Everybody agrees that the disappearance of these old brutalities is an excellent thing. From this opinion it was so easy to pass to the idea that all violence is an evil, that this step was bound to have been taken; and, in fact, the great mass of the people, who are not accustomed to thinking, have come to this conclusion, which is accepted nowadays as a dogma by the bleating herd of moralists. They have not asked themselves what there is in brutahty which is reprehensible.
When we no longer remain content with current stupidity we discover that our ideas about the disappearance of violence depend much more on a very important transformation which has taken place in the criminal world than on ethical principles. I shall endeavour to prove this.
B. Middle-class scientists are very chary of touching on anything relating to the dangerous classes; ^ that is one of the reasons why their observations on the history of morals always remain superficial; it is not very difficult to see that it is a knowledge of these classes which alone enables us to penetrate the mysteries of the moral thought of peoples.
The dangerous classes of past times practised the simplest form of offence, that which was nearest to hand, that which is nowadays left to groups of young scoundrels without experience and without judgment. Offences of brutahty seem to us nowadays something abnormal; so cotnpagnonnage, following the refusals with which the latter had met a few rather modest demands for reforms presented by the candidates for election (pp. 108-116, 126, 131).
1 On March 30, 1906, Monis said in the Senate: " We cannot write in a legal text that prostitution exists in France for both sexes."
much so, that when the brutaUty has been great we often ask ourselves whether the culprit is in possession of all his senses. This transformation has evidently not come about because criminals have become moral, but because they have changed their method of procedure to suit the new economic conditions, as we shall see farther on. This change has had the greatest influence on popular thought.
We all know that by using brutality, associations of criminals manage to maintain excellent discipline among themselves. When we see a child ill-treated we instinctively suppose that its parents have criminal habits. The methods used by the old schoolmasters, which the ecclesiastical houses persist in preserving, are those of vagabonds who steal children to make clever acrobats or interesting beggars of them. Everything which reminds us of the habits of dangerous classes of former times is extremely odious to us.
There is a tendency for the old ferocity to be replaced by cunning, and many sociologists believe that this is a real progress. Some philosophers who are not in the habit of following the opinions of the herd, do not see exactly how this constitutes progress, from the point of view of morals: '* If we are revolted by the cruelty, by the brutality of past times," says Hartmann, ** it must not be forgotten that uprightness, sincerity, a lively sentiment of justice, pious respect before holiness of morals characterised the ancient peoples; while nowadays we see predominant lies, duplicity, treachery, the spirit of chicane, the contempt for property, disdain for instinctive probity and legitimate customs — the value of which is not even understood.^ Robbery, deceit, and fraud * Hartmann here bases his statements on the authority of the English naturalist Wallace, who has greatly praised the simplicity of life among the Malays; there must surely be a considerable element of exaggeration in this praise, although other travellers have made similar observations about some of the tribes of Sumatra. Hartmann wishes increase in spite of legal repression more rapidly than brutal and violent crimes, like pillage, murder, and rape, etc., decrease. Egoism of the basest kind shamelessly breaks the sacred bonds of the family and friendship in every case in which these oppose its desires." ^ At the present time money losses are generally looked upon as accidents to which we are constantly exposed and easily made good again, while bodily accidents are not so easily reparable. Fraud is therefore regarded as infinitely less serious than brutality; criminals benefit from this change which has come about in legal sentences.
Our penal code was drawn up at a time when the citizen was pictured as a rural proprietor occupied solely with the administration of his property, as a good family man, saving to secure an honourable position for his children; large fortunes made in business, in politics, or by speculation were rare and were looked on as real monstrosities; the defence of the savings of the middle classes was one of the first concerns of the legislator. The previous judicial system had been still more severe in the punishment of fraud, for a royal declaration of August 5, 1725, punished a fraudulent bankrupt with death; it would be difiicult to imagine anything further removed from our customs. We are now inclined to consider that offences of this sort can, as a rule, only be committed as the result of the imprudence of the victims, and that it is only exceptionally that they deserve severe penalties; we, on the contrary, content ourselves with light punishment.
