The extent to which money counts. nowadays has been brought home to Parisians by a lawsuit brought against one of the great dressmaking firms by a girl of 25 who was in its employ for some years. Beginning as an ordinary midinette at a very moderate wage, she developed qualities of initiative which attracted attention. She rose to be head saleswoman, with a good commission and an allowance of Francs 100,000 a year for expenses, Being given a free hand, she obtained the custom of an ex-empress, a future queen, Mistinguett and Josephine Baker the reigning queens of the variety stage, and sundry wealthy American women.
Her success, of course aroused, jealousy. She' was deluged with anonymous letters and postcards, and finally her employers dismissed her summarily, for reasons which have not yet been disclosed. She drought an action for breach of contract and wrongful dismissal, and was awarded damages amounting to Francs 268,000, To the more conservative section of the French public, this seems an enormous gum, in the circumstances, and it is pointed out, rating bitterly, that a member of the French Academy, one of the "immortals" who represent the intellectual elite of the country, is paid a beggarly 5,000 francs a year. It seems to be forgotten that a first-class business woman is as eminent in her own line as an academician, and that different kinds of skill obtain diffe: ent. rewards. The academician's social position is supposed to be a compensation for lack of hard cash, To have both the honours and money would be anomalous in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.