France and the Republic Part 27

Set over against these incontrovertible facts, the fact, as incontrovertible, for which I am indebted here to M. Grimbert, that of the millions expended in defence of liberty and religion here at Lille, a very large proportion has been contributed by one single Catholic citizen of this ancient Flemish city, who has consecrated his life and his fortune to his faith in the spirit of the earliest Christian times, and I think my readers will agree with me, not only that the religious sentiment is not dead in France, but that it never was more living and more active in France, nor more full of promise for the social and political regeneration of this great people.

I shall not run the risk of offending this good Catholic by naming him, though his name and his work are an open secret for every intelligent person in Lille. Suffice it that, coming of an old Flemish stock and bearing an old Flemish name, this citizen (the t.i.tle of citizen means something respectable in these staunch old free cities) of Lille years ago insisted to his brother, who was his a.s.sociate in the owners.h.i.+p and management of one of the largest commercial houses of this region, that they should take regularly into the partners.h.i.+p account of their business, for one-third of their annual profits, 'the work of G.o.d.' This was done; and from that day to this the proportion thus set apart of their profits has been regularly devoted to the service of the Church and of charity. But this is not all. The brother, of whom I speak with the reticence and the reverence due to a type of character not absolutely common in this age of the Golden Calf, has systematically limited his own personal expenses during the whole of these years to a few thousands of francs, devoting all the rest of his income to religious and benevolent objects.

I should really like to see a calm business-like estimate made of the economical advantages likely to result to a country from extinguis.h.i.+ng at an expense of several hundreds of millions of francs a year the faith which gives birth to characters such as this.

I visited, in one of the suburbs of Lille, the extensive manufactories of another well-known house, the heads of which have worked out and established an excellent system of 'mutual a.s.sistance' among their employees, and built up a large and well-ordered _cite ouvriere_ on a plan substantially resembling that of those which I saw at St.-Gobain and at Anzin. A house for young girls established by this firm, very near their main factory, struck me as particularly admirable. It is under the management of the Sisters of St.-Vincent de Paul, who fill the place with a pervading spirit of cheerfulness and animation, quite indescribable. The dormitories were the perfection of neatness. The gymnastic hall and the grounds were in apple-pie order, and as the lower part of the large and airy building erected by the firm for this domicile is used during the day as a kind of creche by the married women who leave their young children here while they are busy in the factory, the whole place was alive with merry and laughing little imps. I heard of other establishments of the same kind at and near Roubaix on a still larger scale. These I unfortunately had not time to visit. Under the Empire in 1865 a few energetic citizens of Lille induced the munic.i.p.ality to guarantee five per cent, interest on a capital of 2,000,000 francs for the establishment of a company to construct, let and sell houses for working-men under certain conditions as to the isolation of each house and as to its proper ventilation and drainage.

The rental of these houses can never exceed eight per cent, on the cost of erection, those of one story never to cost more than 2,400 francs, and those of two stories more than 3,000 francs, including the cost of the land. The houses are built of brick with foundations and sills of Soignies stone. These were the original statutes, but the company is now allowed to build single-story houses on a larger scale with cellars, which may be rented for 400 francs a year or bought for 5,000 francs--a first payment in the case of purchase to be made of 500 francs, and after that the money to be paid in instalments of 40 francs a month over thirteen years. All the wells and pumps are supplied by the munic.i.p.ality.

The munic.i.p.ality also makes an annual grant in aid of a very useful charity, founded under the Empire, and largely developed by private gifts and legacies, called the 'Invalids of Labour.' This now secures pensions to nearly a hundred workmen, disabled by serious accidents incurred in their labour or through some effort to help others in peril.

It also gives temporary a.s.sistance in less severe cases. But the most characteristic inst.i.tution which I found flouris.h.i.+ng at Lille has a history worth telling. It strikingly ill.u.s.trates the development under the old _regime_ in France and Flanders of those public works of benevolence of which we are so often and so audaciously asked to believe that they had no existence before the benign 'principles of 1789'

bedewed the hearts of men, and it not less strikingly ill.u.s.trates the demoralising and destructive influence upon all manner of sound and useful establishments throughout France of the headlong and reckless administration of public affairs by the successive 'governments' of the First Republic.

