the protection of children and girls who this turning out of doors means for the After this law came into force, youths and girls of sixteen to eighteen years of age could no longer be employed more than sixty hours per week; girls above eighteen and women were restricted to eleven hours per day. The women thus remain in the workshop while the girls and children are obliged to go away. And what are they to do outside? This fastidious protection of children may have the most unfortunate results for them. The cooks and pastry-cooks of Paris The law condemns them to idleness. recognize, are subject to times of great pressure which compensate for times of slackness. M. Waddington said that he was convinced, on inquiry, that sixty days would suffice. Very good; but if sixty days are all that are wanted, what is the use of the law? Does any one work at night for the fun of the thing? And how wise is this compulsory turning of the workwomen out into the streets at eleven o'clock at night, from the point of view of morals! The legislator deprives these dressmakers, these workwomen, during the season of pressure, of a part of their wages which they would be able to save. Does he indemnify them for the loss when the dull season comes ? Paragraph 5 of this article goes farther. It permits night-work-which, it appears, is no longer destructive of morals and the family when so authorized but only on condition "that the does not exceed, in any case, work seven hours in twenty-four." M. Félix | In mines it is scarcely more than eight Martin exposed, in the Senate, the sit- to eight and a half hours of effective uation to which this law reduces the work. But the Socialists may well women employed in stitching printed say: "Since the legislator can fix the matter. They go to the workshop at day's work at twelve hours, why not nine o'clock at night. They may re- fix it at eight? The principle is conmain there till four o'clock in the secrated by the law.” Others have morning. Then they are inexorably still more generous proposals. M. shown to the door. It may be rain- Vaillant, the new Socialist deputy of ing or freezing, it may be light or the Blanquist school, suggests a legal dark; but, however that may be, these working day of six hours. M. Pablo workwomen must go, and must not Lafargue, a relation of Karl Marx aud re-appear in the workshop during the late deputy for Lille, demands a threenext seventeen hours which complete hours' day. Zero is, in fact, the only the twenty-four. What follows? Un- figure which is safe from being outbid. der the pretence of protecting the women stitchers, the law really turns them out of employment and causes their replacement by men. And, to speak frankly, all the fine phrases spun in the ostensible interest of women and for the protection of children have been but pretexts though in France there is a very large infantile mortality in a certain number of more or less manufacturing departments of the south. In reality, what the Socialists have always aimed at in Frauce is the exclusion of women from all industrial work. They have always regarded women as disloyal competitors who work at a lower price. They therefore fashion beautiful phrases for their special benefit, but with the object of getting rid of them from the labor market. French gallantry is thus transformed into a savage egotism. Up to the present time the only fruit of the law of the 2nd of November, 1892, has been strikes and discontent. The legal limitation of the hours of labor has an appearance of theoretic profundity for those who believe, with Karl Marx, that the employer's profit comes only out of surplus labor; and it presents, at the same time, an immediate practical solace to the people who proudly style themselves " workers," but whose ideal is to work as little as possible. We do not blame them. They obey "the law of least effort" which dominates humanity in the economic as well as in the linguistic field. Only, the majority of them well understand that if the law diminishes their hours of work it must intervene again if it would prevent any diminution of their wages. The legislator thus finds himself committed to intervention in labor bargains in two ways and to the regulation of the cost of production. He thus substitutes the law, an authoritative arrangement, for a private coutract freely entered into; and if, as Sir Henry Sumner Maine has demonstrated, social progress substitutes coutract for State intervention, it follows that State interference in the sale and purchase of labor, so far from marking an advance, is symptomatic of retrogression. From the moment when one accepts the principle of the intervention of the legislator for the limitation of the labor of adult women there is no ground of principle on which to base its rejection for the labor of men. The law of the 9th of September, 1848, passed under Among the legal measures demanded the Socialistic influence of the moment, by the Socialists is the expulsion of forlimited men's labor to twelve hours per eign workmen. They are all internaday; but the decrees of the 17th of tionalists in words they even accept May, 1851, and the 3rd of April, 1883, subsidies towards their election exspecify exceptions. In fact, custom penses from their German friends has reduced the duration of daily labor but in fact they do not like the competo less than the legal limit in the ma- tition of foreigners, especially that of jority of workshops and manufactories. the Belgians and Italians. Yet this the Rue du Château d'Eau, which was opened in the month of May, 1892. This bourse lacked only one element in order to justify its title: there were plenty of sellers of labor but the purchasers of it were rigorously shut out. The supply of labor was there, but the demand