Part 15 (1/2)

Taken in conjunction with the gla.s.sworks also now established here, these works extend over an area of some thirty hectares, fourteen of which are occupied by buildings. Numerous ca.n.a.ls fed from the Oise traverse this immense area, some of them supplying water-power, others serving as waterways. The place, in short, is an industrial Amsterdam or Rotterdam in miniature, lying between the river Oise, the Ca.n.a.l de St.-Quentin, and the Ca.n.a.l de St.-Lazare. The Cite Ouvriere, built for the workmen by the company, lies beyond the Ca.n.a.l de St.-Lazare and on the road from Chateau Thierry in Champagne (the birthplace of La Fontaine) to Bethune in Artois.

The streets and areas within the works are most appropriately baptized by the names of the eminent men of science to whom the company is indebted for great services either directly or indirectly: the Cour Lavoisier, the Rue Pelouze, the Rue Guyton de Morvaux, the Rue Leblanc, the Rue Gay-Lussac, the Cour Scheele, the Rue Hely d'Oisset.

Besides the dwellings put up for the benefit of the workmen at Chauny, the company has built here a chapel, established a free dispensary, and organised excellent schools for the children of both s.e.xes, under the supervision of the devoted Sisters, who have not yet been 'converted'

out of Chauny.

'What is the feeling of the people here on this question of clerical teaching?' I asked an acquaintance of mine, who formerly filled an important post in the local administration of this region, and who now devotes himself to his flowers and his library in a charming old house of the eighteenth century, the high-walled courtyard of which is tapestried with luxuriant vines and creepers.

'All the sensible people in Chauny,' he said--'and there are many sensible people in Chauny, though in the old times our neighbours used to speak of us as ”the monkies of Chauny”--are quite disgusted with all this newfangled nonsense, and with these incessant attacks on the clergy. The troublesome element here in Chauny is not to be found among the workmen: it is to be found among the people who do not work. Of course, everybody knows that it is the great chemical and gla.s.s works here which make Chauny prosperous. But for St.-Gobain we should be where we were a hundred years ago. And so there is a tendency all through the Department to come to Chauny, in hopes of finding work under the company. Of course, in nine cases out of ten, those who seek it thus do not get it, for it is the rule of the company always to give the preference to people from Chauny, or the immediate neighbourhood.

'Of course the unsuccessful ”immigrants” linger about the place, and as they don't find work they go lounging about the town, and take to drink too often and, in short, soon become the raw material of which in these days the freemasons are making what they call ”Republicans.” You have it all,' he added, 'in the letter which M. Allain-Targe has just written, refusing to be a candidate this year for the Chambers.'

I remembered very well the energy shown by M. Allain-Targe, as a Republican Minister of the Interior, at the time of the elections of October 18, 1885. He then issued an official circular instructing all the public functionaries that, while they were to be absolutely 'neutral' as between Republican candidates of different colours, they must exert themselves to the utmost as against all 'reactionary'

candidates. I was much interested, therefore, to learn the present opinion of M. Allain-Targe as to the outlook of the Republic under his successor, M. Constans, in 1889. It was very instructive to find that M.

Allain-Targe now declines to be a Republican candidate because, to use his own words, though the High Court of Justice may 'deliver the Republic from General Boulanger and his confederates, it is beyond the power of the High Court of Justice to bring France back--let us not say to the heroic age, but to the age of good faith, of disinterestedness, of common sense, and of that prudent, sincere, and loyal policy, thanks to which, during long years, France pa.s.sed safely through so many serious trials.'

'The new generations of electors,' says M. Allain-Targe in this remarkable letter, 'exact of their representatives conditions to which I will not submit. I will not undertake to make the promises which it is now the fas.h.i.+on of candidates to lavish, and which I cannot regard as serious.' These 'new generations of electors' are the 'new social strata' about which Gambetta used to declaim so confidently only a few years ago, and I quite agreed with my philosophic friend near Chauny in thinking that no slight significance must attach to such a verdict upon them, p.r.o.nounced in 1889 by an 'advanced Republican' like M.

Allain-Targe, who only four years ago, in 1885, was the most active minister of a Government called into existence to carry out the ideas of Gambetta, and to found a stable republic upon these 'new social strata.'