In a rich community where business is on a very large scale, and in which everybody is wide awake in defence of his own interests, as in America, crimes of fraud never have the same consequences as in a community which is forced to practise rigid economy; as a matter of fact, to show that there is no progress towards happiness, and this preoccupation leads him to exaggerate the happiness of the ancients. * Hartmann, Philosophy of the Unconscious, French trans., pp. 464-465.
these crimes seldom cause a serious and lasting disturbance in the economic system; it is for this reason that Americans put up with the excesses of their politicians and financiers with so little complaint. P. de Rousiers compares the American to the captain of a ship who, during a dangerous voyage, has no time to look after his thieving cook. " When you point out to Americans that they are being robbed by their politicians, they usually reply, ' Of course we are quite aware of that! But as long as business is good and politicians do not get in the way, it will not be very difficult for them to escape the punishment they deserve.' " * In Europe also, since it has become easy to gain money, ideas, analogous to those current in America, have spread among us. Great company promoters have been able to escape pimishment because in their hour of success they were clever enough to make friends in all circles. We have finally come to believe that it would be extremely unjust to condemn bankrupt merchants and lawyers who retire ruined after moderate catastrophes, while the princes of financial swindling continue to lead gay lives. Gradually the new industrial system has created a new and extraordinary indulgence for all crimes of fraud in the great capitalist countries.* In those countries where the old parsimonious and nonspeculative family economy still prevails, the relative estimation of acts of fraud and acts of brutality has not followed the same evolution as in America, England, and France; this is why Germany has preserved so many of the customs of former times,^ and does not feel the same ^ De Rousiers, La Vie amSricaine: I' Education et la socUU, p. 217.
« Several small countries have adopted these ideas, thinking by such imitation to reach the greatness of the large countries.
" It must be noticed that in Germany there are so many Jews in the world of speculation that American ideas do not spread very easily. The majority look upon the speculator as a foreigner who is robbing the nation.
horror that we do for brutal punishments; these never seem to them, as they do to us, only suitable to the most dangerous classes.
Many philosophers have protested against this mitigation of sentences; after what we have related earlier about Hartmann, we shall expect to meet him among those who protest. " We are already," he says, " approaching the time when theft and lying condemned by law will be despised as vulgar errors, as gross clumsiness, by the clever cheats who know how to preserve the letter of the law while infringing the rights of other people. For my part, I would much rather live amongst the ancient Germans, at the risk of being killed on occasion, than be obliged, as I am in modem cities, to look on every man as a swindler or a rogue imless I have evident proofs of his honesty." ^ Hartmann takes no account of economic conditions; he argues from an entirely personal point of view, and never looks at what goes on roimd him. Nobody to-day wants to run the risk of being slain by ancient Germans; fraud or a theft are very easily reparable.
C. Finally, in order to get to the heart of contemporary thought on this matter, it is necessary to examine the way in which the public judges the relations existing between the State and the criminal associations. Such relations have always existed; these associations, after having practised violence, have ended by employing craft alone, or at least their acts of violence have become somewhat exceptional.
Nowadays we should think it very strange if the magistrates were to put themselves at the head of armed bands, as they did in Rome during the last years of the Republic. In the course of the Zola trial, the Anti-Semites recruited bands of paid demonstrators, who were commissioned to manifest patriotic indignation; the Govem- * Haxtmann, loc. cit., p. 465.
ment of M61ine protected these antics, which for some months had considerable success and helped considerably in hindering a fair revision of the sentence on Dreyfus.
I believe that I am not mistaken in saying that these tactics of the partisans of the Church have been the principal cause of all the measures directed against Catholicism since 1901; the middle-class liberals would never have accepted these measures if they had not still been under the influence of the fear they had felt during the Dreyfus affair. The chief argument which Clemenceau used to stir up his followers to fight against the Church was that of fear; he never ceased to denounce the danger which the Republic ran in the continued existence of the Romish faction; the laws about the congregations, about education and the administration of the churches were made with the object of preventing the Catholic party again taking up its former warlike attitude, which Anatol France so often compared to that of the League; ^ they were laws inspired by fear. Many Conservatives felt this so strongly that they regarded with displeasure the resistance recently opposed to the inventories of churches; they considered that the employment of bands of pious apaches would make the middle classes still more hostile to their cause. ^ It was not a little surprising to see Brunetiere, who had been one of the admirers of the anti-Dreyfus apaches, advise submission; this was because experience had enlightened him as to the consequences of violence.
