The Arcades Project - Operi

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rigorously monitored the worker is not satisfied with going to the tavern before
the hour when work begins and at his mealtimes, which are at nine 0 ' clock and two
o'clock; he goes there also at four 0 clock and in the evening on the way home . ...
There are women who have no compunctions about following their husbands to
the barriere, in company with their children (who are already able to work), in
order, as they say, to live it up . ... There they spend a large portion of the income
of the entire family, and return home Monday evening in a state bordering on
drunkenness. Indeed, they often pretend-the children no less than their parents-to
be more inebriated than they really are, so that everyone will know
they've been drinking and drinking well." H.-A. Fregier, Des Classes dangere"ses
de la population (Paris, 1840), vol. 1, Pl'. 79-80, 86. [a3a,2J
On child labor among textile workers: '"Unable to meet the costs of food and of
caring for their children on their modest salary, which often does not exceed forty
sous per day (not even when added to the salary of the wife who earns barely half
that amount), . .. workers find themselves obliged . .. to place their children, as
soon as they are old enough to work (ordinarily, at age seven or eight), in the
establishments of which we are speaking . ... The workers keep their children
working in the factory or mill until the age of twelve. At that point, they see that.
the children make their first Communion, and then they secure them an apprenticeship
in a shop." H.-A. Fregier, vol. 1, Pl'. 98-100. [a3a,3J
There's }Jrass in our pockets,
Piene, let's go live it up;
On Mondays, don't you know,
I love to knock about.
I know of a sixpenny wine
That's not half bad,
So let's have some fun,
Let's go up to the barriere.
H. Gom'don de Genouillac, Les Refrains de la rue, de 1830 a 1870 (Paris, 1879),
1'.56.
'"And what wine! What variety-from hordeaux to burgundy, from burgundy to
full-bodied Saint-Georges, to Liinel and the South s Frontignan and from there to
sparkling champagne! What a choice of whites and reds-from Petit Macon or
chahlis to Chambertin, to Chateau I,arose, to sauterne, to Yin du Roussillon, and
Ai' Mousseux! Bear in mind that each of these wines produces a different sort of
intoxication? and that with a few bottles one can pass through all the intervening
stages from a Musard quadrille to ,loLa Marseillaise," from the wanton pleasures of
the cancan to the fiery ardor of revolutionary fever ? thence to return, with a hottle
of champagne, to the cheeriest carnival mood in the world! And only France has a
Paris? a city in which European civilization attains its fullest flowering? in which
all t.he nerve fibers of European history are intertwined, and from which arise at