Eight
Labor Protest in an Era of Social Reform

The outstanding concerns of fin-de-siècle labor history—a general crisis of industrial discipline, achievements in building working-class institutions, and harsh repression of protest—were all visible at the Parisian gas plants. Studying the gas workers permits us to explore the dynamics of the larger trends in microcosm. The gaziers even traversed the long path of the French labor movement from direct, informally organized action to indirect participation within national, bureaucratic unions.^[1] How and why they did so clarifies many important points about the construction and collapse of peaceable industrial relations in France.

Reformist Syndicalism in Action

The logic of labor protest might seem to dictate that artisans would use their skills to defend their interests through direct action at the workplace but that industrial workers, especially recent rural immigrants, would have to rely on a centralized political party to advance their cause.^[2] Unrest at the gas plants belies such a tidy generalization. The PGC's manual per-

[1] Charles Tilly, The Contentious French: Four Centuries of Popular Struggle (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), chap. 10; Michael Hanagan, The Logic of Solidarity: Artisans and Industrial Workers in Three French Towns , 1871-1914 (Urbana, Ill., 1980), pp. 214-217; Val Lorwin, The French Labor Movement (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), chaps. 1-5.

[2] Bernard Moss, The Origins of the French Labor Movement, 1830-1914 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976), pp. 25-26. The textile operatives of the Nord often form the basis for such a generalization. See Robert Baker, "Socialism in the Nord, 1880-1914," International Review of Social History 12 (1967): 357-389, and Claude Willard, Les Guesdistes: Le Mouvement socialiste en France (1893-1905) (Paris, 1965).

sonnel engaged in collective protest centered at the workplace. The choice was not between syndicalism and socialism but rather between a syndicalism centered on strike action and one based on solid, carefully constructed organization. The gaziers tolerated patient organization building and an incremental approach to resolving their grievances in inverse proportion to their bargaining power with their employer.

The strategy of forming trade unions to pursue collective interests does not appear to have originated with the workers themselves. The law of 1884, which legalized unions, produced no spontaneous movement among the gas personnel. Formal organization began with the opening of negotiations between the PGC and the prolabor municipal council of the 1890s. The initiative probably came from outsiders and politicians. Their motives were to improve the condition of the workers and to develop a clientele. The first union of PGC workers, a fleeting one, was the project of one Jules Roques. A shadowy figure today, Roques was a journalist who edited the Socialist L'Egalité .^[3] Roques chose to organize stokers exclusively. He presided over their union and penned their demands. On May 1, 1890, he led a strike. Even though the stokers won a raise, they were disillusioned by the outcome of the action (for reasons we shall explore later). They apparently quarreled with Roques, and the union fell apart.^[4]

A second union, having nothing to do with the first and even rejecting its legacy, was formed June 1891. Its membership was entirely different. Stokers were not involved in its formation, nor did they seek to join it. To the second—and more permanent—union belonged common laborers from the courtyards, the lighting service, and the coke department. Initiators of the new movement were Socialist municipal councilmen, who assured gas workers of their support and protection. Jean Allemane, a Socialist who subordinated politics to trade union activity, was quite active among the organizers.^[5] This time the fruits of outside intervention took root. An indigenous leadership appeared to exploit the favorable political circumstances that make unionization possible. The common laborers employed by the PGC joined the union in large numbers. By the mid-1890s the Chambre syndicale des travailleurs du gaz was one of the largest, if

[3] Claude Bellanger et al., Histoire g é nérale de la presse française, 5 vols. (Paris, 1969-1976), 3:372. The police appeared to have no file on Roques even though he was prosecuted for publishing pornographic illustrations. See AP, V 8 O , no. 1063, "Grèves de 1890 et de 1899," dipping from L'Egalité, May 4, 1890.

[4] AP, V 8 O , no. 151, "Grève des chauffeurs (1 mai 1890)."

