country, to visit a newly-opened pit--the Lagrange pit. Part of the way
led us through a large forest full of fine, well-grown trees. The
shooting in this forest is good, chiefly deer and pheasants. It belongs
to the domain of the State, and is leased to a former director of Anzin.
That the country is a pleasant land to live in appears from such facts
as this, as well as from the blue, yellow, russet and rose-pink houses
which enliven the long highway from Valenciennes, and are the
habitations of well-to-do people living here on their incomes. From
Valenciennes to the Belgian frontier, indeed, the road is virtually one
long continuous street of houses and gardens, as the railway is between
New York and Philadelphia.
M. Guary pointed out to me the house of another ex-director of Anzin who
has invested in a considerable tract of land here, on which he has put
up a number of exceedingly neat houses. They are built of brick, like
the small houses to which the working-men of Philadelphia are indebted
to the philanthropic enterprise of Mr. Drexel and Mr. Childs; but I
think it would astonish Mr. Drexel and Mr. Childs to know that a brick
house, containing four good 'upright' rooms and two good garret rooms,
all wainscoted in hard wood and well fitted up, well drained, and with a
large cellar and a garden rather wider than the house, running back for
several hundred yards to a fringe of picturesque forest, can be rented
here, from this private proprietor, for 120 francs, or $24 a year.
At an average wage of 4 fr. 50 c. a day, working 25 days in the month,
an average workman at Anzin may easily earn 1,350 francs a year, so that
he may rent such a house as I have here described for a good deal less
than one-tenth of his income. What is the ordinary proportion between
the house-rent and the income of a respectable tradesman or mechanic in
New York? But the Anzin workman who rents such a house as this on such
terms, enjoys also free fuel, free medical attendance, and schooling for
his children.
We called at one of these private houses, seeing the miner, whom M.
Guary knew very well, standing at ease in his doorway and surveying the
scene with a pipe in his mouth. He was a shrewd, stalwart man of about
forty, who glanced down complacently at his own well-developed limbs and
laughed scornfully when I asked him what he thought of a proposition I
had seen made at Paris, by a friend of the workmen, that forty should be
fixed as the age of retiring pensions for miners. 'He may be a friend,'
said the miner, 'but certainly he is not a miner!'
This miner had long done his day's work in the mine, and after his pipe
was going to work in his garden, where his vegetables were coming
forward very well. Nothing could have been better than his
manners--quiet, manly, civil, without the rather aggravating slyness of
the ordinary French peasant, and with absolutely nothing of the
infantine swagger of the small French _bourgeois_. These miners here
wear a picturesque and practical costume, something between the garb of
a sailor and the garb of a fireman, and as their life--like the life of
a fireman or a sailor--is lived a good deal apart from the lives of
other men, and has a constant spice in it of possible danger, they
acquire a certain self-reliance and self-possession which give them a
natural ease and even dignity of carriage. In talking with more than one
of them I thought I detected a slight tone of contempt towards other
workmen and especially towards the peasants, such as tinges the talk of
a sailor about land-lubbers. M. Guary confirmed this, and told me that
the men, especially of the old mining stock, certainly do regard
themselves as rather better than their neighbours.
This may have something to do with the Conservative strength in this
region. Politics do not apparently run very high among the miners,
either here or in the adjoining region of the Pas-de-Calais.
Valenciennes covers three electoral districts, and the Anzin concessions
extend into each of these districts. In the second or St.-Amand
district there was rather a lively contest in September, between M.
Girot, a Republican, and M. de Carpentier, a Boulangist. The latter
received 5,894 votes, but the former was elected, with 8,331 votes. In
the first Valenciennes district the outgoing member, an Imperialist, M.
Renard, was re-elected, receiving 5,803 votes, against 4,856 given to
his Republican competitor.
In the second district another outgoing member, M. Thellier de
Poncheville, a leading Royalist, was also re-elected, receiving 8,690
votes, against 7,263 given to his Republican opponent. In both of these
cases it came within my knowledge that the authorities of the Department
made the most open and unscrupulous efforts to prevent the return of the
outgoing members. Both M. Thellier de Poncheville and M. Renard,
however, sate on M. Pion's Committee on the mines, and the mining
population of the region appear to have a singularly clear notion of the
difference between sense and nonsense in dealing with mining matters.
Our miner, who hit the difference so neatly between 'miners' and the
'friends of miners,' after a little chat on the doorway, asked us, very
politely, to walk in and look at his home. It was very neatly and
adequately furnished, with clocks in each of the ground-floor rooms,
sundry framed mezzotints hanging on the walls, and a goodly show of
neatly-kept crockery. The wife, looking older than her husband, but very
probably his junior, cheerily pointed out to me the local improvement
she had made by transferring the cooking-range from the front room,
looking on the highway, to the back room looking into the garden. 'It is
pleasanter, don't you think?' she said, 'to sit out of the kitchen; and
then, with the kitchen at the back, one can always leave the door open.
That is my idea!' We assured her we thought it an excellent idea and
most creditable to her--a compliment which she received with modest
satisfaction, saying, 'You know the wife must think of these things!' to
which the husband good-naturedly assented, while the daughter, a
well-grown good-looking girl of fourteen, looked up from her household
duties, much interested in our visit. The husband, on his part, had
contrived a convenient wine-cellar under the stairway. 'It will not hold
much wine,'he said with a smile; 'but it is too large for all the wine I
drink.' 'Ah!' said the wife archly, 'he likes cider much better!'
This miner was employed in the new Lagrange pit, and though I was much
struck by the neatness of his person and apparel, I was more struck by
the general absence of anything like the griminess which we commonly
associate with mines and mining among his fellows, whom I found still at
work around the pits. M. Guary told me that this is a characteristic
trait of the Anzin miners. In the buildings attached to each pit there
is a large hall, called the miner's hall, where the men meet when they
go down to and come up from their underworld. There each man has a box,
under lock and key, bearing his number, in which he puts away his
ordinary clothes when he dons his mining suit; the company--I should
mention here--provides every man when he enters the service with a
mining outfit. And to this hall there is attached a lavatory for the use
of the men. The hall is well warmed in winter, and, being always on an
upper floor, is well aired and ventilated in summer. From this hall at
the Lagrange pit we walked into an adjoining room, where we found the
miners going down the shaft in a great metallic basket, while the coal
came up. While we stood there, there came up a magnificent lump of coal,
of a very brilliant and even lustrous surface, around which the
admiring miners crowded. This is a new vein, and the coal found in it,
M. Guary tells me, burns with an unusually clear and intense flame.
A miner with whom I talked a little had been to see the Exposition, and
it was curious to perceive that he had been much more interested in the
Anzin part of it than in anything else. He spoke indeed almost
disrespectfully of the Eiffel Tower, and he was entirely convinced that
the workmen at Anzin were much better off than the workmen at Paris, as
to which I am not prepared to dispute his opinion. He had not seen the
President, which did not appear to disturb him much; but he thought the
beer at the Exposition 'very dear and very bad.' The engines, however,
he frankly admired, though 'everybody can see that it is not possible to
make better engines than are made at Anzin.'
