ing in the world.

The 'Christian Corporation' was an established institution, as I have
said, at Val-des-Bois, in 1870, when the war with Germany broke out. In
1871, after the storm of the invasion had been followed by the horrors
of the Commune of Paris, the principles on which the industrial family
at Val-des-Bois had been organised began to attract attention all over
France. A club of Catholic working-men was opened at Paris in 1871, and
a movement began in earnest for extending these institutions throughout
France. It made rapid progress. In September 1874 a great disaster
occurred at Val-des-Bois. The factory buildings took fire during the
night of the 12th of that month, and despite the efforts of the whole
population they were all in ashes when the morning broke. Before noon of
the next day M. Harmel announced to his workmen that he had leased, at
no small sacrifice of his immediate pecuniary interests, another factory
at some distance from the Val-des-Bois, called La Neuville, and that the
'Christian Corporation' of Val-des-Bois might at once be transferred
thither, and carried on as before until the reconstruction of its
original site. The tidings of this calamity brought substantial succour
from Catholic clubs all over France, from Marseilles to Nantes, and from
Bordeaux to Lille. More than a hundred clubs were represented in this
outburst of sympathy, and the disaster led, not indirectly, to a formal
approval of the work in a brief issued by His Holiness Pius IX. on
October 2, 1874.

In 1878 there were more than four hundred clubs in France, with a
membership of nearly a hundred thousand persons. Concurrently with the
development of these clubs a movement went on for establishing an
organisation of honorary members, not belonging to the working classes,
who should co-operate with the clubs in promoting the principles
represented by the 'Christian Corporations.' In 1875 a parliamentary
inquiry was made into the condition of Labour in France; and on behalf
of the committee which conducted this inquiry, the deputy, M. Ducarre,
who drew up the report, declared it to be the opinion of the committee
that all the syndicating movements of modern times point to the
necessity of re-establishing the corporate system of labour which was
destroyed by the First Republic in 1791. The language used in this
Report is worth citing.

'All the remedies suggested for the existing state of things,' said M.
Ducarre, 'may be sum