The Arcades Project - Operi

to him. m Eugene Buret, La Misere des classes laborieuses en Angleterre et en
France (Paris, 1840), vol. 2, p. 219. [a4a,3]
"If the vices of the lower classes were limited, in their effects, to those who indulged
in them, we may suppose that the upper classes would cease to concern
themselves with all these dismal questions, and would happily leave the world at
large to the sway of good and bad causes that rule over it. But . .. everything is
linked together. If poverty is the mother of vices, then vice is the father of crime;
and it is in this way that the interests of all the classes are conjoined." Eugene
Buret, La Misere des classes laborieuses en Angleterre et en France (Paris, 1840),
vol. 2, p. 262. [a4a,4]
·"Jenny the Worker brings to life one of the most terrible afflictions of the social
organism: the daughter of the working class . .. constrained to sacrifice her virtue
for her family, and to sell herself . . . in order to provide bread for her· loved
ones . ... As for the prologue to Jenny the -Wor'ker, it acknowledges neither the
play's point of departure nor the details of poverty and hunger." Victor Hallays­
Dahot, La Censure dl'antatUJae et Ie th!iatre, 1850-1870 (Paris, 1871), pp. 75-76.
[a4a,5]
"In the mind of the factory boss, workers are not men but forces, and expensive
ones at that-instruments more intractable and less economical than tools of iron
and fire . ... Without being cruel, he can be completely indifferent to the sufferings
of a class of men with whom he has no moral commerce, no sentiments in
common. Douhtless Madame de Sevigm was not an evil woman, . .. yet Madame
de Sevigne, while detailing the atrocious punishments meted out to the people of
Brittany who had rioted over a tax, Madame de Sevigne, the impassioned mother,
speaks of hangings and of thrashings ... in a light, cavalier tone that betrays not
the slightest sympathy . . . . I doubt that, under the rule of the current laws of
industry, there could be any more of a moral community between employers and
their workers than there was, in the seventeenth century, between poor peasants
and townsmen and a fine lady of the court." Eugene Buret, De la Misere des
classes laborieuses en Angleterre et en France (Paris, 1840), vol. 2, pp. 269-271.
[a5,1]
"'Many girls ... in the factories often leave the shop as early as six o'clock in the
evening, instead of leaving at eight, and go roaming the streets in hopes of meeting
some stranger whom they provoke wit.h a sort of calculated hashfulness.-In the
factories, they call this doing one's fifth quarter of the day." Villerme, Tableau de
l'etat physique et moral des ouvriers, vol. 1, p. 226, cited in E. Buret, De la Misere
des classes lahorieases (Paris, 1840), vol. 1, p. 415. [a5,2]
The principles of philanthropy receive a classic formulation in Buret: "Humanity,
and indeed decency, do not permit us to allow human heings to die like animals.
One cannot refuse the charitable gift of a coffin:' Eugene Buret, De la Misere des
classes laborieuses (paris, 1840), vol. 1, p. 266. [a5,3]