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

by William Henry Hurlbert

In the Bouches-du-Rhône, the Government Republicans were as badly beaten in 1889 as in the Calvados. But in the Calvados they were beaten by the Monarchists, and in the Bouches-du-Rhône by the Radicals and the Socialists.

In the Bouches-du-Rhône the Radicals and Socialists threw 52,989 votes, the Government Republicans no more than 7,218. Marseilles, the greatest commercial city in France, a city of 'Republicans before the Republic,' with traditions which give dignity to its democratic tendencies, repudiated the Republic of M. Jules Ferry and M. Carnot as emphatically as the Monarchical Morbihan. Even the Boulangists were nearly twice as strong, and the Monarchists were more than twice as strong in Marseilles as the Opportunist Republicans. The Boulangists threw there 13,123, and the Monarchists 14,445 votes. The strength of the Boulangists gives zest to a terse verdict upon the 'brav' général' which I heard delivered by a cocher in Marseilles on the eve of the famous January elections in Paris. Passing through one of the squares of the Mediterranean city, I observed two cochers engaged in an animated debate. One of them from his box exclaimed 'I tell you Boulanger is the only real man in France!' To which the other replied as vehemently, 'And I tell you that he is nothing but the dealer in a low political hell! c'est un croupier de mauvais aloi!' He may have picked up the phrase from the Petit Marseillais, which is one of the few really well-edited newspapers in France. But it was a notable phrase, and it expresses, I think, the opinion of the sincere Radicals and Socialists, not only as to General Boulanger, but as to the politicians, now his bitterest enemies, who were his original friends and 'promoters.' A very smart and outspoken Provençal Socialist who drove me on a delightful morning from the once royal and always delectable city of Arles to the majestic ruins of Montmajeur, and the unique and wonderful deserted fortress-city of Les Baux, set no bounds to his speech about the official Republicans. We met near Montmajeur a neat private carriage. 'That is the carriage of M——,' he said, as we passed on. 'He is an aristocrat—but I think he will be Mayor of Axles. We have had an aristocratic major who gave to the people, and a Republican mayor who took from the people. I prefer the aristocrat, till we can make an end of all majors and all this rubbish of governments.' At the Legislative elections the Monarchists of Aries threw 8,540 votes, the Radicals 9,858, and the Government Republicans none at all. Of course the Radical members support the Government—but on their own terms. As these terms grow more exacting, the strength of the Monarchist reaction increases, and as the Monarchists grow stronger the Radical exactions become more imperious. The most active and earnest Monarchist whom I met in Marseilles, M. Fournier, assures me that the Marseilles Radicals are more intolerant of the Opportunists than they are even of the Monarchists.

As one of the largest employers of labour in Marseilles, M. Fournier is in constant touch with the working population of the Bouches-du-Rhône. He is an earnest and devoted Catholic, and he has encouraged the foundation of a Christian Corporation among the people employed in his works. These works were founded half a century ago, in 1840, for the purpose of turning to practical results the interesting discoveries then made by M. Chevreuil, the famous centenarian dean of French science, as to the nature and properties of fatty substances. At the outset these works were taken up with the manufacture of stearine candles; but as in the case of the glass works of St.-Gobain, the chemical processes employed in creating one particular product were soon found to yield other very different and not less valuable results. I shall not attempt to enter into the mysteries of saponification and distillation, which cease to be mysteries when they are followed up from point to point through the extensive and orderly organisation of the Fournier Works; suffice it that at these works 600 men and 400 women are busily employed in turning every year 13,000 tons of African palm-oil, and of Australian, Russian, French, and American tallow into stearine candles, oleine, and glycerine. The output is enormous, amounting annually to 20,000,000 packets of candles of an average weight of 400 grammes a packet, to 3,300,000 kilogrammes of oleine, and to 1,200,000 kilogrammes of glycerine. How much of this latter product goes to the pharmacies and how much to the powder magazines of the world it is not easy to say. But it is easy to see that if the Bouches-du-Rhône get the better of the Calvados in the politics of France, there will be a serious falling off in the demand for altar lights and chamber candles, and a still more serious increase in the demand for nitro-glycerine!

