Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

WELSH COTTAGE INDUSTRIES. 361 two yards of narrow, stubborn, waterproof flannel in sixteen toilsome hours. But he is fast dying out. His children have made the streams their servants, set up larger looms, studied modern needs, and outgrown the faults, while retaining the virtues, of the fabric of their forefathers. Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire, Pembroke- shire, Montgomeryshire, and Merionethshire are the woollen centres of to-day. I hey Usually whole families are employed in this industry. Homes are thus kept together happily and profitably, and the depopulation of the rural districts checked. The fact that these workshops exist and increase in the face of the enormous factory competition seems to point to far larger possibilities. Many of these little factories are but the picturesquely thatched and whitewashed cottages dear to the artist. The evening e’ARJOIXG MACHINE. show an increase of about 9'5 per cent, of weavers during the last ten years, which, considering the total population of each of these counties (excepting Carmarthenshire) has seriously declined during the same period, is a more substantial one than at fust appears. In Wales and Monmouthshire thqre are now over 1,000 factories and workshops, employing 1,842 men and 980 women, and 584 power-looms at work. I he cottage weaving machines vary from the first fly shuttle 22-inch loom to the latest improved Jacquard extra double-width power-weaver. But the hand-loom is very generally used. It produces about twenty yards of material in a day of twelve or fourteen hours. 46 primroses and hollyhocks in the garden patch are spread with bleaching stuffs, and the gnarled apple trees roped from bough to bough with drying yarn. Behind the cottage is the long, low weaving shed, where, perhaps, as many as three busy looms are working. Two of them will probably be hand-looms, but the third, and pride of the weaving family, is, in all likelihood, driven by the little stream that rushes noisily down the hill through the garden, and can earn as much in a day as the other two in a week. Above the weaving shed is a loft where sacks and haycocks of wool are stored, and giant balls of worsted yarn are laid iea.dy for the greedy looms. On the other side of the busy, littered yard is the wash-house, with