¹ This figure was given by Secretary-General Lamour at the CGA's 1947 congress. He added that the seven component federations in the CGA had two million adherents in all (Lamour, P., Pour un statut paysan [Paris, 1947], p. 3Google Scholar). The largest of the federations, the FNSEA, claimed 1,750,000 dues-paying members in 1949 (Annuaire de la CGA 1949–1950 [Paris, n.d.], p. 18Google Scholar).

² Cf. the Paris weekly Samedi-Soir for Jan. 7, 1950, which described the CGA as the most powerful special-interest group in France. According to the 1946 census, about one-third of the active French population (7,290,000 of 21 million) is engaged in agriculture or stock-raising (Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, L'espace économique français [Paris, 1951], p. 35Google Scholar). The financial resources available to the organized farmers cannot be measured, but they are doubtless potentially greater than those which organized labor can command from its own members.

³ M. Augé-Laribé estimates that in 1929 only 600,000 peasants were members of syndicates or cooperatives of any kind (La politique agricole de la France de 1880 à 1940 [Paris, 1950], p. 477Google Scholar). At that time, there were almost four million farms in France.

⁴ Augé-Laribé's estimate for 1939 is one million peasants in farm organizations of some sort (loc. cit.). Meanwhile, the total farm population had dropped. The largest syndicate of the 1930's—the UNSA—claimed at the time to represent 1,200,000 families.

⁵ After the liberation, efforts were made to inflate the CGA's resistance record. The first issue of La Libération Paysanne in October, 1944 asserted that the CGA had been founded in 1941. One ex-official of the CGA claims to possess an issue of La Résistance Paysanne, circulated just after the liberation, which bore the serial number 31.

⁶ Tanguy later explained his choice of Socialist technicians rather than peasants by admitting that his “peasant” resistance movement had been made up of the former. “Could I repudiate the friends who had shared with me the risks of the resistance?” he asked (Congrès d'unité paysanne [Paris, 1945], p. 52Google Scholar). For details of the CGA's beginnings in 1944–45, see Lyonnet's report to the first CGA congress, published by the CGA in the pamphlet just cited; and Serve, J., Le syndicalisme agricole (Paris, 1945)Google Scholar.

⁷ The charge that the CGA's founders aimed at outright collectivization has been made repeatedly: e.g., Maspétiol, R., L'ordre éternel des champs (Paris, 1946), p. 518Google Scholar; Cercler, R., “Le syndicalisme agricole et les Chambres d'Agriculture”, Revue politique des idies et des institutions, May 15, 1949, pp. 274–79Google Scholar; Rougié, A., Peints par eux-mêmes; la vague marxiste sur l'agriculture (n.p., 1947), pp. 60–85Google Scholar.

⁸ Despite the idealistic tone which pervaded the congress, the liveliest applause went to a delegate who demanded that the national dues be reduced from 20 to 10 francs, on the ground that “We don't intend to maintain a collection of bureaucrats in Paris.”

⁹ On the 1946 elections, see the reports by Lyonnet and Rambeau at the first FNSEA congress (published as separate pamphlets by the CGA); de Felcoart, E., “La législation agricole depuis la libération”, Monde français, 05, 1948, p. 199Google Scholar; Cercler, R., “L'organisation professionnelle agricole en France”, Revue politique et parlementaire, May 10, 1946, pp. 132–44Google Scholar. Some Communists feel in retrospect that the worst error in CGA history was the decision to let all farmers vote in 1946, rather than active adherents alone (Le Paysan du Sud-Ouest [Toulouse], May 15, 1951Google Scholar).

¹⁰ Forget was allegedly lifted out of obscurity by a prominent Catholic farm leader from Lyon named Genevrey, who for personal reasons could not be elected himself.

¹¹ It was typical of Forget that, although eligible for a high priority to buy a new automobile, he insisted on waiting for two years until his regular turn came up. During an official tour of the United States with other farm officials, Forget left the party at Kansas City and flew home in order to meet a prior commitment to make a “whistle-stop” speech near his home town.

¹² On the 1947 congress, see Drogat, N., “Y a-t-il une crise de la C.G.A.?”, Travaux de l'Action Populaire, pp. 34–41 (01, 1948)Google Scholar; and Blondelle, R., Rapport moral stir l'activité de la F.N.S.E.A. (Paris, 1947)Google Scholar.

