Part 23 (1/2)

Under this system the company makes contracts with the workmen at a fixed price for coal, deliverable during several months. A good workman, holding one of these contracts and stimulated by it, frequently gains from 20 to 25 per cent. more than the average daily wage of his cla.s.s. The syndicate wished to establish 'equality' of wages, or, in other words, to put idle or inferior workmen on the same level with industrious and superior workmen.

To this end, the leaders resorted to the methods usual in all such cases, of intimidation and actual violence. Workmen at Anzin who had taken 'marchandages' were attacked and beaten, some of them so severely as to disable them for weeks.

At the parliamentary inquiry which followed the strike of 1884, such letters as the following, sent to workmen at Anzin, a year before, in 1883, were produced and read in evidence:--

'CACHAPREZ

'Citizen,--In the name of the syndical chamber of the miners of Anzin, thou art forewarned that, if thou dost not cease thy _marchandage_, as we have informed Lagneaux, thou wilt pa.s.s, in the sight of thy brethren coal-miners, for a traitor and a coward, as well as thy seven comrades, who are worth no more than thyself.

'If thou dost not what we exact of thee, be not surprised to find thyself stretched out a bit, and to be laid up for three weeks, as well as the good-for-nothings who are working with thee.

'Receive our great contempt.

'A group of workmen who will caress thee one of these days if thou dost not give up thy marchandage.'

Letters like these, which would not discredit the rural terrorists of Kerry and Clare, were followed, not only by attacks on the obnoxious workmen, but by the destruction of their flowers and vegetables in the gardens which, as I have stated, they are enabled by the company to cultivate. As a workman may go to his work as soon as he likes in the morning (the gates are closed just before six o'clock), they have their afternoons to themselves, and those of them who have gardens I found working there with great evident satisfaction at most of the points which I visited.

With the outbreak of the 'strike' in 1884, matters grew worse. Dynamite was then called into play. Fusees were exploded under the windows and in the doorways of workmen who refused to be coerced into leaving their work. As nearly nine-tenths of the workmen had gone, or been driven, into the strike, the cabarets in which the region abounds were filled with crowds of idle men. Radical speakers and managers hurried down to Anzin from Paris, to harangue the mult.i.tude and stir the people up to mischief, and the position of the workmen who stood out against an agitation which they knew to be founded on no grievance of theirs, and which could have no possible result for them but to injure the company, with the prosperity of which they felt their own prosperity to be identified, became really dangerous.

In the thick of the contest thus provoked and carried on, it is interesting to find M. Allain-Targe, of whom I have already had occasion to speak, in connection with his conduct as Minister of the Interior during the elections of 1885, appearing on the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, of 1884, into the situation at Anzin, as a friend and advocate of the 'syndicate of workmen,' and urging the Anzin Company to accept the syndicate and its secretary, M. Basly, as an umpire between itself and the 'strikers,' who had been seduced or coerced into 'striking' by this very syndicate and its secretary!

What possible good, either to Labour or to Capital, can be rationally expected--what possible harm to both may not be legitimately feared--from a republic controlled and administered by such men?

One curious and important incidental object of the 'syndicate of workmen,' and of M. Basly in promoting this strike of 1884 at Anzin, revealed itself to me in the very full Report of the Parliamentary inquiry which M. Guary was good enough to put at my service.

After devoting large sums of money to the various inst.i.tutions and funds established by it for the benefit of the workmen, the Anzin Company invited the workmen themselves to contribute to their own savings and pension fund at the rate of three per cent. of their wages, the expenses of management being borne, of course, by the company. The 'syndicate of workmen' and M. Basly did not like this. They preferred that any contributions to be made by the workmen from their wages should be made, not to a fund guaranteed and administered by the company, but to a fund to be handled by the syndicate.

Whereupon M. Basly wrote, and caused to be circulated among the workmen, a letter signed by himself as secretary of the syndicate, in which he bade them regard the proposal of the company as 'a snare set for their liberties.' 'To sign any such agreement as the company suggests,' he said, 'will be to sign your own death-warrant and that of your children!'

'Citizens! your enemies see our Union established. They know that we are on the point of having a pension fund solidly established _under the guarantee of the State_, which shall leave us all free to work whenever we like.'