[5] Ibid., no. 148, "Rapport sur ia réunion du mercredi le 11 novembre 1891 à la Bourse du Travail"; "Rapport sur la réunion du 19 juillet 1891"; Préfecture, B/a, 1424, reports of June 27, November 12, 1891, January 16, and November 22, 1892. The editor of Le Rappel, Charles Bos, was also active in encouraging the union.

not the largest, union in Paris. It was also wealthy and had influence with local politicians and the press. As such, it was rather an exception in French labor history, but one whose evolution is nonetheless instructive.

The origins of this union were inseparable from the foundering of the liberal order at the end of the nineteenth century and the development of a political will to attempt the integration of wage earners into the republic. The municipal council announced its intention of helping workers win their rights, defined largely in terms of better pay. The situation has important implications for the question of relations between French workers and the nineteenth-century state. Scholars have debated whether the state functioned as an arm of capital at moments of labor unrest or whether it pursued a conciliatory role in the interest of public order.^[6] Whatever the intentions of the authorities, the comportment of gas workers points to a vast chasm of distrust between wage earners and the state. Workers did not act spontaneously to gain the state's support. They had taken no steps to importune officials during the numerous confrontations prior to 1890. Even when the company had behaved in a heavily repressive manner, neither stokers nor common hands (with the exception of lamplighters, who were paid in part by the government) had tried to draw the authorities to their side. In truth, the gas workers did not reach out to the state until the state—in the form of the municipal council—reached out to them. That happened as the left majority committed itself to a new round of republicanization. Such an extended hand was necessary to make workers active contenders for power within the existing political order. Even with the hand outstretched from above, a large number of gas laborers, as we shall see, turned their backs on the state. This segment of the labor force was not able to explain its behavior in terms of theoretical principles, but it was acting on the syndicalist assumption that the liberation of workers was the task of workers alone.^[7]

The indigenous leaders who directed the second union never fully renounced their distrust of the state, but they soon developed policies firmly

[6] Arguing for the repressive nature of the state, at least until the end of the century, is Michelle Perrot, Workers on Strike: France , 1871-1890, trans. Chris Turner (New Haven, 1987), pp. 280-303. Describing a more flexible policy are Charles Tilly and Edward Shorter, Strikes in France , 1830-1968 (Cambridge, 1974). The economist Gerald Friedman finds that the American government was more repressive than the French and that French strikes were more likely to be successful as a result. See "Strike Success and Union Ideology: The U.S. and France, 1880-1914," Journal of Economic History 48 (1988): 1-25.

[7] See Peter Stearns, Revolutionary Syndicalism and French Labor: A Cause without Rebels (New Brunswick, N.J., 1971). His assertions that militant syndicalism had the shallowest of roots among the mass of workers and that the vast majority sought only moderate reforms are not fully borne out by this study.

aimed at grasping the extended hand. They were also eager to listen to the paternalistic rhetoric of management set on bourgeois reform. They staked the success of their leadership and of the union on the viability of piecemeal reforms in the seemingly favorable climate of the 1890s. The same nine or ten men guided the union from its origins through the strike of 1899. Their backgrounds were humble and rooted in the milieu of the rank and file. Four had been team heads in the coke yards. The other members of the union's governing board had been commissioned workers in the lighting service, lamplighters, greasemen, and waxers.^[8] These leaders quickly escaped from the influence of Socialist politicians and stamped their own strategies and theoretical positions on the union. Manifesting varying degrees of ideological awareness, they all became reformist syndicalists. That stance by no means isolated them in prewar Paris. Indeed, revolutionaries like Victor Griffuelhes frequently lamented that the capital had no major unions of the ideological coloration of which they approved. The programs of the reformists have largely been forgotten by historians but deserve to be far better known.^[9]

The strongest influence over the Chambre syndicale des travailleurs du gaz in its early years came from Alfred Brard, a former team head from the coke yards. He was the general secretary of the union until 1893, when he won a seat on the municipal council from the district that contained the La Villette plant. Brard's views on labor movements had many affinities with those of Maurice Claverie, his counterpart at the employees' union. Brard was just as much a reformist syndicalist and just as flexible. His electoral platform proclaimed that he "had always thought that theories do not suffice; that fine words do not provide bread; that actions are better than words; that realities are better than hopes, which often cannot be realized anyway."^[10] Though Brard ran successfully as an "independent Socialist" in two municipal elections, he was a stranger to the Socialist group at City Hall. He was too committed to the role of councilman in service of the unions to support the policies of the Socialists on the gas question. Eventually, he changed his political label to a more appropriate

[8] AP, V 8 O , no. 148, "Renseignements sur les principaux ouvriers dits délégués des Travailleurs du gaz"; report of September 17, 1892.

