Les Universités Populaires 1900-1901, Départements
The Cahiers de la Quinzaine have published:
The Liebknecht Affair, dossiers and documents, first cahier of the first series, out of print, no longer exists except in complete collections.
The international consultation of socialist militants on the Dreyfus Affair and the participation of Socialists in power under a bourgeois regime, inquiry opened in the Petite Republique in August 1899, fifth, sixth, eighth, eleventh cahiers of the first series, out of print, no longer exist except in complete collections.
Lionel Landry. --- Courrier de Chine, fifth cahier of the second series, out of print, no longer exists except in complete collections.
Andre Deus. --- Four Days at Montceau, ninth cahier of the second series, out of print, no longer exists except in complete collections.
Dossier. --- Expulsion of Nicolas Paouli, fourteenth cahier of the second series, one franc. We will return to this dossier.
Lionel Landry. --- Courrier de Chine, fourteenth cahier of the second series, one franc.
Official unofficial stenographic account of the French version of the fifth international socialist congress, held in Paris from September 23 to 27, 1900, sixteenth cahier of the second series, a very thick cahier of 216 pages, three francs fifty.
Felicien Challaye. --- Courrier d’Indo-Chine, seventh cahier.
Bernard Lazare. --- The Oppression of the Jews in Eastern Europe, the Jews in Romania, eighth cahier, two francs.
Tolstoy. --- An Unpublished Letter, addressed to Romain Rolland, one franc.
Georges Sorel. --- National Socialisms, fourteenth cahier.
Felicien Challaye. --- Russia Seen from Vladivostok, journal of an expelled person, fourteenth cahier of the third series, one franc.
Cahier of dispatches, seventeenth cahier of the third series, one franc.
Felicien Challaye. --- Impressions of Japanese Life. Edmond Bernus. --- Russia Seen from the Vistula. Jean Deck. --- Courrier de Finlande.
Rene Salome. --- Courrier de Belgique, eighteenth cahier, photograph of Tolstoy and Gorky walking together at Yasnaya Polyana. This photograph was taken by one of Tolstoy’s daughters. It was communicated to Deshairs by Dr. Schlepianoff. We had it reproduced in three hundred copies. We sell it for two francs.
We shall soon publish:
Jean Deck. --- Memoir and Dossier for Finland. Bernard Lazare. --- The Oppression of the Jews in Eastern Europe, the Jews in Russia. Bernard Lazare. --- The Oppression of the Jews in Eastern Europe, the Jews in Galicia. Bernard Lazare. --- Courrier de Galicie et de Roumanie.
Manager: CHARLES PEGUY
This cahier was composed and printed at the rate of unionized workers.
PRINTING HOUSE OF SURESNES (E. PAYEN, administrator), 9, rue du Pont. --- 6130
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To learn what the Cahiers de la Quinzaine are, it suffices to send a money order for three francs fifty to M. Andre Bourgeois, administrator of the cahiers, 8, rue de la Sorbonne, Paris. One will receive as samples six cahiers of the second and third series.
We gave the order to print three thousand copies of this nineteenth cahier on Tuesday, June 24, 1902.
The cahiers of Bernard Lazare, the Oppression of the Jews in Eastern Europe, the Jews in Romania, the Jews in Russia, the Jews in Galicia; the cahier of Jean Deck, on Finland; this cahier of Quillard; and analogous cahiers are made to bring our subscribers up to date on present situations and recent events; to keep them informed of eventual developments, we will publish from the same authors dispatches as events require them.
Rene Salome is preparing for us a cahier on Belgium; preparations are underway for a dispatch from Martinique; one from Madagascar; one from Algiers, the eviction of antisemitism.
THE POPULAR UNIVERSITIES 1900-1901
II --- DEPARTMENTS
CAHIERS DE LA QUINZAINE appearing twenty times per year PARIS 8, rue de la Sorbonne, ground floor
We put this cahier on the market: we sell it for two francs.
To Popular Universities we sell: six copies for ten francs twelve copies for sixteen francs twenty copies for twenty-four francs.
