This indicates a rise in wages-particularly in Paris. Nevertheless, the wages of Paris stonecutters,. roofers, and ornamental sculptors have been diminished a few centimes per hour since 1896; the same may be said of coppersmiths, plumbers, and sawyers.

The following table, based in a general way on tables formerly required of mayors by the Government, gives an idea of the gradual rise in wages outside of Paris in the following occupations: Excavators, masons, painters, carpenters, plumbers, horseshoers, wheelwrights, saddlers, and shoemakers:

Official statistics at Paris furnish tables reaching much farther back. The following table, treating of the building industry, begins early in the nineteenth century and ends with the same:

REDUCTION OF HOURS OF LABOR IN FRANCE.

On March 30, 1900, a law went into operation in France limiting the hours of labor to ten hours and thirty minutes per day in all factories employing mixed help-that is to say, employing women and children as well as men. A report filling twelve columns of the Journal Officiel has just been made on the first year's working of this law. Other shops, employing only men, are governed by a law enacted under the Republic of 1848, prescribing a maximum of twelve hours' work. The new law necessarily caused a readjustment of wages, resulting in many strikes. One large establishment changed from work by the day to piecework, causing a strike which lasted six months, when the men accepted the terms offered by their employers. Another result of the law was that many employers at once discharged all the women and children, and thus escaped the operation of the new act. This was a great hardship, as, besides depriving a great many thousand people of needed work, it took from a large number of children their only means of learning a trade.

The report sets forth that in the shops where the employment of women and children was continued, with the reduced hours of work, there was an alarming diminution of the product and a consequent loss of profits. In many branches of industry, such as the reeling of silk, nearly all the employees are women and young girls. In these, the number of hours of labor was cut down according to the new law. During the year, the factory inspectors managed to secure 4,572 convictions for violations of the law by employers; 1,019 violations were for employing children under 13 years of age, generally from 9 to 11, principally in the glass works.

The law permits the employment of children 12 years of age, provided they show a certificate of having attended primary school four years and are in vigorous health, attested by the certificate of a medical officer.

A division inspector is authorized to permit children and women to work twelve hours per day in such business as canning or preserving fruit, where the season is short and the material perishable.

Fault is found by large employers of labor with the fact that establishments employing but twenty persons or less, and using neither steam nor electricity, are exempt from the operation of the law and thus have an advantage over other shops. In such shops, the men can and do work twelve and thirteen hours.

Employing classes complained bitterly of this law during the

first few months of its enforcement.

They now assert that if its operation has not been more disastrous to all the classes that it affects, it is because the last year, following the great exposition of 1900, was a year of general industrial depression.

LYONS, October 18, 1902.

JOHN C. COVERT,

Consul.

FRENCH CAPITAL IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.

A few months ago, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France sent a letter to French consuls in the different quarters of the world instructing them to report on the amount of money invested by Frenchmen in their various consular districts. France has always had the reputation of being an investing country, a dividendreceiving country, a nation of almost inexhaustible resources. The result of the consular investigations fully sustains this reputation, showing that the foreign investments of France aggregate in round. numbers nearly 30,000,000,000 francs-close to $6,000,000,000. The following are the returns from the various countries:

M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the eminent writer on political economy, criticises these figures in l'Economiste for October 18, 1902, declaring that in some cases they are mere guesswork and in others misleading, as they take the nominal for the real value of stocks owned by French citizens. "The bonds in the Corinth Canal," he says, "are made to figure at a valuation of 60,000,000 francs ($11,580,000), when in reality they are worth hardly more than 1,000,000 francs ($193,000). Other cases might be cited where the actual value is not more than 20 or 50 per cent of the figures given." Yet he thinks that these statistics are important as giving a valuable indication of the extent of French investments abroad. M. Beaulieu himself estimates the investments of France abroad, including her colonies, at from 33,000,000,000 to 34,000,000,000 francs, or between

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$6,000,000,000 and $7,000,000,000. In the one colony of Algeria, he thinks the French people have invested not less than 1,500,000,000 francs ($289,500,000), about 650,000,000 francs ($125,450,000) of which are in railroads. In Spain, where many enterprises are owned by foreigners, the French people have investments in commercial houses amounting to nearly $16,000,000. The report credits France with owning three-fifths of the stock in the great Spanish Northern Railroad and four-fifths of the stock in all the other roads in Spain.

It will be seen that Russia figures in the above list for nearly 7,000,000,000 francs ($1,351,000,000). Most of this vast sum has been loaned during the last five years, or since the treaty of alliance between that country and France. It was largely loaned to the Russian Government for the building of the Trans-Siberian and other railroads. Important sums have also been invested by Frenchmen in Russian mines and manufactures. Russia has a large interest debt to pay to France annually, far in excess of the trade balance. It is worthy of observation that since the contracting of these obligations by Russia, the imports of French manufactures into Russia. have materially diminished, either on account of the high tariff encountered at the Russian frontier or because of an instinct which prevents the Russians from augmenting the large sum of money which must in any event be paid to France. French statesmen have several times complained of the meager showing of Russian imports from France, as compared with those from other countries, and Russia's answer has invariably been to ask France to lower her duties on Russian wheat.

Great Britain and the United States do not figure very largely among the nations possessing investments of French capital, they being among the strongest capitalistic countries of the world. The first is set down for 1,000,000,000 francs (nearly $200,000,000) and the second for $116,000,000 in round numbers. But no one knows exactly how much French capital is invested in English securities or deposited in English banks. The talk of imposing an income tax in France has driven a great many Frenchmen to seek English investments.

LYONS, October 22, 1902.

JOHN C. COVERT,

Consul.