Chapter VII: In the Aisne

St.-Gobain--Paris and the Ile-de-France--Reclamation of the
commons--Mischievous haste in the Revolutionary transfer of
lands--The evolution of property and order in France and
England--The flower gardens of France--The home counties
around London compared with the departments around Paris--Superiority
of the French fruit and vegetable markets--The
military city of La Fère--A local cabbage-leaf--French farmers
and the Treaties of Commerce--Arthur Young at St.-Gobain--The
largest mirror in the world--The great French glassworks--'An
industrial flower on a seignorial stalk, springing from a feudal
root'--Evolution without Revolution--Two centuries and a half of
industrial progress--Labour in the Middle Ages--The Irish apostle
of North-eastern France--The forests of France--A factory in a
château--A centenarian royal porter--The Duchesse de Berri and
the Empress Eugénie--A co-operative association of consumers--A
great manufacturing company working on lines laid down under
Louis XIV.--Glass-working, Venetian and French--A jointstock
company of the 18th century--The old and new school of factory
discipline--French industry and the Terror--'Two aristocrats'
called in to save a confiscated property--St.-Gobain and the Eiffel
Tower--Royal luxuries in 1673, popular necessaries of life in 1889--How
great mirrors are cast--Beauty of the processes--The
coming age of glass--Glass pavements and roofs--The hereditary
principle among the working classes--Practical co-operation of
capital and labour--Schools, asylums, workmen's houses and
gardens, social clubs, and savings-banks--Co-operative pension
funds--A great economic family--Of 2,650 workpeople more than
50 per cent. employed for more than ten years--A subterranean
lake--The crypts of St.-Gobain and the Cisterns of Constantinople--A
spectral gondolier--A Venetian promenade with coloured
lanterns underground 125-161