The Lyons weavers have retained until now the character of being the _élite_ of their trade in higher artistic work in silk stuffs. The finest, really artistic brocades, satins and velvets, are woven in the smallest workshops, where one or two looms only are kept. Unhappily the unsettled character of the demand for such a high style of work is often a cause of misery amongst them. In former times, when the orders for higher sorts of silks became scarce, the Lyons weavers resorted to the manufacture of stuffs of lower qualities: _foulards_, _crêpes_, _tulles_, of which Lyons had the monopoly in Europe. But now the commoner kinds of goods are manufactured by the million, on the one side by the factories of Lyons, Saxony, Russia, and Great Britain, and on the other side by peasants in the neighbouring departments of France, as well as in the Swiss villages of the cantons of Basel and Zurich, and in the villages of the Rhine provinces, Italy, and Russia. The emigration of the French silk industry from the towns to the villages began long ago--that is, about 1817--but it was especially in the ’sixties that this movement took a great development. About the year 1872 nearly 90,000 hand-looms were scattered, not only in the Rhône department, but also in those of Ain, Isère, Loire, Saône-et-Loire, and even those of Drôme, Ardèche, and Savoie. Sometimes the looms were supplied by the merchants, but most of them were bought by the weavers themselves, and it was especially women and girls who worked on them at the hours free from agriculture. But already since 1835 the emigration of the silk industry from the city to the villages began in the shape of great factories erected in the villages, and such factories continue to spread in the country, making terrible havoc amidst the rural populations.