Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

237 -—r——— Photo : R Welch, Belfast. AN IRISH LACE CLASS, ARDARA. THE MAKING OF LACE. ONE OF THE MOST INTRICATE OF BRITAIN’S INDUSTRIES. FEW industries appeal to women like the making of lace. The fabric is so delicate and fine, so gossamer-like, and yet so strong, and the tracings are so infinite in variety and beautiful in design, that woman regards the product of this manufacture as a perquisite of her sex. Man is allowed silk facings to his coat, he has linen handkerchiefs, and wears woollen socks, but after he is able to walk he rarely ever uses lace of any kind. On the other hand, it is most intimately associated with all the great occasions of his sister’s life : it forms the principal orna- mentation of baby’s christening robe; it adds to her charms when later she enters church as a bride; in middle age it helps to throw back the years ; and it is a lace cap which adorns granny’s honoured head as her days draw gently to their close. In various ways has the manufacture of lace been introduced into these islands. From Greece and the Ionian Isles, by way of Venice and Flanders, the art has come, but not always as a free gift. 1 he secrets of such crafts are carefully guarded, and half a century ago, when Mother Smith, of the Presentation Convent at Youghal, conceived the idea of occupying the children under her care with this industry, she had to unravel designs thread by thread before she could solve the intricacies of their details. The making of lace is the occupation cf two distinct classes of workers, who labour under different conditions ( and in different parts of the country. Hand-made lace is the employment of women and girls, and is carried on in small country towns and villages, many of which are remote from the railroad and the busy world’s whirl. According to a petition sent to Parliament a couple of hundred years ago, the lace manufacture of England was “ the greatest next to the woollen,” and maintained “a multitude of people,” but it is now chiefly confined to the counties of Devonshire, Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire, and Buckinghamshire, and to several parts of Ireland. Machine-made lace is localised in the county and district of Nottingham. Iheie huge factories, many storeys high and built at the cost of many thousands of pounds, are busy night and clay with the whirr and hum of immense machines which only men are allowed to work. Women and girls find