Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T23:22:29.421Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Industrial Paternalism: Discourse and Practice in Nineteenth-Century French Mining and Metallurgy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Donald Reid
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina

Extract

In recent years paternalism has become one of the most discussed concepts in social history. While historians of women invoke paternalism and patriarchy to help explain relations of male domination, Marxist historians have found paternalism useful in expanding their analyses of class consciousness. Eugene Genovese organized his interpretation of slavery in the American south around paternalism. For E. P. Thompson, the breakdown of the ideology and practice of rural paternalism underlay the development of “class struggle without class” in eighteenth-century England. Despite Genovese's warning that paternalism is an inappropriate concept for understanding industrial society, several recent studies have identified paternalism as an important factor in the history of industrial labor during the nineteenth century. Daniel Walkowitz and Tamara Haraven have analyzed paternalism in the textile industries of upstate New York and southern New Hampshire. Lawrence Schofer and David Crew have studied paternalism in nineteenth-century German heavy industry, and Patrick Joyce has recently argued for its centrality in the restructuring of class relations in the late Victorian textile industry.

Type
The Management in the Industrial Workplace
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Genovese, Eugene D., Roll, Jordan, Roll (New York:Vintage Books, 1976).Google Scholar

2 Thompson, E. P., “Eighteenth-Century English Society: Class Struggle without Class?Social History, 3 (05 1978), 133–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Genovese, , Roll, Jordan, Roll, 661–65.Google Scholar

4 Walkowitz, Daniel J., Worker City, Company Town (Urbana:University of Illinois Press, 1978);Google ScholarHaraven, Tamara, Family and Industrial Time (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1982);Google ScholarCrew, David, Town in the Ruhr. A Social History of Bochum, 1860–1914 (New York:Columbia University Press, 1978);Google ScholarSchofer, Lawrence, The Formation of a Modern Labor Force. Upper Silesia, 1865–1914 (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1975):Google ScholarJoyce, Patrick, Work, Society, and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Late Victorian England (New Brunswick:Rutgers University Press, 1980),Google Scholar and, more recently, Labour, Capital, and Compromise: A response to Richard Price,” Social History, 9:1 (01 1984), 6776.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Stearns, Peter N., Paths to Authority. The Middle Class and the Industrial Labor Force, 1820–48 (Urbana:University of Illinois Press, 1978).Google Scholar

6 Perrot, Michelle, Les ouvriers en gréve. France 1871–1890, 2 vols. (Paris:Mouton, 1974).Google Scholar

7 Perrot, Michelle, “The Three Ages of Industral Discipline,” in Consciousness and Class Experience in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Merriman, John, ed. (New York:Holmes and Meier Publishers, Inc., 1979), 154.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 167, n. 20.

9 One can broadly divide French textile firms into two categories in terms of their labor policies. In the highly competitive factories of Lille, paternalist practices shared much with the older practices of charity. In Mulhouse, on the other hand, company labor management was closer to that in the metalworking factory of Le Creusot, discussed later in this article. See Pierrand, Pierre, La vie ouvriére à Lille sous le Second Empire (Paris:Bloud et Gay, 1967);Google ScholarBorghese, Arthur, “Industrialist Paternalism and Lower-Class Agitation: The Case of Mulhouse, 1848–1851,” Histoire sociale-Social History, 13 (05 1980), 5584.Google Scholar

10 Devillers, Christian and Huet, Bernard, Le Creusot (Seyssel:Champ Vallon, 1981), 124.Google Scholar The statue to Eugéne Schneider revealed the nature of paternalism at Creusot, Le. Huret, Jules wrote in the 1890s: “It is the effigy of the founder of the factories of Le Creusot, father of the current director. At the pedestal of the statue, in bronze like it, there is a symbolic group: a woman of the people indicates with her raised arm ‘the Benefactor,’ to a young twelve-year-old forgeworker.” Enquête sur la question sociale en Europe (Paris:Perrin et Cie, 1897), 37. The statue was a tribute from the owner to his father; on another level, the founder of the firm took the father's place in the portrait of the working-class family.Google Scholar

11 Euverte, J., “De l'organisation de la main-d'oeuvre dans la grande industrie,” Journal des économistes, 3d ser., 19:51 (09 1870), 353–54.Google Scholar

