ORGANISATION OF LABOUR.

BY LOUIS BLANC.

Abridged and Translated by LACIQUOQUE.

[Many of our readers who have not seen the work at large will be glad to obtain a good general idea of the doctrines of Louis Blanc which are now testing in France. For this reason we give the following. Eds.]

it is no less so to strive for a political one. For if the 'first is the end, the other is the means. Besides, the emancipation of the labourer is too complicated a work; is connected with too many questions, deranges too many habits, goes against in appearance, not in reality, too many interests, for it not to be foolish to think of effecting it by partial, isolated efforts. It requires the whole force of the state. What the proletaires want to emancipate themselves, is instruments of labour; the business of government is to furnish them. If we had to define the state, after our idea, we should say, the banker of the poor.

But we make the state interfere, at least initiatorily, ORGANISATION OF LABOUR-These words four or five in the economical reform of society? We avow our end years ago expired in the void; now they sound out from to be the destruction of competition, the withdrawing of one end of France to the other. Far from being accu- industry from the system of laissez-faire and laissezsable of materialist tendencies, this plan of organising passer? Assuredly; and far from denying it, we proclaim labour for the suppression of misery, is based on the it aloud. Why because we will have liberty; that libest understood spiritualism. Who is ignorant that mi-berty which will be sought in vain, wherever equality sery holds the intelligence of man in darkness, by nar- and fraternity, these immortal sisters do not reign. rowing education into the most shameful limits. Misery causes a dependence of condition to him who is independent in character; hides a new torment under a virtue, and changes into bitterness man's most generous sentiments. If misery engenders suffering, it also engenders crime. If it ends in a hospital, it also leads to the galleys. It enslaves; it makes the greater part of our robbers, our assassins, our prostitutes.

We desire then that labour be organised, so as to bring about the suppression of misery, not only that the people be raised out of their material sufferings, but also, and above all, that every one may be restored to his self-esteem; that an excess of wretchedness may no more stifle noble aspirations of thought and a legitimate feeling of pride, that there may be room for all in the domain of education and at the springs of intellect; that there be no more men enslaved, absorbed by a wheel that turns, no more children transformed for their families into a supplement of wages, no more mothers armed by the impossibility of living against the fruit of her own womb; no more girls reduced for bread to sell the sweet name of love. We would that labour be organised, that the soul of the people, the soul, remark it, may no more be crushed and debased by the tyranny of things.

And is he at liberty to form himself to intellectual life, the child of the poor, who turned off by hunger from the road to school, has to sell his soul and body to the next mill, in order to add some mites to the parental wages! Is he at liberty to discuss the question of labour, the labourer who dies, if the discussion is prolonged! Is he at liberty to shelter his existence against the chances of a homicidal lottery, the labourer who, in the confused melée of so many individual efforts, is reduced to dependance, not upon his own foresight and sagacity, but upon all the disorders which competition naturally breeds; upon a distant failure, an order stopped, a new machine, a mill closed, a panic, a strike! Is he free to choose a better couch than the pavement, the day-labourer who without work, has no lodging! Is she at liberty to preserve herself chaste and pure, the daughter of the poor who, wanting work, has no choice between prostitution and famine!

