Chapter 3 No.3

The Federation of Bourses du Travail. (1892-1902)

The Bourses du Travail met an important want in the syndical life of France. The local syndicats were generally poor and could accomplish but little in their isolation. The Bourse du Travail furnished them with a center where they could easily come to a common understanding and plan common action.

The first Bourse du Travail, as indicated above, was opened by the Municipal Council of Paris in 1887. In 1892 there were already fourteen Bourses in existence. Their number increased as follows:

Year Bourses du Travail

1894 34

1896 45

1898 55

1899 65

1900 75

1902 96

Outside of Paris, the initiative of creating a Bourse du Travail was generally taken by the workingmen themselves. The local syndicats would elect a committee to work out statutes and a table of probable expenses and income. The project of the committee would then be submitted to the general assembly of the syndicats. The assembly would also elect an administrative council, a secretary, treasurer and other officers. The statutes, the list of adhering syndicats, and the names of the administrative officers would then be presented to the municipal authorities, and the Bourse du Travail, which in fact was a local federation of unions, would be formally constituted.

In many places, local federations existed before 1887. These simply had to assume the new title to transform themselves into Bourses du Travail. The municipalities would then intervene and grant a subvention. Up to 1902 inclusive, the municipalities of France spent 3,166,159 francs in installing Bourses du Travail, besides giving the annual subventions. In 1902, the subvention received by all the Bourses du Travail of France from the municipalities amounted to 197,345 francs, and 48,550 francs besides were contributed to their budget by the Departments.[84] The readiness of the municipal councils to subsidize the Bourses du Travail was due mostly, if not always, to political considerations.

Though soliciting subventions from the municipalities, the syndicats insisted on being absolutely independent in the administration of the Bourses. The first Congress of the Bourses du Travail in 1892 declared that:

Whereas the Bourses du Travail must be absolutely independent in order to render the services which are expected from them;

Whereas this institution constitutes the only reform which the workingmen have wrested from the ruling class;

The Congress of Bourses du Travail of 1892 declares that the workingmen must reject absolutely the meddling of the administrative and governmental authorities in the functioning of the Bourses,-an interference which was manifested in the declaration of public utility;

Invites the workingmen to make the most energetic efforts in order to guarantee the entire independence of the Bourses du Travail, and to refuse the municipalities if they or the government desire to interfere with their functioning.[85]

The municipalities, on the contrary, wanted to have some control over the funds they furnished. The result was more or less friction. In 1894, the Congress of the Bourses du Travail decided to demand that the Bourses be declared institutions of public utility; this, it was thought, would put them under the protection of the law and make impossible any hostile act on the part of the administration. But the next year the fourth Congress of the Bourses du Travail reversed the decision of the preceding Congress and declared for complete independence.

As the Bourses du Travail became more aggressive, the difficulties with regard to the municipalities increased. At the fifth congress of the Bourses du Travail (1896) in Tours, a report was presented showing the Bourses how they could exist without the subvention of the municipalities. The question of financial independence was brought up at later Congresses, but received no solution. The Bourses could not live on their own resources, while they continued the activities which brought them now and then into conflict with the municipal authorities.

The program which the Bourses du Travail gradually outlined for themselves has been classified under four heads: (1) Benevolent Services, or as the French term it Mutualité; (2) Instruction; (3) Propaganda; and (4) Resistance.[86]

The services of Mutualité included finding employment for workingmen out of work (Placement), assistance to workmen who go from city to city in search of employment (Viaticum), aid to other unemployed persons, sick benefit, etc. The Bourses paid particular attention to the service of placement. Pelloutier, the Secretary of the Federation of Bourses, wrote:

The Placement is in fact the first and greatest advantage which the federative grouping can offer to the workingmen, and it constitutes a powerful instrument of recruiting. In consequence of the instability of employment, the use of private employment bureaus for whose services payment has to be made, soon becomes so onerous that many workingmen exasperated by the necessity of deducting from their future wages (which are more and more reduced) considerable tithes for the services of employment bureaus, prefer often-though losing thereby-to spend their time in search of a place which will secure a livelihood. Besides, it is known-and the proceedings of Parliament have furnished decisive proof-that the habitual practice of the employment bureaus is to procure the most precarious employments so as to multiply the number of visits which the workingmen will have to pay them. It is therefore easy to understand the readiness with which the unfortunates go to the Bourse du Travail, which offers desired employment gratuitously. In this manner men who would hold aloof from the syndicats out of ignorance or indifference, enter them under the pressure of need and find there instruction, the utility and importance of which escaped them before.[87]

The services of instruction comprised the founding of libraries, the organization of technical courses, the arrangement of lectures on general subjects (economic, literary, historical, etc.), workingmen's journals, bureaus of information, etc.

