The fruit
and vegetable-stalls along the Rue St. Honore were thronged as
usual by frugal housewives who do their shopping early, and down by
Les Halles, to which I wended my way through the older streets of
Paris, to note any change in the price of food, there were the usual
scenes of bustling activity among the baskets and the litter of the
markets. Only a man who knew Paris well could detect a difference in
the early morning crowds--the absence of many young porters who
used to carry great loads on their heads before quenching their thirst
at the Chien Qui Fume, and the presence of many young girls of the
midinette class, who in normal times lie later in bed before taking the
metro to their shops.
The shops were closed now. Great establishments like the Galeries
Lafayette had disbanded their armies of girls and even many of the
factories in the outer suburbs, like Charenton and La Villette, had
suspended work, because their mechanics and electricians and male
factory hands had been mobilized at the outset of the war. The
women of Paris were plunged into dire poverty, and thousands of
them into idleness, which makes poverty more awful. Even now I can
hardly guess how many of these women lived during the first months
of the war.
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