APPENDIX. 459 



higher sorts of silks became scarce, the Lyons weavers 

 resorted to the manufacture of stuffs of lower qualities : 

 foulards, crepes, tulles, of which Lyons had the monopoly 

 in Europe. But now the commoner kinds of goods are 

 manufactured by the million, on the one side by the 

 factories of Lyons, Saxony, Russia, and Great Britain, 

 and on the other side by peasants in the neighbouring 

 departments of France, as well as in the Swiss villages 

 of the cantons of Basel and Zurich, and in the villages 

 of the Rhine provinces, Italy, and Russia. 



The emigration of the French silk industry from 

 the towns to the villages began long ago that is, 

 about 1817 but it was especially in the 'sixties that 

 this movement took a great development. About the 

 year 1872 nearly 90,000 hand-looms were scattered, 

 not only in the R,h6ne department, but also in those 

 of Ain, Isere, Loire, Sa6ne-et-Loire, and even those 

 of Drdme, Ardeche, and Savoie. Sometimes the looms 

 were supplied by the merchants, but most of them 

 were bought by the weavers themselves, and it was 

 especially women and girls who worked on them at 

 the hours free from agriculture. But already since 

 1835 the emigration of the silk industry from the city 

 to the villages began in the shape of great factories 

 erected in the villages, and such factories continue 

 to spread in the country, making terrible havoc amidst 

 the rural populations. 



When a new factory is built in a village it attracts 

 at once the girls, and partly also the boys of the neigh- 

 bouring peasantry. The girls and boys are always 

 happy to find an independent livelihood which emanci- 

 pates them from the control of the family. Conse- 

 quently, the wages of the factory girls are extremely 

 low. At the same time the distance from the village 

 to the factory being mostly great, the girls cannot 