In the year 1607, on September 27, a worthy Catholic citizen, Bartholomew Masurel, _bourgeois et manant_ of the city of Lille, came before two notaries, and declared 'that to succour the poor people of Lille in their necessities, and also for the salvation of his own soul and the souls of his predecessors and successors, he wished to establish a _Mont-de-Piete_, where money loans should be made without usury or interest, and not as they were made by the Lombards.'

To this end Bartholomew Masurel gave, by a donation between living persons, and irrevocable, to take effect after his death, all his lands, fiefs, and houses which he owned at Lille, and in his country place, and the value of which might be estimated at a hundred and fifty thousand _livres parisis_, or in money of our day nominally 300,000 francs. In fact, the gift, I am told, represented about half a million francs of our days.

But the good '_bourgeois et manant_' could not hold out till his death against the appeal which the sight of 'the poor people of Lille in their necessities' daily made to his kindly heart. So in 1609 he agreed with the Mayor, that he would turn over all these possessions at once to the magistrates to be applied to the purpose he meant to effect, the magistrates agreeing to secure to him an annuity out of the funds of the city of 1,200 florins, or about 1,562 francs of our time. Thereupon he went to work with the authorities to found his charity. From his statutes we learn that foundations of this kind were then common in French Flanders. He models them, as he says, upon 'those of similar foundations in our neighbouring towns and elsewhere.'

No loans were to be made except to '_manants et habitants de la Ville Taille et Banlieue de Lille_,' and only to 'poor and necessitous persons who, not being able to gain their livelihood, were forced to borrow money;' nor were loans to be made to 'persons prodigal, of evil life, and accustomed to squander their goods.' For this due order was to be taken by the magistrates. At first the loans were limited to 24 florins (30 francs) to one person; the lowest sum loaned being 20 patars, or 1 fr. 25 c. of our times. So well had Bartholomew Masurel organised his charity, and so many good Christian souls swelled its funds by gifts and bequests, that within a year the maximum loan was raised to 50 florins, in 1669 to 100 florins, and in 1745 it was fixed at 120 florins, or 150 francs. At this figure it stood when the First Republic began its experiments. The fund was then known as 'the true Mont-de-Piete,' and was carried on under letters patent granted in 1609 by the Archduke Albert of Austria. When Lille became French in 1667, Louis XIV had to recognise and confirm all the rights and t.i.tles of this benevolent inst.i.tution.

It had rendered great service to the industries of Lille during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the growth of the funds enabling the managers to lend sums to weavers on their goods when trade fell off, and so relieving them from the necessity of parting with them for less than their value. Just before the Revolution the Masurel Fund amounted to 455,454 francs, of which 256,627 francs were in cash or in loans, and the rest in state funds and houses, yielding a revenue of 8,307 francs.

On January 23, 1794, the National Convention coolly ordered that all 'objects of necessity deposited in any Mont-de-Piete for an amount not exceeding 20 francs should be at once restored without payment to their owners, and all such objects deposited for amounts below 50 and above 20 francs on payment, without interest, of the amount beyond 20 francs!'

This 'liberal' legislation had been preceded on August 24, 1793, by another act of spoliation which ordered 'the payment of the capital of all sums at interest to be made in _a.s.signats_, and the conversion of all the debts of the Communes, and of the suppressed public organisations throughout France into State debts.

In consequence of these measures the whole property of the Masurel fund was found in 1803, when Napoleon began to overhaul the chaos to which the lunatics and plunderers of the Republic had reduced France, to amount to no more than 10,408 francs in real estate. This was the way in which the 'principles of 1789' developed the benevolent inst.i.tutions of France, and introduced a new era!

The authorities of Lille had the good sense and forecast thereupon to suspend the operations of the true _Mont-de-Piete_, and to set about restoring the fund as far and as fast as was possible. The Christian inst.i.tution of Masurel had fared better than the 'Lombards.' This latter establishment had to be formally closed in 1796, as it was then found to have no more than 86,000 francs in its treasury, and this in _a.s.signats_!

In 1857 the Prefect of the Nord reported that the Masurel fund might be safely devoted anew to the purposes of its founder. It then amounted to 249,644 fr. By an imperial decree of 1860, all that remained of the property of the 'Lombards' was amalgamated with the Masurel fund, and the inst.i.tution was put under the direction of the official Mont-de-Piete of Lille, but with a separate system of accounts, and began its operations again on the lines laid down by its founder in 1607. It has since worked so well that the maximum of the loans reimbursable, without interest, has risen from 30 francs in 1860 to 200 francs.

