¹ This growth of interest can first be seen in two special issues of Le Mouvement social ‘L'atelier et la boutique’, 108 (1979)Google Scholar, and ‘Petite entreprise et politique’, 114 (1979)Google Scholar. Subsequent publications include Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe (eds.) Crossick, Geoffrey and Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard (1984)Google Scholar; Nord, Philip G., Paris Shopkeepers and the Politics of Resentment (Princeton, 1986)Google Scholar; Splintered Classes: Politics and the Lower Middle Classes in Interwar Europe (ed.) Koshar, Rudy (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; L'univers politique des classes moyennes (eds.) Lavau, Georges et al. (Paris, 1983)Google Scholar; Zdatny, Steven M., The Politics of Survival. Artisans in Twentieth-Century France (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Aux frontières des classes moyennes. La petite bourgeoisie beige avant 1914 (eds.) Kurgan, G. and Jaumain, Serge (Brussels, 1992)Google Scholar; Morris, Jonathan, The political economy of shopkeeping in Milan 1886–1922 (Cambridge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to Peter Heyrman, Serge Jaumain and Leen Van Molle for helpful discussions in the early stages of this research, and also to Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Sylvie Taschereau for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.

² These other strands of analysis have received little attention. For French radicalism and the classe moyenne, see Berstein, Serge, ‘Le Parti Radical-Socialiste, de la défense du peuple à celle des classes moyennes’, in Lavau, , L'umvers politique, 71–93Google Scholar. For French socialists Madeleine Rebérioux, ‘Les socialistes français et le petit commerce au toumant du siècle’, le mouvement social, 114 (1981), 57–70Google Scholar.

³ Blondel, Georges, ‘Le problème des classes moyennes. Aperçus français’, Bulletin de l'Institut international pour l'étude du problème des classes moyennes, 05 1908Google Scholar, cited henceforward as IICM Bulletin. I have not succeeded in tracking down a complete set of this Bulletin for the period 1905–1914, though the combined holdings of the Catholic Documentation Centre (KADOC), at the Catholic University of Louvain, and Louvain Municipal Library between them cover most of these years.

⁴ Brants, Victor, La petite industrie contemporaine (2nd edition, Paris, 1902), 68 ffGoogle Scholar; Dufourmantelle, Maurice, ‘La défense des classes moyennes’, La réforme sociale, LVII (1909), 765–6Google Scholar; Maroussem, Paul du, La question ouvrière (4 vols., Paris, 1891–1894)Google Scholar.

⁵ Pyfferoen, Oscar, ‘La petite bourgeoisie d'aprèes une enquête officielle à Gand (I)’, La réform sociale, XXXVII (1899), 285Google Scholar.

⁶ Maroussem, Paul du, La question ouvirère. vol 3Google Scholar: Le jouet parisien. Grands magasins. ‘Sweating-system’, (Paris, 1894), 202–3Google Scholar.

⁷ For example, Funck-Brentano, Théophile, La Politique. Principes. Critiques. Réforme (Paris, 1893), 186Google Scholar.

⁸ Blondel, Georges, ‘La petite bourgeoisie’, La réform sociale, XLII (1901), 836Google Scholar.

⁹ Lambrechts, Hector, ‘La concentration, commun dénominateur de la question sociale’, Revue sociale catholique, XVII (1912–1913), 186Google Scholar. Lambrechts published extensively in a variety of journals, including La réform sociale, Revue d'Economie Politique, Revue des Questions Scientifiques, and IICM Bulletin. As Hego he wrote a series of interesting popular articles in the Antwerp newspaper La métropole between 1895 and 1906, many of which tackled questions relating to the petite bourgeoisie. His most important books include Le problème social de la petite bourgeoisie envisagé au point de vue beige (Brussels, 1902)Google Scholar and his institutional memoirs, Trente années au service des Classes Moyennes (Dison, 1931)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Compte rendu sténographique du Congrès International de la Petite Bourgeoisie, tenu à Anvers le 17 et 18 septembre 1899 (Brussels, 1900), 713Google Scholar. Original emphasis. His words suggest an implicit response to discordant voices denying the reality of the classes moyennes.

