288 



FRANCE. 



vided into several secondary groups, which hold 

 communication with each other only when unit- 

 ed action is necessary. They are young French- 

 men whose principal object is to foment anar- 

 chistic and internationalist agitation in the 

 army. During 1892 several of these agents were 

 arrested in different parts of France and con- 

 demned to from four to eight months' imprison- 

 ment, for inculcating by word or by printed docu- 

 ments or writings, some secretly and some with 

 rash bravado, the doctrine that the soldiers 

 should mutiny sooner than use their weapons 

 against the people. The Anarchist Federation 

 holds some communication with this league, and 

 makes use of it sometimes to further its own 

 aims. The Internationalist section of the league 

 is composed almost entirely of foreign refugees 

 Italians, Germans, Belgians, Russians, Spaniards, 

 and others who are living in France, usually 

 under assumed names, and are under the double 

 surveillance of the French police and the police 

 agents of their own countries. The Cosmopoli- 

 tan League has no connection with the other 

 league, but is part of a gigantic international 

 organization of revolutionary anarchists and 

 dynamitards who do not recoil from political 

 assassination. The head of this body in France 

 has been an Italian named Pini, who at first was 

 suspected of arranging the dynamite outrages 

 executed by Ravachol and his accomplices. The 

 latter belong to a distinct order of anarchists, 

 who are the most desperate and fanatical, and 

 the most difficult to watch and detect. They 

 call themselves Independents, and are divided 

 into groups of not more than 10 or 12 members 

 which have no connection with each other. Each 

 member preserves the completest liberty of ac- 

 tion. The members are bound by no organiza- 

 tion or common tie except their hatred for all 

 forms of government, and a belief in a regenera- 

 tion of society through anarchy. They are the 

 most dangerous of the anarchistic schools, be- 

 cause they are the most active, the most deter- 

 mined, and the most reckless of consequences. 



Strike at Carmaux. The Socialists in the 

 municipal elections of 1892 put forward many 

 candidates, and were successful in several of the 

 centers of population and in manufacturing and 

 mining communes. In the beginning of Septem- 

 ber a strike broke out at Carmaux in the works 

 of the Tarn Mining Company, which employs 

 2,000 men, of whom 1,200 belonged to a trade 

 union. The majority of the Municipal Council 

 were Socialists, and for 1892 they elected as 

 mayor the secretary of the Miners' Union, M. 

 Calvignac, an employee of the company. He 

 became a candidate for the office of district 

 councilor also, and when he returned to his 

 work after the canvass was over, and after his 

 recovery from a short sickness, he received 

 notice of dismissal unless he would promise to 

 work constantly. This he declared he could not 

 do, because his public functions demanded a 

 part of his time. He would require to be ab- 

 sent two days a week, but the company refused 

 to release him for that time. His fellow-work- 

 men, assuming that he was discharged because 

 he was a Socialist, and therefore distasteful to 

 his employers as a public official, went on strike 

 in a body, and the Socialists and extreme Radi- 

 cals throughout France held the managers up 



to scorn as oppressors of labor and mil lifters of 

 universal suffrage. The strikers damaged the 

 company's property, and forced the manager, M. 

 Humblot, who had refused to retain M. Calvig- 

 nac's services for two thirds of the time, to sign 

 a paper resigning his post. For a long time the 

 directors of the company held firmly to their 

 resolve and refused to submit the matter to 

 arbitration. The Government prosecuted the 

 miners who were guilty of rioting, and several 

 were convicted and sentenced to prison. Arbi- 

 tration was at length agreed to through the in- 

 tercession of Minister Viette, and a settlement 

 was reached in the beginning of November, after 

 which the convicted rioters were pardoned. 



Defeat of the Loubet Cabinet. The Car- 

 maux strike and the exaggerated rumors of 

 scandals connected with the Panama company 

 gave the Conservative and Radical critics of the 

 Government opportunities enough to harrass M. 

 Loubet and his colleagues after the reassembly of 

 the Chambers on Oct. 20. The Right accused 

 them of laxity in dealing with the strikers, and 

 the Radicals of truckling to the employers. A 

 Government bill to amend the press law so as to 

 give the authorities power to suppress anarchist 

 journals which sowed sedition was carried by the 

 aid of the Right. Several measures introduced 

 by individual ministers were voted down, but 

 none were of a nature to warrant the retire- 

 ment of the ministers. M. Loubet seemed to 

 court defeat in his attitude in the Chamber. 

 The Government determined to institute crim- 

 inal proceedings against several directors and 

 other officials of the Panama Canal Company. 

 On Nov. 20 one of the accused persons, Baron 

 Jacques de Reinach, died suddenly. It was 

 generally supposed that he committed suicide 

 because incriminating documents had some time 

 before been stolen from him, and would now be 

 used against him and others in the trial and the 

 investigation that was instituted by the Cham- 

 ber. Some suspected that he had been murdered 

 to prevent him from revealing the secrets of 

 disgraceful financial and political intrigues. It 

 was charged that 9,000,000 francs had been used 

 to bribe Deputies, and that large sums had been 

 distributed among newspapers. The local au- 

 thorities, on the doctors' certifying that Baron 

 de Reinach had died from natural causes, al- 

 lowed the body to be buried. On Nov. 28 a 

 member of the Right asked the Minister of Jus- 

 tice why an autopsy had not been performed. 

 M. Brisson supported the demand of the Marquis 

 de la Ferronnays and moved a resolution express- 

 ing regret that the authorities had not sealed 

 the papers of the Baron de Reinach. M. Loubet 

 indignantly denied that the Government had 

 been guilty of negligence, and refused to accept 

 an expression of confidence in the Government 

 that M. Monjon proposed to append to M. Bris- 

 son's motion, demanding the order of the day 

 pure and simple. This was refused by 304 to 

 219 votes, and M. Brisson's resolution was passed 

 by 393 to 3 votes. The majority that upset the 

 ministry was composed of 172 Conservatives and 

 Boulangists and 121 Republicans. M. Loubet 

 handed in the resignations of the Cabinet, and 

 President Carnot sent for M. Brisson, who at- 

 tempted to form a Cabinet, of which the main task 

 should be to sift the Panama scandal to the 



