These men, however, working in the great yards, eating their meals near them in an irregular and restless way, form clubs and associations which lead not seldom to strikes—blunders which we call placing ourselves en Grève. They take the name en Grève from
the place in which one class of builders’ workmen assemble when waiting to be hired. Various places are chosen by sundry workmen and workwomen for this practice of waiting to be hired. Laundresses, for example, are to be found near the church of our Lady of Lorette, where they endure, and too often enjoy, coarse words from passers-by.
Except in the case of the masons and labourers from the departments, it is to be regarded as no good sign when a workman makes a residence of furnished lodgings. The orderly workman marries, and acquires the property of furniture. The mason from the departments lives cheaply, and saves, to go home with money to his family, and acquire in his own village the property of land. The workman bound to Paris, who dwells only in furnished lodgings, and has bought no furniture, has rarely saved, and has rarely made an honest marriage. In most cases he is a lover of pleasure, frequents the theatre and the wine shop. From wine he runs on to the stronger stimulus of brandy; but these leave to him some gleams of his national vivacity. The most degraded does not get so lumpish as the English workman, whose brains have become sodden in the public-houses by long trains of pots of beer. By far the largest portion of the Paris workmen possess furniture: only twenty-one in a hundred—and that includes, of course, the mobile population, the masons, etc.—live in furnished lodgings.
For clothing we spend, according to our means, from four to fourteen pounds a year. Half of us have no coat in addition to the blouse. Before the crisis of eighteen hundred and forty-eight, one sixth of us had money in savings’ banks, and one man in every two was a member of some benefit society. The benefit societies were numerous, each generally containing some two or three hundred members; but even our singing clubs are now suppressed, and we must not meet even to transact the business of a benefit society without giving notice of our design to the police, and receiving into our party at least two of its agents as lookers-on. The result has been the decay of all such societies, and the extinction of most of them. Where they remain, the average monthly subscription is fifteen-pence, which insures the payment of twenty-pence a day during sickness, with gratuitous advice and medicine from the doctor. The funds of such societies are lodged either in savings’ banks, or in the Mont de Pieté; which, though properly a pawnbroking establishment, has also its uses as a bank. The
imperial fist presses everywhere down upon us. It has forced us out of sick clubs, because we sometimes talked in them about the state of the nation: it would build us huge barracks to live in, so that we may be had continually under watch and ward; and it has lately thrust in upon us a president of its own at the head of our Conseil de Prud’hommes, the only tribunal we possess for the adjustment of our internal trade disputes.
Of our pleasures on a Sunday afternoon the world has heard. We devote that to our families, if we have any; Monday, too often, to our friends. There are on Sundays our feats of gymnastics at open-air balls beyond the barriers, and our dancing saloons in the city; such as the Prado, the Bal Montesquieu, and the Dogs’ Ball. There are our pleasant country rambles, and our pleasant little dinners in the fields. There are our games at poule, and dominoes, and piquet; and our pipes with dexterously blackened bowls. There are our theatres, the Funambule and the Porte St. Martin. Gamblers among us play at bowls in the Elysian fields, or they stay at home losing and winning more than they can properly afford to risk at écarté.
Then there are our holidays. The best used to be “the three days of July,” but they were lost in the last scramble. Yet we still have no lack of holiday amusement; our puppets to admire, and greasy poles to climb for prizes by men who have been prudently required first to declare and register their ambition at the Bureau of Police. Government so gets something like a list of the men who aspire; who wish to mount. It must be very useful. There are our water tournaments at St. Cloud and at Boulogne-sur-Seine; where they who have informed the police of their combative propensities, may thrust at each other with long-padded poles from boats which are being rowed forcibly into collision. We are not much of water-birds, but when we do undertake boating, we engage in the work like Algerine pirates. We must have a red sash round the waist or not a man of us will pull a stroke.
To go back to our homes and to our wives. When we do marry, we prefer a wife who can support herself by her own labour. If we have children, it is in our power to apply—and very many of us do apply—to the Bureau of Nurses; and, soon after an infant’s birth, it can be sent down into the country at the monthly cost of about ten shillings and two pounds of lump sugar. That prevents the child from hindering our work or pleasure; and, as it is the interest of
the nurse to protect the child for which she receives payment, why should we disturb our consciences with qualm or fear?
In Paris there are few factories; some that have existed were removed into the provinces for the sole purpose of avoiding the dictation of the workmen in the town. The Parisian fancy work employs a large number of people who can work at their own homes. In this, and in the whole industry of Paris, the division of labour is very great; but the fancy work offers a good deal of scope for originality and taste, and the workman of Paris is glad to furnish both. He will delight himself by working night and day to execute a sudden order, to be equal to some great occasion; but he cannot so well be depended upon when the work falls again into its even, humdrum pace. On the whole, however, they who receive good wages, and are trusted—as the men working for jewellers are trusted—become raised by the responsibility of their position, shun the wine-shop, live contented with the pleasures of their homes, dress with neatness, and would die rather than betray the confidence reposed in them. With all his faults and oddities, the workman of Paris is essentially a thoroughly good fellow. The solitary work of tailors and of shoemakers causes them of course to brood and think, and to turn out of their body a great number of men who take a foremost place in all political discussions. But the French workman always is a loser by political disturbance. The crisis of eighteen hundred and forty-eight—a workman’s triumph—reduced the value of industry in Paris from sixty to twenty-eight millions of pounds. Fifty-four men in every hundred were at the same time thrown out of employ, or nearly two hundred thousand people in all.