In 1869, the maximum being 100 francs, the number of engagements and renewals was 10,933--the money loaned amounted to 75,460 fr. 50 c., in loans averaging 9fr. 14 c., and the capital of the fund to 257,231 fr.

27 c. In 1888, the maximum being 200 fr., there were 16,000 engagements and renewals, the loans amounted to 136,663 francs in average loans of 8 fr. 54 c., and the capital of the fund to 334,726 fr. 57 c.

Of the 'similar foundations in other towns' which moved the pious emulation of Bartholomew Masurel nearly three centuries ago, how many, I wonder, still exist!

And with them how many other monuments of the Christian civilisation of Flanders and of France were 'improved' off the face of the earth by the 'regenerators' of 1792?

It was not by accident that I learned of the Masurel Mont-de-Piete; but when I went to the Munic.i.p.al Secretary to ask him for some official account of its condition and its operation, that courteous functionary looked at me for a moment with astonishment and then said, 'I am delighted to give you what you want, and I a.s.sure you that, with one exception, you are the only foreigner who has ever asked for this information in the last seven years! The other was the English Protestant clergyman here in Lille, who happens to live or has his chapel, I am not sure which, just opposite the Mont-de-Piete!'

I ought not to speak however of the Masurel foundation as 'unique.' I hope there may be many more men like the good Bartholomew Masurel in our time, and in other countries besides France, than we wot of. But the only modern inst.i.tution of a kindred spirit with this of which I have any present cognisance began its career in England only fifteen years ago, and was founded curiously enough like the Masurel fund by men of the Low Countries. This is the 'Koning Willem's Fonds,' of the Netherlands Benevolent Society of London. At a dinner given at the Cannon Street Hotel on May 12, 1874, to celebrate the twenty-fifth year of the accession of King William III under the presidency of the Dutch Minister in England, the Count de Bylandt, the guests in a glow of loyalty and good-fellows.h.i.+p proposed to raise a contribution to be spent in the purchase of some handsome memorial of the occasion. A happy inspiration came to the Chairman, and he suggested to his countrymen that the best of all possible memorials of such an occasion would be to establish a fund for the relief of poor and worthy Netherlanders in London and to give it the name of their King. The suggestion was adopted by acclamation, and the result the 'Koning Willem's Fonds,' from which, as I find by examining its statutes and its records, gratuitous loans, precisely identical in their object and under conditions not essentially different, are made to deserving Hollanders in London.

The 'fonds' is connected with a society doing the usual work of all such foreign benevolent societies in London. But it is a special fund, and as I learn from the Annual Report of the Society for January 1889, it has so far been administered with entire success, and with the result of enabling not a few honest and industrious Hollanders stranded in London to make a fair and prosperous start in life. That the fund is administered in the true practical spirit of the old Low Country benevolence, and its advantages appreciated as they ought to be, appears from the statement made by the Treasurer, Mr. Maas, in the Report for 1889, that the number of loans is increasing and the number of donations decreasing. In 1888 371_l._ were loaned as against 185_l._ in 1887, and 247_l._ given away as against 382_l._ in 1887. I observe, too, that the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Polydore de Keyser, gave at this annual meeting as his reason for joining the society which administers this fund that it had the courage to spend 251_l._ in excess of its a.s.sured income rather than send away the good which came to its door to be done.

CHAPTER XIII

IN THE MARNE

REIMS

No city in France has more to lose and less to gain from the triumph of the Third Republic over historic France than this ancient, rich, and royal city of Reims.

The triumph of the Third Republic on the lines laid down by M.

Challemel-Lacour in 1874 and re-affirmed at the elections of 1889, means the extinction of the religious sentiment in France. To extinguish the religious sentiment in France would be to empty the history of Reims of all its significance. It would be to filch from the city of St.-Remi and of Clovis, of Urban II. and of Jeanne d'Arc, its great name--a robbery that surely would not enrich the Third Republic, but that would leave Reims poor indeed!

Of course it is possible that the laicised, unbaptized, and atheistic French citizen of the future may come to regard the hegira of M.

Gambetta from Paris to Tours in a balloon, and the occupation of Tonkin, as events of greater importance to mankind than the creation of France by Clotilde and Clovis, or the rescue of France from conquest and dismemberment by the pious peasant-girl of Domremy, or the rolling back of Islam from the domination of the world by Urban II. Heaven forbid that I should a.s.sume to set any limit to the things which a truly scientific unbeliever is likely to believe!

