conduce to an understanding of its causes and therefore of its remedies to note with exactitude the periods of activity and quiescence in the history of this social disease.

Such detailed investigation is beyond the scope of the present article; but there is one constant factor in the history of the problem the significance of which cannot be exaggerated. In every case where the problem has reappeared in an acute form there have, of course, been many contributory causes, but among them two have been constantly present-contraction of credit, and stringency in the money market; in a word, scarcity of capital. And this symptom almost invariably recurs in periods immediately succeeding a great war. It was the distress at home which, after the close of the Seven Years War (1763), led George Grenville to look to the Colonies for support in his scheme of Imperial Defence. The close of the much more severe and much more prolonged struggle against Napoleon was followed by an industrial crisis of still greater severity. All classes were involved landlords, despite the Corn Laws; manufacturers, despite a tariff; wage earners, despite rate-provided employment. It is safe to say that at no time in our history were the sufferings of the working classes so acute as during the years between 1815 and 1834-between the close of the great war and the amendment of the old Poor Law. War itself involves State employment on a gigantic scale, and no employment can in the immediate economic sense be less productive. But the industrial dislocation, inseparable from a great war, was in the years after Waterloo prolonged and intensified by the loose administration of the Poor Law, and by the virtual recognition of the principle of droit au travail. Had the administration been firmer the sufferings of the poor might have been for the moment more acute, but the normal conditions of industry would have been more speedily restored, and in the long run much misery would have been avoided. Anyone who hankers after an extension of the system of outdoor relief under the seductive pseudonym of Municipal or State employment' will be well advised to read Section IV. of the first Report of the Poor Law Commissioners of 1834. It is difficult to believe that anyone who has mastered that most informing document can have any desire to return to the condition of things which is there disclosed. Whole parishes bankrupt; land thrown out of cultivation by the burden of rates; landlords and farmers involved in a common ruin, and the independent labourer, in many parts of the country, almost extinct. Such is the picture painted by the Commissioners. And while many classes suffered, no class was benefited; least of all the class in whose supposed interests this vast system of national extravagance was sanctioned and maintained. The Report of 1834 teems with evidence of the misery and demoralisation brought upon the working classes, alike upon those who were and those who were not in receipt of relief. But it would be tedious to

labour a point which is admitted by all whose opinion is entitled to consideration. It is not easy to understand how any educated person with such evidence staring him in the face can be found willing to embark upon an experiment which would necessarily reproduce many of the worst features of the old Poor Law.

But within the last century we have had practical experience of another experiment even more pertinent to the present discussion. It is small wonder that the Socialist party should be anxious to bury in oblivion the fiasco of the Ateliers Nationaux of 1848. It is perfectly true, as Mr. Wilson insisted in moving the second reading of his Bill on the 13th of March, that between the circumstances of to-day in England and the circumstances of '48 in Paris, no precise parallel exists.

Mr. Llewellyn Smith, in his valuable Report to the Board of Trade on Agencies and Methods for Dealing with the Unemployed, emphasises the same point:

It should, however, be distinctly understood that the state of Paris at the time, the acuteness of the industrial and political crisis, the supposed necessity of doing something at once on a large scale for political, no less than economic reasons, and the jealousies and intrigues of opposing parties both within and without the Provisional Government, were all factors in the situation which tended to make difficult, if not impossible, the execution of any carefully planned scheme.

But while allowing full weight to these considerations, it is none the less necessary to insist that the essential principle of Mr. Wilson's Bill and of the experiment tried with such disastrous results in 1848 are not merely similar but identical.

This being so, it may be worth while to describe with some care the history of that instructive episode. Glib reference is constantly made to it both by writers and speakers, but the details are very imperfectly apprehended, and are not indeed very easily accessible.

