Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/138

112 wants of the big relations of the little people. Beautiful dolls are made in plenty for future mothers. Gallant troops mounted and foot, with artillery are provided for our coming wariors. Ships for our captains and admirals that are to be, and complete noah’s arks for our budding zoologists. In fact our village workers in the toy branch of home industry provides everything necessary for the amusement and unconscious instruction of the children.

The toy-makers dispose of their work in large quantities at small prices to dealers who deal the goods throughout Bohemia and Moravia or export them to Lower Austria, Styria and Hungary. As in the case of so many home industries, winter, is the time when toy-making is in full swing, whole families working together, and the child must be very young whose aid can be dispensed with. The division of this kind of labour is very marked. There are families who only make birds, others confine themselves to dolls and so on, by this special attention to particular toys, the makers get to be exceptionally expert in the manufacture of the article of their choice.

The districts chiefly concerned with the toy trade are Krouna and Dědová (East Bohemia) where they also make several household articles such kitchen utensils of wood, ladles, twirlingsticks, rolling-puis etc.

In the district of Přeštice (S. W. Bohemia) there are about sixty families who confine themselves to the making of a very primitive kind of toys, but they are cheap and always in demand.

In the matter of remuneration, a man and wife working from 14 to 16 hours a day earn from 5 s. 4 d. to 7 s. 6 d. per week. Certainly money well earned.

Of course there are other places than those already mentioned where this industry is carried on, we would refer in conclusion to the forest districts of the Šumava where wood being plentiful toys of that material are produced in very large quantities to meet a never-failing demand.

Beads might be described as a worl-wide requirement, for the dusky maidens of Asia and Africa are no less appre-