r while her hand was completing its task.

I spent a delightful day with M. and Mme. Henrivaux, inspecting all
parts of the manufactory of mirrors, visiting the houses provided for a
considerable number of the workmen and their families, on terms most
advantageous to them by the company, and inquiring into the working of
the co-operative association founded by M. Cochin.

This association is an association of consumers only, not of producers.
Its original statutes were drawn up very carefully by M. Cochin, and as
they have been as carefully observed by the members and the managers, it
is the opinion of M. Henrivaux that the experiment has proved to be a
success. This may be inferred from the fact that the title of
'co-operative' has been assumed in the town of St.-Gobain by a bakery,
which seems to be managed on the principles of private competition under
the 'co-operative' flag. If the 'trademark' were not popular, it would
hardly have been assumed.

The company also encourages societies among its own workmen and in the
town for educational purposes, including a philharmonic and a choral
society, and is liberal in its expenditure upon the schools, both here
and at Chauny, the seat of its very important chemical works.

At St.-Gobain alone, I understand, it is now making an outlay of some
sixty thousand francs on new school-buildings, which is a larger sum
than the total of the taxes paid by the people of the place. The
'budget' of the commune amounts to 27,500 francs, or rather more than
ten francs _per capita_ of the population. Obviously the prosperity of
the glassworks makes the prosperity of St.-Gobain, which, but for them,
would doubtless soon relapse into the proportions of the little hamlet
gathered, twelve hundred years ago, by the Irish evangelist about the
miraculous fountain, which is said to have been evoked by him with a
blow of his staff, and which still flows beneath the shelter of his
church.

When Arthur Young visited St.-Gobain a hundred years ago he
congratulated himself on his 'good luck' in hitting upon a day when the
furnaces were in full blast and the _coulage_ going on. A traveller of
the present day who should reach St.-Gobain armed with the letters of
introduction necessary to secure his admission into the works, and find
the furnaces not in full blast and the _coulage_ not going on, would be
in very bad luck indeed.

For while in 1789 St.-Gobain was a privileged company, enjoying, for t