[TO TRY EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—I believe the ribbon-weaving industry is one that Pro- tectionists claim to have been ruined in Great Britain by Free-trade. I enclose a cutting from the Midland Daily Telegraph of August 18th, which tells a rather different story. I wonder Protectionists do not assert that the crinoline industry was also ruined by Free-trade.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Whitehall Club, Westminster, S.W.
ARTHUR KITSON.
"Ribbon-weaving is, it appears, rapidly becoming a lost art in Coventry,' says T.A.T. The decadence commenced when it first began to get fashionable for ladies to cycle ; and the motor mania is the last straw. Women quickly found that they could not very well " bike " to any great extent in be-ribboned hats and dresses ; and they have now discovered that still less can they travel in that attire in a swiftly-moving automobile. The result is that, whereas prior to the cycling boom there were over eighty ribbon- manufacturing firms in the city, employing between 14,000 and 16,000 workpeople, there are to-day only six, and these employ, at most, only about 2,000 hands. In short, Coventry, by developing as it has done the cycle and motor industry, has practically banned the ribbon as an article of wearing apparel, and has thereby prepared a rod of the thickest and stoutest for its own back. Luton, too, is beginning to get uneasy, for the motor is, they say, killing the large "ladies' straws," out of which it makes its best and biggest profits. The fair automobilist wants no such fancy creations.' "
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