WORK IN OUR COLONIES

It is still a question of our North African possessions, where, perhaps, more knowledge and method would increase general prosperity.
Here is the document which deals with it: A Letter to Mr. René Viviani, Minister of Labor and Social Welfare.
Paris, April 3, 1909.
Mr. Minister, You kindly entrusted me with the study of the organization of work in Algeria.... To tell the truth, the word organization does not fit well with this disordered set of tyrannical contracts and fraudulent transactions which govern the relations of Algerian employers and employees. Our colonists, whether they like it or not, place an iron yoke on the native workforce, and I have not noticed that our French workers are, by them, treated much better. You have, certainly, greatly improved their situation by giving them, in legal form, weekly rest, until then a fiction. The need not to rest, because numerous competitors persisted in working on Sunday, created real overwork for the workers.
It is especially the department of Algiers which has benefited, from the French point of view, from the application of your recent decree. It would still be necessary to control, for the well-being of workers' lives, working hours, which often seem to reach 12 and 13 hours, and the employment of women in arduous work, which continues late into the night.
It seemed difficult to me to enter establishments where such abuses are committed. It will be a great task for a labor inspector to force the barriers of these penitentiaries born from the need to live. It is to be feared, however, that their number, approximately 5,000, will protect them from serious surveillance for a long time.
What particularly interested me in the department of Oran was the growing mass of indigenous, Oran and Moroccan workers. The vast commercial port, which commands West Africa, has greatly enriched certain settlers, who have become owners of immense farms where the workforce is crowded. But it is unfortunate that his recruitment is done at a low price and by dishonest means.
Here is a Moroccan established in the region for several years already. He worked on a large French or Spanish farm; he will be used by his boss to solicit essential agricultural workers. As soon as they, coming from Morocco, landed in Oran, the tout was there; he picks them up immediately, seems concerned about their fate, as a proven compatriot, but he makes them sign an employment contract which binds them, in return for a salary of 1 fr. 25 per day, for the hardest work. The good offices of this intermediary are remunerated by the commitment made by the farmer to pay 1 fr. 50 instead of 1 fr. 25. And the unfortunate workers know, for all complaints, only this sad exploiter.
There are worse things than that. The committed subject has only one haste, once his task is completed: it is to return home, equipped with his meager savings. In the above example, things go quite smoothly.
On the contrary, suppose a team is responsible for clearing 600 hectares, each of its members will receive so much per hectare. However, once the work is completed, the capacity of the land is contested by the farmer's delegate. The 600 hectares fall to 500. What to do? - The boss wants the appointment of a surveyor. The workers refuse to do so so as not to have to pay it. Tired of war, the employer's estimate is accepted.

These things, which are repugnant to us, I would have been careful not to consider as true if several of our colonists had not spontaneously guaranteed them to me, eager to fulfill their duties as men and good French people. The privileges, which generate discontent, would not be possible in the conditions of organized work, with workers who can be visited by a qualified inspector. On the other hand, indigenous workers are not suitable for everything. Not very expert in the art of pruning the vine, they are often replaced by Spaniards, who are very numerous in northern Oran. This results in acute disputes leading to murders, which are frequent in certain parts of Algeria. Let us point out, in passing, that the spectacle is approximately the same in Tunisia, where the Sicilian fills the role of the Spaniard from Oran and depreciates the salary as well as the quality of the work to an extent that has become embarrassing for our nationals.
In short, in the colonies, the economic problem took precedence over all others. The world of work, of heterogeneous composition, nourishes the same aspirations for generous or at least fair treatment. The salary should always be based on the quantity and quality of the work and, given the climatic conditions, be increased when it comes to French workers.
In this regard, I have the honor to submit to you, Mr. Minister, conclusions drawn from my technical study (2), and as follows: European workers living in Algeria and Tunisia do not provide more than the four fifths of the normal yield. The native, on the contrary, exceeds this normal, provided that his diet, often insufficient, corresponds to production.
I also varied the form of work, its duration and the quality of food rations. In these different circumstances, the useful effect was shown for the "Arabs, notably higher than the average results obtained in France... I attribute this unequal production to the temperature, which, seven months of the year, oscillates between 20 and 35 degrees in the shade...
On many occasions, I have heard the complaints of business leaders who, for lack of precise information, did not know how to feed their workers and seek the highest output... The Arab lives very poorly and in an irregular way; he follows it with an orgy. from meat to virtual abstinence; he submits to the restrictive laws of nutrition, which, in these southern countries, are temperature and inaction; and thus, he provided the legend, which flies among lovers of distant lands, with wings of a certain size.
No, Arab sobriety is not a scientific fact. It is due to his poverty and his laziness. But as soon as it gets to work, it is a greedy, robust organism, a powerful transformer of the most useful of energies...
Please accept, Mr. Minister, with my feelings of gratitude, the tribute of my deep respect.
The reader will undoubtedly wonder if any benefit was taken by the State administrations from the two documents placed before their eyes, and which, in foreign affairs, in the interior, or especially in the colonies, was applied to organize indigenous life according to the methods most worthy of our country. I couldn't answer it. But Italy has, for seven years, entered this scientific path, the only human one, while an official commission discusses indefinitely, here, and sterilely.
The publication I made is therefore understandable; it means that the time for words has passed. And then it comes at the right time to help the effort of our diligent minister of the colonies, already instructed by long and solid personal experience.
A colonial power, turned like certain flowers towards the light of the Mediterranean shores, France would wither away if, unfortunately, it deviated from this favorable orientation.

Professeur JULES AMAR