The propaganda of the Bourses had for its general aim the intellectual development of the workingman and the extension of the syndical movement. The Bourses were to support the syndicats in existence, organize new ones, promote the adherence of single syndicats to their national federations, carry on a propaganda among the agricultural laborers and perform other functions of a similar character.

The services of resistance consisted in lending material and moral aid to the workingmen in their economic struggles. The Bourses regarded themselves mainly as societies of resistance whose principal function was to support the workingmen in struggle. The other functions were considered subordinate to this main service.

Every Bourse carried out this program only in proportion to its means. The Bourses differed a great deal in number of adherents, in financial resources, in command of organizers, etc. Some consisted of a few syndicats with a few dozen members only; others comprised tens of syndicats with thousands of organized workingmen and with a budget running into the thousands.

A few figures may help to form some idea of the extent of the services rendered by the Bourses du Travail during the period considered in this chapter. The number of positions filled by the Bourses were as follows:

Year Applications for employment Offers of employment Placed at residence Placed away from residence

1895 38,141 17,190 15,031 5,335

1898 83,648 45,461 47,237 38,159

1902 99,330 60,737 44,631 30,544[88]

The service of viaticum was organized differently by different Bourses. Some paid one franc a day, others one and one-half and two francs. In many Bourses the traveling workingmen received part only of the viaticum in money, the rest in kind (tickets to restaurants, lodging, etc.). The reports of the Bourses presented to their Congress at Paris in 1900, contain some information on the subject. The Bourse of Alger spent from 600 to 700 francs a year on the service of viaticum. The Bourse of Bordeaux distributed during certain months about 130 francs, during others, only 60; other Bourses spent much less. The following table presents the amounts spent in successive years by the Bourse of Rennes:

Assistance

Year Passing Workmen Francs Centimes

1894 25 37 50

1895 22 33

1896 47 60 50

1897 41 81

1898 (till Sept.) 32 64

In organizing technical courses, the Bourses du Travail pursued the aim of fighting "the dominant tendency in modern industry to make of the child a laborer, an unconscious accessory of the machine, instead of making him an intelligent collaborator."[89] Again in this respect the services of the Bourses varied. In the Bourse of Etienne, 597 courses of two hours each were attended by 426 pupils from October 1, 1899, to June 30, 1911. The Bourse of Marseilles had in 1900 courses in carpentry, metallurgy, typography and others. The Bourse of Toulouse organized 20 courses and had its own typographical shop.

Nearly all Bourses organized their own libraries, some of which consisted of several hundred volumes, while the library of the Bourse du Travail of Paris contained over 2,000 volumes. Besides, every large Bourse had its periodical, weekly or monthly.[90]

The Fédération des Bourses du Travail was formed in 1892 to systematize and to unify the activities of the Bourses. Though it owed its origin to political motives, the Federation soon devoted its main energies to the economic functions of the Bourses which it tried to extend and to strengthen. This turn in its policy the Federation owed chiefly to Fernand Pelloutier, who became secretary of the Federation in 1894 and who remained in this post till his death in 1901.

Fernand Pelloutier (1867-1901) came from a bourgeois family and was educated in a Catholic school.[91] He entered political life at an early age in a provincial town (St. Nazaire), as an advanced republican, but soon passed into the socialist ranks. Though a member of the Parti Ouvrier (Guesdists), he defended the general strike in 1892 before a socialist Congress in Tours. This caused his break with the Parti Ouvrier. In 1893 he came to Paris and here came under the influence of the Anarchist-Communists, whose ideas he fully accepted and professed to his last day.

Pelloutier was appointed secretary of the Federation of Bourses in order to assure the political neutrality of the organization. As indicated in the previous chapter, the Federation owed its birth largely to the political interests of the Allemanists. The Federation, however, soon found itself composed of various elements-Blanquists, Guesdists, etc.-but the economic interests which stimulated the growth of the Bourses were strong enough to create a desire on the part of the workingmen to avoid political dissensions and quarrels. An anarchist at the head of the Federation seemed to guarantee the necessary neutrality.