[9] It is interesting to compare the French leaders to the head of the British gas workers' union, Will Thorne. See his autobiography, My Life's Battles (London, n.d.), and his biography, Giles Radice and Lisanne Radice, Will Thorne: Constructive Militant (London, 1974). Thorne was clearly more energetic and imaginative than the people who led the French gas unions.

[10] Prefecture, B/a 195, "Election de 1900, XIX Arrondissement"; AP, V 8 O , no. 148, "Procès-verbaux des audiences données aux délégués du syndicat"; report of July 25, 1891.

"syndicalist." Several Socialist candidates challenged Brard in his last campaign in 1900, and by vying for votes on their right, he not only retained his seat but also won a reputation for being a Nationalist in some circles. The visibility of Brard's rightward drift was reinforced by his qualified support for the Chamon project of 1901, which he viewed as giving workers as much as they could expect. In reality, Brard had not joined the anti-Dreyfusard right; he was simply a reformist syndicalist who avoided large ideological issues and lacked an abiding animosity for capitalism. This position did not make him an anomaly among the union's activists.

After Brard departed from the board to serve the gas workers at city hall, the leadership passed to Jean Darène, who was still more naive about the use of power than Brard and more opportunistic in his quest for immediate gains. His understanding of the workers' position in French society transcended classic divisions between the left and the right. The union newspaper, which Darène edited, expressed his anti-Semitic views. Some-how Jewish stockholders of the PGC were especially guilty of exploitation, and Darène saw the possibility of cooperating with the gentile ones. He was also xenophobic and blamed foreign workers for intensifying the problems that French laborers faced. The antipathy for foreign wage earners that Darène expressed was probably widespread in this union, which may at times have excluded them. n

Darène's hopefulness about reform in this era of liberal crisis was coupled with gullibility and perhaps even an overweening respect for hierarchy. Darène was completely duped by Director Godot's ploy of agreeing to enforce labor rules only to have lower managers violate them. He retained his faith in the director's word long after it was reasonable to do so. The union leader explained the many abuses of authority that his own newspaper reported as a matter of ignorance on the part of top management, which, he insisted, sought to be just in the face of intransigent supervisors.^[12] Darène's guiding vision was some sort of permanent cooperation between well-intentioned management and the moderate union. He perceived in the politics surrounding the gas concession the occasion for a corporatist accord with the PGC.^[13] Ultimately, Darène's lack of critical in-sight led to inept strategies at moments of crisis.

[11] Le Journal du gaz. Organe officiel de la chambre syndicale des travailleurs du gaz , no. 81 (April 20, 1896): 3; no. 90 (September 5, 1896): 3; no. 21 (October 30, 1893): 3.

[12] Ibid., no. 83 (May 20, 1896): 1.

[13] AP, V 8 O , no. 150, letter of the executive commission of the Syndicat des travailleurs to director, September 1892. The union leaders reminded Godot of "the work the union has done to realize a renewal of the monopoly."

