Les Universités Populaires 1900-1901, Paris et banlieue
The Popular Universities 1900-1901 --- Paris and Suburbs
Cahiers de la Quinzaine appearing twenty times per year Paris 8, rue de la Sorbonne, ground floor
The Popular Universities, Paris and Suburbs, 1900-1901
All the copy for this cahier was provided to us by the Society of Popular Universities.
In preparation:
The Popular Universities, 1900-1901. --- Departments. A large cahier of at least one hundred pages.
Gabriel Seailles
Introduction
The reports we publish in this Bulletin were written by the secretaries of the Popular Universities they concern; by their mere compilation they constitute a precious document on the general development of the Popular Universities and on the particular life of each one.
After the brilliant inauguration of the Cooperation of Ideas, when one saw groups spring up spontaneously in the various districts of Paris where the names of manual workers and intellectual workers mingled, one might have feared that it was merely a fad, a passing fashion. Stormy days bring sudden swarms of buzzing flies that vanish with the last rolls of thunder.
Nothing of the sort happened. Those people whom fear had for a moment given the illusion of being generous withdrew, closed their purses, placed their hopes once more in the mediocrity that discourages insolence: we do without them. The Popular Universities have continued to multiply in Paris and in the provinces; they have endured and they live. Unlike the patronages that shrewd or benevolent bourgeois create and direct, many owe their birth to workers who invited intellectuals to come among them and speak. The need thus creates the organ that must satisfy it and that it will modify.
One must not imagine, moreover, that the Popular Universities are all conceived on a uniform model; they are very diverse, adapt themselves to circumstances and to their milieu, proportioning their means of action to their resources, to the demands of those who frequent them; some have a place of their own where they hold their meetings and give their lectures; others receive the hospitality of the Bourse du Travail, of a cooperative, or obtain the use of a town hall meeting room or a school yard; some are nomads that travel through the city from one suburb to another, that go beyond the city into neighboring villages and workers’ centers, extending the circle of their action to the extent of their powers. Thus, to consider the Popular Universities from the outside, in their resources, in their organization, in their methods, nothing is more diverse; each is born from the initiative of its own members; each is autonomous, gives itself its laws, adapts to the needs of the region, to the degree of culture of the inhabitants. Through them something is accomplished outside the State, without its help, without its support, without also the tyranny of a central authority that tends to make everything uniform.
But these multiple groupings, each of which enjoys its full independence, which seem to be unaware of one another, are not, truthfully speaking, strangers to each other; all feel bound by a bond that, though moral, is no less strong. The Popular Universities of Paris and the suburbs are not federated, attached to a single central body that would coordinate their action; but they know one another and freely collaborate: each month their secretaries meet at the headquarters of the Society of Popular Universities, pool their experiences, discuss their interests, sometimes make decisions, organize a celebration like the one we are giving on March 2 in honor of Victor Hugo. Throughout the country, from Lille to Marseille and Montpellier, unknown friends know they are working toward the same end. The feeling of this cooperation sustains their courage. In the realm of moral things, one is often tempted to despair; immaterial facts escape measurement; each person is aware of being able to do very little, but the great effort one makes, the small result one obtains, is multiplied by millions of similar efforts and results: the future will tally up the good that has been achieved.
The Popular University is not frozen in an invariable form; it modifies itself according to the needs to which it must adapt; it is something supple, mobile, and alive; but whatever form it takes, the same spirit creates and animates it. If it lives, if it resists the causes of dissolution that threaten it --- lack of resources, sectarianism, exploitation by politicians --- it is because, as I have already said, it is not merely “university extension,” a rival to adult courses, programs, courses, lectures, and examinations; it is because it marks a moment in the normal evolution of our democracy, because, in the thought of the worker, it must help toward the end that alone truly interests and impassions him --- I mean his economic emancipation.
It seems that the people are deciding to leave the period of waiting and dreaming to enter that of clear thought and positive action. The workers call to themselves those who know, because they sense in science a force they cannot do without. The intellectuals answer this call. They go to the people sincerely, without ulterior motive, because they too need the people, because they wish to entrust to them what they hold most precious, the goods without which it would no longer be worth living. They see what is absurd and monstrous in deliberately maintaining within a society an army of barbarians that could overrun it in a day of fury and drunkenness. To save from civilization what for them truly constitutes it, all that humanity has added of the human to nature --- art, science, morality, the great collective work of all who for centuries have labored and thought --- they place it under the safeguard of the people, striving to give them its understanding and love. Thus is sealed the alliance of labor that will no doubt one day succeed in subordinating the forces that exploit and oppress it.
The spirit of the Popular Universities corresponds to what those who frequent them expect of them: it is a positive and secular spirit. Curiosity does not turn first to the unknowable. Dogmas resting only on the authority of those who affirm them are rejected; one intends to submit only to reason; one demands facts or proofs. The people are discovering what Bacon proclaimed as early as the sixteenth century, that knowledge is power, that one must know in order to foresee and to be able. The people are coming to understand the danger of taking what one desires for what is, and they see that all action upon nature presupposes an understanding of the necessary laws that determine the possible, and they ask of science what it alone can give --- the method that allows effort to be aligned with the laws of things. Nature is a formidable machine that crushes the ignorant and the clumsy, but that carries those who know how to take the direction of its forces and make them converge in the very direction they wish to go. The worker does not accumulate knowledge for pleasure or for glory; he asks of science an education of the mind and will, intellectual virtues, and truths that illuminate the road he wants to travel; he does not separate thought from action.
The Popular University is not an accident, an amiable fancy of philanthropic bourgeois; it is the work of the workers themselves; it responds to a new orientation of their thought. At the same time as the Popular Universities, corporate groupings multiply, cooperatives of consumption and production, all the works of social solidarity and real emancipation that prepare the future instead of passively waiting for it. It seems that the era of Apocalypses is closed, that people are weary of raising up the image of the earthly Jerusalem in the crash of sonorous words, in the smoke of pipes and the fumes of alcohol, at the very moment when bodies are becoming intoxicated, when nerves are breaking down, when man is destroying in his intelligence and his will the instruments necessary for his deliverance and justifying his slavery. The workers have had enough of waiting for the great day, when the Messiah, who is now called the Revolution, will do for them by sudden miracle what they will not have known how to do for themselves; they are discovering the illusion of this providence without God that is charged with producing effects without cause. They want to begin something, to set to work on multiple points, to rank questions and efforts; they calculate their forces, they take account of resistances, they learn through contact with facts, they learn that these facts have laws that cannot be violated with impunity, and they want the science that permits effective action. Moreover, they neither deny nor betray their old faith; they renounce none of their hopes; they are simply passing from dream to science and action, from utopia to the ideal, if it is true that the ideal is the idea conceived in its relation to the possible --- that is to say, to the conditions that make it possible to realize.
The people do not ask the intellectuals for a new ideal; they have an ideal, they hold fast to it; they ask them for a method and for means of action. Great would be the illusion of those who would come to speak to them of the need to believe and to hope: they believe and they hope. But they refuse henceforth to transport their beliefs and hopes into the beyond of inaccessible paradises, whose vain promise cradled their misery when they despaired of bringing any other remedy. Their faith remains on the earth; it is on the earth that they want to act; it is the present life they want to make better, and they place their trust in the progress of human science and power. They refuse a supposed unity of minds, purchased at the expense of free inquiry and critical reason, founded on dogmas that, escaping the control of all our means of knowing, can only be decreed by an infallible authority. They know that all liberties are sacrificed in the freedom of thought, and they are not tormented by the thirst for eternal beatitudes that are generously offered to them. Accustomed to owing only to themselves their daily bread, they take on the task that no God has yet troubled himself to accomplish: justice in the relations between men.
