Pestrowka (Prince A. Obolensky); the P. Malutine Fils Company at Ramenskol; the cotton mills "La Manufacture des Trois Montagnes," Prochorof, at Moscow, and the Coal Company of Southern Russia.

PROFIT SHARING.

France is known as the classic land of profit sharing, and the exhibit made by profit-sharing firms was large and varied, under the stimulus. of the Society for the Practical Study of Participation in Profits, of which the late Charles Robert was long the animating spirit. The society, now numbering 140 members, stipulates in its constitution that only employers or workers in profit-sharing establishments can become members. Among the houses exhibiting at Paris in this line of social effort may be mentioned the less familiar names of L. François, A. Grellon et Cie., rubber manufacturers at Paris; Delaunay-Belleville et Cie., engineers at St. Denis; A. Badin et Fils, Barentin; La Grande Culture Thenenille (Allier), a cattle-raising farm, where one-half of the products goes to the associated cultivators, and there has been a great improvement in the condition of the agricultural laborers; (a) the Compagnie des Wagon-Bars (dining cars), which gives its highest grade of employees a bonus of 3 per cent on the business done; the Secteur de la Place Clichy, Paris, an electric-light company with 142 participants; and the Chambre Consultatif des Associations Ouvrières de Production, which has divided from 25 to 60 per cent of the profits with the workmen employed and has built 60 houses in Paris and 40 in the department for working people.

The long-established and successful profit-sharing establishments of Leclaire, Godin, Boucicaut, and Laroche-Joubert were represented in several sections, because of the variety of their institutions for their employees, and especially by large wall diagrams in the great open upper hall of the Palais. A few details from the placards of the noted Bon Marché, founded by M. Aristide Boucicaut, may be mentioned. The capital of the Bon Marché is in 400 shares of 32 coupons each. The whole 12,800 coupons are held by employees, active or retired, so that this vast enterprise is now a truly cooperative establishment. There were 2,741 employees reported as sharing in the benefits of the provident fund, for which a first levy is made upon the profits. The latest contribution to this fund was 245,000 francs ($47,285), its capital was 3,125,948 francs ($603,308), and the sums distributed 1,450,627 francs ($279,971). A total of 1,073 employees have profited by this fund on leaving the house. A fund to replace the present Caisse de Retraite or retiring fund of 6,751,685 francs ($1,303,075) has a capital of 2,508,626 francs

a The student of the métayer system can now be referred to a valuable work by M. Roger Merlin, Le Métayage et la Participation aux Bénéfices, published in 1898, and chiefly concerned with the share system, and to a supplementary pamphlet by the same writer, Enquête sur le Métayage, 1900.

($184,165). A third levy is made in behalf of the aid and retiring fund for the work people (les ouvriers), which now amounts to 438,485 francs ($84,628). The Bon Marché pays 5 per cent interest on deposits up to 3,000 francs ($579) from any employee. It provides lodging for young women in its employ whose homes are not in Paris and for young persons who can not live at home in the city. Coffee and chocolate are free to the women employed, and each employee has a right to a luncheon and a dinner, which is the same for all grades, in one of the four dining saloons, where one-third of the force can eat together, wine or beer and a salad being furnished. Medicines and medical attendance are furnished free in case of need, and 16 free beds are reserved for the employees in the Hospital Boucicaut. All employees must belong to some mutual aid society. Besides maintaining classes in vocal and instrumental music, fencing, and the study of English, the Bon Marché sends the most capable students to London for a stay of several months to perfect their mastery of English.

Professor Reiger's pamphlet on provident institutions in Holland, exhibited in the Dutch section, was mainly concerned with savings, pensions, and the increasing prevalence of life insurance. His second pamphlet on wages and profit-sharing handles a variety of topics such as the later and the older Bourses du Travail and their somewhat disappointing record in finding employment for men out of work. Profit sharing finds a friend in Professor Reiger, but the pamphlet deals chiefly with the experience of Mr. J. C. Van Marken in regard to this method of remuneration of labor in Holland. Mr. Van Marken has published a brochure of some 70 pages, abundantly illustrated, which represents, in successful operation, a carefully reasoned out scheme of social organization of industry, covering the whole life of the workingman. This scheme bears no such marks of fancifulness as abound. in Fourier's system, and is free from many, if not all, of the faults which M. Godin and Mr. Van Marken committed. Mr. and Mrs. Van Marken's labors have been noticed in most of the recent literature on industrial betterment, but apparently none of the authors had before him this new and authoritative work, which details the history and the present working of a remarkable system of institutions for the welfare of the employee.

