in these schedules we have the
present scale of the necessaries and comforts of ordinary life among the
more industrious and thrifty of the French working-classes. That even in
the seventeenth century the French artisans, and the more prosperous of
the French peasants, lived much more comfortably than one would infer
from the pictures usually painted even by such historians as Michelet,
who, with all his theories and all his imagination, took more trouble
than M. Thiers to keep within hailing distance of the facts, would seem
to be shown by the inventories and the wills of artisans and peasants
disinterred during the last quarter of a century from the local archives
of Troyes and other important towns.

Here, in the Anzin district, to-day, we find these co-operative stores
supplying to 3,000 families of the working-class 12,000 metrical
quintals or bales of the finest quality of wheat flour, 3,000 of these
going to the houses of the members, and 9,000 to the bakery of the
Association, which turns out, on an average, 1,100 loaves, of 3 kilos
each, per day. With this bread the members take from the stores annually
110,000 kilos of the best butter, 50,000 kilos of coffee, 37,000 kilos
of chicory, 4,000 kilos of chocolate, 13,000 Marolles cheeses from the
land of Bretigny--where Edward III. was scared by a tremendous
thunderstorm, which made him 'think of the day of judgment,' into giving
peace to France and liberty to her captive king--200,000 kilos of
potatoes, 6,000 kilos of prunes d'Ente, 11,000 kilos of rice, 15,000
bottles of wine, 12,000 bottles of vinegar, 33,000 bottles of spirits of
various sorts, 45,000 kilos of salt, 6,000 boxes of sardines, 100,000
kilos of maize and corn, 34,000 kilos of bran, 90,000 kilos of sugar,
20,000 kilos of beans, 30,000 kilos of ham, sausages, and other products
of the pork-butchery. That butcher's meat, which, for the reasons I have
mentioned, the stores cannot supply, plays a large proportional part in
the obviously good dietary of these families, may, I think, be inferred
from the fact that the stores annually dispose of 10,000 pots of the
best French mustard, and of 1,000 kilos of white pepper. Vegetables and
fruits are supplied in abundance by the country, and in many cases by
the allotments of the workmen themselves, while beer, as I have said, is
everywhere abundant and cheap.

That the miners and working-people of Anzin are well lodged and well fed
may be considered to be be