The corporatist implications of Darène's approach to union affairs mer-its further investigation, for they were not at all unique. We have already observed the strain of thought in Claverie and Brard. Scholars usually associate corporatism with social thought inspired by Catholicism, preindustrial tradition, and hostility to class analysis. Yet reformist syndicalism and corporatism shared several key assumptions and could readily dove-tail. Both outlooks focused on the interests shared by capital and labor. Both assumed that the employer had the capacity to make major improvements in the lives of bis workers. Corporatists and nonrevolutionary syndicalists agreed that the enterprise, not the political arena, was where reform had to occur. Corporatists were intent on combatting "state socialism," and the union leaders thought of political influence mainly as a source of leverage to negotiate with the employer.^[14] The boundaries between the two outlooks were likely to be especially blurred in this era of nascent corporate capitalism. The separation of ownership and control confused reform-minded syndicalists, it allowed them to represent managers as simply a part of the personnel.^[15] The bureaucratic structure of management at the PGC led Claverie, Brard, and Darène to envision engineers and workers in an easy cooperation—one as the brains, the other as the musde. Furthermore, the freedom that large enterprises enjoyed from market constraints opened the possibility of the company's sharing its monopolistic profits with the personnel. Reformist syndicalists inevitably found attractions in corporatist solutions to labor unrest, particularly at a moment when managers advocated measures of social peace.

Other union leaders were somewhat less optimistic or naive than Darène. They were sometimes openly skeptical about his roseate assessments of management's intentions. Nonetheless, they were just as committed to reformist syndicalism. The policy of delivering ultimatums to the PGC or of striking was not one they advocated. They differed from Darène in having more faith in the good intentions of the municipal council than in the company. They believed that the city could wring further concessions from an employer who was unresponsive, either out of ill will or lack of thought.

Though reformists too, the Socialists on the municipal council found their relations with the gas union leaders to be highly problematical. The Socialist councilmen strove to improve the lives of the gas personnel, but

[14] At the CGT's celebrated Congress of Amiens in 1906, the reformist syndicalists were just as insistent as the revolutionaries on independence from political parties.

[15] At a union meeting in July 1891, Brard affirmed that director Camus was not "an enemy of workers" hut simply an "employee of the stockholders." See AP, V 8 O , no. 148, "Rapport sur la quatrième réunion du syndicat (25 juillet 1891)."

their solution to the gas question, municipalization, required waiting until after 1905 for dramatic ameliorations. Union leaders inevitably found Radicals, and especially the Nationalists, more open to discussing immediate gains for the rank and file. Thus, dose ties between Socialists and syndicalists failed to develop despite a shared concern for the plight of the gas workers. Ironically the leaders of the gas workers might have found more common ground with reformist Socialists had they been less reformist as syndicalists.

The progress achieved by the union was ultimately dependent on the employer's will to grant concessions, and the breakdown of negotiations with the city at the end of 1892 dimmed those prospects. From 1893 to 1898 the union leadership faced frustrations, for the company was not responsive, and the municipal council was not able to impose reforms. There were moments when even Darène lost his optimism. In May 1896 the secretary expressed his disappointment with Director Godot: not that the director had abandoned his concern for the personnel, but he placed too much trust in his subordinates. Darène reluctantly concluded that Go-dot cared more for the principles of hierarchical authority than for social justice. Reaching the acme of disillusionment in late 1896, Darène broached the possibility of some sort of "demonstration" to shake management out of its routine.^[16] The impasse forced the union to reformulate its demands and its strategies. It dropped the long-standing negotiating points of a minimum wage of five francs and equalization of pay and put in their place far-reaching demands, the eight-hour day and tenure for all workers who had been with the firm five years.^[17] The boldness of the new projects was more a sign of resignation than one of radicalization. The union leaders realized that little would be accomplished until the larger gas question was resolved one way or another. They were establishing an agenda for the PGC's successor.

In a speech to the assembled members the union president stated that the goal of collective action was assuring "a certain material well-being [une petite aisance ] for workers."^[18] Though there is no conclusive way to survey the views of the rank and file, there is equally no reason to suppose they were fundamentally out of step with the goals and tactics of the indigenous leaders. Gas workers did flock to the union in large numbers;

[16] Journal du gaz , no. 92 (October 5, 1896): 3.

[17] The minimum wage was realized as a result of the 600,000-franc grant in 1896. Municipal politicians may have been behind the new demands. The city tenured its own workers in 1895. See AP, V 8 O no. 154, "Mesures prises par le Conseil municipal en vue de l'amélioration de la situation du personnel."

