and they fill every known occupation.  The light-heartedness of her nation is in her favor, and she has learned thoroughly how to extract the most from every centime.  There is none of the hopeless dowdiness and dejection that characterize the lower order of Englishwoman.  Trim, tidy, and thrifty, the Frenchwoman faces poverty with a smiling courage that is part of her strength, this look changing often for the older ones into a patience which still holds courage.

Thus far there is no official report of the industries in which they are engaged, and figures must be drawn from unofficial sources.  M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the noted political economist, in his history of “The Labor of Women in the Nineteenth Century,” computes the number of women at work in the manufactories of textile fabrics, cotton, woollen, linen, and silk, as nearly one million; and outside of this is the enormous number of lace-makers and general workers in all occupations.  There are over a quarter of a million of these lace-workers, whose wages run from eighty and ninety centimes to two francs a day; and the rate of payment for Swiss lace-workers is the same.

During the Congres Feministe held in the autumn of 1892, Madame Vincent, an ardent champion of women wage-earners, presented statistics, chiefly from private sources, showing that out of 19,352,000 artisans in France, there are 4,415,000 women who receive in wages or dividends nearly $500,000,000 a year.  Their wage is much less in proportion to the work they do than that of men, yet they draw thirty-five per cent of the entire sum spent in wages.  In Paris alone, over 8,000 women are doing business on an independent footing; and of 3,858 suits judged in 1892 by the Workingman’s Council, 1,674 concerned women.  In spite of these numbers and the abuses known to exist, the Chamber of Deputies has refused practically to extend to women workers the law for the regulation of the conditions of work in workshops.  The refusal is disguised under the form of adjournment of the matter, the reason assigned being that the grievances of women are by no means ripe enough for discussion.  Women themselves are not at all of the same mind; and the result has already been a move toward definite organization of trades, and united action for all women engaged in them,—­a step hitherto regarded as impossible.  The first effect of this has been a protest from Paris shopgirls against the action of the Chamber of Deputies, and the formation of committees whose business will be to enlist the interest and co-operation of women throughout the entire country,—­a slow process, but one that will mean both education and final release from some at least of the worst disabilities now weighting all women workers.