One curious thing he told me of the young miners who are drafted away
into the military service. 'When they come back,' he said, 'some of them
at first try other trades, but all that are of any use sooner or later
come back to the mine. It is of no use,' he said reflectively, 'for any
man to try to be a miner if he is not trained as a boy.' This is exactly
Jack Tar's notion as to sailors.
From the Lagrange pit we drove, still through pleasant woods and fresh
green farming-lands, to Thiers, where the company has a large number of
working-men's houses, together with a considerable church, a lay and a
religious school, and other institutions.
There we paid a visit to a delightful little old lady, with a face, full
of wrinkled sweetness and humour, which Denner might have painted. She
insisted upon showing us all over her home, and a little miracle it was
of thrift and neatness and order; from the spotlessly clean little
bedrooms with the high Flemish beds, the crucifix hanging over the bed,
and prints--not always devout--on the walls, to the sitting-room with
its shining mirror, highly polished tin and brass candlesticks and
platters, and abundant china. She was a staunch Imperialist, and had
portraits of the Emperor, with prints of Solferino and of Sedan. 'There
it was that they betrayed him!' said the little old lady, with deep
indignation in her voice. I had not the heart to ask her who these
traitors were. The garrets I found filled with new-mown hay. 'It keeps
there till we sell it,' she said, 'and then it smells so sweet!' which
was undeniable. Behind her house (her son and his wife were both absent
at their work) she showed us the garden, very trimly kept and gay with
the old familiar flowers, and an arbour, in which she took especial
pride, none of her neighbours possessing anything of the sort.
At Thiers I talked with an officer of the company who had served for
some time in one of the great mines of Southern France. The differences
in the habits and character of the mining populations there and here he
found very great, and, on the whole, he evidently thought the Northern
miners much superior, in most essential points, to their fellows at the
South. Certainly, according to him, they are neater in their persons,
more cool and sensible, less credulous, less addicted to politics, and
much more thrifty. 'The women, when they are well-behaved and good
managers,' he said, 'have more influence with the men in the North. In
the South and in Auvergne, I have sometimes thought the worst women had
more influence with the men than the best.'
He had an odd theory as to the effect of great altitudes on human
character. 'In Auvergne and in Savoy,' he said, 'the higher up you go
the more excitable and quarrelsome you find the people. Here in Flanders
the people are placid, like the plains.' He called my attention, too, to
the prevalence among the miners here at Anzin of a peculiar type of
blonds with a sort of ruddy russet hair and beard, not quite the glowing
Titianesque auburn, and yet by no means red. It is certainly a marked
and peculiar tint, and may be seen faithfully reproduced in a large
picture of the Anzin miners exhibited this year at Paris. I had supposed
it to 'hark back' to the Scandinavians, who made themselves so much at
home in all these fat and accessible regions after Charlemagne passed
away.
'No,' said my philosophic engineer, 'it is due to the potash. These
miners are so addicted to washing themselves and use such quantities of
strong soap, that it has permanently affected their hair.' Upon which
another engineer, also familiar with Auvergne, broke in: 'That's all
very well; but I have seen many miners in Auvergne with the same tint of
hair and beard, and you know that there they wash their faces, at the
most, once a week!'
This last speaker was an exceedingly shrewd man and, as I found, a
strong Conservative. He had been asked to stand as a candidate for mayor
in his commune, but had declined, though his personal popularity made
his election almost a matter of form. I asked him why. 'Let myself be
elected to a political office by my workmen!' he said; 'how can a
sensible man think of such a thing? Ask men to give you their votes, and
what authority will be left to you? No, I think I know my business too
well for that. They tried that sort of thing, you know, during the war,
and a beautiful business they made of it! I suspect it was the Germans
who suggested it!'
What I am told of the morals of the people here reminds me of the
traditional reputation of certain sections of Pennsylvania settled by
the Germans in the last century, and of the Dutch in Long Island. There
is a good deal of drinking. _Buvettes_ are forbidden within the limits
of the _cités ouvrières_, but in the communes they are very numerous,
averaging, I am assured, as many as twenty to every 1,200 inhabitants.
To open a _buvette_ nothing is needed but a police permission, and the
_buvettes_ are kept, for the most part, by the wives of miners and other
artisans, as a means of adding to the family income. Beer is very cheap,
costing only two sous a litre. Wine and spirits are more costly, though
a great deal of gin is made, and inexpensively made, in the country.
There is much sociability among the people, and great practical
liberality as to the conduct of young girls, the ancient practice known
as 'bundling' in New England being still in vogue among these worthy
Flemings. M. Baudrillart, who evidently inclines to a favourable
judgment of these Northern populations, puts the truth on this point
very considerately.
'Conspicuous historical examples,' he observes, 'prove to me that the
flesh is weak in this province of Flanders. The severity of public
opinion does not always make up for the laxity of the control exercised
by principle. Unmarried mothers are numerous, and incidents of this sort
are often regarded as simple errors of youth and inexperience, to be
remedied by marriage. The marriage-tie when formed, however, is not less
respected than among our rural populations in general, and cases of
flagrant misconduct on the part of married women are rare.'
Offences against persons and property are not relatively numerous here.
On the contrary, while the proportion of persons accused of crime is 12
to the hundred thousand, for all France, in this Department of the Nord
it falls to 8-1/3 to the hundred thousand, and this notwithstanding the
numbers crowded into the great manufacturing towns of the department. In
the Department of the Seine, which includes Paris, the proportion rises
to 28 to the hundred thousand, and in the agricultural Department of the
Eure, which is the champion criminal Department of France, to 30 to the
hundred thousand. One might almost imagine that M. Zola must have gone
to the Eure for his studies of French peasant-life.
Without being particularly devout, the people of this region, I am told,
are fond of their religious observances, and much dislike the
persecution of the Church and the laicisation of the schools.
At Thiers the church, which is a large one, fronting on an extensive
Place Publique, was very handsomely decorated on Corpus Christi Sunday
by the people of the commune. Flags and garlands were put up, too, all
about the Place Publique. The Anzin Company are now building a large
school for girls very near this church; and I visited, with M. Guary,
one afternoon, the boys' school at Thiers. It is very well installed in
a large building, with a playground and a gymnasium roofed in, but not
walled. The teacher--a lay teacher, and a very quiet, sensible man--who
lives in the school-building with his wife, told me he preferred to keep
it thus, and the boys liked it better. They were at their lessons when I
visited the school, and a very sturdy, comely lot of lads they were.
