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WORK

[TRAVAIL]

BY

ÉMILE ZOLA


TRANSLATED BY

ERNEST ALFRED VIZETELLY


LONDON

CHATTO & WINDUS

1901




PREFACE


'Work' is the second book of the new series which M. Zola began with
'Fruitfulness,' and which he hopes to complete with 'Truth' and
'Justice.' I should much have liked to discuss here in some detail
several of the matters which M. Zola brings forward in this instalment
of his literary testament, but unfortunately the latter part of the
present translation has been made by me in the midst of great bodily
suffering, and I have not now the strength to do as I desired. I will
only say, therefore, that 'Work' embraces many features. It is, first,
an exposition of M. Zola's gospel of work, as the duty of every man
born into the world and the sovereign cure for many ills--a gospel
which he has set forth more than once in the course of his numerous
writings, and which will be found synthetised, so to say, in a paper
called 'Life and Labour' translated by me for the 'New Review' some
years ago.[1] Secondly, 'Work' deals with the present-day conditions
of society so far as those conditions are affected by Capital and
Labour. And, thirdly and particularly, it embraces a scheme of social
reorganisation and regeneration in which the ideas of Charles Fourier,
the eminent philosopher, are taken as a basis and broadened and adapted
to the needs of a new century. Some may regard this scheme as being
merely the splendid dream of a poet (the book certainly abounds
in symbolism), but all must admit that it is a scheme of _pacific_
evolution, and therefore one to be preferred to the violent remedies
proposed by most Socialist schools.

In this respect the book has a peculiar significance. Though the
English press pays very little attention to the matter, things are
moving apace in France. The quiet of that country is only surface-deep.
The Socialist schools are each day making more and more progress.
The very peasants are fast becoming Socialists, and, as I wrote
comparatively recently in my preface to the new English version of M.
Zola's 'Germinal,' the most serious troubles may almost at any moment
convulse the Republic. Thus it is well that M. Zola, who has always
been a fervent partisan of peace and human brotherliness, should be
found at such a juncture pointing out pacific courses to those who
believe that a bath of blood must necessarily precede all social
regeneration.

Incidentally, in the course of his statements and arguments, M. Zola
brings forward some very interesting points. I would particularly refer
the reader to what he writes on the subject of education. Again, his
sketch of the unhappy French peasant of nowadays may be scanned with
advantage by those who foolishly believe that peasant to be one of the
most contented beings in the world. The contrary is unhappily the case,
the subdivision of the soil having reached such a point that the land
cannot be properly or profitably cultivated. After lasting a hundred
years, the order of things established in the French provinces by the
Great Revolution has utterly broken down. The economic conditions of
the world have changed, and the only hope for French agriculture rests
in farming on a huge scale. This the peasant, amidst his hard struggle
with pauperism, is now realising, and this it is which is fast making
him a Socialist.

All that M. Zola writes in 'Work' on the subject of iron and steel
factories, and the progressive changes in processes and so forth,
will doubtless be read with interest at the present time, when
so much is being said and written about a certain large American
'trust.' The reliance which he places in Science--the great pacific
revolutionary--to effect the most advantageous changes in present-day
conditions of labour, is assuredly justified by facts. Personally, I
rely far more on science than on any innate spirit of brotherliness
between men, to bring about comparative happiness for the human race.

In conclusion, I may point out that the tendency of M. Zola's book in
one respect is shown by the title chosen for the present translation.
The original is called 'Travail,' which might have been rendered in
English as either 'Labour' or 'Work.' We read every day about the
'labour world,' the 'conditions of labour,' the 'labour party,' and so
forth, and as these matters are largely dealt with by M. Zola, some may
think that 'Labour' would have been the better title for the English
version of his book. But then it is M. Zola's desire that man should
_labour_ no more; he does not wish him to groan beneath excessive
toil--he simply desires that he should _work_, in health and in gaiety,
with the help of science to lighten his task, and a just apportionment
of wealth and happiness to gild his days until he takes his rest.


E. A. V.


MERTON, SURREY:

_April_ 1901.



[1] _New Review_, No. 50, July, 1893.




WORK



BOOK I



I


As Luc Froment walked on at random after emerging from Beauclair, he
went up the Brias road, following the gorge in which the Mionne torrent
flows between the two promontories of the Bleuse Mountains. And when he
found himself before the Abyss, as the Qurignon steel-works are called
in the region, he perceived two dark and puny creatures shrinking
timidly against the parapet at the corner of the wooden bridge. His
heart contracted. One was a woman looking very young, poorly clad, her
head half hidden by some ragged woollen stuff; and the other, nestling
amidst her skirts, was a white-faced child, about six years old, and
scarcely clothed at all. Both had their eyes fixed on the door of the
works, and were waiting, motionless, with the mournful patience of
despairing beings.

