nd numbers a thousand
francs a year, may thus secure a well-built house--most of those I saw
were of brick--with proper drainage and cellarage, containing two good
rooms on each of three floors, with closets, and standing in its own
grounds.

Compare this, not with the squalid and noisome single rooms for which in
the worst parts of Spitalfields a rent of tenpence a day, or five
shillings a week (Sunday being thrown in free when the weekly rent is
duly paid), or thirteen pounds sterling a year is exacted--but with the
average rental of lodgings in the manufacturing towns of Massachusetts!

But this is not all. Whatever repairs are needed in these houses are
made, not by the tenants, but by the company, and the company further
leases to its workmen, who choose to avail themselves of them, at very
low rates garden sites within each commune, for cultivation as
kitchen-gardens. No fewer than 2,500 families now have such holdings
under cultivation, making a total of 205 hectares thus put to profit by
the workmen, who take a lively pleasure in cultivating them during their
leisure hours.

Every workman is allowed furthermore by the company seven hectolitres of
ordinary coal per month for his own use. In cases of illness, or where a
workman has a family of more than six persons, this allowance is
increased. In 1888 the coal thus given by the company amounted to
598,550 quintals, representing a money value of 359,150 francs. This is
not only a practical application of the Scriptural injunction 'not to
muzzle the ox which treadeth out the grain;' it is a practical
contribution to the solution of the great 'question' which M. Doumer in
his Report tells us the 'true Republic' has been for ten years making
believe to study--of the participation of the workman in the profits of
the work. It is, indeed, from this economical and practical point of
view, and not from the philanthropic point of view, it seems to me, that
all these advantages conceded by the Anzin Company to its workmen should
be considered.

No man of common sense needs to be told that to deal successfully with
industrial enterprises which require the investment of a large capital
for the production of commodities liable to great fluctuations in price,
the managers of such enterprises must be executive men employing
executive methods. If all the workmen employed in such enterprises are
to be admitted in the ordinary way to a participation in the profits,
they must