12 Pounds, Norman, “Historical Geography of the Iron and Steel Industry of France,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 47:1 (1957), 314;CrossRefGoogle ScholarIsard, Walter, “Some Locational Factors in the Iron and Steel Industry since the Early Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Political Economy, 56:3 (06 1948), 203–17. Later, iron ore deposits and sources of scrap iron became greater pulls for the location of steel factories.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Thuillier, André, Economie et société nivernaises au début du XIXe siécle (Paris:Mouton, 1974), 308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Clemenceau, Georges, Rapport présenté à la commission d'enquéte parlementaire sur la situation des ouvriers de l'agricultu?e et de I'industrie en France (Gréve d'Anzin) (Paris:Imprimerie de la Chambre des députés, 1885), 31;Google ScholarWilloughby, F. W., “Industrial Communities,” Bulletin of the Department of Labor, 3 (03 1896), 239;Google ScholarReybaud, Louis, Le fer et la houille (Paris:Michel Lévy, 1874), 56.Google Scholar

15 Companies recognized the dependent position in which such a system placed the worker. For this reason, Roche-la-Moliére judged that a pension fund like that of the miners would be humiliating for engineers and annually contributed an amount equal to 10 percent of the engineer's salary to an account which he was given as a lump sum on his retirement. Guillaume, Pierre, “Notes sur les ingénieurs des charbonnages de la Loire au XIXe siécle,” in Charbon et sciences humaines, Trénard, Louis, ed. (Paris:Mouton, 1966), 225–26.Google Scholar

16 Schneider, Etablissements, Economie sociale (Paris:Imprimerie Générale Lahure, 1912), 90.Google Scholar For more on Cheysson and the company he kept, see Elwitt, Sanford, “Social Reform and Social Order in Late Nineteenth-Century France: The Musée Social and Its Friends,” French Historical Studies, 11:3 (1980), 431–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Gibon, A., “Les institutions patronales et Teurs services pendant les crises industrielles,” La reforme sociale, 2d ser. (1 02 1886), 139.Google Scholar At the turn of the century in the coal-mining firm of Bruay-les-Mines, half of a miner's wages was given to him and half to his wife. Dubrecq, Adolphe, Un minur nommé Patience. Propos recueillis par Claude Pasteur (Paris:Editions France-Empire, 1981), 194.Google Scholar The demographic basis of paternalism raises an important issue: did workers limit births at some point as either a rational response to economic insecurity or as the ultimate antipaternalist gesture? Both Montceau-les-Mines and Le Creusot experienced traumatic strikes at the turn of the century. Births per 1,000 inhabitants fell from 34.6 in 1900 to 14 in 1913 at Montceau-les-Mines, and from 29.9 in 1893 to 17.6 in 1912 at Le Creusot. At Montceau-les-Mines the number of births per marriage fell from 3.54 to 2.84 from 1890–1899 to 1900–1909. Laroche, Léon, Montceau-les-Mines (Montceau-les-Mines:Imprimerie ouvriére, 1924), 129–37;Google ScholarPeyronnard, Lucien, Le Charbon de Blanzy, 2 vols. (Le Creusot:EcOmusée, 1981), II, 257–58.Google Scholar

18 Marliave, Charles de, Les mines d'anthracite de la Mure, 1806–1946 (n.p.: n.p., 1955), 236.Google Scholar

19 For an example at Decazeville, see Donald Reid, “Labor, Management, and the State in an Industrial Town: Decazeville, 1826–1914” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1981), 243–44. See also Gibon, “Les institutions,” 137.

20 Annuaire statistigue, administratif et commercial de la Niévre 1829, quoted in Thuillier, Guy, Aspects de l'économie nivernaise au X1Xe siécle (Paris:Mouton, 1966), 277.Google Scholar

21 Perrot, , Les ouvriers en gréve; Murard, Lion and Zylberman, Patrick, “Le petit travailleur infatigable,” Recherches, 25 (11 1976), 1287.Google Scholar

22 Devillers, and Huet, , Le Creusot, 80.Google Scholar

23 Perrot, “The Three Ages,” 160–61.

24 For one example among many, see Bergeron, Louis, Les capitalistes en France (1780–1914) (Paris:Editions Gallimard, 1978), 160.Google Scholar

25 Parize, Rend, “La strategie patronale au Creusot pendant les gréves de 1899–1900,” Cahiers de l'lnstitut Maurice Thorez, 12:24 (1978), 1346.Google Scholar