To accomplish this task, they have no use for theology, metaphysics, or blind faith; they need a lucid intelligence and a firm will, the methods and the knowledge that allow man to make the natural fatalities concur with his ends, fatalities from which he liberates himself only after having traced them back to their causes. The people are defended against preachers of dead morals and religions by their living faith.
The very sincere young people who see the salvation of our society in a return to the old dogmas are archaeologists, men of letters, or better yet, moved artists who are enchanted by all that these dogmas have created of beauty in the past --- prayers, hymns, cathedrals, and still more, heroic or charming lives whose memory has mingled since their childhood with their highest thoughts, their purest sentiments. They resemble those last pagans who saw in the crucified one only a barbarous god, jealous of all joy, enemy of all beauty, and who anxiously watched the fading of the luminous forms that for so long had radiated in the verses of poets and the marbles of sculptors --- Apollo, Zeus, Pallas, and divine Aphrodite, whose smile remains mingled with the light waves that kissed her bare feet at the hour of her birth. But nothing that deserves to live dies entirely. The name of Apollo has remained on the lips of the poet, and the sculptor still seeks the form of Aphrodite. There is room for the god of voluntary suffering as for the gods of beneficent joy in the pantheon of human memory.
Condemned to early labor, to the hard apprenticeship of life, the people do not have the leisure to take pleasure in the vision of a past whose distant image, simplified and embellished, lends itself without resistance to the caprice of our dream. They know only that in the past the weight of society pressed still more heavily on the shoulders of the poor, and their good sense warns them that aged dogmas, weakened by time, will not be capable henceforth of doing what they were powerless to do when they reigned supreme. Enclosed in the present by the life that presses upon them, they turn their gaze not toward the past, from which they have nothing to expect, but toward the future, which is the possible --- what does not yet exist, what remains to be done. Less burdened with memories, their mind is more accessible to new facts, to what is original and as it were unprecedented in modern society; they are without theory; their only education is that of work and life; the direct feeling of the evils from which they are the first to suffer leads them to seek and to welcome the idea of necessary reforms. They take things as they are; they do not linger to probe the intentions of God; they accept the world as it is given to them, as the material to which they will apply their intelligence and their will. Their morality is not to obey the orders of a celestial sovereign; it is action on the earth; it consists in doing one’s work as a human being, in improving human society. Their ideal and their faith are summed up in the will for the reign of justice on earth.
But if mystical faith, with its timeless hopes, can shut itself up in contemplation and prayer, the one who wants to act, to modify what is, sooner or later discovers that it is not enough to announce that something is going to happen and to cross one’s arms. The word of man is not creative. To speak is not yet to act; to act, one must translate one’s ideal into defined ends conceived in their relation to the means that make it possible to achieve them. Positive action presupposes science, the condition of power. “We need conscious men” is one of the phrases most often heard in the Popular Universities. Understand that things do not happen by themselves, but through the intelligence and energy of individuals. Society is only an abstraction when one separates it from the living elements that compose it. The individual must act upon himself and upon others, create the new sentiments without which the society of tomorrow will be only an unprecedented form of the old tyrannies. The Popular University responds to this consciousness of the necessity of the effort of each for the salvation of all. It will live, it will develop, if socialism, taking this word in the broadest sense, ceases to be a general philosophy of history, a theory of necessity that allows one to wait for the good instead of creating it, because it is already real in the laws of social evolution; if it passes from the theoretical and mystical phase to the realist, positive, and practical phase; if it no longer limits itself to the constitution of political parties, of sects that divide, oppose, and tear one another apart; if it resolves itself into multiple works, linked to one another, that provide the moral and social education of all who collaborate in them, simultaneously beginning the future society and preparing men capable and worthy of building it.
Gabriel Seailles
The documents that follow relate only to Popular Universities of Paris and the suburbs. It is natural to classify in a first group the Parisian Popular Universities.
The Popular Universities of Paris and the suburbs differ greatly from one another; they present, however, great similarities as well, having been born and developed in a defined milieu under the influence of almost identical intellectual preoccupations.
One will not find below special information on all the Popular Universities. The Society of Popular Universities received reports only from those that wished to make known some particularity of their recent birth, their development, their situation. And the reports published here were all written in April-May 1901; they therefore do not indicate the current situation; they show the results of the winter of 1900-1901.
For documentation on the Popular Universities, one may ask the Society of Popular Universities for the brochure it published directly, containing the reports for the winter of 1899-1900.
Reports
La Fraternelle, Third Arrondissement April 1901
We have a premises specially assigned to the Popular University of the third arrondissement; its location is quite good, since we are in the most populous and most advanced quarter of the third arrondissement; unfortunately, we are cramped for space, rents being very high and our resources relatively small; despite this, thanks to the libertarian school that sublets its premises to us for 600 francs per year, we manage to cover the rental costs without too much difficulty. The administration has been reduced to its simplest expression, meaning that while there is an association, there are no statutes properly speaking, those that exist having only very little value; the active members are those who regularly attend the lectures, and the adherent members are, in short, those who come when they please. Those who are part of the council belong to the category of active members, and we have arranged things so that there is no authority, no domination; each has a defined function; it is up to each to manage, but not one of those on the council has more rights than another.
The normal resources consist of the very regular dues of the active members; several of them even pay beyond their dues, without being taxed in any way; one takes charge of the correspondence costs, another of the purchase of various small items useful to our work; others, finally, carry out carpentry work free of charge, or give books, etc., but all these manifestations of the will of free men are included in extraordinary receipts; we would like to have still more abnormal resources, for while the regularity of the former serves us well, the irregularity of the latter is amply compensated by their real value.
Adherent members contribute an average of 50 francs per month (that is, 100 subscriptions); active members contribute roughly the same; which gives us about 100 francs per month guaranteed; alas! they represent the totality of our expenses.
Up to now, our lectures take place on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week, with absolute regularity. We chose these three days by preference because they are most generally favored by families, and three days per week suffice to satisfy those most hungry for science and literature.
In addition to these lectures, we organize once a month a friendly meeting between audience members and lecturers --- remarkable especially in that the lecturers never come, which I understand very well.
Despite the absence of the principal interested parties, these small gatherings serve to justify the title of our Popular University; people talk about various things, families get to know one another, appreciate one another; university members of both sexes compete in enthusiasm, and generally these monthly celebrations end with a very successful little impromptu concert.
We do not stop there; we organize each month a literary and musical evening or matinee; the first, lavish, took place in the festival hall of the town hall of the third arrondissement; another took place at the old premises of the Popular University, 14, rue de la Corderie, where the tragedy of Andromaque was read with perfect talent and merit. Finally, in March last, the rue de Montmorency saw the blossoming of a new company that superbly performed Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme; this series of successes encouraged us, and we are preparing another evening for April 28 with Article 330 by Georges Courteline; various songs, recitations, and musical pieces will round out the evening. I have little space left to speak of our plans for next winter; however, I want to assure you that we are increasingly seeking to make the Popular University an intellectual center, a hearth of mutual and emancipatory education. The results obtained to date indicate that we must continue on the same path.
There is, however, an entirely personal proposal that I wish to make, one that emanates from no one --- I mean that I alone am responsible for it. Being essentially communist and very fond of social art, I would like each citizen to bring their share of art to our Popular Universities; that there be founded a sort of social museum, in one of the Popular University premises, where each would bring something beautiful and truly artistic, anonymously, solely to create the social museum; and by thus exciting the sense of aesthetics in each person, perhaps we could achieve a very fine result. It would be, in short, the museum of the Popular Universities.
