THE FRENCH WORKMAN.
The original stuff out of which a French workman is made, is a street boy
of fourteen years old, or, perhaps, twelve. That young _gamin de Paris_
can sing as many love ditties and drinking songs as there are hairs upon
his head, before he knows how much is nine times seven. He prefers
always the agreeable to the useful: he knows how to dance all the
quadrilles: he knows how to make grimaces of ten thousand sorts one after
the other without stopping, and at the rate of twenty in a minute. Of
his other attainments, I say little. It is possible that he may have
been to one of the elementary schools set up by the Government; or, it
may be that he knows not how to read; although, by Article 10 of a law
passed in eighteen hundred and thirty-three, it was determined that no
chief town of a department, or chief place of a commune, containing more
than six thousand inhabitants, should be without at least one elementary
school for public instruction.
Such as the boy may be, he is made an apprentice. He needs no act, or,
as you say in England, indenture. His contract has to be attested at the
Prefecture of Police, Bureau of Passports, Section of Livrets. Formerly,
it was the custom in France for the apprentice to be both fed and lodged
by his master; but, as the patron seldom received money with him, he was
mainly fed on cuffs. Apprenticeship in Paris, which is France, begins at
ages differing according to the nature of the trade. If strength be
wanted, the youth is apprenticed at eighteen, but otherwise, perhaps, at
fourteen. There are in Paris nineteen thousand apprentices dispersed
among two hundred and seventy branches of trade.
Of all the apprentices whose number has been just named, only one in five
is bound by a written agreement with his master. The rest have a verbal
understanding. The youths commonly are restless; and, since they are apt
to change their minds, the business of the master is not so much to teach
them as to obtain value for himself as soon as he can out of their
labour. It is the apprentice who is sent out to take orders in the town,
and to play the part of messenger. In consequence of the looseness of
the tie, it often happens that a thoughtless parent, when his son is able
to earn wages, tells the youth that his master is sucking him and
fattening upon his unpaid labour; that he might earn money for the house
at home. The youth is glad to earn, and throws up his apprenticeship for
independent work. It soon occurs to him that his parents are sucking
him, and that his earnings ought to be for himself, and not for them. He
then throws up his home dependence, as he had thrown up dependence on his
master, takes a lodging, falls into careless company, and works on, a
half-skilled labourer, receiving all his life a less income than he could
have assured to himself by a few years of early perseverance.
When I was apprentice, eight years ago, I found that to be a good
workman, it was needful to design and model. "Come with me," said my
comrade Gredinot, "I will show you a good school." It was a winter
evening; our work was over; and, with leave of the patron, we left our
shop in the Rue Saint Martin, and went by Saint Saviour to the Rue
Montorgueil. We bought as we went about twelve pounds of modelling clay.
At the upper end of the street, my friend Gredinot turned up a dark
passage. I followed him. A single lamp glimmered in the court to which
it led us. We went up a few steps to the schoolroom. "Here we are,"
said Gredinot, in opening the door. We entered, carrying our caps.
There was a low room lighted by flaring oil lamps; but in it were busts
and statues of such beauty that it seemed to me to be the most delightful
chamber in the world. Boys and youths and a few men, all in blouses like
ourselves, laboured there. We threw our clay upon a public heap in a
wooden trough near the door. There was only that mud to pay, and there
were our own tools to take. Everything else was free. Gredinot
introduced me to the master, and I learnt to model from that night.
There are other schools--the school of Arts and Trades in the Rue St.
Martin, and the Special and Gratuitous School of Design in the Rue du
Tourraine, in connection, as I think, with the School of Fine Arts. I
might number the museums and the libraries, and I may make mention also
of the prizes of the Academy of Industry and of the Society for the
Encouragement of National Industry.
The apprentice when out of his time goes to the prefecture of police.
There he must obtain a livret, which must have on the face of it the seal
of the prefecture, the full name of the admitted workman, his age, his
place of birth, and a description of his person, his trade, and the name
of the master who employs him. The French workman is taboo, until he is
registered by the police and can produce his livret. The book costs him
twopence halfpenny. Its first entry is a record of the completion of his
apprenticeship. Afterwards every fresh engagement must be set down in
it, with the dates of its beginning and its end, each stamped by the
prefecture. The employer of a workman holds his livret as a pledge.