This idea of a Labour Pension Fund under the guarantee of the State is not, I need hardly say, of M. Basly's invention. It 'trots through the heads' of all manner of political adherents of M. Doumer's 'true Republic.' It was very neatly 'thrashed out' in a brief colloquy which.

I noted down one day in Paris between a representative of the 'syndicate of jewellers' and a deputy, M. Thiesse. 'What would you think?' asked M.

Thiesse, 'of an obligatory a.s.sessment on wages, intended to secure, by the authority of the State and with perfect safety, a certain pension to the workmen of your corporation?'

Whereunto the jeweller, M. Favelier, replied: 'We prefer freedom in this respect, as well as from the point of view of our work.'

M. Thiesse returned undismayed to the charge.

'Then you would prefer to organise a pension fund in your syndical chamber? But if you had not means enough to ensure pensions to your workmen, what would you think of an inst.i.tution which would ensure them a pension and bread for their old age?'

To which M. Favelier, suddenly striking the bull's eye and 'ringing the bell': 'We do not want the State called in, to lay new taxes upon us!'

M. Basly, who is probably a consumer rather than a payer of taxes, had more 'advanced' views than the Parisian jeweller. But his chief immediate object evidently was to secure contributions from the wages of the Anzin workmen to a fund to be controlled by the syndicate. What the eventual meaning to the contributing workmen of a fund so controlled is likely to be may be inferred from an incident which came to my knowledge not long ago, in London. A question arose between a certain a.s.sociation of English engineers, and men employed by one of the great English railway companies, over an issue not unlike that presented at Anzin by the demand of the 'syndicate of miners,' that the Anzin workmen should give up their long time and profitable contracts. The men in the employment of the railway were old and excellent railway men, who were earning, on a kind of special contract, something like a pound a week apiece more than the usual rates paid to their cla.s.s. They were members of the a.s.sociation referred to, and, as such, had for many years contributed to its funds under a system which promised them a certain pension at the expiration of a certain number of years. This being the situation, these men were notified by the a.s.sociation that if they did not give up their special contracts and content themselves with the usual wages earned by others of their cla.s.s, they would, in the first instance, be fined, out of their own money in the hands of the a.s.sociation, a pound a week for a given time, at the end of which, if they still remained in disobedience, their pensions would be forfeited!

I should be glad to know what 'employer' ever devised a more shameless plan than this for reducing workmen to slavery, moral and financial?

Probably the laws of England, if called upon, would protect them against such outrages. But how is a workman in such circ.u.mstances to call upon the laws? How is he to meet the legal cost of defending his rights? How is he to face the organised hostility of men of his own cla.s.s?

The 'strike' at Anzin in 1884 ended as 'strikes' are apt to do. A certain proportion of the men who had been foremost in accepting or promoting it disappeared from the service of the company; others, and the majority, escaped from the domination of the 'syndicate' and of M.

Basly. That the conduct of the company throughout the crisis was such as to commend itself to the workmen in general may, I think, be inferred from the fact that a fresh attempt to bring about a 'strike' at Anzin, since I visited the place, completely failed. The attempt originated with the leaders of a 'strike' which was actually carried out in the mines of the adjoining Department of the Pas-de-Calais. The means employed in 1884 to intimidate the workmen at Anzin were again used. The troops and the gendarmerie were, however, called out at Anzin, not to protect Capital against Labour, but to protect the working-men of Anzin who chose to keep out of the 'strike,' against men of their own cla.s.s who tried to drive them into it. In this case the original 'strike'

seems to have been provoked by local rather than general causes. The managers of the mines in the Pas-de-Calais had resolved to increase the output of their mines. This necessitated a considerable increase in the number of miners employed, and this augmented demand for mining labour, not unnaturally, led the men to demand an advance on their wages. They were encouraged to demand this advance, too, by a somewhat sudden rise in the market-price of certain descriptions of coal, and it is not perhaps surprising that it should not have occurred to them to ask themselves whether the rise in the market price did, or did not, mean a real increase of profits to their employers, who, of course, could only take a very partial advantage of the advance, on account of the long contracts under which by far the greater part of their output had to be delivered to their customers.