¹¹ See for example the variety of intellectual tendencies gathered from the 1870s in Emile Boutmy's EcoU libre des sciences politiques: Christophe Prochason, Les années électriques 1880–1910 (Paris, 1991), 212 ffGoogle Scholar. The coexistence of eclectic and even contradictory ideological groups in late nineteenth– and early twentieth-century French reform movements is a recurrent theme in Elwitt, Sanford, The Third Republic Defended. Bourgeois Reform in France, 1880–1914 (Baton Rouge, 1986)Google Scholar, though his study reduces them to a single underlying project.

¹² Mayeur, Jean-Marie, ‘Catholicisme intransigent, catholicisme social, démocratic chrétienne’, Annales E. S. C, XXVII (1972), 483–99Google Scholar; Cholvy, Gérard and Hilaire, Yves-Marie, Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine, Vol 2 1880–1930 (Toulouse, 1986), 73 ff and 150 ffGoogle Scholar; Een Kantelend Tijdperk. De wending van de Kerk naar het volk in Noord-West-Europe (ed.) Lamberts, Emiel (Louvain, 1992)Google Scholar, especially essays by Mayeur on France and Paul Gerin on Belgium.

³ On the ideas of Le Play and the Le Playist movement, see Brooke, Michael Z., Le Play: engineer and social scientist. The life and work of Frédéric Le Play (1970)Google Scholar; Silver, Catherine Bodard (ed.), Frédéric Le Play on Family, Work and Social Change (Chicago, 1982)Google Scholar; Savoye, Antoine, ‘Les continuateurs de Le Play au tournant du siècle’, Revue française de sociologie, XXII (1981), 315–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elbow, Matthew H., French Corporative Theory, 1789–1948. A Chapter in the History of Ideas (New York, 1953), 48 ffGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ Tréanton, Jean-René, ‘Faut-il exhumer Le Play? ou les héritiers abusifs’, Revue française de sociologie, XXV (1984), 458–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ Demolins, Edmond, ‘L'école de la Réforme sociale. Son programme’, La Réforme sociale, I (1881), 4Google Scholar.

¹⁶ The division amongst the followers of Le Play, which produced an alternative tendency around the journal La Science sociale (founded 1886), was as much to do with personalities as theories, but it is noteworthy that La Science sociale, which was explicitly concerned with the development of Le Playist theory rather than social action, gave relatively little attention to the classes moyennes.

¹⁷ See the publications of the Musée social, its Annales as well as its Memoires et Documents. Éetienne Martin Saint-Léon's report on ‘Le III^e Congrès international lies classes moyennes’ in Le Musée social, December 1911, 357–79 is a rare and low-key exception. On the institution itself, see Elwitt, Sanford, ‘Social reform and social order in late nineteenth-century France: the Musée Social and its friends’, French Historical Studies, XI (1979–1980), 431–51Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Le Playists played a major role in the Belgian, Commission du Travail (1886)Google Scholar and Commission Nationale de la Petite Bourgeoisie (1902–6) as well as in the enquiries undertaken by the Office du Travail in France from 1891.

¹⁹ For the development of the International Institute, see its own publications, above all the IICM Bulletin; Lambrechts, Trentes années; Dufourmantelle, M., ‘Le Decennium de l'Institut International des Classes Moyennes’, La Réforme sociale, LXVII (1914), 56–61Google Scholar; Jaumain, Serge, ‘Les petits commerçantsbelges face à la modernité 1880–1914’, Doctoral thesis, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1991; 395–400Google Scholar.

²⁰ Paul Gérin, ‘Les mouvements populaires en Belgique’, in Lamberts, Kantelend Tijdperk, 159Google Scholar. At its 1893 Congress, the Catholic Ligue démocratique beige formally supported the spread of consumer cooperation: Congrés International de la Petite Bourgeoisie 1899, 124. For agrarian cooperatives, see the excellent study by Molle, Leen Van, Chacun pour tous. Le Boerenbond Belge 1890–1990 (Louvain, 1990)Google Scholar.