Some of them were _en pénitence_, having slighted their lessons, as the
teacher slily intimated, by reason of the great Church festival. This I
thought not unlikely, and he did not appear to regard it as an
absolutely unpardonable offence, while the juvenile criminals themselves
were evidently quite cheery in their minds. In a room near the
gymnasium were racks filled with wooden guns. These the teachers pointed
out with pride. They were a gift from the company to his battalion of
boys, who delighted in their regular military drill. He thought them,
after only eighteen months' training, one of the best boy-battalions in
the department, and would have liked to take them to Paris to compete
for the athletic prizes. But to take up even a picked company of ten
would have cost 400 francs, which he thought, and I agreed with him,
might be better spent in Thiers. 'And then,' he said with a smile, 'what
a life I should have led in Paris, with those ten boys to look after!'
The Anzin Company used to spend 80,000 francs a year on keeping up its
own schools. But it is so heavily taxed for the 'school palaces' which
have been put up, and for the public schools, that it has materially
reduced this outlay, though it still expends a large sum in various ways
for the advantage of the children of its own workmen attending the
public schools; and still keeps up certain religious schools, especially
for the little children and the girls.
One of these schools for little children which I visited at St.-Waast,
kept by the Sisters, was a model. The little creatures, ranged in
categories according to their years, were pictures of health and good
humour, as they sate in rows at their little desks, or marched about,
singing in choruses. One exercise, through which a number of them, from
six to eight years old, were conducted by two of the Sisters, might have
been studied from a fresco by Fra Angelico representing the heavenly
choirs, and gave the most intense delight evidently to the singing
children as well as to the smiling and kindly Sisters. There is a large
church, too, at St.-Waast and a _cité ouvrière_.
The commune, I believe, formerly was a part of the wide domain of the
famous Abbey of St.-Waast which grew up near Arras over the burial-place
of St.-Vadasius, to whom after the victory of Clovis over the Germans at
Tolbiac in 495 the duty was confided of teaching the Frankish king his
Christian catechism. He had a tough pupil, but he taught him, so well
that King Clovis conceived a great affection for him, and got St.-Rémi
to make him bishop, first of Arras, and then of Cambrai.
At the time of the Revolution the great abbey near Arras, which bore his
name, was one of the richest of the religious communities which,
according to the very important _Avis aux députés des trois ordres de la
province d'Artois_, so thoroughly and instructively analysed by M.
Baudrillart, held among them in 1789 two-thirds of the land of that
province. M. Baudrillart's analysis of this _Avis_ shows conclusively
that a judicious and systematic overhauling of these ecclesiastical
properties was absolutely necessary; but it also shows conclusively that
the people of Artois who desired this wished to see it done decently and
in order. They had a strong love of their provincial independence. Even
Maximilian Robespierre, who was then bestirring himself in public
matters at Arras, addressed his first political publication, which he
called a 'manifesto,' not to the people of Artois, but to 'the Artesian
nation.' This from the future executioner of the French federalists is
sufficiently edifying as to the great 'national' impulse to which we are
asked by a certain school of political rhapsodists to attribute that
outbreak of chaos in France called the 'great French Revolution.'
What the Tiers-Etat of the great and solidly constituted province of
Artois really wanted before 1789 is clearly set forth in this remarkable
_Avis_. They did not want the 'Rights of Man,' or the downfall of
tyrants, or any vague nonsense of that sort. They wanted a more fair and
equitable system of taxation, and a better system of agriculture. They
had some practical ideas, too, as to how these things could be got, for
they knew that these things had been got in England. 'The Englishman of
our times,' they said, 'gets an income of 48,000 pounds from a square
mile of land, whereas the Artesian can hardly get 12,000 pounds from the
same area. Yet the soil of Artois is in nowise inferior to that of
England. The enormous difference can only be attributed to the
encouragement and the distinctions which the English Government bestows
upon agriculture, and to the better system of the English
administration.'
This passage reads almost like an extract from the diary of Arthur
Young, and it is noteworthy that Arthur Young at this same time, while
he was commending in his diary the admirable quality of the deep,
'level, fertile plain of Flanders and Artois,' also expressed his
opinion that 'nowhere in the world was human labour better rewarded than
there.' Taken together, however, the _Avis_ and the diary of Arthur
Young prove that the leaders of the Tiers-Etat of Artois in 1787 were
neither radicals nor revolutionists, but practical men, who wished to
see the value of their property improved, and the natural advantages of
their province more adequately developed. To this end they thought it
necessary that the constitution of the Provincial Estates should be
reformed. Thanks to a combination, as the _Avis_ declares, of the
municipalities of the towns with the _noblesse_ and the higher order of
the clergy, the _curés_--'that most interesting class of men who are
alone in a position to make the needs of the people understood and to
work for their relief--were entirely excluded from the Provincial
Estates in 1669, as were also the farmers, who alone can supply the
means of perfecting our agriculture.'
'Here,' said the _Avis_, 'is the true cause of the prostration of our
rural interests.' They proposed to apply a remedy by recasting the
representation in the Provincial Estates, and giving 'two deputies out
of three to the rural population.'
This having been done, so that agriculture might get in Artois the voice
which the author of the _Avis_ believed it to have in England, they then
proposed a reconstruction of the system of taxation. On this point they
inclined to adopt, from the South of France, the system of paying the
taxes not in money but in kind. The system of the tithes, too, needed a
complete overhauling, not with the mere object of abolishing the tithes,
but in order that the gross inequalities which the _Avis_ sets forth as
existing, in regard to the impact of the tithes, both territorial and
personal, might be done away with, and the support of religion put upon
a sound basis. This led naturally to a demand for the release of great
areas of valuable soil in Artois from the control of religious
communities, like the Abbey of St.-Waast, not a few of which were no
longer in a condition to put these possessions to the best uses, either
for the Church or for the country. In Artois, as in French Flanders, the
extent of these ecclesiastical domains which had once been an advantage
to the people, is admitted to have become disadvantageous to French
agriculture with the decline of the feudal aristocracy and the growth of
the royal power. Short leases only were granted in general by the Church
and the monasteries, and under these short leases the farmers hesitated
to improve their holdings.
The authors of the _Avis_ desire that it may be made possible to obtain
leases of even twenty-five years which should not be treated by the
Treasury as an 'alienation' of the property leased. With such leases,
they say, 'the farmer would not hesitate to lay out money upon his land,
because he would feel sure of getting the benefit of the outlay. This,'
they add, 'is one of the principal means which the English Government
has employed in bringing agriculture to the state of perfection in which
we now see it in that monarchy.'
As the greater part of the _cahiers_ of grievances prepared by the
Tiers-Etat of Artois for the States-General of 1789 have been lost, this
_Avis_ is of great value, as setting before us the real objects of that
order in Artois. The _cahiers_ of the Artesian _noblesse_ and the clergy
for the States-General are all preserved, and in respect of the general
objects to be aimed at in the States-General, these _cahiers_ go much
farther than the _Avis_. They seem to show that in Artois, as throughout
the kingdom, the _noblesse_ and the clergy were much more enamoured of
what are now called the 'principles of 1789' than were the body of the
agricultural population.
