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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

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References

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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