At ChambÉry we interrupted our trip through southern France to visit Lyons, the center of the silk industry not only for France but for the entire world. For once, we traveled by train. There is an element of strain about mountain motoring which is as severe upon driver as upon car. A diversion is not only welcome but almost necessary to the motorist who has twice guided his car over the Alps within the short space of a few days. The exhilaration of looking down into France or Italy from the summit of the Alps does not lessen the dangers of the long descent, where for considerable stretches every foot of the way is crowded with possibilities of accident.

Lyons, while usually overlooked by the vast army of summer tourists, holds, in many respects, a unique place among the world's great cities. We would speak of its magnificent location upon two rivers, the rapid Rhone and the sluggish SaÔne; of the twenty-seven bridges that cross them; of the many miles of tree-lined quays, which hold back the spring floods and offer a lovely promenade to the people. No one who has seen Lyons will forget how the houses rise in picturesque confusion, tier piled above tier, to the heights of FauviÈre, where some of the Roman emperors lived centuries ago, and where, on the site of the old Roman forum, stands a beautiful church, overlooking the city and embracing one of the views of Europe of which one never tires. On a clear day the Alps are visible, and the snows of Mont Blanc, and just outside the city one can see the two rivers uniting in their sweep to the Mediterranean.

Lyons is a military stronghold. Its prominence as a manufacturing and railroad center indicates, of course, its great strategic importance. Seventeen forts guard the hills around the city. The army is much in evidence. This constant coming and going of the French soldiers gives much color and animation to the street scenes. Everyone is impressed by the cuirassiers. They are powerfully built and look so effective, like real soldiers who could uphold the traditions of Napoleon's time, and who would feel much more at home on the battle field than at an afternoon tea. We saw the Zouaves, in their huge, baggy red pantalons and with their faces tanned by exposure to the tropical sun of Algeria. Their red caps reminded us of the Turkish fez.

The Place des Terraux, peaceful enough to-day with its busy shops and clouds of white doves, witnessed many a tragic spectacle of the French Revolution. The guillotine stood in the center of the square. Lyons, always royalist in its sympathies, was one of the first cities to raise the standard of revolt against the excesses of the revolutionists in Paris. The consequences of this act were fatal and terrible. The Reign of Terror in Paris was surpassed by the more gruesome reign of terror in Lyons. An army was sent against the city, which was finally captured, after a desperate resistance. "Then the convention resolved to inflict an unheard-of punishment; it ordered the destruction of a part of the city and the erection on the ruins of a pillar, with the inscription, 'Lyons waged war with liberty; Lyons is no more.'"[4]

The city was "the scene of perhaps the greatest cruelty of the Revolution, when women who had begged for mercy to their dear ones, were tied to the foot of the guillotine and compelled to witness hours of butchery."[5] It was soon found that the guillotine did not work fast enough. The defect was quickly remedied. Hundreds of captives were taken outside the city, where the guns of the revolutionists continued the slaughter on a larger and more satisfactory scale.

Possibly the most interesting fact about modern Lyons is its industrial prominence. Baedeker tells us that the city exports annually over one hundred million dollars' worth of silk. Its life seems to be founded upon this one industry. The rich Lyonnais are silk manufacturers. The museum of silks is the finest thing of its kind in Europe. In the old part of the city is the statue of Jacquard, the inventor of the silk loom. As we walked through the narrow streets, there could be heard the sharp clicking of the shuttles, a sign that the weavers were busy at their looms. We were shown the "conditioning house," where the imported raw silk is tested and subjected to a high temperature. This is the first important step in the manufacture of silk, which in the raw state absorbs moisture readily. But by exposing the silk to heat at a temperature of seventy-two to seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit, the water evaporates and the weight of the silk may then be ascertained. To prevent fraud it is then marked by a sworn valuer. France raises very little raw silk, most of it being imported from Japan and China. Out of a population of nearly half a million, nearly a third is directly engaged in the production of silk, and the workers in the surrounding districts would probably number as many more. For a distance of thirty miles, outside of Lyons, the country is dotted with little houses, each containing one or more looms. The prosperity of few large cities is more clearly the result of a single industry.

Americans are especially interested in Lyons for its connection with the starting of silk manufacturing in the United States. A short time ago we were shown a letter written in 1863 by an American living in Lyons. He refers to the excitement created in this district by the rumor that weavers were being engaged with a view to establishing silk manufacturing in the United States on a very extensive scale, and that several companies had been formed and had sent out agents to purchase in Lyons all the machinery and looms used in the manufacture of silk. The writer doubted if the conditions in the United States would make possible the success of the venture. In spite of this prediction, the industry developed rapidly, so that to-day nine hundred American manufacturers have a combined annual output valued at over two hundred million dollars. At the time of the assassination of Lincoln the United States government received a silk flag from the weavers of Lyons dedicated to the people of the United States in memory of Abraham Lincoln. The flag was of the finest fabric and was inscribed: "Popular subscription to the Republic of the United States, in memory of Abraham Lincoln. Lyons, 1865."

But while the United States is making more silk than France, Lyons remains the real center and heart of the industry. American high-power looms are mostly engaged in turning out, by the mile, a cheaper kind of silk, and largely confined to standard grades in most common use. The thread is much coarser. After having lived in Lyons it is possible to understand why this city continues to be the center of the silk industry, even when we consider that this is a mechanical age, and that the inventions of one nation spread quickly to competing nations. American manufacturers are using the Jacquard loom, a Lyonnais invention. The first American looms were imported from Lyons, but one thing which was not bought and imported with the loom, was that aptitude for handling it which is inborn in the Lyonnais. Machinery has its limitations, and back of the machine is the question of efficient labor. The trained hand of the workman is needed at every turn. The looms of Lyons are famous for their light, soft, brilliant tissues. The silk thread woven into many of these beautiful products is so fine that two and one-half million feet of it would weigh only two and one-fifth pounds.

