The neighbourhoods of St. Etienne are a great centre for all sorts of industries, and among them the petty trades occupy still an important place. Ironworks and coal-mines with their smoking chimneys, noisy factories, roads blackened with coal, and a poor vegetation give the country the well-known aspects of a “Black Country.” In certain towns, such as St. Chamond, one finds numbers of big factories in which thousands of women are employed in the fabrication of _passementerie_. But side by side with the great industry the petty trades also maintain a high development. Thus we have first the fabrication of silk ribbons, in which no less than 50,000 men and women were employed in the year 1885. Only 3,000 or 4,000 looms were located then in the factories; while the remainder--that is, from 1,200 to 1,400 looms--belonged to the workers themselves, both at St. Etienne and in the surrounding country.[205] As a rule the women and the girls spin the silk or make the winding off, while the father with his sons weave the ribbons. I saw these small workshops in the suburbs of St. Etienne, where complicated ribbons (with interwoven addresses of the manufacture), as well as ribbons of high artistic finish, were woven in three to four looms, while in the next room the wife prepared the dinner and attended to household work. There was a time when the wages were high in the ribbon trade (reaching over ten francs a day), and M. Euvert wrote me that half of the suburban houses of St. Etienne had been built by the _passementiers_ themselves. But the affairs took a very gloomy aspect when a crisis broke out in 1884. No orders were forthcoming, and the ribbon weavers had to live on casual earnings. All their economies were soon spent. “How many,” M. Euvert wrote, “have been compelled to sell for a few hundred francs the loom for which they had paid as many thousand francs.” What an effect this crisis has had on the trade I could not say, as I have no recent information about this region. Very probably a great number of the ribbon weavers have emigrated to St. Etienne, where artistic weaving is continued, while the cheapest sorts of ribbon must be made in factories. The manufacture of arms occupies from 5,000 to 6,000 workers, half of whom are in St. Etienne, and the remainder in the neighbouring county. All work is done in small workshops, save in the great arm factory of the State, which sometimes will employ from 10,000 to 15,000 persons, and sometimes only a couple of thousand men. Another important trade in the same region is the manufacture of hardware, which is all made in small workshops, in the neighbourhoods of St. Etienne, Le Chambon, Firminy, Rive de Giers, and St. Bonnet le Château. The work is pretty regular, but the earnings are low as a rule. And yet the peasants continue to keep to those trades, as they cannot go on without some industrial occupation during part of the year.