VII.

Before leaving the subject of the Socialistic experiments tried in Paris, I will put on record for purposes of reference the following extract from Thiers's Rights of Property, which describes another experiment in Collectivism:—

The owner of a great engine factory lent for a time his works to his workmen, so that there was no capital sunk in the formation of an establishment, and he agreed to buy at a stated price the machines or parts of machines they might construct. This price has been augmented 17 per cent. on the average. The associated workmen were to govern themselves, to pay themselves, and to share the profits among them. The master had nothing to do with them. He paid for the machines, or portions of machines, and naturally he was not to pay until the work was done.

The associated workmen remained divided, as they were before, in different departments (a great facility of organization, since they had only to continue the habits they had acquired); they placed at the head of each department or workshop a president, and a general president over the whole. They preserved the former classification of wages (another facility arising from acquired habits), except that they gave three francs instead of two-and-a-half francs to the lower class, that of common labourers, and they discontinued paying the skilful workmen (the marchandeurs, or middle-men) the high wages resulting from piece-work. These did not, like the rest, work all day; yet as they must be satisfied in a certain degree, they were accorded supplementary wages of ten, fifteen, and sometimes twenty sous, which, added to the four francs of average wages, gave five francs, at the most, to those workmen who had previously earned six, seven, or eight francs a day. These supplementary wages were given by the presidents of the workshops. After having thus raised the wages of the mere labourer, and lowered those of the clever workman, the following was the result of the three months' trial.

There was a daily tumult in the workshop. 'Tis true, tumult was pretty general then, and was not less at the Luxembourg, or the Hotel de Ville, than in the manufactories. The men made holiday whenever it pleased them to take part in this or that demonstration, which, however, only injured the workmen themselves, for the proprietor paid only for the work when done. But they did not work much when they were present, and the presidents charged with the maintenance of order and the supervision of the labour were changed two or three times a fortnight. The general president, having no local supervision in the workshops, was subject to fewer variations of favour, being changed once only during the period of the association. Had they worked as before, they would have received a sum of 367,000 francs in these three months; but their returns were only 197,000 francs, although their prices were raised 17 per cent. The principal cause of this smaller production was not owing solely to the fewer number of days and hours they attended the workshops than before, but because, when present, they did not work with such activity. The piece-hands, who only received at the utmost a trifling supplement of a franc, were not very zealous in labouring for the association. The men whom they generally took Edition: current; Page: [97] with them when they were on piece, to whom they gave a small additional sum, and whom they superintended in person, were left to the almost negative supervision of the presidents of the workshops, and a thousand workmen out of fifteen hundred manifested that ardour with which men are animated when they do not work for themselves. In a word, 100 labourers received half-a-franc a day more; 300 or 400 workmen received their ordinary 300 or 400 francs, but during fewer days, for they took more holidays; and the 1,000 clever mechanics, who formerly worked by the piece, were deprived of the advantage due to their exertions, which had raised their daily wages to seven, eight, and ten francs. Accordingly, the good hands were all determined to leave the establishment, and when the three months assigned to the association had expired, it came to an end without a single protest. It was a kind of insolvency, for it owed many hours which had not been made up, and had swallowed up the little capital of a benefit fund instituted by the owner of the establishment previously to this philanthropic administration.

Ten sous more a day, to a hundred labourers out of 1,500; the wages of 300 or 400 more kept at the same point; those of 1,000 clever hands diminished; the whole body much poorer in consequence of absences, representing 32 per cent. of time lost; 197,000 francs of work, instead of 367,000 in the same period; all the good workmen disheartened; and finally, the association itself insolvent after three months' existence, although there was an establishment already prepared by the owner—this was the result.

Compare in this context the Report of the Surveyor who in 1893 superintended Mr. Shaw Lefevre's attempt to pull down a part of Millbank Prison by means of the unemployed. When these men worked with the knowledge that their pay would vary according to the work done, they did twice as much as when they knew that whether they worked or idled their pay would be 6½d. an hour. While the cost of cleaning and stacking bricks by the unemployed, acting as the pensioners of the State, averaged from 128. to 138. a thousand, the same men when employed by piece managed to earn higher wages than before, although the rate agreed on was only 7s. a thousand.