I ask, who is really interested in the maintenance of the present social system? None, none. For every pauper who trembles with hunger, there is a rich man who trembles with fear. O ye rich, you are deceived by them who excite you against those who consecrate themselves to the calm and peaceful solution of social That Christianity has laid its anathema upon the problems. This holy cause of the poor is your cause flesh, is true. And who does not know how much evil also. A union of interest enchains you to their misery the abuse of the Christian idea has produced? For in through fear, and binds you to their future deliverance. truth the corporeal life cannot be too completely sacri- A nation in which one class is oppressed resembles a man ficed to that of the soul, without attacking our very na- who is wounded in one member; the weak member inture. But what a strange and sad inconsistency is here! terdicts all exercise even to the members unaffected. It is the privileged classes who, in our days, are lost in Thus, however paradoxical the statement may appear, sensualism. They have invented, in luxury, unheard of oppressors and oppressed both gain by the destruction refinements; they have scarcely any other religion than of oppression; they both lose by its maintenance. Will pleasure; they have stretched the domain of the senses you have a striking proof thereof? The bourgeoisie (emto the most extreme limits imaginable; for them, to ployer class) has based its domination upon unlimitemploy life is no object, to enjoy it is everything. And yet ed competition, a tyrannic principle. Well, it is just it is from these fortunate classes, it is from the depths through this unlimited competition that we see the emof these gilt boudoirs where this their pleasant philoso-ploying class sink at this day. 1 have ten thousand, phy is cradled, that we are adjured not to appeal to material interests, when we demand, for the poor, assurance of employment, daily bread, a home, raiment, the power to love and hope.

What are you afraid of? That we sow about false notions on the condition of the labourer, and on the means of elevating him. If these notions are false, the free breeze of discussion will sweep them off, as chaff from the grain. What then do you dread yet? Take care, you are told, of the war of those who have nought against those who have. Ah! if this impious war were really to be dreaded, what should be thought of the social order which breeds it in its bosom! Miserable sophists, do you not see that the system whose defence you would babble forth, were condemned irrevocably, if it even deserved these fears?

But if it is necessary to think about a social reform,

say you, my rival has only five; in the lists of industry, with the lance of cheapness, I will bring him down, for sure. Base and senseless man! Do you not know that to-morrow some pitiless fellow with millions will crush you with your own arms?

Prove then, that competition is a system of extermination for the employed-and for the employers-a constant cause of impoverishment and ruin. Thus it will result clearly that all interests are correspondent, and that a social reform is a means of safety for all the members of society.

COMPETITION A SYSTEM OF EXTERMINATION FOR THE
PEOPLE.

Is the poor a member or an enemy of society? He finds all round him the ground occupied. Can he sow

the earth on his own account? No, for the right of the first occupant has become right of property. Can he gather the fruits that God has ripened on his passage? No, for they, like the soil, are appropriated. Can he hunt or fish? No, for that is a right given by Government. Can he, dying with hunger and thirst, stretch his hand out for the pity of his fellows? No, for there are laws against mendicancy. May he, worn out with fatigue and homeless, sleep on the stones of the street? No, for there are laws against vagabondage. What then can the poor wretch do? He will say; I have arms, intelligence, force, youth; take it all, and give me in return a bit of bread. That is what the proletaires do at this day. But here even you reply to the poor; I have no work to give you. What shall he do then?

This then is the question; is competition capable of assuring work to the poor? But to put the question thus, is to answer it. What is competition as regards workmen? It is labour put to auction. An employer needs a hand-Three offer. How much do you ask? Three shillings; I have a wife and family. And you? Half a-crown; I have a wife. Good, and you? Two shillings will do me. I am single. So much the better; you come along. And so the bargain is closed. But what becomes of the two unemployed? They will let themselves die of hunger, it's to be hoped. But, suppose they take to stealing? Never mind, we have police! Or to murdering? Well, we have the hangmanAs to the more fortunate of the three, his triumph is but temporary. Another man comes, robust enough to fast every second day, for awhile, and so down goes the wage to zero, and a new paria, a new recruit for the hulks perhaps, is set adrift upon society.

Thus, if there is in this question, an argument of charity, as concerning the poor, there is also an argument of security, as concerning the rich. A perpetual tyranny for the one, competition the mother of poverty, is for the other a perpetual menace. And then imagine, O philanthropist, what a beautiful penitentiary system! But the savings'-bank-the workman is advised to save up for the future. And why? In order to arrive at the possession of a little capital, a prey reserved for the vulture competition, after ten, twenty years of privations and sufferings, when the heart chilled by such an age, beats no more for pure happiness, when the man has past the age of sun and flowers. In itself a little saving is an excellent thing. It would be puerile and foolish affectation to deny it. But, remark well, combined with individualism, it engenders selfishness, competes with alms, taints imperceptibly in the best natures the fountains of charity, substitutes a greedy satisfaction for the holy poesy of benevolence. Combined with association, on the contrary, it acquires a respectable character, a sacred importance. To save up for oneself alone, is to act distrustfully towards one's fellow men and towards the future; but to save for others at the same time as for myself is to practice an elevated pru