¹³ Some time before his fall, Tanguy had finally been forced to restore syndical liberty, so that groups rivalling the CGA could be legally formed. In fact, few such groups were created. One exception was the Fédération Nationale de la Propriété Agricole, an extreme Right organization which represents the interests of large landlords, many of them absentee. Its official organ is La Renaissance Agricole. The MRP abandoned its plan to set up a rival syndicate when the 1946 FNSEA elections strengthened its position within the CGA. Likewise, certain prewar syndicates in the provinces which had been demanding full independence decided to remain affiliated with the FNSEA when the latter showed signs of moving to the Right. Such was the case, notably, in the Nord, Finistère, and Côtes-du-Nord departments.

¹⁴ The seceding cooperatives formed a new union of Rightist tendencies, linked closely with the Wheat Growers' Association on the rue des Pyramides.

¹⁵ Useful details on the origins of the SNPBR may be found in the MRP's farm weekly, Monde Paysan, for April 30 and Sept. 24, 1947. The SNPBR's newspaper admitted in 1951 that fewer than 200,000 tenants and sharecroppers were dues-paying members, and that very few of them took the trouble to read the official organ (Le Fermier et le Métayer, April, 1951).

In 1952 the non-Communists took full control of the SNPBR, and replaced every Communist who had held a high post in it. The Communists then proceeded to organize a new subdivision of the SNPBR, of dubious legal status, and confined to fifteen central and southern departments where Communist rural strength is great (La Terre, March 13 and 20, 1952). They denounce M. Bajeux, the new secretary-general of the SNPBR, as a “gros fermier capitaliste du Nord.” When I visited M. Bajeux's farm in 1951, I found this “big capitalist” stripped to the waist in his barn, putting in hay along with two hired hands.

¹⁶ The only high-ranking Leftist who is still a full-time official in the CGA central offices is Director-General Henri Canonge. The chief remaining stronghold of the Christian Socialists is in the mutual aid societies, whose elected boards supervise the social security system in rural areas.

¹⁷ The Chambers of Agriculture before 1940 were public organisms in each department with power to recommend programs of rural improvement and to speak on behalf of farm interests. They were elected by the peasants and by organized farm groups, and had a regular though small source of income from taxes. Vichy suspended them in 1940, and their surviving members demanded that they be reactivated after the war. CGA leaders resisted this demand for several years, on the ground that the CGA had taken over the functions of the Chambers, and that useless rivalries between the two would split the peasantry. A compromise was finally reached which permitted the revival of the Chambers, with slates of candidates jointly drawn up by Chamber and CGA leaders. Early in 1952, these slates were elected without opposition in most parts of France. No clear division of functions between the Chambers and the FNSEA has yet been made, but so long as Blondelle remains president of both organisms, there should be no problem of rivalry.

¹⁸ In June, 1952 these three federations held a joint congress and decided to coordinate their activities through a new permanent committee. Le Monde described this decision as a “defensive reflex” against the growing encroachment of the FNSEA (Monde, June 27, 1952). The debates at the congress, summarized at length in Libération Paysanne for July 3, 1952, give clear evidence of this resentment at FNSEA domination.

¹⁹ I have described the CGA's recent political ventures in an article entitled “French Farmers in Politics”, South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 51, pp. 356–65 (07, 1952)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Such a proposal was advanced in the FNSEA's 1952 congress (Monde, Feb. 1, 1952). Blondelle had hinted at the same thing in the 1949 congress.

²¹ See Drouin, P. in Le Monde, April 13, 1951Google Scholar. The CGA officially favors the creation of a “green pool” in Europe to provide a common market for agricultural products. It has also supported the Schuman Plan for a coal and steel pool. On the other hand, CGA leaders boast that they were instrumental in blocking a Franco-Italian customs union somewhat similar to Benelux. Italian competition, they insist, would ruin many French farmers unless food-importing countries could also be brought into the union.

²² Forget, E. in Liberation Paysanne, March 16, 1950Google Scholar.

²³ N. Drogat, loc. cit., p. 36; cf. also Couvreur, P., “La C.G.A. et les grandes lignes d'une politique agricole”, Revue de l'Action Populaire, p. 16 (Jan. 1950)Google Scholar.

