468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tian charity. We have already proof of this in public benevo- 

 lence, which seems, at great expense, to have sterilized the field 

 which private benevolence had fertilized. Beware, lest, instead of 

 inspiring patrons and capitalists, industrial societies and indus- 

 trial managers, to fulfill their social duty in a larger sense, the 

 arbitrary intervention of the state does not dissuade or discourage 

 them from it ! Symptoms of such discouragement are already be- 

 ginning to appear in France. We, in fact, slander ourselves when 

 we represent that private initiative has been sterile in this sphere. 

 Not so ; on the contrary, it is one of the domains in which our 

 end of the century has deserved the most from France and man- 

 kind. I want no better evidence of this than the group of social 

 economy, or, as it was justly styled, " of social peace," in our Uni- 

 versal Exposition of 1889, where were represented in fifteen sec- 

 tions: remuneration for labor and participation in benefits; co- 

 operative associations for production; professional syndicates; 

 apprenticeship and patronage societies ; mutual aid societies ; 

 superannuation and pension funds ; accident and life assurance ; 

 co-operative consumers' associations; co-operative credit associa- 

 tions ; workmen's houses ; workmen's circles and people's societies ; 

 social hygiene and temperance societies ; societies for the protec- 

 tion of children ; and national institutions. These fifteen sections 

 of social economy prove by actual specimens that men of means 

 are not insensible to the ills of the working classes, and that our 

 society has not waited for the urging of the state before it occu- 

 pied itself with questions of interest to working-men. The greater 

 part of the works, foundations, associations, and social enterprises 

 to which awards were made in 1889 were relatively recent, some 

 of them entirely new. They have been tending for several years 

 past to make a rapid advance. Heaven prevent the intervention 

 of the state which is threatened, inflicting a fatal blow on all these 

 creations of private initiative ! The state has a heavy hand, not 

 to call it a paw. It often unwittingly crushes what it touches. 

 There is something depressing and stifling in administrative regu- 

 lation; may it not for a long time yet put the brakes upon a 

 movement from which so much is promised ! Selected and trans- 

 lated for The Popular Science Monthly from the Revue des Deux 

 Mondes. 



The emigration of the English agricultural population into the towns is at- 

 tributed by Mr. T. E. Kebbel, among other causes, to the dullness of village 

 life. The old feasts, the fairs, and the games have for the most part disap- 

 peared. Thus, while there is vastly more cricket played in England than fifty 

 years ago, it is not played by the same class. In the old day-long matches 

 on the village greens, the elevens were mostly made up of laborers. They are 

 so no longer. 



