FRENCH BARGAIN COUNTERS.
"Yes, it is the great shops that have done that, madame. Once, you saw
what was only well finished and a credit to the worker, and, even if the
reward was small, she had pride in the work and her own skill, and did
always her best. But now, what will you? The thing must be cheap,
cheapest. The machine to sew hurries everything, and you find the
workwoman sans ambition and busy only to hurry and be one with the
machine. It is wrong, all wrong, but that is progress, and one must
submit. When the small shops had place to live, and the great _magasins_
were not for ladies or any who wished the best, then it was different,
but now all is changed, and work has no character. It is all the same;
always the machine."
More than once this plaint has been made, and the sewing-machine
accused as the cause of depression in wages, of deterioration of all
hand needlework, and of the originality that once distinguished French
productions; and there is some truth in the charge, not only for Paris,
but for all cities to which needlewomen throng. Machinery has gradually
revolutionized all feminine industries in Paris, and its effect is not
only on the general system of wages, but upon the moral condition of the
worker, and family life as a whole has become to the student of social
questions one of gravest importance. On the one hand is the conviction,
already quoted, that it has brought with it deterioration in every phase
of the work; on the other, that it is an educating and beneficent agent,
raising the general standard of wages, and putting three garments where
once but one could be owned. It is an old story, and will give food for
speculation in the future, quite as much as in the past. But in talking
with skilled workers, from dressmakers to the needlewomen employed on
trousseaux and the most delicate forms of this industry, each has
expressed the same conviction, and this quite apart from the political
economist's view that there must be a return to hand production, if the
standard is not to remain hopelessly below its old place. Such return
would not necessarily exclude machinery, which must be regarded as an
indispensable adjunct to the worker's life. It would simply put it in
its proper place,--that of aid, but never master. It is the spirit of
competition which is motive power to-day, and which drives the whirring
wheels and crowds the counters of every shop with productions which have
no merit but that of cheapness, and the price of which means no return
to the worker beyond the barest subsistence.
Subsistence in Paris has come to mean something far different from the
facts of a generation ago. Wages have always been fixed at a standard
barely above subsistence; but, even under these conditions, French
frugality has succeeded not only in living, but in putting by a trifle
month by month. As the great manufactories have sprung up, possibilities
have lessened and altered, till the workwoman, however cheerfully she
may face conditions, knows that saving has become impossible. If, in
some cases, wages have risen, prices have advanced with them till only
necessities are possible, the useful having dropped away from the plan,
and the agreeable ceased to have place even in thought. Even before the
long siege, and the semi-starvation that came to all within the walls of
Paris, prices had been rising, and no reduction has come which even
approximates to the old figures. Every article of daily need is at the
highest point, sugar alone being an illustration of what the
determination to protect an industry has brought about. The London
workwoman buys a pound for one penny, or at the most twopence. The
French workwoman must give eleven or twelve sous, and then have only
beet sugar, which has not much over half the saccharine quality of cane
sugar. Flour, milk, eggs, all are equally high, meat alone being at
nearly the same prices as in London. Fruit is a nearly impossible
luxury, and fuel so dear that shivering is the law for all but the rich,
while rents are also far beyond London prices, with no "improved
dwellings" system to give the utmost for the scanty sum at disposal. For
the needlewoman the food question has resolved itself into bread alone,
for at least one meal, with a little coffee, chiefly chicory, and
possibly some vegetable for the others. But many a one lives on bread
for six days in the week, reserving the few sous that can be saved for a
Sunday bit of meat, or bones for soup. Even the system which allows of
buying "portions," just enough for a single individual, is valueless for
her, since the smallest and poorest portion is far beyond the sum which
can never be made to stretch far enough for such indulgence.
"I have tried it, madame," said the same speaker, who had mourned over
the degeneration of finish among the workwomen. "It was the siege that
compelled it in the beginning, and then there was no complaining, since
it was the will of the good God for all. But there came a time when
sickness had been with me long, and I found no work but to stitch in my
little room far up under the roof, and all the long hours bringing so
little,--never more than two and a half francs, and days when it was
even less; and then I found how one must live. I was proud, and wished
to tell no one; but there was an _ouvrière_ next me, in a little room,
even smaller than mine, and she saw well that she could help, and that
together some things might be possible that were not alone. She had her
furnace for the fire, and we used it together on the days when we could
make our soup, or the coffee that I missed more than all,--more, even,
than wine, which is for us the same as water to you. It was months that
I went not beyond fifty centimes a day for food, save the Sundays, and
then but little more, since one grows at last to care little, and a good
meal for one day makes the next that is wanting harder, I think, than
when one wants always. But I am glad that I know; so glad that I could
even wish the same knowledge for many who say, 'Why do they not live on
what they earn? Why do they not have thrift, and make ready for old
age?' Old age comes fast, it is true. Such years as I have known are
double, yes, and treble, and one knows that they have shortened life.
But when I say now 'the poor,' I know what that word means, and have
such compassion as never before. It is the workers who are the real
poor, and for them there is little hope, since it is the system that
must change. It is the middleman who makes the money, and there are so
many of them, how can there be much left for the one who comes last, and
is only the machine that works?
"All that is true of England, and I have had two years there, and thus
know well; all that is true, too, here, though we know better how we can
live, and not be always so _triste_ and sombre. But each day, as I go by
the great new shops that have killed all the little ones, and by the
great factory where electricity makes the machines go, and the women too
become machines,--each day I know that these counters, where one can buy
for a song, are counters where flesh and blood are sold. For, madame, it
is starvation for the one who has made these garments; and why must one
woman starve that another may wear what her own hands could make if she
would? Everywhere it is _occasions_ [bargains] that the great shops
advertise. Everywhere they must be more and more, and so wages lessen,
till there is no more hope of living; and, because they lessen, marriage
waits, and all that the good God meant for us waits also."
On the surface it is all well. There is less incompetency among French
than English workers, and thus the class who furnish them need less
arraignment for their lack of thoroughness. They contend, also, with one
form of competition, which has its counterpart in America among the
farmers' wives, who take the work at less than regular rates. This form
is the convent work, which piles the counters, and is one of the most
formidable obstacles to better rates for the worker. Innumerable
convents make the preparation of underwear one of their industries, and,
in the classes of girls whom they train to the needle, find workers
requiring no wages, the training being regarded as equivalent.
Naturally, their prices can be far below the ordinary market one, and
thus the worker, benefited on the one hand, is defrauded on the other.
In short, the evil is a universal one,--an integral portion of the
present manufacturing system,--and its abolition can come only from
roused public sentiment, and combination among the workers themselves.