But while men still abide in the thick darkness of the Catholic faith, or even in the penumbral twilight of Protestant Christianity, I do not see how Reims is to be one bit the better, materially or morally, for the extinction of the religious sentiment in France.

The arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of Reims contains very nearly 200,000 people, of whom considerably more than one-third inhabit the city itself. A very large proportion of these are employed in the numerous factories which flourish here, and many more in the various industries connected with the incessantly growing commerce in those sparkling wines which have made the name of this ancient province synonymous with luxury and gaiety in the remotest corners of the world. Though epernay is the real headquarters of this commerce, two or three of the most important houses connected with it are, and long have been, established at Reims, and some of the most remarkable of the vast cellars excavated in the chalk, in which these sparkling wines are stored throughout the Department of the Marne, are here to be seen. Here too, at least as well as at epernay or Chalons, acquaintance may be made, at the right time and in the right places, with certain vintages of Champagne which seldom or never find their way into the channels of trade, not so much because of their rarity and high cost as because of their exceeding delicacy. It is almost impossible, for example, to find even at Paris the finest quality of the red _vin de cave_ of Bouzy. This is ill.u.s.trated by the fact that the only samples of this exquisite wine sent to Paris for the Universal Exposition of 1889 were those sent by Bouche Fils at Mareuil-sur-Ay, and these represented only three vintages, the earliest being that of 1884.

The daintily aromatic bouquet of this wine is seldom unaffected even by the short railway journey to the capital. Of course I know that by speaking of this or of any other still wine of Champagne, I put myself under the ban of Mr. Canning's famous declaration, so often cited by Lord Beaconsfield, that 'the man who says he likes still champagne will say anything.' Nevertheless what I have written, I have written--and I shall not take it back. This the less, that I cannot allow myself even to enter upon this theme of the vineyards of the chalky Marne and the cellars of Champagne. Were I to do this, I should have a tale to unfold, much too long, and involving too many points of controversy with the accepted gastronomic authorities in my own country, in England, and in Russia, to be brought within the compa.s.s of this volume. Suffice it that the great wine-growers of Champagne do not seem to me to be infidels, or to neglect the due provision of their own households in their philanthropic anxiety to promote the convivial happiness of the four quarters of the globe. The extent to which the syndication of vineyards for the production of the wines most in demand in one or another part of the world, has been developed of late years in Champagne is a noteworthy phenomenon. Not less noteworthy is the growing attention paid throughout this Department of the Marne of late years to scientific methods in agriculture, and the steady improvement in the condition of the rural population.

Whether a similar improvement can be shown in the general condition of the urban population is not so clear as might be wished. That within certain limits such an improvement has taken place, is however undeniable; and this is of great interest, because it is distinctly due to the energy and decision with which the challenge flung down to the Christianity of this historic Christian heart of France has been taken up by the Catholics of Reims.

In the course of a most interesting visit which I made in August to the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims, His Eminence was good enough to put me in the way of measuring for myself the work done among the factory people of this region by a great Christian organization, the centre and pivot of which was established here, but which is mow extending itself all over the country. Most a.s.suredly there is nothing in the story of this work to indicate either the approaching death or the decay of the religious sentiment in France.

This work rests, like all great works, upon certain principles. But these principles were worked out, not through any theoretical inquisition into the possibilities of society, but through a direct personal practical experience of the relations between an employer of labour and his employees. It is known now throughout France as the work of the 'Christian Corporations,' and it includes, as a part of its machinery, the 'Catholic Workmen's Clubs,' which are increasing and multiplying throughout France. Its founder, M. Leon Harmel, is at the head of an important manufactory at the Val-des-Bois near Reims. This manufactory was established here half a century ago by the father of M.

Harmel, and the great social work which the son is now doing is the coming to fruit, after many years, of the virtues and the experience of his father. The Ardennes is the northernmost of the four Departments into which the wise men of 1790 divided the ancient province of Champagne, and M. Harmel, the father, had inherited a manufactory in that department. This he gave up to his brother, and removing to the Marne in 1840 he founded here the establishment of the Val-des-Bois. He was a devout and sincere Catholic, and he had lived all his life among a quiet and Catholic population in the Ardennes. He found himself surrounded in his new home by a totally different people. His new employees were amazed when they saw him attending ma.s.s at the parish church on Sunday. A few of their wives and daughters went there irregularly, but the men, as a rule, were 'total abstainers.'

