INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 295 



the industrial cities of Northern France are so 

 many linen handkerchiefs fabricated as in this 

 region in hand-looms, we are told by Ardouin 

 Dumazet. 



Within the curve made by the Loire as it flows 

 past Orleans we find another prosperous centre 

 of domestic industries connected with cottons. 

 " From Romorantin [in Loire-et-Cher, south of 

 Orleans] to Argenton and Le Blanc," the same 

 writer says, " we have one immense workshop 

 where handkerchiefs are embroidered, and 

 shirts, cuffs, collars and all sorts of ladies' linen 

 are sewn or embroidered. There is not one 

 house, even in the tiniest hamlets, where the 

 women would not be occupied in that trade . . . 

 and if this work is a mere passe-temps in vine- 

 growing regions, here it has become the chief 

 resource of the population." * Even at Romo- 

 rantin itself, where 400 women and girls are 

 employed in one factory, there are more than 

 1,000 women who sew linen in their houses. 



The same must be said of a group of industrial 

 villages peopled with clothiers in the neigh- 

 bourhood of another Normandy city, Elboeuf. 

 When Baudrillart visited them in 1878-1880, 

 he was struck with the undoubted advantages 



Sevres. The same revival takes place in Ireland, where the 

 weaving of handkerchiefs in hand-looms is growing in the shape 

 of a small village industry. 



* Ardouin Dumazet, vol. i., p. 117 et seq. 



