INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 297 



number of smaller workshops grew up in the 

 neighbourhood, for the fabrication of card- 

 board boxes, wooden heels, and so on, as well 

 as a number of tanneries, big and small. And 

 M. Ardouin Dumazet's remark is, that one is 

 struck to find, owing to these industries, an 

 undoubtedly higher level of well-being in the 

 villages quite unforeseen in the centre of this 

 purely agricultural region.* 



In Brittany, in the neighbourhood of Quim- 

 perle, a great number of small workshops for 

 the fabrication of the felt hats which are worn 

 by the peasants is scattered in the villages ; 

 and rapidly improving agriculture goes hand 

 in hand with that trade. Well-being is a dis- 

 tinctive feature of these villages. f At Henne- 

 bont (on the southern coast of Brittany) 1,400 

 workers are employed in an immense factory 

 in the fabrication of tins for preserves, and 

 every year twenty-two to twenty-three tons of 

 iron are transformed into steel, and next into 

 tins, which are sent to Paris, Bordeaux, Nantes, 

 and so on. But the factory has created " quite 

 a world of tiny workshops " in this purely 

 agricultural region : small tin-ware workshops, 

 tanneries, potteries, and so on, while the slags 

 are transformed in small factories into manure. 



* Ardouin Dumazet, vol. v., p. 270. 

 t Ibid., vol. v., p. 215. 