It is an experience to see the weavers at their work, and to watch the sure, skillful way in which they weave the thousands of delicate threads into harmonies of color. Their skill is the heritage that has come down from father to son. These workmen have a start of many centuries over their American competitors. Their ancestors were weaving silk before America was discovered, the industry being started in Lyons in 1450 by Italian refugees. Traditions count for a great deal in the silk industry, and from the moment when Lyonnais weavers gained the Grand Prix from their Venetian rivals, under Louis XIV, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, their looms were busy making costly robes and rare tapestries for the royalty of Europe. In the museum at Lyons is a robe worn by the famous Catherine II of Russia. One is shown tapestries that adorned the apartments of Marie Antoinette in the Tuileries at Paris, and the throne room of Napoleon I in the palace at Versailles. Money could not buy these precious souvenirs of the Lyonnais looms. Many of the gorgeous robes worn at the coronation ceremony of George V were made in Lyons. To-day, as in the past, to make these rich silks and brocades that France is exporting, there is needed not only the skill of the worker, but the soul of the artist. This artistic French temperament is the important and deciding factor that makes Lyons the center of the silk industry. There has been the attempt to create in the United States a style which would be distinctly American. It failed. The German emperor also encouraged efforts to create a style which would be typically German. The result was the same. The atmosphere in these countries is too commercial and mechanical for artistic vitality. In such an environment it is said that the French weavers who are employed in American silk factories become less effective, and lose much of their artistic originality. The industrial pace is too fast. The cost of labor in the United States is so great that the emphasis has to be placed on speed and quantity in order to cover the cost of production. But in Lyons, with a cheaper labor cost, the organization of hand and power looms is so perfect that a manufacturer is able to fill large orders readily.

A superior loom organization, combined with a temperament naturally artistic and creative, explains the advantage of the Lyonnais manufacturer over his American rival, and why it is that American buyers for our large department stores come to Lyons twice a year to select designs and place orders with the Lyonnais manufacturers. Department stores which cater to the wealthiest class of trade have their representatives permanently stationed here to keep in closest possible touch with the latest French fashions.

This question of style is of such absorbing interest to the average American home that it will be worth while to notice the forces at work in Lyons to produce it. Paris is so largely the parade ground for new fashions that nearly everyone overlooks the tremendous influence of Lyons in the creation of styles. The hundred and more silk manufacturers of Lyons have their own designers, who are constantly devising new patterns and color combinations. Most of the new designs and color schemes that appear every season in muslins, taffetas, satins, in all the varied kinds and qualities of silk, have their origin here. This is the creative source. It is Paris that discriminates and decides to which of these new patterns it will give expression in the models which will be copied in all the fashion centers of the world. Paris has the artistic sense of knowing how to combine the materials that Lyons furnishes. The two cities work together. The famous fashion stores of Paris and the silk manufacturers of Lyons are the primary factors in the creation of styles, and yet, after all, the origin of style is to be found in the spirit of the times. Our restless age craves constant change. A century ago in France, when life moved more slowly, the silk dress was an important part of the bride's trousseau, and after being worn on special occasions through her life, was handed down to the next generation. But to-day the styles change with the seasons.

And as they change in Paris so they change in the United States. If we look at this question of style simply from the standpoint of organization, it seems remarkable how perfectly every little detail of the complicated machinery has been worked out. A French silk manufacturer, who arrived in Lyons after a visit to several American cities, was impressed not only with the rapidity with which styles spread from the upper to the middle classes, and the quickness with which the American people grasp new ideas of dress, but also with the fact that Paris fashions appear in New York and Chicago at almost the same time that they appear in Paris. He saw accurate reproductions of the spring Paris fashions, made in America of French materials, and with the color, the line, the idea, the detail, so perfectly reproduced that it would have been difficult to decide between them and the Paris garment. More and more we are coming to realize our great debt to France, and to the Old World, for our education in matters of taste, for our appreciation of beauty in line and color.

And in Lyons one comes closest to this artistic spirit in the workshops of the weavers, and especially those who work on the hand looms. There are thousands of these weavers of the old school that has done so much to make famous the silk industry of the city. Their wages are small and they work amid surroundings of extreme poverty. We visited some of them in their shops. Often we found the loom situated in a damp, gloomy basement, or on the top floor of some old house that looked as though it might have passed through the storm and stress of the period of the French Revolution. These sanitary conditions are so bad that in 1911 there was organized a charitable company with the sole purpose of providing decent lodgings where the weavers could work under improved conditions of light and shade. We always found them hospitable, eager to exhibit their work and explain the workings of the loom. In one workshop the weaver was busy with a piece of satin, the design being wrought in silver and gold. For this beautiful bit of tapestry, which had been ordered for one of the apartments of the Queen of England in Windsor Castle, the workman was receiving only one dollar a day. On another loom there was being reproduced a piece of sixteenth-century brocade. A French millionaire had noticed the original in a museum and wanted an exact reproduction of it for a new chÂteau he is building. After a morning passed amid such scenes, you feel that Lyons is worth visiting, if for no other reason than to see at their work these artists of the loom who are so closely associated with one of the world's oldest and most interesting industries.