[18] Ibid., no. 148, "Rapport sur la réunion du mercredi 11 novembre 1891."

the company, the police, and the municipal council concurred that the majority were members. The figure of 6,783 members that Darène advanced in May 1899 was creditable and implied that nearly every common laborer belonged.^[19] The superintendent of the La Villette plant understood the strength of the union's attraction enough to be troubled and insulted by it. Cury noted that until 1892 workmen had come to him to air grievances or ask favors. Once the union era opened, the personnel relied on the dele-gates.^[20] It is clear that the leaders did try to discover the will of the rank and file and act on it. We have already seen the popularity of the five-franc minimum wage, and union officers took up that demand for a long time, often against their better judgment. When the PGC first granted the profit-sharing plan, some leaders were inclined to celebrate it as a major victory and give low priority to the minimum wage. They soon learned, along with management, that workers were attached to the latter goal and would not count their year-end bonuses as part of the wage. Godot insisted that officers convince workers of their good fortune, but the leaders expressed helplessness to do so. The lamplighter Chapelle affirmed that he personally "was in agreement with the company in terms of principles" but that his members "were not mathematicians and did not understand these calculations."^[21] Union leaders prudently abandoned the effort to make the rank and file understand. The union ended its meetings in 1893 with the cry "Long live the five-franc minimum wage!" but not necessarily because leaders wanted that to be the rallying point.^[22]

The leaders' respect for managerial prerogative and their optimism about the good intentions of upper management also had resonances among the mass of wage earners. Common hands did have trouble with immediate supervisors, and their vocabulary expressed it. They referred to the foreman as le patron, with all the resentment and fear that that title implied.^[23] Indeed, the alleged injustices perpetrated by the foreman had long been sources of complaint and would soon become major themes of protest. Nonetheless, the rank and file shared their leaders' expectation that the engineers who headed departments would be men of wider vision and of equity. That is to say, Emile Cheysson's view of engineers as disinterested authorities ready to replace the arbitrary foreman had credence on the shop floor. Similarly, Darène's faith in the director's justness had its counterpart below, in the internalization of a paternalistic ethos among

[19] Journal du gaz , no. 154 (May 5, 1899): 1.

[20] AP, V 8 O no. 148, report of Cury, March 24, 1892.

[21] Ibid., "Procès-verbaux des audiences données aux délégués du syndicat," p. 3.

[22] Ibid., no. 148, clipping from Le Journal des débats , May 28, 1893.

[23] Ibid., no. 159, Louis Saget to director, n.d.

general laborers. Workers initiated contact with the chief executive to ask for his aid and for his intervention in their personal problems. One coal hauler, who was barely literate, wrote a rambling letter to Godot, full of complaints about his ungrateful and lazy sons. The worker had nothing to request from the director, but he apparently needed to explain his situation to his employer.^[24]

One historian of British labor has commented on workers' fractured and indistinct notion of employers as a class, and still more as "the enemy."^[25] This vision is clearly relevant for the mass of workers at the PGC as well as for union leaders. The identification of friends and enemies was all the more difficult in the new sort of enterprise that was arising, with its bureaucratic layers of authority and its encumbered face-to-face relations. Thus, the failure of union officials to confront management aggressively and the respect they generally accorded engineers met with comprehension from the rank and file.

The mass membership achieved by the gas union provides insights into the French labor movement because it was so uncharacteristic. The ability to mobilize so many laborers as permanent, dues-paying members casts doubt on the common arguments that French wage earners were too fiercely independent to submit to formal organization or too entranced by a romantic, revolutionary faith in apocalyptic action.^[26] French laborers were willing to unionize when there was little danger of revenge from the employer and when that was the best option for obtaining results. The gas workers' union also stands out for having attracted the unskilled rather than the most qualified laborers. The aberrant situation points not only to the exceptional political circumstances but also to the influence of the workplace situation in determining the shape of collective action. At the mercy of their employers, the common hands readily seized the opportunity to gain some control over their fate by grasping the extended hand of the state. Stokers, by contrast, could rely on informal cooperation to re-dress grievances because of their relative power to disrupt operations at the workplace. Such power encouraged them to pursue goals that Darène's

[24] Ibid., no. 162, J. Depoix to director, n.d.; no. 150, "Demandes de secours, 1875-1899." Elinor Accampo has argued that paternalism had a strong appeal to the workers she studied. See Industrialization, Family Life, and Class Relations: Saint Chamond, 1815-1914 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989), chap. 5.

