The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-29 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, OCT. 29, 1869.

The strike which is just now " on" in Paris is
suggestive here in London of one of those social re-
forms being at last seriously taken in hand in regard
to the reorganisation of a very numerous industrial
Bass—a reform which has often, hitherto, been so far
only very vaguely meditated. It is a strike among
the Parisian attendants at the Magasins de Noureaute's,
and is, naturally enough, a reminder of the change
long desired to be seen here in England in respect
to the persons assisting behind the counters in the
shops of the London and provincial linen-
drapers. Of all occupations the least appro-
priate to a man, one need hardly hesitate
to essert, is that of measuring out ribbons, and lace,
and silks, and satins by the yard. Even a man-
milliner is a sort of an improvement upon a draper's
assistant. Mr. iSIANTILINI, we take it, though an
utterly ludicrous and preposterous individual, one
would give the pas to rather than to such con-
temptible creatures as the HUCICY and TITTY of
" Ten-Thousand-a-Year." It was by a touch of
shrewd sarcasm that the author of that humorous
novel hit upon the notion of making his fanciful
hero, TITTLEBAT TIT3I 0 USE, a counter-jumper or linen-
draper's assistant. It was with a like sense of the
ridiculous incongruity of such an employment for
any specimen of the genus homo that the young
author of " Sketches by Boz," revealed in the meta-
physical HORATIO SPARKINS, when the final moment
for the eclaircissement as to his identity had arrived
—Mr. SMITH, the linendraper's assistant. The
Laureate, in his volume of " Maud, and other
Poems," cast similar derision upon the same avoca-
tion, and in doing so, virtually, was one of the very
first to sound the trumpet, as it were, that
called together from shop and factory, from
homestead and laboratory, the English Na-
tional Guard of the Rifle Volunteers. Two rea-
sons there are which are recognisable at the merest
momentary glance why the system according to
which the linendrapers, hosiers, silkmercers, and
similar traders in London and elsewhere throughout
England are served. The first of those two
reasons being that the work thus done
is wholly unsuited to him. And the second reason
—which is the corollary of the first—that it is, on
the contrary, work peculiarly suited to women, that
it is one of the most obvious and fitting fields opened,
or rather we must say, as yet to be opened up for—
Female Employment. In consequence of the strike
of the mercers' assistants at Paris, females have re-
placed them in many of the Magasins de Nouveautes.
A change has thus at Paris been inaugurated. With-
out waiting for the chance of a possible strike one of
these days among the same class here in London,
could not some gradual modification of the system
at present and hitherto acted upon lead almost
imperceptibly to a similar replacement of male
by female assistants ? The same thing might
also be done in many other kinds of shops much
more systematically. Attendance behind counters,
as a rule, might be the right of women seek-
ing employment. The projected transformation is
worthy of the especial attention of the Social Science
Association.

TIrE Archbishop of YORK has lately borne testi-
ninny, at the Hull Church Conference, to the fact
that secular journalism is doing its work far better
than religious journalism; that while the first is, on
the whole, fair to political opponents, ready to credit
them with honourable motives, even when most dis-
approving of their conduct, the second is so partizan
that it seems as if its mission were to sunder
fellow-Christians by magnifying the points of dis-
agreement between them, instead of uniting them by
dwelling on the points of agreement. It may be worth
while to examine the causes of this difference. The
main cause undoubtedly is the excessive importance
which is attached to mere opinion so far as theology
is concerned. We do not find that theoretical
fallacies, however extravagant, seriously interfere
with a man's political career. He may hold
erratic notions about the relations of the