Union Mouffetard, Fifth Arrondissement
The Union Mouffetard is installed at 76, rue Mouffetard, in premises specially assigned to it. It comprises: a large hall for talks; a library containing more than 2,500 volumes, periodicals, and newspapers; several rooms of lesser dimensions: a games room, a room for medical consultations, a room reserved for group meetings or special courses. The annual sum needed for the running of the work is approximately 5,000 francs. One can estimate that the subscriptions and donations of members amount to roughly 2,500 francs. Lectures take place every evening. The number of listeners is rarely more than 150, except for the Sunday evening sessions, which attract a considerably larger audience. From January 1 to April 20, 1901, 745 registrations were counted; the number of members who regularly paid their monthly dues is approximately 380 to 400.
The experience of the first year had shown the ineffectiveness of isolated talks, unconnected, given by lecturers foreign to the house. The Board of Directors succeeded this year in organizing a methodical teaching program directed by professors from the Sorbonne and the Ecole Normale, who accepted the functions of delegates. Each delegate ensured the weekly service of his study group, in collaboration with a worker member. As much as possible, subjects belonging to a specific science or a particular order of research were treated on a fixed day of the week. Our listeners knew, upon arriving, which delegate they would find, what kind of discussion or study they would participate in. Thus precious bonds of intimacy and trust could form between the comrades who taught and those who came regularly to hear them. Ideas were not thrown about at random by strangers whom one knew one would never see again, but presented with continuity and method, discussed at length, accepted or rejected with reflection and freedom.
Monday (delegate: Francois Simiand, agrege of the University) is devoted to economic questions and professional studies. Topics treated include cooperatives of production and consumption in France, England, and Belgium; trade unions, their methods, organization, and aim. Several trade union activists, particularly from the Federation du Livre, gave practical presentations: the Federation du Livre, labor tribunals, union labels, etc. The lessons from the Socialist School, beginning in March, came to complement and broaden this program.
Tuesday (delegate: A. Jarde, agrege of the University) is reserved for the political history of contemporary Europe.
Wednesday (delegate: Leon Deshairs, licencie es lettres) is reserved for the history of art. Sessions are accompanied by projections. Among the subjects treated, let us note architecture in Paris (7 talks); French sculpture in the nineteenth century (5 talks); the excavations of Mycenae and Troy. Every month there is a walk through a museum. One evening per month is reserved for listening to musical works, preceded by a brief talk: one was devoted to Schumann, one to Berlioz, one to Pierre Dupont.
Thursday (delegate: Louis Lapicque, maitre de conferences at the Sorbonne) is devoted to the physical and natural sciences, considered in their applications. These talks are accompanied by experiments whenever possible. Let us note the following subjects: How should we eat (6 talks); the brain and intelligence (3 talks); what we owe to the Sun (2 talks); man and animals, comparative anatomy (3 talks).
On Friday, a series of lectures was given under the direction of Gustave Lanson, maitre de conferences at the Sorbonne. They dealt with the Masters of the Modern Conscience --- that is, the writers who since the sixteenth century have most contributed to spreading the essential ideas that form our consciousness.
Saturday (delegate: Frederic Rauh, maitre de conferences at the Ecole Normale) was devoted to questions of social morality: How to form a social belief? Social justice; the right to the full product of one’s labor; the development of solidarity, etc.
Although the Union has endeavored to present coordinated series of talks designed to leave fairly complete notions and lasting memories, it has not neglected to keep its audience abreast of current affairs. The law on associations and related questions (Jesuit morality, congregations and education), the judgments of President Magnaud, the Foureau mission, the Finnish coup d’etat, the white lead question, were the subject of talks and discussions.
Sunday is devoted to literary and musical evenings. The program is infinitely varied. We note, for example: Philoctetes, by Sophocles; Orphee, by Gluck; Article 330 and Le Client serieux, by Courteline.
Let us add that a group for dramatic reading has formed among the members of the Union. Its development will provide the Sunday evenings with precious and faithful contributions.
The Union has done more and better than found a teaching program. In the Popular University there are not pupils and professors, but comrades who discuss and live together. Association in all its forms has been encouraged within the Union. Very diverse groups have formed --- groups of comrades and friends united by the similarity of their occupations and tastes, attached to one another by the daily practice of life in common: groups for dramatic and musical evenings, for German, English, fencing, for professional and technical studies. Other associations already formed have come to ask us for shelter (Young Socialists group). Finally, judging sterile any work of democratic education that addresses adults and neglects children, we have formed for the children of our comrades, boys and girls, a Thursday patronage.
Our premises tend to become the refuge of all works of democratic propaganda. The Federation of Secular Youth gave several of its lectures in our halls; the sections of the League of the Rights of Man of the fifth arrondissement came to organize themselves there; the Socialist School, which at present exercises such a powerful influence, came to install itself in our house. This sufficiently indicates the tendencies of the Popular University. The general assembly of December 16, 1900, wished to affirm the rigorously secular character of the work by issuing the following resolution: “Under no circumstances may the Board of Directors allow to speak as a lecturer any person who is professionally invested with a confessional character.” It inscribed in the statutes the following rule: “The presentations and discussions taking place at the Union shall be free and may bear on all political and religious questions, on the condition that they are placed on rational and positive ground.” It intended to declare thereby that there would be no reserved questions, and that it claimed the right of rational investigation for all problems.
The Popular University of the fifth arrondissement believes it has thus remained faithful to the program it set for itself and to the mission it was to fulfill. One may consider that today, from the standpoint of guiding ideas as much as material organization, it has passed from the phase of trials and groping to that of definitive constitution.
The Secretaries
Read and approved in a meeting of the administrative committee, April 20, 1901.
Voltaire, Eleventh Arrondissement April 1901
On the initiative of a few comrades, a first meeting took place on March 19 last. The newspapers had announced it, and this call gathered about 60 persons. The founding of a Popular University in the center of the eleventh was decided in principle, and a provisional committee of 15 members was named to draw up statutes, find premises, etc.
After several meetings of this committee, we had a general assembly on April 12; the name “Voltaire” was adopted, as were the statutes; a permanent committee was named with the mandate to organize. We found premises at 140, rue Saint-Maur, fairly well suited for our meetings, since it was previously a Masonic temple. The rent is 820 francs per year, payable by term and in advance, plus taxes.
We currently have 130 registered members; our resources will therefore be the subscriptions of these members, whose number we shall try to increase through active propaganda. We shall also have, we hope, some subsidies and the sacrifices that the better-off among us can make.
Starting at the beginning of the fine season, it will be difficult for us to seriously organize lectures in our premises, but in any case we shall give readings followed by discussions there, and we shall try to establish a permanent schedule so that the premises are open every evening, whether there is a lecture or not. In addition, we shall try Sunday outings: lecture-concerts in the countryside.
We are too recently born to have very definite plans, but we hope that our good will shall make up for our inexperience, and that by next autumn our organization will allow us to do useful work.
At present the bourgeois element rather dominates among our 130 members (merchants, industrialists, doctors, engineers, commercial employees, traveling salesmen); the milieu in which we are establishing ourselves will, we think, allow us to bring in the manual working element broadly; that is the goal of the Popular University, and it is indispensable to its success.
This can still be only a simple birth announcement. The child is doing well; it is up to us to make it live!
Diderot, Twelfth Arrondissement May 1901
In November 1900, an appeal addressed to all democrats of the twelfth arrondissement gathered, in a hall on the rue Rondelet, a large audience that had come to study the advisability and means of founding a Popular University.
From the outset of the meeting, one could see that the work was already founded, for the unanimity of citizens adopted the principle and, moreover, manifested their will to act quickly and well. Then and there, statutes were voted, a Board of Directors was named, and the date of the opening ceremony was fixed for the last Sunday of November.
The first thought of the young Popular University was to have its own place. To this end, it sublet premises at 8, rue Rondelet, large enough to hold three hundred persons, and immediately installed itself with its own furniture. Voluntary contributions, subscriptions, and gifts, from either individuals or democratic societies, allowed it not only to acquire the indispensable furniture but also to install a veritable small stage with sets, wings, etc., thanks to which weekly entertainments are offered to the families of members, where they can find rest from the fatigues of the week.
