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

by William Henry Hurlbert

Compare this, not with the squalid and noisome single rooms for which in the worst parts of Spitalfields a rent of tenpence a day, or five shillings a week (Sunday being thrown in free when the weekly rent is duly paid), or thirteen pounds sterling a year is exacted—but with the average rental of lodgings in the manufacturing towns of Massachusetts!

But this is not all. Whatever repairs are needed in these houses are made, not by the tenants, but by the company, and the company further leases to its workmen, who choose to avail themselves of them, at very low rates garden sites within each commune, for cultivation as kitchen-gardens. No fewer than 2,500 families now have such holdings under cultivation, making a total of 205 hectares thus put to profit by the workmen, who take a lively pleasure in cultivating them during their leisure hours.

Every workman is allowed furthermore by the company seven hectolitres of ordinary coal per month for his own use. In cases of illness, or where a workman has a family of more than six persons, this allowance is increased. In 1888 the coal thus given by the company amounted to 598,550 quintals, representing a money value of 359,150 francs. This is not only a practical application of the Scriptural injunction 'not to muzzle the ox which treadeth out the grain;' it is a practical contribution to the solution of the great 'question' which M. Doumer in his Report tells us the 'true Republic' has been for ten years making believe to study—of the participation of the workman in the profits of the work. It is, indeed, from this economical and practical point of view, and not from the philanthropic point of view, it seems to me, that all these advantages conceded by the Anzin Company to its workmen should be considered.

No man of common sense needs to be told that to deal successfully with industrial enterprises which require the investment of a large capital for the production of commodities liable to great fluctuations in price, the managers of such enterprises must be executive men employing executive methods. If all the workmen employed in such enterprises are to be admitted in the ordinary way to a participation in the profits, they must obviously be admitted to a participation in the councils, and in the direction of the policy of the managers. How is that to be brought about without endangering the success of the enterprises? To consult the workmen of the company on technical questions within the range of their regular employment is one thing; to consider the commercial and fiscal policy of the company in its relation with competing companies, and with the consuming public, in a general conclave of all the establishment, would be quite another thing. It is a curious fact that in the original statutes of 1757 the founders of Anzin expressly provided that the six directors of the company should, when necessary, consult not only the employés, but the workmen of the company—the 'ouvriers;' and this provision was insisted on at a time when, as the doctrinaires of the nineteenth century would have us believe, 'labour' was not recognised in France as a social force to be considered.

Under its existing system of management the Anzin Company makes its workmen real participants in the profits of its operations, without at the same time exposing them to participate in the losses.

This is done not only through the singularly low rates at which the workmen are enabled to house themselves and their families, through the coal allowance, through the provision of cheap kitchen-gardens, and particularly through the establishment of a pension fund and of a savings-bank, but in many other forms.

Advances repayable without interest, for example, are made to workmen who wish to buy or to build houses for themselves. These advances in 1888 stood in the books of the company at a total of 1,446,604 francs, of which 1,345,463 fr. 91 c. had been repaid, leaving a balance due to the company then of 101,140 fr. 9 c. With these funds workmen of the company had bought or built for themselves 741 houses, being thus visibly, and unanswerably to the extent of the value of these houses, participants in the profits of Anzin.

Not less real is the participation of the workmen in the profits through the various beneficial and educational institutions which I visited with M. Guary, or with his son, and of which I shall presently speak.

The concessions now possessed by the Anzin Company are eight in number: those of Vieux-Condé, Fresnes, Raismes, Anzin, Saint-Saulve, Denain, Odomez, and Hasnon. These concessions cover, in the form of an irregular polygon, about thirty continuous kilomètres of territory, stretching from Somain to the Belgian frontier, with a breadth varying from seven to twelve kilomètres. The total area amounts to 2,805,450 hectares.

Of these concessions the four first-named were the original basis of the organisation of the company under the controlling influence of the Prince de Croy-Solre at the Château of l'Hermitage which still belongs to his family near Condé.