The 10 Commandments Of A Belgian Employee At The End Of The 19th Century

I've been reading this really interesting book, La vie quotidienne en Belgique sous le règne de Léopold II (1865-1909) by Georges-H. Dumont, for research purposes, when I fell on this little tidbit I thought you guys might enjoy.

Belgian miners circa 1900. They were considered
inferior because they worked with their hands
and in the bowels of the earth.

Particularly for those of you who want to spot the differences (where have we improved in over 100 years), and the similarities (I assure you, some things never seem to change).
So, here goes:

1. Respect of God, cleanliness and punctuality are the rules of a well-ordered house.
2. As of now, the personnel will have to be present from 6 am to 6 pm. Sunday is reserved for religious service. Every morning, everyone has to say prayers in the principal's office.
3. Everyone has to do overtime if management deems it useful.
4. The oldest employee is in charge of the premises' cleanliness. The youngest must show up at his place, 40 minutes before prayer time, and are also at his disposition at the end of the day.
5. The clothing has to be simple. The staff cannot wear light colors, and must ware appropriate stockings. It is forbidden to wear rubber boots and fur coats inside the offices, due to the presence of furnaces and kilns. Exceptions in case of bad weather: scarves and hats. We also recommend everyone bring, during wintertime, four pounds of coal.
6. It is forbidden to talk during office times. An employee who smokes cigars, takes alcoholic drinks, goes to billiards rooms or attends political meets will be considered suspect with respect to his honor, his honesty, and his propriety.
7. It is permitted to take some sustenance between 11h30 and noon. However, work cannot be interrupted.
8. Employees have to show modesty and respect before clients, management and representatives of the press.
9. Each staff member has the duty to keep good care of his own health. In case of illness, a salary will not be paid. We recommend everyone to save a good part of his pay so that, in case of inability to work, and in his old age, he will not be dependent on the community's goodwill.
10. And to finish this, we would like to draw your attention to the generosity of these new rules. We expect from it a considerable increase in work.

Lovely, isn't it? And one of the many reasons I do not wish to travel back in time... What are your thoughts?

The rules were translated from the Règlement de bureaux et chancelleries (private collection), or the rules the poorly-paid
office and chancellery employees had to follow. As you can see, as stringent as the rules a "lower" miner had to follow, so
no reason for them to feel superior. Yet superior they did feel.

Feminism

Campaign for women's suffrage in Belgium, 1908.
Source: Getty Images

Feminism (n.):
Belief in or advocacy of women's social, political, and economic rights, especially with regard to the equality of the sexes.
(source)

Ah, what a dangerous word to (rightly or wrongly) bandy about these days. Or has it always been so?

In any case, the role of women in Belgian society, and particularly their rights and how hard they had to fight to get them, is the subject of this post.

Before Belgium's independence, when its states were under the control of Napoleon I, women weren't considered for much else except for reproduction purposes (or for men's pleasure, depending on which strata of the society you happened to belong to). For though he was behind great changes for his country and revamped the French legislature, among other things, Napoleon didn't believe those rights were meant for the "inferior sex."

The Boundary Between Flanders And Wallonia

Belgium split in two (or three, depending on who and where you are)

Who's heard of Belgium is also aware of the the sometimes, and unfortunately, great differences between its two main regions (Brussels notwithstanding): Flanders (the Flemish-speaking, Northern side) and Wallonia (the French-speaking, Southern portion).

What is really interesting, however, is that though this separation hasn't always existed (indeed, Belgium used to be a Celtic country before the "Germans" and Romans invaded them), this boundary between the two regions is perhaps much older than one might think, and takes us all the way back to...

358 C.E.

A Century Of Freedom...And Political Changes

Albert Devèze

"A [political] party does not have a reason for being unless it possesses its own ideal which it pursues with  the conscious and tenacious effort to progressively achieve it, an ideal which is susceptible to arouse within its adherents enthusiastic impulses and fervors of faith.
Does that mean the party must adhere to an immutable dogmatism, whose rigid rule will be the norm of its activity? Definitely not. It must, on the contrary, understand that when it comes to translating its idealism into positive laws, that these can only be the legislative raiment adapted to the measure of the social being who wears it; that this collective being, through internal and external transformations, suffers all the phenomena of growth and development, health and sickness, and that yesterday's impossibilities must consequently become today's possibilities and tomorrow's inevitable. If such is not that party's concept of politics, it would soon become a power of blind conservatism first, of reaction next. From then on, its decline would sanction its divorce from the people's material and moral necessities whose destinies it would have the pretension to hamper."