It was in these material details that the spirit of the new “university members” was immediately manifested. Each one indeed contributed; expenses, thanks to the collaboration of volunteer workers, were reduced to the purchase of raw materials.
The opening ceremony, where no one entered without paying the monthly subscription, aroused such a wave of enthusiasm that more than a hundred persons had to be turned away, and a great number who had taken their cards could not enter the overcrowded hall.
Under these happy auspices, the young University developed; now it lives and will, through the collection of the subscription of 50 centimes per month, cover its general expenses once, fully known, it has been able to gather around itself all those who seek this type of organization.
Lectures are given three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday), by scholars, philosophers, and men of letters.
Sunday evenings are occupied by performances or concerts. Along with light pieces, masterpieces of classical literature and music are given. It must be admitted that this is one of the causes of the University’s success. Families find in these evenings a most precious element of entertainment, a pleasure that, while inexpensive, draws them away from the horrible cafe-concert.
One of the causes of the Society’s success was also its absolutely democratic character. All members participate in the administration and management of the University. A Board of Directors, appointed for one year, is, it is true, in charge of the material work, but each month, in a general meeting, it gives an account of its mandate, both moral and financial. This common action of administrators and members creates constant bonds between them and attaches each more closely to the work for which each effectively labors.
When the winter season resumes, the Popular University Diderot hopes to be able to add to its service of lectures and celebrations a library with an on-site reading and work room, and other services designed to facilitate for all the acquisition of knowledge useful for the emancipation of thought.
Perhaps even certain lectures, becoming periodic, will constitute a teaching of a truly university character; perhaps even courses will be founded --- courses of elementary or professional instruction.
That is the secret of the future.
In any case, the Popular University “Diderot,” though still young, has proved what can be done with will, when one walks in the path of progress through science and reason.
Le Contrat Social, Popular University of the Chaillot and Porte Dauphine districts (Sixteenth Arrondissement) April 1901
The first concern of the administrative committee upon the founding of Le Contrat Social, the Popular University of the sixteenth arrondissement, was not only to spread higher popular education and instruction among workers of both sexes, but above all to bring together all classes of individuals, whether intellectual or manual, in order to study together all practical means, and to win their emancipation through justice and truth --- some by teaching what they hold from science through their previous studies, others by bringing out the value of their often unrecognized labors, their sufferings and miseries; to do useful work in this way by concentrating all forces and participating in the creation of a future society founded on labor.
And since it considered that alcoholism is one of the principal enemies of the goal to be attained, it needed a meeting place other than the wine merchant’s; it set to work and, after many disappointments, succeeded in renting a shed that it fitted out to hold lecture-discussions; it installed a small stage that allowed it to give literary and artistic evenings or matinees.
But at what cost did it achieve this result! Each contributed their share of labor, whether financially or manually.
And one can see today at 12, rue Herran, in this arrondissement said to be rotten with clericalism and capital, a premises assigned to a popular university, an authorized association managed by a Board of Directors and two sub-committees, one responsible for organizing the lectures on Wednesdays and Fridays of each week, the other for the literary and artistic evenings and matinees.
In addition, a library of three hundred volumes is available to members on lecture days.
As for the resources of Le Contrat Social, they have consisted up to now of gifts, collections, and monthly subscriptions; the committee will only be able to establish them properly at the end of this year, given that our association is only six months old and is still in the period of formation.
This is why, before thinking about plans for next winter, the committee is concerned about this summer. It does not believe it possible to establish the Popular University year as the school year, that is, from October to July. It believes it very useful for the work to take advantage of the fine season.
It is certain that workers, for example those in construction, if they are not idle, work only very short days in winter, and their work done in the open air, in rain, snow, and cold, does not give them heart to leave their homes in the evening, where misery and hunger often reign, if not sickness.
Factory workers work late hours, leave their work very late, and consequently cannot attend our meetings, or else we would be asking too much of them, and their devotion to the cause cannot extend to the abnegation of their fatigues and sorrows.
The committee hopes that, despite the habit of intellectuals of finishing their work in July to go on vacation and rest from their studies, whether in the country or at the seaside, some of them will break with the custom and come in summer to discuss with the worker, who is much happier, for the days are long, the sun is warm, and unemployment much less frequent.
And it is there that we shall be happy to observe that the intellectuals have practical will as well as eloquence.
L’Education Sociale de Montmartre, Eighteenth Arrondissement April 1901
The progress of our Popular University, which was created in March 1900, has continued very regularly.
The number of our members has risen notably, for personal cards have been gradually replaced by family cards. Thus the Popular University today comprises one hundred and forty personal cards and one hundred and twenty family cards. If one considers that the family card corresponds to at least three persons, one can say that five hundred persons participate in turn in the lectures of the Popular University.
Series of lectures have been organized; they have been perfectly successful, and we persist in thinking that this is the method that should generally be applied in organizing lectures.
Lectures take place on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Every two weeks, on Saturday, the lecture is replaced by a musical and literary evening.
On Mondays and Fridays, courses in photography and shorthand take place, to which a music course will soon be added.
Some sections of workers’ unions have established weekly meetings in our premises.
The library is open every evening, except Sunday.
We have organized every Tuesday afternoon meetings devoted to questions of particular interest to women. The lectures, generally given by women, are followed by readings and music. The meeting ends at the time when the children leave school.
The daytime meetings have the advantage of allowing access to the Popular University for women whose family occupations keep them home in the evening.
They tighten the bonds of intimacy that unite all the members.
We have nothing to add to the information given in last year’s report concerning the organization and resources of the Popular University.
Madame W.
La Maison Commune, Nineteenth Arrondissement May 1901
Our Popular University owes its birth to the collaboration of a few socialist workers and a few bourgeois of the “model” type now customarily called intellectuals.
During the hesitations and delays inseparable from the creation of a work we wanted to be strong and lasting, we had the good fortune of finding the support of an educational institution in the quarter.
Thus armed against material difficulties and passing discouragements, we were able to gather at our constitutive meeting, which took place in October 1900, about forty activists whose devotion has not faltered. From that day dates the organization of the Popular University, directed by a committee of fifteen members, half workers, half bourgeois. The statutes were voted, following the model proposed by the Society of Popular Universities. Finally, thanks to the donations we had collected, we were able to secure premises that would truly be ours, a large shop on the rue Mathis, very near the rue de Flandre.
The necessary work was done to fit it out for its purpose, and our hall took on a bright and cheerful aspect, altogether inviting.
Wishing to make our inauguration a public and grand ceremony, we decided that it would take place not in our premises, which we judged too small, but in a school yard, and on December 9, under the chairmanship of M. Louis Havet, we had the great joy of seeing more than a thousand persons come to applaud our concert, which was splendid, and the exposition of our program delivered in a masterly fashion by M. Havet.
Our lectures began the next day on the rue Mathis, and from January on they became daily. Some were very brilliant. Our lecturers address all subjects: philosophy, history, literature, political economy, or science; as much as possible we organize them in series. We also have regular courses in drawing and sewing for young women, and in recitation for men.
Saturdays are scrupulously reserved for literary and musical evenings, organized for the most part with our own resources. We are simultaneously actors, musicians, directors, stage managers, etc. The favor of the public has so far rewarded our efforts in an almost unhoped-for manner.
The number of our members has remained at about 250, of whom 100 are families. The number of listeners varies considerably depending on the nature of the lectures. Only the Saturday celebrations regularly fill our hall, which holds about 200 persons.
On Sunday afternoons, the children of members can come to play at the patronage. In summer, they will be taken on walks. We have also organized for adults instructive or simply entertaining walks.
Following an incident, the general assembly formally declared itself against any party politics.
The free discussion of opinions has created between us a mutual esteem, and the title of “comrade,” exchanged by all, well expresses the cordiality of relations that reigns in our Popular University.
