INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 303 



family, or even less. Consequently, in thirty 

 villages round Nogent, about 5,000 men are 

 engaged in cutlery, chiefly of the highest sort 

 (artistic knives are occasionally sold at as 

 much as 20 a piece), while the lower sorts are 

 fabricated in the neighbourhoods of Thiers, in 

 Puy-de-D6me (Auvergne). The Nogent indus- 

 try has developed spontaneously, with no aid 

 from without, and in its technical part it shows 

 considerable progress.* At Thiers, where the 

 cheapest sorts of cutlery are made, the division 

 of labour, the cheapness of rent for small 

 workshops supplied with motive power from the 

 Durolle river, or from small gas motors, the aid 

 of a great variety of specially invented machine- 

 tools, and the existing combination of machine- 

 work with hand-work have resulted in such a 

 perfection of the technical part of the trade 

 that it is considered doubtful whether the 

 factory system could further economise labour.f 

 For twelve miles round Thiers, in each direction, 

 all the streamlets are dotted with small work- 

 shops, in which peasants, who continue to 

 cultivate their fields, are at work. 



Basket-making is again an important cottage 

 industry in several parts of France, namely in 



* Prof. Issaieff in the Russian Memoirs of the Petty Trades 

 Commission (Trudy Kiistarnoi Kommissii), vol. v. 



t Knives are sold at from 6s. 4d. to 8s. per gross, and razors 

 at 3a. 3d. per gross "for export." 



