"organisation of the sale of labour on a wholesale basis." He makes violent attacks on the priests, and the Chagot family is denounced because it forces the miners of Monceau to go to Mass.[1] Everybody then counted on the working men's organisations to destroy the power of the clerical party.
If the Waldeck-Rousseau had had the slightest foresight, he would have perceived the advantage that the Conservatives have tried to draw from the law on syndicates, with a view to attempting the restoration of social peace in the country districts under their own leadership. For several years the peril which the Republic ran in the formation of an agrarian party has been denounced;[2] the result has not answered to the hopes of the promoters of agricultural syndicates, but it might have been serious. Waldeck-Rousseau never suspected it for an instant; he does not seem, in his circular, to have suspected even the material services which the new associations would render to agriculture.[3] If he had had any idea of what might come to pass, he would have taken precautions in the drawing up of the law; it is certain that neither the minister who drew up the law, nor the "rapporteur"[4] understood the importance of the word "agricultural" which was introduced by means of an amendment proposed by D'Oudet, the senator for Doubs.[5]
Workmen's associations directed by democrats, using cunning, threats, and sometimes even a certain amount
- ↑ Y. Guyot, Morale, pp. 293, 183–184, 122, 148 and 320.
- ↑ De Rocquigny, Les Syndicats agricoles et leur œuvre, pp. 42, 391–394.
- ↑ This is all the more remarkable since the syndicates are represented in the circular as capable of aiding French industry in its struggle against foreign competition.
- ↑ [See note p. 80.—Trans.]
- ↑ It was thought to be merely a question of permitting agricultural labourers to form themselves into syndicates; Tolain declared, in the name of the Committee, that he had never thought of excluding them from the benefits of the new law (De Rocquigny, op. cit. p. 10). As a rule, the agricultural syndicates have served as commercial agencies for farm bailiffs, landowners, etc.