[25] Patrick Joyce, "Labor, Capital, and Compromise: A Response to Richard Price," Social History 9 (1984): 67-76.

[26] Reaffirming these long-standing stereotypes are Gordon Wright, France in Modern Times, 3d ed. (New York, 1981), p. 291, and Gérard Noiriei, Les Ouvriers dans la société française: XIX -XX siècle (Paris, 1986), pp. 263-267.

union dared not countenance.^[27] The organization of skilled industrial workers did not proceed along the same lines as that of the unskilled, and reformist syndicalists were not prepared to deal with the skilled workers.

The union officials were ideologically and temperamentally out of their element with the upsurge of labor militancy created by the stokers in 1898. Darène in particular developed tactics that were inept and ultimately unreasonable. The union had always hoped that the stokers would join, but when they finally did, the leaders were alarmed by the spirit of vindictiveness. The "winds of revolution" blowing through the union, against which Darène warned, appeared quite threatening—all the more so in that further concessions from the PGC suddenly appeared possible once again. Another round of talks between the company and the city opened in 1899. Hope of movement on one front and fear that militants could undermine progress pushed Darène to undertake a bold, but futile, experiment. The union secretary was ready to abandon a neutral stance regarding the gas question and use the moral authority of the union to obtain a prolonged charter for the PGC. In return Darène had a list of benefits that management would grant to the workers—larger pensions, the eight-hour dar and tenured positions. In July 1899 he began to establish his stance by writing in the union newspaper that "the most resolute enemy of the worker is not the company but the city. The company would grant our demands, at least in part, if it could be certain of a renewed charter." A few days later (July 20) the union journal openly announced the corporatist policy of working with the PGC to obtain benefits for both it and the personnel but added that the union was "ready to combat our ally if it does not give us complete satisfaction."^[28] The tactic was of course infused with Darène's naive optimism regarding the good intentions of management. It was particularly ill timed in that the war of nerves between management and stokers was near an explosion. Indeed, Darène made his plan public just before Godot gave permission to crush the union should any strike occur. Clearly, the union leaders were badly out of touch not only with the engineers' intentions but with the stokers' militancy as well. The stokers were forcing the union to accept a new agenda that reformist syndicalists wanted desperately to eschew.

[27] See Alain Cottereau, "The Distinctiveness of Working-Class Cultures in France, 1848-1900," in Working Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States, ed. Ira Katznelson and Aristide Zolberg (Princeton, 1986), pp. 111-154. Cottereau would find the stokers' tactics and strategies characteristic of a wide segment of the French labor force.

[28] Journal du gaz , no. 158 (July 5, 1899): 1; no. 159 (July 20, 1899): 1. On the behind-the-scenes cooperation, see AP, V 8 O no. 160, "Août 1899."

The Crisis of Industrial Discipline

That there were major differences in collective behavior and outlook be-tween stokers and general laborers is a revealing finding. After all, the two groups were one in most ways. They had identical social backgrounds. Stokers were recruited among the common laborers and did unskilled work for part of the year.^[29] As stokers aged, they reentered the ranks of the general hands. Both types of wage earners became dependent on the PGC at roughly the same time. Despite these shared experiences, there was an undeniable gulf between stokers and general laborers. The stokers failed to provide leadership for their more oppressed comrades, and union formation divided the two still further. The stokers' indifference to permanent organization made them far more representative of the nineteenth-century French labor movement as a whole. Moreover, their periodic, direct challenges to managerial authority after 1890 also reflected wider currents of unrest among skilled laborers in France.