Fernand Pelloutier realized the expectations placed in him. He was disgusted with politics and his "dream was to oppose a strong, powerful economic action to political action."[92] The Federation of Bourses became his absorbing interest in life. To it he devoted most of his time and energy. He proved himself a man of steady purpose, of methodical procedure, and of high organizing abilities. He has been recognized as the most able organizer of the working class that modern France has produced. His services to the development of the syndicalist movement have been recognized by men of various opinions and political convictions. M. Seilhac wrote of him in 1897, "a young man, intelligent, educated, sprung from the bourgeoisie, has just entered the Federation as Secretary; M. F. Pelloutier has led the Federation with a talent and a surety of judgment which his most implacable enemies must acknowledge. Having passed through the 'Guesdist' school, M. Pelloutier violently broke away from this intolerant and despotic party and was attracted by pure anarchism. The Federation owes its rapid success in great measure to him."[93]

In 1892 the Federation was formed by ten Bourses out of the fourteen then in existence. Its growth was as follows:

Year Bourses Syndicats

1895 34 606

1896 46 862

1897 40 627

1898 51 947

1899 54 981

1900 57 1,061

1902 83 1,112

The Federation was represented by a Federal Committee in Paris. Each Bourse had the right to a delegate in the Committee, but a single delegate could represent several Bourses. As the Federal Committee was in Paris, the delegates were not members of the Bourses they represented. They were chosen by the Bourses from a list sent to them by the Secretary of the Federation and made up of men either personally known by him or recommended to him. This gave rise to dissatisfaction, and it was decided that the secretary should complete the list of candidates with remarks on their political attachments, so that the Bourses might choose representatives expressing exactly their opinions.

In this way the Federal Committee came to be composed of various political elements. In 1899 there were 48 Bourses in the Federation; of these three were represented in the Federal Committee by Blanquists, eleven by Allemanists, five by Guesdists. The last named soon left the Federation; the rest did not adhere to any party. "Within the group of their representatives particularly," wrote Pelloutier, "must one look for those convinced libertarians[94] whom the Bourses have maintained as delegates regardless of the reproaches of certain socialist schools, and who, without fuss, have done so much for some years to enhance the individual energy and the development of the syndicats."[95] The Committee had no executive officers, not even a chairman. The business was done by the secretary, an assistant secretary and a treasurer. The first received 1,200 francs a year. Each session began with the reading of the minutes of the preceding session, and of the correspondence; then the discussion of the questions raised by the correspondence, inscribed on the order of the day, or raised by the delegates, occurred. A vote took place only in cases, "extremely rare", when an irreconciliable divergence of views sprang up. The meetings took place twice a month.

Pelloutier wrote:

The suppression of the chairmanship and of useless voting dates only from the entrance of the libertarians into the Committee, but experience soon convinced all members that between serious and disinterested men there is no necessity of a monitor because everyone considers it an honor to respect the freedom of discussion and even, (without wavering from his principles) to conduct the debate in a conversational tone.

The Federal Committee proceeded in a methodical way. Between 1894-1896 it devoted itself mainly to propaganda and to organization. It invited the local syndicats and unions of syndicats to constitute themselves into Bourses du Travail. To guide them Pelloutier wrote a little pamphlet on The method of organizing and maintaining Bourses du Travail. After 1895 the Federal Committee thought the multiplication of Bourses too rapid. The Committee feared that the Bourses were constituting themselves without sufficient syndical strength and that they were putting themselves at the mercy of a dissolution or of an unsuccessful strike.

The Committee, therefore, thought it wise if not to moderate the organizing enthusiasm of the militant workingmen, at least to call their attention to the utility of extending to arrondissements, sometimes even to an entire department, a propaganda which was till then limited to a local circle. Two or three Bourses per Department, wrote Pelloutier, would group the workingmen more rapidly and at the cost of less efforts than seven or eight insufficiently equipped and necessarily weak.[96]

In 1897, at the Congress of Toulouse, Pelloutier read two reports in which he invited the Bourses du Travail to extend their activities to the agricultural population and to the sailors. These reports reveal a thorough study of the conditions in which these two classes of the population spend their lives, and contain indications how to attract them to syndical activity. Pelloutier recommended the Bourses to create commissions which should be specially devoted to agricultural problems and which should train propagandists for the country. He also recommended the institution of homes for sailors in the ports.

Some Bourses acted on the suggestion of Pelloutier and since then dates the propaganda carried on by some Bourses among the wood-cutters, the wine-growers, the agricultural laborers, the fishermen, sailors and similar groups of the working population.