dence, it is to add to wisdom the might of devotion,

From individualism (separateism) proceeds competition; from competition, the changeability, the insufficiency of salary. Then follows dissolution of the family tie. Marriage is an increase of expense. Why should poverty unite poverty? Here then the family gives place to concubinage. Children are born; how support them? Hence so many unfortunate little creatures found dead in corners. Hence it has been direly enough needful that the State say to the indigent mother-Give me your children, I must open hospitals. But that is too little. It is necessary to go farther, and banish those obstacles which render the remedial system of no avail. The proportion of foundlings to the population has almost tripled within forty years; and to crown the evil, the hospitals progress daily in sanitary improvement! Hygienic improvement becomes a calamity! Heavens, what a social state! But you find additional taxes grow

ing. Ah! that shoe pinches. But we will not have it that the number of infanticides should increase. The weight of your budgets frightens you. But since the daughters of the people cannot find a livelihood, it is just that what you gain on one side, you should lose part of on the other. Then the family tie is broken thus? Doubtless. See then that labour be organised. For competition produces misery; this is proved by statistics. Misery is horribly prolific; this too is proved by statistics. The fecundity of the poor throws upon society wretches who need work, and cannot find it; this too is proved by statistics. Here then, society has only to choose between extirpating the poor, or nourishing them gratuitously; atrocity, or folly.

COMPETITION A COURSE OF RUIN FOR EMPLOYERS.

I might stop here. A society, such as I have just described, is in gestation of civil war. It is quite in vain that the bourgeoisie felicitates itself upon not bearing anarchy in its bosom, if anarchy is under its feet. But does not the middle class domination itself, even leaving aside what ought to serve as its base, contain in itself all the elements of a speedy and inevitable dissolution.

Cheapness, here is the great word, which contains, according to economists of the school of Smith, and say, all the benefits of unlimited competition. But why obstinately regard the results of cheapness, relatively only to the momentary profit obtained by the consumer? Cheapness only benefits those who consume, in sowing amongst those who produce, the germs with which rich producers crush the poorer of their own of the most ruinous anarchy. Cheapness is the club class. Cheapness is the trap into which bold speculators make laborious men fall. Cheapness is the sentence of death upon the manufacturer who has not means to procure at once a costly machine which his richer rivals set to work. Cheapness is the right hand agent of monopoly; in a word, the annihilation of the employer class itself in favour of a few industrial aristo

crats.

"Is it that cheapness ought to be condemned, in itself? No one would sustain such an absurdity. But it is the property of bad principles to change good into evil, and corrupt everything. This competition, which tends to dry up the sources of consumption, pushes production to a devouring activity. The confusion produced by universal antagonism, hides from the individual producer an acquaintance with the market. He must count upon chance for the sale of his products, which he brings out in darkness. Why should he moderate his course, especially when he can throw back his losses upon the salary, so elastic, of his workers? Even those who produce at a loss, continue to go on, tools, then raw stock, then mills, then remainder of cusbecause they will not keep useless their machines, their tomers; and because industry, under the empire of competition, being only a game of chance, the player will not give up the possible profit of some fortunate turn of the dice.

"Thus, and this result cannot be too strongly insisted upon, competition forces production to increase, and consumption to decrease; thus, it goes precisely against the aim of economy; thus, it is at once oppression and insanity-Manufacturers crushing trades; great shops absorbing the little; the artizan working for himself displaced by the tender of the machine; failures multiplying; industry transformed into a game where the gain is assured to no one, not even to the knave; in fine this vast disorder, so fit to raise in every soul jealousy, distrust, hatred, extinguishing by degrees, all generous aspirations, and drying up all the fountains of faith, of devotion, of poetry-this is the picture,

hideous and too correct, of the results of the applica- COMPETITION BETWEEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND, LEADS tion of competition.