When he receives money in advance, the sum is written in his book, and it
is a debt there chargeable as a deduction of not more than one fifth upon
all future employment, until it is paid. The workman when travelling
must have his livret _vised_; for, without that, says the law, "he is a
vagabond, and can be arrested and punished as such."
The workman registered and livreted, how does he live, work, and sleep?
He is not a great traveller; for, unless forced into exile, the utmost
notion of travel that a French workman has, is the removal--if he be a
provincial--from his native province to Paris. We pass over the
workman's chance of falling victim to the conscription, if he has no
friends rich enough to buy for him a substitute, or if he cannot
subscribe for the same object to a Conscription Mutual Assurance Company.
When Louis Blanc had his own way in France the workmen did but ten hours'
labour in the day. Now, however, as before, twelve or thirteen hours are
regarded as a fair day's work. I and Friponnet, who are diamond
jewellers, work ten hours only. My friend Cornichon, who is a goldsmith,
works as long as a painter or a smith. Sunday labour used to be very
general in France, but extended seldom beyond the half day; which was
paid for at a higher rate. In Paris seven in eight of us used to earn
money on the Sunday morning. That necessity could not be pleaded for the
act, is proved by the fact, that often we did no work on Monday, but on
that day spent the Sunday's earnings. As for wages, calculated on an
average of several years, they are about as follows:--The average pay for
a day's labour is three shillings and twopence. The lowest day's pay
known is five pence, and the highest thirty shillings. About thirty
thousand of us receive half-a-crown a day; five or six times as many (the
majority) receive some sum between half-a-crown and four and twopence.
About ten thousand receive higher wages. The best wages are earned by
men whose work is connected with print, paper, and engraving. The
workers in jewels and gold are the next best provided for; next to them
workers in metal and in fancy ware. Workers on spun and woven fabrics
get low wages; the lowest is earned, as in London, by slop-workers and
all workers with the needle. The average receipts of Paris needlewomen
have not, however, fallen below fourteenpence a day; those of them who
work with fashionable dressmakers earn about one and eightpence. While
speaking of the ill-paid class of women, I must mention that the most
sentimental of our occupations earns the least bread. Those who make
crowns of _immortelles_ to hang upon the tombs, only earn about
sevenpence-halfpenny a day. That trade is, in very truth, funereal. To
come back to ourselves, it should be said that our wages, as a whole,
have risen rather than declined during the last quarter of a century. It
is a curious fact, however, that the pay for job-work has decreased very
decidedly.
And how do we live? it is asked. Well enough. All of us eat two meals a
day; but what we eat depends upon our money. We three, who draw up this
account, work in one room. We begin fasting, and maintain our fast until
eleven o'clock. Then we send the apprentice out to fetch our breakfasts.
When he comes back with his stores, he disposes them neatly on a centre
table in little groups. I generally have a pennyworth of ham, which
certainly is tough, but very full of flavour; bread to the same value; a
half share with Friponnet in two-pennyworth of wine, and a
half-pennyworth of fried potatoes; thus spending in all
threepence-halfpenny. Cornichon spends the same sum generally in another
way. He has a pennyworth of cold boiled (unsalted) beef, a pennyworth of
bread, a halfpennyworth of cheese and a pennyworth of currant jam.
Friponnet is more extravagant. A common breakfast bill of fare with him
is two penny sausages, twopennyworth of bread, a pennyworth of wine, a
halfpenny _paquet de couenne_ (which is a little parcel of crisply fried
strips of bacon rind), and a baked pear. All this is sumptuous; for we
are of the aristocracy of workmen. The labourers of Paris do not live so
well. They go to the _gargottes_, where they get threepence
halfpennyworth of bouilli--soup, beef and vegetable--which includes the
title to a liberal supply of bread. Reeking, dingy dens are those
_gargottes_, where all the poorer classes of Parisian workmen save the
beef out of their breakfast bouilli, and carry it away to eat later in
the day at the wine-shop; where it will make a dinner with more bread and
a pennyworth of wine. Of bread they eat a great deal; and, reckoning
that at fourpence and the wine at a penny, we find eightpence to be the
daily cost of living to the great body of Parisian workmen.