From 1898 to 1900 the Federal Committee was trying to systematize the services of the placement and of the viaticum. The suggestion came from some Bourses, which particularly felt this necessity. Some Bourses had already been placing workingmen at a distance through correspondence. They wanted to generalize this by having the Federal Committee publish statistics of the fluctuations of employment in the various Bourses. On the other hand, the Bourses had difficulties with the service of viaticum. The diversity of conditions in this respect gave rise to dissatisfaction, while the Bourses were unable to control abuses. The secretaries could not know the number of visits paid them by workingmen, nor the amounts received by each.

At the Congress of Rennes (1898), the Federal Committee presented a plan of a "federal viaticum", and in 1900, the Office national de statistique et de placement was organized. The "federal viaticum" was optional for members of the federation, and though presenting certain advantages for the Bourses, was accepted by very few of them. Organized in 1899, it functioned unsatisfactorily.

The Office national began activity in June, 1900. It was organized with the financial aid of the government. In 1900, after the Universal Exhibition, Paris was overcrowded with unemployed workingmen, and the government thought it could make use of the Federation of Bourses to disperse them over the country. Before that, in November, 1899, the Federal Committee had addressed the government for a subsidy of 10,000 francs to organize the Office national. In June, 1900, the Government granted 5,000 francs. The Office began to publish a weekly statistical bulletin containing the information on the fluctuation of employment sent to the Federal Committee by the Bourses. The Office, however, did not give the expected results. In organizing these services, the Federation of Bourses always kept in mind the interests of the syndicats. It directed workingmen to employers who satisfied the general conditions imposed by the syndicats. The viaticum also served to diminish competition among workingmen in ordinary times, or during strikes.

In all its activity the Federal Committee generally followed the same policy. It called the attention of one Bourse to the experiments and to the achievements of others; it made its own suggestions and recommendations and it carried out the decisions of the Congresses. It did not regard itself as a central organ with power to command. Constituted on a federalist basis, the Bourses expected from the Federal Committee merely the preliminary study of problems of a common interest, reserving for themselves the right to reject both the problems and the study; they considered even their Congresses merely as foyers where the instruments of discussion and of work were forged.[97]

The activity of the Federal Committee was handicapped by insufficiency of means. The financial state of the Federation between 1892 and 1902 may be gathered from the following table:

Receipts Expenses

Francs Centimes Francs Centimes

1892-1893 247 209 45

1893-1894 573 95 378 95

1894-1895 1,342 55 960 07

1895-1896 2,380 05 1,979

1896-1897 2,310 75 1,779 45

1897-1900 6,158 75 5,521 45

1900-1901 4,297 85 3,029 71

1901-1902 5,541- 85 4,320 80

The Bourses paid their dues irregularly and Pelloutier complained that with such means the Committee could not render all the services it was capable of and that it was necessarily reduced to the r?le of a correspondence bureau, "slow and imperfect in its working."

Whatever others may have thought of the results obtained by the Federation of Bourses, the leaders themselves felt enthusiastic about the things accomplished. Pelloutier wrote:

Enumerate the results obtained by the groupings of workingmen; consult the program, of the courses instituted by the Bourses du Travail, a program which omits nothing which goes to make up a moral, complete, dignified and satisfied life; regard the authors who inhabit the workingmen's libraries; admire this syndical and co-operative organization which extends from day to day and embraces new categories of producers, the unification of all the proletarian forces into a close network of syndicats, of co-operative societies, of leagues of resistance; consider the constantly increasing intervention into the diverse manifestations of social life; the examination of methods of production and of distribution and say whether this organization, whether this program, this tendency towards the beautiful and the good, whether this aspiration toward the complete expansion of the individual do not justify the pride the Bourses du Travail feel.[98]

This feeling and the preoccupation with socialist ideals led Pelloutier and other members of the Federation to think that the Bourses du Travail could not only render immediate services, but that they were capable of "adapting themselves to a superior social order". Pelloutier thought that the Bourses du Travail were evolving from this time on the elements of a new society, that they were gradually constituting a veritable socialist (economic and anarchic) state within the bourgeois state,[99] and that they would, in time, substitute communistic forms of production and of distribution for those now in existence. The question was brought up for discussion at the Congress of Tours (1896) and two reports were read on the present and future r?le of the Bourses du Travail. One report was written by Pelloutier, the other was prepared by the delegates of the Bourse of Nimes, Claude Gignoux and Victorien Briguier (Allemanists).