came not; and the very persous who showed purchasers the door wondered and were indignant at their absence. They consoled themselves, competition is scarcely ever effective | the Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and save in work which they consider be- afterwards built a magnificent edifice, neath them. They seek, however, to which cost three millions of francs, in reconcile their theory of fraternity between the proletarians of all countries with their personal interest by demanding that the fine, and if necessary imprisonment, shall be imposed on the employer of foreign workmen. This system satisfies all their requirements, and it affords an excellent opportunity of having one fling the more at the employer. It is very difficult for the Chamber of Deputies not to follow the Socialists on this path; for the latter however. The delegates of the syndiwill say to the Protectionists: "You have asked for duties for the protection of native industry;' but this industry is not native from the moment when foreigners can come and take part in it." The Socialists also demand the suppression of the registry offices which submitted to the decree of 1852. These are completely in the hands of the police, who can intervene in case of abuse of their functions. The Socialists, in order to insure the recruitment of the trade syndicates, wish to give them a monopoly as agents between employer and employed. A committee of the last legislature adopted a bill framed to accomplish this. I procured its rejection by the Chamber of Deputies on the 8th of May last. This would have been a formidable instrument of oppression. The syndicates would have placed an interdict on all employers and workmen who would not come to terms with their chiefs. V. It was because of this that the question of the Bourse du Travail came up. M. de Molinari, one of the most original economists of this century, had so early as 1843 proposed the creation of bourses du travail at which bargains might be made by those who sought work and those who desired to purchase it. This idea was taken up by the Socialists, but with very different intentions from those of its author. The Municipal Council of Paris first opened a Bourse du Travail in 1887, in cates received an honorarium for their presence from the subventions given by the Municipal Council of Paris, and they multiplied every day. The time which they did not employ in discussions between themselves they consecrated to the elaboration of the Journal de la Bourse du Travail, which contained the most virulent articles against "capitalism" and employers. They organized public meetings, at which they gave themselves up to invectives and anathemas against the bourgeois. They busied themselves in provoking strikes at all points of France. They sent delegates to various Socialist congresses; and one of them, M. Chausse, himself a municipal councillor of Paris, on his return from the Congress of St.Quentin, published a plan of the strategy to be adopted in social war. They organized lists of officers of Socialism and Revolution, as in 1871 the delegates of the battalions of the National Guards, forming the central committee, organized the Commune. Through indifference, in order not to make a fuss, the police and the government permitted the installation of this focus of anarchy and its support by the Municipal Council at the expense of the rate-payers. Under pressure by the Chamber of Deputies, the ministry took the energetic step of closing it on the 6th of July last. Will they re-open it, as they are summoned to do by the Socialists? And, if so, on what conditions? Indeed there are bourses du travail in certain towns of the departments in some of which the errors of government attend to this? Will it allow them to continue their action, which, by serving to form their organization, was not without effect on the success of the Socialists at the last general election ? that of Paris still prevail. Will the two thousand underground workers in France, more than one-half are grouped in the departments of the Nord and the Pas-de-Calais. It was so much the easier to work upon them, as these miners were admirably disciplined by the companies. They, however, put the quality of obedience which they had acquired at the service of revolutionaries, and with docility obeyed their orders. VI. ACCORDING to the ultimate conception of the Socialists, all laws of the kind we have just described are, notwithstanding their Socialistic character, but bourgeois legislation. But they claim the honor of having called them into existence, and they have no gratitude to the bourgeois Radical Socialists, like Messieurs Floquet and Clémenceau, who have lent themselves to the passing of this legislation. They loudly declare that the concessions made to them will but serve to fortify their cause and weaken their adversaries. They frankly forewarn those who cooperate with them that they are deceiving no one but themselves; but there are some persons who have a passion for this jeu de dupes. We shall see, in the coming legislative session, not only Radical Socialists, but Monarchists who have recently rallied" to the present form of government and Republicans, accept it as the theme of their adulation and from the desire to try to deserve the gratitude of people who tell their allies that they must not count on receiving it. In reality, the chief means of action of the Socialists is the strike. They do not look upon it in its economic aspect. They do not at all regard it as the withdrawal of labor from the market by the laborers, the rendering of the supply of labor a monopoly in order to raise its price. For them it is a combat of the advanced guard, a precursory episode of the social war. It is with these sentiments that