Madame T.
Fondation Universitaire de Belleville, Nineteenth Arrondissement
The Fondation Universitaire de Belleville is not, properly speaking, a Popular University. Created by a group of students, soon organized moreover through the progressive collaboration of worker members, it has set itself a double goal: first, to create relations of comradeship between those customarily called manual workers and intellectual workers; second, to create a popular university education --- that is, one founded on the very principles of the University: methodical studies and personal research; collaboration of teacher and student. The entire organization of the Fondation has from the beginning been conceived with this goal in view; it is fitting, however, to highlight two organs that, each on its side, respond to it most particularly and thus constitute the originality of the Fondation: the residents and the study groups.
People have sometimes, in speaking of the Fondation, failed to recognize the usefulness of the “residents” and have been surprised at the importance we attach to this creation. Article 8 of our statutes states: “The most important mechanism of the association, the group of residents, is formed either by students who wish to acquaint themselves with workers’ questions, or by foreign students or workers who wish to find in Paris a friendly hospitality, or by worker members active in the association for more than a year, admitted by the Executive Committee, and wishing to undertake a specific piece of work.” What constitutes the function of “resident” is not the fact of having one’s room, of “sleeping” at the Fondation: that is a convenience offered to the student who lives, as most often happens, in the center of Paris; whether he takes advantage of it or not matters little; it suffices that he be present every evening during the period he has set for himself. The resident is first, from the material and administrative point of view, a sort of manager responsible for overseeing the functioning of the association and the good upkeep of the whole house; for controlling the receipts of the beverage counter, the collection of subscriptions, etc. He must also introduce the lecturers, arrange for their replacement when they are prevented --- or if need be, fill in for them. But his principal role is the very one that corresponds to the first goal of the Fondation --- I mean the formation of relations of friendship among all its members, and, as is natural, more especially between the two elements that compose it, workers and students. It is he indeed who “receives” new arrivals, shows them around the premises, introduces them to the comrades present, informs them about the life and organization of the association.
“The resident, finally, is that familiar and quickly beloved figure that our worker comrades find every evening, that most of our student comrades know. The resident visits those of our members who are ill; he encounters the others here and there, at mealtimes, in his errands; this or that one of them invites him to come talk at his home. He is the soul of our association.” Since the creation of the Fondation, residents have followed one another without interruption. All have carried away from their stay lasting impressions; none has left his room without deep emotion. But among them, one of the most attached to the Fondation is certainly a worker comrade who, upon reading a newspaper article about the Fondation, had come from London, where he was working, to seek among us a solid intellectual education that, by giving him the possibility of entering the profession of letters to which he felt destined, would allow him to fulfill the social role he aspired to. He was to find at the Fondation, in addition to deep and sure friendships, the means, through serious discussion and incessant contact with men of very diverse educations and lives, to enrich his fund of knowledge and broaden the field of his observations. It is certainly to be hoped that the experience will be repeated; but even should it remain isolated, the Fondation would have found there one of its best reasons for being.
Study groups. --- By this we mean the meeting on a fixed day each week of all comrades interested in a particular order of questions. The subjects are surveyed methodically according to a program fixed in advance and discussed by each group at its first session. A few days before each meeting, a mimeographed summary of the lecture is given to the comrades, which allows listeners unfamiliar with the order of questions treated that evening to follow the lecture more easily, and those who already have some preparation to study the question beforehand, to do some special reading, and to bring to the discussion that will follow the exposition well-considered arguments. The study groups of the Fondation correspond in sum fairly exactly to the organization of higher studies, at the Faculty of Letters for example, and especially at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes.
It is fitting to note here that not all the groups have had the same success. One can indeed classify them as follows: philosophical, economic, artistic, historical, scientific, literary study groups.
Alongside the study groups, it is important now to point out an initiative that has appeared this year: a group of comrades --- six or seven --- agree to meet once a week to study in depth either a subject that touches them particularly but is too specialized to interest all the members of the association and fit into the program of a study group, or, as happened with the group I am speaking of, a work that was briefly discussed and simply mentioned in a lecture.
Such a group does not necessarily have a permanent duration: it dissolves of its own accord when it has finished the study for which it was formed. And this is very exactly what happens in those “University settlements” that served as a model for the Fondation, notably at Toynbee Hall, where we find a “Toynbee Elizabethan Society” (a group for the study of Elizabethan literature), a “Toynbee Shakespeare Society” (a group for the study of Shakespeare), etc.
Lectures. --- One day per week is reserved for lectures proper: current affairs lectures, travel reports, propaganda lectures given by various societies (League against Tuberculosis --- Society for Arbitration between Nations --- against white lead, etc.).
Library. --- About 2,600 volumes. Loans from April 1 to December 31, 1900: 732 volumes, of which: 400 novels, 54 books of philosophy, 51 of sociology, 29 of science; the average number of loans per month is 175 volumes.
School Thursdays. --- Founded last year by one of our comrades, reorganized this year under the direction of a committee of women who are active members of the association, they gather the children of members for a subscription of 20 centimes per month per child; lessons in reading and singing occupy the afternoon; one learns to make paper flowers, one watches projections, and… one has a snack. The young active members number 59.
Mutual Aid Group. --- This group aims to provide its members with assistance in case of illness; constituted by comrades within the association, it administers itself and naturally possesses an independent budget. Created January 1, 1901, it currently has 35 members. At the start, to build a reserve fund, members paid 1 franc per month; then the subscription was lowered to 50 centimes. Here is its balance sheet: Receipts: subscriptions … Francs 93 Proceeds from a raffle … 60 Total … Francs 153.50 Three payments were made: one of 10 francs 60, another of 52 francs 50, the third of 31 francs 50 --- making a total of 94 francs 50.
Premises. --- The Fondation is “at home”: a house with a garden. On the ground floor: lecture hall (150 seats), beverage counter, one resident’s room. On the first floor: library, reading room (reviews, various periodicals), meeting room. On the second floor, three rooms, one containing a billiard table, the other two serving as residents’ rooms. Finally, a theater hall occupies a separate wing.
Financial resources. --- These include: I. The subscriptions of active members (0.50 per month or 6 francs per year), still unfortunately insufficient to allow the Fondation to live on its own. --- II. The subscriptions of honorary members, some fixed (minimum 10 francs), others in the form of gifts. --- III. The beverage counter, whose receipts, previously independent and used to organize somewhat luxurious “teas,” now go into the general fund and provide a surplus of about 50 francs per month on average.
Plans. --- Various plans are under study or in the process of realization: I. From the intellectual and social point of view: 1. Creation of professional courses, for mechanical workers among others. 2. Organization in the Fondation’s halls of artistic exhibitions, thanks to the already assured cooperation of great contemporary artists. 3. For the summer season, excursions to the environs of Paris. --- II. From the point of view of propaganda and development of financial resources: 1. Creation of a periodical journal, either specific to the Fondation or shared with other Popular Universities and sold to members. 2. Development of the beverage counter into a consumer cooperative.
Results achieved. --- The Fondation, whose development dates from the end of 1898, opened its doors on November 5, 1899. On May 28, 1900, too cramped in the small pavilion at 151 rue de Belleville, it moved to number 19, its current premises. Today, at the end of April 1901, it has 753 members (of whom 470 workers, 181 students, and 122 honorary members) and 59 children. Two important gatherings made it known in Belleville and in the Latin Quarter: one, organized with the assistance of artists from the Comedie-Francaise, the Opera, the Opera-Comique, the Odeon, etc., and preceded by a talk by M. Chantavoine, brought together more than 300 Bellevillois. The other, in the Descartes amphitheater of the Sorbonne, gathered 500 students who, after the appeal of our comrade Ch. Charpentier expressing with noble and strong simplicity the meaning of the action we intended to exercise in Belleville and the greatness of the lessons we gathered there, applauded the address of M. Ernest Lavisse saying, in words that most of the newspapers reproduced, the “necessity of progress toward justice,” and showing collaboration at the Fondation as a means of effectively working toward it.
