yond a doubt. Let us now see what they do in
the way of clothing themselves, and of furnishing their houses.

They buy from the stores annually 30,000 francs'-worth of kitchen and
household utensils, which are both well made and cheap in all this part
of France, 600 kilos of mattrass wool, 4,400 yards of sheeting, 500 wool
and cotton blankets and bedspreads, 9,000 towels, 44,000 pairs of
sabots, 10,000 pairs of shoes, 4,600 caps and hats, 2,200 pairs of
stockings, 3,700 shirts and 6,000 metres of shirting, 17,000 metres of
_pique_, 2,000 undervests and 2,000 metres of flannel, 6,000
handkerchiefs, 52,000 metres of linen goods, 17,000 metres of lustrines;
7,200 metres of merinos, 7,000 metres of muslins, 14,000 metres of
_Indiennes_, 57,000 francs'-worth of mercers' wares, 24,000 metres of
calicoes, and, finally, 3,100 yards of velvet. When we remember that
this is the annual outlay for keeping up the household wardrobe, not the
original outlay in establishing it, it seems to me that the workpeople
of Anzin ought to be, and indeed one need only walk and drive about the
region to see that they are, at least as well clothed as they are housed
and fed.

Umbrellas even have come to be regarded as 'necessities' here, and the
stores annually supply 1,300 of these useful but essentially fugitive
articles. The men are clothed by their village tailors and bootmakers
chiefly, so that the masculine wardrobe is represented in the accounts
of the stores less extensively than the feminine. But the Anzin miners
nevertheless annually invest in scarves and cravats to the number of
more than 4,000. Each man on going into the employ of the company
receives, as I have said, a complete mining outfit, the cost of which is
not defrayed out of his wages. But the miners annually buy, on an
average, 500 new mining-suits for themselves.

Tables, chairs, bedsteads, bureaux, well made and often handsome, are to
be had in all these communes at very low prices; and I went into no
house in any of them which did not seem to me well equipped in these
particulars. Engravings, coloured and plain and lithographs, are to be
found in them all, and though the people are obviously not much addicted
to literature, I found in one miner's house at Thiers quite a collection
of books, and most of them good, sensible, and instructive books,
installed in an upper chamber, in which the housewife said, her 'man'
liked to sit and read when it was too hot out of doors i