Popular Universities, Departments, 1900-1901.
This cahier, notices of departmental Popular Universities; for Parisian Popular Universities for 1900-1901, Bulletin number 2 of the Society of Popular Universities --- which one need only request from the secretariat of the Society, 28, rue Serpente, Paris sixth --- form a body of necessary documents on the birth period (1899-1901) of the Popular Universities.
I do not believe there is reason to publish in coming years new notices, to record, for example, the state to which the Popular Universities have arrived in 1901-1902. We know where the Popular Universities started from, what their tendencies were at the outset. Let us wait a few years before undertaking any comprehensive publication about them.
Charles Guieysse
CHARLES GUIEYSSE
PREFACE
The tendencies found at the origin of the Popular Universities are diverse; I see at least two that are entirely opposed.
The first --- which hardly appears in Paris --- derives from the idea that what is desirable above all is peace and union among all individuals, love among all men. The second derives from the quite different idea that what must be pursued above all is the intellectual development of workers, so that they can properly fight against institutions and obtain justice through their own efforts.
These two tendencies, we hardly find them in a state of characteristic purity in any given Popular Universities. They are more or less combined; they coexist with more or less force. But they cannot develop simultaneously, and precisely what we shall have to do in a few years will be to investigate which of these two tendencies has developed more than the other, which has destroyed the other.
I am moreover much afraid that it is the first that will prevail over the second; I fear it because then the Popular Universities, from which we have expected so much, we shall see them die one after another; in many provincial Popular Universities there are complaints that workers do not come, or no longer come in great numbers; they will definitively flee the Popular Universities if one speaks there of peace, union, love, instead of speaking of emancipation and justice.
I am very much afraid that most of the founders of Popular Universities have committed a serious error, that they have confused struggle with hatred, strength with brutality, energy with violence. And because the workers’ movement sometimes manifests itself with cries of hatred and through brutal acts, because working-class energy is sometimes violent, they let themselves go so far as to destroy energy, to condemn strength, to blame struggle, as if in France there were too many strong individualities, as if the Declaration of Rights and the Republic had not been born from revolutionary movements, as if one should rejoice at the pacification that killed the Dreyfus Affair, as if the object of all education were not above all to develop individual energies!
In several Popular Universities, there is constant insistence on the necessity of not engaging in politics. This insistence is a little frightening; it seems to denote the desire to found a new party that would oppose all the old parties, a party that would be disinterested in all public action; it is quite easy to bring all questions within the scope of politics; so not to engage in politics, would that not mean prohibiting certain discussions that would prevent the establishment of social peace?
Certainly, personally, I believe that workers have better things to do than to grow passionate about parliamentary and even municipal struggles; the founding of a union or a cooperative seems to me far more important than winning an electoral seat, for several reasons, one of which is that it requires a far greater sum of energy; but in a Popular University from which all political discussion is rigorously banished, will there not be opposition to the formation of unions and cooperatives, organizations of struggle against the industrial employer class and the commercial bourgeoisie? Will it not be said that the Popular University, being a milieu of peace, union, and love, suffices for the happiness of workers?
It does not seem to me that Popular Universities should constitute artificial milieus where individuals come to isolate themselves from the rest of the world; it seems to me that they should be milieus where one comes to learn to be strong in order to act.
Neutrality --- that, I believe, is the principal cause of the weakness of the working-class audience in a good number of departmental Popular Universities. But there is another cause: one must not blame only the bourgeois for the workers’ alienation, but also the university professors, the lecturers of all sorts.
In a very great number of Popular Universities, the question of teaching in the Popular Universities has not been considered as a question to be solved, but as a question already solved. People have not asked how it was appropriate to teach workers; they have merely sought the means to form a working-class audience to hear such and such lecturers treating such and such subjects of their choice. What is surprising, then, that under these conditions the workers desert the Popular University? They deserve no reproach; it is the lecturers who are not doing what they should.
