The Civil Code protects minors and incapables, and I am in favor of the protection of children against the abuses which may be committed against them. But it is necessary that the law should not, under the pretext of repressing some abuses, create others which would leave the manufacturers in the hands of arbitrary authority, compel them to shut out children and young women from the workshops, and result-for the young people affected-in the suppression of apprenticeship and the replacement of labor by vagrancy and the factory by the prison.

Already in 1874 a law was passed for the protection of children and girls who had not attained their majority, in manufactories. This law remained almost entirely a dead letter. The law of the 2nd of November, 1892, limited the labor of children of thirteen to sixteen years of age to ten hours per day; but did this necessitate the limitation of their work during the gathering of roses and jasmine in the Midi? These flowers are destined to be used in a manufacturing industry, to be distilled in order to extract their essences. Ought, then, their gathering in to be regarded as agricultural industry? The above law does not extend to agriculture, though, from the economic point of view, it does not differ from other industries. And why was this difference made? Because the deputies elected for the most part by rural populations feared to provoke among these people a discontent which they did not dread on the part of the manufacturing population, since, in their depraved appetite for regulation, very many of the workmen had demanded measures of this kind without well understanding their nature, and the employers seem to be quantités négligeables.

After this law came into force, youths and girls of sixteen to eighteen years of age could no longer be employed more than sixty hours per week; girls above eighteen years and women were restrict. ed to eleven hours per day. The women thus remain in the workshop while the girls and children are obliged to go away. And what are they to do outside ? This fastidious protection of children may have the most unfortunate results for them.

The cooks and pastry cooks of Paris have 3,000 apprentices, many of whom are orphans or have no relations in the French metropolis. The law compels their employers to give them one day's holiday per week; and, as the employers have no desire to take any responsibility in the matter, this weekly holiday becomes a day of compulsory vagrancy for these boys.

The law condemns them to idleness. The legislator has not dreamed of what this turning out of doors means for the child or the young woman. On the day after the promulgation of the law one house-that of Lebaudy-dismissed forty-four girls employed in breaking sugar, because they were too young. Messieurs Millerand, Baudin, and Dumay announced that they would question the Government on this event; but they did not dare to uphold the doctrine that an employer should be compelled to keep children and young women against his will. Has the material and moral condition of these young people been improved?

We French Free Traders and Individualists willingly appeal to the experience of England. The partisans of the intervention of the State in labor contracts are only too happy to turn up for us the Factory Act of 1878 to justify the regulation of women's labor. Like the English law, the French one is riddled with exceptions. After paragraph 3 of Article 5, an administrative regulation authorizes night work for sixty days, but to 11 P. M. only. This has special application to the trade and manufactures of Paris which, as our legislators have been good enough to recognize, are subject to times of great pressure which compensate for times of slackness.

M. Waddington said that he was convinced, on inquiry, that sixty days. would suffice. Very good; but if sixty days are all that are wanted, what is the use of the law? Does any one work at night for the fun of the thing? And how wise is this compulsory turning of the workwomen out into the streets at eleven o'clock at night, from the point of view of morals! The legislator deprives these dressmakers, these workwomen, during the season of pressure, of a part of their wages which they would be able to save. Does he indem

nify them for the loss when the dull season comes?

Paragraph 5 of this Article goes farther. It permits night work-which, it appears, is no longer destructive of morals and the family when so authorized-but only on condition " that the work does not exceed, in any case, seven hours in twenty-four." M. Félix Martin exposed, in the Senate, the situation to which this law reduces the women employed in stitching printed matter. They go to the workshop at nine o'clock at night. They may remain there till four o'clock in the morning. Then they are inexorably shown to the door. It may be raining or freezing, it may be light or dark; but, however that may be, these work women must go, and must not reappear in the workshop during the next seventeen hours which complete the twenty-four. What follows? Under the pretence of protecting the women-stitchers, the law really turns them out of employment and causes their replacement by men.

