o is still a part of Rome, and likely to remain so, since the
conservatism of the lowest order is stronger even in the Italian than in
the French or German worker.

But if civilization does not abolish the effects of low wages and
interminable hours of labor, it at least removes them from sight, and
having made its avenues through what once were dens, is certain that all
dens are done away with. The fact that the avenue is made, that sunshine
enters dark courts and noisome alleys, and that often court and alley
are swept away absolutely, is a step gained; yet, as is true of
Shaftesbury Avenue in London cut through the old quarters of St. Giles,
the squalor and misery is condensed instead of destroyed, and the
building that held one hundred holds now double or triple that number.
For Paris the Rue Jeanne d'Arc already described is an illustration of
what may lie within a stone's throw of quiet and reputable streets, and
of what chances await the worker, whose scanty wages offer only
existence, and for whom the laying up of any fund for old age is an
impossibility.

The chief misfortune, however, and one mourned by the few French
political economists who have looked below the surface, is the gradual
disappearance of family life and its absorption into that of the
factory.

With this absorption has come other vices, that follow where the family
has no further place, and, recognizing this at last, the heads of
various great manufactories--notably in Lyons and other points where the
silk industry centres--have sought to reorganize labor as much as
possible on the family basis. In the old days, when the loom was a part
of the furniture of every home, the various phases of weaving were
learned one by one, and the child who began by filling bobbins, passed
on gradually to the mastery of every branch involved, and became judge
of qualities as well as maker of quantities. In this phase, if hours
were long, there were at least the breaks of the ordinary family
life,--the care of details taken by each in turn, and thus a knowledge
acquired, which, with the development of the factory system on its
earliest basis, was quite impossible. There were other alleviations,
too, as the store of songs and of traditions testifies, both these
possibilities ceasing when home labor was transferred to the factory.

On the other hand, there were certain compensations, in the fixing of a
definite number of hours, of the rate of wages, and at fir