position of the workmen who stood out against an
agitation which they knew to be founded on no grievance of theirs, and
which could have no possible result for them but to injure the company,
with the prosperity of which they felt their own prosperity to be
identified, became really dangerous.

In the thick of the contest thus provoked and carried on, it is
interesting to find M. Allain-Targe, of whom I have already had occasion
to speak, in connection with his conduct as Minister of the Interior
during the elections of 1885, appearing on the Parliamentary Committee
of Inquiry, of 1884, into the situation at Anzin, as a friend and
advocate of the 'syndicate of workmen,' and urging the Anzin Company to
accept the syndicate and its secretary, M. Basly, as an umpire between
itself and the 'strikers,' who had been seduced or coerced into
'striking' by this very syndicate and its secretary!

What possible good, either to Labour or to Capital, can be rationally
expected--what possible harm to both may not be legitimately
feared--from a republic controlled and administered by such men?

One curious and important incidental object of the 'syndicate of
workmen,' and of M. Basly in promoting this strike of 1884 at Anzin,
revealed itself to me in the very full Report of the Parliamentary
inquiry which M. Guary was good enough to put at my service.

After devoting large sums of money to the various institutions and funds
established by it for the benefit of the workmen, the Anzin Company
invited the workmen themselves to contribute to their own savings and
pension fund at the rate of three per cent. of their wages, the expenses
of management being borne, of course, by the company. The 'syndicate of
workmen' and M. Basly did not like this. They preferred that any
contributions to be made by the workmen from their wages should be made,
not to a fund guaranteed and administered by the company, but to a fund
to be handled by the syndicate.

Whereupon M. Basly wrote, and caused to be circulated among the workmen,
a letter signed by himself as secretary of the syndicate, in which he
bade them regard the proposal of the company as 'a snare set for their
liberties.' 'To sign any such agreement as the company suggests,' he
said, 'will be to sign your own death-warrant and that of your
children!'

'Citizens! your enemies see our Union established. They know that we are
on the point of having a pension fund solidly established _under th