26 Yet, as the most astute contemporary critics of industrial paternalism noted, there was a clear divide between such a socially construed notion of paternity and the workings of the nineteenth-century family. The paternalist employer was more like Freud's primal father than a bourgeois head of household. The Catholic social reformer Paul Bureau put the matter succinctly at the turn of the century: he criticized paternalism by pointing out that in a family the father seeks to rear his children to become independent and self-sufficient, not to remain as children. For this reason the paternalist employer found himself in the position of the father who “cannot imagine that his children will join together in order to look after their interests against him.” Montceaules-Mines et le paternalisme (La Chapelle-Montligeon:Imprimerie-Librarie de Notre-Dame de Montligeon, 1902), 2, 22.Google Scholar

27 Cheysson, Emile, Oeuvres choisies, 2 vols. (Paris:A. Rousseau, 1911), II :32. The analysis of paternalism in this article differs from that of E. P. Thompson because it deals less with the breakdown of a relationship of deference and expectations than with efforts to create such a relationship.Google Scholar

28 Reid, Donald, “Decazeville: Company Town and Working-Class Community, 1826–1914,” in French Cities in the Nineteenth Century, Merriman, John, ed. (London:Hutchinson, 1982), 200.Google Scholar

29 Clemenceau, , Rapport.Google Scholar See also Rolande, Trempé's discussion of reforms of mining operations in Carmaux in Les mineurs de Carmaux (Paris:Editions Ouvriéres, 1971).Google Scholar

30 As David Landes has pointed out, paternalist firms publicized their social programs to deflect adverse publicity about relations with their workers. French Entrepreneurship and Industrial Growth in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History, 9:1 (05 1949), 58.Google Scholar

31 Rouff, Marcel, Les mines de charbon en France au XVIécle (Paris:F. Rieder, 1922), 333.Google Scholar Rouff contends that company towns had their origins in the eighteenth century not in philanthropy, but in a desire to please the government. Ibid., 307–8.

32 Guillaume, Pierre, La Compagnie des Mines de la Loire (Paris:Presses Universitaires de France, 1966), 151.Google Scholar

33 Sutet, M., “Jules Chagot: Fondateur de la Compagnie des Mines de Blanzy (1801–1877). Etude de la mentalité d'un grand patron au XIXe siécle,” in Actes du quatre-vingt-neuviéme congres national des sociétés savantes, 1964. Section d' histoire moderne et contemporaine (Paris:Bibliothéque nationale, 1965), II, 807–15;Google ScholarLanfrey, A., “Eglise et monde ouvrier. Les congrégationistes et leurs ecoles à Montceau-les-Mines sous le Second Empire et Ia IIIe Republique (1875–1903),” Cahiers d'histoire, 23:1 (1978), 5171.Google Scholar

34 Devillers, and Huet, , Le Creusot, 71.Google Scholar For the Lorraine, see Köll, Louis, Auboué en Lorraine du fer. Du village rural à la cite miniere (Paris:Karthala, 1982), 81.Google Scholar

35 Clemenceau, , Rapport, 36.Google Scholar

36 Euverte, “De (l'organisation,” 355–56.

37 Brooke, Michael Z., Le Play (London:Longman, 1970), 29, 137.Google Scholar Le Play's followers, like Cheysson, used the term patronage in preference to paternalisme, which took on negative connotations over the course of the nineteenth century. My usage of “paternalism” in this article precludes the need to make this differentiation.

38 Archives Nationales (hereafter cited as AN) 84AQ23, Direction de Decazeville to Conseil d'administration of the Société des Houilléres et Fonderies de I'Aveyron, 21 December 1840.

39 AN 84AQ34, Conseil to Direction, 28 December 1840.

40 Guillaume, , La Compagnie des Mines de la Loire, 146–56.Google Scholar

41 Duveau, Georges, La vie ouvriére en France sous le Second Empire (Paris:Gallimard, 1946), 255;Google ScholarBendix, Reinhard, Work and Authority in Industry (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1974), 216–20;Google ScholarSteams, , Paths to Authority, 87.Google Scholar

42 Schneider, Etablissements, Economie sociale, 84.Google Scholar As a result of these changes, the cafe became the institutional counterpart to paternalist institutions in the company town. Serge Bonnet and Roger Humbert write of the cafe in tum-of-the-century iron towns in Lorraine: “The cafe lodges and nourishes a number of workers. The cafe-owner does a business in labor. Contractor for small jobs, he hires workers on the condition that they board with him. He has a hold on the workers who, as consumers, spend at his place as much and more than they earn.” La ligne rouge des hauls fourneaux (Paris:Editions Denoël, 1981), 123.Google Scholar

