'
'Are there strikes,' I asked, 'among your workmen?'
'They are beginning,' said Beaumont. 'We have had one near us, and the
authorities were afraid to interfere.'
'I suppose,' I said, that they are illegal?'
'They are illegal,' he answered, 'and I think that they ought to be so.
They are always oppressive and tyrannical. The workman who does not join
in a strike is made miserable. They are generally mischievous to
the combined workmen themselves, and always to those of other trades.
Your toleration of them appears to me one of the worst symptoms of your
political state of health. It shows among your public men an ignorance or
a cowardice, or a desire of ill-earned popularity, which is generally a
precursor of a democratic revolution.'
'It is certain,' said Ampere, 'that the masters are becoming afraid of
their workmen. Pereire brings his from their residences to the Barriere
Malesherbes in carriages. You are not actually insulted in the streets
of Paris, but you are treated with rude neglect. A _fiacre_ likes to
splash you, a _paveur_ to scatter you with mud. Louis Napoleon began with
Chauvinism. He excited all the bad international passions of the
multitude.
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