THE PARIS WORKMAN.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2719, 14 December 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE PARIS WORKMAN.

The real pretender in France is not the Comte de Paris or Prince Victor Napoleon, not the Due d' Aumale or Prince Jerome ; the real pretender is the Paris workman. If you speak to hiin of " the people," it is he, and he alone, whom he supposes you mean. The millions of quiet peasant labourers and other rural toilers he totally ignores ; he is the " sovereign people." The Parisian workman is not satisfied with the old cry: "What is the capitalist? Everything. What ought he to be? Nothing." tiis new cry is : " What is the workman? Nothing. What ought he to be ? Everything." A member of the commission appointed by the late French Parliament to inquire into the Paris workman's life, asked one of them to get up a budget of his family expenses. After describing minutely all the necessaries, the workman put down, "For music-halls, theatres, distraction — three hundred francs." Aud on the member of Parliament suggesting that the last item might, perhaps, be reduced, the Paris workman indignantly retorted, " Do you think we are going to live like brutes ?" The present house of Deputies is all occupied with the question of employers and employed, granting one by one all the demands of the latter. Nobody seems concerned about the rural population, by far the most interesting of all. How is that? Simply bocause the peasants do not hold stormy meetings, do not speak of erecting barricades, and are quiet, peaceful, industrious, sobci, and lawabiding people. The peasant has the sun, and if the harvest is destroyed by the frost, the hail, or the drought, it is for him to make the best of it ; while the Paris workman goes to the music halls, smokes cigars, aud talks politics. Suppose the country engages in war, the Paris workman assumes a uniform and sings war songs, but the peasant sees his land laid waste and his cottage burnt down ; and this is why you will understand that he feels it is his duty to hate the Germans in a theoretical way, but hopes and trusts that he may not live to see the day when he or his may be called upon to avenge the disaster of the ter- j rible year 1870.—Max O'Rell.