This was a precious encouragement: there is an even better one for the members of the Fondation, which is to know themselves friends, to have become so little by little, through incessant contact and loyal discussion, to become so each day more intimately. This is the reason for our confidence in the future: the Fondation Universitaire will live, because it is a house of work and friendship, and nothing but that.
La Semaille, Twentieth Arrondissement April 1901
La Semaille was inaugurated in July 1900 in the school yard on the rue des Pyrenees (near the rue de Menilmontant), under the chairmanship of M. Duclaux and with the assistance of the poet Maurice Bouchor. It is, I believe, the last born of all the Popular Universities of Paris. Its founding core was composed of mechanics. Since then, the number of members being 238, all trades are more or less represented. Immediately La Semaille installed itself at 13 rue du Cambodge, in premises consisting of two rooms; the entrance room reserved for the office and the library (containing about 800 volumes and pamphlets), and the other, larger, serving as a lecture hall and meeting place.
Our university functions under the direction of a secretary assisted by a sub-secretary and a treasurer, plus a council of thirty members subdivided into committees dealing with administration. Despite this, each member has the moral obligation to concern himself with common interests and by his actions to contribute to the good functioning of our association.
Up to now, except for a donation at the start (400 francs, I believe), La Semaille has been able to meet its needs from its own resources, from the subscriptions of its members at the rate of 50 centimes per person and 75 centimes per family.
We have only been able to offer our comrades three lectures per week up to now: Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays. These lectures are in turn historical, philosophical, sociological, scientific. In addition, one Sunday evening per month is devoted to musical concerts by M. de Soleniere. Children’s or friendly matinees and evenings often bring all the comrades together.
Up to now, the difficulties of the present moment and the little time we can devote to La Semaille have not allowed us to establish plans for next winter. But let the comrades be reassured: we shall always try to do better. Already we are organizing a small theatrical troupe that will soon be able to entertain while instructing.
All our devotion is committed to this work that is dear to us, and not to feel alone in our march toward emancipation will give us the courage to see it through.
L’Emancipation de Vincennes, Vincennes May 1901
“L’Emancipation de Vincennes” opened its doors in a season not very propitious for lectures, in high summer, in July 1900. This reason, combined with the fact that we find ourselves in a Masonic lodge, did not a little to make us vegetate for some months.
Although at the start the number of dues-paying members rose to about fifty, each Saturday about ten listeners crowded into the room preceding the main hall of the Lodge where we have since given matinees.
The inauguration celebration, which took place in November, was a great success for progressive ideas, a success that was rather difficult to expect in the midst of a clerical and militaristic population like that of Vincennes.
Since then we have always been growing, except during the period of bad weather.
We have said that L’Emancipation de Vincennes meets in the same premises as the Masonic Lodge; it is, however, independent of it, as well as of any other political group in the region. It was authorized by the Prefect of Police one month after its opening.
During the winter season, lectures took place on Wednesday and Saturday evenings; since the inauguration celebration, a matinee has been given regularly on the second Sunday of each month. We also had a visit to the Pasteur Institute, a lecture at the Louvre Museum, and finally a visit to the gas works at Saint-Mande.
In summer, lectures will take place on Saturday evenings only.
Despite the growing number of members, the subscriptions are not enough to ensure the existence of L’Emancipation de Vincennes. An average based on the experience of the past months allows us to count on one hundred monthly subscriptions, that is, an annual income of 600 francs. Since expenses exceed 1,000 francs, we therefore need to find forty francs each month, either through subsidies, or through gifts, or else by trying to reduce expenses, either by asking the municipality for premises, which would eliminate rent, gas, and heating costs, or by making lectures less frequent.
But it is not enough to live; one must progress. We have for next winter a plan for decentralization that could also be adopted by our comrades from other suburban Popular Universities, if they find themselves, as we do, in the midst of an indifferent population that must almost be sought out at home. We intend, instead of giving all our lectures in Vincennes, to organize them also in the canton, at Saint-Mande, at Fontenay-sous-Bois. Among the comrades who would attend these meetings, there would certainly be some who would take an interest in our work and come to swell the number of our members. This is, we believe, a question to study.
Germinal, Nanterre May 1901
What we said about “Germinal” last June, in the report published in bulletin number 2 of the Society of Popular Universities, has hardly changed since; our audience is almost exclusively working class and our program is to pursue a work of mutual, secular, and social education.
However, since June 1900 our field has expanded considerably.
First, “Germinal” organized a large outdoor celebration to which all the Popular Universities of Paris and the suburbs were invited, and this celebration was such a success that it exceeded all our hopes; then, Nanterre elected a clerical, militaristic, nationalist municipality, and these two combined causes --- the success of the celebration and the election of the new municipality --- have done not a little to create difficulties for us. Fearing our rapid success in Nanterre, we know not quite why, the Sisters, who run a private school, rented five vacant premises in the building where our headquarters was located, including that headquarters itself: hence our eviction.
So there we were without a home, and finding no landlord willing to rent to us. It was only after two months of searching that we finally succeeded in finding an entire house that was rented to us for the annual sum of 600 francs.
This premises consisted of a ground floor of three rooms and a kitchen, and a first floor of four rooms. A small ornamental garden in front, a large garden in the rear, and finally a basement level with the rear garden completed the property.
A comrade sublet the first floor for himself and his family, and we were thus able to establish ourselves in a manner that was, to a certain extent, cooperative; our comrade benefiting from a very modest rent for the space at his disposal, and we having the advantage of having someone on the premises who could maintain the place, and whose wife was willing to look after the library service and home lending.
From two of the ground-floor rooms we made a lecture hall by knocking down the partition wall: the third serves as our library. Finally, we hope soon to use the basement to create a temperance bar; we plan, as soon as the fine weather comes, to set up in the garden games of bowls, skittles, barrel, etc.
We currently have 135 member or family subscribers, of whom 50 are active members.
Our lectures take place twice a week and are attended by a regular audience of 30 to 40 comrades. This number sometimes rises to 60 or 80 when the subjects treated are of particular interest to our audience. Of this number, we have a good third of female attendance.
Finally, twice a month we give musical and literary matinees that are very well attended; every Sunday evening, family gatherings take place to which each contributes, either with a reading or a song.
We are currently organizing free courses in drawing and music theory for the members and children of members of the Popular University, and soon we shall have lecture-concerts on the history of music.
What is, in our opinion, most interesting is the intimacy of the relations that have developed between “Germinal” and “La Ruche,” the consumer cooperative of Nanterre. In addition to the firm material and moral support that the comrade administrators of “La Ruche” give us, they also turned to us for the organization of their annual matinee, which allowed them to eliminate some of their cafe-concert-style numbers --- ill suited to developing the tastes and sentiments of the public --- and to replace them with some fine verses recited by Maurice Bouchor, a lecture by comrade Charles Guieysse, and a little play by Courteline performed by “Germinal” comrades.
The side that certainly leaves the most to be desired in our little group is the budgetary standpoint, for our installation costs and the increase in our rent are hard to cover, but we have good hope and good confidence and are convinced that with these two factors one can accomplish anything.
L’Idee, Puteaux May 1901
The Popular University of Puteaux was established in November 1900, a date at which the development of these institutions was already very pronounced.
A few comrades had discussed the subject, and the general opinion was that the creation of a Popular University in Puteaux had every chance of producing a good result.
