six, and hard at work at
seven, the workmen go at nine o'clock to get some soup and a piece of
cheese. It is to some little eating-house in the neighborhood that they
betake themselves. The cost of this _casse-croute_ [bread-crust], as
they call it, fifty centimes at the least. At eleven o'clock, the
dejeuner, always at the wine-shop or the little restaurant. When one
works in the open air, and when one propels, by the strength of his
arms, shovelfuls of earth weighing five kilos each a height of two
metres into the cart, one is hungry. Notwithstanding the utmost
frugality, the dejeuner amounts to thirty sous, thirty-five sous at the
least. We have now expended two francs, twenty-five centimes. About
four o'clock, another mouthful and a glass of wine,--say ten sous,
about. We have now reached fifty-five sous, have we not? In case the
workman should be fatigued, or that the distance home should be too
great,--observe that from Auteuil to Clignancourt there are nine good
kilometres, that is more than two leagues,--he dines on the spot, say
twenty-five sous more.

"'If the workman earns eight francs, here are his wages reduced more
than one-half. And you will remember that the wife and the brats eat at
home; also, that it is necessary to clothe yourself and to clothe the
little ones, that it is necessary to pay the rent, that, sometimes,
there is an old infirm mother at home, that an illness is readily
contracted.... In fact, the workman, at Paris, who labors at a distance
is obliged to eat away from his own house, and he expends for himself
alone as much as would be required to support the whole family. It may
therefore be said, that he has to provide for two households,--the
outside establishment, himself, and the inside establishment, the wife
and the children.'"

It does not seem to have occurred to the author of this interesting
expose, or to his interlocutor, that there was a very simple and
well-known remedy for this idiotic and extravagant mode of living,--the
dinner-pail. The contractor cited to his friend the case of the masons
from the provinces, the Creusois and the Limousins, who are enabled to
save money by leaving their families in the country, and that of the
London workman who commences his day's labor at nine o'clock in the
morning and who ends it at five,--but without any interruption. "At one
o'clock in the afternoon he breaks a piece of bread, which he generally
brings in his work-bag; and at six o'c