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cessive hours of work on some of the smaller lines, even allowing for any exaggeration for exceptional circumstances. In some cases, there is no doubt that the result of the inquiry will be to lead first to the employment of more relief labor, and then to the employment and training of more labor that is now unskilled; but it is probable also that the inquiry that is in progress must turn the thoughts of railway engineers to the subject of the consideration of the use of machinery where now only labor is employed. There has been little or no advance in some of the systems and parts of railway work within the past few years, and there is now ample room for any such advance. In the loading alike of goods and of luggage there is ample room for the employ. ment of machinery of various kinds, instead of the older methods of the porter's barrow or the lorry; and it is quite evident that some changes in the method of marshalling trains may follow, so as to enable the companies to limit labor or to make the labor employed more effective. It is clear that the systems of machinery that have been employed of late in mines and in works are far more effective than those on railways-that is to say, as far as the mere short transit is concerned. The railway companies may anticipate a dearer form of labor in the future-judged, that is, by the hours; and they may meet it partly by drawing in more of the unskilled labor of the country parts that they serve, and partly by the making more effective the skilled labor of the towns. It is quite probable, too, that there may be found methods that will in some degree lessen the cost of the actual operating expenses of the railways. It is in some way by checking the waste, and by the employment of more economical methods, possibly to the limitation of the use of labor in some degree, that attention should be given. The working expenses of our railways have of late risen considerably; part of that increase is due to the rise in the cost of coal and of some other materials a rise that will be temporary, it is certain; but there is another cause, and that is the increase in the cost of labor, through shortened hours and higher rates of pay. The price of coal is falling now; but the other advance will be checked only, as in other industries it has been checked-by making dearer labor more effective by machinery.-Engineer.

HOME LIFE IN FRANCE.-An Englishman who

begins to know France is struck at first by the small number of servants in the middle classes. The incomes are usually limited, and the French bourgeois has long since come to the conclusion that a small house, few servants, and few children are the practical solution of the question how to save money out of a small income. The private dwellings of shopkeepers are often ill arranged, badly lighted, and insufficiently ventilated. Some are so dark, so confined and malodorous, that one hardly knows how children can be brought up in them. French politeness to women and French kindness to children have placed men at a disadvantage in home life since the old paternal authority has died away. There is a clatter of small talk, and unless the father can take a share in it, he may sometimes feel solitary at his own table. He is but one of the members of a little democratic home parlia ment that receives or rejects his opinions without deference. Again, in French families, particularly of the middle classes, the preponderance of the mother is very strongly marked. It is easily explicable by very evident causes. She rules the house in detail, she gives orders to children and servants, so that the father appears infrequently as an acting authority. She wins power by her activity and attention to detail, and by her presence. The father is away during the daytime, and is considered to have but two duties in life-regularity in monthly payments for household expenses and regularity at meal times. The monthly payments are not seen by the children, still less the labor and intelligence that go to the earning of them, but they feel the maternal power. The servants are usually women, and man cannot command women; he may ask for services, gently-he does not give orders as he would to a man servant. Rather overpowered at home by the feminine and infantine, or puerile, majority, the Frenchman often, though not always, seeks refuge in the cafe, where he goes for a little intercourse with mature minds of the male sex. Taking French life as it is, with the predominance in home life of the feminine and the immature, and the rarity-in com. parison with England-of hospitality in the house, the cafe seems to be a necessary institution. The explanation of it is not the need of drink, which might be had at home, but the want of masculine society.-Mr. P. G. Hamerton, in the New York Forum."

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