o unemployed. The old women of the poor went
daily to an empty court-room where they sat in the little amphitheater
sewing or knitting. In countless other ouvroirs they were cutting and
making uniforms with the same facility that men had long since
acquired, or running sleeping bags through sewing-machines at the rate
of thousands a day. M. Herriot "mobilized" Lyons early in the war, and
its contribution to the needs of the Front has been enormous.

The reformes (men too badly mutilated to be of further use at the
front) are being taught many new trades in the ateliers: toy-making,
wooden shoes with leather tops for the trenches, cigarette packages,
baskets, typewriting, stenography, weaving, repairing. In one of the
many ateliers I visited with Madame Castell I saw a man who had only
one arm, and the left at that, and only a thumb and little finger
remaining of the ten he had taken into war, learning to write anew.
When I was shown one of his exercises I was astounded. He wrote far
better than I have ever done, and I can recall few handwritings so
precise and elegant. One may imagine what a man accomplishes who still
has a good hand and arm. It was both interesting and pathetic to see
these men guiding their work with their remaining hand and
manipulating the machinery with the stump of the other arm. Those who
come out from the battlefields with health intact will be no charge to
the state, no matter what their mutilations.

[Illustration: SOCIETE L'ECLAIRAGE ELECTRIQUE, USINE DE LYON]

One poor fellow came in to the Ecole Joffre while I was there. He was
accompanied by three friends of the Mayor's, who hoped that some one
of the new occupations might suit his case. He was large and strong
and ruddy and he had no hands. Human ingenuity had not yet evolved far
enough for him. He was crying quietly as he turned away. But his case
is by no means hopeless, for when his stumps are no longer sensitive
he will be fitted with a mechanical apparatus that will take the place
of the hands he has given to France.

Madame Castell's work is supplying hospitals with anything, except
food, they may demand, and in this she has been regularly helped by
the Needlework Guild of Pennsylvania.

Madame Harriot's ouvroir occupies the magnificent festal salon of the
Hotel de Ville, with its massive chandeliers and its memories of a
thousand dinners and balls of state from the days of Louis XIV down to
the greatest of its mayors. She supp