The yearly production of silk stuffs in France attained no less than 7,558,000 kilogrammes in 1881;[206] and most of the 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 kilogrammes of raw silk which were manufactured in the Lyons region were manufactured by hand.[207] Twenty years before--that is, about 1865--there were only from 6,000 to 8,000 power-looms, and when we take into account both the prosperous period of the Lyons silk industry about 1876, and the crisis which it underwent in 1880-1886, we cannot but wonder about the slowness of the transformation of the industry. Such is also the opinion of the President of the Lyons Chamber of Commerce, who wrote me that the domain of the power-loom is increased every year, “by including new kinds of stuffs, which formerly were reputed as unfeasible in the power-looms; but,” he added, “the transformation of small workshops into factories still goes on so slowly that the total number of power-looms reaches only from 20,000 to 25,000 out of an aggregate of from 100,000 to 110,000.” (Since that time it certainly must have considerably increased.) The leading features of the Lyons silk industry are the following:-- The preparatory work--winding off, warping and so on--is mostly made in small workshops, chiefly at Lyons, with only a few workshops of the kind in the villages. Dyeing and finishing are also made--of course, in great factories--and it is especially in dyeing, which occupies 4,000 to 5,000 hands, that the Lyons manufacturers have attained their highest repute. Not only silks are dyed there, but also cottons and wools, and not only for France, but also to some extent for London, Manchester, Vienna, and even Moscow. It is also in this branch that the best machines have to be mentioned.[208] As to the weaving, it is made, as we just saw, on from 20,000 to 25,000 power-looms and from 75,000 to 90,000 hand-looms, which partly are at Lyons (from 15,000 to 18,000 hand-looms in 1885) and chiefly in the villages. The workshops, where one might formerly find several _compagnons_ employed by one master, have a tendency to disappear, the workshops mostly having now but from two to three hand-looms, on which the father, the mother, and the children are working together. In each house, in each storey of the Croix Rousse, you find until now such small workshops. The _fabricant_ gives the general indications as to the kind of stuff he desires to be woven, and his draughtsmen design the pattern, but it is the workman himself who must find the way to weave in threads of all colours the patterns sketched on paper. He thus continually creates something new; and many improvements and discoveries have been made by workers whose very names remain unknown.[209]