²⁴ The Communists asserted in 1950 that two-thirds of the CGA's members had left the organization (La Terre, Nov. 16, 1950). No accurate membership figures are available, but this estimate seems to be grossly exaggerated. It is true, however, that seven departmental units are totally moribund, and had to be suspended in 1952 for failure to pay any national dues for three years (Libération Paysanne, Feb. 7, 1952), All of these departments are in the southwest. It is also true that fifteen or twenty other departmental units are in bad condition. Some are kept afloat by a strong cooperative organization, which assumes the burden of collecting FNSEA dues. In three departments where Communist influence is strong (Corrèze, Landes, and Haute-Garonne), the FNSEA unit has split into two rival syndicates, with the non-Communist organization officially recognized by the Paris leadership.

²⁶ FNSEA officials assert that three-fourths of the members of their National Council operate “family farms” (Libération Paysanne, April 6, 1950). Among them are some of the most influential of the Federation's leaders: e.g., honorary president Eugene Forget (40 acres), secretary-general Albert Génin (25 acres); assistant secretaries-general Fernand Van Graefschepe (60 acres) and Lucien Biset (40 acres); vice-president Clément Bardet (70 acres). Van Graefschepe is often described in the Communist press as “un très gros exploitant du Nord.” The average size of French farms, according to the 1946 census, is about 40 acres.

In FNSEA congresses, there was some discrimination against populous but poor departments prior to 1947. Representation then was based on a combination of membership and total value of farm production in a department. Thus, Seine-et-Marne with only 7,448 farmers had three delegates, and Ariège with 19,106 farmers had only two. Since 1947, representation has been based on membership alone; this democratic gesture has been partially nullified by allotting 76 delegates to the specialized associations.

²⁶ On this point, see Laborbe, J. in Libération Paysanne, March 30, 1950Google Scholar. It is true, however, that the FNSEA has more often disintegrated in subsistence-farming regions than in prosperous small-farming areas.

²⁷ The CGA's program to aid the small peasants has both progressive and regressive aspects. In the latter category one might classify the CGA's constant efforts to keep farm taxes low. In 1950 Blondelle boasted that the number of peasants subject to the agricultural profits tax had been cut from a million and a half to 593,000, thanks to the CGA's lobbying (Libération Paysanne, May 4, 1950). On the other hand, the CGA has sponsored a number of constructive projects designed to aid small farmers in technically backward areas, for example, to furnish them with selected seed at low prices.

²⁸ Cf. Gendarme, R., “Esquisse d'une théorie du revenu des agriculteurs”, Revue Economique, Vol. 3, pp. 357–60 (07, 1952)Google Scholar.

²⁹ The tendency of the peasants to consider themselves constant victims of injustice is well illustrated by an opinion poll carried out in 1949. The respondents were asked to rate seven social categories (industrialists, workers, peasants, etc.) in the order of their economic status. Virtually all of the farmers rated themselves in the bottom three categories, while all other groups rated the farmers in the top three categories (Sondages, August, 1949).

³⁰ An outspoken young Christian Socialist named René Colson used this phrase in Témoignages Chrétiens (April 13, 1951). His thesis, borrowed from one of the ablest Catholic agricultural experts in Prance, was that there are too many marginal farmers on the soil, and that real rural prosperity cannot be attained until these marginal operators disappear from agriculture. Colson's article was loudly denounced by farm leaders of both Right and Left, especially by the Communists, who called it proof that the CGA wishes to destroy the small peasantry. Most CGA officials who are interested in rural progress agree privately that many marginal peasants must and will disappear. Men like Eugène Forget, however, prefer to save as many as possible through technical aid and better planning of crops.

³¹ See, for example, R. Cercler, loc. cit., pp. 276–77; and François, J. in Cahiers du clergé rural, 03, 1951, pp. 122–23Google Scholar. On the other hand, Drogat, N. in Revue de l'Action Populaire, Vol. 43, pp. 572–73 (11, 1950)Google Scholar, holds that the CGA has a great educational role to play, and that it may survive not as a mass organization but as an agency grouping the rural elite. Most of the views about the CGA's future summarized in this paragraph were gathered in conversations with syndical and cooperative officials in Paris and the provinces.