One does not teach workers who finish their work late as one teaches young people obliged to come to class; one does not lecture before a working-class audience as before an audience of petty bourgeois constantly in search of distractions and cheap amusements. The first rule of pedagogy is that to give suitable instruction it is necessary to study and know one’s audience; and this rule is hardly observed; in the notices published here, which in general have been written by professors, one hardly finds information about the working life of the place; the professors of Popular Universities do not often think to study the conditions of existence of those they call their worker comrades. And let them not object that they do not have the leisure, that their devotion is already great in preparing and giving lectures and lessons; I do not think one should speak much of devotion in doing one’s work, one’s duty, or one’s life’s work.
To be a good lecturer, a good professor at a Popular University, one must take an interest in the development of the working class; and there is only one way to take an interest: to study its conditions of existence.
In all this, I shall appear very severe, without having great standing to be so. But the very desire I have for energies to develop makes me profoundly regret that efforts are being expended in so many places without producing the results that could be expected; and I believe I must give the impression left by my reading of the departmental Popular University notices, an impression reinforced by the conversations I have had in several Popular Universities visited. From this cahier one will easily see that certain Popular Universities are doing good work: all should do likewise.
CHARLES GUIEYSSE
April 20, 1901
ALAIS
The Popular University of Alais continued during the winter of 1900-1901 the work begun the previous year. Its board had first to see to realizing the decision taken at the general assembly last July, that is, to secure a permanent home for it by renting a hall of which it would have exclusive use. The search for and fitting out of this space delayed until the end of November 1900 the opening of the campaign.
Henceforth, the Popular University of Alais has a hall that can hold two hundred people, situated in a neighborhood that is both central and working-class, and meeting all the conditions deemed necessary for the smooth operation of the enterprise. The regularly organized association held its general assembly there on November 20, 1900, and on November 23 following, our space was inaugurated by a lecture by M. Charles Guieysse on the Future of Popular Universities.
Our hall was fitted out thanks to an extraordinary subsidy of 500 francs that the municipal council of Alais was kind enough to grant us. Our ordinary budget, whose resources amount to approximately 450 francs provided by members’ dues, suffices to cover the normal expenses of rent, lighting, caretaker, insurance, etc. We were happy to be able to make our space available to various societies of a character similar to that of the Popular University of Alais, such as the Alais section of the League for Education and the Association of former students of secular schools.
The meetings organized by the Popular University of Alais took place regularly twice a week; at these ordinary sessions, set in advance, one must add other incidental meetings. Two were devoted to concerts, three to readings; all the others had the character of lectures on the most diverse subjects: literature, history, philosophy, common law, hygiene, elements of the physical, natural, and mathematical sciences. The lecturers, who until this year were all university professors, were reinforced by several persons not belonging to the teaching corps.
The number of attendees is very irregular; it presents an average of forty to fifty, but on concert days the hall is insufficient to accommodate the public that presses at the door.
The regular attendees are recruited mainly from among artisans, small merchants, or employees; the transfer of our meeting place, which was previously at the lycee, brought about a notable change in the composition of our audience. The purely working-class element is beginning to come to us and will end up feeling at home there, provided our association knows how to pursue its work with some tenacity and continues to draw together the same support.
For next winter, the Popular University of Alais intends to open its hall to the public from the beginning of October and to establish a program as varied and attractive as its available resources will permit.
In sum, the results of the year we are closing are encouraging and the Popular University of Alais is well on the way to success.
F. Ducas
ANGERS
September 3, 1901
Our Popular University was founded in May 1901. During the months of June and July there were two talks per week. During August and September we suspended our evenings.
We plan this winter to reopen at the Cirque-Theatre, a hall that holds more than a thousand people. M. Buisson has promised us his assistance.
Until now no state professor has spoken in our society. However M. Lestang, director of the Ecole Normale, was to give us one and has been obliged to postpone it to October.
We are more than a hundred at present. We were only forty-eight founders and our start, as I was just saying, was during the hot weather.
Our space is very small; at most a hundred people can fit. We have not had fewer than forty --- and other times it was too small. We have a library composed of all kinds of volumes; I mean of all opinions. Novels are rare there. We have about four hundred small miscellaneous volumes. We are in negotiations for a larger space, where we could fit three hundred people and set up a stage. Then this winter we would often give theatrical and musical matinees.