Though the stokers did not join Brard's organization in significant numbers, they were not adverse to unionization in principle. Indeed, they had formed the first trade union in 1890. The police believed that all or nearly all of the stokers had joined it. Its organizer, Jules Roques, had used his newspaper to defend the stokers' cause when agitation surfaced in the spring of 1890. Under Roques's presidency the union strove to be exclusive. Its high monthly fee of five francs (more than a day's wage for the unskilled) opened it only to stokers.^[30] From the beginning of the union era stokers were destined to act separately from general laborers.

Stokers did not need a union to win concessions from their employer, as their history before 1880 demonstrated. Yet their concerns shifted, and new interests encouraged new strategies. Stokers eagerly joined a union in 1890 because they were angry, and the threat of a strike emerged at once. The issues mobilizing them now were quite different from the wage concerns that had generated agitation before 1880. As dependent workers, stokers of 1890 were upset by the arbitrary pattern of layoffs the PGC practiced. The stokers understood seniority as the valid basis for according the right to continue to serve in the distillation rooms during the slow season. But factory managers refused to honor the principle, which the director had accepted, in a systematic manner. This grievance first brought the stokers and the Socialist journalist Roques together. He pleaded their cause in L'Egalité, the only journalist to do so other than Henri Rochefort.

[29] AE V 8 O , no. 163, "Personnel ouvrier—jours de congé."

[30] Ibid., no. 148, report of July 25, 1891.

The stokers were also discontent with the company's administration of their sick-pay fund. Though the stokers contributed 1 percent of their nine-to-ten-franc wages to the fund, the company awarded them only two or three francs as "half pay" when they missed a day of work because of illness. Moreover, there were changes of details in the work routine that stokers found irksome. Managers had recently changed the mix of coals, increasing the portion of a hard, heavy variety (cannel coal). The change made the stokers' task more difficult. The stokers now wanted some checks on the arbitrary power of the company and limits on their exploitation.^[31]

The chargers relied on Roques to translate their grievances faithfully into formal demands, but he did not do that well. The statement he penned on April 29 mentioned the augmentation of the "already super-human work load" but he stressed the need for higher pay. The journalist made a raise from three to five francs per metric ton the central demand.^[32] A pay increase, however, was no longer the primary matter to stokers, and gaining it did not produce satisfaction. Caught by surprise, the PGC immediately promised a raise, but the stokers struck anyway on May 1, 1890, France's first Labor Day Some 350 stokers remained off the job for a week. The timing of the action, coinciding with the new festival of labor power, expressed the complexity of the stokers' challenge better than did Roques's negotiating position.^[33] He and the company quickly came to an agreement on a 10 percent raise (3.30 francs per metric ton of coal distilled) and justice on the matter of sick pay. In the meantime, the PGC had come close to reestablishing full production by recruiting seasonal stokers from the provinces. The strikers drifted back to the gas plants to the extent their employer would have them.^[34]

In a narrow sense, the strike had been a success: the company had granted a raise, and management was licking its wounds over the defeat. Nonetheless, the stokers did not define the settlement as successful, though they surely would have prior to 1880. A police report noted that workers "would rather have had [concessions] on lighter work loads than on wages."^[35] Moreover, the raise by no means ended the grumbling

[31] Ibid., no. 1063, "Grèves de 1890 et 1899."

[32] Ibid., no. 151, Roques to director, April 29, 1890.

[33] On this festival of labor, see Michelle Perrot, "The First of May 1890 in France: The Birth of a Working-Class Ritual," in The Power of the Past: Essays in Honor of Eric Hobsbawm , ed. Geoffrey Crossick et al. (London, 1984).

[34] AP. V 8 O , no. 151, "Grève des chauffeurs (1 mai 1890)."