"And since it is to the English we owe this deplorable system, let us see a little what it has done for the glory and prosperity of England.

COMPETITION CONDEMNED BY THE EXAMPLE OF
ENGLAND.

"Let us form sailors, let us construct ships which shall deliver to us the commerce of the world-let us go seek, at the extremities of the earth, raw materials to manufacture-let us produce, always produce, and get by every means other nations to consume. Then all the people will consume our products, and we will work for all the world, and this will make the

chants.

NECESSARILY TO A WAR TO THE DEATH.

"Now it remains to be known if manufacturing France would tread in the steps of England; if, in order to find for her industrial power ever renovated aliment, she would wish to succeed to England's odious domination of the ocean. For it is there that irresistibly tends, for a great people, the logic of competition. But England will not resign, without combat, the sceptre of the seas. Still as ever that race, unconquerable in cupidity, seeks and finds consumers. England has cottons and woollens requiring sale. Quick, and let the East be conquered that England may clothe the East. She must live, but she cannot, except by enslaving the world for her merwealth of England and develope the genius of our death, is so also for France, if the principle of competition But that which is for England a question of life or people. "Such is the idea of England. Gigantic plan, almost be maintained. This competition then, includes necessaas absurd as it is selfish, which, during nearly two cen-sword for the liberty of the peoples, and all men of rily the conflagration of the world. No, let France draw turies, England has followed out with incredible perse-heart will applaud. But why should she draw it to But to attain her end, what has she not at-revive in her own bosom the excesses of England? Ah! tempted! To what deeds has she been driven by the to come to a poor law, it is not worth while putting the rapacity of her hopes, and the delirium of her preten-world to pillage! tions! Think of Essequibo, Surinam, Ceylon, Demerara, Tobago, Saint Lucia, Malta, Corfu; of her tyrannic abuses of force in India"-and (the author might have added since) of the massacres of Affghanistan and China. While over all these atrocities, which would make a black stain even on the dark records of Tamerlane, of the Vandal or the Dane, her merchants and philanthropists console themselves by the idea, that through the hole, smashed open by the cannon-ball, they can throw their calicos, and their Bibles--can build glory, "Government would be considered the supreme recivilization, Christianity, over the tombs of the massa-gulator of production, and to this end, invested with cred aborigines. "All this to envelope the world in an immense girdle of colonies, and to have raw materials for her mechanics, and consumers for her products.

verance!

HOW, ACCORDING TO OUR IDEA, LABOUR COULD BE
ORGANISED.

"The present social order is bad-how change it? Let us say what remedy we imagine might be possible; warning the reader, however, that we only regard as transitory, the social order, whose bases we are about to indicate.

great force.

"Its task would consist in employing the very weapon of competition to abolish competition. Government would raise a loan, for the creation of social workshops, in the most important branches of natural industry.

"This creation, requiring considerable funds, the original number of workshops would be rigorously restricted; but in virtue of the plan of their organization, as will be seen, could be endowed with an immense force of expansion.

"This political economy carried in itself a vice which ought to render it fatal to England. It laid it down as principle, that the end of everything was to find consumers; it should have been added, consumers who pay In constituting themselves, as a people the producers par excellence, could the English expect that their products would long find markets among peoples exclusively consumers? Such an expectation was evidently sense- "Government, being considered the sole founder of less-A day would be forced to arrive, when the peo- these social workshops, would draw up the regulations ples consuming would not be able to give materials in which deliberated and voted by the national representexchange; whence would result for England, reple-atives, would have form and force of law. tion of markets, ruin of numerous manufactures, misery for masses of workmen, and general shock of credit.

