The Organization of Labor & Association

Mathieu Briancourt

1847

PREFACE

Many good minds have long been persuaded that on the present generation must devolve the task of solving the formidable problem of the organization of labor, under penalty of being visited by a social revolution, the terrible consequences of which are incalculable. This belief gains ground every moment, and already this question of life and death for civilization is placed among the orders of the day by the most valuable organs of publication.

In view of a problem of such importance, it is the duty of all men of heart to come to the assistance, as much as they can, of those generous workmen who are employed upon all points of the globe in laying the foundations of the edifice which is to shelter the human race.

Desirous of taking part in this immense work, I, an unknown laborer, had prepared a rapid sketch of the organization of labor. It was intended to be read by only a few friends; but this sketch might, I am assured, contribute to destroy certain prejudices, and to restore hope to men of good desires, by proving to them the possibility of happiness for all; and I venture to give to the public a work which was not intended for it.

In the first part of this volume, I pass rapidly in review of our miseries, leaving to each of my readers the care of increasing that very incomplete list, by the sufferings and deceptions which are peculiar to himself.

In the second part, I display, in a few pages, the very simple mechanism of the organization of labor; it will be readily understood, I tale pleasure in hoping, by those least accustomed to questions of this nature.

In the third part, I demonstrate that this organization is conformable to the views of the Creator.

The attentive reader will perceive without difficulty, that if labor were organized in a township according to the method described in the second part, all the noble instincts of man, piety, love of the neighbor, devotedness, would necessarily be developed, and would take the place of incredulity and selfishness; he will perceive also that the physical necessities of each would be amply satisfied, at the same time that the delights of the soul, the heart, and the mind, would become accessible to everyone.

Like many of the children of this age, I have, during long years, conscientiously sought the truth without discovering it. Unable to accustom myself to live in indifference respecting the great and important problems which have occupied men of all epochs, and, on the other hand, not finding the solutions which had been given until our day sufficient, I doubted. Those who are in a similar state of mind will alone understand how much that doubt made me suffer.

I address myself to such persons; I beseech them to read the third part attentively; perhaps they will there find a termination to their doubts, for, if I do not deceive myself, they will be compelled to acknowledge that the law upon which the proposed organization is founded, bears the seal of a goodness and a justice without limit, and reveals the existence of an infinitely perfect creating power. Then, by reflecting a little, the reader will remain convinced that, in reality, the same law embraces the solution of the so much disputed problem of the immortality of the soul. On another side, the law which regulates the progressive march of humanity, a law indicated in the third part, has made me understand and love Christianity, against which I shared the prejudices of a great number of my contemporaries.

It is, therefore, also to well-informed Christians of elevated minds, that I address this work; they will thence derive, I am confident, new light which will strengthen their belief while enlarging it; they will there see, with happiness, that the organization which I sketch is but the application of the spirit of the Gospel to social relations.

Finally, and above all, I address myself to those honest and sympathizing hearts who suffer the sorrows of all, who groan over the vices and disorders of society, who ask themselves where we are going, and who perceive the yawning abyss, towards which the civilized world is marching with ever quickening pace.

I beseech all men of good will, whatever may be their religious faith, to whatever political party they may belong, to read these few pages without prejudice; they will thence derive, I hope, the conviction that is my own, which is, that the organization of labor is the remedy for all the sufferings of humanity.

Let those readers who find no serious objection to the theory, and who acknowledge how easy and conclusive a trial would be, do all in their power to influence public opinion, and to hasten the day when that trial shall be made.

THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR

AND

ASSOCIATION.

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FIRST PART.

ANARCHICAL LABOR.

“And seeing the multitudes, Jesus had compassion on them, because they were exhausted with sufferings, and lying here and there, like sheep that have no shepherd.”—St. Matthew, chap. ix. “But Jesus answered them: ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up. Let them alone, they are blind leaders of the blind.’”—St. Matthew, chap. xv.

One day, in the month of October, I found myself in a city but a short distance from the town of M—–, which a horrible conflagration had completely consumed. On the next day, the inhabitants or that unfortunate town were to hold a meeting, which the mayor had called for the purpose of distributing succor to the most needy, and of making known the result of the subscriptions opened in favor of the victims of the disaster.

One of my friends, a merchant, in whose house I was staying and who was to be present at the meeting, offered me a place in his carriage; I accepted his offer with pleasure, and on the following day we started quite early in the morning.

We had for travelling companions a magistrate, a government officer, and a silk manufacturer.

During our journey the conversation naturally turned upon conflagrations, which were very numerous that year, and had caused great distress in Germany, in England, in America, and in many of the departments of France.

Then the manufacturer, who had seen the overflowings of our rivers, gave an account of the immense destruction they had occasioned, and asserted that inundations presented a still more desolate and frightful spectacle than conflagrations. “Such sights are horrible,” said I, in my turn; “still, the civil war and the riots which I saw at Lyons, some years since, leave the soul more afflicted than it is by the sight of disorders occasioned by the elements. Those collisions between fellow-citizens are the more deplorable, because it would be possible, as it seems to me, for all the world to live in peace and almost happy, if each of us would consent to introduce a little less selfishness into his relations with other men.” “Eh! how can you expect to make a good understanding prevail among men,” replied the merchant, “when each class, each individual, has interests opposed to the interests of other classes and other individuals? Think a moment: it is the interest of the manufacturer to make his operatives work a great deal, and to give them as little wages as possible, while it is the interest or the operative to work but little, and to get overpaid for his time and his labor. The producer’s interests are at variance with those of the consumer, and reciprocally; and the interests of the trader are opposed to those of the producer, from whom he buys as cheap as possible, and to those of the consumer, from whom he exacts the most he can. “Each manufacturer, each merchant, sees, and he is quite right, in all his fellows dangerous competitors, whose interests are incompatible with his own.

“The physician hopes there will be a great deal of sickness; the lawyer that there will be a great many law-suits; the military man desires war; and many are not sorry that there are conflagrations, &c.

“Now, you understand that this general opposition of interests must inevitably give birth to incessant struggles of every kind; for, as we must necessarily acknowledge, gentlemen, personal interest is the moving power of the actions of the immense majority of mankind; thus, so long as interests are opposed; we must not hope to destroy clashings and hatreds; so long as each is free, as the career is open to all, we must not be astonished that each draws to himself with all his strength, and that an unbridled competition takes possession of all branches of industry.

“You must not believe, however, that I am an enemy to liberty; far from that, I am its warm advocate; but I could wish it were possible to unite liberty with order, for I hate anarchy still more than I love liberty. I have a horror of tyranny, from whatever source it comes, under whatever form it shows itself. I consider it very melancholy, for example, that the rich should be able to grind down the poor without pity; that a producer, opulent enough to make momentary sacrifices, should be able to overthrow his rivals, and exact at will from the consumers, as soon as he remains master of the field of battle. Eh! good God! is there not room enough, then, in the sun for everybody, and has the Creator made the earth too small for humanity!”

“You merchants,” said the officer, “are incessantly complaining that competition ruins you. Do you believe then, sir, that those employed by the government do not experience as many vexations as the commercial classes? Do you believe that they do not undergo a thousand mortifications, a thousand wrongs? that they do not suffer at seeing preferred to them men less capable than themselves, competitors who owe more to protection than to merit? Do you think that the cultivator is not also overwhelmed by cares and anxieties of every kind?

“If competition be injurious, it has also its good side: it reduces the prices of productions, and renders them accessible to a greater number of persons. It is to that we owe our travelling so cheaply from time to time. I have even been told that, upon a certain route, not only are travellers carried gratis, but that an excellent dinner is given by way of thanks, to those who consent to allow themselves to be transported in very good diligences. This is, doubtless, one of the fine effects of that competition which you decry so pitilessly, Mr. Merchant.”

“Certainly,” returned the latter, “the effect is not over disagreeable to him who dines and travels without putting his hand into his pocket; but, for the rival contractors, who are not rich enough to support the undertaking, the effect is not a most satisfactory one; neither is it very much so for those travellers who come after, when the conqueror, master of the highway, makes them pay with interest for the dinners to which he treated their predecessors.”

“What can you say,” added the manufacturer, “the fatal results of competition are to be met at every step: for my part, I have known twenty respectable houses that have been ruined because they did not wish to falsify their products, while their neighbors, less scrupulous, were offering their spurious or adulterated goods at lower prices. I, myself, who cannot make up my mind to sell cotton for silk, perceive that my customers forsake me from day to day. Really, gentlemen, in the way things are now going, men must become rogues in order not to die of hunger! I have said it a hundred times: this competition which is so much vaunted, produces more” misery than war and plague united. By reducing indefinitely the profits of the manufacturer, it compels him to lower the wages of the operative, at the same time that he is induced to manufacture more than is necessary; and thence come gluts in the market, which inevitably produce stagnation in business; and the manufacturer, unable to dispose of his large stock, cannot meet his engagements, and is obliged to stop payment.

“Speaking of failures, which competition produces by thousands, who can number the honest people and small capitalists who, every day, are affected by bankruptcies more or less fraudulent, and see themselves reduced to vegetate, in deep poverty, until the day of their death, which sorrow often occasions in a short time?”

“Mon Dieu! you are perfectly right, sir,” said the merchant in his turn: “business grows worse and worse, and if what is called progress goes on for twenty years more, I don’t know what we shall come to. The evil is already so great, that, if each of us should attempt to enumerate the commercial disasters of which he has been a witness or a victim, we should have enough to talk about for a week, and then we should not have told all.

