3-021-758 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Workmen waiting to be engaged in the Place of the Hotel de Ville, Paris, 1869. '...by far the larger part of the working population who are in want of work assemble in the open air on particular spots, which have been used by them for this purpose from time immemorial, and there wait employment. Large gatherings of them may be seen - in which almost everyone has with him the tools of his particular calling - from daybreak until about nine or ten o'clock in the morning, by which time those who have failed in obtaining employment generally disperse...Ever since its construction the vast place of the Hotel de Ville has been appropriated by the workmen belonging to the building trades - excavators, stonecutters, masons, plasterers, carpenters, painters, plumbers, and locksmiths;...the numbers who daily resort there are enormous. On some mornings as many as 3000 or 4000 men may be assembled, and yet among this immense crowd a few sergens-de-ville are sufficient to preserve order and keep the road and foot-pavement clear for ordinary traffic. Such things as quarrels are of rare occurrence'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.