We aristos among workpeople dine famously. My own practice is to dine in
the street du Petit Carre upon dinners for ninepence; or, by taking
dinner-tickets for fourteen days in advance, I get one dinner a fortnight
given me gratuitously. I dine upon soup, a choice of three plates of
meat, about half-a-pint of wine, a dessert and bread at discretion. Our
dinner hour is four o'clock, and we are not likely to eat anything more
before bedtime; although one of us may win a cup of coffee or a dram of
brandy at billiards or dominoes in the evening. Cornichon and Friponnet
dine in the street Chabannais; have soup at a penny a portion, small
plates of meat at twopence each, dessert at a penny, and halfpenny slips
of bread. Each of us when he has dined rolls up a cigarette, and lounges
perhaps round the Palais Royal for half an hour.
As for our lodging the poorest of us live by tens in one room, and sleep
by fours and fives upon one mattress; paying from twopence to tenpence a
night. The ordinary cost of such lodging as the workman in Paris
occupies is, for a whole room for one person, nine or ten shillings a
month; for more than one, six or seven shillings each; and for half a
bed, four shillings. Cornichon lives in room number thirty-six on the
third floor of a furnished lodging house in the street du Petit Lion.
You must ring for the porter if you would go in to Cornichon; and the
porter must, by a jerk at a string, unlatch the street door if Cornichon
wishes to come out to you. In a little court at the back are two flights
of dirty stairs of red tile edged with wood. They lead to distinct
portions of the house. Cornichon's room is paved with red tiles,
polished now and then with beeswax. It is furnished with the bed and a
few inches of bedside carpet, forming a small island on the floor, with
two chairs, a commode with a black marble top, a washing-basin and a
water-bottle. Cornichon has also a cupboard there in which he stores his
wood for winter, paying twenty-pence per hundred pounds for logs; and as
the room contains no grate, he rents a German stove from his landlord,
paying four-and-two-pence for his use of it during the season.
Friponnet rents two unfurnished rooms up four pair of stairs, at the back
of a house in the street d'Argenteuil. He pays ten shillings a month.
They are furnished in mahogany and black marble bought of a broker, and I
think not paid for yet. Fidette visits him there. She is a gold and
silver polisher, his _bonne amie_. She has her own lodging; but she and
Friponnet divide their earnings. They belong to one another: although no
priest has blessed their voluntary contract. It is so, I am pained to
say, with very many of us.
I have a half-bed in a little street, with a man who is a good fellow,
considering he is a square-head--a German. The red tiles of my staircase
are very clean, and slippery with beeswax. My landlord rents a portion
of the third floor of the house, and under-lets it fearfully. One
apartment has been penned off into four, and mine is the fourth section
at the end. To reach me one must pass through the first pen, which is
occupied by Monsieur and Madame. There they work, eat, and sleep; as for
Madame, she never leaves it. Monsieur only goes away to wait upon the
_griffe_, his master, when he wants more work; his _griffe_ is a slop
tailor. Monsieur and Madame sleep in a recess, which looks like a
sarcophagus. A little Italian tailor also sleeps in the same pen; but
whereabouts I know not--his bed is a mystery. The next pen is occupied
by two carpenters, seldom at home. When they come home, all of us know
it; for they are extremely musical. In the third pen live three more
tailors, through whose territory I must pass to my own cabinet. But how
snug that is! Although only eight feet by ten, it has two corner
windows; and, if there is little furniture and but a scanty bed, there is
a looking-glass fit for a baron, and some remains of violet-coloured
hangings and long muslin curtains; either white or brown, I am not sure.
I and the German pay for this apartment fifteen shillings monthly.
