REPORTS OF THE PARISIAN WORKING-MEN DELE- GATES ON THE GREAT
EXHIBITION.* PanAnoxicAr., as it may seem, it is certain that by far the most abundant and authentic source of information as to the views and feelings of the French working class in reference to their own con- dition at the present day is to be found in a series of reports on our
• Rapport,' des Delegues des Ourriers &wirier's a rExposiliots de kondres en 1862. Polliis par la Commission Ouvribre. Paris : Enema Lacroix, 1862-62. own Great Exhibition of 1862, by working-men delegates from Paris, Lyons, &c. The Parisian ones, published at first at irregular inter- vals in successive pamphlets (which appear to be no longer procur- able, and seem therefore to have all been taken up by the respective trades), have recently been brought out in a big volume of nearly 900 pages, printed on a larger page and with " leaded " type, but without, so far as can be discovered, any modification of the matter, —a fact creditable to the Imperial Government,—which volume was not long since commented on by M. Lavollee, in an article on Les Expositions Universelles in Le Dens Mondes for 1st December, 1864. It hardly impairs the value of the work that the writers must of necessity belong to that portion of the French working class which is not absolutely disaffected to the Second Empire. Although one or two names occur, amongst the signatures to the various reports, of men whom the Empire sent into temporary exile, it is evident from the general tone of them that the Na- poleonic re'gime has by this time made itself at least tolerable to a large portion of the French working class, and has conciliated not a few of its members. There is an evident and express look- ing to the personal initiative of the Emperor in social ques- tions. Cabinet-makers recall a recent declaration of the "chief of the State" that "he would always take into consideration the wishes which might be expressed in the interest of the many." Carpenters tell of a strike in March, 1862, against those private employers who refused to adopt the labour tariff of the city of Paris, when more than 2,000 workmen were arrested and taken to the Prefecture (how little the political world has known of so grave a disturbance of Parisian industry!) but "an order from on high '' gave th3 disputed franc a day to the workers. Tanners speak of the "work of social regeneration so boldly undertaken, so ardently followed by His Majesty the Emperor." "The Emperor, we know," says a saddler, "only wishes for what is good, and he has the strength to fulfil it,"—a specimen of naive faith in despotism which would not be out of place in the mouth of a Russian moofik.
It is not indeed to be denied that the mere act of forming a Working-Men's Commission to organize the election, by universal suffrage of the working-men themselves, of delegates who should not only report on the mere facts of the English Exhibition, but on the condition of the English and French workmen in the respective trades, and on the wants and wishes of the latter, was one of a nature to appeal to the pride of the French working classes. The idea, it may be indeed observed, belonged to the working-men themselves, as will be seen from the brief but interesting sketch of the origin and labours of the "Commission Ouvriere" prefixed to the Paris volume. And the day came when the movement assumed proportions which gave alarm to the police, which gave orders to the Commission to proceed no further. Under these circumstances, the Commission addressed itself "directly to the Emperor, to set before him the gravity of the situation. The Emperor, having confidence in the feelings of the working class, deigned to grant to the Commission authority to proceed with its task." Thus, whether by accident or by design, the Emperor has secured for himself the sole credit of a certainly very bold and popular measure. And the feelings thereby aroused seem well expressed in a report of the leather-dressers, who speak of the "illustrious family whose actual chief has understood that the workman alone could tell exactly what takes place on the last steps of the social ladder, and signalize abuses which our laws cannot reach."
We need not dwell on the. technical portion of the reports— that treating either of the qualities or defects of exhibited articles, or the processes of manufacture in England or France—though this should be often of immense value to English employers. That portion of the reports which is generally headed "Wishes and Wants" (max et besoins) is the one which most concerns the general public. On this M. Lavollee declares that one seems no longer to hear the same men as the keen but calm judges of before. "Now the talk is of the tyranny of capital, of the curse of com- petition, of the cupidity of employers, of the exploitation of man by man. We are brought back to 1848, to its ideas, to its phrases." And again : "One sees from their reports that the French workmen, whose organs they are, retain their former prejudices against capital, against competition, against the division of labour, and even against machinery. . . . By what fatal blindness have they brought nothing back from London but their wretched and empty theories of 1848 ?" Upon which "ideas" and "theories" the able economist, after the manner of economists, proceeds straightway to trample, even to the extent of treating as the logical result of them those ateliers nationaux founded, as all the world should have knewn ere this, for the very purpose of ruining the doctrine of industrial association. And what, after
all, axe the enormous public works carried on by the Second Em- pire in the capital of France, and now proposed to be extended throughout the provinces, but ateliers nationaux in another form?
