M. Goblet, who has been Premier, and is now leader
of the French Radicals, has introduced the first Collectivist Bill into the French Chamber. He proposes that whenever a mining strike has lasted too long, the State shall resume possession of the mine. If the strike was not caused by the fault of the lessees, they are to receive indemnity at the rate of half the capital value as reckoned from a calculation of the last five years' profits. The State is to work the mine at first, but afterwards to make the miners themselves its lessees. The proposal, with those terms of compensation, is, of course, sure to be rejected ; but, as we have argued elsewhere, there is a drift in the French mind towards trying Collectivist experiments which renders such a proposal one of serious importance. It must not be forgotten that technically the Bill does not propose confiscation, the State in France being the freeholder of all mines, as it would have been in England, but that the Baronage, after a fierce struggle over the matter, defeated the Crown. It must be added that M. Goblet, in proposing such inadequate compensation, is possibly influenced by some pessimist calculations as to the exhaustibility of the mines.
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