"To know to what a point the unforesight of the folly of production can go, we only need to look at the industrial and commercial history of England.-What losses has she suffered by the single circumstance of her products accumulating in a proportion exceeding the objects to be given in exchange! How often she has produced according to pre-calculations, which events have cruelly punished for their extravagance! And while, abroad, she was exhausting her forces in efforts, scarcely credible, to render the universe tributary to her industry, what a spectacle has her interior history presented to the attentive observer! Mills added upon mills; the working population increasing out of all measure, under the thousand excitements of unlimited competition; the bread of charity substituted for that of labour; the workhouse filled instead of the house of work; poor-law raising swarms of poor; England, in fine, presenting to the indignant and astonished world, the spectacle of the extreme of misery, crouched under the wing of the extreme of opulence. Such are the results produced by this policy of seeking consumers everywhere and at any price.

"There would be called to work in the social workshops, until concurrence of the primitive capital, all workmen offering guarantees of morality.

Although the false and anti-social education given to the present generation, renders it difficult to find otherwise than in increase of profit, a motive of emulation and encouragement, the salaries would be equal, an entirely new education being instituted, in order to change manners and ideas.

"For the first year the government would regulate the hierarchy of functions. Afterwards, the workmen, having had the time to appreciate each other, and all being equally interested in the success of the association, the hierarchy would be elective.

66

Every year the account of net profits would be made, and would be divided into three parts; one for the support of old, sick, and infirm; one for the alleviation of crises fallen upon other branches of industry, as all branches owe each other aid and support; another in fine, to furnish instruments to those, who desire to join the association, so that it might extend indefinitely.

"Into each association formed for the industries which can be exercised on a large scale, those might be admitted who belong to professions which are forced by their nature to scatter in different localities. So that

די

FACTS FROM THE FIELDS.—THE DEPOPULATING or I can not buy.' So the manufacturers lay their heads

prisoners to their own trade by their poverty. They'd Meldrum, your labourer's wages were princely to be glad enough to get into another trade, but how? All that. other trades are full, and it wants money for a man to "But these were good times to what came after. I put his son apprentice, and that is just what the stock-worked to a bag-hosier, but you dont know what a inger has not got. The moment his children can seam bag-hosier is. He is a man who, to avoid starvation a hose, they must seam, and earn a penny, and the mo- himself, by hook or by crook, gets a frame or two at ment they can mount a frame, they must do it; and get first. He hires them of the hosier in the town, and re-lets all they can to help. And so the numbers every day in- them at a profit, to his neighbours. So he gets along crease, though they know well enough that by this in- till he has perhaps all the frames in the village his own, crease, even the present starvation prices must decrease; or in his hire, let and re-let. The stockingers take in and so it has come to pass, that the stockingers are their work to him, and he pays them, and carries these eating one another, and when the horrible wretched- stockings to the town, and sells them to the great honess is to end, God knows, for I dont! siers there. He is the English middle-man, and is "Well, I was a stockinger's son. I had better have called the bag-hosier, because he is often seen in the been the devil's ten times, for he's a cunning piece earlier part of his career, carrying his goods in a bag of goods, and would have found me a good trade on his back to the town. But he soon gets beyond this, made a lawyer, or a lord, or something of me, but as and sends them by the carrier. Then, perhaps he gets it was, I remember running about a stockinger's son, his horse and gig, and at last goes to the town, and bewithout shoes or stockings. I could have been very comes a great hosier and a great man himself. That is happy on Bulwell Common in the sunshine, in hunting the history of scores who now are great and wealthy birds' nests, and picking violets from under the hedges, men, magistrates and mayors, and some of them parliaor catching bull-heads in the brook, and these days are ment men. the only ones that I can remember that had any pleasure. But I was always so nation hungry. I was forced to sit at the house-end and seam till my fingers were sore, and wind cotton, while I saw the colt gallopping on the common, and the lark singing in the sky-and I wished I had been only a colt or a lark, and not have to seam and to wind, and to starve for ever. Water gruel, and nettle porridge, and a piece of bread now and then, were my diet. I heard my father and the rest talk of Luddites, who broke the frames, and broke into bakers' shops, and I wished they might come that way, for if the frames were broken, I saw clearly enough there could be neither seaming nor winding; and as for the bakers' shops, when I passed them, and smelt the hot new bread-Good Lord alive! I would not have given a pin to go to heaven if I was not sure that there were bakers there!