“Who of us, for example, does not know several families formerly opulent, now fallen into a poverty which is the more distressing because the earlier part of their lives was passed in the luxury and enjoyments which riches procure; and who would dare to say that those women and children have so fallen by their own fault? Almost always the cause of their fall was beyond their reach; their misfortune generally proceeds from the illness or death of the head of the family, from his misconduct, his incapacity, from some enterprise badly conceived or poorly managed, from some unforeseen accident, such as failures, revolution, conflagration, shipwreck, &c., all things which the mother and children could in no way avoid or prevent.

“Who of us, gentlemen, does not know some of those small manufacturers, who are sober and industrious; of those comfortable shop-keepers, full of order and economy, who, overpowered by rivals less delicate or more rich than they, see their ruin advance a step every day? Horrible agony! which produces despair and suicide, and those terrible diseases of the liver and stomach, and those aneurisms and cancers so common in our day, but which were unknown to our fathers. Who of us has not seen workmen, by hundreds, rendered incapable of supporting their families and reduced to the humiliation of subsisting by charity, in consequence of the invention of a new machine, or of a simple improvement in one to which they were in some sort an accessory? Then what revulsions in commercial affairs; how many capricious variations in demand, in fashions, shake the most solid fortunes! A poor crop, a riot, a simple change of ministry, throws all into disorder, shakes credit, and occasions periodical stagnations which are injurious to the millionnaire and fatal to the workman who lives from hand to mouth!”

“Certainly,” said the manufacturer, “he must be very blind who would assert that commerce and industry, abandoned as they are, without guide and without compass, to the caprices of each, are not unfailing sources, from whence proceed wave upon wave, evils without end and without name. All our lives, all our comforts are incessantly threatened; no one is sure of the morrow; nowhere is stability to be found, and everyone trembles for his future and for that of his children.

“Why then is there not some minister appointed for the purpose of making known the necessities of consumers, in order that we may regulate our productions accordingly? But no: every one goes on at random, blindly: success belongs to the boldest, to the greatest cheat, to the most lucky. It is quite time to find some method of organizing production, since the people have become producers; there was no difficulty about organizing the elements of war, when the people were fighters.”

“It is easily seen, gentlemen,” said the magistrate in his turn, “that you are engaged in business; the evils which result from the method of producing, or exchanging and dividing products, have struck you more than all the others. Competition, I know, tortures the manufacturer and the merchant; it corrupts them, renders them fraudulent, adulterators, bankrupts. The labors of the workshop do not assure to the laborer his daily bread; they destroy his health, deform his body, deprave his morals, leave his mind without cultivation, and send him to die in the hospital, degraded in his moral and physical being. All these deleterious results of industry, all these thousand plagues, with which commerce overwhelms the human race, strike you more than our other sufferings, because you are industrialists; still those evils are not our only evils; perhaps they are not the most poignant. Do you think, gentlemen, that the business man alone has causes of grief? Probably not, for you suffer also in other respects. As for myself, I maintain that there is no man who is exempt from anxiety,—who is not wounded in some of his affections. Allow me to cast a glance upon the family relations only, and you will see that those sweet ties of father, of son, of husband, of brother, which should make our happiness, do cause our suffering in a thousand ways.

“Fathers suffer from the misconduct of their children, do they not? they suffer at their pains and their sorrows; they experience an infinity of cares and anxieties in order to educate them and secure a position for them; and they often receive only ingratitude as the reward of their toils and their sacrifices! I knew, for instance, a poor father who had diminished his fortune and imposed upon himself great privations in order that his son might receive a brilliant education; that is, to send him to school and college for eight or ten years; and that unhappy father had the misfortune to see his son ashamed of his birth and the condition of his parents,—he who was not fit for any condition; to see him despise his family, which did not possess the inappreciable advantage of having their heads stuffed with Latin and Greek. I knew a poor mother who died of grief at having her daughter seduced and dishonored by one who called himself a friend of the family. Everywhere we meet old men who have the sorrow to know that their death will not occasion a single tear, even if it be not desired by their greedy heirs. In all our villages there are honest old people who, after having given up their little fortunes to their children, on condition of being supported by them, perceive, but too late, from the barbarous haste with which each strives to get rid of them for the profit of his brothers, that they are only a heavy burden from which their children desire to be relieved. You will hardly believe such ingratitude, but I have often seen destitute mothers come into court, obliged to have recourse to the tribunals in order to obtain a small annuity for their support from their children in easy circumstances. Yes, gentlemen, the tender affections of the family will soon be nothing more than a fiction. Already we see brothers bringing suits against brothers, and becoming estranged for life, on account of the smallest pecuniary matter; we see them dispute the poorest inheritance even before their father’s body is cold.

“But if we penetrate still further into the interior of households, what hidden sufferings, what vexations devoured in secret, do we not see? Here is a married couple who do not understand each other, and to whom everything is an occasion of complaint; or who do not love each other, and to whom everything becomes an occasion of dispute; or who suffer from the tortures of jealousy, and whose mouths are constantly full of reproach. There are husband and wife disagreeing on the subject of money, of expenses, of dress, of housekeeping, of the education or settling of their children: what can I say? every household has its tribulations, and perhaps there are not two couples in a hundred who are really and constantly satisfied with their union. Is it possible it can be otherwise, moreover, when, in families in rich or comfortable circumstances, the young people marry without knowing each other? And how, besides, can they succeed in knowing each other, even if they had the opportunity of meeting frequently, when it is for the interest of both to conceal their defects and to pretend qualities which they do not possess? This inevitable dissimulation, let me say in passing, is in part the reason why marriages of inclination, very rare at any rate in the richer classes, are not less unhappy than the others, because but a very short time after their union, both parties cease to see each other with the eyes of lovers, and because the deception has been greater, the warmer and more blind the love.

“But as I have just said, marriages of inclination are rare. Marriage, nowadays, is a kind of commercial transaction, in which each party endeavors to obtain the best pecuniary condition; it is a scandalous and very strange bargain, in which a mother of small fortune throws into the arms of a rich old libertine, who has never believed in love, a beautiful and pure young girl whose heart is filled with the sweetest illusions; in which the father must increase the dowry in proportion to the ugliness, the age, or bad temper of the bride! And this is called a compensation which some consider quite natural! What have we come to, Good God!

“Among the poor, love makes more marriages than among the rich, but they are not more happy on that account, for brutality and misconduct are too often, alas! the dowry of the married couple; and besides, poverty alone is enough to introduce discord into the best assorted household.

“But, gentlemen, I should never come to an end if I wished to search out all the sufferings of families; if after having depicted the almost always insipid and often oppressed life of the woman, I should speak of that of childhood and youth, those ages of gaiety, of innocence, and of illusions, which are still the least unhappy of our life, but which ought to be so happy! If I were to show you the child of the rich man torn from his brothers, sent to school in order to learn words for which he cares but little, and of which he will never feel the need; and receiving, instead of maternal caresses, ferrulings, tasks, and black marks; then, having entered the world, experiencing an infinite trouble in obtaining a position, inasmuch as all the public offices are fun, while commerce and industry present but few chances of success; if I could make you see the child of the poor man, exhausted by privations, suffering from the bad treatment of a drunken and brutal father, or of a libertine mother; having incessantly before his eyes the example of depravity and of the most shameful vices; then thrown, still young, into a workshop where he becomes completely depraved, both physically and morally!”

“All this and still worse is seen at every step,” continued the manufacturer; “I know, nevertheless, that there are exceptions here, as everywhere; still I hold as true the proposition that you advanced just now, Sir, which is, that cares and troubles reach us, whatever place we may occupy in the social scale. Yes, each has his sorrows here below,–from the royal family exposed to assassination, overwhelmed with calumnies and trembling for its sons always kept at a distance and exposed to the dangers of combats and tempests, even to the proletary who knows not where he shall find to-morrow that work which alone will enable him to provide the necessaries of life for his children.

“And, in fact, if we wished to group together all human miseries, to enumerate the diseases which, under forms as horrible as they are numerous, torture and decimate families; those which, having become hereditary, mow down youth in its flower; those which, under the name of epidemics, the plague, the cholera, ravage cities and whole nations; if we counted all the accidents and all the crimes which the newspapers record each day: the thefts, the cheatings of every kind, the suicides, the assassinations, the infanticides, &c.; if we were to recall all the vices which display themselves with insolence or are hidden in the miserable dens of our great cities: drunkenness, libertinage, adultery, prostitution, &c.,—certainly we should never come to an end, and would be compelled to admit that each has his share of sorrows, and that life is not, in our day, by any means attractive.

“If each of us should recapitulate, moreover, what he has suffered in his friendships, if it be permitted, without prostituting that holy name, to give it to those intimacies of childhood, at which we laugh as soon as we have shaken off the dust of the school; if each of us should recall the deceptions he has experienced in his love, in his ambition; the hindrances opposed to his advancement; if each of us should think of the monotony of the present, of the uncertainty of the future; if he counted up his illusions destroyed, his affections crushed, his faith shaken or vanished, eh! doubtless life would not seem to us a present worthy of the Creator, and we should recognise that, in our sceptical and selfish age, in which people believe in nothing but the power of gold, men suffer more and more in proportion as their hearts are better constituted and more loving, their souls more elevated and more generous.”