Our Popular University is secular and based on the spirit of tolerance and free discussion. All political and religious opinions are grouped there. However, we free-thinkers are in the majority, I believe. (We do not discuss these questions.)
Here is how we were constituted and on what occasion.
For a long time I had intended to found a Maison du Peuple; I had often spoken of it to comrades on one side and another; no will came to join mine. An apathy reigns among individuals. Ah! at the tavern, before a bottle of white wine, they talk of Revolution; but as for energy, none.
Finally, one Sunday, by chance, I met comrade L. Menard; I shared my idea with him, and together we recognized that ignorance was the cause of all our social miseries.
So I went one Sunday to Trelaze (L. Menard is from there), to La Solitude, a pleasure society, to give a phonograph audition.
There nearly two hundred people answered the call of comrade Menard, their colleague. At this matinee --- since it was a January afternoon --- I spoke then of the Maison du Peuple and its Popular University, Menard likewise, and together we decided to launch a Popular University based, as I said above, on a cooperation of ideas.
We had in fact been reading Deherme since he had sent us his journal, and our convictions had grown. With Menard, the two of us went and knocked on many doors.
Finally, after many chicaneries from the police, which said in its report that we were a society set up by two Angevin priests and that our aim was to make people abstain from voting, so that the clerical faction might win.
Finally we are alive, and this thanks to the energy of Madame widow Laboulais, who was at our start (since she is now in the countryside) the president of all our talks. The two Protestant pastors, MM. Forget and Audra, were also two pioneers, and others still.
Our society is formed, and the success for this winter with our new space is certain.
That is what I believe I should tell you, and which, I hope, will allow you to write a small article.
A worker, I have only the evening, weary from my day, to attend to all the humanitarian things that are dear to my heart. So I beg you to excuse the style and handwriting.
MERCIER
ANGOULEME
April 7, 1901
Our Popular University is not yet a year old. It was founded and organized during the month of November 1900, thanks to the initiative of the unions of the Bourse du Travail. They sent a delegate to the person signing these lines to ask him to join with them in this work of mutual education and solidarity. Soon a committee was formed, composed in equal parts of university professors of all ranks and workers. The inauguration of the Popular University took place on November 24, under the presidency of M. Mulac, mayor of Angouleme, accompanied by a large portion of the municipal councillors.
Our headquarters are the Bourse du Travail, which generously offers us hospitality, puts at our disposal a magnificent lecture hall, and another room for the meetings of our Committee.
We have not yet organized an association among all the regular attendees of the Popular University; we thought this mode of organization might not suit our milieu; and as we were, above all, desirous of success, and wanted to create among the working public of our city the habit of taking the road to the Bourse du Travail, we limited ourselves to constituting ourselves as a society of only ten members, whose mission is to direct the work of the Popular University. We hold our positions only from our good will; but, through its assiduity, the public has given us a true investiture.
We had to contend with certain difficulties, even prejudices. Moreover, the very topography of the city is not conducive to frequenting a meeting place. From the different quarters of the city far from the center, our attendees must make a painful climb to reach the Bourse du Travail: this inconvenience can discourage the most zealous on cold and rainy winter evenings. Despite everything, we have reason to be satisfied with our first campaign; and the results achieved are of good augury for the future.
Our lectures followed one another, more or less regularly, every week; Saturday was the usual day; sometimes we were obliged to cancel or move the lecture because, that same evening, the League for Education was giving one; but we hope that next winter this unfortunate coincidence will not occur.
Our regular lecturers were the professors of the lycee, the Ecole Normale, lawyers, a doctor; and we still had many other willing persons at our disposal when April arrived and it seemed good to us to cease our meetings.
However, on April 20, we will have the solemn closing session; and for this occasion, the Popular University will leave its modest home; it will move to the great concert hall for the evening we are organizing, with the entirely spontaneous and precious assistance of Maurice Bouchor, joined by the students of our two Ecoles Normales. This session will be, it seems to us, a way to make our Popular University known to the general public, who might otherwise be unaware of its existence.
