the worst of all thieves, and for them to despoil him was but to seek restoration of stolen goods. And the schoolmaster said that he who takes for his own the value labor has given is worse than he who robs upon the public highway—for he adds hypocrisy to theft.
Some of them counseled an immediate attack upon the managers of the Confidence Society, but the voice of master-workman Jacques was for some compromise which would restore them to employment. There had been a considerable fund collected by the Chevaliers of Industry in the way of dues and assessments. This fund he had distributed among the unemployed laborers, freely at first, but of late more sparingly. There were many who hoped to live through the winter on this fund, and these spoke in no pleasant terms of the master-workman's stinginess. The fund was nearly gone, and Jacques well knew that, if work was not soon resumed, the order of Chevaliers of Industry would come to a sudden end. Organized labor without money is very soon disorganized.
A few heeded his words of counsel and followed his lead to their homes. But the bolder spirits stiffened their resolve with the wines for which the café du Lion d'Or is so justly famous, and started for the residence of the President of the Confidence Society. They roused him from his bed, killed one of the Jonas men whom they found asleep at his door, insisted on an immediate division of his personal property—which he was only too willing to grant—and next morning they found themselves in jail, charged with robbery and murder.
There was again excitement at Issoire. The workingmen held mass-meetings at the Lion d'Or, and passed resolutions of sympathy and defiance. The wives and daughters of the members of the Common Council sent bouquets and baskets of fruit to the prisoners, and the mayor said that he loved them as though they were his own sons. But the law in France is in higher hands than those of the municipality. It is swift and sure. The prisoners were taken to the capital city, Clermont, to be tried. The sympathies of the judge were on the side of capital, and he paid little attention to the plea of organized labor. "If your theory is true," said the judge, "you have no sort of claim on the boots you have demanded from the President of the Equitable Confidence Society. All this labor you talk of is simply the moving of things back and forth. How can this confer value? The real work is done by the cow; and the herdsmen on the mountains, who are her heirs and assigns, are the only persons who have a natural lien on the boots which are made from her hide when she is dead. This claim the herdsmen have assigned to capital, and to capital, therefore, all the boots belong."