Put into plain English, this letter of M. Allain-Targe, who had more than any of his colleagues to do directly and in the way of business both with the electors and with the elected of France four years ago, and who now declines to have anything more to do with them all--simply means that the electors sell their votes to the highest bidder, and that the man who will make the most unscrupulous bid is likeliest to get the votes. It is hard to see much difference between such a verdict and the outspoken declaration of M. Paul de Ca.s.sagnac that law, order, property, and liberty in France are threatened to-day, not by a 'democracy,' but by a 'voyoucratie' or 'blackguardocracy.'

The 'anti-clerical' agitation here, as elsewhere in France, I am a.s.sured, is plainly under the control of the 'freemasons.' Not that the 'freemasons' are avowedly very numerous here. But they are influential because they act together, in silence, and on lines common to the agitation all over France. 'Three or four energetic members of the order,' said one very intelligent man to me here at Chauny, 'can easily manage the whole official machinery of a large political district. To understand their methods and their organisation you must go back to the wors.h.i.+p of Baphomet in the Middle Ages. In some of their lodges they reproduce with a goat one at least of the abominations which Von Hammer tells us were charged upon the Knights Templars as Baphometic. They are a sect--a persecuting sect, and a sect bent on absolutely destroying the Christian religion. To this end they parody the Christian symbols and the Christian scheme of charity and of good works. They do not, most of them, hold office, it being much more to the purpose for them to awe the officials, and that is their favourite way of working. There are, however, exceptions to this. If you go to Marmande in the South you will find a sub-prefect there who is a most energetic and mischievous ”freemason.” In the Aisne the Prefect is a freemason, and here all the public functionaries go in fear of the order. They own the newspaper, control profitable contracts of all sorts, and can make or mar the career of public servants, through their occult relations with people at headquarters in Paris.'

I suggested that in England and Germany and the United States the 'freemasons' are not only regarded as friends of order and of law, but number among their dignitaries men of the highest official and personal rank.

'That is quite true, no doubt,' he said. 'But this order in France has, I believe, no official relations now with the order in either of these countries. Its affiliations are with the ”freemasons” of Italy, of Belgium, and of Spain, so far as it has any affiliations. There have been ”freemasons,” as you must know, among the Radical leaders in Belgium who have not hesitated, while holding high public positions, to denounce Christianity in open meetings as a ”corpse blocking the way of modern progress”; and what the freemasonry of Italy and of Spain is I am sure you must know.'

I told him that in Spanish America and in Brazil I had met priests who were members of the order; and I particularly cited the case of an ecclesiastic of considerable importance, who in Costa Rica, some ten or twelve years ago, was at the head of the Order of Freemasons in that country.

'That may be,' he replied, 'but officers of our expedition into Mexico under Maximilian have told me that the freemasons in Mexico were active allies of the Liberals and of Juarez in their war against the Church.'

This I could not contradict, for while I never heard that President Juarez was himself a 'freemason,' I know, from my conversations with him after the fall of the Empire, in 1871, that, though educated by the priests in Oajaca, as Robespierre was by the priests in Arras, he was an unbeliever of the type of the advanced Encyclopaedists of the last century, and though not such a fanatic as Condorcet, strongly disposed, not only to deprive the Mexican clergy of their 'fueros' under the old Spanish system, but to make an end of Catholicism in Mexico if possible.

Nor was he much more friendly to the Protestants, who were then trying, under Bishop Riley, to found a Protestant propaganda in Mexico.

'In France, at all events under the Third Republic,' he went on, 'the ”freemasons” are the implacable enemies of religion. It was in full accord with them, and as a battle-cry in their interest, that Gambetta uttered his famous declaration that ”Clericalism is the enemy!” And if the ”freemasons” of any other country recognise and in any fas.h.i.+on affiliate with the Grand Orient of France, they ought to understand what they are doing, and to what objects they are lending themselves, consciously or unconsciously. You tell me that General Was.h.i.+ngton was a freemason. Yes, no doubt, but the freemasonry which he accepted was no more like the modern ”freemasonry” of France than this Third Republic of ours is like the republic of which he was the founder!'

