ion we find grouped the "noteworthy facts concerning the community or the family," and here the subdivisions are allowed to vary according to the exigencies of each case.
The mere scrap of a hotel bill found in Falstaff's pocket tells much concerning the character of the "valiant knight"; and when we remember that in these budgets of expenses and receipts which Le Play prepared there is apparently nothing omitted which can throw light on the character and condition of the family, we see how suggestive and useful such a system of social and industrial photography might become in the hands of skillful workmen. All sources of receipts are enumerated, including the house-work of the women, and whatever work may be performed by the children. The production of values in use is reckoned at its estimated worth, but the actual receipts and disbursements of money are kept separate. The classification of the expenses is especially suggestive. The expenses for provisions are classed under seven heads, beginning with cereals and concluding with fermented liquors. Next come the expenses for dwelling and the incidentals of heat and light; then follows the expenditure for clothing; while after this are placed the items of expense for religious purposes, for the instruction of the children, for alms, for recreations and festivals, and for health service. The list of expenses is concluded with the outlays necessitated by the work done, by the interest on debts, by taxes, and by insurance. When, in looking over these systematized account-books, we find that a certain Parisian tailor spends two hundred and ninety-five francs for alcoholic liquors, besides six hundred and eight francs spent in hobnobbing at the cabaret, lost at gaming, etc., we are not surprised to find that he spends nothing for religion, but thirty-four francs for education, twenty francs in charity, and saves nothing whatever. The facts taken together tell us very plainly of his character, and, remembering that Le Play made it a point to study none but typical families, we are brought face to face with some "temperance statistics" of a most suggestive kind. We may also see at a glance the difference in economic condition between the semi nomadic herdsmen of the Ural Mountains where a family consumes seventy-eight per cent of the products of its own labor and the condition of a watchmaker of Geneva, who, assisted at his trade by his wife, consumes only two per cent of the result of their joint labor without exchanging it for money. With the herdsmen the problem of the distribution of the fruits of labor is unimportant, but with the mechanic it is all-important.
With this patient thoroughness Le Play studied some three hundred families in various parts of Europe; and it was while performing this prodigious work that his methods and theories took shape. In 1855 was published the first edition of his greatest work, "Les Ouvriers Européens." It contained thirty-six (afterward fifty-seven) of the most representative monographs. In January, 1856, the French
