freedom of association to trade associa- |dence," should cease to observe legal tions only, and with the restrictions prescriptions. which I have just indicated. The reactionaries mistrusted this law much, though, by a singular irony, it is they who have made the greatest use of it. Pretending to the exclusive representation of agriculture, they have founded agricultural syndicates for the purchase of agricultural machines, manures, and animals for breeding; and they have endeavored to make political capital out of these. If the agricultural syndicates have rendered service to agriculture, they have done nothing of the kind for those who sought to use them as electoral means. Employers have made use of this law to found syndicates which have chiefly been worked for Protectionist ends. As to the work I cite this fact more especially to show the singular conception of legality which has grown up among French Socialists. A law has been passed abrogating that of 1791 which, in order to guarantee the freedom of labor against the tricks of corporations, prohibited all associations between persons of the same profession. This law of 1884 gives them rights which they may regard as too restricted; but instead of asking for their extension - for example, by enlarging their power of holding property - they have refused to submit to the law, while at the same time they are promoting the adoption of a new law, which has been voted by the Chamber of Deputies and rejected by men, the "Annuaire des Syndicats" the Senate, and is known by the name counts as working with the syndicates of the deputy who has presented it as only two hundred and eight thousand, the loi Bovier-Lapierre. According to or about six per cent. of the laboring population of France, the agricultural laborers excepted. But many have not been willing to join syndicates constituted in conformity with the law, as they consider that some obligations to which they are submitted under it do violence to their freedom and dignity, and are police arrangements. More than half of the syndicates which occupied the Bourse du Travail were illegal. As the result of my speech in the Chamber of Deputies on the 8th of May last, the minister of the interior, M. Charles Dupuy, took steps to compel these syndicates to conform to the law before the 5th of July. The members of the "executive commission of the committee" of the Bourse du Tra this bill, every employer who refused to hire a workman and was so simpleminded as to declare that this refusal was based on the fact that the workman was a member of a syndicate, or who discharged a workman for the same reason, would be liable to from ten days' to a month's imprisonment and a fine of from one hundred to two thousand francs. Every employer would be under the obligation, under penalty, to accept any workman who was a member of a syndicate, and when once this workman was domiciled with him - to regard him as immovable, whatever might be the freaks to which he gave himself up. There still remains the question whether the workmen who take part with the irregular syndicates demand vail replied "to the indescribable af- the benefits of the loi Bovier-Lapierre, frout which the minister of the interior while so loudly scorning the law of had just inflicted on the laboring class, 1884. The attitude of their representathat the dignity, the honor of the prole-tives in the Chamber of Deputies would tariat bid it not to let pass so odious a make one believe that they ask for the provocation." good things of the one law and reject the obligations of the other, although the two laws would be connected. The syndicates affirmed by deliberate and repeated resolutions, not merely that those which were not en règle Behold the phenomenon which has would not put themselves in accord- manifested itself. Until about 1889 ance with the law, but that the others, social reforms were regarded as re"in order to recover their indepen-forms in the direction of liberty and c'est le Vol!" and while ridiculing the Communists, advocated the suppression of interest by the establishment of a bank of exchange in which barter should replace the use of money, as a means of the abolition of poverty and the equalization of fortunes. equality. It was at that point of view hon published his book "La Propriété we placed ourselves when we obtained, by the law of the 2nd of April, 1868, the abrogation of Article 1781 of the Civil Code, by virtue of which the master's mere word was taken as to the amount of wages and its payment. Again, it was from that point of view that we procured, in 1883, the repeal of the laws which obliged the workman to carry about a book in which were in 1848, and afterwards led to the in These various conceptions resulted in the creation of the national workshops entered sundry matters concerning him. surrection usually called les journées de It was at that point of view we placed juin. Under the Empire Socialistic ourselves to attain the repeal of Article ideas, though restrained, manifested 416 of the Penal Code, which prohib- themselves in 1862 by the formation of ited workmen from suspending their l'Internationale. They came to a head labors in order to obtain an increase of in the Commune of 1871. Resting wages. That article, modified by the law of 1864, was finally abrogated by the first article of the law of the 21st of latent after that, they grew in strength and expanded after the amnesty of 1879, which brought back to France the March, 1884, on workmen's syndicates, old chiefs and champions of the Comwhich recognized the right of combina- mune. A certain number of these, tion and of striking. The majority among them M. Jules Guesde, came of those who demanded and obtained back imbued with the Socialism of these legislative changes received, Karl Marx, and presented as their prohowever, and accepted, the name of gramme the accession of the Fourth Socialists. But now, in France, so far Estate. They said that if the Revolufrom Socialism being a movement of tion of 1789 had suppressed the priviliberty and equality, it might be de-leges of the nobility and clergy, in fined: The intervention of the State making them equal before the law with in contracts of labor, always directed against the employer and to the exclusive profit of the laborer. II. the Third Estate, it had acted to the profit only of the bourgeoisie - that it had created a "capitalist class," and that the workmen constituting the Fourth Estate must make their '89. IN 1789 the French Revolution af- Their political resource was a war of firmed the rights of man against the classes - as if there were classes recogrights of the State. During its contin-nized by the public or domestic law of uance there was but one really Social- France! They repeated the formula istic manifestation - that of Babœuf. of Marx concerning the "surplus labor The real awakening of Communistic which gives profit to the employer," so ideas was at the Restoration and under the government of Louis Philippe. Saint-Simon and Fourrier were its two most eminent exponents. Louis Blanc, in a little book entitled "L'Organisation du Travail," made a passionate criticism of the actual state of society. He proposed State workshops, in which, as an incitement to work, would be placed large placards bearing the inscription: "Whoever does not work is a thief." He thought that the State should become the sole producer and the sole distributor of wealth. Proud- In order to distinguish their various that an employer has but to multiply the number of his workmen and their hours of labor to make his fortune! They demanded, therefore, as an immediate and practical measure, the lim-. itation of the hours of labor by law. After that they showed what steps should be taken to transform the supply of food into a public function, by the municipalities at first, to be followed by the "socialization" of the instruments of production-the machinery of industry and the land. schools, French Socialists take the names, not of principles, but of men. The Marxists, the disciples of Karl Marx, are also called Guesdists. The Broussists, who follow M. Paul Brousse, form le parti ouvrier, properly so called. The Allemanists have for their leader a working printer, M. Allemane. The Blanquists, who are attached to the tradition of the ancient conspirator Blanqui, dream above all of riots and insurrections, without troubling them they are taking an active part in politics, and their action is growing, for reasons I will now explain. Very wisely, their principal chiefs have understood that the peasants the small French proprietors and cultivators, who, of all the principles of right, know best that which asserts that nul n'est tenu de rester dans l'indivision - would not be accessible, for a long time at least, to their Collectivist theories; so they address them selves much about the economic trans- selves to the centres in which are formations to follow in their wake. They love the Social Revolution for the Revolution itself. They are the devotees of art as art. In reality, all the Socialists are much more divided by personal questions than by questions of doctrine. They are all of opinion that the actual state of society is worthless, that legislation should interfere vigorously to give to the laborers all the privileges they may demand, that however great these demands may be they will never be sufficient, and that the end to be arrived at is the expropriation of the "capitalist class." Thus, as may well be believed, this expropriation is to be violent; though, the expropriators declare with touching unanimity that, if this violence come about it will not be their fault, but that of those who resist them. found the workmen employed in large scale production. They have put before them, as an immediate object, the capture of the municipalities. They succeeded, at the last municipal elections, in installing Socialism, with flying colors, in twenty-nine municipalities, of which three are large towns - Roubaix, Montluçon, and Saint-Denis. At the same time they tried to force the gates of the Chamber of Deputies. In 1889 they cunningly profited by Boulangism, some bidding for its support, others for the support of its adversaries. A dozen succeeded. M. Goblet, an ex-minister, having been beaten, in 1889, in two successive elections in the Somme and Department of the Seine, and stranded since 1891 in the Senate, where he found himself without influence, was de While waiting for this beautiful con- voured by the ambition of playing summation of their dreams, they go anew an active part and returning to every year, on the 28th of May, to cele-power. In the elections of 1893 - in brate religiously the anniversary of the concert with another deputy, M. Milledefeat of the Commune in 1871. In rand, very clever and the less scrupuinflammatory harangues, they render lous with regard to doctrines as he homage to the heroes who stirred up knows nothing about them - M. Goblet civil war and burnt down the monu-conceived the idea of the "Socialist mune of 1871 and professional revolu- | against that of foreigners. Some emtionists. ployers have even been so imprudent, This scheme succeeded. To-day in their mad passion, as to drive them they reckon that they will enter the on to riotous manifestations and Chamber to the number of sixty-eight. threats. They have thus spread the This is relatively few when compared conviction among the workpeople that with the five hundred and eighty-one the State can usefully intervene in members who compose the Chamber of order to fix the prices of goods and Deputies, if we must not add some make them as dear as they like. NatSocialistic Radicals who will follow urally the workmen, thus indoctrinated, them with docility and even go beyond have listened with enthusiastic docility them sometimes in order to manifest to the Socialists who afterwards came their existence, and, finally, an indeter- and told them: "Your employers deminate number of deputies who, being clare that the State can, by good laws, without any strong convictions and by good tariffs, raise the prices of having characters more or less feeble, goods and guarantee profits. But the will allow themselves to be seduced State can also raise the rate of wages and intimidated. These Republicans and guarantee to you a minimum. If believe themselves very clever, and it guards their profits against foreign will say to justify their weakness: "It competition, it ought also to insure would not do to let them have the mo- your fair share of these benefits. They nopoly of social questions! By following them, we shall absorb them." ments of Paris under the eyes of the Prussians; and they take solemn oaths to take their revenge, not against the external enemy, about whom they have never concerned themselves, but against the internal enemy - their fellow-citizens of France. III. WHILE living in expectation of this grand day, notwithstanding their intestine divisions and the confusion and contradiction of certain of their ideas, Union." The project was to associate certain Radical Republicans with the Socialists in common electoral action. They also managed to draw to their alliance the former