King Louis then reigned in Bavaria, but being so indifferent a prophet could not foresee his own speedy abdication.
CHAPTER XXIV.
the french workman.
The original stuff out of which a French workman is made, is a street boy of fourteen years old, or, perhaps, twelve. That young gamin de Paris can sing as many love ditties and drinking songs as there are hairs upon his head, before he knows how much is nine times seven. He prefers always the agreeable to the useful: he knows how to dance all the quadrilles: he knows how to make grimaces of ten thousand sorts one after the other without stopping,
and at the rate of twenty in a minute. Of his other attainments, I say little. It is possible that he may have been to one of the elementary schools set up by the Government; or, it may be that he knows not how to read; although, by Article 10 of a law passed in eighteen hundred and thirty-three, it was determined that no chief town of a department, or chief place of a commune, containing more than six thousand inhabitants, should be without at least one elementary school for public instruction.
Such as the boy may be, he is made an apprentice. He needs no act, or, as you say in England, indenture. His contract has to be attested at the Prefecture of Police, Bureau of Passports, Section of Livrets. Formerly, it was the custom in France for the apprentice to be both fed and lodged by his master; but, as the patron seldom received money with him, he was mainly fed on cuffs. Apprenticeship in Paris, which is France, begins at ages differing according to the nature of the trade. If strength be wanted, the youth is apprenticed at eighteen, but otherwise, perhaps, at fourteen. There are in Paris nineteen thousand apprentices dispersed among two hundred and seventy branches of trade.
Of all the apprentices whose number has been just named, only one in five is bound by a written agreement with his master. The rest have a verbal understanding. The youths commonly are restless; and, since they are apt to change their minds, the business of the master is not so much to teach them as to obtain value for himself as soon as he can out of their labour. It is the apprentice who is sent out to take orders in the town, and to play the part of messenger. In consequence of the looseness of the tie, it often happens that a thoughtless parent, when his son is able to earn wages, tells the youth that his master is sucking him and fattening upon his unpaid labour; that he might earn money for the house at home. The youth is glad to earn, and throws up his apprenticeship for independent work. It soon occurs to him that his parents are sucking him, and that his earnings ought to be for himself, and not for them. He then throws up his home dependence, as he had thrown up dependence on his master, takes a lodging, falls into careless company, and works on, a half-skilled labourer, receiving all his life a less income than he could have assured to himself by a few years of early perseverance.
When I was apprentice, eight years ago, I found that to be a good workman, it was needful to design and model. “Come with me,”
said my comrade Gredinot, “I will show you a good school.” It was a winter evening; our work was over; and, with leave of the patron, we left our shop in the Rue Saint Martin, and went by Saint Saviour to the Rue Montorgueil. We bought as we went about twelve pounds of modelling clay. At the upper end of the street, my friend Gredinot turned up a dark passage. I followed him. A single lamp glimmered in the court to which it led us. We went up a few steps to the schoolroom. “Here we are,” said Gredinot, in opening the door. We entered, carrying our caps. There was a low room lighted by flaring oil lamps; but in it were busts and statues of such beauty that it seemed to me to be the most delightful chamber in the world. Boys and youths and a few men, all in blouses like ourselves, laboured there. We threw our clay upon a public heap in a wooden trough near the door. There was only that mud to pay, and there were our own tools to take. Everything else was free. Gredinot introduced me to the master, and I learnt to model from that night. There are other schools—the school of Arts and Trades in the Rue St. Martin, and the Special and Gratuitous School of Design in the Rue du Tourraine, in connection, as I think, with the School of Fine Arts. I might number the museums and the libraries, and I may make mention also of the prizes of the Academy of Industry and of the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry.
The apprentice when out of his time goes to the prefecture of police. There he must obtain a livret, which must have on the face of it the seal of the prefecture, the full name of the admitted workman, his age, his place of birth, and a description of his person, his trade, and the name of the master who employs him. The French workman is taboo, until he is registered by the police and can produce his livret. The book costs him twopence halfpenny. Its first entry is a record of the completion of his apprenticeship. Afterwards every fresh engagement must be set down in it, with the dates of its beginning and its end, each stamped by the prefecture. The employer of a workman holds his livret as a pledge. When he receives money in advance, the sum is written in his book, and it is a debt there chargeable as a deduction of not more than one fifth upon all future employment, until it is paid. The workman when travelling must have his livret viséd; for, without that, says the law, “he is a vagabond, and can be arrested and punished as such.”