And, to speak frankly, all the fine phrases spun in the ostensible interest of women and for the protection of children have been but pretexts-though in France there is a very large infantile mortality in a certain number of more or less manufacturing Departments of the south. In reality, what the Socialists have always aimed at in France is the exclusion of women from all industrial work. They have always regarded women as disloyal competitors who work at a lower price. They therefore fashion beautiful phrases for their special benefit, but with the object of getting rid of them from the labor market. French gallantry is thus transformed into a savage egotism. Up to the present time the only fruit of the law of the 2nd of November, 1892, has been strikes and discontent.

From the moment when one accepts the principle of the intervention of the legislator for the limitation of the labor of adult women there is no ground of principle on which to base its rejection for the labor of men. The law of the 9th of September, 1848, passed under the Socialistic influence of the moment, limited men's labor to twelve hours per day; but the decrees of the 17th of May, 1851, and the 3rd of April, 1883,

specify exceptions. In fact, custom has reduced the duration of daily labor to less than the legal limit in the majority of workshops and manufactories. In mines it is scarcely more than eight to eight and a half hours of effective work. But the Socialists may well say: "Since the legislator can fix the day's work at twelve hours, why not fix it at eight? The principle is consecrated by the law." Others have still more generous proposals. M. Vaillant, the new Socialist Deputy of the Blanquist school, suggests a legal working day of six hours. M. Pablo Lafargue, a relation of Karl Marx and late deputy for Lille, demands a three-hours' day. Zero is, in fact, the only figure which is safe from being outbid.

The legal limitation of the hours of labor has an appearance of theoretic profundity for those who believe, with Karl Marx, that the employer's profit comes only out of surplus labor; and it presents, at the same time, an immediate practical solace to the people who proudly style themselves" workers," but whose ideal is to work as little as possible. We do not blame them. They obey "the law of least effort" which dominates humanity in the economic as well as in the linguistic field. Only, the majority of them well understand that if the law diminishes their hours of work it must intervene again if it would prevent any diminution of their wages. The legislator thus finds himself committed to intervention in labor bargains in two ways and to the regu lation of the cost of production. He thus substitutes the law, an authoritative arrangement, for a private contract freely entered into; and if, as Sir Henry Sumner Maine has demonstrated, social progress substitutes contract for State intervention, it follows that State interference in the sale and purchase of labor, so far from marking an advance, is symptomatic of retrogression.

Among the legal measures demanded by the Socialists is the expulsion of foreign workmen. They are all internationalists in words-they even accept subsidies toward their election expenses from their German friends-but in fact they do not like the competition of foreigners, especially that of the Belgians and Italians. Yet this competition is

scarcely ever effective save in work which they consider beneath them. They seek, however, to reconcile their theory of fraternity between the proletarians of all countries with their personal interest by demanding that the fine, and if necessary imprisonment, shall be imposed on the employer of foreign workmen. This system satisfies all their requirements, and it affords an excellent opportunity of having one fling the more at the employer. It is very difficult for the Chamber of Deputies not to follow the Socialists on this path; for the latter will say to the Protectionists: "You have asked for duties for the protection of native industry; but this industry is not native from the moment when foreigners can come and take part in it."

The Socialists also demand the sup. pression of the registry offices which submitted to the decree of 1852. These are completely in the hands of the police, who can intervene in case of abuse of their functions. The Socialists, in order to insure the recruitment of the trade syndicates, wish to give them a monopoly as agents between employer and employed. A committee of the last legislature adopted a Bill framed to accomplish this. I procured its rejection by the Chamber of Deputies on the 8th of May last. This would have been a formidable instrument of oppression. The syndicates would have placed an interdict on all employers and workmen who would not come to terms with their chiefs.

V.