The _noblesse_ and the clergy of Artois wished to see the States-General
called at regular intervals, like the English Parliament. They wished
the Provincial Estates to be maintained and to be convened annually, and
they wished a provincial administration to be established under a system
which should give the Tiers-Etat a representation equal to that of both
the other orders united, and in which decisions should be reached not by
a vote of the orders collectively, but by the members of the whole body
voting individually, so that a measure as to which all the members for
the Tiers-Etat should be of one mind, might at any time be carried if
they could secure the adhesion of even a small number of the members
from either of the other orders. Clearly it was not necessary, in the
case of Artois, that the Tiers-Etat should be declared to be
'everything,' in order that justice might there be done to the wishes
and the interests of the Tiers-Etat! And if not in the case of Artois,
why in the case of any other French province?
The _Avis_ shows that in Artois before 1789 the representatives of the
Tiers-Etat had confidence in the liberality and the common sense of the
_noblesse_ and of the clergy, and that they were disposed to consider
all the abuses there needing reformation in the spirit of practical
compromise which had presided over and made possible the development of
liberty and of progress in Holland and in England, but of which no
traces are to be found in the chaotic history of the 'National Assembly'
of 1789. The authors of the _Avis_, for example, point out, in dealing
with the questions of the tithes and of the seignorial dues in Artois,
that it is the unequal and irregular impact, above all, of those
impositions to which most of the evils flowing from them must be
imputed; the ill-feeling they engender between the farmer and his
landlord or his pastor, the bad blood they breed between the different
orders. If the charges of one sort and another upon one field of a
farmer's holding amounted, as was sometimes the case, to one-fifth of
the value of the crop, while upon other fields of his holding the
charges amounted to no more than one-thirtieth of the value of the crop,
the farmer not unnaturally gave his chief care to the fields which were
least heavily encumbered, without much troubling himself as to their
agricultural merits relatively to the other fields.
But while the authors of the _Avis_ earnestly desired to see all this
changed, and called for the most complete revision and re-organisation
of the agricultural system in Artois, they raised no philosophical
clamour against privileges as privileges, and they had sense enough to
see that no community could afford to bring about the abolition of the
most obnoxious 'privileges' at the cost of any flagrant violations of
the Rights of Property. 'Whatever may have been the origin of these
rights,' say the authors of the _Avis_, 'their antiquity has made them
property to be respected in the hands of those who possess it. To
deprive these owners of these rights would be an injustice and an act of
violence of which no citizen can possibly dream. The privileged orders
must be asked to divest themselves of their privileges.'
Here is a recognition of 'vested interests' for which we may look in
vain from the motley mob of the 'National Assembly' into which the
States-General of 1789 so rapidly resolved, or--to speak more
exactly--dissolved, themselves! With men of the Tiers-Etat, in a
province like Artois, who could see things so plainly and state them so
fairly before the convocation of the States-General, what became the
French Revolution, plunging the whole realm into anarchy, might surely
have been made a reasonable and orderly evolution of liberty. Such a
document goes a good way in support of the contention that with ordinary
firmness, consistency, and courage on the part of the luckless Louis
XVI., the convocation of the States-General in 1789, instead of leading
France, as it actually led her, through a quagmire of blood and rapine,
into what George Sand felicitously called the 'merciless practical joke
of the Consulate,' and the stern reality of the despotic First Empire,
might easily have resulted in converting the absolute monarchy of Louis
XIV. into such a limited and constitutional monarchy as France really
enjoyed under Louis XVIII. The pathway to the Inferno of the Terror was
really paved with the good intentions of the king.
Beyond St.-Waast lies the considerable town of St.-Amand-aux-Eaux, to
which General Dumouriez transferred himself, on the pretence of taking
the waters there, while he was working out his plans for saving France
by marching on Paris and upsetting the Assembly. The plans miscarried
mainly through his own fault, but it is a curious vindication of the
patriotism of Dumouriez in making them that, while he was explaining to
the lunatics in Paris, in January 1793, the absurdity of attempting to
overthrow the English power in India, and the German empire in Europe,
before feeding and clothing their armies on the frontier, de
Beurnonville, whom Dumouriez was destined to seize and arrest at
St.-Amand, was himself writing from the headquarters at Sarrelouis to
Cochon Lapparent at Paris that everything was going to the dogs, and
that the Government was mad about chimeras. 'We think of nothing,' he
said, 'but giving liberty to people who don't ask us to do it, and with
all the will in the world to be free ourselves, we don't know how to
be!'
St.-Amand now has a population of ten or twelve thousand souls. Part of
the Anzin property lies within the communal limits, but the place is a
busy place and has industries of its own. It is connected with Anzin and
with Valenciennes by a steam tramway, and I went there with M. Guary one
fine summer morning to see what is left of the once magnificent
Benedictine monastery of the seventeenth century, which was the great
feature of St.-Amand a hundred years ago. A picture preserved in the
collection at Valenciennes gives a fair notion of the extent and
magnificence of the abbey, the demolition of which has been going on
from 1793 to this day. M. Guary remembers the stately ruins as much
more extensive in his youth than they now are, and as the good people of
St.-Amand have very recently allowed the local architect to put up,
under the very shadow of the exquisitely beautiful belfry still
standing, one of the most dismal and commonplace brick school-houses I
have seen in France, it is to be presumed that a few more years will see
everything pulled down, and replaced, perhaps, by a miniature
reproduction in steel and iron of the Eiffel Tower.
Before the deviltries of 1789 began, the marketplace of St.-Amand must
have been one of the most picturesque in Northern Europe. The market is
still held there, and the place was full when we crossed it of peasant
women and peasants, carts laden with vegetables, tables set out with all
manner of utensils, with fruits, with knicknacks. All was bustle and
animation. It was the old picture, save for the uncomely modifications
of our modern costume. But of the splendid architectural frame in which
that picture once was set, how little now is left!
Beside the lofty belfry, one of the most graceful seventeenth-century
buildings now to be anywhere seen, a few arches of one of the cloisters
and one of the great abbatial gatehouses converted into a town-hall! The
Vandal Directory of Chauny dealt more rationally with Prémontré than the
'patriots' of St.-Amand with their superb abbey. Had they preserved it,
their town would now have possessed not only an architectural monument
of interest and importance, but ample space and the best possible
'installations' for all its public uses and offices.
