A dozen women kneel at a stream, scrubbing clothes.
The composition of this Edison actuality is decent, but compared to the previous year's Lumiere film, "Laveuses sur la Rivière" it is distinctly primitive. There are only two lines of competing motion -- the river's winding flow and the women's rhythmic scrubbing, so there isn't much to interest the viewer once you've absorbed that.
Neither is the camera well placed to catch the washerwomen and their actions. Instead, it is placed to frame the composition as a still photograph might. Given the time needed to place the camera and the fact that this was actually staged, it shows a lack of understanding of how to compose for the screen.
Finally, the women are presented as an undifferentiated mass, although that might be due to the poor transfer from the Library of Congress' paper prints. Although transfers to film have been available for decades, the details almost always got lost until half a dozen years ago.