Sometimes there were shelters overhead for their protection from sun and rain, sometimes not. They washed the clothes on flat boards, and beat them when lathered with a flat wooden sort of paddle. The washing was well done too, surprising to tell, but although they say not, one would think that the process was rather hard upon the clothes. These quaint customs quite charmed us, and we were inclined to shut our eyes to certain evidences of drunkenness and its accompanying sins among the lower classes which could not be concealed, and which perhaps need not be entered into here. Valenciennes was a manufacturing town, and the condition of the artisan classes was said to be even worse than that in Belgium just over the border. The hours of labor were long--unquestionably too long--and said to be as a rule fixed by the employer. Children of tender age were employed in factory and warehouse, and this perhaps explains the stunted appearance of the poor people. The law says that no child under sixteen can be kept at work for more than twelve hours a day, but it is understood that this law was easily evaded. The result was inevitable. If the child could be kept at work for twelve hours a day, then it will be understood that an adult was assumed to be able to do more. Of course the man did not really work as hard as our own men do, and that he did piece work, and also that a considerable portion of his time must be deducted for shirking, for gossip and for rest. Still, at the foundries the hours and the labor were both excessive. The thought had not occurred to these manufacturers and proprietors that a man might do more in sixty hours a week than he will do in seventy. The terrible "Borinage" district of the mines of Belgium, which extends as far west as Quevrain on the border, really runs over the line, and some of its conditions existed at Blanc Misseron, Fresnes, and at Bruay. The name "Borinage" signifies the place of boring. Here was to be found a state of society that does not exist in any other part of the country, and the miners and their wretched families were a type quite distinct from all the rest of their countrymen. By the character of their work and by the deficiencies or lack of education, supplemented by the poisonous effects of the fiery and deleterious potato brandy and other decoctions which they freely imbibe, they had sunk into a state of both physical and mental decay.