In other respects, the continuity of the labor movement after the Commune with that of the preceding period was no less evident. As will be seen in the following chapter the problems raised and the solutions given to them by the French workingmen for some time after the Commune were directly related to the movement of the Second Empire. The idea of co-operation, the _mutuellisme_ of Proudhon, and the collectivism of the "International" reappeared in the labor movement under the Third Republic.
ORIGIN OF THE GENERAL CONFEDERATION OF LABOR (1872-1895)
The vigorous suppression of the Commune and the political events which followed it threw the French workingmen for some time into a state of mental depression. Though trade-union meetings were not prohibited, the workingmen avoided the places which had been centers of syndical activity before the Commune. Full of suspicion and fear, they preferred to remain in isolation rather than to risk the persecution of the government.
Under these conditions, the initiative in reconstituting the syndicats was taken by a republican journalist, Barberet.[41] Barberet was prompted to undertake this "honorable task" by the desire to do away with strikes. He had observed the strike movement for some years, and had come to the conclusion that strikes were fatal to the workingmen and dangerous to the political institutions of the country. His observations had convinced him that the Second Empire had fallen largely in consequence of the strike movement during 1868-70, and he was anxious to preserve the Republic from similar troubles. As he expressed it, strikes were "a crime of _lèse-democratie_"[42] which it was necessary to prevent by all means.
[41] Barberet was afterwards appointed chief of the Bureau of Trade Unions, which was constituted as part of the Dept. of the Interior.
[42] J. Barberet, _Monographies Professionelles_ (Paris, 1886), vol. i, p. 16.
Barberet outlined the following program for the syndicats. They were to watch over the loyal fulfilment of contracts of apprenticeship; to organize employment bureaus; to create boards of conciliation composed of an equal number of delegates from employers and from workingmen for the peaceful solution of trade disputes; to found libraries and courses in technical education; to utilize their funds not to "foment strikes", but to buy raw materials and instruments of labor; and finally, "to crown these various preparatory steps" by the creation of co-operative workshops "which alone would give groups of workingmen the normal access to industry and to commerce" and which would in time equalize wealth.[43]