The

In France, as in England, the first half of the nineteenth century was a period of rapid and far-reaching economic change. application of steam to manufactures had revolutionised the face of the industrial world. The handworker had succumbed in the economic struggle with machinery. Even in France the self-sufficing household was tending to disappear; the factory was raising its ungainly head, and industrial concentration was beginning. No great economic revolution can be effected without grievous suffering to the weakest economic class. Political wisdom may perhaps avail to mitigate its severity. Can it hope altogether to avert it? But economic suffering was not confined to France; the pressure was infinitely more severe in England. Nor had the Parisian ouvriers any monopoly of The English working classes-or many of them-sought in a Charter whose 'points' were exclusively political a remedy for

error.

2 C. 7182, 1893.

distress which was primarily economic. Fortunately for ourselves, there were statesmen in England who accurately diagnosed the nature of the disease. While France was heading towards the Socialist revolution, Sir Robert Peel was producing a series of masterly budgets which knocked the bottom out of Chartism. In England economic remedies were applied to the cure of economic disease. In France the political Republicans who overthrew the Bourgeois Monarchy' found themselves immediately confronted by the doctrine of droit au travail. For many years past the Salons had been discussing Saint-Simon and Fourier, and not a few fantastic experiments were the result. But Saint-Simon and Fourier had preached to an audience comparatively select. Louis Blanc preached to the masses, and from him the Parisian citizen learnt of his right to work at the hands of the State. This was the doctrine which supplied the driving power of the Revolution of 1848. But for Louis Blanc and the Socialists the agitation would probably have begun and ended with a further instalment of political reform, another change of ministry, and a riot in the streets of Paris. That revolt deepened into revolution was due in part, no doubt, to the procrastination of the Government-always a day too late-partly to the pusillanimity of Louis Philippe, partly to the narrow basis of the Orleans Monarchy, but most of all to the stress of economic conditions, and to the fact that inflammable doctrines were persistently preached to masses of the unemployed. The differences of policy between two greedy sets of placehunters were too subtle for the working men of Paris; but in the droit au travail there was something definite and tangible, a principle which starving men could without difficulty apprehend.

The true meaning of the February Revolution was thus rapidly unfolded.

On the abdication of Louis Philippe an attempt was made to save the crown for his grandson the Comte de Paris, with the Duchess of Orleans as Regent. But the mob made short work of the partisans of the Bourgeois Monarchy; the right of regency,' declared Ledru Rollin, belongs only to the sovereign people'; the claims of Orleanists were pushed aside, and a Provisional Government, under Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, and others, was hastily set up.

From the first we can discern two elements in the new Government: the political Republicans represented by Lamartine, and the Socialists led by Louis Blanc. The brief story of the Second Republic consists in the struggle between them for supremacy. Lamartine regarded the Republic as an end in itself. Other forms of government are states of tutelage, confessions of the eternal minority of peoples, imperfections in the sight of philosophy, humiliations in the sight of history.' But it was not for this that the Parisian artisan had taken off his coat. To him and his leaders the Republic meant the advent of a Socialist millennium.

It has always been my opinion (wrote Louis Blanc) that the Republican form of government is not the sole object to be aimed at, even by politicians of the Republican school, if their love for the commonwealth be sincere and disinterested. . . . I believed then, as I do now, that the chief end to be kept in view is to enable the worker to enjoy the fruit of his work; to restore to the dignity of human nature those whom excessive poverty degrades; to enlighten those whose intelligence from want of education is but a dim, vacillating lamp in the midst of darkness; in one word, to enfranchise the people by endeavouring to abolish this double slavery-ignorance and misery.

Admirable sentiments! But observe their translation into action. Louis Blanc himself was an evolutionary Socialist; his ultimate object was to replace private by public property: to' nationalise' all the instruments of production. But he meant to reach his goal gradually by means of State-supported co-operative workshops. For his followers this method was too slow. The Parisian artisans were out of work; their families were starving; to them the Republic meant the droit au travail or nothing; they demanded immediate employment at the hands of the State.