The processes carried on in the great chemical works at Chauny are in their way as interesting as the processes carried on at St.-Gobain or in the gla.s.sworks here. But I cannot say they are as pleasant, or even as picturesque. Commercially speaking, the output of the chemical works of this great company is at least as important now as the output of its gla.s.sworks. The chemical works grew up out of the necessities of the gla.s.sworks. When the company was led, at the beginning of this century, by the pressure of the war epoch, to adopt in its gla.s.sworks the use of the artificial soda made by Leblanc, the Director soon found it advisable to have the artificial soda manufactured by the company itself. This led to the establishment of the chemical works at Chauny, and down to 1867 the company itself was the chief consumer of these chemical products. The Exposition of that year widened the horizon, by making France acquainted with the agricultural importance of the English fabrication of 'superphosphates' as fertilisers. At the Exposition of 1878 the Company of St.-Gobain exhibited, and received a gold medal, for superphosphates, which it was then turning out at the rate of 20,000 tons a year from three establishments--one at Chauny, one at L'Oseraie, and one at Montlucon. As the company was then turning out a great production of sulphuric acid, and owned the only important mine of pyrites in France, it went on with increasing energy, and now, in 1889, shows an output of 110,000 tons of superphosphates, from no fewer than six establishments--Chauny, Aubervilliers, Marennes, Saint-Fons near Lyon, L'Oseraie, and Montlucon. Besides these it possesses salt-works at Art-sur-Meurthe, its iron pyrites works at Sain-Bel, and some important deposits of phosphates at Beauval. These give employment to no fewer than 3,300 workmen, independently of those employed by the company at its various gla.s.sworks in the gla.s.s manufacture. At Chauny alone the chemical works employ 1,350 of these workmen. For these, as for its gla.s.sworkers, the company has established a system of savings inst.i.tutions and of pensions. Medical advice and medicines are given gratuitously to the workmen and their families. The co-operative a.s.sociation founded by M. Cochin at St.-Gobain has not, I believe, been extended to the chemical works; but the company maintains establishments which supply the chief wants of the workpeople at cost price, and the dwellings provided for them, either gratuitously or at very low rents, now number more than seven hundred, independently of the dormitories for unmarried workmen. Retiring pensions, varying from one-fifth to one-fourth of the wages of the workmen, are granted to all after a certain number of years of service, and to workmen disabled by disease or by accidents.

At the pyrites-mine of Sain-Bel, in the South, near Tarare, where more than 400 workmen are employed--300 as miners and the rest in the works above named, the former earning on an average 1,309 fr. 25 c., and the latter on an average 1,114 fr. 90 c. a year--a system exists under which any workman who chooses to put aside his savings in a _caisse de la vieillesse_ receives from the company, when he has completed twenty-five years of service, or has attained the age of fifty-five years, an annual pension more than equal to the amount at that time of his savings in the _caisse_.

As I have said, the manufacture of chemical products is not so pleasant or so picturesque in itself as the manufacture of plate-gla.s.s and mirrors. Within the last decade the output of sulphuric acid alone from the company's works has more than doubled, and now amounts to more than 200,000 tons a year. The gases disengaged in the manufacture of chemical fertilisers, such as carbonic acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, fluorine of silicium, and so on, it was found at Chauny, destroyed entirely in a very short time the polish of the gla.s.s in the window-panes of the houses opposite to the works, and certainly did not improve either the respiratory organs or the general health of the workmen. The company therefore spent a good deal of time and of money in working out a system for the complete condensation of these gases. I am told that it has proved completely successful, and is now established in all the chemical works of the company, to the great advantage not only of the workmen, but of the company also.

Although Chauny is really a very ancient city--dating back at least to the age of Charlemagne, when the monks of Cuissy and St.-Eloi-Fontaine, with the keen eye of those early agriculturists for a good thing, reclaimed its marshes and turned them into a fat land, yielding, as an old local _dicton_ tells us, the

'septem commoda vitae, Poma, nemus, segetes, linum, pecus, herba, racemus.'

--it has almost nothing to show to-day in the way of antique architecture. Of the 'seven comforts of life,' the vine has vanished also; but all the others flourish abundantly, and the people of Chauny have little to complain of on the score of the natural resources of their region. During the wars, though, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the place was so often taken and retaken that its buildings were pretty well battered to pieces. The English of Harry the Fifth stormed it in 1417, and England held it for a quarter of a century, during which period an incident occurred much more creditable to the burghers of Chauny than is the taking of the Bastille in 1789 to the citizens of Paris. Monstrelet tells the story in a quaint and vigorous fas.h.i.+on. Chauny at that time was part of the appanage of the Duc d'Orleans, then a prisoner in England, and it was held for the conquerors by a French, n.o.bleman, 'Messire Collard de Mailly,' who had accepted the office of Bailli of Vermandois from King Henry of England.

The burghers of Chauny, who had lived for two centuries in the enjoyment of the rights and privileges granted them in a royal charter by Philip Augustus, did not like this state of things at all. So they made up their minds to demolish the castle, lest 'Messire Collard de Mailly'