Yes, it is true,—the ideas, the language of these picked Parisian working-men, elected by their fellows, apparently full of devotion towards the Emperor personally, are those of 1848. Is there no lesson in the fact for the critic, for the ruler, for the distant observer? Those who still imagine that 1848 really kindled the social warfare which it revealed, that that social warfare has been appeased, and not merely covered over, as a fire with ashes, by the Second Empire, to burst out afresh on the first opportunity given to it to do so, may surely learn from these reports of the com- paratively satisfied amongst the workmen how baseless is the suppo- sition. It may safely be said that the most passionate declamations on the sufferings of labour which have been uttered amongst our- selves of late years in the very heat of strikes and lock-outs could be amply matched from the reports of these men, who have just been paid their expenses by official authority. Let us take a few samples, purposely omitting extreme cases. The very first report, that of the tanners, curriers, and morocco-workers, speaks of "the selfishness of French industrial society, which pays the worker as little as it can, and causes to radiate all around a spirit of parsi- mony, of narrowness of feeling. . . . Perpetuate this spirit of selfishness, of commercialism, of competition . . . . and not only every kind of industry is imperilled, but all honourable indi- viduality disappears, social chaos is established, the nation in degraded." The very last report, that of the musical instrument makers in brass, after declaring that whilst the price of all articles of necessity in France has been rising wages have daily fallen, says, "Hence it happens that the worker is for the most part in a state of complete discouragement ; he feels no emulation in his labour, he works more as a machine than as an intelligent being." Exactly midway between these two reports (27 out of 53) stands that of the marble workers. We find them lamenting an "ever augmenting disorganization" of trade, which is "sowing division and hatred between masters and workmen." It would be idle to multiply these instances. Suffice it to say that wherever the delegates have ventured upon the condition of their fellows they have painted it. in the blackest colours, and have uniformly pointed to that of the English worker in the same department as superior to their own.
How far the delegates are right in their appreciation of the state of French industry, as between the employer and the em- ployed, may be so comparatively with England, how far their con- tradicter, it would be too long to examine here. The great fact of truly European import which results from the reports is once more, and by the French reviewer's own confession, that the Parisian work- ing class at large are as discontented with their social condition after twelve years of the Empire as they were in 1848,—their dis- content only tempered, or rather only restrained, by a certain blind reliance on the good-will towards them of the crowned author of L'Extinction du Paupe'risme. And this reliance is nourished, it will be observed, by certain gracious interferences on the part of the "chief of the State" with the severities of his subordinates, so apt and frequent as irresistibly to recall the story of the famous Persepolitan discoverer's tame leopard, whose affections were riveted by being regularly thrashed every morning by the servant and as regularly delivered by the master. Which is the greater danger of the two orders of feeling to the workers themselves, to the ruler, to France, to the world, it were perhaps hard to say.
The best security against those dangers lies perhaps in the wonderful revival of that movement of co-operative association which was checked, but could not be killed, by the events of 1851-2, and the new impulse given to which has been attested by M. Baudrillart in the Journal des Debate, by M. Lavollee in the Revue des Deux Mondes, but which is still better proved by the growing prosperity of the "Societe du Credit au Travail "—a sort of "Credit Mobilier " of co-operation, and by the publication of the journal " l'association " the " Co-operator " of France. It is only through self-help that the French working-men can learn to do without and to disdain Government patronage.
• The 011ivier law on " Coalitions " only perpetuates this state of things. Its loose wording seenis framed on purpose to allow at once any amount of severity and any latitude of indulgence, in other words, to throw the worker entirely on the arbitrary will of the governing power. Faithful to the lawlessness of its origin, the Second Empire seems to be applying itself to the eradication of the very idea of law from the mind of the French people. It is succeeding in its purpose. The late condemnation of "the Thirteen" is an outrage to justice such as could be hardly matched from the annals of the most despotic eras of the
" ancien regime." It has been tamely, passively received. What does this mean but that the law has in France ceased to be an embodiment of public justice, a common property of the citizens, and is only henceforth for them an enemy too strong to-day to be resisted? And so the peace of the Second Empire is not dis- turbed, but it is at bottom but a "lame and ill-seated peace," like the treaty so called of the French era of religious conflicts in the sixteenth century, a peace which, whether it last months or years, is but a mere truce in civil war.
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