THE COUNTRY HOME [chapter 



power. Articles of clothing, as well as cheese and 

 butter, are once more becoming matters of domestic 

 and cottage industry. The great factory assem- 

 blages of population are slowly giving way to small 

 manufacturing and agricultural groups. In France 

 electric motors furnish power to domestic weavers 

 for about fifteen dollars a year for each loom. In 

 the city of Lyons alone, five hundred looms for 

 weaving have recently been installed in private 

 homes. The results are more regular employment 

 and an increase of the earnings of the weaver, while 

 he becomes at the same time owner of a country 

 home and a garden — if not a large acreage, with- 

 out rent. Power is secured from stock companies, 

 which supply electricity to a given area — town or 

 otherwise — and distribute this power to houses, at 

 a maximum charge of about one dollar and fifty 

 cents per month. 



This is the future of country life. The revolu- 

 tion that is suggested must be at once reckoned 

 with by social economists. Industrialism, and not 

 mere sentiment, is working away from the cities 

 countryward. We have, approximately, a solution 

 of the factory problem — the overcrowding of work- 

 men, and especially women and children, in huge 



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