²¹ Pyfferoen, Oscar, ‘Les boulangeries coopératives’, La Réforme sociale, XXIII (1892), 340–53Google Scholar; though compare Pyfferoen's changed tone just seven years later in ‘La petite bourgeoisie’. Hubert-Valleroux similarly defended consumer cooperatives, and questioned the proliferation of individual retailers, in ‘Les origines de la co-opération en France et Angleterre et les tendances actueles des coopérateurs’, La Réforme sociale, XXV (1893), 445–65Google Scholar. The early Le Playist attraction to consumer cooperation is most clearly shown in the Société d'économie sociale's discussion on the subject at the 1890 annual meeting. Whereas Dr Goddyn's savage onslaught on consumer cooperatives as the work of socialists and anarchists was excluded from the full report, M. Gruner's moderate assessment of their advantages, given the exploitation of workers by overnumerous intermediaries, was reproduced in full. Compare the report of the working session in ‘Les sociétés coopératives en Belgique. La coopération, son domaine, ses limites,’ La Réform sociale, XX (1890), 33–37Google Scholar, with the full report ‘La coopération. Son domaine et ses limites’, ibid., 577–98.

²² Retours, J. Angots des, ‘Les Grands Magasins du Louvre’, La Réforme sociale, XXII (1891), 95–9Google Scholar. See also Demolins', defence of the department store in his ‘La question des grands magasins’, La Science sociale, IX (1890), 289–319Google Scholar.

²³ Brants, Victor, La Lutte pour le Pain Quotidien. Précis des leçons d'économie politique (Paris, 1885), 195Google Scholar.

²⁴ Turmann, Max, ‘Un aspect du problème des classes moyennes’, La Chronique sociale du France, XVIII (1909), 461Google Scholar.

²⁵ Funck-Brentano, Th., Politique, 141Google Scholar; Maroussem, Paul du, La Question ouvrière. vol 2 Ebénistes du Faubourg St-Antoine (Paris, 1892), 277Google Scholar. See also Congrès International de la Petite Bourgeoisie 1899, 92 (Frantz Funck-Brentano) and 231 (G. Verbiest).

²⁶ Pyfferoen, Oscar, ‘La formation technique des classes moyennes’, La Réforme sociale, L (1905), 838Google Scholar.

²⁷ Maroussem, Paul du at Closing Banquet, Les Classes Moyennes dans le Commerce et l'Industrie. XXIX^e Congrés de la Société Internationale d'économie sociale (Paris, 1910), 128Google Scholar.

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²⁹ Saint-Leon, Étienne Martin, ‘L'organisation corporative des classes moyennes’, La Réforme sociale, LX (1910), 204Google Scholar.

³⁰ The classic statement in Aristotle's own writings is in The Politics Book 4, Chapter II.

³¹ Duplat, Georges, La classe moyenne. Son rôle social. Son action politique. Sa situation économique. Les réforme urgentes (Brussels, 1914), 97–8Google Scholar. See also Funck-Brentano, Frantz, Grandeur et décadences des classes moyennes (Paris, 1903), 48–9Google Scholar; Lambrechts, , Trente Années, 79Google Scholar.

³² Blondel, , ‘Le problème’, IICM Bulletin, 05 1908Google Scholar.

³³ Duplat, , Classe moyenne, 12Google Scholar.

³⁴ Aynard, Edouard, ‘Le petit commerce et l'industrie’, in Les Classes Moyennes dans It Commerce et l'Industrie, 12Google Scholar.

