CHAPTER XII
ORGANISED PHILANTHROPY AND PUBLIC ASSISTANCE
It would be difficult to say whether or no France compares favourably with England in the matter of philanthropy and the poor laws. But this much must be admitted in favour of the Republican Government,—charity was never so widely practised, was never so effectual or so free-handed, as it is to-day in France. You will hear the futile nobles and those who would pass for a part of the aristocracy by the mere virtue of adopting its vices and prejudices, assure you that everything was better under the ancien régime; that shopkeepers, peasants, farmers, and workmen were all better off when they depended upon an absolute king. French Catholics, like nearly all other Catholics I know, soar above argument, logic, the surprises, revelations, and irrefragable testimony of history. What they desire to have been, to have happened, must have been and happened, and there is nothing more to be said. And so to-day, whenever a handful of titled malcontents out of office, followed by a train of wealthy and fashionable imitators, rail at a Government indifferent to their interests, it is solemnly maintained that the people groan and sweat under tyrannical laws, and that France has gone to the dogs. A statement more contrary to truth and fact could not possibly be made.
Without examining even the enormous efforts of private charity to improve the condition of the poor, we need only take up the subject of Public Assistance to assure ourselves that the incessant preoccupation, under republican rule, of the municipalities all over France is the amelioration of the lot of the unfortunate classes of humanity. If you lend an indulgent ear to the Catholics, they will assure you that the municipality of Paris, because hitherto it has been democratic and secular, is a mere gang of thieves, that the public funds are squandered on private ends, and that not a penny of its vast revenues finds its way into the pockets of the poor. This is simply a calumny—a stupid, groundless invention. The Assistance Publique has done more for the poor than all the kings of France put together. In the days of Louis XIV. there was no such thing as a public lying-in hospital. Wretched women, without a home, or means of any kind to obtain shelter for the birth of their children had to go to the Hôtel de Ville, where they lay on the floors, and even two occupied each of the few beds, and childbirth took place in a state of indescribable filth and discomfort.
The calumniated Assistance Publique has built a large maternité, where mothers and infants receive all possible care; and, in case of pressure on their space, they pay midwives, properly diplomaed, to take charge of poor women in their own houses. Everything at present is so comfortably organised in these public institutions that many women of small means prefer to avail themselves of them rather than endure the domestic upheaval of a confinement at home. It should, however, be admitted that the Assistance Publique took the idea from M. Pinard’s charmingly situated maternité of the Boulevard Port Royal. M. Pinard is something more than a celebrated accoucheur; he is a philanthropist, or, as his enthusiastic disciple, Dr. Franck Brentano, said of him when kindly doing me the honours of the maternité of the Boulevard Port Royal, he is a saint. He decided that his hospital should be cheerfully situated, and so it lies in lovely gardens, and, on every side, the patients have views of flowers and trees and green spaces between well-kept paths. Not a hospital this, surely, but an elegant old mansion, through whose long, open windows the fragrance and bloom of flowers carry joy to the senses, while the song of birds makes perpetual music for the weary convalescents. Dr. Franck Brentano showed me the trim rose-beds with the proud intimation that it was M. Pinard who reared them exclusively for his invalids. From time to time he gathers them, and places a rose, moist with its early dew, beside a patient, bringing her, with such delicacy, the assurance that she is, for him, something more than a public patient. Not so were cherished unfortunate women under the ancien régime. We laugh at the official legend bequeathed France by the Revolution, and, of a surety, we are not justified in that laughter. If liberty, equality, and fraternity are not all that they might be in France to-day, there has been made a considerable step towards their accomplishment which the conscientious observer is forced to recognise. If brotherhood is still in a nebulous state, the same cannot be said of equality. Where, in London, will you find the head of a large hospital cultivating roses and gathering them at sunrise to carry a breath of delight to a worn-out woman of the people? Such a division and infrangible distance as exist between classes in England are here no longer known. The people are the better for it, and certainly society is not the worse. If republican independence has done nothing else for France, it deserves national gratitude for having abolished what flourishes so desperately in England,—the painful whine of poverty, not ashamed to cringe, and the smirking curtsey and bob of the people, proud to acknowledge what they are pleased to call their betters.
