Inside, Dr. Rubbens, who since taking his university degree has not been strong enough to follow his profession, and has devoted himself to the 800 lace-workers of his district, explained the organization of the Zele “Trade Union Lace School,” founded three years ago and the only one of its kind in Belgium. I felt, as he talked, that he was reproducing in miniature a Henry Ford plant, and when I told him this, he smiled. “I begin to think I should see one of Mr. Ford’s factories, for in reading an account of his system in the Paris Matin last week, I was astonished at the number of his ideas I had incorporated.”
The fifty advanced workers in the atelier (there are 140 apprentices) share the profit of the lace sales in proportion to their wages, and own part of the stock of the union. The best workers of this group make twenty-five centimes an hour, or two and a half francs (fifty cents) a day of eight hours, the highest pay I know of, so far, gained by a lace-maker. The girls may go four hours each week to a school of domestic science, without losing pay; there are illness and pension funds, and other provisions for the health and protection of the members of the school. Dr. Rubbens has seemed to accept every opportunity as a privilege.
AT WORK ON DETAILS OF A NEEDLE-POINT SCARF TO BE PRESENTED TO QUEEN ELIZABETH
NEEDLE LACE CLASS-ROOM IN THE TRADE UNION LACE SCHOOL AT ZELE
I looked over the files and photographs and records, for even tho Zele is a remote town of but 6,000 inhabitants, this wide-awake director has made it provide for him a better set of records and announcement and advertising cards (some of them in English) than I have seen anywhere else in Belgium. While I was inspecting the books, he opened a chest and spread on the table a finished model from his school—a Needle Point scarf or veil, sown with marguerites and varied by a bewildering succession of open-work stitches, each seemingly more exquisite than the preceding and some of them invented for this particular veil. The needle-workers who had made it had given about 9,000 hours to its flowers and gauze, and it would bring 3,000 francs to the Trade Union treasury.