Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/302

294 Other important beds are southwest of Lyons at St. Etienne, and northwest of Lyons near Creuzot. Some anthracite is found in the Alps; some lignite near Marseilles.

The manufactures of France depend more largely upon skill and artistic ability, and less upon cheap coal and raw materials, than do those of England or Germany. The use of the 'factory system' secures the advantage of cheap motive power and the economy of machines, but it does not so much further the utilization of skill. This accounts, in part, for the persistence of household industries in France. The distribution of industrial skill depends upon the location of trade centers, where the traditions of craft have been handed down from generation to generation of workers. Here and there one finds an industry that grew up under royal patronage, often carried on for a time, as an exotic by Italian workmen, as was the case with the silk manufactures of Lyons. The industries of many towns are the survivals of those founded when the place was one of the privileged cities in which the Protestants were allowed to live and carry on trade. In other places industries are still carried on where they were attracted by mediæval church fairs, or royal courts, or by water powers no longer utilized, or harbors now silted up. Skill is a relatively immobile economic factor. The supplies of raw silk are either imported at or grown close to Marseilles, but to be manufactured they must be taken as far north as Lyons to secure a healthy and temperate climate. The manufacture of woolens is located at five points in France, each being midway between sheep-raising highlands and the populated valleys where markets are found. The supplies of raw cotton come chiefly from America, and are landed at Le Havre. Cotton manufacturing requires exactly such a moist climate as there prevails. It is, therefore, carried on in the lower valley of the Seine, or, at most, is removed but a short distance to the east to secure coal and a labor market. The linen manufactories are naturally in a flax-growing country, and center at Amiens and Lille. The Liverpool of France is Le Havre. Its Birmingham is St. Etienne. The French Manchester is said to be Montluçon. The bank center and city of diversified industries, corresponding to London, is Paris. There a vast variety of art goods, conveniences and luxuries, such as Gobelin's tapestry and articles de vertu, collectively known to the trade as 'Articles of Paris,' are manufactured.

The commercial routes of France have been remarkably distinct from the earliest historical times. The railways of France have opened fewer new arteries of trade, and have destroyed less of the old equilibrium of industry than it has been their fate to do in most other countries. The distribution of large cities serves well to show where these commercial highways are located. The southern trade moves from Marseilles to the Rhône Valley, and across the plains to Paris, or it