“Hallo! gentlemen croakers,” cried the government officer, “things here below are not all rose-color certainly; but, I beg of you, do not exaggerate beyond measure the number and the intensity of human miseries; whatever you may say, all men are not perverse and corrupt; there are still some honest people, and we even see, here and there, some persons who are happy, or at least who affirm that they are so. All these little troubles of housekeeping, all the quarrels among friends are not very poignant sufferings. Sometimes even they are not without their charm: after the quarrel comes the reconciliation. Besides, a happiness without mixture would be very insipid: I go for variety and contrasts: that is my motto.

“Then we are so much accustomed to consider discomfort as the inevitable condition of the great majority, that most men have no consciousness of their sufferings until they become intolerable.

“Moreover, what can you do? we must be resigned, sorrow has been the lot of our fathers, and probably will be the lot of our children, unless we succeed in discovering a remedy for so many evils; which may well happen some day, as a profound politician latterly said to me; for everything goes on improving, and our legislators, by dint of making laws, may perhaps hit upon some one which will render us all happy.”

“That is exactly what grieves me,” returned the magistrate; “we deny the evil or we resign ourselves to it, and say with the Turks—it is written: or we jest instead of seeking remedies which man must have the power to find, since if evil be ignorance is the sage says, science can overcome and destroy evil.

“Now, gentlemen, when I look around me, and see everywhere only diseases, misery, frauds, vices, and crimes of every nature, I am led to ask myself what palliatives for so many ills are proposed by men placed at the head of society and called upon to lead it. Then I pass in review the labors of our legislators, the professions of faith of our candidates for representatives, and the politics of newspapers of every color, and I recognise, with stupefied astonishment, that those holding themselves to be most advanced, most democratic, most radical, limit their efforts to demanding changes of ministers, modifications in the form of government, laws upon parliamentary or electoral reform, as if all these changes in the political machinery had any connexion with the sorrows which overwhelm mankind; as if they had not been tried without success twenty times in the last fifty years; as if the same sufferings did not exist, with very trifling difference, under all the ministries of the present government, under the Restoration, under the Empire, under the Republic, under the ancient régime; as if absolute Russia, representative France, republican America, were not attacked with the same disease; and, despairing thought! as if that disease were not deeper seated and more severe the more industry is perfected and the more considerable the riches of nations become! Witness powerful, industrious, opulent England, exhausting herself in vain efforts to cure the horrible misery of her starving population, and giving hardly any solace by her charities, as ingenious as they are numberless, by her enormous poor-tax, her numerous work-houses, her hospitals and unceasing emigrations.

“This horrible situation of our neighbors, our elders in industry, threatened by an imminent social revolution, makes me foresee the sufferings and terrible commotions in store for our dear country and the whole of Europe, attacked more and more each day by the disease of pauperism; and I begin to despair of the future, and to think that God has abandoned humanity, and given up the world to chance.”

We all shared the sorrowful emotion experienced by the magistrate at the dark prospect he had opened before us; we kept a sad silence, when our carriage stopped; we had arrived at M—–, of which only the church and town house were standing; all the rest was but a heap of cinders and of ruins.

SECOND PART.

ORGANIZED LABOR

“Seek and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.—St. Matthew, vii. “Wherefore trouble not yourselves, saying: What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? … Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be given unto you in addition.”—St. Matthew, vii.

We alighted, and perceived here and there long pieces of wall blackened by fire, and half consumed machines, which alone reminded us that fine factories of cloths formerly flourished in this place of desolation.

We directed our steps towards the church, into which we saw several persons going, and we entered it at the moment when the curate ascended the pulpit.

The venerable pastor made a touching address to his parishioners on the subject of love to our neighbor: he recalled to them the numerous instances of courage and devotedness which had been witnessed on the occasion of their catastrophe; be mentioned that several citizens had abandoned their houses and furniture to the flames, in order to give assistance, at the peril of their lives, to a bedridden old man, whose house was on fire.

He then passed a eulogium on the neighboring villages, the firemen of which had rivalled each other in ardor and intrepidity, while all the inhabitants had vied in welcoming the victims of the disaster, and had shared with them their bed and board.

He taught them especially to admire the goodness of Providence, which has placed in the heart of man so much love for his neighbor, so ardent a sympathy for the sufferings of others, that subscriptions in favor of M—– were opened every day beyond the limits of France, although, in consequence of the prejudices with which nations are still imbued, each of them looks upon the others as enemies.

He ended his discourse by returning thanks to the Almighty that he had permitted so many reasons for consolation to alleviate the evils with which he had been pleased to visit the parish.

On leaving the church, we entered the Town Hall with all the rest. The Mayor gave an account of the sums produced by the subscriptions and of those which could be reasonably hoped for; he requested the inhabitants to come to an understanding, in order to make the best possible use of these precious resources; he invited each to give his opinion freely as to the course he thought it best for the community to pursue under its present disastrous circumstances. “As for myself,” added he, “while listening just now to our venerable pastor, who has shown us so clearly that men are led by nature to love and mutually assist each other, I asked myself how it happened that all of us, who are neighbors, relatives, or connexions, far from loving and helping each other on every occasion, are, on the contrary, jealous and envious each of the other. I asked myself why we endeavor to crush our competitors, often even by fraud and bad faith; and, I confess it, I have discovered no other cause for this incessant war than the opposition of our interests. In fact, is it not true, gentlemen, a merchant does not look with displeasure upon the success of his partners, so far as they are his partners, be it understood, and this for the sole reason that they cannot become rich without his also becoming so? Now, if it be necessarily thus, would it be impossible to associate all our interests, so that each would find his advantage in the prosperity of all? Let us think seriously of this; the question is surely worth the trouble.”

After some moments’ silence, a manufacturer of cloths spoke. “It seems to me,” said he, “that the problem stated by our mayor is not unsolvable; I will endeavor to solve it:

“Let us see, in the first place, what is done when several persons enter into partnership for any business; then we will examine if the same process would not be applicable to a partnership having for its object the production and manufacture of all things necessary for the inhabitants of a community like our own.

“When I became a partner with Messrs. A. and B. to manufacture cloth, I was already a manufacturer, as you know; I brought into the partnership stock my buildings, machinery, and looms, valued at 400,000 francs. Mr. A., who was a wool merchant, put in what he had on hand, to the value of 100,000 francs, and Mr. B. paid in 200,000 francs in money.

“Then Mr. A. undertook the purchasing of wool, oil, and dye stuffs; also the sale of our manufactures; and he travelled for the purpose of effecting this. He understands buying and selling very well, and takes pleasure in these operations, for you know that people generally do with pleasure those things in which they are skilful.

“Mr. B. took charge of the books and correspondence, and I employed myself in the manufacture of our goods.

“By means of these arrangements, we all three employed our time usefully; and as we do not want for activity and experience in our various departments, as moreover our united capitals are quite considerable, our accounts show good profits, which we divide in proportion to the capital put in, and also in proportion to the labor of each during the year.

“I ask of you, gentlemen, would it be very difficult to make analogous arrangements among us all, in order to produce grains, vegetables, fodder, cattle, clothes, furniture—in a word, those things of which we have need, or which we shall sell, in order to procure in exchange whatever we do not manufacture ourselves?”

All the hearers, rich and poor, declared that such a partnership appeared to them very easily realized, and that as each would there find an advantageous investment for his funds, and assured labor, it was necessary to study this project. Consequently, the manufacturer was requested to give a further development to his thought. He, continued, therefore, in these terms:

“In order to produce the partnership capital, let us proceed in the manner I have cited; let the land owner bring to the stock his fields, his meadows, and his cattle; let the manufacturer give in his cloth, his wool, and his machines, which have been saved from the flames; let each one give up his garden, his money, and his portion of the contributions which are to be distributed. We will estimate, in a neighborly manner, what each one brings, and we will give, in exchange, as many shares, based upon the whole of our property, as there are thousands of francs in the portion of each. These shares of one thousand francs will be subdivided into parts of one hundred and even of ten francs, in order that all of us may be stockholders, or soon become so.

“Our partnership capital being thus formed, and it will be very considerable, will it not? we will begin by building a single factory and distributing the cultivation of our soil. It being well understood that the manufactory and soil, the whole, must be considered as the property of a single individual, as is the case in every partnership.

“We will begin, then, by levelling our enclosing walls and our hedges, by removing the bounds of our fields; we will fill up our ditches.

“That done, our agriculturists will decide what cultivation is most proper to be given to each soil; then they will plant for us a vast vineyard, a large kitchen garden, a superb and spacious flower garden, which will take the place of all our present small -vineyards and gardens. Our domain will be magnificent as that of a king, and a thousand times better cultivated than these kitchen gardens which, more or less badly kept, now surround our houses.

“I say that our domain will be perfectly cultivated. In fact, those of us who excel in the cares to be given to prairies or artificial meadows will take charge of that part; those who prefer the care of trees or of flowers will find work in our vineyard, our vegetable or flower garden; those who like to be with animals will employ themselves in our barns and stables; in a word, each inhabitant will apply himself to those labors he is best acquainted with, and consequently everything will be done in the best possible manner.”

“Gentlemen,” said a farmer, “the ideas which have been laid before us are admirable in their simplicity and fruitfulness. I do not know, really, why they do not present themselves to everybody. Their application will produce great abundance; for the union of the various parcels of soil in our town will evidently unite the advantages inherent to large and small farms, without having their inconveniences, which are great, as must be confessed.

