Page:Women Wanted.djvu/232

 she had already advocated wider business opportunities for women on the ground that France would have need of women in many new capacities. Now she came to ask that the High Schools of Commerce throughout the land should be opened to girls. Hitherto they had been exclusively for boys. The Minister of Commerce took the matter under consideration. The argument that girls should be prepared for responsibilities that every year of war would more surely bring to them sounded to him logical enough. Besides Mlle. Valentine Thomson is a daughter with a most pretty and persuading way, a way that is as helpful to a feminist as to any other woman. So it happened that the Minister of Commerce, in September, 1915, issued a circular recommending the opening of the national Schools of Commerce to women. The Ministry could only recommend. Each Chamber of Commerce could ultimately decide for its own city. And there were but three cities in which the final court of authority refused, Paris, Lyons and Marseilles.

Then in Paris Mlle. Sanua decided that women too must somehow have their chance. She had already organised her countrywomen in the Federation of French Toy Makers, for which she has far flung ambitions. This new industry which she is putting on its feet in France, she has planned shall supplant the made-in-Germany toys in the markets of the world. But the women who are handling the industry must know how on more than a domestic scale. And Paris, the metropolis of France, offered