ardor, and losing no time through fatigue, throws off an
enormous output.

Wages perform their material share in spurring the worker. Louis Barthou
says that the woman's average is eight francs a day. Long ago--it seems
long ago--she could earn at best five francs in the Paris district. She
works on piece work now, getting the same rate as men. And think of
it!--this must indeed be because of the spirit of France--this woman
does better than men on the light munition work, and equals, yes, equals
her menfolk on the heavy shells. I do not say this, a commission of men
says it, a commission with a trade union member to boot. The coming of
the woman-worker with the spirit of win-the-war in her heart is the same
in France as elsewhere, only here her coming is more gracious. Twelve
hundred easily take up work on the Paris subway. They are the wives of
mobilized employees. The offices of the Post, the Telegraph and
Telephone bristle with women, of course, for eleven thousand have taken
the places of men. Some seven thousand fill up the empty positions on
the railways, serving even as conductors on through trains. Their number
has swollen to a half million in munitions, and to over half that number
in powder mills and marine workshops; in civil establishments over three
hundred thousand render service; and even the conservative banking world
welcomes the help of some three thousand women.

[Illustration: Has there ever been anything impossible to French women
since the time of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have
no horses.]

Out on the land the tally is greatest of all. Every woman from the
village bends over the bosom of France, urging fertility. The government
called them in the first hours of the conflict. Viviani spoke