The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-09-24
TIE FOOD PROBLEM IS VERY SERIOUS French Housewives Are in
 Open Revolt WORKS DURING NIGHT Hotel Guests Quiet While Great Author Sleeps in Daytime.
 Art Society to Elect
 New President
By GEORGE DuFREsNE

1 against the high price of provisions, re- l mind one of the market women of Paris | besieging the Court of Versailles for | bread. It is a perious state of things whench French women take to violence. One virago is a match for six soldiers. The food problem is a very serious one. | A Normandy woman just returned from l & visit to her native place told me to- | day that you could not get butter under l 60 cents a pound that new laid eggs were l a dime each. There is no water and nc pasture The poor catte are suffering | dreadfully.
 These conditions are not confined to the north, but reported all over the country. This is why the epidemic of violence will surely extend to other de- partments.
 The gravity of the situation in the north consists chiefly in that part of France being the centre of industries. The min CTS of the Pas de Calais form total of 10000 men. The iron and steel workers of Saint Quentin, Mubeuge. and VaIen- cienness are not only affiliated to but compose the strength of the revolutions ary Labor confederation, whose head quarters are at Paris. Citizen Yveteot, lilc COllIcucIdllOllt CIlltl, IS on In6 SpOI, working up a movement of united ac- ton amongst the metallurgists, the min CTS and the lockers.
 It is to be food war and, if all goes well, 1t is to be carried on in Paris in the coming winter.
 Gabrielle d Annunzio, who seems now to have definitely chosen France as his place of sojourn, is residing at Areachon. ze,tt1 .zT- dinner and continues his labors the whole of the night. For this reason the hotel which he inhabits is kept quiet until the midday meal that the novelist may re- pair his forces by slumber. The guests have readily accepted the position. 'Hush," says the scandalized mother of her noisy offspring, you will wake the master
 The hotel keeper moves cautiously to respect the rest time of the great man
 Areachon, as a whole, Is delighted at the presence of the author and the lat ter apparently delights in his own pres ence, for he has said the most obliging things about the local climate. M. Georges Cain has added a Chat Noir'' to the Carnavalet museum. This
 
 entrance of the cabaret of that name the house of entertainment in which Maurice Donnay, now an academician made his debut as poet and song writer. l The Black Cat that has been raised 10 | the honor of the museum was merely the 1 sign that has hung for two centuries above the door of a confectioner, who, in the eighteenth century. was Queen Marie Antoinette's chocolate maker and pepper mint confectioner. The same house was pstronized later by the Empress Jose phine, and in one of it's first floor rooms the playwright Eugene Scribe was born in 1791.
 The house stood, and still stands, at the corner of the Rue St. Denis and the Rue de la Reynie, a short alley not far from the Church of St. Merri, and also near the Fountain of the Inno- cents. This ancient edifice. however, Is about to be pulled down to make room for wider thoroughfare and modern buildings, and M Cain hastened 10 claim the relic of old Paris that would otherwise have perished.
 Shops and house signs still abound in France, contentious, funny, or phil osophic, but naturally, in these days of clearly named and numbered streets, their mission in life has been lost.
 The committee of the Societe National des Beaux Arts is about to meet to elect a president, M. Rolls term of of flee expiring this year, Since the fam ous secession which gave us the Champs de Mars salon 20 years ago, the young societe has. only had four presidents, of whom Meissennier was the first, the great Puvis de Chavannes was the sec ond, Carolus Duran the third and M. Roll, the outgoing president the fourth. M. Roll will probably be asked to run a third time, but In the event of his re- fusing an onorous and delicate task, his successor will, in all probability, be either M. Codin or Albert Besnard. The committee is anxious to make some changes this year in their or- ganization, with the object of raising the standard of their annual exhibition | The two rival salons are now held side l by side in the immense Grand Palais | and many people are of the opinior | that the one Is as academic and stere- l otyped as the other.
 The Beaux Arts has the reputation | of course, of being more cordial to new men and new formulae than the older l Societe des Artistes Francais. and the more advanced of the associates ar, anxious to carry their eclecticism tc still greater lengths.
 M. Matisse exhibits at the Beau Art, but up to the present the "cubistes' have not found admittance, and the, complain bitterly of the fact
 The League of Big Families. whicl gained so much popular sympathy two or three months ago when they or.
 ganized a meeting on the Esplanad des Invalides, Is loud in protest againsr | Parislan proprietors who refuse to le
 their apartments to parents of hug families, or even in some cases to fam files of two or three children. At As nieres, just outside Paris, a work mai was given notice to leave the hous he occupied, owing to his having eigh children. Since then he has been un able to find another home, as every where he is met with the reply tha the proprietor will not have childrer
 in the house." The family have thera
 fore been obliged to sleep whereve they best could and for the last fev
 nights have been put up at the towl hall.
 The other day they were escorted b,
 several inhabitants through the streets o
 Asnieres in order to find shelter, m, | whenever the caretaker of a house re | fused to let he We received with storn | of insults and in some cases the proprie
 tors themselves were roughly handled
 But the day ended without any abod,
 having been found. and the workman ent
 his family were obliged to go back to tn,
 town hall for the night.
 A collection made during their macl amounted to nearly s15 and the father immediately sent half of this sum tc Thouvenin the bread winner of a fimlS who some time ago was expelled from his house at PuteauX, and who has not ye,
 succeeded in finding a proprietor willing to let house to him.