“Thus large farms cannot be cultivated without the aid of hired laborers, who have no interest in employing their time well, and securing products which shall be abundant and of superior quality.

“Small farms, on their side, present inconveniences of more than one kind, as we see each day; our fields are too small for us to alternate our crops properly, and to raise animals enough to manure them sufficiently. We are very often obliged to sow wheat, which we need to feed our families and to pay our rent, on soil which would yield much more largely if laid down to grass or planted with trees. Then our farms, cut up into small fields, scattered here and there, present obstacles to a well understood cultivation; and that which we give them, imperfect as it is, obliges us to lose a great deal of time in going and coming. In fine, the smallness of our farms, of our capitals, of our manure heaps and our crops, often occasions a deterioration of the soil for want of the means to enrich it; it places us in a condition in which we cannot possibly benefit by the discoveries of science, make experiments or improvements, or take advantage of the tools and machines which so greatly economize both time and labor.

“But give up to us all the territory of the township freed from the hedges, the ditches, and enclosures which disfigure it and make unfruitful an important portion of the soil which will be restored to cultivation; give us good horses, ploughs, and other improved tools; procure for us the necessary hands, which we sometimes feel the want of; yield to us the fountain which has occasioned so many quarrels and law suits, and assure to us the means of properly irrigating our fields, our meadows, and our gardens, and we guarantee to you a crop double or triple that which we now make each year.”

“Very well!” resumed the manufacturer, “you will have all this, and moreover good advice, if necessary; for we will consult, at home and abroad, those men who are most experienced in the practice and theory of agriculture; we shall also be able to procure plants and seeds of the best quality; we shall be rich, and we will make for our establishment temporary sacrifices which the earth, that good nursing mother, will soon reimburse to us with usury.

“I say that we shall be rich; I mean by this that we shall have capital enough not to neglect any improvement; for if we have not enough with our united capitals, we can easily borrow upon the security of our land, and we should have no difficulty in repaying within a few years, if desirable, since you promise us a double and even a triple crop.

“Hands will not be wanting, and good hands, I assure you; since our workmen will be partners, proprietors, and not hired laborers; and, in case of need, you can be sure that our hay will be cut, cured, and housed in two or three days; for that hay belonging to all, we shall all have an interest in its being saved without getting wet; and we shall be anxious to do this at once, whenever the weather is not perfectly sure.

“It will be the same with all the crops, the gatherings and harvestings of every kind.

“You will have good horses, perfectly taken care of; as I have said, by those among us who like to be with animals; we shall so arrange as to retain only those which are necessary for our purposes, and distribute our labors so as not to keep, as now, a number of horses doing nothing a part of the year.

“You will have all the tools and machines which facilitate and diminish labor; in a word, like the great and rich farmers, we shall know how to procure everything that can improve our soil, increase our products, and diminish our fatigue.”

“I see very clearly,” returned the farmer, “that our workmen, interested in the good and prompt execution of our labors, and undertaking those which they like and in which they are experienced, will work with ardor, and will become very skilful; I foresee that our crops will become still more abundant than I stated just now; but if all the inhabitants put their hands to the work at times of hurry, and if all the farmers accomplish a great deal, as do those who work upon their own lots, the labors of the field will soon be over. Shall we remain with our arms folded when we have nothing more to do in the field, and would it not be possible to increase our income by employing ourselves usefully in the house in our leisure moments, and during the bad weather?”

“When you cannot work in the fields, or there is nothing to call you there,” replied the manufacturer, “each can busy himself according to his tastes; some will go to the blacksmith’s, the wheelwright’s, or the joiner’s shop; others into our cloth factory; these will keep the books, those the schools, &c. In this manner, each of us, able to find employment in the house and on the farm, will do a great deal more work than he can now, since he need not lose a single moment, and the profits realized by the whole of the inhabitants will be much greater than they are now.

“At the end of the year, we will take from the gross amount of our profits the sums necessary to pay our taxes and the expenses common to all the inhabitants, to pay also the interest to our stockholders, and on money borrowed, if there be any; then the surplus will be divided among the workmen, in proportion to what each has accomplished, absolutely as in the partnership which I gave as an example.

“Our partnership will always have this immense advantage over the other, that no one need fear any great diminution in his share of the profits from one year to another, inasmuch as our branches of industry being numerous and greatly diversified, even when there should be a loss on one or two branches, our general revenue would hardly feel it. It is quite otherwise when the partnership has but a single branch, for this, when it experiences a stagnation or losses, too often occasions the ruin of those concerned.”

All the assembly having approved this project of partnership, the architect was requested to give his opinion respecting the rebuilding of the town; the greatest economy was especially recommended to him.

The architect expressed himself thus: “As the whole territory of the township is to be cultivated as if it belonged to a single person, I think that we shall require but one stable for our horses, one for our cows, one for our sheep, &c.; thus fewer persons will be needed to tend and oversee our animals. We will build but one barn for our hay, one granary for our corn; it will then be much more easy to take the precautions necessary for the preservation of our crops.

“We will build a single shop for shoemaking, one for joinery, &c.; our workmen thus assembled will find their labor less wearisome; besides, these workshops, store-houses, and stables, will be vast, commodious, well ventilated, well lighted, properly warmed, and they will nevertheless cost us much less to build, and keep in order, than those which have been destroyed by the conflagration, and which were so inconvenient, so dark, so dirty, and unhealthy.

“The private houses only will remain to be built. Each family will arrange this to their liking. You will remark, however, that these buildings will not be very extensive, since it will no longer be necessary to add to them either stables, barns, or workshops.”

“But,” observed an old soldier, “when we wish to provide lodgings for a regiment, we do not build a barrack for each soldier; when we establish a boarding school, we take good care not to furnish a house for each scholar; that would be too costly, expensive, and inconvenient. It seems to me that, in our town, as the families must have frequent communication with each other, and as each of them will require but a few rooms, it will be more reasonable, and much more economical, to construct only one large building, in which the workshops shall be placed, and where each can hire a lodging as modest, or as magnificent, as he may desire.”

“And why,” added a travelling clerk, “not establish a single kitchen, in which food shall be prepared on a large scale, so that we can all be served according to our taste and our means, as is the case in the great restaurants at Paris? Why not, also, build a single wash-house, such as is seen in certain public establishments, where skilful chemists bleach linen so perfectly, and at such small expense? “

“An excellent idea!” said a housekeeper; “those of us who understand cooking will prepare the food for all; the economy will be enormous, and the food will be more varied and better prepared than it now is upon the best tables in the town. And then so many less cooking utensils will have to be bought!”

“Add,” said the mother of a family, “that the women, freed from the details of their housekeeping, will take part in the labors of the garden, of sewing, of manufacturing, &c.; they will take care of the children, keep the workshops and apartments in good order, and will, therefore, have a right to share in the profits of the partnership.”

“All these observations are perfectly correct,” returned the architect, “and I consider it very reasonable that we establish only a single kitchen, but abundantly provided with ovens, boilers, pumps, &c.; a single wash-house, one brewery, one bakery, provided with all the machines and tools necessary to economise time and labor.

“As to the lodgings, we will place them together in one wing of the building; we will so arrange them that there shall be both large and small, sumptuous and modest, “in order that there may be enough for all tastes, and all fortunes; but all shall be convenient, well provided with those things which render habitations comfortable; such as bathing rooms, abundance of hot and cold water. All will be well warmed in winter by means of steam, which can be done without great expense by making use of the waste heat of the kitchen, of the steam engine, &c.

“The whole building will be perfectly lighted during the day by numerous lofty windows, which will allow the air and sun to enter for the health of the population; and at night we can light our courts, our assembly rooms, our workshops, and our apartments, with gas.

“We will arrange a fine corridor, which will make the circuit of the buildings, in-order that we can go easily to our work, to our pleasures, and visit our friends, without fear of the wind, the snow, or the sun.

“This style of architecture will economise roofs, beams, staircases, entrance doors, carriage doors, party walls, &c.; it will also economise overcoats, umbrellas, overshoes, and other articles of the same character; it will enable us to avoid many colds and coughs.”

“Do not forget a handsome ball-room,” said the young girls; “it will cost much less to warm and light than the two or three hundred chambers in which we now pass our evenings alone.”

“Do not forget, either, dining halls, in which we can frequently dine in company with our friends,” added the old men; “chatted food is half digested, says the proverb; and besides, it will not cost more to take our meals in company with those we love, than to have them served in our own apartments.”

“Gentlemen,” said a machinist, “allow me to bring to your notice the great economy of labor and time, which will necessarily result from our executing the labors of our farm, and of our workshops, upon an extensive scale. We shall have the hardest executed by machines, as is the case in our great manufactories, and in a great number of workshops, where articles are prepared destined for the table; such as in the English breweries, the bakeries, where kneading is done by machinery, &c.

“It will be neither very difficult, nor very expensive, for example, to raise by steam power the water necessary for our workshops and our apartments; that which will be used in the irrigation of our fields; that, in fine, which is reserved for fires, which, I will say in passing, will become almost impossible.

“Machines will soon be found, I assure you, to assist our threshers, to load and unload our hay and our manures, to sweep our roads and our court yards; in a ‘Word, to take place of the arms or men in all unmeet and fatiguing labors.

“And, since we are to operate in all matters upon a large scale, I must point out to you, gentlemen, some of the precious advantages of this method of production.

