VI.

Such are the facts of the organization. I have no desire to moralize as to the abstract futility of these arrangements. I merely desire to call attention to the actual results of M. Louis Blanc's experiment, under the nineteenth and thirtieth Decrees. The first witness I will call is the Correspondent of the Economist newspaper, who was in Paris in 1848, and saw with his own eyes what he describes:—

The greatest experiment made by Louis Blanc was the organization of tailors in the Hôtel Clichy, which, for the purpose, was converted from a debtors' gaol into a great national tailors' shop. This experiment began with peculiar advantages. The Government made the buildings suitable for the purpose without rent or charge; furnished the capital, without interest, necessary to put it into immediate and full operation; and gave an order, to commence with, for twenty-five thousand suits for the National Guard, to be Edition: current; Page: [93] followed by more for the Garde Mobile, and then for the regular troops. The first step taken was to ascertain at what cost for workmanship the large tailors of Paris, who ordinarily employed the bulk of the workmen, and performed Government contracts, would undertake the orders. Eleven francs for each dress was the contract price, including the profit of the master tailor, the remuneration for his workshop and tools, and for the interest of his capital. The Government agreed to give the organized tailors at the Hôtel Clichy the same price. Fifteen hundred men were quickly got together, with an establishment of foremen, clerks, and cutters-out. It was agreed that inasmuch as the establishment possessed no capital to pay the workmen while the order was in course of completion, the Government should advance every day, in anticipation of the ultimate payment, a sum equal to two francs (1s. 7d.) for each man in the establishment, as 'subsistence money'; that when the contract was completed, the balance should be paid, and equally divided amongst the men. Such fair promises soon attracted a full shop; and when we visited the Hôtel Clichy, upwards of fifteen hundred men were at work, and apparently were not only steady, but industrious. The character of the work they were upon at the time, the urgency of the ragged Garde Mobile for their uniforms, formed an unusual incentive to exertion; the foreman told us that notwithstanding the law limiting the hours of labour to ten, the 'glory, love, and fraternity' principle was so strong that the tailors voluntarily worked twelve or thirteen hours a day, and the same even on Sundays: they seemed to forget the stimulus of the expected balance which each was to receive at the conclusion of the contract. What was the result? For some time many contradictory statements were put forward by the friends and opponents of the system. Louis Blanc looked upon it as the beginning of a new day for France. He had already arranged that as the tailors were the first to begin, the cabinet-makers should next be organized, and one by one all the trades of France. He forgot that he would not have an order for the cabinet-makers to furnish half the houses in Paris to begin with: this, in his estimation, was no difficulty. He had in view public warehouses for the sale of furniture; and although not a chair or table had been sold in the existing over-stocked shops for two months, he had no doubt about customers. But the result of the experiment in the Hôtel Clichy has been fatal. The first order was completed: each man looked for his share of the gain. The riches of Communism, and the participation in the profits, dazzled the views of the fifteen hundred tailors, who had been content to receive 1s. 7d. per day as subsistence money for many weeks: no doubt every one in his own mind appropriated his share of the 'balance'; for once he felt in his own person the combined pleasure of 'master and man.' The accounts were squared. Eleven francs per dress for so many dresses came to so much. The subsistence money at 1s. 7d. a day had to be deducted. The balance was to be divided as profit. Alas! it was a balance of loss, not of gain; subsistence money had been paid equal to rather more, when it came to be calculated, than sixteen francs for each dress, in place of eleven, at which the master tailor would have made a profit, paid his rent, the interest of his capital, and good wages to his men, in place of a daily pittance for bare subsistence. The disappointment was great when no balance was to be divided. The consternation and disturbance was greater when a large loss was to be Edition: current; Page: [94] discussed, for which no provision in the plans had been made. The customers—that is, the new National Guard and the Garde Mobile—were in a rage at the detention of their uniforms, and the whole attempt seems to have resulted in confusion and disappointment. Louis Blanc is not a match for the master tailors of Paris.—From The Economist, May 20, 1848.

The next witness is Mr. Senior—for, as I have said, he was cognizant of the facts at first hand. He entirely corroborates the testimony of the Correspondent of the Economist, and tells us, as above, that the work done in the Ateliers Nationaux was purely nominal—an exact counterpart of 'all Parish work'—i.e. the parish farms and parish houses of industry which Senior had seen at work, or rather at idleness and waste, during his inquiry into the English poor law. In addition, however, to noting Senior's evidence in regard to the complete failure of the national workshops, I should like to quote the following very able reflections:—

When the relations of the labourer and the capitalist are in the state which in a highly civilized society may be called natural, since it is the form which in such a society they naturally tend to assume when undistorted by mischievous legislation, the diligence of the labourer is their necessary result. As he is paid only in proportion to his services, he strives to make those services as valuable as he can. His exertions perhaps ought more frequently to be moderated than to be stimulated. A large proportion of our best artisans wear themselves out prematurely. In another state of society, which is also natural in a lower civilization—that of slavery—a smaller but still a considerable amount of industry is enforced by punishment. But in eleemosynary employment there is absolutely no motive for the labourer to make any exertion, or for the employer, a mere public officer, to enforce it. The labourer is, at all events, to have subsistence for himself and his family. To give him more would immediately attract to the public paymaster all the labourers of the country; to give him less, and yet require his services, would be both cruelty and fraud. He cannot be discharged—he cannot be flogged—he cannot be put to task work—since to apportion the tasks to the various powers of individuals would require a degree of zealous and minute superintendence which no public officer ever gave. When the attempt was made in Paris, men accustomed to the work earned fifteen francs a day, those unaccustomed to it not one.

Another witness is Victor Hugo, who boldly asserted in the National Assembly that the experiment was a failure. 'The national workshops,' he declared, 'have proved a fatal experiment. The wealthy idler we already know well; you have created a person a hundred times more dangerous both to himself and others, the pauper idler.... At this very moment Edition: current; Page: [95] England sits smiling by the side of the abyss into which France is falling.' The pauper idler is a happy phrase and well describes the condition of the unemployable—the men who pass their lives looking for work and praying God they won't find it. Hardly less emphatic was the grave report of the Commission appointed by the French Government to inquire into the subject. While compelled to recommend the expenditure of further enormous sums of money, it felt bound to admit that 'the Revolution, which found the workmen of Paris contracted in their proper sphere, has been, by treating them like spoilt children, the cause of that change in their character which makes every one now dread the excesses of which they may be guilty.'

The next witness to whom I would refer is M. Émile Thomas, the Director of the Ateliers Nationaux, whose work I have named above. He shows how exceedingly difficult it is to do the thing which the Socialist assumes to be so easy, i.e. make people work, and how in spite of the most tremendous exertions to render the workshops a success, they broke down. His work, however, should be read, not merely quoted. He was a plain man of business, not a forger of epigrams, and he does not attempt to sum up the results of the experiment in any single passage. He tells the plain tale of what he saw and did quite plainly—a fact which makes the general drift of his history all the more impressive. His account of the workshops is the most convincing testimony possible that in 1848 Collectivist production had a fair trial and utterly broke down.

A word in conclusion as to what was the end of the national workshops. When the National Assembly found that the Ateliers Nationaux were rapidly bringing the State to a condition of bankruptcy they determined to close them. This they did, with the result that the workmen rose in insurrection, and that for four days and nights there was such street fighting as the world had never seen before. In putting down the insurrection caused by the dissolution of the great Socialist experiment, 12,000 men were sacrificed—the number of killed at Waterloo was hardly greater.

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