Chapter 7

IN THE AISNE

St.-Gobain--Paris and the Ile-de-France--Reclamation of the commons--Mischievous haste in the Revolutionary transfer of lands--The evolution of property and order in France and England--The flower gardens of France--The home counties around London compared with the departments around Paris--Superiority of the French fruit and vegetable markets--The military city of La Fère--A local cabbage-leaf--French farmers and the Treaties of Commerce--Arthur Young at St.-Gobain--The largest mirror in the world--The great French glassworks--'An industrial flower on a seignorial stalk, springing from a feudal root'--Evolution without Revolution--Two centuries and a half of industrial progress--Labour in the Middle Ages--The Irish apostle of North-eastern France--The forests of France--A factory in a château--A centenarian royal porter--The Duchesse de Berri and the Empress Eugénie--A co-operative association of consumers--A great manufacturing company working on lines laid down under Louis XIV.--Glass-working, Venetian and French--A jointstock company of the 18th century--The old and new school of factory discipline--French industry and the Terror--'Two aristocrats' called in to save a confiscated property--St.-Gobain and the Eiffel Tower--Royal luxuries in 1673, popular necessaries of life in 1889--How great mirrors are cast--Beauty of the processes--The coming age of glass--Glass pavements and roofs--The hereditary principle among the working classes--Practical co-operation of capital and labour--Schools, asylums, workmen's houses and gardens, social clubs, and savings-banks--Co-operative pension funds--A great economic family--Of 2,650 workpeople more than 50 per cent. employed for more than ten years--A subterranean lake--The crypts of St.-Gobain and the Cisterns of Constantinople--A spectral gondolier--A Venetian promenade with coloured lanterns underground 125-161