Part 14 (2/2)
A hundred years ago more than ten days were required to complete these seven processes, from the crus.h.i.+ng and mixing and putting into the furnace of the soda and the silicious sand and the charcoal and the lime and the broken gla.s.s, called here _calcin_, through the fusion, and the moulding, and the squaring, and the smoothing, and the was.h.i.+ng, and the polis.h.i.+ng. Now this is all done in half the time--127 hours instead of 246.
With all this the condition of the workmen employed at St.-Gobain has also steadily improved. It seems always to have been good, relatively to the general conditions of workmen in other industries and other establishments in France. Under the original statutes, and in the time of the excellent M. Deslandes, the nominee of Madame Geoffrin, who ruled St.-Gobain with great success from 1759 down to the Revolution, the workmen of St.-Gobain, as I have shown, were looked after, as well as kept to their duty, on strictly patriarchal principles, not likely to find favour in modern eyes. That they did not themselves dislike the system may be inferred from the fact that no such thing as a strike has ever been known at St.-Gobain, and that a considerable proportion of the workmen employed here now are the direct descendants of workmen employed here in the last century. There are even workers by inheritance, as men may be soldiers and sailors or magistrates by inheritance. Of course with the great extension in our own time of the operation of the company, great numbers of workmen other than gla.s.sworkers have come into its employment. But in the gla.s.s manufactures alone there are now employed: at St.-Gobain 375 workmen, at Chauny 583, at Cirey-sur-Vezouze 628, at Montlucon 473, at s...o...b..rg, in Rhenish Prussia, 842, at Waldhof, in Baden-Baden, 518; making, in all, 3,419.
The wages of the workmen are paid by the day, by the month, or by the piece, according to the special work which they do, but in all cases (and this, I believe, has been the rule here from the beginning) the workman is interested in his work by one premium on the amount, and by another on the quality of the work done. Furthermore (and this also dates from the beginning) the company look after the primary education of the children of the workmen. At St.-Gobain, at Chauny, at Cirey, at Montlucon, and I believe, also, at Waldhof, it maintains schools for both s.e.xes at its own expense, together with asylums and training schools for the children. In these there are now more than 1,400 children. When the company owns no such school it pays a subvention to the nearest school for the benefit of the children of its workmen.
Here at St.-Gobain the company owns a number of houses, each house having a garden and dependencies, which it lets to the workmen at an average rental of eight francs a month. I saw not long ago, at one of the stations on a line newly opened by the Great Eastern Railway Company of England, very neat and even handsome cottages well built of brick and thoroughly comfortable, which are leased to servants of the company at 2s. 6_d_. a week, or ten s.h.i.+llings a month. The houses I saw at St.-Gobain let at less than seven s.h.i.+llings a month, were quite as large as those of the Great Eastern Company, and the gardens were much larger.
I gathered from the remarks made to me at St.-Gobain by people who seemed to be both well-informed and well-disposed, that of late years the liberality of the company in regard to these houses has, in not a few cases, worked mischief rather than good. They are not confined to St.-Gobain, and the company owns and leases no fewer than 1,256 of them. A good many allotments of land around the factories are also made at nominal rates to the workmen, who cultivate them a.s.siduously. The gla.s.s-founders are particularly favoured in making these leases and allotments. Besides these houses meant for families, the company provides lodgings near the factories for unmarried workmen, or for workmen whose homes are at a considerable distance from their work.
Within the buildings of the manufactory itself at St.-Gobain, M.
Henrivaux showed me some such lodgings, as well as several bath-rooms which the workmen are allowed to use on the payment of a very slight fee. It is his experience that the workmen prefer to consider the bath as a luxury, and to pay for it.
All the relations between the company and its workmen, indeed, seem to me to be governed by a sensible avoidance on the part of the company of everything like fussy paternalism; and to this, in some measure, I have no doubt, must be attributed the remarkably smooth and easy working of these relations through so long a course of years. The workmen are treated, not like children, but like reasonable beings, who may be expected to avail themselves of advantages which are offered them with an eye at once to their own interests and to the interests of the company.
The co-operative societies at St.-Gobain and at Chauny, for example, were founded in 1866, not by the company, but by the employees of the company under statutes carefully drawn up by M. Cochin, and the company simply undertook to a.s.sist them; in the first place by leasing them, at a low rent, the buildings necessary for the business, and in the next place by taking charge gratuitously of their financial operations. The goods supplied are sold only to members of the societies, as in the co-operative stores in England. The transactions amount to about 1,500,000 francs a year, the goods are sold at prices below those charged in the local shops, and the members divide an average annual profit of from eight to ten per cent. The management is entirely in the hands of the members.
The company has founded at St.-Gobain a kind of savings-bank in which the workman may make deposits of from one franc to 400 francs, drawing interest at the rate of 4 per cent. per annum, until the maximum is reached, when the money is either paid back to the depositor or, if he prefers, invested for him, without charge by the company, in the public funds or in railway securities. In this way many of the workmen are coming to be small capitalists. If they wish also to become house-owners the company advances, at the lowest possible rate of interest, the necessary funds for the purchase, and workmen in good standing with the company find no difficulty in getting gratuitous advances of money repayable in small fixed amounts, upon showing good reasons for the advance. And in all the establishments of the company, except at Montlucon, where there is a special fund to give a.s.sistance in cases of accident or disease, the workmen and their families are ent.i.tled to medical advice and medicines at the expense of the company.
In addition to all these arrangements for promoting a real community of interests between the company and its employees, there is a pension fund out of which retiring pensions, varying from one-fifth to one-fourth of the wages earned by the pensioner, are granted to employees who have served the company for a certain number of years, or who find themselves disabled from further service by age or by disease. A certain proportion, determinable by the circ.u.mstances of each case, of these pensions is settled upon the widows and young children of the pensioners; and in order to encourage habits of thrift and forecast among the workmen, the company undertakes to manage without charge the investment of a certain proportion of his wages by any workman in the 'pension fund' of the national government.