1 [The League was a political organisation directed by the partisans of the Due de Guise against the Protestants; it resisted Henri IV. for a considerable time. — Trans. Note.]
« At a meeting of the Municipal Council of Paris on March 26, 1906, the Prefect of Police said that the resistance was organised by a committee sitting at 86. rue de Richelieu, which hired pious apaches at between three and four francs a day. He asserted that fifty-two Parisian cures had promised him either to facilitate the inventories or to be content with a merely passive resistance. He accused the Catholic politicians of having forced the hands of the clergy.
Associations which work by craft provoke no such reactions in the public; in the time of the " clerical republic," ^ the society of Saint Vincent de Paul was an excellent centre of surveillance over officials of every order and grade; it is not surprising, then, that freemasonry has been able to render services to the Radical Government of exactly the same kind as those which Catholic philanthropy was able to render to former Governments. The history of recent spying scandals has shown very plainly what the point of view of the country actually was.
When the nationalists obtained possession of the documents containing information about officers of the army, which had been compiled by the dignitaries of the masonic lodges, they believed that their opponents were lost; the panic which prevailed in the Radical camp for some time seemed to justify their hopes, but before long the democracy showed only derision for what they called the " petty virtue " of those who publicly denounced the methods of General Andr^ and his accomplices. In those difficult days Henry Berenger showed that he understood admirably the ethical standards of his contemporaries; he did not hesitate to approve of what he called the " legitimate supervision of the governing classes exercised by the organisations of the vanguard "; he denounced the cowardice of the Government which had " allowed those who had undertaken the difficult task of opposing the military caste and the Roman Church, of examining and denouncing them, to be branded as informers " {Action, Oct. 31, 1904); he loaded with insults the few Dreyfusards who dared to show their indignation; the attitude of Joseph Reinach appeared particularly scandalous to him; in his opinion the latter should have felt himself extremely honoured by being tolerated in the ** League of the Rights of Man," which had decided at last to lead " the good 1 \I.e. in the time when MacMahon was President. — Trans. Note.]
fight for the defence of rights of the citizen, sacrificed too long to those of one man " [Action, Dec. 12, 1904). Finally, a law of amnesty was voted declaring that no one wanted to hear anything more of these trifles.
There was some opposition in the provinces,* but was it very serious? I am inclined to think not, when I read the documents published by Peguy in the ninth number of the sixth series of his Cahiers de la quinzaine. Several people, accustomed to speaking a verbose, sonorous, and nonsensical language, doubtless found themselves a Uttle imcomfortable under the smiles of the leading grocers and eminent chemists who constituted the ^lite of the lesimed and musical societies before which they had been accustomed to hold forth on Justice, Truth, and Light. They found it necessary to adopt a stoical attitude.
Could anything be finer than this passage from a letter of Professor Bougie, an eminent doctor of social science, which I find on page 13: "I am very happy to learn that at last the League is going to speak. Its silence astonishes and frightens us." He must be a man who is easily astonished and frightened! Francis de Pressens6 also suffered some anxiety of mind — he is a specialist in that kind of thing — but his feelings were of a very distinguished kind, as is only proper for an aristocratic Socialist; he was afraid that democracy was threatened with a new guillotine seche,^ resembling that which had done so much harm to virtuous democrats during the Panama scandal.^ When he saw that the public quietly accepted * The people in the provinces are not, as a matter of fact, so accustomed as the Parisians are to indulgence towards non-violent trickery and brigandage.
" [" Dry guillotine," popular expression meaning persecution — Trans.]
