Father Enfantin, as he was called, had only been introduced to Saint-Simon as he lay on his death-bed.
Barely initiated (à peine catéchisé), writes Mme. Adam, this Elisha of Saint-Simonianism went forth to preach throughout the towns and villages of France the golden age of the future. Signal success attended his crusade. There was much in the Saint-Simonian doctrine which accorded with the romantic humanitarianism of the age. “Its key-note was love—love and pity for the oppressed, for the poor, for the fallen woman, for the sinner, for Satan himself.” The service of mankind was the essence of this religion. For Saint-Simonianism was a religion. As such, its founder and many of its disciples regarded it. Le Nouveau Christianisme is the title of Saint-Simon’s last book, published in the year of his death.
But, as we have said, this new philosophy had also its extremely practical side. Its adherents preached “the gospel of great public works, railroads, maritime canals, free trade.” Here again they were responding to one of the great needs of the age.
A striking characteristic of society under the Empire was the intensity of its material activity. Industry on a large scale had begun to develop under Louis Philippe. It had received a powerful impetus from railroad construction.
One of the most wonderful experiences of Juliette’s childhood was her first railway journey. When she was ten and a half, her father took her by train from Amiens to Boulogne. This line, the first in France, had recently been opened. Juliette was horribly frightened. Everything terrified her: the snorting of the engine, the diabolical air of the engine-driver and fireman, the piercing shriek of the whistle, and, above all, the darkness of the tunnel, in which, she was told, a poor lady, who had put her head out of the window, had only that morning been guillotined by a passing train. When Juliette returned to Chauny, quite a heroine, because she had been in a train, this story told to her schoolfellows had a brilliant success. That unhappy passenger’s tragic fate remained for many a long day an object of intense interest to the Mlles. André’s pupils, to whose inquisitiveness it suggested all manner of questions.
“Why did she lean out of window?” asked the elder girls. “People who go on journeys ought to take care.”
“Had she any children?” asked the juniors, “and, if so, were they present?”
And when Juliette replied that they were, the horror was indescribable.
Juliette’s fame as a train traveller, however, soon faded, for so rapid was the spread of railway construction throughout France that train journeys soon became every-day occurrences. Chauny was before long united by a railway line to Paris, which Haussman was rapidly rendering almost unrecognisable. And in all this mechanical activity the Saint-Simonians were playing a prominent part. With them originated many industrial enterprises: the Saint-Simonian Pereires founded the Magasin du Louvre and the General Transatlantic Company. Father Enfantin himself, a capable railroad administrator, was the first to conceive the project of the Suez Canal.
Mme. Adam inclines to the opinion that as employers the Saint-Simonians were inferior to the Fourierists; for the latter practised division of profits among employers and employed, whereas the Saint-Simonians showed a tendency to exploit their workers. They encouraged trusts. Their system Benjamin Constant described as le papisme industriel.