The report of the Bourse of Nimes starts out from the idea that no new plan of a future society need be fabricated; that the Bourses du Travail show themselves already capable of directing the economic activities of society and that with further growth they will become more and more capable of so doing. The natural development of the Bourses, it held, leads them to investigate the number of unemployed in each trade; the causes of industrial perturbation, the cost of maintenance of each individual in comparison with wages received; the number of trades and of workingmen employed in them; the amount of the produce; the totality of products necessary for the population of their region, etc., etc. Now, it further set forth, with all this information at hand, and with all this economic experience, each Bourse could, in case of a social transformation, assume the direction of the industrial life of its region. Each trade organized in a syndicat would elect a council of labor; the syndicats of the same trade would be federated nationally and internationally. The Bourses, knowing the quantity of products which must be produced, would impart this information to the councils of labor of each trade, which employ all members of the trade in the manufacture of necessary products. By their statistics, the Bourses would know where there is excess or want of production in their regions, and would determine the exchange of products between the territories which by nature are adapted for some special production only. The report presupposed that property would become "social and inalienable"; and the assumption was that the workingmen would be stimulated to develop the industrial powers of their regions and to increase the material welfare of the country. The report concluded:

This summary outline gives those who live in the syndical movement an idea of the r?le which falls and will fall to the Bourses du Travail. It would not do to hurry decisions; the methodical pursuit of the development of our institutions is sufficient to realize our aim, and to avoid many disappointments and retrogressions. It is for us, who have inherited the thought and the science of all those who have come before us, to bring it about that so many riches and so much welfare due to their genius should not serve to engender misery and injustice, but should establish harmony of interests on equality of rights and on the solidarity of all human beings.[100]

The report of the Federal Committee, prepared by Pelloutier, contained the same ideas but emphasized some other points. "We start out from the principle," read this report, "that the task of the revolution is to free mankind not only from all authority (autorité), but also from every institution which has not for its essential purpose the development of production. Consequently, we can imagine the future society only as a voluntary and free association of producers."[101] In this social system the syndicats and the Bourses are to play the part assigned to them in the report of the Bourse of Nimes.

The consequence of this new state, of this suppression of useless social organs, of this simplification of necessary machinery, will be that man will produce better, more and quicker; that he will be able, therefore, to devote long hours to his intellectual development, to accelerate in this way mechanical progress, to free himself more and more from painful work, and to arrange his life in greater conformity to his instinctive aspirations toward studious repose.

Pelloutier laid emphasis on the idea that this future state was being gradually prepared and was dependent upon the intellectual and moral development of the working-class; he conceived it as a gradual substitution of institutions evolved by the working-class for those institutions which characterize existing society. He believed that the syndicalist life was the only means of stimulating the power and the initiative of the workingmen and of developing their administrative abilities. His report, quoted above, concluded: "And this is the future in store for the working-class, if becoming conscious of its intellectual faculties, and of its dignity, it will come to draw only from within itself its notion of social duty, will detest and break every authority foreign to it and will finally conquer security and liberty."[102]

This conception of the syndicat has since become fundamental with revolutionary syndicalists. Formulating it, the Fédération des Bourses du Travail really laid the foundations of what later became revolutionary syndicalism. The "Federation of Bourses" also made the first step in the propaganda of anti-militarism and in outlining a policy of opposition to the State. The latter ideas, however, were at the same time developed in the General Confederation of Labor and will be considered in connection with the history of that body in the next chapter.

From 1894 to 1902 the Fédération des Bourses du Travail was the strongest syndical organization in France. Pelloutier claimed 250,000 members for it, but the figure is exaggerated. There is no way, however, of finding out the true figures.

Conscious of its comparative strength, the Federation of Bourses at times ignored, at times dominated the General Confederation of Labor. These two organizations were rivals. The General Confederation of Labor had adopted at Limoges (1895) statutes according to which the Confederation could admit not only National Federations of Syndicats, but single syndicats and single Bourses. This was obnoxious to the Federation of Bourses. The latter wished that the General Confederation should be composed exclusively of two federal committees; one representing the Federation of Bourses; the other representing the National Federations of trade. Until this was accepted, the Federation of Bourses, at its Congress in Tours (1896), refused to give any financial aid to the General Confederation in view "of the little vitality" which it displayed.

The General Confederation of Labor modified its statutes year after year, but no harmony between the two organizations could be established for some time. In 1897, the Federation of Bourses joined the General Confederation, but left it again in 1898.

The friction was due partly to personal difficulties, partly to the differences of spirit which prevailed in the central committees of the two organizations. After 1900, however, the two organizations, though distinct, co-operated, and the question of unifying the two organizations was more and more emphasized. In 1902, at the Congress of Montpellier, this unity was realized; the Federation of Bourses entered the General Confederation of Labor, and ceased to have a separate existence.

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