310 



FRANCE. 



were easily filled, but the people unharnessed 

 the horses as soon as an omnibus started out, 

 and drove away the police when they attempted 

 to interfere. At the end of two days the Minis- 

 ter of the Interior threatened to municipalize the 

 omnibus service, a proposition that had often 

 been advocated in .Radical circles, if the direct- 

 ors did not at once make terms with the men 

 and furnish to the public the service required by 

 their charter. They were thus compelled to 

 grant the maximum work-day demanded, at the 

 same rate of pay, abolish fines, and recognize 

 the union officially. The success of this " revo- 

 lutionary strike," as it was called, destroyed the 

 ascendancy of the Possibilists, who had the ad- 

 hesion of the main body of French working men 

 from the split of the Labor party into Possibil- 

 ists and Marxists, till the time when the Marx- 

 ists and a part of the Possibilists accepted 

 Boulanger as their political deliverer, expecting 

 that the general who had encouraged his sol- 

 diers to share their rations with the strikers at 

 Decazeville would accomplish more for them at 

 one stroke than the Possibilist policy of consti- 

 tutional action had in eight years. The Possi- 

 bilists had become a power in the municipal 

 councils, and had organized labor exchanges 

 supported by public funds, had the expenses of 

 labor delegates to international exhibitions paid 

 out of the public revenue, obtained subsidies for 

 schools established by Socialist societies, and 

 even secured aid for the families of workmen on 

 strike. The success of the omnibus strike, which 

 outweighed all they had done, brought to the 

 front the revolutionary Marxists and the Inde- 

 pendents, who eschew politics, and new revolu- 

 tionary strikes were thought of. The railroad 

 companies were more unpopular than the omni- 

 bus and street railroad companies, which were 

 compelled all over the country by strikes to 

 grant the concessions won in Paris. The rail- 

 road employes were underpaid, and one reason 

 was that a part of their wages was detained in 

 order to give them a pension at the end of 

 twenty-five years of service ; and yet they could 

 be discharged at any time without cause, forfeit- 

 ing what they had contributed to the fund. To 

 remedy this and other abuses, a strike was be- 

 gun. The public did not respond, as was ex- 

 pected, to this new demand on their sympathies, 

 and the Government could not afford to allow 

 the railway service to be paralyzed, because it is 

 a part of the military system. The army rail- 

 road corps was made to take the places of the 

 striking engineers and trainmen, and even to re- 

 pair the damaged rolling stock, and the Govern- 

 ment threatened to call the strikers back, as 

 reserve men of the army, to work without pay. 

 The popular feeling against the railroads is 

 strong, especially on account of the failings of 

 the third-class passenger service, and a tendency 

 toward the resumption of the Government con- 

 trol of railroads was manifested in two bills 

 presented to the Chamber, one of which pro- 

 posed that directors of lines enjoying a State 

 guarantee should be appointed by the Govern- 

 ment, and the other that no foreigner should 

 hold office in the boards of such railroads. A 

 strike for short hours by barbers, grocers' clerks, 

 druggists' assistants, and other employes in the 

 shops of Paris, who thought that from eight in 



the morning till eight at night was a fair day's 

 work, proved likewise a failure. A strike against 

 the bureaux des placement, or private intelli- 

 gence offices, seemed to promise better results, 

 for the abuses connected with these agencies, 

 the excessive charges, the practice of sending 

 applicants to places that they can not fill, in 

 order to get a double fee, have been familiar for 

 generations. Since the time of the empire they 

 have been under police supervision, but this 

 control has never been effectually exerted. The 

 municipal officials have been intrusted with the 

 work of directing workmen to places, but have 

 shirked the task. Labor exchanges have been 

 established, and have proved a failure because 

 they must send the persons whose names head 

 the list, without regard to character or capabil- 

 ity, and therefore nine tenths of the business 

 remains in the hands of the private agencies. 

 The strike was begun by the bakers, and was to 

 be taken up by hair-dressers, woman cashiers, 

 seamstresses, domestic servants, and all who 

 were dependent on the bureaux des placement 

 for finding them employment, Who proposed to 

 organize trade unions to get them places gra- 

 tis. M. Constans told them that if they did not 

 like the services of the private offices they could 

 withhold their patronage. When the people of 

 Paris began to be deprived of their daily wheaten 

 bread the Government set the army bakers to 

 work to furnish the masters with bread that 

 they could serve to their customers at a better 

 profit than they had made with their own, and 

 thus the strike was crushed by the interposition 

 of the authorities. 



The Chambers had under discussion from the 

 beginning of the year a bill to regulate the labor 

 of women and children in factories, in accord- 

 ance with the recommendations of the Berlin 

 Labor Conference. The proposal of M. de Mun 

 and Bishop Freppel to designate Sunday as the 

 weekly day of rest was rejected by the vote of 

 the entire Republican party. The maximum 

 work day was fixed at ten hours for children and 

 eleven hours for women. In February the Cham- 

 ber voted in favor of subsidizing working men's 

 provident and old-age benefit societies. An act 

 to distribute and fix responsibility in case of 

 accidents was rendered of little value by amend- 

 ments. After the Fourmies disaster and the 

 omnibus strike all kinds of socialistic legislation 

 was introduced by private members. M. La- 

 fargue, who was sent to the penitentiary for a 

 year as ringleader of the Fourmies riot, was 

 elected a Deputy, but was pronounced disquali- 

 fied by the Chamber in November on the ground 

 that he was a foreigner. A law was proposed 

 giving a part of the profits to workmen em- 

 ployed in state industrial establishments, and a 

 Eroject was discussed for fixing not only a uni- 

 5rm length for a day's work, but also a minimum 

 rate of wages. The Chamber almost unanimous- 

 ly agreed to a bill extending the twelve-hour 

 work day of the law of 1848, which was limited 

 to state and municipal establishments, to rail- 

 road engineers, firemen, and signal men, and to 

 drivers of omnibuses and all employes of trans- 

 portation and navigation companies possessing 

 franchises granted by the state or by munici- 

 palities. A bill passed by the Chamber, which 

 was rejected by the Senate, would compel every 