Boulangists. м. Goblet, a late minister of the interior, who had, in 1882, to repress the disorders of the strike of Bessèges-a late deputy of the Left Centre who had been one of the most embittered adversaries of the amnesty - presented himself to the electors in company with late members and convicts of the Com In France there is a legendary personage who throws himself in the water for fear of wetting himself and who is called Gribouille. These people who, for fear of Socialism, throw themselves into it have for their patron saint this illustrious Gribouille. IV. It is because of this policy that Socialism has made such strides in these latter years. Republicans, reactionaries, monarchists, adversaries of the Republic of all shades, have desired to attract to themselves "the working classes." They have therefore wished to give them des satisfactions - to prove that they were attentive to them; and, instead of seeking reforms which would have been just and really useful to them, they have laid themselves out to flatter their prejudices, or, rather, the prejudices of their leaders. To this game of political self-seeking must be added that of the Protectionists. The manufacturers, in order to obtain the raising of the customs duties have claimed 'the assistance of society.' Demand it in your turn." And they have demanded it, as is proved by the letter of the Lillebonne strikers published in the Siècle of the 7th of June last. Some Protectionists - such as M. Richard Waddington, brother of the late French ambassador at London think themselves clever in swimming with this stream. M. Waddington, who is a Protectionist, has declared himself a Socialist, and has demanded with persistent energy the intervention of the State in labor contracts. He has drawn up a report on the law of the employment of children, young girls, and women in our manufactures. The Civil Code protects minors and incapables, and I am in favor of the protection of children against the abuses which may be committed against them. But it is necessary that the law should not, under the pretext of repressing some abuses, create others which would leave the manufacturers in the hands of arbitrary authority, compel them to shut out children and young women from the workshops, and on their wares, have incited their work-result-for the young people affected people to take part with them. They in the suppression of apprenticeship have told them and urged them to re- and the replacement of labor by vapeat that the State should be the pro-grancy and the factory by the prison. tector of "the national industry" Already in 1874 a law was passed for the protection of children and girls who | this turning out of doors means for the had not attained their majority, in child or the young woman. On the manufactories. This law remained day after the promulgation of the law almost entirely a dead letter. The law one house - that of Lebaudy - disof the 2nd of November, 1892, limited missed forty-four girls employed in the labor of children of thirteen to six- breaking sugar, because they were too teen years of age to ten hours per day; young. Messieurs Millerand, Baudin, but did this necessitate the limitation and Dumay announced that they would of their work during the gathering of question the government on this event; roses and jasmine in the Midi? These but they did not dare to uphold the flowers are destined to be used in a doctrine that an employer should be manufacturing industry, to be distilled compelled to keep children and young in order to extract their essences. women against his will. Has the maOught, then, their gathering in to be terial and moral condition of these regarded as agricultural industry? young people been improved? The above law does not extend to agriWe French Free Traders and Indiculture, though, from the economic vidualists willingly appeal to the expepoint of view, it does not differ from other industries. And why was this difference made? Because the deputies elected for the most part by rural populations feared to provoke among these people a discontent which they rience of England. The partisans of the intervention of the State in labor contracts are only too happy to turn up for us the Factory Act of 1878 to justify the regulation of women's labor. Like the English law, the French one is rid did not dread on the part of the manu- dled with exceptions. After Paragraph facturing population, since, in their 3 of Article 5, an administrative reguladepraved appetite for regulation, very tion authorizes night work for sixty many of the workmen had demanded days, but to 11 P.M. only. This has measures of this kind without well special application to the trade and. understanding their nature, and the manufactures of Paris which, as our employers seem to be quantités négligeables. After this law came into force, youths and girls of sixteen to eighteen years of age could no longer be employed more than sixty hours per week; girls above eighteen and women were restricted to eleven hours per day. The women thus remain in the workshop while the girls and children are obliged to go away. And what are they to do outside? This fastidious protection of children may have the most unfortunate results for them. legislators have been good enough to recognize, are subject to times of great pressure which compensate for times of slackness. M. Waddington said that he was convinced, on inquiry, that sixty days would suffice. Very good; but if sixty days are all that are wanted, what is the use of the law? Does any one work at night for the fun of the thing? And how wise is this compulsory turning of the workwomen out into the streets at eleven o'clock at night, from the point of view of morals! The legislator deprives these dressmakers, these workwomen, during the season The cooks and pastry-cooks of Paris have three thousand apprentices, many of whom are orphans or have no rela- of pressure, of a part of their wages tions in the French metropolis. The law compels their employers to give them one day's holiday per week; and, as the employers have no desire to take any responsibility in the matter, this weekly holiday becomes a day of compulsory vagrancy for these boys. The law condemns them to idleness. The legislator has not dreamed of what which they would be able to save. Does he indemnify them for the loss when the dull season comes? Paragraph 5 of this article goes farther. It permits night-work-which, it appears, is no longer destructive of morals and the family when so authorized - but only on condition "that the work does not exceed, in any case, |