n Point, and placed in her hands
for the first expenses 150,000 francs. The manufacture spread over every
country of Europe, though in 1640 the Parliament of Toulouse sought to
drive out women from the employment, on the plea that the domestic were
her only legitimate occupations. A monk came to the rescue, and
demonstrated that spinning, weaving, and all forms of preparing and
decorating stuffs had been hers from the beginning of time, and thus for
a season averted further action.

The monk had learned his lesson better than most of the workmen who
sought to curtail woman's opportunities. In the chronicles of that time
there is full description of the workshops which formed part of every
great estate, that known as the _gynaeceum_ being devoted to the women
and children, who spun, wove, made up, and embroidered stuffs of every
order. The Abbey of Niederalteich had such a _gynaeceum_, in which
twenty-two women and children worked, while that of Stephenswert
employed twenty-four; co-operation in such labor having been found more
advantageous than isolated work. Before the tenth century these
workshops had been established at many points. If part of a feudal
manor, the wife of its lord acted often as overseer; if attached to some
abbey, a general overlooker filled the same place. In the convents
manual labor came into favor; and the spinning, weaving, and dyeing of
stuffs occupied a large part of the life.

Apprenticeship for both male and female was finally well established,
and many women became the successful heads of prosperous industries. The
wage was, as it is to-day, the merest pittance; but any wage whatever
was an advance upon the conditions of earlier servitude.

Life had small joy for women in those days we call the "good old
times." Take the married woman, the house-mother of that period. She not
only lived in the strictest retirement, but her duties were so complex
and manifold that, to quote Bebel, "a conscientious housewife had to be
at her post from early in the morning till late at night in order to
fulfil them. It was not only a question of the daily household duties
that still fall to the lot of the middle-class housekeeper, but of many
others from which she has been entirely freed by the modern development
of industry, and the extension of means of transport. She had to spin,
weave, and bleach; to make all the linen and clothes, to boil soap, to
make candles and brew beer. In addition to these occupa