Like all the Benedictine abbeys, St.-Amand was a home of letters and of
arts. What remains of its noble library is to be found, as I have said,
in the collection at Valenciennes. Of the treasury which the abbey
contained in the way of sculpture, painting, brass and iron work,
carving in wood, no such account can be given. Such of these as escaped
destruction were looted, sold, and dispersed. There is a tradition, well
or ill-founded, that some exceedingly fine sixteenth-century monuments
executed by Guyot de Beaugrant, the sculptor of the matchless
chimney-piece which, in the Chambre Échévinale at Bruges, commemorates
the expulsion of the French under Francis I. from Flanders, were brought
here and set up in the abbey. If so, no trace of them remains. In the
gatehouse, of which the local authorities have taken possession, a few
fine old books, relics of the abbatial library, are still kept, and the
vaulted chapter-room on the upper floor, used now as a council chamber,
contains four interesting _dessus de porte_ painted here by Watteau. The
subjects are scriptural, of course; but as, in spite of all her efforts,
the obliging damsel who acted as our cicerone could not possibly manage
the blinds and sashes of the lofty window in the octagonal room which
they adorn, it was impossible to make out to what period of the artist's
career they belong. Upon one of them--the 'Woman taken in Adultery'--we
got light enough thrown to show that its colouring is admirable. It can
hardly have been painted while Watteau was at work in Paris on his
endless reproductions of the then popular St.-Nicholas, but must
probably have been executed after his study of Rubens in the Luxembourg,
and his failure to win the first prize at Rome had opened to him his
true path to fame, and carried him into the French Academy of Fine Arts
as 'the painter of festivals and of gallantry.'
The fine old church of St.-Amand has fared better than the abbey. It has
been judiciously restored, and the third Napoleon made it an historical
monument. Despite the Radicalism of the place, we found it thronged
with people of both sexes--the men, indeed, almost in a
majority--attending a high mass. It was rather startling, as we emerged
from this service on our way back to Anzin, to come upon a large cabaret
which bore for its sign the words, in glaring gilt letters, 'Au Nouveau
Bethléhem, Estaminet Barbès.' Whether this is the conventicle of a sect
of believers in the revolutionary Barbès I could not learn. But it is
just possible that the Barbès, whom it celebrates, may be the
enterprising proprietor of the place, and that the sacred name he has
given it is a relic of that familiar use of holy things which never
scandalised the good people of the Middle Ages, particularly in Flanders
and in France. Does not the best old inn in the comfortable town of
Châlons-sur-Marne to this day bear the name of 'La Haute Mère de Dieu'?
I have already said that the miners of Anzin have been practically
enjoying all the advantages of co-operation, while the 'true
Republicans' of M. Doumer have been 'studying' and going to sleep over
that 'beautiful and generous idea.' As a matter of fact, the
'Co-operative Society of the Anzin Miners,' now known in commerce as
'Léon Lemaire et Cie of Anzin,' was founded, I find, even before the
Co-operative Association of the Glass-workers at St.-Gobain.
It was organised in 1865, two years before the passage of the Imperial
law affecting co-operation.
M. Casimir Périer, a son of the Minister of Louis Philippe, and the
father of the present Republican deputy of the same name, was then a
director of the Anzin Company. He had seen what M. Doumer fantastically
imagines to be the purely French and republican 'idea' of co-operation
carried out in England, the 'beautiful and generous idea,' as even every
French schoolboy ought to know, being of English and not of French
origin.
M. Périer had been particularly struck by the great success of the
Rochdale experiment--an experiment begun and carried out, as Mr.
Holyoake has set forth at length, by weavers, who, being nearly at the
end of their tether, and worn out with distress, had associated
themselves into a company under the name of the 'Equitable Pioneers of
Rochdale.' He looked thoroughly into the history of this experiment, and
having convinced himself that the 'beautiful and generous' idea might
bear as good fruit at Anzin as at Rochdale, he went to work in earnest,
got the society organised, accepted the honorary chairmanship of it, and
set it on its feet on February 21, 1865. M. Cochin took the same matter
up at St.-Gobain, and in 1867 the Imperial law, about which M. Doumer
and his 'true Republicans' have been cackling and dabbling for ten
consecutive years, was enacted, and the co-operative associations became
legally constituted bodies. The statutes which now govern the Anzin
Association were adopted on December 8, 1867, and the Association was
formally launched.
The authorities at first could not be made to understand that a
co-operative association was not a mercantile speculation, and for some
time the Anzin Association was compelled to pay a regular fee for a
licence, or 'patent,' as it is called in France. This exaction, however,
was long ago given up.
Under the original statutes the profits derived from the sale to the
members of the Association, and to them only (a rule never departed
from), of all the goods purchased by the Association, were to be divided
into a hundred parts. Of these, seventy parts were to be distributed at
the end of each year to the members, proportionally to the sales and
deliveries made to each of them. Twenty parts were to be set aside for a
reserve fund; and the remaining ten parts were to be used by the
governing committee chiefly in paying the salaries of the manager and
employees of the Association.
Such was the success from the outset of the Anzin experiment that within
six years, at a general meeting held on April 24, 1872, the Association
adopted a resolution suspending the payment over into the reserve fund
of the twenty parts of the profits set aside to be so paid, and ordering
these twenty parts also to be paid over to the members semi-annually.
The reserve fund had already reached proportions which made it
unnecessary and even undesirable to increase it.
The Association was originally constituted for a term of twenty years,
from December 10, 1867. At a general meeting held on March 27, 1887, its
life was prolonged for another twenty years, or to December 10, 1907.
It might edify M. Doumer as to the nationality of the 'beautiful and
generous' idea which his 'true Republicans' find it so difficult to
'study,' if he would take the trouble to visit this Anzin region. He
would find the establishments of the Association currently known by the
English name of 'stores.' I found one of them flourishing in every
commune which I visited in the vicinity of Anzin; at St.-Waast, where
the experiment was first made, at Denain, where during the past year it
has been found necessary to establish two stores instead of one--at
Anzin, at Fresnes, at Thiers, at Abscon, at Vieux-Condé! The
Association, indeed, which began in 1865 with fifty-one members and a
subscribed capital of 2,150 francs, now conducts no fewer than fifteen
'stores,' and now consists of no fewer than 3,118 families.
The capital of the Association, originally fixed at 30,000 francs, in
600 shares of fifty francs each, was increased by a vote of a general
meeting in April 1882 to 250,000 francs. The 'firm-name' is now 'Lemaire
and Company,' the present manager being M. Léon Lemaire, who can use
this 'firm-name' only for the affairs of the Association. The manager
(or _gérant_) is elected at a general meeting to serve for three years,
but he is always re-eligible. His salary is fixed by the governing
committee, and the amount of it is charged to the general expenses. The
governing committee has power also to present the manager, if it thinks
proper, with a certain sum each year taken from the ten parts of the
profits which are set apart by the statutes of the Association to be
used for such purposes by the Committee. All the persons employed by the
Association in various capacities are taken, as far as is found
compatible with the interests of the business, from among the families
of the members. This is particularly the case with regard to the young
girls, of whom forty-eight are now employed in the different drapery and
mercery stores, and an excellent practice has been adopted of calling in
a certain number of girls when there is a special pressure of business
to serve for a short period, these girls being regularly registered, and
thus constituting a sort of reserve corps, from which the permanent
employees are taken as vacancies are made.
