2. In public contracts he introduced clauses favorable to workingmen. These clauses embraced the number of hours in a normal work day, the minimum wage for every class of workmen, prohibition of piece-work, guarantee of no work on Sunday, and the per cent. of foreign workmen allowed on the job. He arranged that the workingmen should unite with the employer in fixing the wages and the hours of labor before the contract was signed. In these contracts, furthermore, the state reserved the right to indemnify the workmen out of the funds due to the contractor.
3. An accident insurance law.
4. The abolition of private employment agencies, with their many abuses, and replacing them with communal labor bureaus free to all. The voluntary federations of the trade unions were put on a similar footing with the communal labor exchanges, and were encouraged to co-operate with them. Millerand took great care to perfect the organization of trade unions. He introduced amendments to the old law of 1884, giving greater scope and elasticity to the unions, granting them greater corporate powers, and making the dismissal of a workman because he belonged to a union ground for a civil suit for damages. He began a movement to secure the co-operation between the unions and the state workshop inspectors. There had been a great deal of abuse in the operation of the inspection laws by the employers. An attempt was now made to define strictly the rights and duties of the inspectors.
5. His pet scheme was the establishing of labor councils (conseils du travail). On these councils labor and employer were to have equal representation. The duty of the councils embraced the adjudication of all disputes arising between employer and employee, suggesting improvements, and keeping vigilance over all local labor conditions. In 1891 a supreme labor council had been established. To this Millerand added lay and official members and greatly increased its efficiency. He tried to make it a central vigilance bureau, keeping in close touch with local conditions all over the land.
6. He elaborated a plan for regulating industrial disputes. This was to be effected by a permanent organization in each establishment employing more than fifty men, a sort of committee of grievance to which all matters of dispute might be referred. In case of failure to settle their difficulties an appeal to the local labor council was provided. By this democratic representative machinery Millerand hoped to solve the labor problem.
It will be seen that Millerand's plan was an attempt, by law, to project the working class, not into politics but into the capitalist class. He would do this by compelling the employer to share the responsibility of ownership with his employees. This would mark the beginning of a revolution very different from the revolution ordinarily preached by propagandists, because this revolution would substitute class peace in place of our present incessant economic class war.
The Socialists made it plain that Millerand's procedure was not Socialism. When Millerand was first asked to take a cabinet portfolio his friend Jaurès told him to accept. When he had perfected his practical procedure, and the bulk of the proletarians evinced their disappointment and chagrin that the elevation of a Socialist had not brought utopia, Jaurès gradually slipped away from his former alliance and finally left the reformist group.
Jaurès also had his day of power. The Dreyfus affair presented the issue in tangible form—the old traditions, religious, political, social, against the new ideas of society, property, and government. It was the heroic period of modern French Socialism. Red and black flags were borne by enthusiastic multitudes through the streets of Paris. The "Université Populaire" was inaugurated by students for the purpose of instructing the common people in the issues that were at stake. The flame of eager anticipation spread over the Republic.
As master of the "Bloc" in the Chamber, Jaurès became the first real head in the first French democracy. Two great reforms were undertaken: the disestablishment of the Church, carrying with it the secularization of education and the reorganization of the army. The old Royalist families had continued to send their sons into the army and navy. Many of the officers were suspected of royalist sympathies. An elaborate system of espionage was instituted, and the suspects weeded out. The last vestige of the old monarchy has now disappeared from French officialdom. France has a bourgeois army, a bourgeois school system, a bourgeois bureaucracy, thanks to the power of the proletarian Socialists led by Jaurès in the days of the Republic's danger.
Jaurès remained orthodox; Millerand became heretic. The Millerand episode left a deep impression on the public mind. The first Socialist minister shaped not only a program but an entire policy. In 1906, when a new cabinet was formed, Millerand declined a portfolio, but two other Socialists accepted cabinet honors; Viviani, a well-known Parisian lawyer, held the newly created ministry of labor and social prevision (prévoyance sociale), and Aristide Briand became Minister of Public Instruction and Worship, and later Minister of Justice.