It was because of this that the question of the Bourse du Travail came up. M. de Molinari, one of the most original economists of this century, had so early as 1843 proposed the creation of bourses du travail at which bargains might be made by those who sought work and those who desired to purchase it. This idea was taken up by the Socialists, but with very different intentions from those of its author. The Municipal Council of Paris first opened a Bourse du Travail in 1887, in the Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and afterward built a magnificent edifice, which cost three millions of francs, in the Rue du Château d'Eau, which was

opened in the month of May, 1892. This bourse lacked only one element in order to justify its title: there were plenty of sellers of labor, but the purchasers of it were rigorously shut out. The supply of labor was there, but the demand came not; and the very persons who showed purchasers the door wondered and were indignant at their absence. They consoled themselves, however. The delegates of the syndicates received an honorarium for their presence from the subventions given by the Municipal Council of Paris, and they multiplied every day. The time which they did not employ in discussions between themselves they consecrated to the elaboration of the Journal de la Bourse du Travail, which contained the most virulent articles against "capitalism" and employers. They organized public meetings, at which they gave themselves up to invectives and anathemas against the bourgeois. They busied themselves in provoking strikes at all points of France. They sent delegates to various Socialist congresses; and one of them, M. Chausse, himself a Municipal Councillor of Paris, on his return from the Congress of St.Quentin, published a plan of the strategy to be adopted in social war. They organized lists of officers of Socialism and Revolution, as in 1871 the delegates of the battalions of the National Guards, forming the central committee, organized the Commune.

Through indifference, in order not to make a fuss, the police and the Government permitted the installation of this focus of anarchy and its support by the Municipal Council at the expense of the rate-payers. Under pressure by the Chamber of Deputies, the Ministry took the energetic step of closing it on the 6th of July last. Will they reopen it, as they are summoned to do by the Socialists? And, if so, on what condition? Indeed there are bourses du travail in certain towns of the Departments in some of which the errors of that of Paris still prevail. Will the Government attend to this? Will it allow them to continue their action, which, by serving to form their organization, was not without effect on the success of the Socialists at the last general election?

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VI.

According to the ultimate conception of the Socialists, all laws of the kind we have just described are, notwithstanding their Socialistic character, but "bourgeois" legislation. But they claim the honor of having called them into existence, and they have no gratitude to the bourgeois Radical Socialists," like Messieurs Floquet and Clémenceau, who have lent themselves to the passing of this legislation. They loudly declare that the concessions made to them will but serve to fortify their cause and weaken their adversaries. They frankly forewarn those who co-operate with them that they are deceiving no one but themselves; but there are some persons who have a passion for this jeu de dupes. We shall see, in the coming legislative session, not only "Radical Socialists," but Monarchists who have recently" rallied" to the present form of government and Republicans, accept it as the theme of their adulation and from the desire to try to deserve the gratitude of people who tell their allies that they must not count on receiving

it.

In reality, the chief means of action of the Socialists is the strike. They do not look upon it in its economic aspect. They do not at all regard it as the withdrawal of labor from the market by the laborers, the rendering of the supply of labor a monopoly in order to raise its price. For them it is a combat of the advanced guard, a precursory episode of the social war. It is with these sentiments that they stir up strikes as frequently as possible. They have been obliged to give up the notion of a general strike, as the agriculturists decline to follow them. Not having sucNot having succeeded in this, they endeavor to multiply partial strikes. The miners' strikes were the best for them. For, of the 92,000 underground workers in France, more than one half are grouped in the Departments of the Nord and the Pasde-Calais. It was so much the easier to work upon them, as these miners were admirably disciplined by the companies. They, however, put the quality of obedience which they had acquired at the service of revolutionaries, and with docility obeyed their orders.

When the strike broke out, drawing into its vortex many thousands of workmen, the public, whose knowledge of mining was drawn solely from their imagination and their recollection of explosions of fire-damp, drew a fancy picture of mining in which it was of all occupations the most terrible and dangerous. They were captured by sympathy for the miners; and the man who desired to buy his coal at the cheapest rate subscribed in support of the miners on strike, without seeing the selfcontradiction in which he was involving himself.