A large meeting was organized in the Festival Hall of La Revendication, a consumer cooperative, to receive memberships. Without producing the results we were entitled to expect, we nevertheless collected about thirty members. This was, in our view, more than enough, and the Popular University was founded with this nuance, however, that we were, like vagabonds, without a known domicile, the fundamental laws of property not permitting us to regard as such the dining room that one of our comrades was willing to lend us and which, moreover, was notoriously insufficient. Finally, after searching all over Puteaux, we ended up discovering a coal shed that seemed to suit us marvelously, given the modest price of the rental. After subjecting it to numerous washings and applying four coats of whitewash to the walls, we moved in and are still there, with the hope of leaving as quickly as possible. We are now 125 members and this number is gradually increasing.
Our financial resources consist purely and simply of our subscriptions, our Popular University comprising until now only workers; the few bourgeois elements that may exist in Puteaux are of a thoroughly clerical stripe.
However, we are convinced that we can live, given the working-class density in Puteaux, through the number of members. But for that, it is indispensable that we find a suitable premises where we can give celebrations and matinees on Sunday afternoons, to attract women and children to us. Regarding the latter, the institution of a secular patronage by the Popular University seems strictly necessary to us.
In summary, we look to the future with confidence. The dominant spirit in the Popular University is very broad; all questions are discussed there, and opinions that are often contradictory are expressed without departing from the most complete courtesy and with the will to reach understanding.
We are moreover all convinced that among existing organizations, only the Popular Universities, free of all political coteries and all sectarianism, can prepare men truly worthy of the free and just city of the future.
La Verite, Levallois-Perret
Fervent admirers of the work of the Popular Universities, conscious of the good they can do in our working-class milieus, and thinking that there was no reason for Levallois-Perret to remain outside this fine movement of social progress created in the great Parisian city, among a few comrades whom the events of recent years had brought to know and esteem one another, we founded La Verite in March 1900.
The long electoral period that came shortly after much delayed our initial organization, so that in summer, being still too few to solicit the help of lecturers, we called on friends of good will, and in turn, to enliven the session, a talk was given by one of them, always closely listened to, and sometimes even provoking a general exchange of ideas. In autumn, after our fine inauguration matinee, attended by more than seven hundred persons, a good number of memberships were secured and, moreover, having made ourselves known to a good public, we began, after announcements, our series of weekly lectures, being then assured of the precious assistance of the men who have devoted themselves to the cause of popular education.
Since that time, the average number of listeners at our sessions has varied from forty to eighty.
We are therefore functioning normally, and even legally. The impossibility of finding until now a suitable premises at a price within our means obliges us to remain for some time yet tenants of the Cafe Moderne, where we have, it is true, a fine hall at our disposal for the days that suit us.
Subscriptions are fixed at 50 centimes per member per month, or 75 centimes per family.
We are one hundred and twenty registered but can count on only about eighty for regularity of payment.
There then is the state of our resources; if they are not large, at least they are at present sufficient to cover our costs.
We have until now only one lecture day per week, Wednesday. We are to meet in general assembly every two months. Then we organize literary and musical matinees, as artistic as possible and absolutely free, adopting however the collection system, which is very well received and partly covers our expenses. These matinees are very successful: three hundred persons attended the last one.
The results obtained so far and the reception given to our work in certain circles allow us to hope for a certain success in the future, especially if we know how to deploy the desirable effort. So we intend to give another large celebration in autumn at the new premises of the Alliance des Travailleurs, a cooperative society of Levallois-Perret.
But we wish to add a second lecture day per week, even if we should have to stay where we currently are; but we hope by then to find premises, which would allow us to settle in our own place and thereby achieve the goal we all pursue, which is, we believe, to offer our friends a meeting place where one finds the good teaching that strengthens reason, and the wholesome entertainment so necessary for the relaxation and rest of the mind.
L’Avenir, Colombes April 1901
We infinitely regret that ideas of solidarity and humanity do not arouse in the secular element devotions and generosities similar to those enjoyed by the religious element. Our section knows something about this, unfortunately, for our social fund is so poor that we do not know how we shall manage to undertake next winter’s campaign. But only faith saves, say the Christians, and since we have the firm will to work no matter what for the intellectual development of our fellow citizens, we shall go to the last humanly possible efforts.
But it will be hard! Our commune is certainly one of the most refractory to ideas of solidarity, being inhabited in large part by employees, whose distinctive mark you must know --- the most ingrained couldn’t-care-less attitude.
But it is useless for me to dwell at greater length on this subject.
The public premises of the commune being few and very expensive to rent, we have been obliged to confine ourselves to the hall of the Masonic Lodge of La Garenne. This is most regrettable, given that when we were founded we wanted to give our lectures at various points of the commune, whose territory is very large, which is, moreover, we believe, one of the causes of our lack of success to date.
On the other hand, we cannot do as well as we would like to attract a greater number of listeners, our resources consisting solely of the subscriptions of 50 centimes that our some sixty members whom we have managed to recruit with such difficulty pay us, more or less regularly, and we do not think we shall see this number increase much.
From which it follows that, having little money, we cannot multiply free lectures, which are almost totally neglected by the population during the week, which obliges us to give mainly family celebrations on Sundays, which, while nearly covering the costs they occasion, at least give us the satisfaction of having people. This audience is, it is true, composed largely of indifferent persons who have come to amuse themselves rather than to learn, but whom the eloquence of our lecturers manages all the same to shake from their torpor by making them reflect on questions that can develop in them sentiments of which they are still unaware.
In sum, since our founding (November 1900) to May 12 next, we shall have had twelve meetings, of which eight were family celebrations!
We shall not hide from you that we are not more than moderately enthusiastic about these celebrations, which would end up making our Popular University seem like a singing society, which we do not want at all! If the concert is sometimes obligatory, especially on Sundays, we would still like to manage to banish cafe-concert vulgarities from it, by interesting our audience through absolutely literary performances accompanied by good and beautiful music.
To achieve this absolutely necessary result, we need help in recruiting good and devoted volunteer artists, who would come to our commune to awaken the soul of our fellow citizens by performing some of those beautiful poems that predispose one to understand and love life by wanting to make it better for all.
The Budgetary Question
The principal difficulties encountered by the Popular Universities of Paris are of a budgetary nature. These same difficulties are less in the suburbs and much less in the departments.
It is useful to point them out by publishing the following note by Edouard Dujardin, who has served as assistant secretary of the Society of Popular Universities since its founding and who knows the question well.
The Parisian Popular University needs to live a budget that can vary between 2,000 and 4,000 francs depending on the size of its premises and the price of rents in the quarter where it is located.
For the realization of this sum, it currently has at its disposal the subscriptions of its members, gifts, and subsidies. Gifts and subsidies will become less and less frequent, and it clearly appears that before long the Popular University will have to count for its survival only on its own resources.
The ordinary subscription common to almost all the Popular Universities is 50 centimes per month; which indicates for a minimum budget of 2,000 francs an average of 300 to 350 paying members per month. It is necessary to note that during the period from June to October, the life of the Popular University is almost suspended. Receipts are therefore less important. One would not well understand this decrease in receipts if I did not add that, contrary to all the habits of daily life, the Popular University member comes himself to pay his subscription. This system is harmful in that it allows the accumulation of arrears and thus drives away from the Popular University workers who can at a pinch pay 50 centimes or 1 franc but cannot disburse 2 francs 50 or 3 francs all at once.
Can the subscription be collected differently --- at home, for example? I do not think so, with the current organization.
However, one suburban Popular University has been seen, on the eve of paying a term of rent, without a sou in its coffers, to raise the sum in a few days by establishing home collection of overdue subscriptions.
This is a precious indication that it would be wrong to neglect.
But the subscription to the Popular University is an expense not yet foreseen in the family budget. It seems very difficult to me to present to the housewife a subscription receipt for an undertaking whose functioning she does not know, and especially for which she sees no immediate purpose. Let no one misunderstand the meaning of what I write; I mean by this that the housewife does not always have the time to frequent the Popular University, when she works outside the home, and especially if the household has children. What has been done for her? The lectures, for the most part, are not of a nature to interest her. In reality, perhaps nothing could have been done. Family cards have been created: I do not know if they have been much used beyond the Sunday matinees.