There is a kind of lodgers worth especial mention. The men working in
the yards of masons, carpenters, and others--masons
especially--frequently come from the provinces. They are not part of the
fixed population; but are men who have left their wives and families to
come up to the town and earn a sum of money. For this they work most
energetically; living in the most abstemious manner, in order that they
may not break into their hoard. They occupy furnished lodgings, flocking
very much together. Thus the masons from the departments of la Creuse
and la Haute Vienne occupy houses let out in furnished rooms exclusively
to themselves, in the quarters of the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal, Saint
Marcel, and in other parts of Paris. The rigid parsimony of these men is
disappointed terribly when any crisis happens. They are forced to eat
their savings, to turn their clothing and their tools into food, and, by
the revolution of eighteen hundred and forty-eight, were reduced to such
great destitution, that in some of the houses occupied by them one dress
was all that remained to all the lodgers. They wore it in turn, one
going out in it to seek for work while all the rest remained at home in
bed. The poor fellows thanked the want of exercise for helping them to
want of appetite--the only kind of want that poverty desires.
These men, however, working in the great yards, eating their meals near
them in an irregular and restless way, form clubs and associations which
lead not seldom to strikes--blunders which we call placing ourselves _en
Greve_. They take the name _en Greve_ from the place in which one class
of builders' workmen assemble when waiting to be hired. Various places
are chosen by sundry workmen and workwomen for this practice of waiting
to be hired. Laundresses, for example, are to be found near the church
of our Lady of Lorette, where they endure, and too often enjoy, coarse
words from passers-by.
Except in the case of the masons and labourers from the departments, it
is to be regarded as no good sign when a workman makes a residence of
furnished lodgings. The orderly workman marries, and acquires the
property of furniture. The mason from the departments lives cheaply, and
saves, to go home with money to his family, and acquire in his own
village the property of land. The workman bound to Paris, who dwells
only in furnished lodgings, and has bought no furniture, has rarely
saved, and has rarely made an honest marriage. In most cases he is a
lover of pleasure, frequents the theatre and the wine shop. From wine he
runs on to the stronger stimulus of brandy; but these leave to him some
gleams of his national vivacity. The most degraded does not get so
lumpish as the English workman, whose brains have become sodden in the
public-houses by long trains of pots of beer. By far the largest portion
of the Paris workmen possess furniture: only twenty-one in a hundred--and
that includes, of course, the mobile population, the masons, etc.--live
in furnished lodgings.
For clothing we spend, according to our means, from four to fourteen
pounds a year. Half of us have no coat in addition to the blouse.
Before the crisis of eighteen hundred and forty-eight, one sixth of us
had money in savings' banks, and one man in every two was a member of
some benefit society. The benefit societies were numerous, each
generally containing some two or three hundred members; but even our
singing clubs are now suppressed, and we must not meet even to transact
the business of a benefit society without giving notice of our design to
the police, and receiving into our party at least two of its agents as
lookers-on. The result has been the decay of all such societies, and the
extinction of most of them. Where they remain, the average monthly
subscription is fifteen-pence, which insures the payment of twenty-pence
a day during sickness, with gratuitous advice and medicine from the
doctor. The funds of such societies are lodged either in savings' banks,
or in the _Mont de Piete_; which, though properly a pawnbroking
establishment, has also its uses as a bank. The imperial fist presses
everywhere down upon us. It has forced us out of sick clubs, because we
sometimes talked in them about the state of the nation: it would build us
huge barracks to live in, so that we may be had continually under watch
and ward; and it has lately thrust in upon us a president of its own at
the head of our _Conseil de Prud'hommes_, the only tribunal we possess
for the adjustment of our internal trade disputes.
Of our pleasures on a Sunday afternoon the world has heard. We devote
that to our families, if we have any; Monday, too often, to our friends.
There are on Sundays our feats of gymnastics at open-air balls beyond the
barriers, and our dancing saloons in the city; such as the Prado, the Bal
Montesquieu, and the Dogs' Ball. There are our pleasant country rambles,
and our pleasant little dinners in the fields. There are our games at
poule, and dominoes, and piquet; and our pipes with dexterously blackened
bowls. There are our theatres, the Funambule and the Porte St. Martin.
Gamblers among us play at bowls in the Elysian fields, or they stay at
home losing and winning more than they can properly afford to risk at
_ecarte_.