* Cahiers de la quinzaine 9th of the Vlth series, p. 9. F. de Pressensfe was at the time of the Panama affair H^brard's principal clerk; we know that the latter was one of the principal beneficiaries from the Panama booty, but that has not injured his position in the eyes of the austere Huguenots; the Temps continues to be the organ of moderate democracy and of the ministers of the Gospel.
the complicity of the Government with a philanthropic association which had turned into a criminal association, he hurled his avenging thunders against the protestors. Among the most comical of these protestors I pick out a political pastor of St-Etienne called I.. Comte. He wrote, in the extraordinary language employed by the members of the League of the Rights of Man: " I had hoped that the [Dreyfus] affair would have definitely cured us of the moral malaria from which we suffer, and that it would have cleansed the republican conscience of the clerical virus with which it was impregnated. It has done nothing. We are more clerical than ever." ^ Accordingly this austere man remained in the League I Protestant and middle-class logic! It is always possible, you see, that the League might one of these days be able to render some small service to the deserving ministers of the Gospel.
I have insisted rather lengthily on these grotesque incidents because they seem to me to characterise very aptly the moral ideas of the people who claim to lead us. Henceforth it must be taken for granted that politicocriminal associations which work by craft have a recognised place in any democracy that has attained its maturity. P. de Rousiers believes that America will one day cure itself of the evils which result from the guilty manoeuvres of its politicians. Ostrogorski, after making a long and minute inquiry into " Democracy, and the organisation of political parties,*' believes that he has found remedies which will enable modem states to free themselves from exploitation by political parties. These are platonic vows; no historical experience justifies the hope that a democracy can be made to work in a capitalist country, without the criminal abuses experienced everywhere nowadays. When Rousseau demanded that the democracy should not tolerate the existence in its midst of any private association, he reasoned from his knowledge of the republics ^ Cahiers de la quimaine, loc. cit. p. 13.
of the Middle Ages; he knew that part of history better than his contemporaries did, and was struck with the enormous part played at that time by the politicocriminal associations; he asserted the impossibiUty of reconciling a rational democracy with the existence of such forces, but we ought to learn from experience that there is no way of bringing about their disappearance.^ Ill Ill The preceding explanations enable us to understand the ideas about the proper function of the worker's syndicates formed by the enlightened democrats and the worthy progressives. Waldeck-Rousseau has often been congratulated on having carried the law on syndicates in 1884. In order to give an account of what was expected from this law we must recall the situation of France at that epoch. Severe financial embarrassments had compelled the Government to sign agreements with the railway companies which the Radicals denounced as acts of brigandage; the colonial policy gave opportunities for extremely violent attacks and was thoroughly unpopular \^ the discontent which a few years later took the form of Boulangism was already very marked, and in the elections of 1885 very nearly gave a majority to the Conservatives.
Waldeck-Rousseau, without being a very profound seer, was yet sharp enough to understand the danger which might threaten the opportunist republic, and C5mical enough to look for a means of defence in a politico- ^ Rousseau, stating the question in an abstract way, appeared to condemn every kind of association, and our Governments for a long time used his authority to subject every association to authority.
* In his Morale, published in 1883, Y. Guyot violently attacks this policy. " In spite of the disastrous experiences [of two centuries], we are taking Tunisia, we are on the point of going to Egypt, we are setting out for Tonkin, we dream of the conquest of Central Africa ' ' THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE 22g criminal association capable of checkmating the Conservatives.
At the time of the Empire the Government had tried to manipulate the benefit societies in such a way as to control the employes and a section of the artisans. Later on, it believed it might be possible to find, in the workmen's associations, a weapon with which it might be capable of ruining the authority which the Liberal party had with the people, and terrorising the rich classes, who had obstinately opposed the Government since 1863. Waldeck-Rousseau was inspired by these examples and hoped to organise among the workmen a hierarchy under the direction of the police.^ In a circular of August 25, 1884, Waldeck-Rousseau explained to the prefects that they ought not to confine themselves to their too limited function of enforcing respect for the law; they must stimulate the spirit of association and " smooth away the difficulties which were bound to arise from inexperience and lack of practice in this new liberty," their task would be so much the more useful and important if they succeeded in inspiring greater confidence in the workmen; in diplomatic terms the Minister advised them to undertake the moral leadership of the Syndicalist movement.^ ** Although the Government is not obliged by the law of 1884 to take any part in the search for the solutions of the great economic and social problems, it cannot be indifferent to them, and I am convinced that it is its duty to participate and to put its services and zeal at the disposal of all the parties * I have pointed this out in the Ere nouvelle, March 1894, p. 339.
