e more."

"Well, mademoiselle, these conditions might have been fulfilled, as they
have been, but how? Had M. Hardy only been a speculator, he might have
said: 'At a distance from my factory, my workmen might have trouble to
get there: rising earlier, they will sleep less; it is a bad economy to
take from the sleep so necessary to those who toil. When they get feeble,
the work suffers for it; then the inclemency of the seasons makes it
worse; the workman arrives wet, trembling with cold, enervated before he
begins to work--and then, what work!'"

"It is unfortunately but too true, M. Agricola. At Lille, when I reached
the factory, wet through with a cold rain, I used sometimes to shiver all
day long at my work."

"Therefore, Mdlle. Angela, the speculator might say: 'To lodge my workmen
close to the door of my factory would obviate this inconvenience. Let us
make the calculation. In Paris the married workman pays about two hundred
and fifty francs a-year,[30] for one or two wretched rooms and a closet,
dark, small, unhealthy, in a narrow, miserable street; there he lives
pell-mell with his family. What ruined constitutions are the consequence!
and what sort of work can you expect from a feverish and diseased
creature? As for the single men, they pay for a smaller, and quite as
unwholesome lodging, about one hundred and fifty francs a-year. Now, let
us make the addition. I employ one hundred and forty-six married workmen,
who pay together, for their wretched holes, thirty-six thousand five
hundred francs; I employ also one hundred and fifteen bachelors, who pay
at the rate of seventeen thousand two hundred and eighty francs; the
total will amount to about fifty thousand francs per annum, the interest
on a million."'

"Dear me, M. Agricola! what a sum to be produced by uniting all these
little rents together!"

"You see, mademoiselle, that fifty thousand francs a-year is a
millionaire's rent. Now, what says our speculator: To induce our workmen
to leave Paris, I will offer them, enormous advantages. I will reduce
their rent one-half, and, instead of small, unwholesome rooms, they shall
have large, airy apartments, well-warmed and lighted, at a trifling
charge. Thus, one hundred and forty-six families, paying me only one
hundred and twenty-five francs a-year, and one hundred and fifteen
bachelors, seventy-five francs, I shall have a total of twenty-six to
twenty-seven thousand francs. Now, a building large enough to ho