The total outlay of the company upon these various methods of promoting a community of interests between itself and its employees amounted in 1888 to 438,033 francs, thus divided:--
francs Pensions 241,657 Medical Service 100,055 Schools and Religious Services 57,788 Recreations 17,667 Gifts and a.s.sistance 19,758
The outlay upon 'recreation' is made in the form of subventions and prizes granted to a.s.sociations of the workmen, such as shooting and gymnastic clubs and musical societies. The manufactory, for example, boasts a philharmonic society of its own, and there is a Choral Society of St.-Gobain. Both of these have scored successes in various public exhibitions. There is a rifle club, founded in 1861, and reconst.i.tuted in 1874, with an eye to the possible military necessities of the country.
The relations between the company and its employees under this system, the germs of which were planted here two centuries ago, have a.s.sumed such a character that the workmen habitually speak not of the manufactory but of the 'maison.' They are and feel themselves to be members of a great economic family. Of 2,650 persons now actively employed in St.-Gobain, Chauny, and Cirey, 432, or 16.3 per cent., have been employed for more than thirty years; 411, or 15.5 per cent., for more than twenty and less than thirty years; 553, or 20.9 per cent., for more than ten and less than twenty years; and only 1,254, or 47.3 per cent., for less than ten years.
It would be instructive to compare this record with the records of the most important industrial establishments in England and America during the past thirty years, and I should be glad to see this done by some of the people who talk so glibly in England and America of the inherent fickleness and instability of the French character, as offering an adequate explanation of the political catastrophes which have so often recurred in France during the past century.
One of the most curious features of the establishment at St.-Gobain is a subterranean lake. The fine forests around St.-Gobain and La Fere--forests of oak, beech, elm, ash, birch, maple, yoke-elm, aspen, wild cherry, linden, elder, and willow--flourish upon a tertiary formation. The surface of clay keeps the soil marshy and damp, but this checks the infiltration of the rainwater and therefore favours the growth of the trees. In the calcareous rock the early inhabitants hollowed out for themselves caverns, in which they took refuge from their enemies and from the beasts of the forest; and these caverns, called by the people _creuttes_--an obvious corruption of the name of _crypts_, given them by the Roman conquerors of Gaul, just as the early French trappers gave the name of 'caches' to the Indian hiding-places of the Far West--are to be found all about Soissons and Laon. The more modern lords of St.-Gobain, its monks and its barons, dug out of the calcareous rock the stones which they used to build their chateaux and their churches, and they created great _creuttes_ beneath St.-Gobain. It seems to have occurred to M. Deslandes, during his long and skilful supervision of the works here, that these caverns might be put to the very practical use of securing an adequate water-supply. The idea has been thoroughly carried out, and the subterranean reservoir of St.-Gobain is much more impressive as a spectacle than the crypts of the Cisterns at Constantinople. It is kept filled to an average depth of one metre by the infiltration of the surface waters and by the overflow of a pond, La Marette, on the plateau of St.-Gobain, and it covers an area of some 1,200 square metres.
After two or three hours spent in visiting the various departments of the gla.s.sworks overhead, M. Henrivaux led me through winding pa.s.sages, which reminded me of the dismal vomitories at Baiae, down into this strange underworld. Walls and pillars, partly of the natural rock, left in the working of the quarries, partly of masonry built up to strengthen the reservoir, give this weird water, when you reach it, the aspect rather of a stream than of a lake. A workman, who had preceded and guided us with a swinging lantern, put out a long boathook, and drew slowly around to the landing-place a long, shallow boat, into which he invited us to step. M. Henrivaux had kindly sent orders in the morning to have the reservoir illuminated with Venetian and Chinese lanterns of various colours. These had been hung from hooks in the rocks and pillars with infinite good taste at long intervals, so as to illuminate not too brilliantly the mystical darkness of the scene. Looking upon the vague, indefinite vista, as it glimmered away into an indefinable distance, one seemed really to stand
Where Alp, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless by man, Down to a sh.o.r.eless sea.
Seating ourselves carefully in the boat, our silent boatman, like a spectral gondolier, rowed us silently along the labyrinthine ca.n.a.ls of this dim and ghostly Venice. Vathek Beckford would have made them waterways to the Hall of Eblis.
CHAPTER VIII
IN THE AISNE--_continued_
LAON
The lively little city of Chauny, standing in the heart of the rich and lovely valley of the Oise, the 'golden vale' of this part of France, has a history of its own of which I shall presently have something to say, and which throws some interesting light upon the general history of France.
But Chauny owes its actual prosperity mainly to its connection with the Company of St.-Gobain. From a very early period in the annals of the company, the plate-gla.s.s made at St.-Gobain was sent across the country to Chauny, and thence by water to Paris, where it was polished and 'tinned' at the company's works in the Rue de Reuilly.
When the first machines were invented for saving much of the manual labour spent upon these processes, it occurred to the managers of the company that these machines might be advantageously worked with the water-power of the Oise at Chauny. This was in the beginning of the present century. About the same time, thanks to the foreign wars provoked by the Girondists to promote the Revolution, it became very difficult to obtain the supplies of natural soda necessary for the manufacture of plate-gla.s.s, these supplies having been drawn, down to that time, almost exclusively from Alicante in Spain; and the chemist Leblanc hit upon a process for extracting soda on a great scale from sea-salt. Of this invention the managers of St.-Gobain promptly availed themselves; and, after a brief and unsatisfactory experiment at a place called Charlesfontaine, they established at Chauny some soda-works, which have since been developed into the most extensive chemical works in France.
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