Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/295

Rh furnished supplies to the farming, mining, and lumbering pioneers. Reports brought back by the individual trader guided the steps of the agricultural pioneer. The trader was the farmer's path-finder into some of the richest regions of the continent. In Wisconsin, at least, the traders' posts, located at the carrying-places around falls and rapids, pointed out the water-powers of the State. The trails became the early roads. "An old Indian trader relates that the path between Green Bay and Milwaukee was originally an Indian trail and very crooked, but the whites would straighten it by cutting across lots each winter with their jumpers, wearing bare streaks through the thin covering, to be followed in the summer by foot and horseback travel along the shortened path. The process was typical of a greater one. Along the lines that Nature had drawn, the Indians traded and warred; along their trails and in their birch canoes the trader passed, bringing a new and transforming life. These slender lines of Eastern influence stretched throughout all our vast and intricate water-system, even to the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific, and the Arctic Seas, and these lines were in turn followed by agricultural and by manufacturing civilization."

French Silk-weaving Centers.—According to the United States consular clerk at Lyons, the geographical position of silk-weaving in France has undergone considerable changes since the introduction of the industry. Cities in which silk-weaving was formerly of great importance, have turned their attention toward other industries, while new centers have sprung up and attained more or less prosperity. Tours was the first great silk-weaving center of France, but its industry in this line has been declining for the last sixty years. Nimes was likewise one of the early centers, and reached great prosperity in the eighteenth century; but it has now less than one sixth as many looms as it had then. About twenty-five thousand looms are employed in Paris and the adjoining districts in weaving silk and silk-mixed goods, galloons, fringes, cords, and other varieties of passementerie and trimmings. Nets, tulles, and laces constitute the specialties of Calais. Whenever the demand for silk nets is low, the manufacturers substitute cotton or wool on their looms. During the latter half of the present century Roubaix has become the center of an extensive industry, manufacturing silk and wool and silk and cotton-mixed goods. These articles, though often wanting in originality, find ready sale on account of their low price. At Saint-Chamond, silk-weaving has been established in a modest way ever since the thirteenth century; and by confining their attention to braids and similar articles, the manufacturers have advanced their specialties to a degree of excellence that has established for them a world-wide reputation. At Saint-Etienne the weaving of ribbons is carried on, with great variations in the value of the yearly manufacture. Lyons is considered the most important silk center of France, and of Europe as well. Its total production averages about $80,000,000 a year. The quantity of goods produced is now greater than ever before, and constitutes two thirds of the production of France, and one quarter of the total production of the world.

Swiss Watch-making.—The Swiss watch industry is chiefly situated in the west of Switzerland, where the French language is spoken, and particularly in Geneva, Vaud, the canton of Neutchâtel, and the Bernese Jura. An ingenious labor organization has sprung up there, which combines at once the advantages of principal and minor industry. Composed of small workshops, grouped in a given region, it is under the control of a manufacturer who gives orders to the workman, and supplies him with the necessary materials, and, when the watch is finished, effects a sale. Under this system the master has not the general expenses of a factory, and the diminution in production and holidays affect him but little. In his turn, the operative working at home has a particular part of the watch to construct. He is both journeyman and foreman, who combines his dwelling with his shop. Paid by the piece, he works at his leisure from early in the morning till late at night. Such a system, which allows the wife to assist in the labors of the husband, and the children to be initiated by an easy apprenticeship into the manufacture of a special part of the watch, must suit the mountaineers. They preserve their intelligence, realize often large profits, and by the