ROUBAIX  , a manufacturing

town of northern France, in the department of Nord, 6 m . N.E. of Lille on the railway to Ghent . Pop . (1906) 119,955 . Roubaix is situated about a mile from the Belgian frontier on the Roubaix Canal, which connects the lower Deule with the Scheldt by way of the Marcq and the Espierre . Tramways connect the town with Lille and with the neighbouring communes of Tourcoing (pop . 62,694), Croix (pop . 16,292) and Wattrelos (pop . 14,618), with which it unites to form one great industrial centre . The chief business of Roubaix is the woollen manufacture, but cotton, silk and other materials are also produced . The chief of these are fancy and figured stuffs for garments, velvet and upholstering fabrics . Wool-combing and wool-dressing works, spinning-mills, weaving establishments, dye-houses and printing-works occupy some 50,000 work-people, and four hundred firms act as commission agents for the sale of raw material and the other requisites for the industry .

Power is supplied chiefly by steam, less than 5000 out of 28,000 looms being hand-looms . There are breweries, rubber-works, metal foundries and machinery-works in the town . Tomato and grape growing under glass for the winter market is extensively prosecuted . To maintain the high standard of artistic taste which has made the industry of Roubaix a success, schools have been multiplied . By the co-operation of the town and the state the national school of industrial arts was founded in 1883 . This is a small university of art,commerce and industry, the twenty-two courses of which include all the branches of knowledge useful in any of those pursuits . Among the public institutions are the tribunal of commerce and the chamber of commerce, the exchange, a board of trade-arbitration and the establishment (bureau de conditionnement) for determining the nature and weight of silk, wool and cotton . The prosperity of Roubaix had its origin in the first factory franchise granted in 1469 by Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, to Peter, lord of Roubaix, a descendant of the royal house of Brittany . In the 18th century Roubaix suffered from the jealousy of Lille of which it was a dependency, and it was not till the 19th century that its industries acquired real importance . The population, which in 1804 was only 8700, had risen in 1861 to 40,000, in 1866 to 65,000, and in 1876 to 83,000 .