they stir up strikes as frequently as possible. They have been obliged to give up the notion of a general strike, as the agriculturists decline to follow them. Not having succeeded in this, they endeavor to multiply partial strikes. The miners' strikes were the best for them. For, of the ninety When the strike broke out, drawing into its vortex many thousands of workmen, the public, whose knowledge of mining was drawn solely from their imagination and their recollection of explosions of fire-damp, drew a fancy picture of mining in which it was of all occupations the most terrible and dangerous. They were captured by sympathy for the miners; and the man who desired to buy his coal at the cheapest rate subscribed in support of the miners on strike, without seeing the self-contradiction in which he was involving himself. In our French legislation the concession of a mine is regarded as a privilege conferred by the State. A strike of miners, therefore, offered a magnificent opportunity to the Socialists to mount the tribune and ask of the minister of public works what he was doing and what he intended to do. If he replied that the mine, once conceded, is property like anything else - which is the truth-they would accuse him of being a supporter of industrial feudalism. There are some ministers to whom this reproach is not a matter of indiffercnce. Moreover, we have seen, in 1892, at Carmaux, all the authorities giving in to the miners, who, under the direction of certain Socialist deputies, and especially of M. Baudin, set patrols in order to prevent the realization of any desire to return to work, and threatened the army and the constabulary. The strike finished, in October, 1892, by a lamentable debate, in which M. Loubet, the prime minister, consented to serve as arbitrator; and, as his decision did not give complete satisfaction to the demands of Messieurs Clémenceau, Millerand, and Camille Pelletan, who set themselves up as delegates of the miners, they insulted the arbitrator whom they had asked to act, and rejected arbitration at the very time when they had just voted, in the Chamber of Deputies, in favor of compulsory arbitration. This strike ended with a dynamite explosion in the Rue des Bons Enfants, which killed five persons. The champions of the strike then judged it prudent to put an end to their rodomontade. These furious harangues and more after their kind will be reproduced in the new Chamber. VII. THE Socialists have a programme of immediate action and a political plan of campaign. Many Republicans, it must be confessed, though they feel uneasy in respect of them, have no economic principles sufficiently firmly held to oppose them. The Protectionists, while demanding the intervention of the State in exchange agreements, are in a bad position to refuse it in labor agreements. Having claimed that profits shall be guaranteed to them, what can they say to the workmen who claim that the law should guarantee to them a certain scale of wages? Many others have no criterion by which to determine what should be the limit of the intervention of the State in the economic domain. Has the government any such principle? Or will it drag the majority into concession after concession to the Socialists? Will it say, what has already been said and reThey do peated too often, that the new Chamnot even know that of the twelve hun-ber of Deputies should occupy itself dred concessions of mines in France with labor questions and labor laws? there are eight hundred which are not What are labor laws-lois ouvrières ? worked, after having exhausted the re- We are here back to caste legislation sources of those who have obtained we who believed that the Revolution of them; and that of the mines in actual 1789 had abolished caste! working one-half produce nc profit. The Socialists announce that they are about to demand that the mines shall re-enter into the domain of the State and be worked by it. This is a good field for them, as there are many good owners of real property who imagine that the mines are not property as other things are, and that it is only necessary to dig a hole in the earth to make it debouch millions. 66 or' If the government and the majority The Socialists are also going to de- put their shoulders to this wheel, it mand that the railroads be taken over will be very serious, not only for the and worked by the State. That will new legislature, but for the elections of not be a way of putting our finances 1897. The Socialists are about to mulmore in order. The example of Prus-tiply their proposals. They will put sia shows us that the State forgets forward resolutions and propose willingly to redeem the cost of the ders of the day." Many of these will railroads. Morcover, if the State man- be lost. They will heap up these ages the railroads it will have to lower losses carefully and go to the electors the scale of charges and raise all the with the cry: "Here is what we prosalaries. The conditions of such man- posed! We have been defeated! You agement will, therefore be ruinous. must give us a majority in the next However, it is well to bear in mind that Chamber." While they will utilize this proposal meets with a favorable their defeats for the denunciation of reception on the part of some Repub-" bourgeois society" and parliamentary licans who repudiate Socialism. The government, they will make use of transport industries are always unpopular; and the management of the railroads, in their relations with the State, is very complicated in France. every law which has the appearance of Socialism, proposed by themselves or others, to point out how many coucessions they have obtained, and what might have been if they had obtained them in greater number. They have, at the present time, the power of at |