43 Reybaud, , Le fer et la houille, 243.Google Scholar

44 Archives départementales de I'Aveyron, U Watrin VI, no. 338, interrogation of Jules Grés, 1 March 1886.

45 Ibid., no. 310, interrogation of Pierre Galtié, 1 March 1886.

46 See Elaine Glovka Spencer's study of the restriction of foremen's prerogatives in the Ruhr before 1914. Her findings are similar to those I have uncovered in French heavy industry. Between Capital and Labor: Supervisory Personnel in Ruhr Heavy Industry before 1914,” Journal of Social History, 9:2 (Winter 1975), 178–92.Google Scholar For the situation in America, see Edwards, Richard, Contested Terrain (New York:Basic Books, 1978).Google Scholar

47 Perrot, Michelle, “Le regard de l'autre: les patrons français vus par les ouvriers (1880–1914),” in Le patronat de la seconde industrialisation, Lévy-Leboyer, Maurice, ed. (Paris:Editions Ouvriéres, 1979), 295.Google Scholar

48 Mony, Stéphane, Etude sur le travail (Paris:Hachette, 1877), 350–51.Google Scholar

49 Blanzy, the Chagots' mining firm at Montceau-les-Mines, was an exception.

50 Cheysson, Emile, “L'autorité patronale et les gréves.” La réforme sociale, 2d ser., 2 (1 07 1886), 2829.Google Scholar

51 Ardant, Gabriel, “Le mineur d'Anzin. La famille de I'ouv?er et patronage de Ia Compagnie,” La réforme sociale, 1st ser., 8 (1 09 1884), 205–29.Google Scholar

52 Ariés, Philippe, Histoire des populations françaises (Paris:Editions du Seuil, 1971), 250,Google Scholar

53 Barbichon, G. and Moscovici, Serge, “Modernisation des mines. Conversion des mineurs,” Revue francaise du travail, 16:3 (0712 1962), 129.Google Scholar Miners' union leaders Casimir Bartuel and Henri Rullieére wrote that “the hewer, in his work area, has in some respect charge d'âames.” La mine et les mineurs (Paris:Librairie Octave Doin, 1923), 233.Google Scholar

54 Geiger, Reed, The Anzin Coal Company, 1800–1833 (Newark:University of Delaware Press, 1974), 27, 3540.Google Scholar

55 Guignet, Philippe, Mines, manufactures, et ouvriers des Valenciennois au XVIII'. siécle (New York:Arno Press, 1977), 662.Google Scholar

56 Ledoux, Ch., L'organisation du travail dans les mines et particuliérement dans les houilléres tant en France qu'à l'étranger (Paris:Imprimerie Chaix, 1890), 1112.Google ScholarEwald, François, in his excellent “La condition du mineur,” in Andre Théiet, Parole d'uvrier (Paris:Grasset, 1978), 2122,Google Scholar asks why the relationship of the engineer to the miner plays such a comparatively small role in Emile Zola's Germinal (and other novels about mining). In addition to Zola's political proclivities, the answer for Germinal is that at Anzin, a model for Montsou, there were fewer engineers and they were less directly involved in workers' lives in the years before 1884–85, when Germinal was written, than after this period.

57 Lebon, André, Martin du Tiss, mineur en 1900 (Paris, Jean-Pierre Delarge, 1979), 13.Google Scholar

58 Vuillemin, E., La gréve d'Anzin de Février-Mars-Avril 1884 (Lille:Imprimerie L. Danei, 1884), 68.Google Scholar See also Gar^enot, A., Les mines d'Anzin (Paris:Imprimerie Joseph Kugelmann, 1884), 2223, 53.Google Scholar The state mine engineer stressed that as a result of this system Anzin remained closed to technical innovation. Archives départementales du Nord M626–13, no. 498, “Histo?que de la greve d'Anzin. Février, Mars, et Avril 1884.” Note that in Germinal Zola made the engineer Négrel the nephew of the director Hennebeau.

