FOOTNOTES:
[B] Boulevard means, I presume, rampart or fortified works (hence our English bulwark). The rampart was long ago removed, as the city outgrew it, but the name is retained by the ample street which took its place. Our Battery at New-York illustrates this origin of a name.
XX.
LYONS TO TURIN.
Turin (Italy), June 20, 1851.
Lyons, though a French city, and the second in the Republic, wears a sad, disheartened aspect. In '91 a stronghold of decaying Loyalty, it is to-day the very focus of Democratic Socialism, being decidedly more "Red" than Paris.—Here is concentrated the Sixth Military Division of the French Army, under chiefs not chary of using the sabre and bayonet, and with instructions to apply efficient poultices of grape and canister on the first palpable appearance of local inflammation. Should Louis Napoleon be enabled to override the Constitution and prolong his sway, it is possible that, by the aid of the act of May 31st, 1850, whereby more than half the Artisans of France are disfranchised, the spirit of Lyons may in time be subdued, and partisans of "Order" substituted for her present Socialist Representatives in the Assembly; but, should the popular cause triumph in the ensuing Elections, I shall be agreeably disappointed if that triumph is as temperately and forbearingly enjoyed here as was that of February, 1848.
Lyons is now undergoing one of those periodical revulsions or depressions which are the necessary incidents of the false system of Industry and Trade which the leaders of Commercial opinion are bent on fortifying and extending.—Here, at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone, is concentrated a population of nearly 200,000 souls, half of whom attempt to live by spinning, weaving and dyeing Silks, while the residue in good part busy themselves in collecting and buying the raw material or in exporting and selling the product. But it is not best for themselves nor for mankind that 100,000 Silk-workers should be clustered on any square mile or two of earth; if they were distributed over the world's surface, in communities of five to fifty thousand souls—if the raw Silk were grown in the various countries wherein the fabrics are required, where the climate and soil do not forbid, and taken there to be manufactured where they do—the workers would have space, air, activity, liberty, development, which are unattainable while they are cooped within the walls of a single city. If those Silk-weavers, for instance, whose fabrics are consumed in the United States, were now located in Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, &c. instead of being mainly crowded into Lyons, they would there obtain many of the necessaries of life at half the prices they now give for them, while the consumers of their fabrics would pay for them in good part with Fruits, Vegetables, Fuel, &c. which, because of their bulk or their perishable nature, they cannot now sell at all, or can only sell at prices below the cost of production. No matter if the Silks were held in money a fifth, a fourth, or even a third higher than now, the great body of our consumers would obtain them much cheaper, estimating the cost not in dollars but in days' labor. The workers on both sides would be benefited, because they would share between them at least three-fourths of the enormous tax which Commerce now levies upon their Industry through the sale and resale of its products, to distribute among its importers, shippers, jobbers, retailers and lackeys of infinite variety. The bringing together of Producer and Consumer, where Nature has interposed no barrier, so that their diverse needs may be supplied by direct interchange, or with the fewest possible intermediates, is the simple and only remedy for one of the chief scourges under which Industry now suffers throughout the world.
"Very true," says Vapid, "but this will regulate itself."—Will it, indeed? Be good enough to tell me how! All the potent individual agencies now affecting it are attached by self-interest to the wrong side. The Capitalists, the Employers, the Exporters, engaged in the Silk trade, all own property in Lyons, and are naturally anxious that the manufacture shall be more and more concentrated there. The Shipper, the Importer, the Jobber of our own country, has a like interest in keeping the point of production as distant from their customers as possible. Very often have I been told by wholesale merchants, "We prefer to sell Foreign rather than Home-made fabrics, because the profit on the former is usually much greater." This consideration is active and omnipresent in Trade generally. The sole interest subserved by Direct and Simple Exchanges is that of Labor; and this, though greatest of all, is unorganized, inert, and individually impotent. These Silk-Weavers of Lyons are no more capable of removing to Virginia or Missouri and establishing their business there than the Alps are of making an American tour. Our consumers of Silks, acting as individuals, cannot bring them over and establish them among us. But the great body of consumers, animated by Philanthropy and an enlightened Self-Interest, acting through their single efficient organism, the State, can make it the interest of Capital and Capacity to bring them over and plant them in the most eligible localities among us, and ought immediately and persistently to do so. The inconveniences of such a policy are partial and transitory, while its blessings are permanent and universal.