France and the Republic / A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces During the 'Centennial' Year 1889

by William Henry Hurlbert

I have already said that the miners of Anzin have been practically enjoying all the advantages of co-operation, while the 'true Republicans' of M. Doumer have been 'studying' and going to sleep over that 'beautiful and generous idea.' As a matter of fact, the 'Co-operative Society of the Anzin Miners,' now known in commerce as 'Léon Lemaire et Cie of Anzin,' was founded, I find, even before the Co-operative Association of the Glass-workers at St.-Gobain.

It was organised in 1865, two years before the passage of the Imperial law affecting co-operation.

M. Casimir Périer, a son of the Minister of Louis Philippe, and the father of the present Republican deputy of the same name, was then a director of the Anzin Company. He had seen what M. Doumer fantastically imagines to be the purely French and republican 'idea' of co-operation carried out in England, the 'beautiful and generous idea,' as even every French schoolboy ought to know, being of English and not of French origin.

M. Périer had been particularly struck by the great success of the Rochdale experiment—an experiment begun and carried out, as Mr. Holyoake has set forth at length, by weavers, who, being nearly at the end of their tether, and worn out with distress, had associated themselves into a company under the name of the 'Equitable Pioneers of Rochdale.' He looked thoroughly into the history of this experiment, and having convinced himself that the 'beautiful and generous' idea might bear as good fruit at Anzin as at Rochdale, he went to work in earnest, got the society organised, accepted the honorary chairmanship of it, and set it on its feet on February 21, 1865. M. Cochin took the same matter up at St.-Gobain, and in 1867 the Imperial law, about which M. Doumer and his 'true Republicans' have been cackling and dabbling for ten consecutive years, was enacted, and the co-operative associations became legally constituted bodies. The statutes which now govern the Anzin Association were adopted on December 8, 1867, and the Association was formally launched.

The authorities at first could not be made to understand that a co-operative association was not a mercantile speculation, and for some time the Anzin Association was compelled to pay a regular fee for a licence, or 'patent,' as it is called in France. This exaction, however, was long ago given up.

Under the original statutes the profits derived from the sale to the members of the Association, and to them only (a rule never departed from), of all the goods purchased by the Association, were to be divided into a hundred parts. Of these, seventy parts were to be distributed at the end of each year to the members, proportionally to the sales and deliveries made to each of them. Twenty parts were to be set aside for a reserve fund; and the remaining ten parts were to be used by the governing committee chiefly in paying the salaries of the manager and employees of the Association.

Such was the success from the outset of the Anzin experiment that within six years, at a general meeting held on April 24, 1872, the Association adopted a resolution suspending the payment over into the reserve fund of the twenty parts of the profits set aside to be so paid, and ordering these twenty parts also to be paid over to the members semi-annually. The reserve fund had already reached proportions which made it unnecessary and even undesirable to increase it.

The Association was originally constituted for a term of twenty years, from December 10, 1867. At a general meeting held on March 27, 1887, its life was prolonged for another twenty years, or to December 10, 1907.

It might edify M. Doumer as to the nationality of the 'beautiful and generous' idea which his 'true Republicans' find it so difficult to 'study,' if he would take the trouble to visit this Anzin region. He would find the establishments of the Association currently known by the English name of 'stores.' I found one of them flourishing in every commune which I visited in the vicinity of Anzin; at St.-Waast, where the experiment was first made, at Denain, where during the past year it has been found necessary to establish two stores instead of one—at Anzin, at Fresnes, at Thiers, at Abscon, at Vieux-Condé! The Association, indeed, which began in 1865 with fifty-one members and a subscribed capital of 2,150 francs, now conducts no fewer than fifteen 'stores,' and now consists of no fewer than 3,118 families.

The capital of the Association, originally fixed at 30,000 francs, in 600 shares of fifty francs each, was increased by a vote of a general meeting in April 1882 to 250,000 francs. The 'firm-name' is now 'Lemaire and Company,' the present manager being M. Léon Lemaire, who can use this 'firm-name' only for the affairs of the Association. The manager (or gérant) is elected at a general meeting to serve for three years, but he is always re-eligible. His salary is fixed by the governing committee, and the amount of it is charged to the general expenses. The governing committee has power also to present the manager, if it thinks proper, with a certain sum each year taken from the ten parts of the profits which are set apart by the statutes of the Association to be used for such purposes by the Committee. All the persons employed by the Association in various capacities are taken, as far as is found compatible with the interests of the business, from among the families of the members. This is particularly the case with regard to the young girls, of whom forty-eight are now employed in the different drapery and mercery stores, and an excellent practice has been adopted of calling in a certain number of girls when there is a special pressure of business to serve for a short period, these girls being regularly registered, and thus constituting a sort of reserve corps, from which the permanent employees are taken as vacancies are made.