' According to the Sociahst deputy, Marius Devize, the Prefect du Gard undertook this leadership of the Syndicahst movement under the minister Combes {Etudes socialistes, p. 323). I find in the France du Sud-Ouest (January 25, 1904) a notice announcing that the Prefect of La Manche, delegated by the Government, together with the underprefect, the mayor, and the municipality, officially inaugurated the Bourse du Travail at Cherbourg.
concerned." It will be necessary to act with a great deal of prudence so as " not to excite mistrust," to show the workmen's associations how very much the Government interests itself in their development, and to advise them " when they make appHcations." The prefects must prepare themselves for " this role of counsellor and energetic collaborator by a thorough study of legislation, and of the similar organisations which exist in France and abroad."
In 1884 the Government did not in the least foresee that the sjmdicates might participate in a great revolutionary agitation, and the circular spoke with a certain irony of " the hypothetical peril of an anti-social federation of the whole of the workers." Nowadays one is very tempted to smile at the ingenuousness of the man who has so often been represented to us as the prince of cunning; but to account for his illusions it is necessary to go back to the writings of the democrats of that period. In 1887, in the preface to the third edition of Sublime, Denis Poulot, an experienced manufacturer, former mayor of the nth arrondissement and a follower of Gambetta, said that the syndicates would kill strikes; he beUeved that the revolutionaries had no serious influence on the organised workmen, and he saw in the primary schools a sure means of bringing about the disappearance of Socialism; like nearly all the opportunists of that time, he was much more preoccupied with blacks than with reds} Yves Guyot himself does not seem to have had much more insight than Waldeck-Rousseau, because in his Morale (1883) he considered collectivism to be merely a word, he denounced the existing legislation which " aims at hindering the organisation of workmen for the sale of their labour at the highest possible price and for the discussion of their interests," and he expected that what the syndicates would lead to would be the * Blacks and reds — clericals and Socialists.
" 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.^ 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 imder their own leadership. For several years the peril which the RepubUc ran in the formation of an agrarian party has been denounced; * 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.^ 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 " * imderstood the importance of the word " agricultural ** which was introduced by means of an amendment proposed by D'Oudet, the senator for Doubs.*^ Workmen's associations directed by democrats, using cunning, threats, and sometimes even a certain amount « De Rocquigny, L«s Syndicats agricoles et leur ceuvre, 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.
* 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 bailifis, landowners, etc.
Q Q of violence, could have been of the greatest service to the Government in the struggle against the Conservatives, then so threatening. Those people who have recently transformed Waldeck-Rousseau into the father of his country will probably protest against such a disrespectful interpretation of his policy; but this interpretation will not seem altogether improbable to the people who remember the cynicism with which he, who is now represented as a great Liberal, governed; one had the impression that France was about to enter on a regime which would recall the follies, the luxuries, and the brutality of the Caesars. Moreover, when unforeseen circumstances brought back Waldeck-Rousseau to power, he immediately resumed his former policy and tried to use the syndicates against his adversaries.
In 1899 it was no longer possible to attempt to put the workmen's associations under the direction of the prefects in the way indicated by the circular of 1884; but there were other methods which might be tried, and in including Millerand in his ministry, Waldeck-Rousseau thought he had earned out a master-stroke. As Millerand had been able to make himself the leader of the Socialists, who had, until then, been divided into irreconcilable gi-oups, might he not become the broker who would discreetly manipulate the syndicates by influencing their leaders? Every means of seduction was employed in order to bring the workmen to reason, and to inspire them with confidence in the higher ofhcials of the " Government of Republican Defence.'* One cannot help being reminded of the policy that Napoleon, in signing the Concordat, intended to follow; he had recognised that it would not be possible for him, as for Henry VIII., to directly influence the Church. " Failing that method," said Taine, " he adopts another, which leads to the same end. He does not want to change the opinions of his people, he respects spiritual things and wishes to control them without interfering with them and without becoming entangled himself in them; he wants to make them square with his policy, but by the influence of temporal things." ^ In the same way, Millerand was commissioned to assure the workmen that their Socialist convictions would not be interfered with; the Government only wanted to direct the action of the syndicates and to make them fit in with its own policy.