Luc paused and also looked. It would soon be six o'clock, and the light
of that wretched, muggy, mid-September evening was already waning.
It was a Saturday, and since Thursday the rain had scarcely ceased
to fall. It was no longer coming down at present, but across the sky
an impetuous wind was still driving a number of clouds, sooty ragged
clouds, athwart which filtered a dirty, yellowish twilight, full of
mortal sadness. Along the road over which stretched lines of rails,
and where big paving-stones were disjointed by continuous traffic,
there flowed a river of black mud, all the gathered moistened dust of
the neighbouring coal-works of Brias, whose tumbrels were for ever
going by. And that coal-dust had cast a blackness as of mourning over
the entire gorge; it fell in patches over the leprous pile of factory
buildings, and seemed even to besmirch those dark clouds which passed
on interminably like smoke. An ominous melancholy swept by with the
wind; one might have thought that the murky quivering twilight was
bringing the end of the world in its train.

Luc had stopped short at a few paces from the young woman and the boy,
and he heard the latter saying with a shrewd decisive air, like one who
was already a little man: 'I say, _ma grande_,[1] would you like me to
speak to him? P'r'aps he wouldn't get so angry with me.'

But the young woman replied: 'No, no, _frérot_, those are not matters
for little boys.'

Then again they continued waiting in silence, with an air of anxious
resignation.

Luc was now looking at the Abyss. From professional curiosity he
had visited it when first passing through Beauclair the previous
spring. And during the few hours that he had again found himself in
the district, suddenly summoned thither by his friend Jordan, he had
heard through what a frightful crisis the region had just passed.
There had been a terrible strike of two months' duration, and ruin was
piled up on either side. The establishment had greatly suffered from
the stoppage of work, and the workmen, their rage increased by their
powerlessness, had almost starved. It was only two days previously, on
the Thursday, that work had been resumed after reciprocal concessions,
wrung from either party with the greatest difficulty after the most
furious wrangling. And the men had gone back like joyless, vanquished
beings enraged by defeat, retaining in their hearts only a recollection
of their sufferings and a keen desire for revenge.

Under the wild flight of the mourning clouds the Abyss spread its
sombre piles of buildings and sheds. It was like a monster which had
sprung up there, extending by degrees the roofs of its little town.
One could guess the ages of the various structures by the colour
of those roofs which arose and spread out in every direction. The
establishment now occupied a surface of many acres and employed a
thousand hands. The lofty, bluish, slated roofs of the great halls with
coupled windows, overtopped the old blackened tiles of the earlier
buildings, which were far more humble. Up above one perceived from the
road the gigantic hives of the cementing-furnaces, ranged in a row,
as well as the tempering tower, seventy-eight feet high, where big
cannon were plunged on end into baths of petroleum. And higher still
ascended smoking chimneys, chimneys of all sizes, a very forest, whose
sooty breath mingled with the flying soot of the clouds, whilst at
regular intervals narrow blast-pipes, with strident respiration, threw
out white plumes of steam. All this seemed like the breathing of the
monster. The dust, the vapour that it incessantly exhaled, enveloped
it as in an everlasting cloud of the perspiration of toil. And there
was also the beating of its organs, the impact, the noise of its every
effort: the vibration of machinery, the clear cadence of helve-hammers,
the great rhythmical blows of steam-hammers resounding like huge bells
and making the soil shake. And at the edge of the road, in the depths
of a little building, where the first Qurignon had first forged iron,
one could hear the violent, desperate dance of two tilt-hammers which
were beating there like the very pulse of the colossus, every one of
whose life-devouring furnaces flamed afresh.

In the ruddy and dismal crepuscular mist which was gradually submerging
the Abyss, not a single electric lamp as yet lighted up the yards. Nor
was there any light gleaming through the dusty windows. Alone, through
the gaping doorway of one of the large halls, there burst a vivid flame
which transpierced the gloom with a long jet of light, like that of
some fusing star. A master puddler had doubtless opened the door of
his furnace. And nothing else, not even a stray spark, proclaimed the
presence of the empire of fire, the fire roaring within that darkened
city of toil, the internal fire which heated the whole of it, the
trained, subjected fire which bent and fashioned iron like soft wax,
and which had given man royalty over the earth ever since the first
Vulcans had conquered it.

At last the clock in the little belfry surmounting the offices struck
six o'clock. And Luc then again heard the poor child saying: 'Listen,
_ma grande_, they will be coming out now.'

'Yes, yes, I know well enough,' the young woman answered. 'Just you
keep quiet.'

As she moved forward to restrain the child, her ragged wrapper fell
back slightly from before her face, and Luc remarked the delicacy of
her features with surprise. She was surely less than twenty. She had
fair hair all in disorder, a poor, thin little face which to him seemed
ugly, blue eyes blurred by tears, and a pale mouth that twitched
bitterly with suffering. And what a light, gir