~Albert Devèze, Un siècle de libéralisme

(transl. by A. Ellefson)

After the Catholic Party, it is the Liberal Party that is the oldest political party in Belgium, having been officially formed in 1846, followed by the third of the three major parties, the Socialist Party, which was founded in 1857 (although, with time, these have split and reformed into many other parties).

Anecdotal Story From The 1830 Revolution

Belgian revolutionaries from Liege, 1830

I’m still reading out of the 1830-1930 La Patrie Belge book of the Editions illustrées du “SOIR” Bruxelles, and just fell on a text by H. Liebrecht talking about the 1830 Revolution, out of which I’m going to translate a number of passages for you, for I find them to be quite interesting, even if I have already spoken about the events before.

The Allied Forces’ decision to place Belgium under the United Kingdom of the Netherlands’s

Louis De Potter in his cell at the Prison des Petits-Carmes
(Dec. 2, 1829)

dominion in 1815 did not please the Belgians of the time. And right they were to feel that way for they suffered religious intolerance, extra financial charges and taxes, and administrative partiality until poverty reigned throughout Belgium’s provinces. In the meantime, the country found its freedom of press continuously encroached upon, especially with regards to those journalists who dared to speak up against the Dutch yoke. Thus, from 1816 to 1828, 23 newspapers and more than 80 journalists were taken to court.

But it’s not until the July 1830 revolution in Paris, where the French people managed to force their then King Charles X and the Duc D’Angoulème to abdicate, that the Belgians finally realized they could defeat their own government as well.

Thus, when King William I had a huge celebration planned for his birthday, and that despite the fact that the Belgian People were being overtaxed (particularly by the impôts de la mouture, a tax placed upon the grains that must be paid before they can be ground into flour for bread-making), a number of revolutionaries stuck red posters up at street corners that read: “Monday, fireworks; Tuesday, illuminations; Wednesday, revolution.”

1887: King Leopold II Worries About The Future Of Belgium And Europe

The World's Sovereigns 1889 (photomontage)
The one in the center is Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, seated to his left on a chair is Queen Victoria.
King Leopold II of Belgium is the second man on his right (long dark beard), while the two men standing right next to him are; Left: Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria; Right: Tsar Aleksandr III

While in London in 1887 to attend the celebrations for his cousin Queen Victoria’s 50 years of reign, Belgium’s second King, Leopold II (who later became infamous for his role in the Congo massacre), wrote the following to his chief of state:

King Leopold II

Europe’s political future remains rather uncertain […]. If we wish to remain independent, we need to strengthen ourselves and prove ourselves worthy of our independence.

As you can tell, he was already quite worried about what was fomenting behind the curtains within Europe’s highest political spheres.

Upon his return, King Leopold II desired to have a true Belgian army raised instead of their current conscription system which mainly allowed richer folks to pay poorer ones to take their spot in this army. Unfortunately, these changes were voted down by the Chamber of Ministers in July.

So the King decides to play a little game: pretend that he doesn’t want to uphold his obligations (such as attending an important party in Bruges in August) to show his displeasure with his government, then finally accede to their entreaties upon the condition that they let him hold a speech (WARNING: it is quite a long read). The maneuver works, and on August 15, 1887, King Leopold II says the following to a large crowd:

Happy Birthday Belgium!

Tomorrow, July 21, will be the celebration of Belgium's first step towards independence, aka the beginning of its revolution (which started with a Broadway-like play, if you will).

185 years of independence (discounting the years of occupation, of course). It's rather young for an "Old World" country, but that's one of the things that makes Belgium so interesting, isn't it?

In any case, I'm reading this great book that was published in 1930 by the Editions illustrées du "SOIR" Bruxelles published in celebration of Belgium's 100 year anniversary (ah, how I love history!). And in its first pages, I found this great genealogical tree of the Royal Family which I thought I'd share with you here (notice how beautiful Princess Astrid was, so beautiful and such a tragic fate after the publication of this book).

PS: Apologies for the crookedness of the picture...