It is the struggle for survival. The organization of teaching in the Popular University has absorbed all vital energies. The most active among the members have been in turn secretaries of the association. The treasurer has been chosen from among the most level-headed, for that is how one ordinarily imagines a good treasurer. Has not the opposite of what should have been done been done?
At various times, people have been concerned about how the Popular University would survive materially in the future.
It has appeared that it had at its disposal a certain number of means. For example: the attachment of the Popular University to a consumer cooperative; the founding of a cooperative by the members of the Popular University; the organization of paid literary or musical Sunday matinees whose proceeds would go into the Popular University’s coffers; lastly, an increase in subscriptions has been considered.
I do not believe that a standard solution applicable to all the Popular Universities should be sought. This has been repeated many times: no Popular University resembles another; to know one Popular University is not to know all of them.
One Popular University has been able to obtain from a cooperative in its quarter, some of whose members were common to both groups, a renewable annual subsidy. It would be a great mistake for this Popular University to base its budgetary forecasts on the annual renewal of this subsidy. The distribution of the surplus in cooperatives is at the mercy of the general assembly of cooperators. The subsidy can legally be granted only by the general assembly. The general assembly is subject to the law of the majority. The majority is not always right.
I would better understand a grouping of cooperators belonging to a Popular University that would function within the very cooperative, each giving up to the Popular University coffers their share of the refund. I am surprised that in cooperatives, where opinions are so divided, this solution has not yet been put into practice.
A certain Popular University was formed within a cooperative; the new members joined both associations. The cooperative, which had been vegetating, considerably increased its turnover as a result. The grateful cooperative shelters the Popular University; it graciously keeps premises at its disposal, thereby relieving it of all material worry. There, it seems to me, is an excellent example.
Can the members of the Popular University found the cooperative that is to provide the means to keep the Popular University alive? This is, in my opinion, the most difficult solution to achieve. The Popular University does not generally possess members who have time to run a consumer cooperative. A cooperative administrator must be a good administrator, a good bookkeeper, a good grocer. Then the founding of a cooperative requires a considerable outlay: seven terms of rent in advance, fitting out of premises, goods to stock. A few thousand-franc bills are quickly absorbed. Some cooperatives have been known to be founded with much less money in their coffers, living simply on the credit extended to them by certain suppliers, particularly the wine supplier; but they thus delivered themselves into the hands of these suppliers who held them for a long time.
The organization by the Popular University of paid matinees, besides completely destroying the former moral conception of the Popular University, offers other drawbacks. Can one always hope to find volunteer artists? One will have the resource of creating an artistic group within the Popular University, but it is to be feared that one will quickly tire of listening to well-meaning comrades whose repertoire is limited and insufficient.
It remains to examine the possibility of an increase in subscriptions. I have already said that this increase seemed to me likely to be unfavorably received with the current system. The monthly subscription would have to be raised from 50 centimes to 1 franc or more, and one would have to be assured of an average of one hundred to one hundred and fifty paying members, which currently represents two to three hundred registered, for at the Popular University the average number of defections is considerable.
These defections must be limited at all costs. The Popular University subscription must at all costs be inscribed in the family budget.
For that, one must offer the woman other advantages than intellectual advantages, from which she can, at present, only imperfectly benefit.
Now, we have just received at the Society of Popular Universities a letter from a Popular University member of which here is the essential passage:
”… The Popular Universities are now created, they live, and will live a long time, I dare hope.
“Nevertheless, in order to secure a core, gather new memberships, and maintain the number of its members, do you not think that one should create alongside it a new undertaking, which would be its complement and would ensure its life?
“The members of the Popular Universities are for the most part small employees or workers.
“Their salaries are modest, and to meet the various needs of life in Paris, everyone knows that one must sometimes make sacrifices.
“When unfortunately illness enters the home, it is often misery and all its consequences.
“One has not been provident, through negligence if not through ignorance; one has not joined a mutual aid society, and in painful and difficult moments, one finds oneself alone to struggle against adversity.
“Do you not think that there is a question to study here?
“Could one not establish a mutual aid society among the active members of the Popular Universities?…”
Perhaps one could create at least within the Popular University a fund for medical and pharmaceutical assistance from which the member and his whole family would benefit.
Thus it would be possible to collect subscriptions at home; one would limit defections to the minimum possible; one would interest the woman in the good functioning of the association.
The subscription would be raised to 1 franc 50 or 2 francs, half of which would suffice for the assistance fund, and the other half would ensure the functioning of the Popular University.
Edouard Dujardin
List of the Popular Universities as of March 1, 1902
Paris: Le Reveil des First and Second, 14, rue Marie-Stuart. La Fraternelle du Third, 6, rue de Montmorency. L’Aube du Fourth, 24, rue du Bourg-Tibourg. Union Mouffetard, 56, rue Mouffetard. L’Egalite du Seventh, salle Rousselet, 21, rue Cler. L’Egalite des Ninth and Tenth, 6, rue Richer. L’U. P. du Tenth, 103, quai de Valmy. L’Ideal Social du Tenth, 5, rue de l’Hopital-Saint-Louis. La Cooperation des Idees, 157, faubourg Saint-Antoine. Voltaire du Eleventh, 140, rue Saint-Maur. Diderot du Twelfth, 8, rue Rondelet. Solidarite du Thirteenth, 4, rue Veronese. Union du Fourteenth, 5, rue Texel. L’Emancipation du Fifteenth, 38, rue de l’Eglise. L’Aurore du Fifteenth, 61, rue Boileau. Le Contrat Social du Sixteenth, 12, rue Herran. L’Aube Sociale du Seventeenth, 8, rue des Apennins. Le Foyer du Peuple du Seventeenth, 8, place Boulnois. L’U. P. des Batignolles, 71 bis, rue de La Condamine. L’Education Sociale de Montmartre, 3 and 5, rue Jules-Jouy. L’Enseignement Mutuel du Eighteenth, 41, rue de la Chapelle. La Maison Commune du Nineteenth, 27, rue Mathis. La Fondation Universitaire de Belleville, 19, rue de Belleville. La Semaille du Twentieth, 78, rue des Partants.
Suburbs: Alfortville and Maisons-Alfort: L’Idee, 6 bis, rue des Camelias, Alfortville. Argenteuil: L’U. P., boulevard Heloise (old town hall). Asnieres: Floreal, 17, rue de la Station. Bezons: Fructidor, maison Dubuisson, 7, quai de Seine. Charenton: L’Essor, 29, rue de Paris. Choisy-le-Roi: L’Education Mutuelle, 36, rue de Vitry. Clichy: L’U. P., 82, rue de Paris. Colombes: L’Avenir, salle de l’Etoile, 41, boulevard de la Republique, La Garenne. Levallois-Perret: La Verite, 46, rue Rivay. Les Lilas: Le Progres Social, 4, rue Bernard. Meudon: c/o M. Guichard, 4, rue Lavoisier. Montreuil-sous-Bois: Soirees ouvrieres, 15, rue des Ecoles. Montrouge: L’Effort, 33, rue du Marche. Nanterre: Germinal, 37, rue Sadi-Carnot. Saint-Ouen: L’U. P., c/o M. Lamotte, 8, rue Raspail. Puteaux: L’Idee, 15, rue Parmentier. Versailles: L’Institut Populaire, 15, rue Colbert. Villeneuve-Saint-Georges: L’Education Mutuelle, c/o M. Bedeaux, 11, rue de Crosne. Vincennes: L’Emancipation, 3, rue de l’Eglise.
Le Gerant: Charles Peguy
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