With all this the condition of the workmen employed at St.-Gobain has also steadily improved. It seems always to have been good, relatively to the general conditions of workmen in other industries and other establishments in France. Under the original statutes, and in the time of the excellent M. Deslandes, the nominee of Madame Geoffrin, who ruled St.-Gobain with great success from 1759 down to the Revolution, the workmen of St.-Gobain, as I have shown, were looked after, as well as kept to their duty, on strictly patriarchal principles, not likely to find favour in modern eyes. That they did not themselves dislike the system may be inferred from the fact that no such thing as a strike has ever been known at St.-Gobain, and that a considerable proportion of the workmen employed here now are the direct descendants of workmen employed here in the last century. There are even workers by inheritance, as men may be soldiers and sailors or magistrates by inheritance. Of course with the great extension in our own time of the operation of the company, great numbers of workmen other than glassworkers have come into its employment. But in the glass manufactures alone there are now employed: at St.-Gobain 375 workmen, at Chauny 583, at Cirey-sur-Vezouze 628, at Montlucon 473, at Stolberg, in Rhenish Prussia, 842, at Waldhof, in Baden-Baden, 518; making, in all, 3,419. The wages of the workmen are paid by the day, by the month, or by the piece, according to the special work which they do, but in all cases (and this, I believe, has been the rule here from the beginning) the workman is interested in his work by one premium on the amount, and by another on the quality of the work done. Furthermore (and this also dates from the beginning) the company look after the primary education of the children of the workmen. At St.-Gobain, at Chauny, at Cirey, at Montlucon, and I believe, also, at Waldhof, it maintains schools for both sexes at its own expense, together with asylums and training schools for the children. In these there are now more than 1,400 children. When the company owns no such school it pays a subvention to the nearest school for the benefit of the children of its workmen. Here at St.-Gobain the company owns a number of houses, each house having a garden and dependencies, which it lets to the workmen at an average rental of eight francs a month. I saw not long ago, at one of the stations on a line newly opened by the Great Eastern Railway Company of England, very neat and even handsome cottages well built of brick and thoroughly comfortable, which are leased to servants of the company at 2s. 6_d_. a week, or ten shillings a month. The houses I saw at St.-Gobain let at less than seven shillings a month, were quite as large as those of the Great Eastern Company, and the gardens were much larger.