The operations of the Association cover all manner of commodities
excepting butcher's meat, it having been found that there are
insuperable difficulties in the way of dealing in butcher's meat over so
wide an area. These difficulties do not exist in the case of what the
French call _charcuterie_. A central pork butchery has been established
just outside the _octroi_ at Anzin, and the business done in that line
now averages about 30,000 kilogrammes a year, the difference per
kilogramme between the buying and the selling prices averaging about
eighteen francs. It is the iron rule of the Association never to sell at
a figure beyond the average ruling retail prices in the shops, it being
quite clear that if it should now and then be necessary, in order to
cover the Association, to sell at prices equivalent with the shop
prices, the members would still have a real advantage in the eventual
distribution of the profits.
It is impossible to examine the statutes, and the rules adopted under
them, without being struck by the precision, clearness, and efficiency
of the methods prescribed to keep the accountability of all the
different agents of the Association within easily definable limits, and
to simplify, in the final adjustment, the necessarily complicated
accounts of so many stores dealing with customers many of whom must,
from the force of circumstances, be allowed a credit of a fortnight as
cash. The proof of all such methods, of course, is the net result. In
the case of the Co-operative Association of Anzin this proof is
conclusive in favour both of the methods and of the men by whom they
have for now more than twenty years been administered.
The operations of the Association for the first semester of its
existence closed on February 22, 1866, with sales amounting to 71,020
fr. 10 c., and with the payment to the members of an 8 per cent.
dividend, amounting in all to 8,228 francs. From that day to this, the
semi-annual dividend has never fallen below eight per cent., excepting
for the half-year ending August 22, 1868, when it was declared at 7-1/2
per cent. By August 1872 it readied 12 per cent. and stood there for
three semesters. It then fell to 10 per cent., and stood there from
February 28, 1874, to August 28, 1878, when it rose to 11. By August 31,
1879, it rose to 12, and by February 29, 1884, to 13 per cent., at which
figure it has stood ever since down to February 28, 1889, with two
exceptions--August 31, 1884, when it rose to 14, and February 28, 1887,
when it fell to 12-1/4.
The total amount of sales made to the members between February 1866 and
February 1889 was 38,864,999 francs; and the total amount of dividends
paid to the members during that period has been 4,585,557 fr. 69 c.,
showing an average dividend during these twenty-three years of
11.80 per cent.
It appears to me that this is a very good account rendered of a very
good stewardship, and involves, for the workmen interested, a number of
useful practical lessons on the true relations of capital to labour,
including the relations of their own capital to their own labour. There
are now about 800 Co-operative Associations of Consumers in France; but
the Anzin Association is by far the most important of them all. As the
existing associations are estimated to consist on an average of 550
members each, we have 440,000 heads of families, and a total presumable
population, therefore, of not far from 2,000,000, more or less
successfully availing themselves of the co-operative principle in
France. The net profits vary greatly in the returns of these
associations, from 1 to 14 per cent. The Co-operative Coal Association
of Roubaix shows a net profit of 21 per cent., and the Co-operative
Bakery of the same busy and thriving city a profit of 23 per cent. But
the Anzin Association not only covers more ground than any of the rest:
it covers it in a more equably satisfactory fashion. During the past
year, on an employed capital of 156,150 francs, it made sales amounting
to 2,303,836 francs, with a gross profit of 450,497 fr. 61 c., and a net
profit of 310,106 fr. 30 c. Each man had spent an average of 738 fr. 28
c., and received a net profit of 99 fr. 45 c. In other words, every
holder of a 50 franc share paid for his share out of a single year's net
profit, and pocketed 49 francs to boot!
As indicating the scale of comfort attained in their daily life by these
miners and their families, it is of interest to glance over the
schedule of the goods and commodities supplied by these co-operative
stores, it being premised that the stores do not keep or sell what are
regarded as 'articles of luxury,' so that in these schedules we have the
present scale of the necessaries and comforts of ordinary life among the
more industrious and thrifty of the French working-classes. That even in
the seventeenth century the French artisans, and the more prosperous of
the French peasants, lived much more comfortably than one would infer
from the pictures usually painted even by such historians as Michelet,
who, with all his theories and all his imagination, took more trouble
than M. Thiers to keep within hailing distance of the facts, would seem
to be shown by the inventories and the wills of artisans and peasants
disinterred during the last quarter of a century from the local archives
of Troyes and other important towns.
Here, in the Anzin district, to-day, we find these co-operative stores
supplying to 3,000 families of the working-class 12,000 metrical
quintals or bales of the finest quality of wheat flour, 3,000 of these
going to the houses of the members, and 9,000 to the bakery of the
Association, which turns out, on an average, 1,100 loaves, of 3 kilos
each, per day. With this bread the members take from the stores annually
110,000 kilos of the best butter, 50,000 kilos of coffee, 37,000 kilos
of chicory, 4,000 kilos of chocolate, 13,000 Marolles cheeses from the
land of Brétigny--where Edward III. was scared by a tremendous
thunderstorm, which made him 'think of the day of judgment,' into giving
peace to France and liberty to her captive king--200,000 kilos of
potatoes, 6,000 kilos of prunes d'Enté, 11,000 kilos of rice, 15,000
bottles of wine, 12,000 bottles of vinegar, 33,000 bottles of spirits of
various sorts, 45,000 kilos of salt, 6,000 boxes of sardines, 100,000
kilos of maize and corn, 34,000 kilos of bran, 90,000 kilos of sugar,
20,000 kilos of beans, 30,000 kilos of ham, sausages, and other products
of the pork-butchery. That butcher's meat, which, for the reasons I have
mentioned, the stores cannot supply, plays a large proportional part in
the obviously good dietary of these families, may, I think, be inferred
from the fact that the stores annually dispose of 10,000 pots of the
best French mustard, and of 1,000 kilos of white pepper. Vegetables and
fruits are supplied in abundance by the country, and in many cases by
the allotments of the workmen themselves, while beer, as I have said, is
everywhere abundant and cheap.
That the miners and working-people of Anzin are well lodged and well fed
may be considered to be beyond a doubt. Let us now see what they do in
the way of clothing themselves, and of furnishing their houses.
They buy from the stores annually 30,000 francs'-worth of kitchen and
household utensils, which are both well made and cheap in all this part
of France, 600 kilos of mattrass wool, 4,400 yards of sheeting, 500 wool
and cotton blankets and bedspreads, 9,000 towels, 44,000 pairs of
sabots, 10,000 pairs of shoes, 4,600 caps and hats, 2,200 pairs of
stockings, 3,700 shirts and 6,000 mètres of shirting, 17,000 mètres of
_piqué_, 2,000 undervests and 2,000 mètres of flannel, 6,000
handkerchiefs, 52,000 mètres of linen goods, 17,000 mètres of lustrines;
7,200 mètres of merinos, 7,000 mètres of muslins, 14,000 mètres of
_Indiennes_, 57,000 francs'-worth of mercers' wares, 24,000 mètres of
calicoes, and, finally, 3,100 yards of velvet. When we remember that
this is the annual outlay for keeping up the household wardrobe, not the
original outlay in establishing it, it seems to me that the workpeople
of Anzin ought to be, and indeed one need only walk and drive about the
region to see that they are, at least as well clothed as they are housed
and fed.