M. Harmel made no attempt to preach to his people otherwise than by his example. But the employer being regarded, in the light of modern progress, as the natural enemy of the employee, this example had little effect. M. Leon Harmel tells a delightful story of his father's first success in inducing some of his workmen, with whom he had fallen incidentally into conversation on the subject, to go over to Reims in the early morning at the beginning of Lent, and confess to an excellent priest there who was one of his friends. He spake with the men separately, and said nothing to any one of them of his conversations with the others. Meeting one of his converts on his return, M. Harmel asked him about his experience. 'Ah, sir!' the man replied, 'it is all very well, but I shall never be caught there again!' 'And, pray, why not?' 'Why I thought I was the only man going to confess. I saw no one when I went into the confessional, and the good priest was very good, and I was glad I went. But when I came to commune in the church, there were three of my comrades! How I looked at them, and how they looked at me! It will be all over the factory to-night, and we four will have no peace for six months! No! I shall not do this again!'

The manufactory prospered. If the example of M. Harmel availed little against the public sentiment of the workpeople educated in utter indifference to all religion, in the way of inducing them to attend to their religious duties, his unvarying justice and benevolence, his readiness to succour and to advise them in all straits, and his un.o.btrusive devotion to his faith, at least exerted a wholesome effect upon their general conduct; and the factory of the Val-des-Bois earned a high reputation for its freedom from flagrant scandals and disorders.

But this did not satisfy M. Harmel. After twenty years of single-handed and uphill work, he determined to seek help. On February 28, 1861, he established three Sisters of St.-Vincent de Paul in a small house which had been a wayside inn, and set about Christianising his people in earnest. There was no pomp or parade about the matter. The good Sisters were quite content to establish an asylum for the little children in what had been the stable of the inn, and to open their school in two little upper chambers. Two Jesuit Fathers came and devoted a month to a regular mission. Processions were organised and lectures given, some in the factory, others at the little inn. The novelty of the enterprise excited the attention of the people, and when a decided movement at last of interest in the mission made itself clearly felt, M. Harmel took advantage of it, with the help of the Sisters, to form Christian a.s.sociations, first among the young girls, then among the young men, and then among the workmen themselves. The first young girl who gave an effectual impulse to the work, was a girl selected by the Sisters, with their usual sound instinct, because they found her capable of absolute devotion to a not by any means estimable mother, and to a decidedly reprehensible sister. She was a peasant-girl, brought up in a disorderly family, by no means choice or refined in her language; but the Sisters, for whom she conceived a great affection, saw that she was generous, fearless, and determined, and that was enough.

With the girls, with the young men, with the workmen, no sort of direct or indirect pressure was ever for a moment employed. The a.s.sociations which they formed were managed by themselves, M. Harmel, the priest whom he finally brought to Val-des-Bois, and for whom he built a chapel, and the missionary brethren, giving advice and aid only when and as it was asked. One excellent workman, who had been in the factory for many years, and who was much esteemed by M. Harmel, was asked one day by the priest why he had never taken any interest in the religious a.s.sociations. 'I do take an interest in them,' he replied, 'and they are doing a great deal of good. I don't feel moved to join them, but I do them a great service often. Many a time in the cabarets I hear a man say, "Oh, the papa Harmel is a good man, no doubt; they are right to call him there 'the good father.' He is all that, but n.o.body can get any work there unless he is a little saint!" Then I get up and say, "Don't talk like a fool! You see me; I have worked for 'the good father'

thirty-five years. I have never done my religious duties, but n.o.body treats me the worse for that! That shuts them up!"'

One great obstacle, at the outset, to the success of these a.s.sociations, out of which the 'Christian Corporations' were eventually to grow, was the hostility of the elder married women to the 'Enfans de Marie,' and the other societies of young girls. They objected that these societies broke up the Sunday b.a.l.l.s, and when they were asked whether these Sunday b.a.l.l.s did not lead to a good many scandals, they replied, 'Oh, young people must amuse themselves; we used to amuse ourselves!' They insisted too, that the girls would neglect their home duties to attend ma.s.s and the meetings of their new societies. One particularly recalcitrant dame made her husband's life a burden to him, because he not only encouraged his daughters in going to the Sisters, but actually went to ma.s.s himself. Finally, one day the poor man came to see the Sisters. He was evidently much exercised in his mind, and showing the Sisters a small sum of money he had, he said, 'I have saved this up to bring my old woman to a better mind, and I want you to help me.' They asked him how.

