- 

 mazet, whose work will have in the future 

 almost the same value as Arthur Young's 

 Travels, f that a considerable portion of the 



* Les Populations agricoles de la France : Normandie. 

 f Voyage en France. Paris, 1893- 1910 (Berget-Levreau, pub- 

 lishers}, 56 volumes already published. 



