WESTPHALIA AND THE RUHR BASIN, THE marks of South Westphalian progress, since the previous year, which met the eye last autumn in the valley of the Lenne-the increase of houses of brick and stone, of people, carts, public conveyances and private carriages on the roads, of new faces of a different type near the stations, of villas and factories by the riverside made a scene so changed that the first impression conveyed was that the truer a description of the south of the province, as it appeared a twelvemonth before, the farther from truth was it now. Such, however, was soon seen not to be the case beyond the immediate vicinity of the great thoroughfare of the new business and life of the region, the railway. Not far from it were roads even more lonely and silent than the year before; and the very new highway of progress which had so transformed and augmented the industry of the valley through which it winds its own course, had extinguished altogether the simple industries of valleys adjacent. Rivers formerly determined in a great measure the economy of the whole district; its metal manufactures were carried on by the aid of water-power, and planted themselves in the river valleys; the men congregating there, while the dry valleys were left during most of the year to the husbandry of women, or to nature. Iron and copper works of a primitive kind, together with charcoal-burning, gave formerly a considerable amount of employment in places where they are now dying out before coal and steam in the distance. In the valley of the Bigga, a river adjacent to the Lenne, there was a few years ago a good deal of metal production which the Ruhr-Sieg Railway has arrested, but which a branch line is expected soon to resuscitate on a grander scale. Even in the Lenne valley itself, although many tall chimneys have risen, though the steam-cylinder is fast driving out the water-wheel, and the steam-hammer the old tilt-hammer, the production of textiles by power has not yet begun; and a good part of the clothing business is done as it was in the middle ages. The shoemaker still goes round the farmhouses and the mines in the neighbourhood with the implements of his trade; the owner of the premises supplying the leather, and the stock of shoes being made on the spot, as the author has had ocular proof. The weaver, too, makes his periodical call at the cottage, and works up the thread which the housewife has spun from her own flax, dried in the sun-the process here substituted for steeping. But if the manufacturing side of South Westphalian industry is far as yet in degree, if not in time, from the complete revolution that awaits it, the agricultural side is altogether unaltered. It is not here that M. Emile de Laveleye can find evidence of the superiority of the German over the Celt as a cultivateur d'élite; unless, indeed, for his admirable irrigation and draining, which are however of no modern date. All along the Ruhr-Sieg line itself, as poor oat crops were seen last August as one could wish never again to behold in Ireland. In fact, the only tolerable crop the author saw, turned out on inquiry to be the produce of seed imported from Ireland. The snow is seldom off the ground before the end of February, when all the labour of the family is needed to put in at once the more important rye and potatoes, so the oats are sown too late. The rye itself is not a magnificent success; and most of the wheat consumed in the valley is imported from Hungary. The harvest returns for the year 1869, recently published by the Prussian Minister of Agriculture, place Westphalia lowest but one among the departments for the yield of the principal grain crops, wheat, rye, barley, and oats; Schleswig-Holstein coming first, and the other provinces ranking in order as follows-Pomerania, Prussia, Hanover, Rhine Province, Brandenburg and Saxony, Silesia, Hesse, Posen, Westphalia and Hohenzollern. In some of the provinces, the seasons doubtless in a great measure determined this order; but in the South Westphalian hills, the sterility of the soil and the system of husbandry together, must ensure feeble cereal returns. Above the left bank of the Bigga an isolated plateau of Devonian limestone appears like a geological island surrounded by rocks of Lenne-schiefer; and here Under this plateau lies in the Biggathal the smart little town of Attendorn, overlooked by the ancient schloss of a wealthy nobleman who never comes near it, and whose wife, it is said, has never seen it. much heavier grain crops were to be seen than anywhere else around, just before the last harvest. But although the immediate cause of the light harvests of Sauerland is the general sterility of the soil, it is certain that Flemish husbandry would produce very different results. The ultimate cause is that the women have to do almost all the farm work, including the feeding of cattle, in addition to the work of the house, which includes the spinning of thread and the mending of clothes; and, considering all they have to do, they do it surprisingly well. Besides their ordinary labours in and out of doors, the women do likewise the extraordinary work of the place when a sudden emergency arises, such as a fire. They run to the house and form in double line, one side handing up buckets of water, while the other side hands down rescued articles. Even in the town of Siegen, this is the usual course when a fire takes place; the women supplying the water and removing property, while the men, save those working the engine, stand by looking on. Fires are of frequent and destructive occurrence in the villages, from the number of thatched roofs separated only by small gardens. Every cottage seems to be insured; but if fire insurance has its economical side, it does not consist in a tendency to diminish the number of fires. Slated roofs are now increasing under a law prohibiting new thatches within a certain distance of other houses, and by degrees the old incendiary will disappear altogether. In spite of the scanty harvests and the indifferent husbandry of South Westphalia, it would be a serious S mistake to suppose that its rural economy offers an argument against a system of property which doubles the income of the family by the addition it makes to the earnings of the man at his trade, more than doubles the happiness of the whole family, notwithstanding the hard work it throws on the women. It would be better for the man to give up his trade than his land. He has indeed to import his wheat from Hungary, but he is able to pay for it; and the high prices of meat, butter, milk, vegetables, and houserent, which are such grievous calamities to the English labourer, are to him sources of profit. Although the German nation is not one remarkable for attention to personal appearance, the children in these villages are all comfortably clothed, and are never seen bare-footed, as both children and adults too often are in the plain of the Rhine, where so many families are without a bauer-gut. In these villages, too, it should be remembered that many of the people are themselves the children of serfs-of sclaven, as the author has heard them say; a term which, though not the correct one, for their legal status was not that of slavery, shows how abject their condition really was, and from what prostration they have risen under their land system to independence and comfort, in a period during which the peasantry of a great part of England have socially and economically sunk. The rate of wages in Sauerland and Siegerland varies considerably in different places, and is generally lower than in the Ruhr Basin. One employer has for several years, to the author's knowledge, paid 30 per cent. |