“Manufactures upon a large scale, in the first place, allow great products with few hands. England is a very evident proof of this truth, and I recently read in one of our newspapers, that fifteen establishments in Lancashire manufactured cotton goods enough to provide three shirts a year for every inhabitant of France. These prodigious results are evidently owing to the employment of machinery; now, their use becomes practicable only in manufactures upon a large scale; it is clear, in fact, that the mother of a family cannot purchase a stocking machine, in order to knit stockings for her children, and that a man who should make cloth without the assistance of any other person, could not buy the power and the machines used by great manufacturers in the production of this article. If he should procure them, those machines would soon deteriorate, and absorb far more than the profits on his products.

“In the second place, manufacturing on a large scale gives products of a superior quality and at a low rate. These results are owing to two causes; to the use of machines, and the division of labor. An example will easily make me understood.

“If as I supposed just now, a man had to make a piece of cloth alone, that is, sort, clean, and scour the wool; wash, dye, card, and spin it; set up his piece, and weave it; then full it, clear it, nap it, shear it, press it; in a word, give it all the dressings; certainly, if he had the greatest experience in manufacturing, he would still make very poor work, and in very small quantity; and in order to derive any profit from his labor, our man would have to sell his inferior cloth at perhaps more than one hundred francs per yard. And remark, that he would already have made use of machines in all his operations; for if he had had only his fingers, his whole life would not have been enough to make a yard of the most common stuff.

“But let a rich man establish a cloth factory: he brings to his assistance five or six superintendents employed in directing and overseeing exclusively, one the fulling, another the dyeing, this one the spinning, that one the weaving or the dressing; and all these various operations are executed by special workmen furnished with the most improved machines, which spin, full, shear with the assistance of very few hands, and accomplish each more work, and work superior in quality, than twenty men could have done with the machines in use fifty years ago. Thus our manufacturer produces, with few hands, a great number of pieces, and he can sell his handsome cloth at twenty francs the yard.

“In fine, manufactures on a large scale, finding their superiority and profits in the use of machinery, tend incessantly to improve them; in other words, they tend to render the labor less fatiguing to the workman, to subdivide all the operations, and consequently to render them more easy to be learned. It is thus that, nowadays, a child understands a trade in a short time; the shearing of cloth for example, which formerly required several months’ apprenticeship in a grown person; and that the greater part of the operations necessary for the production of our fabrics are of such easy execution that an apprentice receives wages from the beginning.

“You see, gentlemen, that manufactures on a large scale owe their superiority to the use of machinery and to the division of labor. If, therefore, we wish “to produce much and well, we who will also execute on a large scale the labors we undertake, let us do like all extensive manufactories: let us employ machines as much as we can, and subdivide our operations so that each laborer may perform a simple detail the smallest possible: he will easily learn to accomplish it, and soon he will do it well and quickly.

“But as a simple detail, always the same, is an exceedingly wearisome occupation, each of us will apply himself, according to his activity, his tastes, and his fitness, to ten, twenty, or thirty different details; at one time in the fields, the vineyard, the vegetable or the flower garden; at another in the workshop, the counting house, the factory, &c. This variety of occupation will change our labor into pleasure, since we shall leave one job to pass to another quite different, before weariness or fatigue attacks us; it will also increase our profits, for we shall not lose a moment.”

“This manner of living,” said the physician, “these employments, alternating between the fields and the house; these labors of the body and the mind, united with an abundant and healthy nourishment, with cleanliness, with the absence of great vexations, and especially of anxiety for the future lot of one’s self and children, will all contribute to the increase of gaiety and health: we shall soon see the greater number of diseases disappear; the successive generations will become more and more healthy, handsome, and strong; the physicians of the future will have only to take care of the public hygiene.”

“It has been shown to us,” said the justice of the peace, “that our crops will be at least doubled; we can calculate that our cloth factory, in which so many will work as partners, will give a large product of good quality, from which we shall derive considerable profits; we will wait the most favorable moment for our sales; we shall be rich enough not to hurry in realizing; it is therefore evident that the income of our town will be greatly increased.

“On the other side, we have seen that our table, although better and more abundantly served than it now is, will nevertheless cost us much less, as the dinner of a soldier who eats at the ordinary of his mess is preferable to that of a man who lives alone and spends twice as much. We shall also be lodged and clothed much more cheaply.

“We may therefore boldly conclude that we shall live six or eight times better, physically speaking, when associated together than we do now. As to our moral enjoyments, they will necessarily be such as to make it impossible to establish a comparison between those of the past and those of the future.

“Believe me, gentlemen, I am far from exaggerating; association is the source of all economies; it alone possesses the means of rendering accessible to persons of small fortune enjoyments which, without it, would be beyond the reach of kings.

“Is it not in fact to a species of association that we owe our primary schools and the colleges attended by our children for the payment of a small consideration? Is it not from an association between the owners of animals in our village that we are able, for a small contribution each, to pay a shepherd to take charge of and pasture our flocks? Is it not to an association of the lovers of reading of a great city that are due those reading rooms which place at our disposition the greater part of the newspapers and recent works, for a subscription of a few francs each year?

“Again, it is association which enables us to travel at a small expense more rapidly and more conveniently than the most powerful monarchs could in former times; it is this which reduces to a few sous the postage on letters from the most distant countries; it is because a great number of persons are associated for their pleasures, that for two or three francs we enjoy the best dramatic representations, or purchase the right of hearing a band of musicians whom a sovereign would not be rich enough to keep in his pay.

“It is, in fine, to the association of all the inhabitants of a country that are due the museums, the libraries, the fleets, the armies, the roads, the canals—in a word, all the gigantic enterprises of their governments.

“I was, therefore, quite right in saying that association is the source of all economies.

“Thus nothing is more certain: we shall economize, as you have been told, in all things; in the purchase of housekeeping utensils, in heating and lighting, in the building and preservation of the edifices, which we shall know how to construct with solidity, without having any disputes about contract.”

“I wish to point out to you an economy of another kind, which is not to be despised: we shall have no more lawsuits.

“In fact, there will no longer be any method of getting up a law-suit about service, encroachment upon property, a right of way, a spring, a party wall, and a thousand other things which now engender a great deal of hatred, and cause the loss of much time and money.

“I must confess, nevertheless, that I fear there may be some difficulty in the distribution of work, in which each would like to command, and in the division of profits.”

“It seems to me,” said a retired general, “that it is not impossible to reassure our honorable justice of the peace. It is enough, in my opinion, that we organize our laborers, in order to avoid the disputes he fears. I was formerly employed by the emperor in the organization of the regiments composed of foreigners who served France against their will; and yet I succeeded. I do not think it will be more difficult to organize workmen who engage with pleasure. Therefore, if you think well of it, I will undertake to organize our labors, and this is the method I will adopt:

“Suppose that we take up our factory of woollen cloth. I will make a call upon all well-inclined persons, men, women, and children, of whom I will form a fine regiment, which I will divide into as many battalions as we manufacture kinds of cloth.

“The first battalion will manufacture, I suppose, cloths; the second, cassimeres; the third, mousselines.

“Each battalion will be composed of companies; there will be a company of spinners, one of weavers, one of shearers, &c. Several companies will be out of file, that is, will belong to two battalions, or even to the whole regiment. Such as the scourers, dyers, &c. It is thus we see our artillerymen, our companies of engineers, of the baggage train, not forming part of the regiments with which they work on the day of battle, but still belonging to the same division, or the same army.

“Each company will, in its turn, be divided into squads, performing one same work, but by different processes. Thus in the company of scourers, for example, some squads will operate with carbonate of soda, some with soap, &c. Each squad of the company of dyers will apply itself exclusively to one color; in the company of shearers one squad will employ the transversal, others the longitudinal, or shears of different systems, and thus in all the companies.

“This organization will excite rivalry among the squads, and will tend to perfect all the operations; each squad, each company will become passionately fond of its labor and peculiar processes, the esprit du corps will soon display itself and will produce wonders.

“Every workman will have charge of a detail of the work executed by his squad. In a squad of nappers, I will suppose, some will fix the teasles without attending to other details; others will secure the frames to the machines; these will take charge of the cloth during the operation of napping; those will remove the frames or clear the teasles, and so in all the parts. The smaller is the portion to be executed by each person, the more speedily will the work advance, as our machinist has very truly told us; besides, this is so clear that you have only to look at what is going on in every factory to be satisfied that such is the case.

“It is well understood that each squad must have its corporal, each company its captain, each battalion its commandant, and every regiment its colonel, to direct the labors and superintend the operations. All these officers will be appointed for a fixed time, by the laborers engaged in the work: the corporal by his squad, the captain by the corporals of his company, and so with the others.

“I promise you that the chiefs will be well selected, for all the workmen will have their interest and their honor involved in their rivalries, and consequently all will wish to have for commanders those most skilful in leading the work, in exciting the ardor of the laborers—in a word, in sustaining the honor of their flag.

“And not only will all wish to make good selections, but all will be able to choose the most capable, since every day each will see everybody at work, and will know exactly the worth of the men of his squad, and that of the chiefs who are immediately over them.”

“This organization,” remarked a farmer, “appears easy to establish in a woollen factory as large as ours will be; but how can it be applied to field labor?”

“I would proceed exactly in the same manner to organize the regiment of agriculturists,” replied the general; “I would compose it of several battalions, one of which should cultivate grains, another the meadows, a third the vineyards, a fourth the gardens, &c.

