are now participants, of whom about eighty are past apprentices. A much larger portion are depositors in the caisse d'épargne, or savings bank, established by the firm, or are "insured" in its books. Even the youngest apprentices put by a portion of savings out of their small earnings. The principals of the house fear no strike now, as there are enough participants in the wealth of the house to carry on its business through a crisis. "La maison pour chacun, tous pour la maison" is inscribed in gold on one of the beams that cross the great atelier. The sum thus divided among the employees in 1878 exceeded ten thousand dollars. The financial results of these arrangements, at once educational and prudential in their nature, are most encouraging. M. Berger, the accomplished inspector of this department of the enterprise, attributes the substantial growth and prosperity of the business, now one of the largest and wealthiest in France, as much to one influence as to the other. He prides himself on the superior intelligence of his pupils and their technical knowledge, gained while they are in the very midst of a great business, and thus forced even to realize and keep au courant with commercial exigencies. The few who have gone out to take places elsewhere are also doing well.
The fourth and last of our typical schools is the École Municipale d'Apprentis, which since 1872 has been at work in the Boulevard de la Villette. No school has produced more striking results as yet, and none merits more careful attention. Beginning with seventeen pupils in 1872, it now numbers a following of two hundred and twenty-one. The course lasts three, or in some cases four, years. It speaks volumes for the efficiency of the school that, out of seventy-two who, up to the end of 1877, had completed the course and gone out into situations, sixty-nine are at the present moment pursuing the trade they have learned in the school, and are earning on the average four francs a day—some of them even as much as six and a half francs a day. A school which can receive young lads of thirteen or fourteen, and after a three years' course can turn out workmen at the age of sixteen or seventeen able at once to command wages of twenty, or, in some cases, thirty-three shillings a week, is something so wholly new that its organization merits the most profound study. Founded on the suggestion of M. Gréard by the then Prefect of the Seine, M. Léon Say, at the expense of the city of Paris, it began its work in premises previously used as a factory of aneroid barometers, additional schoolroom accommodation being obtained in the adjacent dwelling-house. The object of the school is simply to make good workmen. The education it offers is absolutely gratuitous, and even remunerative to the pupils, for they receive every week a "gratification" varying from a franc and a half to three francs. None of the pupils are boarders. None are admitted until their primary education is completed, and then only after an easy examination. Five hours a day are given to studies, six hours to the work of the shops. The teaching of the schoolroom is both general and technical
