orkers in all occupations. There are
over a quarter of a million of these lace-workers, whose wages run from
eighty and ninety centimes to two francs a day; and the rate of payment
for Swiss lace-workers is the same.

During the Congres Feministe held in the autumn of 1892, Madame Vincent,
an ardent champion of women wage-earners, presented statistics, chiefly
from private sources, showing that out of 19,352,000 artisans in France,
there are 4,415,000 women who receive in wages or dividends nearly
$500,000,000 a year. Their wage is much less in proportion to the work
they do than that of men, yet they draw thirty-five per cent of the
entire sum spent in wages. In Paris alone, over 8,000 women are doing
business on an independent footing; and of 3,858 suits judged in 1892 by
the Workingman's Council, 1,674 concerned women. In spite of these
numbers and the abuses known to exist, the Chamber of Deputies has
refused practically to extend to women workers the law for the
regulation of the conditions of work in workshops. The refusal is
disguised under the form of adjournment of the matter, the reason
assigned being that the grievances of women are by no means ripe enough
for discussion. Women themselves are not at all of the same mind; and
the result has already been a move toward definite organization of
trades, and united action for all women engaged in them,--a step
hitherto regarded as impossible. The first effect of this has been a
protest from Paris shopgirls against the action of the Chamber of
Deputies, and the formation of committees whose business will be to
enlist the interest and co-operation of women throughout the entire
country,--a slow process, but one that will mean both education and
final release from some at least of the worst disabilities now weighting
all women workers.

"La femme devenue ouvriere, n'est plus une femme," wrote Jules Simon in
a burst of despair at the conditions of the Paris workwoman; and he
repeated the word as his investigations extended to manufacturing
France, and he found everywhere the home in many cases abolished, the
_creche_ taking its place till the child, vitally dependent upon a care
that included love, gave up the struggle for existence, rendering its
tiny quota to the long list of infant mortality. M. Leroy-Beaulieu had
described years before the practical extinction of the family and the
government interference[34] brought about by the discoveries made by the
governmen