The wages paid those who still work at the craft seem low indeed, especially when the long years of apprenticeship are considered. Verhaegen, in statistics collected in 1910, cites a girl of thirteen who was working ten hours a day, making in fifty-five hours a meter of Cluny lace for which she received about fifty cents. Children of fourteen were working seventy-two hours a week for something less than a cent an hour, and grown women earned little more. The workers were not organized, and the middlemen seem to have prospered accordingly. But the pay was low in all branches of industry, even those which were well organized. An English writer noted that the rate of wages per hour for men in Belgium was only about half that prevailing in Britain, while the cost of living was nearly the same. The average earnings of the breadwinner of the family were about $165 a year. These facts certainly account for the development of coöperation. This movement, which had a great vogue throughout the country, started in Ghent in 1873. Bread was scarce, and famine prices prevailed. A group of poor weavers conceived the idea of baking for themselves and their friends at cost. Their capital consisted of the vast sum of seventeen dollars and eighteen cents. Their bakery was in a cellar, and their utensils were antiquated. They could not afford a dog to deliver their wares, which were taken from door to door in a basket. But this was only the beginning. The "free bakers," as they called themselves, came to have for their headquarters one of the finest buildings in Ghent. A few years later Edouard Anseele, realizing the power of the new movement, decided that it should be identified with Socialism for their mutual benefit. To that end was organized the Vooruit, which has branches all over Belgium, and in other countries as well. Instead of returning the profits made on bread sold at market prices to the purchasers, as had been originally done, a percentage was retained for the support of the organization in its various departments. There was a mutual benefit fund, for instance: bread was sent to members out of work; a doctor went to those who were ill; a trained nurse was at hand to look after the first baby and to instruct the mother in its care.