rved, will have
cost the member nothing, being simply a result of the union of employer
and employed in a corporate dealing with the purveyors. In 1879 the
annual budget of a hundred families at Val-des-Bois, earning among them
249,242 francs, showed an actual 'Corporation profit' of 91,319.05
francs, which ought to have been much larger had Val-des-Bois then
possessed more than one butcher, baker, grocer, and tailor. These
hundred families comprised 496 members, 279 of them employed in the
factory and 217 occupied at home.

During the last ten years, and especially since the passage of the law
of March 1884, the scope of these Christian Corporations, not only at
Val-des-Bois and at Reims, but all over France, has been considerably
extended. Many of them have now the character of true guilds, as at
Poitiers, for example, where there is a Corporation of the Builders
under the invocation of St-Radegonda, another--Our Lady of the
Keys--founded upon a syndicate of clothiers, and a third, of St.-Honore,
founded upon a syndicate of provision-dealers. At Lille I found a
typical Corporation, that of the spinners and weavers, known as the
Christian Corporation of St.-Nicholas. This was founded in May 1885.
This Corporation admits workmen and workwomen, employees and
manufacturers, belonging, either by residence or by connexion with the
industry named, to the commune of Lille or to one of the adjoining
communes. It had last year a membership of 887 persons, of whom 26 were
master manufacturers and 37 employees, the rest being workmen and
workwomen. Five large firms were represented in it. The Syndical Council
was made up of a syndic employer, a syndic employee, and a syndic
workman from each of these firms, and of a syndic workman, M.
Courtecuisse, representing the members who were employed in other
establishments. The directing bureau consisted of seven members,
including the chaplain. It was presided over by one of the great
manufacturers of Lille, M. Feron-Vrau, and the two vice-presidents were
M. Edouard Bontry, of the house of Bontry-Droullers, and M. Courtecuisse
already named.

This Corporation, under the law of 1884, can own the buildings necessary
for its meetings, its libraries, and its lecture-courses; it can
establish among its members special savings funds, mutual assistance and
pension funds; found and conduct offices for information bearing on the
business of its members, and it may be consulted, under Article 6