The Provisional Government had no option but to accede to the demand. Shoals of Proclamations were issued from the Hôtel de Ville, which during these days was the real centre of government in Paris. One declared that a retrograde Government has been overturned by the heroism of the people of Paris'; another decreed the establishment of the Republic; but far the most significant was the following: 'The Government of the French Republic engages to guarantee the subsistence of the workman by his labour. It engages to guarantee work to all citizens.' (February 25, 1848.)

The doctrines of Louis Blanc had verily come home to roost. It was all very well for the Government to guarantee work to all applicants; but how was the guarantee to be fulfilled? The answer to this question was contained in the following proclamation (February 28):

From Wednesday, March 1, important works will be organised at different points. All workmen who wish to take part in them should apply to one of the mayors of Paris, who will receive their applications and direct them without delay to the different workyards.

WORKMEN OF PARIS,

You wish to live honourably by labour; all the efforts of the Provisional Government will, you may rely on it, be directed to assist you in the accomplishment of that wish. The Republic has a right to expect, and it does expect, from the patriotism of all its citizens that the example it gives may be followed. In that manner the extent of the works may be increased. Let labour, therefore, everywhere resume its wonted activity. Workmen, after victory, labour is a fine example which you have to give to the world, and you will give it. We shall see how these exalted expectations were fulfilled.

Quoted by Mr. Lowes Dickinson, to whose brilliant work, Revolution and Reaction in Modern France, I wish to acknowledge-not for the first time-my obligations.

The prescribed method of procedure for obtaining admittance to the 'workshops' was as follows. The workman had first to procure from his landlord a certificate that he had resided for six months in Paris; this certificate had then to be visaed by the police, and finally to be exchanged at the mairie for a ticket of admission to the 'workshops.' But no' workshops' were in existence.

These soi-disant Ateliers Nationaux turned out to be not workshops, but certain works that might happen to be going on; and the only works that were either in hand or in prospect were such as never belonged, or could belong, to an atelier. They were nothing but earthworks to the number of half a dozen at most, in opposite quarters of Paris, such as the filling up the Champ de Mars

the levelling the new Place de L'Europe on the north-west extremity of Paris, the embanking a portion of the riverside at La Gare on the south-east, with the repair and reconstruction of some small portions of the suburban highways.

Such works were not only grotesquely unsuitable for unemployed artisans, but ridiculously inadequate as a means of relief for the prevailing distress. Some 6000 men found employment in this way, but the number of applicants for work still continued to rise rapidly. Tickets of admission were issued by the mayors, but no work could be found, and the mairies were consequently thronged night after night by a crowd of workmen, disappointed by the fruitless search for work, tired, starving, and discontented.' The inevitable happened. The Government, unable to fulfil its promise of work, felt constrained to provide pay without work. The mayors were authorised to pay to any applicant 1.50 francs a day' on the production of a ticket showing that there was no vacancy for him in the national works.' The rate of pay on the works was 2 francs a day. Consequently, as Émile Thomas points out, the workman made the following simple calculation and made it aloud: "The State gives me 30 sous for doing nothing, it pays me 40 sous when I work, so I need only work to the extent of 10 sous." This was logical.' The number of applicants rose not unnaturally with ever-increasing rapidity, and the mob became a serious menace to public order. The Government were at their wit's end.

56

The situation was saved, for the moment, by a young chemist, Émile Thomas. He proposed a scheme by which a semi-military organisation should be applied to the unemployed, and the adminis tration of relief should be centralised. The Minister of Public WorksM. Marie-was only too eager to adopt any suggestion which seemed likely to relieve the situation, and to save the capital from impending anarchy. Thomas was appointed Director of the Ateliers Nationaux, and was established in the Royal villa of Monceau, where elaborate

• Quarterly Review, June 1850.

Histoire des Ateliers Nationaux, quoted in Report on Agencies and Methods for Dealing with the Unemployed. Board of Trade Labour Department, 1890.