³⁵ Brants, , Petite industre, 30Google Scholar. For an interesting critical discussion of the implications of the word moyenne, see Henri Mougin, ‘Un projet d'enquête sur les classes moyennes’, in Aron, R. et al. , Inventaires III: Classes Moyennes (Paris, 1939), 296 ffGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ Wahrman, Dror, ‘Virtual representation: parliamentary reporting and languages of class in the 1790s’, Past and Present, 136 (1992), 83–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁷ Starzinger, Vincent E., Middlingness. Juste Milieu Political Theory in France and England, 1815–1848 (Charlottesville, 1965)Google Scholar; Sick, Klaus-Peter, ‘Le concept de classes moyennes. Notion sociologique ou slogan politique?’, Vingtième siècle, XXXVII (1993), 16–18Google Scholar.

³⁸ Boissieu, Le Comte de, ‘Le moteur éléctrique et l'industrie à domicile dans la région lyonnaise’, La Réform sociale, LV (1908), 656Google Scholar. For an enthusiastic description of harmonious family life in a shoemaker's workshop, see Beckers, René, ‘La cordonnerie à Louvain’, in Commission Nationale de la Petite Bourgeoisie (Belgium), Enquêtes écrites, Monographies, I (1904), 284–6Google Scholar.

³⁹ Saint-Léon, Etienne Martin, Le Petit Commerce français. Sa lutte pour la vie (Paris, 1911), 97–8Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Aynard, , ‘Le petit commerce et l'industrie’, 23Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Pyfferoen, , ‘La petite bourgeoisie’, 292Google Scholar.

⁴² Saint-Léon, Martin, Le Petite Commerce français, 93–4Google Scholar.

⁴³ Funck-Brentano, Frantz in Congrès International de la Petite Bourgeoisie 1899, 91Google Scholar. See also Pyfferoen, , ‘La petite bourgeoisie’, 293Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Bernard, Joseph and Hoffmann, Louis, ‘Le petit commerce et les grands magasins’, La Réforme sociale LXI (1911), 303Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Lambrechts, , Trente années, xivGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁶ The German example is a continuing thread in Brants, Petite industrie, but one over which he is cautious.

⁴⁷ Brants, , La petite industrie, 67–8Google Scholar and his ‘La petite industrie et la restauration corporative (Loi du 15 mars 1883)’, La Réforme sociale, XVII (1889), 224–37Google Scholar. Blondel, Georges, more acquainted with German and Austrian developments than others in France, was vigorous in his rejection of corporate legislation in Austria: ‘Le probleme’, IICM Bulletin, 05 1908Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Guibert, Louis, ‘Les anciennes corporations de métiers en Limousin’, La Réforme social, VI (1883), 445–54Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Demolins, Edmond, report on ‘Une conférence sur le mouvement corporatif’, La Réforme sociale, V (1883), 519–20Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Lambrechts, Hector, ‘L'œuvre sociale du Reichstag allemand en 1886’, Revue des Questions Scientifiques, XLI (1897), 104 ffGoogle Scholar. Le Play himself had admired the guilds of the ancien régime, but a concern for freedom of occupation made him unwilling to accept a continued role in the nineteenth century: Elbow, , French Corporative Theory, 48–9Google Scholar. A more corporatist social catholic concern for small enterprise can be found in the Union fratemelle du commerce et de l'industrit set up by Léon Harmel in 1891. See Nord, , Paris Shopkeepers, 395 ffGoogle Scholar.

⁵¹ E.g. Deherme, Georges, Les classes moyenne. Etude sur le parasitisme social (Paris, 1912)Google Scholar, which stressed not only shopkeepers but civil servants as well for the purpose of ridicule.

⁵² Babeau, Albert, Les Artisans et les Domestiques d'autrefois (Paris, 1886)Google Scholar. For such atempts to root the image of artisans in their past, see Husson, François, Artisans français. Les serruriers. Etude historique (Paris, 1902)Google Scholar. Examples of the uses of Babeau's influential study include Brants, , La petite Industrie, 27 ffGoogle Scholar and Rivière, , ‘La notion des classes moyennes’, in Les Classes Moyennes dans le Commerce et l'Industrie, 4Google Scholar.

