Suchergebnisse

On December 11, 1847, the Journal des chemins de fer, founded and edited in Paris since 1842 by an Englishman, declared that the French rentes had fallen as much as if the government was about to be overthrown. The King, who was ill in body at the time, yet perfectly comfortable in mind, recovered, but on February 24, 1848, he and his government fell in a revolution that was as sudden and dramatic as it was triumphant. Among its leaders were Socialists, like Louis Blanc, who controlled a considerable body of workingmen, some of whom belonged to the building trades and the domestic industries of the capital, while others had been brought to Paris some years before to work on the fortifications. They were moved first to the barricades; then, after being victorious there, to the national workshops organized by Louis Blanc, now a member of the provisional government, who had proclaimed on behalf of the workingmen the "right to work," as the most important organ of the workingmen, L'Atelier, had proclaimed the limitation of hours, the right to organize, and a minimum wage. These demands seem reasonable to us now, but they were thought dangerous then, not only by a majority of the provisional government, but also by the majority of the new legislature and of the French people.

A new study of labor in France in the earlier nineteenth century seems justified for two reasons. First, a change in the point of view is desirable. Labor in that period has been treated as a movement related to political factors and to socialistic and other doctrines. I feel that it should be studied now in the light of the changes wrought in the lives of the French people by the advent of large-scale industry with its factories, machinery, and concentration of capital. It is important to realize that much of the unemployment from which French laborers suffered in this period was due to those recurrent crises in industry and trade which we now study as parts of the business cycle. We have been taught wrongly to believe that while England suffered from these crises early in the nineteenth century France was virtually exempt until 1857. Secondly, the study of French labor needs revision in the light of new evidence and of a reappraisal of some of the familiar evidence.

France is often described as the country that planned its network of railroads with the greatest care, wisely arranging for private construction and operation under control of the Government. She deserves criticism, it has been said, only because it took ten years to make these excellent arrangements. Yet most of the writers who have painted this rather attractive picture have not looked beyond the well-known books of Audiganne and Kaufmann, studies based chiefly upon collections of French statutes and legislative debates as well as the best known contemporary newspapers and literary reviews. Little attention has been paid to the Corps des ponts et chaussées, whose activities were far more important than the speeches of its director in the Chambers. Little concern has been given to the vital problem of obtaining the very large amounts of capital that were needed, or to the influence of the serious depression that began in 1837.