France and the Republic | Page 4

French and English--The true story of Enguerrand
de Coucy--A little feudal city--The finest donjon in France--An official
guardian--A dinner with four councillors-general--'What France really
wants is a man'--Agricultural philosophers--How a councillor-general
tested chemicals--Peasantry on the highway--A land of gardens--A city

set on a hill--Simple good-natured people--A raging Boulangist at
Laon--What a barber saw in Tonkin--The diamond belt of King
Norodom--Castelin the friend of Boulanger--A revolutionary
shoemaker on government by committees--Evils of the
Exposition--Foreigners steal the ideas of France--The railways, the new
feudal system--They are the real 'enemy' of the people--Extravagance
of the ministers--Freemasonry at Laon--How it controls the press--The
rise of Deputy Doumer--How he lost his seat in 1889--The author of
'Chez Paddy' at Château Thierry--Over-zeal of the curés--The question
of working men's unions--M. Doumer's report on the Law of
Associations--He proves that the Republic has done absolutely nothing
with this law--'Five years' spent in drawing up a report--'The Republic
never existed until 1879'--And nothing done for working men until
1888--M. de Freycinet and M. Carnot only 'studied measures which
might be taken;' but were not!--The first practical step taken by M.
Doumer by making an enormous report in 1888, recommending things
to be done hereafter--The true Republic eluding for ten years questions
which the Emperor grappled with in 1867--The voters of Laon in
September defeat M. Doumer--A curious little chapter of French
politics--M. Doumer's coquetry with General Boulanger--After his
defeat M. Doumer becomes secretary of the President of the Chamber
and lets the working men's question alone--Politics as a profession in
France and the United States--Intense centralisation of power in France
makes it easier and more profitable than in America 226-258
CHAPTER XI
IN THE NORD
Valenciennes--The shabbiest historic town in North-eastern
France--Perfect cultivation of French Flanders--Cock-fighting and
flowers--Prosperity of the cabarets--One to every forty-four inhabitants
around Valenciennes--Growth of the mining and manufacturing
towns--Interesting buildings in Valenciennes--Carelessness of the
citizens about their city--A graceful edifice of the 15th century falling
into ruins--Valenciennes in the days of the Hanse of
London--Mediæval burghers and their sovereigns--A citizen of

Valenciennes, in 1357, the richest man in Europe--Festivals in the
olden times--Religious wars--Vauban at Valenciennes--How the
clothworkers fled from the Spanish persecution--Dumouriez at
Valenciennes--The Hôtel de Ville--Interesting local artists from Simon
Marmion down to Watteau and Pater--The triptych of Rubens--Some
historic portraits--The Musée Carpeaux--The coal mines of
Anzin--14,035 workmen there employed and 200,210,702 tons of coal
extracted--Competition with Belgium, the Pas-de-Calais, England, and
Germany--The coal mines of Anzin organised a century and a half
ago--The discovery of coal in North-eastern France--Energy shown by
the local noblesse--Pierre Mathieu, an engineer, strikes the vein in
1734--The lords of the soil claim their rights over the coal--A long
lawsuit ending in a compromise--A business arrangement under the
ancien régime--The hereditary principle recognised in the organisation
and undisturbed by the Revolution--An orderly, quiet, and prosperous
town--A region of factories intermingled with farms--Charming home
of the director--The company encourages workmen's homes, with
gardens and allotments--An improvement on the Cité Ouvrière--2,628
model homes now occupied by workmen--For three francs a month a
workman secures a well-built cottage, with drainage and cellarage, six
good rooms and closets, and a plot of ground--2,500 families hold
garden sites for cultivation--Fuel allowed, and a general 'participation
in profits' of a practical sort--The right of the workmen to be consulted
recognised at Anzin a century and a half ago--Beneficial and
educational institutions--An industrial republic--How the National
Assembly meddled with the mines--Mining laws in France, ancient and
modern--Influence of politics on the output of the mines--Every
Republican development at Paris diminishes, and every check to
Republicanism at Paris develops, the great coal industry--The great
strike of 1884--During that year the company expended for the benefit
of the workmen a sum equivalent to the profits divided amongst the
shareholders--What caused the collision therefore between capital and
labour?--A syndicate of miners under a former Anzin workman, Basly,
puts a pressure from Paris upon the workmen at Anzin to develop the
strike--The pretext found in contracts granted to good workmen--The
object of the strike to establish the equality of bad with good
workmen--Boycotting and intimidation--Dynamite and Radical

deputies from Paris--A Republican minister asks the company to accept
Basly and his syndicate as an umpire--Bitter opposition of the Basly
syndicate to the saving fund system--They demand a State pension
fund--And pending this a fund controlled by the syndicate--A
despotism of agitators--Upshot of the strike--The mines in the
Pas-de-Calais--Visits to workmen's houses--Fine appearance and
carriage of the miners--Their politics--Women and children--Good
ventilation and sanitation of the mines--'No man can be a miner not
bred to it as a boy'--Excellent housekeeping of the women--Miners of
Southern and Northern France--Influence of high altitudes on
character--The elective principle in the mines--Morals and conduct of
the mining people--Churches and schools--A children's school at St.
Waast--A digression into the Artois--What the Tiers-Etat of Northern
France wanted in 1789--The