there are over eighteen hundred of them. The conditions are so
excellent and the ruling wages so high, that the minimum wage law passed
in 1915 applied only to the sweated home workers in the clothing trade,
and not to the domestic munition shops.

A commission which included in its membership a trade unionist, sent by
the British government in the darkest days to find why it was that
France could produce so much more ammunition than England, found these
tiny workshops, with their primitive equipment, performing miracles. The
output was huge and of the best. The woman, when at the head, seemed to
turn out more than the man, she worked with such undying energy. The
commission said it was the "spirit of France" that drove the workers
forward and renewed the flagging energies. But even the trade unionist
referred to the absence of all opposition to women on the part of
organizations of men. Perhaps the spirit of France is undying because in
it is a spirit of unity and harmony.

It seemed to me there was one very practical explanation of the
unmistakable energy of the French worker, both man and woman. The whole
nation has the wise custom of taking meal time with due seriousness. The
break at noon in the great manufactories, as well as in the family
workshop, is long, averaging one hour and a half, and reaching often to
two hours. The French never gobble. Because food is necessary to animal
life, they do not on that account take a puritanical view of it. They
dare enjoy it, in spite of its physiological bearing. They sit down to
it, dwell upon it, get its flavor, and after the meal they sit still and
as a nation permit themselves unabashed to enjoy the sensation of hunger
appeased. That's the common sense spirit of France.

Of course the worker is renewed, hurls herself on the work again with