I have heard a great deal of abuse of the lay nurses who replace the sisters now in public hospitals. All I can say is, that I was struck with the spirit of cordiality and exquisite humanity which seemed to emanate from everybody I encountered at M. Pinard’s maternité. This, of course, may be due to the governing hand, for where so rare a nature as the chief commands the illimitable devotion and passionate admiration of his subordinates, it is but natural we should find an atmosphere of disinterestedness and good-will. That M. Pinard’s delicate consideration for oppressed womanhood does not end or even begin in this well-ordered hospital is proven by the establishment of his admirable asylum close by. This is a home for friendless women awaiting their turn to be received into the hospital. Here they may come for two or three months, free to live and work as they like, to go to mass, to the temple or synagogue, or to no church whatever; and, by sewing or some such light labour, to earn a little to put by for the day they leave the maternité. Surely this is the most practical of all forms of free philanthropy. No propaganda, no religious exclusiveness, no other preoccupation, but the wish to persuade a despairing creature to live and give life under the best conditions of care and personal kindness. Yes; let us frankly admit that the Revolution has not been in vain, in spite of its horrors, its inexplicable baseness, its acts of inconceivable cowardice. The men who made it were no heroes, and we can bear at this hour to call them remorselessly by their proper names. But the evil they did in the cause of humanity has finally led to the amelioration of their race. Lay France, with all her liberal aspirations, with her generous hatred of injustice, tyranny, and oppression, bids fair to construct a France which shall be the real and not the illusive home of freedom. The land that can produce men and women like M. Pinard and Madame Coralie Cahen need have no fear of the triumph of decadence. There were nearly seven thousand births during the past year at the maternité. When we remember that women are not obliged to give their names, and that their secret is honourably kept in the teeth of all inquiries that may be made, there seems less and less reason to-day for the extremities of despair.
The Assistance Publique is not exclusively concerned with hospitals. The increase of its income and the increase of its expenditure sufficiently testify to the extent of public charity in France. In 1834 its income reached 9,946,874 francs, and in 1894, 43,043,935 francs. The number of patients received in hospitals in 1834 was 66,521, and in 1894, 172,500; of children helped in 1834, 21,781, and in 1894, 48,000. It disposes of 11,989 beds in hospitals, 12,370 beds in asylums, and the average of persons helped is 480,600 a year. In outdoor help it spends 11,365,951 francs.
Again to compare the ancien régime with the new order of things. It was not until 1660 that the horrors of forsaken childhood obtained commiseration. Yet St. Louis had lived; more than one king had been called the father of his people, and the good King Henri IV. of legend had asserted his royal wish that each family should have a fowl boiling in the pot. It was the work of St. Vincent of Paul who, after founding the excellent order of Sisters of Charity, bethought himself of unwelcome babes left to suffer the consequences of their parents’ fault. Since then the idea has rapidly progressed. In 1881 the Conseil Général de la Seine instituted what is greatly superior to the mere animal succour of new-born infancy, the Service des Moralement Abandonnés. The morally abandoned! How much more needful, how much more clamorous for the good of the race, is the succour of these little creatures, morally depraved, from want of training! In 1888 this society received 2062 boys and 905 girls, the numerical difference being explained by the fact that there are always more ways of disposing of girls than of boys, and their adoption by private persons is much more frequent.
Too much praise cannot be given to the Assistance Publique for the admirable fashion in which it discharges its duty to the children placed under its protection. Zola in Fécondité records the improbable tale of a whole town in Normandy living solely upon the slow murder of babies put out to nurse by the institution. I need give only one example of what has come under my own notice. My servant, unfortunately married, was deserted many years ago with three children, one new-born. The Public Assistance took the two elder boys and placed them out to nurse in a farmhouse, where every quarter an inspector visited them, and himself inquired into the condition of their health and general welfare. The inspector makes his report to the prefect, and his visits are supplemented by the doctor’s. It is he who signs the agreement of apprenticeship, distributes clothes, and pays the nurses and adopted parents. As an encouragement to treat the children well, these receive a present of money when each child reaches the age of thirteen; an outfit is bestowed upon the child, who is then apprenticed, preferably for farm-work, and, in order that the precious ties of family life shall not be broken, it is invariably exacted that the boys shall continue to live with their foster parents during the years of apprenticeship. A portion of the boy’s earnings is placed in the Caisse d’Épargne to make him a tiny capital, when of age to start upon his own account. My servant’s children were well-treated and happy, and when she went down to the farm to spend ten days with them, she found two healthy lads and a hospitable family to receive her, and in their midst enjoyed a delightful holiday. The boys had their pass-books, and could make her a present each of twenty-five francs. The other day one of them decided to come to Paris to earn his bread, and even at the station the mother was not allowed to claim him, it being a notorious fact that boys fresh from the country often fall into evil hands at the big railway stations. Scrupulous in the acquittal of its duties, the Assistance Publique will only deliver its charge into the mother’s hand in official circumstances that render all fraud impossible. The boy wore a fine new suit of clothes and new boots, and his great fear was that, leaving the care of the Assistance Publique these peacock feathers would be taken from him. But they were not, and when he came to see me, I found, instead of a cowed charity lad, a pink-cheeked, open-eyed youth, well dressed and strong, with an independent air and an excellent fashion of speech. I sent him with a card of recommendation to the Figaro, and he was engaged on the spot. It speaks well for the people who brought him up, that he already regrets them and their quiet shepherd-life, and says he was much happier in the country than ever he expects to be in Paris. In the case of children leaving the correctional schools, the State has organised several schools of apprenticeship for the young prisoners of both sexes.