HOUSING OF THE WORKING CLASSES.

The center of the floor of the United States section was occupied by three large models of tenement houses, contributed by the tenement house committee of the Charity Organization Society of New York. Effort is being made to procure needed legislation to promote the formation of companies to build improved dwellings at moderate rents and to shape public opinion concerning a problem which takes an acute

form in New York beyond all other cities of the modern world. No. great capital of Europe can show such a condition of things as that represented by one of these models-that of the old block bounded by Christie, Forsythe, Canal, and Bayard streets. Here are 39 tenement houses, with 605 different apartments, accommodating 2,781 persons, 2.315 over 5 years of age and 466 under. Twenty-one apartments have five rooms each; 105, four rooms; 179, three rooms, and 263 two rooms only. The block has but 264 water-closets and not a single bathroom. Forty apartments have hot water, and there are 441 dark rooms, with no ventilation to the outer air, all the light and air coming from other rooms; 635 rooms get their light and air from dark and narrow air shafts. The spectacle presented by this block, with its interior area almost filled by houses, crowded into the formerly free space, and its narrow passages for air and light was a revelation to many visitors. But the old block, bad as it is, is far better than the new block of typical tenement houses erected under existing laws, which was also shown. With 4 families on each floor in 14 rooms; 22 families in each building, and 704 families in the whole block, 4,000 persons all told, all the houses of the same height and as near together as possible, this imposing block is one of the worst types ever built.

It was unfortunate that the cheerful side of the situation was represented by only one model of the prize plans by Mr. R. Thomas Short for the best form of construction of tenements on an entire block around a central rectangular area affording a playground.

The photographs of the numerous tenements built by Mr. A. T. White, of Brooklyn, and by the Improved Dwellings Association and the City and Suburban Homes Company, both of New York, were in a case on one side of the room, where they were inspected by few.

In Mr. White's buildings every room has air and light direct from outside. The rents in the older blocks are from $1.90 per week for two rooms to $3 for three rooms. The apartments are occupied by day laborers and all classes of workingmen, who thus pay no more, possibly less, than they would be charged for the worst tenements in New York, while Mr. White has received 5 per cent net profit on his investment for 20 years or more. In his more recent Riverside buildings $7.60 per month is charged for three rooms, each apartment is self-contained, having a separate water-closet, dust chute, and washtubs. The interior area is made into a small park, 100 by 250 feet, with a fountain, a playground, and a concert stand, where music is furnished free on Saturdays in summer.

The model tenements erected on Seventy-first street and First avenue, New York, by the Improved Dwellings Association, in 1879, are another demonstration of the compatibility of "philanthropy and 5 per cent," the rents ranging from $6 a month for two rooms to $13.50 for three. Likewise, the City and Suburban Homes Company,

at Sixty-fourth street and First avenue, supply independent apartments of two or three rooms, with shower and tub baths, dumb-waiters, steam heat, and gas ranges, at an average rent of $1 a week per room. Other photographs represented the neat and comfortable houses for workingmen erected in Wilmington, Del., renting for from $10 to $22 a month, and in Cincinnati, Albany, Cleveland, Chicago, Dayton, Pittsburg, and St. Paul. But the extreme contrast to the perpetualfever nests of Baxter street and Bottle Alley, in New York, was shown in the model houses erected by American employers at Willimantic, Conn., where six rooms rent for $1.93 a week, in a park-like environment; at the Howland Mills, New Bedford; at Cumberland Mills, Me., and especially at Hopedale, Mass., where the Draper Company build double houses for men who earn $2.50 a day, creditable to any country neighborhood, which they let for $3 a week, each house containing a parlor, dining room, kitchen, pantry, hall, bathroom, and three sleeping rooms.