Umbrellas even have come to be regarded as 'necessities' here, and the
stores annually supply 1,300 of these useful but essentially fugitive
articles. The men are clothed by their village tailors and bootmakers
chiefly, so that the masculine wardrobe is represented in the accounts
of the stores less extensively than the feminine. But the Anzin miners
nevertheless annually invest in scarves and cravats to the number of
more than 4,000. Each man on going into the employ of the company
receives, as I have said, a complete mining outfit, the cost of which is
not defrayed out of his wages. But the miners annually buy, on an
average, 500 new mining-suits for themselves.
Tables, chairs, bedsteads, bureaux, well made and often handsome, are to
be had in all these communes at very low prices; and I went into no
house in any of them which did not seem to me well equipped in these
particulars. Engravings, coloured and plain and lithographs, are to be
found in them all, and though the people are obviously not much addicted
to literature, I found in one miner's house at Thiers quite a collection
of books, and most of them good, sensible, and instructive books,
installed in an upper chamber, in which the housewife said, her 'man'
liked to sit and read when it was too hot out of doors in the garden.
This good dame, by the way, was of the opinion that 'the house gives you
the character of the wife,' and that 'the conduct of the husband depends
upon the character of the wife.' Her own 'man' was evidently an
excellent and orderly person, so I considered it a legitimate compliment
to assure her that I entirely agreed with her.
I hope, for the future of France, that she may be right. For there seems
to be a tendency here, as there certainly is in other parts of France,
to insist on sending their girls to the religious schools, even when
they allow their boys to attend the lay schools, where they are exposed
to having the 'true Republican' deputies and functionaries of the time
get up--as M. Doumer did the other day, at the opening of a new lay
school in the Aisne--and propound the doctrine that 'morals have nothing
to do with religion.'
The lay schools are attended, for example, in Anjou by 22,451 boys, and
only 3,562 girls: while the free congreganist schools are attended by
25,360 girls, and only 5,232 boys.
Adding the number together, this gives us a total of 30,592 children in
the religious, as against 26,013 in the anti-religious or irreligious
schools of one province.
If my good housewife at Thiers is right as to the influence of the
character of the women in France upon the conduct of the men, there is
hope in these figures, which I am assured pretty fairly represent the
state of things in Flanders as well as in Anjou, with the difference
that the proportion of boys attending the religious schools is probably
larger in Flanders than in Anjou. M. Doumer's doctrine that 'morals
should be taught independently of religion' certainly did not commend
itself to all his constituents. The _Journal de St.-Quentin_, commenting
upon it, plainly said, 'The verdicts of our assize courts show us every
day the result of the atheistic instructions recommended by M. Doumer
and the rest of the Masonic Brothers. The truth simply is that if some
remedy be not soon found for the situation created by these people, who
are as stupid as they are mischievous, in a few years we shall be
obliged either to decuple the gendarmerie, or to allow every citizen to
go about armed with a revolver, in order to protect himself against our
much too liberally emancipated young scolos!'
Curiously enough this voice from St.-Quentin in France substantially
echoes another voice from another St. Quentin in California--the seat of
the State Penitentiary in that young and active and opulent American
commonwealth. In California the plan of giving instruction in morality,
independently of religion, has been tried much longer than in France,
and certainly in circumstances much more favourable to its success. The
result, as set forth in an Official Report of the resident director,
cited by Mr. Montgomery, ex-assistant Attorney-General of the United
States, in his treatise on 'The School Question,' is that, while the
illiterate convicts in the California penitentiary, at the date of the
report, numbered 112, against 985 who could read and write, '_among the
younger convicts they could all read and write_'.
I have already spoken of many of the advantages offered by the Anzin
Company to its workmen and miners, as amounting really to a kind of
participation in the profits of the company. This, I think, must be
admitted to be clearly the case with regard to certain regulations
affecting workmen's pensions, established here by the governing council
of the company in December 1886.
These regulations are to affect workmen who contribute to what is known
as the 'National Retiring Fund for Old Age.' This fund was established
originally in 1850 under the presidency of Louis Napoleon. It was
re-organised by a law passed in July 1886, and by a decree issued in
December 1886. It is under the guarantee of the State, and is
administered by a committee co-operating with the Ministry of Commerce.
Its object is to enable working-men and others to secure annuities up
to the amount of 1,200 francs a year, at or after the age of fifty, by
the payment of small regular assessments on their wages. The smallest
sums are received by the fund, which of course is managed on principles
not unlike those of the great life insurance companies. A running
account is kept with the treasury to meet the current expenses of the
fund, but all the rest of the money received by it is invested in the
French public funds, or in securities guaranteed by the State. No part
of the compound interest received by the fund is deducted to meet the
expenses of administration. It all goes to the account of the
depositors, the current expenses being met by the Deposit Fund, which
manages the Retiring Fund. If at any time before that fixed for his
enjoyment of the retiring pension, the depositor should be made
incapable of work by some illness or accident, he is at once put into
possession, without awaiting the age fixed in the original agreement, of
a pension or annuity proportioned to the amount of his actual payments
and to his age at the time when the incapacity is medically and legally
established.
Every year a certain amount is voted by the Chamber as a subvention to
this fund, and out of this annual appropriation these 'premature
pensions' may be increased by the committee in charge of the fund. This
is a sort of practical State socialism beyond a doubt. But it is at
least as respectable as the expenditure made in this year's budget of
6,500,000 francs, or about one fifth of the whole amount of the French
naval pension list, on annuities of indemnification 'to the victims of
the _coup d'état_ of 1851,' the _coup d'état_ of 1851 having been simply
a collision between the Legislature of that year, trying to suppress the
Executive, with the Executive trying to suppress the Legislature, with
the result that the Executive carried the day, and that the French
people, by an overwhelming majority, approved the victory of the
Executive.
Why the socialistic principles at the bottom of the National Retiring
Fund for workmen should not be extended to others than working-men it is
not easy to see. The French pension-list is now very heavy. It figures
in this year's budget at nearly a hundred millions of francs, exclusive
of the military and naval pensions, which amount to about one hundred
and twenty-five millions more, and without counting the _débits de
tabac_, which are in fact a kind of pensions used freely by deputies and
other functionaries of influence to reward services of all sorts. Of
these about two hundred were given away in 1888, the list filling five
pages of the huge reports of the Finance Ministry.