The output of the Fournier Works represents about one-fourth of the whole stearine and glycerine production of France, and as paraffin has of late years largely taken the place of stearine in the famous Price Works in England, the Fournier Works are now doubtless the most important of their kind in the world. Thirty years ago the candles produced here were almost all exported; now the home consumption just about equals the exportation, a fact as to which the truly paternal Government of France takes pains to leave no doubt in the minds of the producers by taxing candles heavily as an 'article of luxury.' They are subjected to a régie like cigars, and to the octroi, and these imposts, M. Fournier tells me, now amount to about fifty per cent, of their value. A knowledge of this circumstance may, perhaps, divert the wrath of travellers in France from the hotel-keeper, who claps a couple of francs for bougies into your bill if you pass half a summer's day in his house, to the Government which concerns itself much more actively with squeezing percentages out of the industries than with balancing the national budgets of France. Must not all taxes be paid by the ultimate consumer? What with these taxes and with the higher wage of labour in France, the stearine works of Marseilles find themselves taken at advantage by the energetic manufacturers of Holland. In the Fournier Works the average workman earns a daily wage of from 3 frs. 25 c. to 3 frs. 50 c.; the average workwomen, who do chiefly the clean and even pretty work of moulding the candles, making them up into packets, in large, very well ventilated and well ordered rooms, earn an average daily wage of 2 frs. 50 c. Both men and women work about ten hours a day. The 'eight-hours' doctrine of the political Socialists finds no more favour here with the real working people apparently than elsewhere in France. In Holland and Belgium and at Roubaix the average wage is about one franc less for both sexes.

The Christian Corporation of the Fournier Works is organised upon the principles, but not exactly upon the lines, of the Harmel system. It is formed by a union of five religious associations among the workpeople, made up of the men, the married women, the young men, the young girls, and the children. Character and conduct are the conditions of membership, and under the direction of a General Council in which the employers take an active part, the Corporation has founded and administers for the common benefit a Consumers' Society which maintains an economical kitchen with refectories, a recreation hall with a bar, (not limited to soda water, lemonade, and tea), and a circulating library. The statutes of this Society leave the members a wide range of liberty, and the managers are chosen by the members. Of the profits five per cent first go to the reserve fund; dividends may then be declared of not more than ten per cent, on the capital stock of 10,000 francs, and the surplus, if any, forms a supplementary reserve. The economical kitchen is so well managed that it gives a customer (who must be employed in the works, but need not be a member of the Association) for 55 centimes, or a little more than fivepence, a bowl of soup, a large helping of meat and vegetables, half a pound of bread, and a third of a bottle of wine. A café-cognac (and the cognac good) may be had for 25 centimes more.

In August of last year, with the help of the owners of the works, a Musical Society was established, and the workpeople are furnished gratuitously with medical advice and medicines. To these, in the case of invalid workmen who have been for two years employed in the works, is added a weekly allowance of six francs during illness. The owners have also founded a savings bank which pays six per cent. on sums below 3,000 francs, and four per cent. on sums above that amount. These are open to all the workpeople employed in the works, whether members or not of the Christian Corporation.

In this fashion M. Fournier, and other devout and practical Catholics of the Bouches-du-Rhône are fighting the Republic by fighting the Socialistic Radicalism of which their department is the true headquarters, and to which the Republic has substantially surrendered. It is visibly an uphill fight in the Bouches-du-Rhône, and in South-Eastern France generally. But there is life in the convictions which nerve men to fight an uphill fight, and there is something in the fire and spirit of these militant Catholics of France which reminds one of Prudentius, the Pindar of Christian Spain, celebrating fifteen centuries ago the believers who upheld so manfully the rights of conscience against prætors and prefects bent on converting them to the beauty of 'moral unity'—quod princeps colit ut colamus omnes!

When two men ride on a horse the man who holds the bridle is the master, and the Radicals hold the bridle of the French Government. The Radical Department of the Bouches-du-Rhône represents the Republic. The Monarchist Department of the Calvados represents France. If the Republic wins, the history of France before 1789 will be wiped out as with a sponge, and with it all the great qualities of the French people must disappear. Without an Executive, without a Past, and without a Religion, France would become the ideal nation of the Nihilists.

If France wins, if she recovers the Executive unity and stability essential to her life as a nation, recovers the historic sense of her national growth into greatness, recovers for every man, woman, and child in France the simple human right to believe and to hope, then the Republic must inevitably vanish, for with all these things the Republic has made itself incompatible.

If these were only my own conclusions, drawn from all that I saw and heard and learned in France during the year 1889, I might hesitate to adopt them as adequate and final.