e not more than one hundred francs, and they seldom
exceed two hundred; for they accept whatever is offered them, and the
merchants who deal with them know that they submit to any extortion so
long as their secret is kept.

This class is one of the obstacles in the way of the ordinary worker,
and one that grows more numerous with every year of the growing love of
luxury. There must be added to it another,--and in Paris it is a very
large one,--that that of women who have known better days, who are
determined to keep up appearances and to hide their misery absolutely
from former friends. They are timid to excess, and spend days of labor
on a piece of work which, in the end, brings them hardly more than a
morsel of bread. One who goes below the surface of Paris industries is
amazed to discover how large a proportion of women-workers come under
this head; and their numbers have been one of the strongest arguments
for industrial education, and some development of the sense of what
value lies in good work of any order. In one industry alone,--that of
bonnet-making in general, it was found a year or two since that over
eight hundred women of this order were at work secretly, and though they
are found in several other industries, embroidery is their chief source
of income. Thus they are in one sense a combination against other women,
and one more reason given by merchants of every order for the unequal
pay of men and women. It is only another confirmation of the fact that,
so long as women are practically arrayed against women, any adjustment
of the questions involved in all work is impossible. Hours, wages, all
the points at issue that make up the sum of wrong represented by many
phases of modern industry, wait for the organization among women
themselves; and such organization is impossible till the sense of
kinship and mutual obligation has been born. With competition as the
heart of every industry, men are driven apart by a force as inevitable
and irresistible as its counterpart in the material world, and it is
only when an experiment like that of Guise has succeeded, and the
patient work and waiting of Pere Godin borne fruit that all men
pronounce good, that we know what possibilities lie in industrial
co-operation. Such co-operation as has there proved itself not only
possible but profitable for every member concerned, comes at last, to
one who has faced women-workers in every trade they count their own, and
under every p