Napoleon had said, " You will see how I shall be able to utilise the priests." ^ Millerand was instructed to gratify in every way the vanity of the leaders of the syndicates,^ while the mission of the prefects was to induce the employers to grant material advantages to the workers; it was thought that this Napoleonic policy would give results as considerable as those obtained from the policy pursued in regard to the Church. Dumay, the Minister of Public Worship, had succeeded in creating a docile episcopacy formed of men whom the ardent Catholics contemptuously called the " prefets violets."^ Might it not be possible, by putting a shrewd principal clerk in the office of the minister, to create *' prefets rouges.'* An this was fairly well thought out and corresponded perfectly with the kind of talent possessed by Waldeck-Rousseau, who was all his life a great partisan of the Concordat and was fond of negotiating with Rome. It was not impleasing to him. to negotiate with the reds \ the very originality of the enterprise would have been enough to chaxm a mind Hke his, that deUghted in subtlety.
^ Taine, Le Regime moderne, vol. ii. p. 10.
2 Taine, loc. cit. p. 11, ' This is what Mme. Georges Renard very sensibly points out in her report of a workmen's fete given by Millerand (L. de Seilhac, Le Monde socialiste, p. 308).
• [Prefets violets; this expression was used ironically by several papers to designate bishops who were too submissive to the Government. Catholic bishops wear a violet robe. — Trans. Note.]
In a speech on December i, 1905, Marcel Sembat, who had been in a particularly good position to know how things happened in the time of Millerand, related several anecdotes which very much astounded the Chamber. He told them how the Government, in order to make itself disagreeable to the nationalist mimicipal councillors of Paris, and to reduce their influence on the Bourse du Travail,! had asked the syndicates **to make applications to it that would justify " the reorganisation of that establishment. A certain amount of scandal was caused by the march past of the red flags before the official platform at the inauguration of the monument to Dalou in the Place de la Nation. We now know that this happened as the result of negotiations; the prefect of police had hesitated, but Waldeck-Rousseau had authorised these revolutionary ensigns. The fact that the Government denied having any relations with the syndicates is of no importance — a lie more or less would not trouble a pohtician of Waldeck-Rousseau's calibre.
The exposure of these manoeuvres shows us that the ministry depended on the syndicates to frighten the Conservatives. Ever since then it has been easy to imderstand the attitude they have adopted in the course of several strikes: on the one hand, Waldeck-Rousseau proclaimed with great fervour the necessity of giving 1 Millerand did not keep on the former Director of the Office du Travail, who was doubtless not pliant enough for the new policy. It seems to me to be clearly established that at that time considerable attention was being given in this Government department to a kind of enquiry as to the state of feeling among the miUtants of the syndicates, evidently in order to ascertain in what way they might be advised. This was revealed by Ch. Guieysse in the Pages libres of December 10, 1904; the protestations of the department and those of Millerand do not appear to have been very serious {Voix du peuple, December 18, 25, 1904, January i, 1905, June 25, August 27). [The Office du Travail is a ministerial office, which makes enquiries about labour and publishes statistics; it was created principally in the hope that it would serve to put the Government into connection with the leaders of the syndicates. — Trans.]
the protection of public force to every single workman who wished to work in spite of the strikers; on the other hand, he has more than once shut his eyes to acts of violence. The reason of this is, that he found it necessary to annoy and frighten the progressists,^ and because he meant to reserve to himself the right of forcible intervention at the moment when his political interests require the disappearance of all disorder. In the precarious state of his authority in the country he believed it possible to govern only by fear and by imposing himself as the supreme arbitrator in industrial disputes.^ Since 1884 Waldeck-Rousseau's plan had been to transform the syndicates into politico-criminal associations which could serve as auxiliaries to the democratic Government. The syndicates were to play a part analogous to that played by the lodges, the latter being useful in sppng on the officials, and the former designed to threatening the interests of those employers who were not on the side of the administration; the freemasons being rewarded by decorations and favours given to their friends, the workmen being authorised to extract extra wages from their employers. This poUcy was simple and cheap.