Europe, as has been said, has no such tenement-house problem as New York presents. In East London, for example, the worst streets are bordered by houses of two or three stories only, while in Paris the all-toocommon style of house, the same for rich and poor, provides a central area for each dwelling. The housing problem in Europe is mainly at present the problem of providing better houses in the country or the suburban districts for factory hands or agricultural laborers. How earnest and widespread the efforts are which municipalities, employers of labor, and philanthropic societies are making toward this end was evident in the social economic exhibits of all the more enlightened nations at Paris. It was especially evident in the exhibit of workmen's dwellings built of actual stone, brick, and mortar at the exposition annex in the Bois de Vincennes. Here, in an ample space, were full-sized houses representing the comfortable and attractive tenements built by the Société Bordelaise des Habitations à Bon Marché, the Menier Chocolate Works at Noisiel, near Paris, the Caisse d'Épargne of Troyes, the Prussian ministry of war, the Farbwerke of Lucius and Brüning, at Höchst on the Main, the General Savings and Retiring Fund guaranteed by the Belgian State, the Suchard Chocolate Works of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and the Lever Company, at Port Sunlight, England.

The Bordeaux Society showed on the side of its dwelling, at Vincennes, a statement of its work. It builds houses in groups of from 7 to 28 in number. These houses have a kitchen and living room on the ground floor, one step down from the yard, two large rooms on the first floor, and two of good size in the attic under the roof, sloping back. They are built in a very solid manner, each having a bathroom, and there is a garden in the rear. The property, in the case of the Cheysson group valued at 7,800 francs ($1,505) for ground and building,

can be acquired in regular payments for twenty years at what amounts to a moderate rent.

At Noisiel the houses stand widely apart in a park through which a river runs. They are double, costing 8,293 francs ($1,601), each house having a kitchen, a hallway (salle) in front, a good cellar, and two chambers; the yearly rent is 150 francs ($28.95). The neat houses built by the Savings Bank of Troyes for 5,100 francs ($984) have large gardens and small greenhouses. The Prussian war ministry's double houses are quite different in style from the others, but very substantial and homelike in appearance, an outhouse and a large garden being provided for each pair of houses.

The Belgian exhibit at Vincennes was the largest, showing the great interest taken by this crowded little country in the housing of its many thousand workers. At Ixelles, for instance, the workingman belonging to the Cooperative Society pays 17.50 francs ($3.38) monthly rent, this sum including the premium on a life-insurance policy for 3,000 francs ($579) procured as a guarantee for 20 years, and then he becomes owner of a house costing 2,638 francs ($509). This rent is easy for a man to pay who is earning 3.50 francs (68 cents) a day. At Chenée, likewise, if he earns 4 francs (77 cents) a day he can become owner, after twenty-five years, of a house costing 4,125 francs ($796) by paying 21.50 francs ($4.15) rent, a life-insurance policy for 3,850 francs ($743) being procured. Another example in Belgium is furnished by a 4,300-franc ($830) house, 800 francs ($154) for the lot and 3,500 francs ($676) for the building, to be gained in fifteen years by a workman paying 26 francs ($5.02) rent on a wage of 6 francs ($1.16), his life-insurance policy being for 3,200 francs ($618). The tendency of large makers of chocolate to care for their employees, shown not only at Noisiel, but by the Cadburys in their model establishment at Bournville, near Birmingham, England, appears in the large twostory and high-studded houses built by Ph. Suchard, the Swiss manufacturer. It would be difficult to choose, on the score of comfort, between these roomy dwellings and the brick cottages of Port Sunlight, England, perhaps the most attractive, architecturally, in the Vincennes exhibit. In the Champ de Mars building the Lever Brothers exhibited a large relief model of their village. (a)

An important exhibit at Vincennes, near the workingmen's dwellings, was the reproduction of the attractive Maison de Convalescence maintained at the metal works and foundry of Bernsdorf, Lower Austria, by Arthur Krupp. Herr Krupp's hospital, with its 24 beds and all the adjuncts of a cheerful common home for as many

a It is hardly necessary to refer to the report on the Housing of the Working People, prepared, under the direction of the United States Department of Labor in 1895, by Dr. E. R. L. Gould. In this report are described in detail, with many plans and illustrations, most of the types of houses which were exhibited at Vincennes. Port Sunlight is of more recent date.