made a few years since it was found that over 890,000 were engaged in them, and also at the same time in agriculture.  Manufacturing in Russia concentrates about Moscow and St. Petersburg, which represent more than two fifths of the whole production of the empire.  The requirements of nine tenths of the Russian people are met by domestic manufacture in the villages, and home-weaving for the market employs over two hundred thousand workers, other textiles, leather, etc., being dealt with in the same way.

In the other northern countries of Europe,—­Norway, Sweden, and Denmark,—­manufactures are at a minimum, fisheries and agriculture being the chief industries.  Women are employed in both; and in the few factories there is a small proportion of women and children, working at a wage much less than that given to men.  Sweden has a most admirable system of industrial education; and Norway and Denmark, though far less in population, have adopted the same methods.  But the limitations of all wage-earning women are felt here in the same manner as elsewhere, the summary for all countries being much the same.  The Northern workwoman has the advantage of training and of as keen a sense of economy as the Frenchwoman; but her wage is most usually at or below subsistence point, and her difficulties are those of the worker in general,—­long hours, insufficient pay, and fierce competition.

As to the present laws concerning the length of the working-day, a general abstract is found in a return issued in reply to an address from the House of Commons, an abstract of which was given in “St. James’ Gazette":—­

“In France the hours of adult labor are regulated by a series of decrees, of which the earliest, promulgated September, 1848, enacts that the workingman’s day in manufactories and mills shall not exceed twelve hours of ‘effective’ or actual labor.  A decree issued in May, 1851, made exceptions, so that more hours might be worked in certain trades.  In 1885 a circular was issued stating that the limit of twelve hours per diem was not to be imposed where hand-power was employed, but was to be confined to manufactories and mills in which the motive power was machinery.  No workshops were to come under the clauses of the act that did not employ more than twenty hands in any one shed.  The report says:  ’It is likewise to be borne in mind that there is in France no compulsory observance of Sunday, and no day of habitual rest.’

“The reports of the French inspectors of labor appear to show that the Act of 1848 is very loosely interpreted.  It is even doubtful whether the section limiting the actual working-day to twelve hours was intended to include or exclude hours of rest.  Practically the legal time is made to exclude rest.  This makes the working-day so much the longer.  Thus one of the French inspectors states that the hours of attendance in factories under the Act of 1848 are from five