“The battalion of grain-growers would be formed of companies attached, some to the culture of wheat, some to that of rye, to that of barley, &c.

“The company cultivating wheat should be subdivided into squads, each cultivating a particular species, or making use of a different system of cultivation.

“The other battalions and companies of agriculturists should be subdivided in the same manner; and as we have seen in the regiment of manufacturers, there would be companies out of file; such would be the company of ploughmen, whose labor would be required by all the battalions which might need ploughing done.

“I would organize, in the same manner, in battalions or only in companies, in proportion to the importance of the work, or, to speak more exactly, in proportion to the number of workmen necessary to execute it, those persons who take charge of the house-keeping, of the joinery, &c.; and in all the squads, I repeat, I would take care to divide the work to be executed into as many portions as possible.

“The women and children will enrol themselves in all the companies, or in almost all; they will there form distinct squads which will apply themselves to such details as are conformable to their tastes and strength.”

“Such an organization,” returned an old officer of dragoons, “will be an inexhaustible source of gaiety, or emulation, of enthusiasm and earnestness in labor; the battalion which manufactures cloths will be in continual emulation with that which makes cassimeres; they will endeavor to surpass each other, and, to succeed, they will spare neither pains nor sacrifices; and their efforts will result to the advantage of our general income and the glory of our town.

“A similar rivalry will be established between the companies of the same battalion, between the squads of the same company; the squads of men will emulate those of the women and those of the children, and reciprocally, and all will be led to work a great deal and well. It is thus that on the field of battle, and during the siege or the defence of a place, we have seen the different portions of the army make superhuman efforts to surpass each other. The enthusiasm will be permanent among our peaceful battalions, since the strife will be a daily one, the combatants will have for judges or witnesses of their exploits, their friends, their lovers, their mothers, their sisters, and before them an advance in rank and profits increasing with their efforts. Really, it would be difficult to foresee where the impetuosity of our soldiers would stop.

“Still, as we must neglect nothing to stimulate that ardor, since the general prosperity will increase with it, it will be well, I think, to recompense those persons who distinguish themselves by premiums, honors, and decorations. You know, general, to what prodigies of valor the hope of a cross has incited our brave soldiers.

“It will be well, also, when practicable, to execute our labors in the midst of songs and instrumental music. Have we not seen our troops surmount incredible fatigues owing to the excitement of their drums and fifes? It will be really a pleasure to see the reviews and parades in which our columns will defile, in brilliant uniforms, preceded by fine and good music. And if our stout ploughmen, with vigorous horses, execute their rude labor to the sound of flourishes; the joyous songs of our young girls, united with the harmonies of the piano, will give an infinite charm to our saloons of seamstresses and mantuamakers.

“Musicians, and other artists, will certainly not be wanting. The schoolmaster will tell you how many, among our children, have a natural aptness for the fine arts, and especially for music. Before ten years have passed all our young people will be musicians, of unequal power, of course. We shall also have, in a few years, skilful painters to adorn our church and our saloons, and poets to sing our happiness. .

“But please to tell us, general, who will take care of the establishment, of the buildings, who will keep the accounts?”

“Those labors,” replied the general, “will be executed by a battalion which I will name, if you please, the staff. This battalion will be composed of companies, one of which will buy at wholesale and at first hands those things which we require, and which we do not produce ourselves; another will sell to the battalions, to the companies, to the squads or to individuals, the articles required by them, and this at cost, that is, at a price much lower than that which we now pay to the retailers, who themselves buy from second or third hands, and too often sell us only damaged or adulterated articles.

“Different companies of the staff will sell abroad those products of our industry which we do not consume, take care of the children, bring up and educate the youth, watch over the repairs of the buildings, &c. One of them will keep the accounts, the correspondence, and the great book, upon which every person, man, woman, or child, every squad, every company, every battalion, will have an account opened, where will appear their earnings and their expenses. In a word, the battalion of the staff will be the father of the family to our township.

“It now remains for me to show you,” added the general, “that the division of profits which the justice of the peace fears must be a stumbling-block, fill become the easiest thing in the world with the organization which I propose to you.

“In fact, you understand that in true justice we ought not to recompense equally an hour spent in the cultivation of flowers, and an hour spent in cleaning our pig-pen. We will begin by classifying our labors according to their degree of usefulness and of difficulty; and if we allow a share in the profits, represented by the figure 20, I will suppose, to the most irksome and most necessary work, we shall attach only the figure 20 to an occupation which is useful but not repugnant, and the figure 10 to a labor of pure pleasure.

“To determine the figure belonging to each battalion, and consequently its share of profits in the yearly division, all the inhabitants of the township will assemble every year at a fixed period.

“The figure of a battalion being determined, all the workmen of that battalion will fix the figure of each of their companies, and the soldiers of each company will determine the figure of each squad. After some trials, we shall attain a perfectly equitable arrangement.

“It will be easy for each squad to share the dividend which falls to it, in a manner exactly proportioned to the labor and the talent of each of its members; for the chiefs will keep an account of the work done, or of the time employed by each person; and, on the other hand, talent will be always represented by the grade which will be its exact expression.

“You understand, gentlemen, that the figure of each battalion will be fixed every year for the following year, in order that each may know if he will or will not continue to belong to it, it being also understood that the Society will diminish or increase this figure according as the work to be executed shall be more or less easy, more or less useful; according, in fine, as fewer or more persons present themselves to undertake it. Thus, when too few persons offer to enrol themselves for the purpose of executing a disagreeable but necessary work, workmen will be attracted by in. creasing the dividend of the company, or of the squads which undertake that work.

“Moreover, glory will very naturally be awarded to those generous companies which, for the interest of all, apply themselves to repugnant labors. In a society which will not be acquainted with poverty, honors will be a much more powerful lever than money for those noble and devoted hearts which, thank God, are not so rare as might be thought; our disastrous conflagration has shown this very clearly.”

“I begin to believe, general,” returned the justice of the peace, “that lawsuits will disappear entirely from our village; but nevertheless you cannot deny that the division of profits will always give occasion to discussions more or less earnest, for you know that men deceive themselves respecting the value of their own work, which they look upon as more important than that of their neighbors. Thus, the battalion which cultivates flowers, for example, will allege, at the general meeting, that its products embellish our greenhouses, our garden, and our fields, that they make the ornament of our church, our workshops, our festivals; that they adorn our young girls, and are the charm of our habitation, to which they give, throughout the year, a holiday appearance. This battalion will consequently claim a large share in the profits. For myself, I should be quite disposed to consider their claim a just one; but everybody might not coincide with me, and thence would arise disputes, or at least very animated discussions.”

“Your observation is a very just one,” replied the general, “and matters would probably pass as you say, if each associate had but one trade; but you will remember that it is not so. All, on the contrary, will belong to different battalions; consequently the florists will be employed also in the factory, in housekeeping, millinery, keeping accounts, &c. If therefore, they were to cabal in order that their battalion should receive an unreasonable recompense, they would be working against their own interests, concerned in all the other battalions; which would be absurd.

“On the other hand, there will not be a company, not a squad perhaps, in which our florists will not have a friend, a child, a relative; then personal interest, and that of those connected with them, will therefore compel them to be always just.”

“All that you have told us, general,” remarked the officer of dragoons, “is strikingly true, and as easily arranged as the organization of an army or of any administration. One difficulty still troubles me, however; allow me to state it: I do not see where you will find the people necessary to fill the ranks of so many battalions; you will require twenty or twenty-five thousand workmen, while we are not more than two thousand inhabitants, one half of whom probably know nothing of the labors in which your soldiers will be engaged.”

“In the first place,” replied the general, “the workmen will be much more numerous than they are now, and this for several reasons easily understood.

“1st. No one will wish to remain idle when each can choose the occupations which please him, and when, moreover, there will be details for all strengths, all ages, and all tastes.

“2d. The shopkeepers will increase the number of our workmen, inasmuch as they will no longer have any business at their counters, since two companies of the staff will have the sole charge of purchases and sales.

“3d. The women will take part in all the labors, freed as they will be from the cares of housekeeping, and the worrying of their children, since special companies will undertake the labors of the kitchen, and others which fill up the lives of our housekeepers, and the children will be tended, brought up, and taught, as I have told you, by those companies to which the education of youth is intrusted.

“4th. The children themselves, instead of destroying, as they do now, impelled by their unconquerable need of movement, will enter with delight into the squads of infantine laborers, which will be open to them from their tenderest years, in order to initiate them to work, and in which they will render services proportioned to their strength.

“You see, therefore, commandant, eighteen hundred at least of our two thousand inhabitants will enrol themselves under our standard. The sick, those who are absolutely decrepit, and very young children, will alone remain out of our active ranks.

“But let us suppose an effective force of sixteen hundred workmen, and suppose that each of these enrols himself; on an average, in twenty squads,–that will give thirty-two thousand soldiers. Confess, dear commandant, that with such materials we can form some fine battalions, and accomplish a great deal.

“Besides, it is well understood that we shall form our regiments only in proportion to our materials, in the same manner as we shall undertake only such cultivation and such branches of industry as are perfectly appropriate to our soil and our locality. “We can readily procure whatever we have need of that we do not produce.

“We will remember, in forming our battalions, that we have agreed it is indispensable we should operate in all things on a large scale, and that, consequently, it would be impossible to undertake a great number of different branches.

