80 francs ($14 to $16) a
month. In general, greater demands are made of them in regard to personal
appearance and dress. There is a law requiring that chairs be furnished
during working hours. There is a consumers' league in Paris which probably
will effect reforms in the laboring conditions of women. The women in the
industries, of whom there are about 900,000, have an average wage of 2
francs (50 cents) a day. Hardly 30,000 are organized into trade-unions;
all women tobacco workers are organized. As elsewhere, the French
ready-made clothing industry is the most wretched home industry. A part of
the French middle-class women oppose legislation for the protection of
women workers on the ground of "equality of rights for the sexes."[83]
This attitude has been occasioned by the contrast between the typographers
and the women typesetters; the men being aided in the struggle by the
prohibition of night work for women. It is easy to explain the rash and
unjustifiable generalization made on the basis of this exceptional case.
The women that made the generalization and oppose legislation for the
protection of women laborers belong to the bourgeois class. There are
about 1,500,000 women engaged in agriculture, the average wage being 1
franc 50 (about 37 cents). Many of these women earn 1 franc to 1 franc 20
(20 to 24 cents) a day. In Paris, women have been cab drivers and
chauffeurs since 1907. In 1901 women formed 35 per cent of the population
engaged in the professions and the industries (6,805,000 women;
12,911,000 men: total, 19,716,000).

There are three parties in the French woman's rights movement. The
Catholic (_le feminisme chretien_), the moderate (predominantly
Protestant), and the radical (almost entirely socialistic). The Catholic
party works entirely independently; the two others often cooperate, and
are represented in the National Council of Women (_Conseil national des
femmes_), while the _feminisme chretien_ is not represented. The views of
the Catholic party are as follows: "No one denies that man is stronger
than woman. But this means merely a physical superiority. On the basis of
this superiority man dare not despise woman and regard her as morally
inferior to him. But from the Christian point of view God gave man
authority over woman. This does not signify any intellectual superiority,
but is simply a fact of hierarchy."[84] The _feminisme chretien_
advocates: A thorough education for girls according to Cat