In our French legislation the concession of a mine is regarded as a privilege conferred by the State. A strike of miners, therefore, offered a magnificent opportunity to the Socialists to mount the tribune and ask of the Minister of Public Works what he was doing and what he intended to do. If he replied that the mine, once conceded, is property like anything else-which is the truth-they would accuse him of being a supporter of industrial feudalism. There are some ministers to whom this reproach is not a matter of indifference. Moreover, we have seen, in 1892, at Carmaux, all the authorities giving in to the miners, who, under the direction of certain Socialist deputies, and especially of M. Baudin, set patrols in order to prevent the realization of any desire to return to work, and threatened the army and the constabulary. The strike finished, in October, 1892, by a lamentable debate, in which M. Loubet, the Prime Minister, consented to serve as arbitrator; and, as his decision did not give complete satisfaction to the demands of Messieurs Clémenceau, Millerand, and Camille Pelletan, who set themselves up as delegates of the miners, they insulted the arbitrator whom they had asked to act, and rejected arbitration at the very time when they had justed voted, in the Chamber of Deputies, in favor of compulsory arbitration. This strike ended with a dynamite explosion in the Rue des Bons Enfants, which killed five persons. The champions of the strike then judged it prudent to put an end to their rodomontade. These furious harangues and more after their kind will. be reproduced in the new Chamber.

The Socialists announce that they are about to demand that the mines shall re-enter into the domain of the State and be worked by it. This is a good field for them, as there are many good owners of real property who imagine that the mines are not property as other things are, and that it is only necessary to dig a hole in the earth to make it debouch millions. They do not even know that of the 1,200 concessions of mines in France there are 800 which are not worked, after having exhausted the resources of those who have obtained them; and that of the mines in actual working one-half produce no profit.

The Socialists are also going to demand that the railroads be taken over and worked by the State. That will not be a way of putting our finances more in order. The example of Prussia shows us that the State forgets willingly to redeem the cost of the railroads. Moreover, if the State manages the railroads it will have to lower the scale of charges and raise all the salaries. The conditions of such management will, therefore, be ruinous. However, it is well to bear in mind that this proposal meets with a favorable reception on the part of some Republicans who repudiate Socialism. The transport industries are always unpopular; and the management of the railroads, in their relations with the State, is very complicated in France.

VII.

The Socialists have a programme of immediate action and a political plan of campaign. Many Republicans, it must be confessed, though they feel uneasy in respect of them, have no economic principles sufficiently firmly held to oppose them. The Protectionists, while demanding the intervention of the State in exchange agreements, are in a bad position to refuse it in labor agreements. Having claimed that profits shall be guaranteed to them, what can they say to the workmen who claim that the law should guarantee to them a certain scale of wages? Many others have no criterion by which to determine what should be the limit of the intervention of the State in the economic domain. Has the Government any

such principle? Or will it drag the majority into concession after concession to the Socialists ? Will it say, what has already been said and repeated too often, that the new Chamber of Deputies should occupy itself with labor questions and labor laws? What are labor laws-" lois ouvrières"? We are here back to caste legislation-we who believed that the Revolution of 1789 had abolished caste!

If the Governinent and the majority put their shoulders to this wheel, it will be very serious, not only for the new legislature, but for the elections of 1897. The Socialists are about to multiply their proposals. They will put forward resolutions and propose 66 orders of the day." Many of these will be lost. They will heap up these losses carefully and go to the electors with the cry: "Here is what we proposed! We have been defeated! You must give us a majority in the next Chamber." While they will utilize their defeats for the denunciation of "bourgeois society" and parliamentary government, they will make use of every law which has the appearance of Socialism, proposed by themselves or others, to point out how many concessions they have obtained, and what might have been if they had obtained them in greater number. They have, at the present time, the power of attraction. They are attacking; the Republicans, on the other hand, are on the defensive -the worst of strategical conditions in politics as in war. The Socialists wish to attract into the circle of their activity the indifferent, the timid, the apathetic, and the still more numerous folk who always look to see which way the wind is blowing in order to let themselves be carried in its direction.

However, this movement is nothing to be frightened about, for it has against it a considerable resistant force. The workmen of the large industries number 800,000; but the workmen of the small scale industries, of whom the majority desire to become employers, number 1,500,000. Trade and transport give occupation to more than 1,000,000; proprietors cultivating their own lands count for nearly 2,500,000; small proprietors for nearly 800,000; farmers, métayers, and planters for more than