In Brittany, in the neighbourhood of Quimperlé, a great number of small workshops for the fabrication of the felt hats which are worn by the peasants is scattered in the villages; and rapidly improving agriculture goes hand in hand with that trade. Well-being is a distinctive feature of these villages.[152] At Hennebont (on the southern coast of Brittany) 1,400 workers are employed in an immense factory in the fabrication of tins for preserves, and every year twenty-two to twenty-three tons of iron are transformed into steel, and next into tins, which are sent to Paris, Bordeaux, Nantes, and so on. But the factory has created “quite a world of tiny workshops” in this purely agricultural region: small tin-ware workshops, tanneries, potteries, and so on, while the slags are transformed in small factories into manure. Agriculture and industry are thus going here hand in hand, the importance of not severing the union being perhaps best seen at Loudéac, a small town in the midst of Brittany (department of Côtes-du-Nord). Formerly the villages in this neighbourhood were industrial, all hamlets being peopled with weavers who fabricated the well-known Brittany linen. Now, this industry having gone down very much, the weavers have simply returned to the soil. Out of an industrial town, Loudéac has become an agricultural market town;[153] and, what is most interesting, these populations conquer new lands for agriculture and turn the formerly quite unproductive _landes_ into rich corn fields; while on the northern coast of Brittany, around Dol, on land which began to be conquered from the sea in the twelfth century, market-gardening is now carried on to a very great extent for export to England. Altogether, it is striking to observe, on perusing M. Ardouin Dumazet’s little volumes, how domestic industries go hand in hand with all sorts of small industries in agriculture--gardening, poultry-farming, fabrication of fruit preserves, and so on--and how all sorts of associations for sale and export are easily introduced. Mans is, as known, a great centre for the export of geese and all sorts of poultry to England. Part of Normandy (namely, the departments of Eure and Orne) is dotted with small workshops where all sorts of small brass goods and hardware are fabricated in the villages. Of course, the domestic fabrication of pins is nearly gone, and as for needles, polishing only, in a very primitive form, has been maintained in the villages. But all sorts of small hardware, including nails, lockets, etc., in great variety, are fabricated in the villages, especially round Laigle. Stays are also sewn in small workshops in many villages, notwithstanding the competition of prison work.[154]