addresses himself to the honest, hard-working workmen, burdened
with families, whom the want of employment frequently reduces to
the most cruel extremities. It is not a degrading alms which he
offers to his brethren, but a gratuitous loan he begs them to
accept. And he hopes that this loan may frequently prevent them
from involving their future by distressing loans, which they are
forced to make in order to await a return of work, their only
resource for a family of whom they are the sole support. As a
guarantee of this loan he only requires from his brethren an
undertaking on honour, and a keeping of the word pledged. He
invests a sum producing an annual income of twelve thousand
francs, and to this amount loans of twenty to forty francs,
without interest, will be advanced to married men out of work.
These loans will only be made to workmen or workwomen with
certificates of good conduct given by the last employer, who
will mention the cause and date of the suspension from labour.
These loans to be repaid monthly by one-sixths' or one-tenths',
at the option of the borrower, beginning from the day when he
again procures employment. He must sign a simple engagement, on
his honour, to return the loan at the periods fixed. This
engagement must be also signed by two fellow workmen as
guarantees, in order to develop and extend by their conjunction
the sacredness of the promise sworn to. The workman and his two
sureties who do not return the sum borrowed must never again
have another loan, having forfeited his sacred engagement, and,
especially, having deprived so many of his brethren of the
advantage he has enjoyed, as the sum he has not repaid is for
ever lost to the Bank for the Poor. The sums lent being, on the
contrary, scrupulously repaid, the loans will augment from year
to year. Not to degrade man by a loan, not to encourage idleness
by an unprofitable gift, to increase the sentiments of honour
and probity natural to the labouring classes, to come paternally
to the aid of the workman, who, already living with difficulty
from day to day, owing to the insufficiency of wages, cannot,
when work stops, suspend the wants of himself and family because
his labour is suspended,--these are the thoughts which have
presided over this institution. May His Holy Name who has said
'Love