59 Vuillemin, La gréve, 78. On Anzin's difficulties at this time, see Simard, Marc, “Situation économique de l'entreprise et rapports de production: Le cas de la Compagnie des Mines d'Anzin (1860–1894),” Revue du Nord, 65 (0709 1983), 581602.Google Scholar

60 Clemenceau, , Rapport, 46.Google Scholar

61 Ibid., 142 (letter from the director of Anzin to the Prefect of the Nord).

62 Ibid., 52–55.

63 Ibid., 175.

64 Willoughby, “Industrial Communities,” 235. This system later became the basis of an extended “apprenticeship,” which allowed companies to pay young miners at a lower production rate than their more senior colleagues with whom they worked. Dumoulin, Georges, “La crise de l'apprentissage,” Mouvement syndicaliste, 25:207 (02 1909), 103–4.Google Scholar

65 Willoughby, “Indust?al Communities,” 230.

66 Ledoux, , L'organisation du travail, 1112.Google Scholar

67 Clemenceau, Rapport, 159–60.Google Scholar The situation in the Pas-de-Calais was particularly revealing in this regard. During the first decades of operation, in the second half of the nineteenth century, companies in the Pas-de-Calais imported foremen from the Nord who established the same pattern of internal self-recruitment which characterized Anzin and other mines in the Nord. These foremen often mistreated the native recruits under their command. But, Georges Dumoulin reports, until the end of the 1880s, foremen in the Pas-de-Calais also often acted as the miners' “accomplices” by turning a blind eye or actually aiding miners in their efforts to get paid for more work than they had done. “Au pays des gueules noires” [1912], in Germinal. Projet sur un roman (Paris:Christian Bourgois, 1975), 79, 97.Google Scholar In addition, Dumoulin explains, the personnel from the Nord taught miners in the Pas-de-Calais how to demand their rights. During its early years the miners' union in the Pas-de-Calais occasionally turned to foremen for leadership. La fédé?ation du minurs,” Mouvement syndicaliste, 24:203 (15 10 1908), 242, 244.Google Scholar

68 George Lamb, “Coal Mining in France, 1873 to 1895” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, 1976), 113.

69 Clemenceau, , Rapport, 159–60. There was no marchandage at Escarpelle, however.Google Scholar

70 Lamb, “Coal Mining,” 417.

71 Bartuel and Rulliere, La mine et les mineurs, 239–40.

72 Dumoulin, Georges, Carnets du route (Quarante années de vie militante) (Lille:“Edition de l'Avenir,” [1938]), 44.Google Scholar

73 Trempé, Rolande, “Le réformisme des mineurs franĉ, ais à la fin du XIXe siécle,” Mouvement social, 65 (1012 1968), 93107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74 Clemenceau, , Rapport, 34.Google Scholar

75 Reid, Donald, “The Role of Mine Safety in the Development of Working-Class Consciousness and Organization: The Case of the Aubin Coal Basin, 1867–1914,” French Historical Studies, 12 (Spring 1981), 98119CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hatzfeld, Henri, Du paupérisme à la sécurité sociale (Paris: A. Colin, 1971).Google Scholar

76 Gillet, Marcel, “Aux origines de la première convention d'Arras. Le bassin houiller du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais de 1880 à 1891,” Revue du Nord, 39 (04-06 1957), 111–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77 Kéravic, Yan, “Mineur des mines de houille du Pas-de-Calais-France,” Les ouvriers des deux mondes, 2d ser., 5:86 (1897), 279–80.Google Scholar The author points out that the foreman did have to carry out certain technical responsibilities, but these were generally not taken into account by those under his command. Writing in 1912, Dumoulin remarked on the “moralizing” and “sermonizing” of the messages passed down the hierarchy from the director through the senior engineers down to the junior engineers; the foremen then translated this moral discourse into physical coercion (“on fera ‘taper’ plus fort”) and production bonuses. “Au pays des gueules noires.” 9495.Google Scholar

78 Bartuel, and Rullière, , La mine et les mineurs, 253.Google Scholar

79 Ibid., 217, n. 1.

80 Ibid., 253.

81 Ibid., 255–57. Bartuel and Ru'here seemed unconcerned by the ultimate thrust of much “human relations” literature, embodied in the comment of one French coal-mining engineer: “The worker is much more grateful for a friendly attitude from his supervisors than for the same attitude on the part of workers' leaders.” Condevaux, John, Le mineur du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais. Sa psychologie. Ses rapports avec le patronat (Lille: Imprimerie L. Danei, 1928), 57.Google Scholar

82 Jarey, Robert, “Les agents de maitrîse et l'évolution sociale,” in Conférences de service social (Paris: Edition Sociale Française, n.d.), 123–24Google Scholar. See Gillet, Marcel, “Le Nord/Pas-deCalais: 36–38,” in De Blum à Daladier. Le Nord/Pas-de-Calais 1936–1939Google Scholar, Gillet, Marcel and Hilaire, Yves-Marie, eds. (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1970), 146–47.Google Scholar

