A soldier's mother in France

by Rheta Childe Dorr

They seem to like the change. They are a much more coquettish class than the English workers. They do not wear any hats, as a rule, but they spend a good part of their wages on their hair. Even in the factory a girl in overalls working at a forge has her black hair elaborately coiffured and shining with brilliantine. Usually her hair is dressed with bright pins and sidecombs. What the French working girls would do if the war lasts long enough to exhaust the world’s supply of rhinestone combs I really do not know.

The French woman who escorted me through the Citroen factory deplored the fact that the working girls are beginning to wear dressy clothes and high heeled boots. It did not used to be so, she said. I pointed out that the girls formerly hadn’t the money to buy these things, and that the evils of democracy were cured only by more democracy. Women can’t learn, all at once, how to spend wisely.

The women of the French middle classes and those of the old aristocracy have gone into war work, if not into war industries. The advent of so many more women in factory work brought a new sense of responsibility to the more fortunately placed women. They have done a great deal for the workers to keep them in health and strength, to take care of the children of married workers, and even to raise wages.

The Citroen factory is such a model establishment that it has been written about in half a dozen American papers and magazines. It pays very good wages, and the minimum for piece work, eight francs a day—about a dollar and forty-five cents—is shared by men and women alike. Most of the workers average ten and twelve francs a day.

In this factory an excellent noon meal is served at cost, about thirty cents, with wine extra. The meal is prepared by professional cooks in spotless kitchens and it is well served. But not every factory has a canteen, and many have been established and are maintained by women of wealth for the benefit of the workers. I visited one of these in company with the principal founder, formerly a woman of the exclusive “great world,” but now a hard and indefatigable worker.

“These girls must have good food,” she said. “It is a tradition in France, and if we lose it we lose something national. We who have time must feed those who have no time except for toil.”

The luncheon served at this canteen was as dainty, and it was perhaps even more carefully composed, than an expensive repast in a Fifth avenue tea room. The rich lady and her American guest sat down and ate it with the girls from the munitions factory a block away, and we enjoyed it as much as they did.

Every American woman knows the beautifully embroidered French underwear, which over here is rather expensive but in France could once be purchased for very little. The Paris “white sales” before the war was the trade event of the year for women. But what few women took into consideration when buying this lovely underwear so cheaply was that the women who made the garments received appallingly low wages for their work.

The underwear was made by women working at home. Pride kept them from leaving home, and besides, there were often young children to care for. So the home workers toiled far into the night, sewing and embroidering the dainty things that were to adorn the soft bodies of richer women. For their long toil they often received less than a franc a day.

I met the woman who was chiefly responsible for the alleviation of this great blot on the civilization of France. Her name is Madame Viollet, and she has devoted her life to the problems of the poor, in much the same wholehearted way as Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, Lillian Wald and other well-known American women have. Like them she lives with her poor.