“We will remember, also, that, to excite and keep up the emulation among our workmen, the squads of the same company ought to be numerous, so that each of them will have work almost similar to that of the neighboring squads.

“You tell me,” added the general, replying to one of his neighbors, “you tell me that you do not well understand how each person can become perfectly acquainted with twenty or thirty trades, while at present it is so seldom that a man understands well the single trade which he constantly exercises.

“You have forgotten, my dear sir, that we do not here speak of trades such as we now see carried on, but simply of the details, sometimes very small, of a trade. Now, it is evident that a workman, executing only a trifling portion of any trade, must quickly render himself skilful in it; it is also evident that as the apprenticeship of a detail requires but little time, each workman will be able to learn a great number.

“See, moreover, what actually takes place, and you will find that there is not a cultivator, not a mechanic, who does not accomplish a crowd of these details of which we speak. A gardener, for example, digs, hoes, sows, waters, harvests; he plants trees, prunes, grafts, and cultivates them; he takes care of espaliers, quenouilles, and standards, those trees which bear fruits with seeds, as well as those which give stone-fruit, vines and peach trees, apple and pear trees of every kind; he cultivates vegetables of every species; he takes care of green-houses and hot-beds, of Bowers and shrubs: in a word, he exercises some hundreds of trades, which, in our society, will become the occupation of more than fifty squads. “Thus, in supposing that each person, on an average, has twenty parts of trades, I have confined myself far within the reality.”

“Few men, as you have said, are perfectly acquainted with their trade nowadays, and this will cease to astonish you if you remark that it is almost always chance, and not a vocation, which decides the choice of the trade that each of us embraces; especially if you pay attention to the fact that each trade is made up of a number of details which, for the most part, are by no means in accordance with the tastes and dispositions of the persons compelled to execute them.”

“This is also the reason why, let us observe in passing, we meet with so few women who are really good housekeepers; the cares of a household and of a family, the order of a house, require so many multiplied and very different inclinations, which God rarely grants to a single person, but which, in our great societary household, will all be found in an eminent degree, divided among all our women.

“You ask me, moreover, how it will be possible to undertake twenty different kinds of work each day. I have never said, sir, that each must be occupied every day in all the labors he is acquainted with. That would be impossible; the day would not be sufficient: impossible, because many squads, many companies, and even whole battalions, like those of the cultivators, will work only a part of the year; and some companies of those battalions, such as those which dig, plough, plant trees, or graft them, will not be able to exercise their talents more than a few days each year.

“Nevertheless, it will be easy to undertake seven or eight, or even ten, different labors in a single day. In fact, every one may remark that men accomplish more during the first two hours of any employment than during the three following hours. It will, therefore, be for our interest to proceed by short sessions; and when a squad has not finished its task in an hour or two, if the chief perceive that the ardor of the workmen is relaxed, he will cause the ranks to be broken, and each soldier will depart to begin a different work with one of the numerous squads of which he is a member. It is unnecessary to say that, if the work requires it, the squad will prolong its session, or be replaced by another.

“Every evening, by order, the employment of the next day’s time will be fixed: thus, each can so arrange as to occupy his days with the labors most agreeable to him, and not lose a moment.”

All the audience applauded, and the curate spoke pretty nearly as follows: “My dear children, what we have heard is admirable in its simplicity. The organization which is proposed to us can be easily tried. A trial cannot compromise the public order in any manner; for this organization, limiting itself to the formation of workmen into regiments, and to their association for production and consumption, requires no change in the civil, political, moral, and religious laws which govern us. The processes of the organization of labor, which have been laid before us, are in perfect agreement with the character God has given to us; for man is passionately fond of the society of man: he dies or becomes crazy in isolation. He also loves with passion variety in his labors and in his pleasures; his health deteriorates, his organs become weakened, his intelligence brutified, in an occupation always the same.

“The labor chosen by each of us—I say us, because I certainly intend, in spite of my advanced age, to enrol myself in more than one squad of gardening, of teaching, of accounts-the labor, I say, always of our own choice, always varied, and executed in the company of persons whom we love, will become a continual pleasure, an incessant source of gaiety and of perfect health.

“Association, as has been demonstrated to us, is, in itself; the source of every abundance in production, of every economy in consumption, of every justice in the division of its products.

“Thus, my good friends, if we form an integral association, poverty will evidently give place to abundance; if we organize our labors, idleness will give place to activity; and all the vices will disappear with their mothers, poverty and idleness.

“Jealousies and hatred having no longer any occasion for their production, we shall give ourselves up with happiness to the affectionate feelings which God has so abundantly implanted in our hearts. Our parish will be a model for the neighboring parishes, which, envious of its happiness, will not delay imitating it; for what is more contagious than happiness? and our own dear country will become the abode of wealth, of order, of true liberty, of all the talents, of all the virtues.

“Then you will understand me when I speak to you of the providence of God and of his goodness; for we shall be filled with his benefits every moment of our lives.”

And raising his voice: “We thank thee,” said he, “O Almighty God, who hast permitted men to discover the means of rendering practicable and easy the law of thy Son, which commands us to love each other as brothers; we thank thee that it has been granted to us to see the dawn of the thousand-fold happy day when thy will shall be done on earth as it is done in the heavens; when thy kingdom shall come; that kingdom of truth and justice, the coming of which we ask of Thee every day in our prayers; that kingdom which Jesus recommended his disciples to seek before all things, assuring them that the rest (food and clothing) should be given to them in addition.”

And all the inhabitants of our unfortunate village, full of hope, congratulated themselves, embracing each other and clasping hands.

All soon left the hall, and groups more or less numerous were formed here and there, to converse respecting the advantages promised by the proposed association, and respecting the measures to be taken in order to organize it in the township.

THIRD PART.

MAN IS CREATED FOR ASSOCIATION.

“He shall enter into the kingdom of God who doeth the will of my Father who is in the heavens.—St. Matthew, chap. vii.

My travelling companions and myself approached the most animated group. The doctor, who made part of it, was earnestly addressing a grave looking man, who, we were told, was the professor of physic and mathematics in the royal college of the shire town.

“It is impossible,” said the doctor, “you do not think, Sir, that we ought to take literally that exclamation drawn by the foresight of a great good from the excellent heart of our venerable pastor: ‘Then the will or God shall be done upon the earth.’ This is one of those hyperbolical phrases which cannot be accepted as the expression of a scientific truth.”

Professor. “Excuse me, doctor; I do say very positively, the form of society willed by God, in view of which the Creator has given to man all his wants and all his natural instincts, is and can be no other than that resulting from the integral association of the inhabitants of a township, organized in regiments of workers, after the manner which we have heard explained. This proposition seems to you bold, extravagant. Well, I will endeavor to demonstrate it to you decidedly.

“If I am compelled to enter into rather extended details, you will excuse me, gentlemen, in view of the importance of the question, to the demonstration of which I attach great weight, inasmuch as the truly religious persons whom I may have the happiness to convince, must necessarily, if they are consistent, do all in their power to contribute to the coming or God’s kingdom, and to the accomplishment of his will here below.

“In order to introduce more method into my demonstration, I will read to you, if you please, some pages in which I have endeavored to discover the terrestrial destiny of humanity, and the manner in which the Creator intends that man shall proceed to the accomplishment of that destiny. I will afterwards complete my proofs if you wish to hear them.”

All the group having testified a desire to hear, we took our seats upon benches placed in the shade of an aged linden near at hand, and the professor read his manuscript, which was as follows.

———-

THE PROFESSOR’S MANUSCRIPT.

Attractions are proportional to Destinies. God, the Creator of all things, is infinitely good and infinitely just.

“In order to discover what is the terrestrial destiny of humanity, I must first establish two propositions, which, as they are intended to serve as a base to my principal proposition, must be demonstrated in an unshakeable manner. I request you, therefore, gentlemen,” added the professor, addressing us, “to allow nothing that is in any way uncertain to pass in my reasonings: they ought to be as unattackable as mathematical demonstrations.

“These two propositions are as follows:

“1st. God gives to all his creatures the powers and the instruments, material and immaterial, which are best adapted to the accomplishment of their destinies.

“2d. God is always economical in means; by this I mean that the Creator makes things and makes them operate with the least possible expenditure of instruments and powers.

“These propositions, which are axioms to every one who admits a good, just, and powerful Creator, are easily demonstrated by examining animate and inanimate beings with a little attention. We will do this succinctly.

“The beings with which the earth is covered may be classed in four different great categories, to wit, the minerals, comprehending all inanimate bodies; the vegetables; the animals; the human race.

“All known bodies are formed of elements which are few in number; in our day chemistry reckons only eleven, exclusive of the metals. For ourselves, we are persuaded that these elements are themselves formed of only a single one, of which light is perhaps one of the most simple manifestations. The discoveries recently made in astronomy, in chemistry, and in physics, authorize us to believe that unity of substance will be proclaimed ere long. This opinion, moreover, is in accordance with the Genesis, which informs us that the first creature issuing from the hands of God was light.

“However this may be, the bodies called elementary by the chemists appear to obey a single power, attraction; but each of those elements is provided with a dose of attraction, if we may thus express ourselves, so admirably proportioned to its numerous destinies, that these eleven elements are enough, with a few metals, as we have said, to give birth to everything that is in the bosom and on the surface of the earth.

