obviously be admitted to a participation in the councils, and
in the direction of the policy of the managers. How is that to be
brought about without endangering the success of the enterprises? To
consult the workmen of the company on technical questions within the
range of their regular employment is one thing; to consider the
commercial and fiscal policy of the company in its relation with
competing companies, and with the consuming public, in a general
conclave of all the establishment, would be quite another thing. It is a
curious fact that in the original statutes of 1757 the founders of Anzin
expressly provided that the six directors of the company should, when
necessary, consult not only the employes, but the workmen of the
company--the '_ouvriers_;' and this provision was insisted on at a time
when, as the doctrinaires of the nineteenth century would have us
believe, 'labour' was not recognised in France as a social force to be
considered.

Under its existing system of management the Anzin Company makes its
workmen real participants in the profits of its operations, without at
the same time exposing them to participate in the losses.

This is done not only through the singularly low rates at which the
workmen are enabled to house themselves and their families, through the
coal allowance, through the provision of cheap kitchen-gardens, and
particularly through the establishment of a pension fund and of a
savings-bank, but in many other forms.

Advances repayable without interest, for example, are made to workmen
who wish to buy or to build houses for themselves. These advances in
1888 stood in the books of the company at a total of 1,446,604 francs,
of which 1,345,463 fr. 91 c. had been repaid, leaving a balance due to
the company then of 101,140 fr. 9 c. With these funds workmen of the
company had bought or built for themselves 741 houses, being thus
visibly, and unanswerably to the extent of the value of these houses,
participants in the profits of Anzin.

Not less real is the participation of the workmen in the profits through
the various beneficial and educational institutions which I visited with
M. Guary, or with his son, and of which I shall presently speak.

The concessions now possessed by the Anzin Company are eight in number:
those of Vieux-Conde, Fresnes, Raismes, Anzin, Saint-Saulve, Denain,
Odomez, and Hasnon. These concessions cover, in the form of an irregular
polygon, about thirty continuous