"But the Luddites never came, and I grew up into a great lad, and was set to work in the frame; and was starved six days every week on water-gruel and a few potatoes-and on Sundays lay in the sunshine in the fields and ate raw turnips.

"Well-I don't blame them for getting on-every man should try to get on-but I blame them for the means by which they often get on. They get on by tyranny and extortion. Once that they get the stockinger under their thumb, and all is over with him. He rents his frame of the bag-ho ier, and takes in his work to him. He gets a few shilus into his debt, and is at his mercy. Then begin th ew and the press to work and squeeze and crush Fr Then begin the systematic bullying and baiting and 'o ing. Ah! curse that word docking! The horse is docked of his tail once in his life, but the stockinger is dock d of his very vitals every week of his existence.

"He goes in with his He has been in his frame sixteen hours a day the week. It is Saturday night, and till he gets wages, his family is without fire, candle, or a mouti. 1 of bread. He has been induced to work to the bug-hosier because he is on the spot, and the poor stockinger, to whom time is inestimably precious, cannot afford to spend half a day or a day in going himself to the town. He enters the bag

hosier's house and sits or stands. There are a score of "My father died soon,-starved, and worked out the warehouse, that is, the parlour. In goes every one others. There he waits while one by one are called into my mother and the younger children went to the work-in turn with a pale care-worn look, and a sad and anxhouse. I stayed in that house and married."

Married;" ejaculated Meldrum.

why p

"Ay, married!" rejoined Bates. "Can't you tell "No. How should I? You could not maintain your self."

ious expression-the door is closed, and stern hardsounding words are heard on the part of the hosier, and anon out comes the poor man, with a flushed look, and goes off with a shake of the head and a- God help us!' Your own turn comes. You go in the door is closed-your stockings are taken. How many are there?' So many.' They are counted-the hand is put down them. They are stretched, held up to the light, weighed-and then begins the operation of the commercial rack and thumb-screw.

"A thousand faults are found with the work.

There

"Nor ever hoped to do," said Bates. "Was sure I never could do, if I worked my fingers to the bones. It was precisely for that reason that I got married. Population,' say the political economists,-how often have I heard that read at our public house- increases with the means of subsistence.'-It's a lie! It in- are as many ravellings ith' welts and toes as would stuff creases with the want of it. Ireland is one proof of it a bolster. There is a regular line of tuck-stitches hafe -the manufacturing districts are another. Men must (half) way down th' hose. You have doubled the weight marry because they can't maintain themselves-ando' th' cotton by suet or oil, that is, by greasing it to then they get a claim on the parish. At least it was so make up for waste, and have thus embezzled half the then. I knew that when I had a wife and two children, cotton itself. You have put too few narrowings in, and I could go to the parish and demand relief: and so I narrowed by too many needles at a time. You've missed th' presser and have drawn th' course out. You've made cuts and let stitches down, and never stopped to mend 'em. You've made th' work too slack by ten or a dozen nicks of a side. The seamer has missed th' loop and gone into th' wale. You've brought 'em in as damp as dish-clouts.

married.

"Now what do you think we lived on, I and my wife? I got about seven shillings a week-out of which 1 paid two shillings for frame-rent. Then there was suet to stiffen the cotton, and candles, another shilling. Four shillings were left, and my wife got about a shilling a week by seaming. Five shillings a week. And of this two went for rent. The landlord came every Monday morning for it-Three shillings were left for two people-eighteen-pence a piece per week! Why,

During all these imputed defects, the bag-man makes your hose almost as slack as he describes them by stretching them unmercifully, as he shines them between himself and the candle. For every one of these defects