“Oxygen, for example, which is one of the eleven elementary bodies, has received an attraction which leads it, compels it to combine itself with the metals, in order to form oxides; with eight of the ten other elements, to form acids; and with a ninth, hydrogen, to compose water. This liquid, in its turn, is animated with an attraction so wonderfully proportioned to the wants of plants and animals, that it dissolves in air with the greatest facility, and abandons it in the same manner; so that a slight cooling of the atmosphere is enough to cause the water which is contained in it to resolve itself into dew, rain, &c., and to distribute on all sides life and freshness.

“And as a similar reasoning can be employed with regard to all other crude’ bodies, simple or compound, solid, liquid, or gaseous, we are right in concluding:

“1st. That God has given to inanimate bodies attractions proportional to their destinies.

“2d. That the Creator has been economical of means in crude bodies, for he has formed them of a small number of elements, probably of a single one, and he makes them accomplish their destinies by means or a single power: attraction.

“If we study the vegetable kingdom, we shall recognise, with M. Dumas, that the principal task of plants is to form organic materials for the nourishment of animals.

“Now let us see how the vegetables accomplish this mission according to that wise professor.

‘“ The air contains or engenders oxidized products, principally water, the oxide of hydrogen, carbonic acid, and azotic acid. The plants decompose these oxides and take possession of their bases, that is, of hydrogen, of carbon, and of azote, and with these three elements they form all the organic and organizable matters which they yield to animals. They throw back the oxygen into the atmosphere.

“‘The animals, in their turn, by the aid of the oxygen which they draw from the atmosphere by their breathing, burn the vegetable matters on which they feed, and reproduce water, carbonic acid, and azotic acid, which return to the atmosphere, to reproduce anew the same phenomena in the immensity of the ages.

“Let us add,’ says the learned man whom we quote, ‘let us add to this picture, so striking from its simplicity and its greatness, the undisputed part filled by solar light, which alone has power to put in motion this immense apparatus, to develop the vegetable kingdom, which absorbs, by its green portion, the chemical force of the luminous rays, in order to form organic products which, eaten, then burned by animals, reproduce the differences by which their movements are assisted, and the heat, the electricity which constitute our strength and measure its extent.

‘“Thus is formed the mysterious circle of organic life upon the surface of the globe, thus the atmosphere constitutes the chain which binds the animal kingdom to the vegetable.’

“The vegetables commissioned to accumulate power for the benefit of animals, as M. Dumas teaches, are so organized as to be rarely required to employ that power in order to accomplish their functions: thus the Creator, economical in all things, has not given to plants powerful organs like the heart in animals. In order to cause the circulation of the sap, that blood of vegetables which runs through the whole plant, from the roots to the most elevated extremes, in order to produce and renew the organs, nature employs a particular method, endosmosis, which is not capillary attraction, for it allows the sap to issue from the tubes in which it is enclosed, and to spread itself in the interior, and even outside of the plant.

“Nevertheless, in the important acts of their life, in those, among others, having for object the reproduction of their species, plants bum the sugar they have accumulated, and reproduce heat and strength: they then live an almost animal life; we see them perform movements which seem to-depend upon will: they close their calyxes at the approach of night, or of a storm, in order to protect their organs of generation; they turn their corollas towards the sun in order to warm those same organs.

“The Creator has divided among the various species of vegetables the great task which he has confided to them. He has intrusted to each of them several special missions: some produce flowers, fruits in infinite variety, destined to cause the delight of men and animals; others form gum, rosin, starch; these, honey, sugar; those, oils, dye-stuffs, and a thousand other products, all of which, nevertheless, in spite of their dissimilar qualities, are composed of the same elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and, in a few, azote in small quantities.

“The apparatus commissioned to organize the different products of plants is so delicate, so marvellously constructed, that starch, gum, dextrine, sugar, woody fibre, &c., are composed of absolutely the same elements: twelve atoms (or molecules) of carbon and eleven atoms of water. The simple difference in the respective position of the elements, says M. Dumas, gives birth to substances which have very slight resemblance to each other.

“We may, therefore, conclude also, with regard to vegetables:

“1st. That the Creator has given to plants in general, and to each species in particular, the organs and the power necessary for the accomplishment of their destinies, since those destinies are accomplished without interruption.

“2d. That the Creator has been economical in means, since he has employed to form the vegetables and their numberless products, only three or four elements, and a single power, chemical force.

“Let us pass now to the animal kingdom.

“The functions common to all animals are, as we have just said, to burn the vegetable products on which they feed, in order to appropriate to themselves the power accumulated in them, and to recompound the water and the carbonic and azotic acids which they throw back into the atmosphere where the plants resume them in order to use them anew.

“Animals, to fulfil these important tasks, are provided with mouths, with trunks, with suckers, fitted to draw in their nourishment; with teeth, beaks, and mandibles, intended to crush it; with stomachs and intestines capable of decomposing it; with arteries and other analogous organs which transport through the whole body, with the blood, the products of digestion, in order to cause the organs to grow and to renew them; with veins which carry to the lungs the blood charged with carbonic acid; finally, with lungs which absorb the oxygen of the air, and expel the carbonic acid contained in the venous blood.

“Obliged to change place in order to satisfy their wants, animals, in general, have received the organs necessary for locomotion, and they find in their food, as we have said, the power which is indispensable to put those organs in motion.

“But these two presents of the Creator, the power and the organ, are not sufficient for the animal; for, in order to change place, it is moreover requisite that he should have the will to do so, and this will is necessarily the result of a want, or an attraction, which I shall call a stimulant.

“Thus, while attraction is sufficient for crude matter in order to fulfil its destinies, vegetables require attraction and power, and animals require attraction, power, and stimulants.

“We will now cast a glance, as rapidly as possible, upon some of the stimulants commissioned to impel animals towards the accomplishment of the two principal tasks of their life, which are, the preservation of the individual and the perpetuation of the species. We shall discover here, as always, the economy of means or the Creator.

“To grow and to preserve itself, the animal has two stimulants, hunger, and the desire to live, or more properly, the fear of death.

“To fly from pain, and to avoid death, the different animal species have received different material and immaterial instruments: some, strong and endowed with courage, oppose resistance to their enemies, and are provided with powerful arms, defences, teeth, horns, claws, galvanic piles, poisonous stings, &c., others, weak and timid, but shrewd and crafty, escape from their enemies by flight, and are consequently furnished with rapid wings, agile feet, threads to uphold them in the air; some are dyed with the color of the plant on which they feed, or of the trunks of trees against which they cling; and thanks to the color of their covering and their absolute immobility during danger, they escape the animal which pursues in order to devour them. Several species are protected by carapaces, shells, scales, feathers, hair, prickles; others are furnished with reservoirs containing mephitic odors, corrosive liquors, black dyes. These latter diffuse their coloring matter in the water in which they live, render it opaque, and by this means escape from the pursuit of their enemy.

“Let us here remark a circumstance very worthy of our whole admiration: all animals know their enemies, without having ever seen them, and they make use of the instruments which God has given them to serve their stimulants, without study, without previous practice, and yet with perfect skill. This is especially the case with the insects whose life, extremely brief, is incompatible with experience.

“To satisfy the second preservative stimulant of the individual, hunger, the animals have received organs and instruments which they also use perfectly, and instincts which do not deceive them.

“Those among them which feed upon living prey have a piercing sight to discover it, and powerful organs to reach it, seize it, tear it in pieces, and devour it. They know how to hunt in company, and have an exquisite smell, like the dog; or they lie patiently in wait for their prey, like the cat; know how to spread nets, like the spider; or to set traps, like the ant-lion.

“The animals which live on vegetables or their products are furnished with suckers, with trunks, with teeth of a peculiar form, and some, like the ox, with four stomachs and voluminous intestines to digest their food.

“But the carnivorous animals were not destined to devour all animals indifferently; the herbivorous were not all to feed upon the same plants. This is why nature has given to each species a taste, an instinct, by the assistance of which each animal knows surely the food which is destined for him; and this instinct is so imperious, that the greater part of the insects would perish of inanition rather than touch any other plant than that which nourishes their respective species.

“When it is in conformity with her views, nature designs as food for one species what would be poison to all the others; she gives to certain animals a strong desire for aliments the sight alone of which causes in us an extreme disgust: thus dead bodies and the excrements of large animals would, while decomposing, disengage dangerous miasmas; what does nature do? she inspires numerous species with a violent taste for these things, and grants them an exquisite smell, in order that they may discover their presence from a great distance; and legions of wolves, of hogs, of vultures, of crows, of beetles, of flies and larvas, attracted by the odor, for which we feel an irresistible repugnance, throw themselves with fury upon those ruins, turn to use the organic matters which they contain, and thus purge the earth of them.

“At the approach of winter, when the plants, by losing their verdure in our climates, take away from the herbivorous animals all means of nourishment, nature, always foreseeing, removed from a great number of those animals, quadrupeds, and insects, the preserving stimulant itself, hunger. Then they become completely torpid, and, in this miraculous lethargy, await the return of verdure.

“Nature, rich in expedients, does not stupify all species at the approach of frost; she engenders in some, quadrupeds fishes, birds, a new instinct which we will call a need of migration, which impels them to a milder climate, where they continue their mission, eating the insects, plants, or fruits, the substance of which they are commissioned to assimilate.”

The professor having interrupted his reading, in order to take breath, the doctor profited by the moment of silence to cause us to notice how i