it
seems to me its chief mission and probable future is to supply an
exceptional art textile; one which has the firmness and flexibility
belonging to hand-woven stuffs, and can be at the same time beautiful
in colour, capable of hard wear and reasonably inexpensive. I am
tempted to modify the last qualification, because no hand-woven goods
ought to be or can be inexpensive, in comparison with those
manufactured under every condition of competitive economy. And in
truth, domestic weavings are sure of their market at paying prices,
simply because they are what they are, _hand products_.

I have shown in a limited way some of the possibilities of artistic
hand-weaving without touching upon cotton or flax diapers and damasks,
since these cannot readily compete with power-weavings, but I have not
spoken of the difference it would make in the lives of the mountain
weavers of the South if their horizon could be widened by the
introduction of art industries. Only those who know the joy and
compensation of producing things of beauty can realize the change it
might work in lives which have been for generations narrowed to merely
physical wants; but there are many gifted Southern women who do fully
realize it, and we may safely leave to them the introduction and
encouragement of art in domestic manufactures.

NEIGHBOURHOOD INDUSTRIES

AFTER-WORD

I am often asked by women who are interested in domestic manufactures,
how one should go to work to build up a profitable neighbourhood
industry. To do this one must know the place and people, for anxious
as most country women are to earn something outside of farm profits,
they are both timid and cautious, and will not follow advice from
unpractical people or from strangers.

In every farming community there will be one or two ingenious or
ambitious women who do something which is not general, and which they
would gladly turn to account. One woman may be a skilled knitter of
tidies, or laces, or rag mats; another may pull rags through burlap,
and so construct a thick and rather luxurious-looking door-mat;
another may have an old-fashioned loom and weave carpets for all the
neighbourhood; and each one of these simple arts is a foundation upon
which an industry may be built, important to the neighbourhood, and in
the aggregate to the country.

The city woman or club woman who wishes to become a link between these
things and a purchaser must begin by improving or adapting th