Then there are our holidays. The best used to be "the three days of
July," but they were lost in the last scramble. Yet we still have no
lack of holiday amusement; our puppets to admire, and greasy poles to
climb for prizes by men who have been prudently required first to declare
and register their ambition at the Bureau of Police. Government so gets
something like a list of the men who aspire; who wish to mount. It must
be very useful. There are our water tournaments at St. Cloud and at
Boulogne-sur-Seine; where they who have informed the police of their
combative propensities, may thrust at each other with long-padded poles
from boats which are being rowed forcibly into collision. We are not
much of water-birds, but when we do undertake boating, we engage in the
work like Algerine pirates. We must have a red sash round the waist or
not a man of us will pull a stroke.
To go back to our homes and to our wives. When we do marry, we prefer a
wife who can support herself by her own labour. If we have children, it
is in our power to apply--and very many of us do apply--to the Bureau of
Nurses; and, soon after an infant's birth, it can be sent down into the
country at the monthly cost of about ten shillings and two pounds of lump
sugar. That prevents the child from hindering our work or pleasure; and,
as it is the interest of the nurse to protect the child for which she
receives payment, why should we disturb our consciences with qualm or
fear?
In Paris there are few factories; some that have existed were removed
into the provinces for the sole purpose of avoiding the dictation of the
workmen in the town. The Parisian fancy work employs a large number of
people who can work at their own homes. In this, and in the whole
industry of Paris, the division of labour is very great; but the fancy
work offers a good deal of scope for originality and taste, and the
workman of Paris is glad to furnish both. He will delight himself by
working night and day to execute a sudden order, to be equal to some
great occasion; but he cannot so well be depended upon when the work
falls again into its even, humdrum pace. On the whole, however, they who
receive good wages, and are trusted--as the men working for jewellers are
trusted--become raised by the responsibility of their position, shun the
wine-shop, live contented with the pleasures of their homes, dress with
neatness, and would die rather than betray the confidence reposed in
them. With all his faults and oddities, the workman of Paris is
essentially a thoroughly good fellow. The solitary work of tailors and
of shoemakers causes them of course to brood and think, and to turn out
of their body a great number of men who take a foremost place in all
political discussions. But the French workman always is a loser by
political disturbance. The crisis of eighteen hundred and forty-eight--a
workman's triumph--reduced the value of industry in Paris from sixty to
twenty-eight millions of pounds. Fifty-four men in every hundred were at
the same time thrown out of employ, or nearly two hundred thousand people
in all.
But there are some callings, indeed, wholly untouched by a crisis. The
manufacture of street gas goes on, for example, without any change.
There are others that are even benefited by a revolution. After the last
revolution, while other trades were turning away men to whom there was no
longer work to give, the trades concerned in providing military equipment
were taking on fresh hands. To that class in Paris, and to that only,
there was an increase of business in eighteen hundred and forty-eight to
the extent of twenty-nine per cent. The decrease of business among the
printers, although few books were printed, did not amount to more than
twenty-seven per cent., in consequence of the increased demand for
proclamations, handbills, and manifestoes.
Without any extra crisis, men working in all trades have trouble enough
to get over the mere natural checks upon industry, which come to most
tradesmen twice a year in the shape of the dead seasons. Every month is
a dead season to some trade; but the dead seasons which prevail over the
largest number of workmen in Paris are the two months, July and August,
in summer, and the two months, January and February, in winter. The dead
season of summer is the more decided of the two. The periods of greatest
activity, on the other hand, are the two months, April and May, and next
to those the months, October and November. Printers are busiest in
winter, builders are busiest in summer--so there are exceptions to the
rule; but, except those who provide certain requisites for eating and
drinking which are in continual demand, there are few workmen in Paris or
elsewhere in France, who have not every year quite enough slack time to
perplex them. They can ill afford the interference of any small crisis
in the shape of a strike, or large crisis in the shape of a national
tumult.
Finally, let me say that the French workman, take him all in all, is
certainly a clever fellow. He is fond of Saint Monday, "solidarity," and
shows; but is quickwitted at his work, and furiously energetic when there
is any strong call made upon his industry. In the most debased form he
has much more vigour and vivacity than the most debased of English
operatives. He may be more immoral; but he is less brutish. If we are a
little vain, and very fond of gaiety; and if we are improvident, we are
not idle; and, with all our street fighting, we are not a discontented
race. Except an Arab, who can be so happy as we know how to make
ourselves, upon the smallest possible resources?