'Why, you see, all the trouble comes because she don't know you, and won't know you, and thinks everything wrong about you. Now if one of you will just take this money, and buy her a new Sunday gown, and take it to her as if it was a gift you wanted to make her, that will bring her all right, I know, and we shall have peace in the house!'

What Sister could resist such an appeal? The pious fraud was perpetrated, and the worthy dame gave way along the whole line!

This working population of Val-des-Bois, when M. Harmel began his work among them, it will be seen, was a fair type of the average working populations of France in those parts of France where the influence of Radicalism has been most potent, and the influence of the Church weakest. There is another factory in the same commune now. There are sixteen others within a radius of three French leagues, and the city of Reims, with its population of nearly a hundred thousand souls, is within half an hour of the place. All the disturbing currents of socialism, of agrarianism, of indifferentism play about and upon the place constantly.

The Sunday ball is an inst.i.tution still. The influence of the local authorities during the last ten years has been thrown against the Catholic a.s.sociations, and therefore, from the nature of the case, in favour of dissipation, debauchery, and disorder.

To see his work prosper in a soil so unpropitious and amid such hostile circ.u.mstances might well have quickened the faith of a man much colder and more sceptical than M. Harmel.

In 1861, as I have said, not one workman could be found at Val-des-Bois who dared to go to ma.s.s. In 1867, at the request of forty of his workmen, M. Harmel a.s.sisted them in drawing up the statutes and arranging the programme of a Catholic Working-Men's Club. The initiative came from them. No pressure of any sort or kind was put upon them to take it. It was the free outcome of the influence exerted upon them by the example of the Harmel family and by the religious and charitable work which the Sisters and the priests had been doing at Val-des-Bois.

Within a year the club doubled its members.h.i.+p. When the invasion came, in 1870, it was an established inst.i.tution.

'M. Harmel planted his Christians at Val-des-Bois,' said to me one of the most interesting men I met at Reims, 'as our vine-growers in Champagne plant their vines. It is one of the mysteries of our viticulture that the grapes which yield our most delicate and exquisite wines of Ay, all sparkle and suns.h.i.+ne, can only be made to yield those wines when they are planted in our poorest and most chalky soil, and in regions where the climate is so ungenial that the plants have to be set as closely as possible together in the ground. We really huddle them together, as we do sheep in the hurdles in winter, to keep one another warm. This M. Harmel did with his converts. He taught his workmen to a.s.sociate more closely with one another, he brought their minds and their hearts together, and let them act one upon another. He lived and moved and had his own being among them like a father, and in this way insensibly they came by degrees to regard each other as members of a family. He has always felt, and his whole life has shown it, that the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," whatever the motives of its authors may have been, put the weak of this world at the mercy of the strong, and set Capital free to deal with Labour as a mere matter of bargain and sale. The dominant idea in his mind has always been, as it was in the mind of his father before him--the "good father" of Val-des-Bois--not how to get the most work out of his workmen, but how best to do his own duty to his workmen, thinking that the best way to get them, on their part, to do their duty to him. All this, you see, is quite mediaeval and Christian, not in the least modern and scientific!

But has the modern and scientific way of looking at the relations of capital and labour, so far, been what may be called a great success? Do we seem to be in the way of organizing a solid modern society on the principles of the "struggle for life" and of the "survival of the fittest"? Certainly these principles are a logical outcome of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," and of such legislation as that which in 1791 shattered to pieces at a blow the whole ancient and Christian organization of industry in our unhappy land of France! As certainly too, they are admirably fitted to secure either the complete subjugation of labour by capital or the relapse of France and of Europe into barbarism. Is not universal suffrage a natural and easy weapon of capital in any "struggle for life" with labour? Is it not clear that, in losing the notion of duty to his employer, the workman has necessarily lost the idea also of duty to his fellow-workmen? "Every man for himself" is the motto of modern democracy, and do we not see that the syndicates of workmen which it was the object of the Radicals to establish by their law of March 1884 concerning "professional syndicates," in order to facilitate and promote "strikes," are only kept together and made to work by sheer terrorism? What is the sanction of the measures ordered by such syndicates excepting the fear in which every member goes of his fellow-members? Does not that take us a long way on towards savage life? Does not that tend directly to build up a subterranean machinery of despotism which will be at the service of the shrewdest head and the longest purse whenever any real and decisive issue arises between organised capital and organised labour?