ABSTRACT
Miss Clive Bayley took up the challenge. While agreeing that the moral tone in many villages left very IDuch to be desired, she thought it was to be attnbuted to other causes than village industries, and instanced one village, celebrated as a refuge for bad characters, which had been entirely reformed during the last few years, church and schools built, and industries established which had utilised the superfluous energy formerly wasted in riotous living. She gave an interesting account of a visit to Finland, where the long nights of winter and the long cold days of early spring are employed by the women in spinning, weaving, and making their own and their husbands' clothing. During the sumIDer the looms are put aside; the spinning-wheels and the woven cloth are put uJ? on the beams of the verandah, and great is the gratification of the Finnish housewife if on entering the house the visitor remarks on these evidences of her winter industry. The clothes made with so much pleasant labour are worth care and mending, and the Finnish woman is as good a mender as she is a maker. The result is a ,well-clad peasantry - thrifty, too: nothing is wasted. The wool of worn-out garments is pulled out, re-carded, and re-spun. In Finland there are as many cows as women, and, those who 'attend on them collect the hair which falls from them in a bag kept for the purpose, and it is afterwards woven into warm and comfortable carpets. Spinning has also a hygienic value, as it has a soothing effect on the nervous strain which the. long days and nearly total absence of night tends to develop in northern countries. The Finland girls of the upper classes who develop nervous or hysterical symptoms are often sent by the physicians to spinning schools, where the regular but soothing work often effects a complete cure.