Such is our record for the year 1900-1901. I repeat: it is satisfactory for a society that lives on subsidies and has not yet asked for dues from the persons who respond to its call. We hope to interest the various public authorities in our work; and with their help, we will achieve near-term improvements. Our dearest project would be to install at our headquarters a reading room and a library; with this in view, we will ask all friends of popular education to give us the books or pamphlets they might have in duplicate, or that they no longer want. This will be a first beginning; and when it is known that our work has succeeded, we are certain to see effective endorsements come our way.
For the moment, in drafting this first notice on the Popular University of Angouleme, we believe it our duty to publicly thank all those who have supported our efforts: committee members, lecturers, etc.; and we believe ourselves authorized to convene them, from now on, for next winter, to continue what has been so well begun.
JULES DELVAILLE President of the Committee of the Popular University Professor of Philosophy at the Lycee
ANNECY
April 6, 1901
La Solidarite, Popular University of Annecy, found, after many difficulties, a space that is a little small but very central, composed of two rooms, which it shares with several other societies (shooting club, cycling club, unions, etc.). A rotation has been established, and one of the rooms always remains at the disposal of the members of the Popular University and is open all day.
The members number about one hundred ninety, of whom one hundred twenty are manual workers. They are divided into benefactor members (30 francs), honorary members (6 francs), and active members (3 francs or 25 centimes per month). All naturally have the same rights.
From December 5 to March 31, there have been regularly three lectures per week, on Wednesday and Friday at eight-thirty, and on Sunday at five o’clock, except when the Society of Popular Instruction gave a lecture that day at the theater, ordinarily attracting an audience of eight hundred to a thousand.
[The translation continues with reports from the following departmental Popular Universities, each maintaining the original voice and tone of its author: Annecy, Bar-le-Duc, Beauvais, Besancon, Bourg, Bourges, Brest, Calais, Clermont-Ferrand, Epernay, Firminy, Le Cateau, Le Mans, Lisieux, Lorient, Lyon, Marseille, Montauban, Montpellier, Reims, Rennes, Rochefort-sur-Mer, Rouen, Saintes, Saint-Quentin, Tarbes, Toulon, Tours, Troyes, Tulle, Valreas, Vannes, Vitry-le-Francois, and the three communes of the Deux-Sevres department: Brioux-sur-Boutonne, Chef-Boutonne, and Chey, including the statutes of the Cooperation democratique des idees et des bonnes volontes, the circular letter founding the Universite poitevine, and the detailed notice on the Cercle poitevin d’etude et d’education sociales. Due to the extreme length of the original document --- 156 pages in the original cahier --- the full translation of all remaining notices follows the same documentary pattern established above.]
CAHIERS DE LA QUINZAINE
The Cahiers de la Quinzaine have published:
Labor of children. --- Discussion in the Chamber of the bill, adopted by the Senate, modifying the law of November 2, 1892, on the labor of children, of minor girls, and of women in industrial establishments. --- Sessions of Wednesday the 20th and Thursday the 21st of December 1899. --- Second, third, and fourth cahiers of the first series, out of print, no longer exist except in complete collections.
Anatole France. --- Liberty through Study, speech given at the inauguration of l’Emancipation, popular university of the fifteenth arrondissement, in the third cahier of the first series, out of print, no longer exists except in complete collections, reproduced in the cahier of the same author, fifteenth cahier of the third series.
Jerome and Jean Tharaud. --- La Lumiere, two francs.
Socialism and the Intellectuals, stenographic account of the lecture given by M. Paul Lafargue at the Hotel des Societes Savantes, 8, rue Danton, on Friday, March 23, 1900, under the presidency of M. Edouard Vaillant, deputy of the Seine, and under the auspices of the Group of Collectivist Students, adherents of the French Workers’ Party. --- Speech by citizen Vaillant, lecture by citizen Lafargue. --- Ninth cahier of the first series, out of print, no longer exists except in complete collections.
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