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or the Parliament. In fact, the leasing company agreed readily to all the
conditions, and indeed proposed itself some of the clauses favorable to the
laborers.
Edmund J. James.
Paris,
March 17, 1900.
The day after dictating above note Professor James mailed the following addition :
I find that the government, upon the demand of the minister of public works and upon the advice of the council of state, has struck out the two provisions of the lease relating to the minimum wage and the normal working day. This makes a material change, of course, in the actual facts concerning the provisions for the benefit of the laborers ; but it leaves undis- turbed the significance of the circumstance that the city had insisted upon the insertion of this provision, while the leasing company had accepted it without any protest. The government struck out these clauses on the ground that they referred to matters already regulated by provisions in the existing code, and that these provisions should be altered only by general law and not by special contract. E. J. J.