⁵³ Rivière, Louis, ‘La notion’, 8Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Clerck, Victor de, ‘Les co-opératives d'achats en gros entre petit commerçants et petits industriels’, La Réforme sociale, LX (1910), 648Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ This was an assumption which shopkeeper representatives might contest, as when they insisted that associations could not bring to retailers the benefits which artisans might enjoy. See the interventions by Moens, and Cutsem, Attout-Van too the session on associations at the 1899 Congress, Congrès International de la Petite Bourgeoisie 1899, 363–8Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Clement, Henry, ‘Les classes moyennes’, La Réforme sociale, LXIV (1912), 706Google Scholar. The essay is a review of the book by Georges Deherme referred to above.

⁵⁷ Brants, , La petite Industrie, 167Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ ibid., 159; Funck-Brentano, Fr. in Congres International de la Petite Bourgeoisie 1899, 94Google Scholar.

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⁶⁰ Clercq, P. -J. de, ‘Les Artisans’, IICM Bulletin, 12 1908Google Scholar.

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⁶³ Brants, , La lutte, 262Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Duplat, , Classe moyenne, 74Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Morisseaux, Charles, La législation du travail, I (Brussels, 1895), 292–3Google Scholar. See also Julin, Armand, ‘Les industries à domicile et les moteurs éléctriques’, La Réform sociale, XLIV (1902), 322Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Boltanski, Luc, Les cadres. La formation d'un groupe social (Paris, 1982)Google Scholar; Maurice Halbwachs, ‘Les caractéristiques des classes moyennes’, in Aron, , Inventaires III, 28–52Google Scholar. See also a discussion rooted in the debates of the interwar period, Moulin, Leo and Aerts, Luc, ‘Les classes moyennes. Essai de bibliographic critique d'une définition’, Revue d'histoire économique et sodale, (1954), 168–186, 293–309Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Brants, Victor, ‘Les employés’, La Réform sociale, LVIII (1909), 619Google Scholar. As early as 1883 Feyeux was rejecting the possibility that managers and employees could play such a role: Feyeux, A., ‘La question des grands et des petits magasins’, La Réform sociale, V (1883), 361Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Maroussem, Du, La question ouvrière. vol 3: Le jouet parisien, 37 and 241–62Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Moride, Pierre, Les Maisons à succursales multiples en France et à l'étranger (Paris, 1913), 192–3Google Scholar. Note the or, in ‘their labour or their capital’, removing the key linkage that described the classic petite bourgeoisie. For a similar argument, this time from the Director of the Statistique générate de la France, see March, Lucien, ‘La concentration dans les industries de fabrication, d'entretien, etc’, in La Concentration des entreprises industrielles et commerciales. Conferences faites à l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes sociales (ed.) Fontaine, A. (Paris, 1913), 71Google Scholar. Social catholic defenders of consumer co-operatives followed an equivalent path, presenting the managers of co-operative stores and the workers who accumulated savings through their dividend as forces constructing a newb classe moyenne. See the contributions of Welche and Récamier to the discussion on consumer co-operation at the Société d'Econamie sociale, in La Réforme sociale, XXV (1893), 461–4Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Congrès International de la Petite Bourgeoisie 1899, 89.

⁷¹ Pyfferoen, , ‘La petite bourgeoisie’, 292Google Scholar.

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⁷³ Funck-Brentano, Th., Politique, 53–4Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ For an explicit challenge from Victor Brants to the supposedly inexorable nature of economic laws, see Brants, , La petite Industrie, 5–9Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Denayrouze, M., ‘La décentralisation desateliers domestiques’, La Réforme sociale, V (1883), 613–18Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ E. Dusaugey, Director of the Société d'énergie électrique de Grenoble, quoted in Dubois, Ernest and Julin, Armand, Les Moteurs électriques dans les industries à domicile (Brussels, 1902), 274Google Scholar. Optimistic faith in the power of electricity was widespread in these years—one historian has written of an ‘electromania’ seizing French society in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. See Beltran, Alain, ‘Du luxe au coeur du système. Electricité et société dans la région parisienne (1880–1939)’, Annales E.S.C. (1989), 1114Google Scholar. It is interesting to note how this enthusiasm was used by different groups to sustain such very varying views of progress.