83 Cheysson, , Oeuvres choisies, I, 25.Google Scholar

84 Chevalier, Jean, Le Creusot, 2d ed. (Paris: Dunod, 1946), 197.Google Scholar

85 Dumay, Jean-Baptiste, Mémoires dun militant ouvrier du Creusot (1841–1905) (Paris: François Maspéro/Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1976), 10.Google Scholar

86 Roy, Joseph-Antoine, Histoire de la famille Schneider et du Creusot (Paris: Marcel Riviére et Cie., 1962), 93Google Scholar. For examples of the much greater mobility at other French metallurgical enterprises, see Trempé, Rolande, “Pour une meilleure connaissance de la classe ouvrière. L'utilisation des archives d'entreprise: Le fichier du personnel,” in Mélanges d'histoire sociale offerts à Jean Maltron (Paris: Les Editions ouvrières, 1976), 249–63.Google Scholar

87 Bonnefont, Gaston, Souvenirs dun vied ingénieur au Creusot (Paris: Société d'Edition et de Publication, n.d.)Google Scholar

88 Scott, Joan W., The Glassworkers of Carmaux (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974).Google Scholar

89 Dumay, , Mémoires, 82.Google Scholar

90 Etablissements Schneider, , Economie sociale, xxiGoogle Scholar. For more on Le Creusot's philosophy of education, see the work of one of the enterprise's former directors, Deseilligny, A.-P., Del'influence de 1'education sur la moraine et le bien-être des classes laborieuses (Paris: Hachette, 1868).Google Scholar

91 Schneider, Etablissements, Economie sociale, 63.Google Scholar

92 Dumay, , Mémoires, 83, 85.Google Scholar

93 Forest, Jean, L'emprise (Paris: La Pensée Universelle, 1971), 70.Google Scholar

94 Bonnefont, , Souvenirs, 19.Google Scholar

95 Roy, , Histoire, 95.Google Scholar

96 Beaud, Claude, “Les ingénieurs du Creusot à travers quelques destins du milieu du XIXe siècle au milieu du XXe” (Paper given at the colloquium “Ingénieurs et Société” at Le Creusot, October 1980).Google Scholar

97 Parize, , “La stratégie,” 20.Google Scholar

98 For an example of a foreman at Le Creusot breaking company rules in exchange for a bribe, see Dumay, , Mémoires, 102–3.Google Scholar

99 Cheysson, , Oeuvres choisies, II, 34.Google Scholar

100 Ibid., I, 28.

101 Schneider, Etablissements, Economie sociale, 187.Google Scholar

102 Company unions existed in several other industrial centers, including Carmaux and Montceau-les-Mines.

103 Parize, , “La stratégie,” 29Google Scholar. See also idem,Les militants ouvriers au Creusot pendant les greves de 1899–1900,” Mouvement social, 99 (04-06 1977), 97108.Google Scholar

104 Schneider, Etablissements, Economie sociale, 8586.Google Scholar

105 Lamirand, Georges, Le rôle social de l'ingénieur. Scènes de la vie d'usine (Paris: Editions de la Revue des Jeunes, 1932). Lamirand's social engineer was a practicing engineer who understood each component of his job—as technician, leader, and confidant—in social terms. This should not be confused with the “social engineer” in the American sense of an individual who managed social welfare programs. For Lamirand and his French acolytes, the engineer's interaction with his subordinates was more important than even the most generous social benefits in fostering harmonious labor relations.Google Scholar Beginning in World War I, a number of major French firms turned to young middle-class women to look after the social needs of their employees. The creation of surintendantes was seen as one way for middle-class women to make use of their talents: “Here is a way for a whole generation of young women to climb the ladder that leads to jobs in management.” Maurel, Edouard, L'ingénieur social dans l'industrie (Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey, 1929) iii–ivGoogle Scholar. A career as a surintendante enabled a middle-class woman to enter management by drawing on her presumed natural maternal instincts. The company was able to legitimate its authority in the worker's life away from the workplace by invoking maternalism rather than the much-maligned paternalism. On surintendantes, see Verdès-Leroux, Jeannine, Le travail social (Paris: Les Editions du Minuit, 1978), ch. 1.Google Scholar

106 Boltanski, Luc, Les cadres. La formation dun groupe social (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1982), 63153Google Scholar; Kolboom, Ingo, “Patronat et cadres: La contribution patronale à la formation du groupe des cadres (1936–1938),” Mouvement social, 121 (10-12 1982), 7195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

107 Murard, and Zylberman, , “Le petit travailleur infatigable.”Google Scholar

108 Stearns, , Paths to Authority.Google Scholar