The National Retiring Fund for Old Age is managed by a high committee of
sixteen, which must include two deputies, two state councillors, two
presidents of mutual aid societies, and one manufacturer. Workmen who
choose to avail themselves of the fund may break off and renew their
payments into it as they like, and increase or diminish the amount of
their annual deposits without affecting by any interruption the value of
their previously acquired interest in the fund. Deposits may be made in
the name of any person at or after the age of three years, so that a
father may in this way, if he likes, form a small property for his
children. The authorisation of the father, however, is not required to
validate deposits made in the name or for the benefit of a child, unless
these deposits are made by the children themselves, in which case they
merely show the authority of their parents as guardians until they have
attained the age of sixteen. Married women may make deposits
independently of their husbands, but unless these deposits are gifts to
them, they are held to be equally the property of the husband and wife
where these are not legally separated. In case of the absence either of
the husband or of the wife for more than a year, a justice of the peace
may authorise the deposit of money to the exclusive benefit of the
partner on the spot. Deposits of one franc are received from one person,
but in no case can one person deposit more than one thousand francs a
year. The capital deposited may be alienated to the fund or reserved. In
the latter case the capital may be returned, but without interest, to
the representatives of the depositor in case of death. Any reserved
capital may be alienated for the purpose of increasing the income at a
certain age, to be named by the depositor when he signs the alienation.
The pension incomes are guaranteed by the State. They become payable at
any full year of age selected by the depositor between fifty and
sixty-five years. After sixty-five the pension-income is paid to the
depositor from and after the first quarter-day following the deposit. Up
to 360 francs the pension-incomes are not liable to be seized for debt.
If they accrue from a capital presented to the depositor the donor may
have them declared unsellable to their full amount.
Funds deposited in the National Sayings Bank may be transferred in
whole, or in part, to the National Retiring Fund for Old Age.
Under the conditions of this fund an annual alienated deposit of 10
francs, begun at the age of thirty years, will secure the depositor at
fifty an annuity of 28 fr. 62 c., at fifty-five of 47 fr. 89 c., at
sixty of 81 fr. 43 c., and at sixty-five of 145 fr. 97 c.
The regulations adopted by the Anzin Council in 1886 are intended to
duplicate the results of this system of the National Retiring Fund for
the benefit of any workman who chooses to make himself a depositor in
the National Fund to the amount of 1-1/2 per cent. of his annual wages.
Suppose, for example, a miner earning 1,500 francs a year chooses to
deposit in the National Retiring Fund 22 fr. 50 c. a year. Upon
verification of this the Anzin Company will pay into the same fund for
him annually an equal sum. This would give the miner who began his
deposit of 22 fr. 50 c. a year at the age of thirty, a pension-income at
the age of fifty of 128 fr. 74 c., or just about the pension-income
which he would draw at the age of sixty-five from the National Fund if
he began a payment of 10 francs a year into that fund at the age of
thirty-two. A miner who began his annual deposit of 22 fr. 50 c. in the
National Fund at the age of twenty-one, taking advantage then of the
regulations of the Anzin Council, would enjoy at fifty a pension-income
of very nearly 250 francs a year.
Under the Anzin regulations, the two payments made by and for the
workmen concerned are inscribed in an individual bank-book which becomes
his property. The sums paid in by the company are alienated, and to the
exclusive advantage of the workman, while he is left at liberty to
alienate or reserve his own payments. If he is married, of course his
personal payments are held to be made one-half for the benefit of his
wife.
In the case of subterranean miners, the company will begin to carry out
this system as soon as they enter its service, and without regard to
their nationality. In the case of the surface workmen, they must be
eighteen years of age, and must have been in the service of the company
for at least three years without interruption. The reasons for the
difference are obvious.
The payments of the company cease at fifty years, but the workman is
not obliged to draw his pension-income then, as by continuing his
personal payments he can put it off, thereby increasing it until he
attains the age of 55, 60, or 65.
To meet the case of miners drawn into the army, the company, as long as
the miner so drawn and returning to its service shall remain in its
service, will pay in fractions, and within a period equal to that of his
military service, into the National Fund for his benefit a sum equal to
the percentage he would himself have paid into the National Fund upon
his wages, calculating them as being the same during the period of his
military service that they would have been had he remained there at work
in the mine.
In the case of a workman who falls ill or is injured, the company, if he
is a member of a mutual aid society, which will make his personal
percentage payments for him, will pay itself an equal sum during his
illness or incapacity for at least one calendar year. After that each
case must be separately dealt with.
Furthermore, and in addition to these general conditions, the company
will grant to workmen long in its service, who shall have made their
regular payments to the National Retiring Fund under these regulations,
when they give up work, supplementary pensions calculated at the rate of
3 francs a year for fifteen years of service for the miners, and of 1
fr. 50 c. a year for fifteen years for the surface workmen. These
supplementary pensions are doubled for married workmen, so that they may
amount to 90 francs a year for miners, and to 45 francs a year for
surface workmen.
On the whole, I think the miners of Anzin knew what they were about when
they stood aloof from the 'strike' in the Pas-de-Calais. To do this was
to aid the 'strikers' themselves much more effectually than by joining
in the strike. For surely the spectacle of such an orderly prosperity as
exists at Anzin, the result of equitable relations maintained for years
between Capital and Labour, is the strongest possible argument in
support of the reasonable demands of Labour. But what are the reasonable
demands of Labour?
It appeared from an inquiry made by the 'Society of Mineral Industries'
after the great strike of 1883, that, out of ten coal-producing
companies in the North of France which maintained Assistance Funds for
the miners, the Anzin Company alone did this entirely at the expense of
the company. The nine other companies reported a joint revenue of
821,133 francs in 1882 for these Assistance Funds, of which amount the
workmen furnished 603,097 francs. The outlay for 1882 exceeded the
revenues and amounted to 849,839 fr. 49 c. But, in addition to the
603,097 francs furnished by the workmen to these funds, the nine
companies in question expended themselves, in pensions, medical service,
school subventions, free fuel, hospitals and other contributions to the
welfare of these 32,849 miners and workmen, no less than 2,942,694 fr.
91 c. So that while the workmen expended on an average 3 per cent. of
their wages in maintaining Assistance Funds, these nine companies
(excluding Anzin, where no demand was made on the workmen) expended for
the benefit of the workmen and their families an amount equal to 9 per
cent. of the wages paid by them, and to 24 per cent. of the interest and
dividends paid to the stockholders. On the average the companies thus
spent about 50 c. for every ton of coal extracted.
Could labour reasonably demand more than this of capital?
Under the leadership of deputies like MM. Basly and Camélinet, backed
by the revolutionary press of Paris, the miners in another part of
France, at Decazeville, went on 'strike' in January 1888. They began by
brutally murdering M. Watrin, one of the best managers in the country.
They kept the whole region idle and in terror for three months and a
half. They inflicted great loss on the company and disturbed all the
industries of France. They themselves lost 630,427 francs of wages. The
company finally granted an increase of wages representing only 1-1/2 per
cent. of the wages sacrificed by the strike. The Municipal Council of
Paris, which had fomented the strike, magnificently gave the miners
10,000 francs of money which did not belong to them. All the Radical
press together subscribed 70,000 more. The Decazeville charities gave
2,231! And the next year all the miners testified that they had been
quite content with the wages before the strike, and gave a banquet to
the chief engineer!