⁷⁷ IICM Bulletin, August 1905

⁷⁸ Morel-Journel, Henry, ‘Le Réveil des classes moyennes en France’, in Société d'Economie politique et d'Economie sociale de Lyon, Comple Rendu Analytique des Séances de l'Année 1910–1911 (Lyon, 1911), 54–103Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Julin, and Dubois, , Moteurs électriques, 274Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Julin, , ‘Les industries à domicile’, 232Google Scholar. See also Julin and Dubois, Moteurs électriques; de Boissieu, ‘Le moteur éléctrique’; Julin, Armand and Dubois, Ernest, ‘Les moteurs électriques dans les industries à domicile’, La Revue sociale catholique, VI (1901–1902), 158–66Google Scholar; Julin, Armand, ‘L'outillage mécanique de l'atelier familial’, La Revue sociale catholique, IX (1904–1905), 289–317Google Scholar; Boissieu, Le Comte de, ‘L'emploi du moteur mécanique dans la petite industrie parisienne’, La science sociale, XXXVI (1903), 314–33Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Brants, , La petite industrie, 151Google Scholar. Indeed, Brants took Lambrechts to task for making concentration the common denominator of the social question. Brants insisted that it was not concentration but the moral order that was the essential issue, for all techniques and all forms of enterprise had both advantages and disadvantages. See the discussion of Lambrechts, , ‘Commun dénominateur’, 187Google Scholar.

⁸² Julin, , ‘L'outillage mécanique’, 310Google Scholar; Julin, and Dubois, , Moteurs électriques, 13Google Scholar; Julin, Armand, ‘Le travail des femmes beiges dans la grande et la petite industrie’, La Réforme sociale, XLII (1901), 381–408Google Scholar; Picot, Robert in Les Classes Moyennes dans le Commerce et l'Industrie, 85Google Scholar. Brants was, as ever, more careful about these distinctions: Brants, , La Lutte, 192Google Scholar.

⁸³ Pyfferoen, Oscar in Comte rendu sténographique du 2^ème Congrès international de la Petite Bourgeoisie, term à Namur le 15 et 16 septembre 1901 (Namur, 1902), 64–5Google Scholar. The brief emergence of consumer associations directed to encouraging ethical shopping practices, such as the responsible settlement of debts to shopkeepers and the purchase only of produce manufactured without sweated labour, responded to the same anxieties. See Deslandres, Maurice, L'Acheteur, son rôle économique et social: les ligues sociales d'achteurs (Paris, 1911)Google Scholar; the report of La Ligue nationale du paiement comptant (Belgium) in Compte Rendu Sténographique du IV^ème Congrès national de la petite bourgeoisie term à Saint-Trond les 4, 5 et 6 août 1907 (Saint Trond, 1907), 87–94Google Scholar; and the brief discussion in Williams, Rosalind H., Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley, 1982), 303–10Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Hego, (Hector Lambrechts), ‘Vous dépensez trop’, La Métropole, 6 09 1900Google Scholar.

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⁸⁶ Lambrechts, Hector, ‘De l'Avenir des Classes Moyennes’, IICM Bulletin, 02 1911Google Scholar. See also Théophile Funck-Brentano, ‘Préface’, in Maroussem, Paul du, La Question ouvrière. vol. 1. Charpentiers de Paris. Companons et Indépendents (Paris, 1891), 16Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ IICM Bulletin, June/July 1911, 456. See also Saint-Léon, Martin, Petit commerce, 16Google Scholar.

⁸⁸ Feyeux, Albert, ‘Un nouveau livre des métiers—I. La boulangerie parisienne’, La science sociale, IV (1887), 341Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Du Maroussem, Question ouvrière, passim.

⁹⁰ Blondel, , ‘Le problème’, IICM Bulletin, 04 1908Google Scholar. For contemporary critiques of the department store, see Miller, Michael B., The Bon Marché. Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869–1920 (Princeton, 1981), 190 ffGoogle Scholar.

⁹¹ Maroussem, Du, La question ouvrière. vol 3: Le jouet parisien, 254Google Scholar; Saint-Léon, Martin, Petit commerce, 98Google Scholar; Bernard, Joseph, Du mouvement d'orgmisation et de défense du petit commerce français, These de droit, University of Paris (1906), 51–3Google Scholar.

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⁹³ G. Verbiest, ibid., 219–33.

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⁹⁷ In addition to the international congresses of 1899 and 1901 cited above, the Institut international pour l'étude des problèms des classes moyennes organised further congresses including one in Munich in 1911, whose proceedings were published as III. Congrès international des classes moyennes (Munich, 1912)Google Scholar. The Belgian Association national? pour l'etude et la défense des intérêts de la petite bourgeoisie, founded in 1900 as a result of the 1899 Antwerp congress, organised a series of national congresses, all of whose proceedings were published. The proceedings of the 4th Congress at Saint-Trond are cited above.

⁹⁸ For the operation of that strategy in Belgium, see Jaumain, Serge and Gaiardo, Lucia, ‘“Aide-toi et le gouvernement t'aidera'”. Les responses de l'état à la crise de la petite bourgeoisie (1880–1914)’, Revue belge d'histoire contemporaine, XLX (1988), 417–71Google Scholar. Bernard, Du mouvement d'organisation is a detailed study directed at just such a strategy of turning shopkeepers away from demands of the state.

⁹⁹ Lambrechts, , Le problème social, 254Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁰ A note from the Association des commerçants de la Louvière was read out by the Chairman of the session on co-operatives: Congrès International de la Petite Bourgeoisie 1899, 217–19.

¹⁰¹ Hector Labrechts was later to recall ‘the fluctuating terminology at the time’. Lambrechts, , Trente Années, 316Google Scholar.

¹⁰² Aynard, Edouard, at Closing Banquet, Les Classes Moyennes dans le Commerce et l'Industrie, 124Google Scholar.

¹⁰³ Brants acknowledged this, writing that ‘it is the movement, the agitation which has provoked the research, and we are sure that this time it has not been without value to science.’ Brants, , La petite industrie, 5–6Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ There is an increasing literature on these movements, of which the most important works are Nord, Paris Shopkeepers, Jaumain, , ‘Petits commerçants’, 473–527Google Scholar. See also various essays, especially the national surveys, in Crossick & Haupt, Shopkeepers and Master Artisans.

¹⁰⁵ Lebon, M., to Congrès international de la boulangerie, 28 & 29 août 1910 (Louvain, 1910), 90Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁶ Congrès international de la Petite Bourgeoisie 1901, 114–15.

¹⁰⁷ For this careful management, see Jaumain, , ‘Petits commerçants’, 456 ffGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁸ The terminology of description merits further attention, distinguishing not only between countries and languages, but also between different actors, such as outside observers, national leaders, local organisations and so on. For some preliminary findings on Belgium, see Hentenryk, G. Kurgan-Van, ‘A la recherche de la petite bourgeoisie: l'enquête orale de 1902–1904’, Revue belge d'histovre contemporaine, XIV (1983), 295–7Google Scholar. The generalisation on self-description rests upon my reading of various shopkeeper newspapers for Lyon in the decade or so before the First World War, especially L'Alliance and Le Courier du Commerce. Crossick, Geoffrey, ‘From gentleman to the residuum: languages of social description in Victorian Britain’, in Language, History and Class (ed.) Corfield, Penelope J. (Oxford), 1991), 150–78Google Scholar, a general discussion of the vocabulary of social description in Britain, contains brief comments on the English terminology of lower middle class, 173–4.

¹⁰⁹ Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘La paysannerie, une classe objet’, Actes de la recherche en sciences societies, 17–18 (1977), 2–5Google Scholar.