[35] Prefecture, B/a 176, "Grève des chauffeurs gaziers, 1890." See, especially, the report of May 13. There was a similar pattern to the large strike wave that hit the textile industry of the Nord on May Day, 1890. See William Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 305-309.

among the stokers, and managers reported on rumors of new strike actions through June.^[36] Far from being bolstered by a recent success, the stokers' union soon fell apart as a result of recriminations and disappointments among the rank and file. Eight years later Darène and his comrades could still cite the 1890 strike as a disillusioning experience that kept stokers from joining the gas workers' union.^[37]

The sudden effervescence of 1890 was indeed followed by eight years of somnolence among stokers. Immediately after that strike the company was able to undertake its most aggressive attack to date on the source of the stokers' bargaining power—without meeting any visible resistance whatsoever. Factory managers finally substituted the scoop for the shovel (see chapter 4), thereby reducing the dexterity and, to a lesser extent, the endurance necessary to charge retorts. The threshold of recruitment was lowered without quite bringing stoking to the level of common labor.^[38] The stokers' acquiescence made managers crow about their recovered sense of control over the labor force. Cury, the ancient superintendent of the La Villette plant, was so confident of his ascendancy that he even sup-pressed the fifty-centime bonus that chargers had long received. That move earned him a slight rebuke from his superior, who was not eager to press his luck, on the grounds that the change had been done "not to save money but rather to reassert control over the workers."^[39]

Disillusionment with the recent strike may have been one reason for the stokers' passivity in view of the fundamental threat to their bargaining power. It was also the case that the chargers conspired in their own deskilling. The company had imposed the scoop during the height of the slow season. Not only were the workers aware of their good fortune to have jobs, but also their opposition to the tool was weakened by the thought that it could prolong their days in the distillation room. By rendering charging somewhat less taxing, the scoop favored a longer career at high pay. Apparently disillusionment, coupled with the caution imposed by dependency, undermined protest over a serious attack on the stokers' status as skilled workers.

[36] AP, V 8 O , no. 151, report of Cury to Euchène, June 13, 1890.

[37] Journal du gaz , no. 134 (July 5, 1898): 3.

[38] AP, V 8 O , no. 148, "Résumé des avis donnés par les chefs de service sur les demandes formulées par la chambre syndicale (décembre 1891)."

[39] Ibid., report of Gigot, October 21, 1890. The bonus had been given for many years to the stokers who worked the shovels; Gigot insisted that superintendents give the bonus to the stokers who took the handle of the scoop.

The birth of a new gas workers' union in mid-1891 left the vast majority of stokers indifferent. Managers continually congratulated themselves that stokers were staying away from the Chambre syndicale des travailleurs du gaz.^[40] Even the union newspaper revealed (in 1898) that although eight-ninths of the common hands had joined, only a quarter of the stokers, at most, were members.^[41] The aloofness of the stokers, reflecting the very different perspective on protest separating them from workers with whom they otherwise had much in common, entailed divergent strategies and goals. The skilled workers now disdained the wage-centered concerns of the reformist union. Moreover, they distrusted the patient organization building and negotiations with public authorities. The stokers' power on the shop floor, weakened but not eliminated by the scoop, allowed them to remain faithful to a direct-action strategy even though the public authorities were willing to help them procure material gains. The stokers in-tended to use their bargaining power to extract concessions directly from their employer Their passivity regarding the union was not at all a matter of contentment. In fact, the stokers were seething with resentment, but the union was unable to tap it. That anger finally exploded in the second half of 1898.

During the summer and autumn of that year—a moment of general labor unrest in Paris—the stokers began to flock to the union. Eventually as many as a thousand may have joined within the space of just a few months.^[42] The union leaders, at once pleased and apprehensive about the new recruits, organized plant-by-plant meetings for the purpose of hearing complaints and channeling the resentment into acceptable directions.^[43] Yet stokers were not interested in listening to the reformists; they had their own reasons for entering the union en masse. They were intent on forcing the union to confront their central grievance—the arbitrary power of superintendents and foremen to insult, punish, lay off, fire, and reward. The sudden unionization of the stokers announced that they were willing to abide such authority no longer

The source of the stokers' vexations in 1898 was not a recent problem, nor was the grievance felt by chargers alone. Darène's organ, the Journal du gaz, had from its initial issues reported on supervisors' unjust or vindictive treatment. Long before the stokers provoked collective protest over the matter, the union sheet had lamented the freedom of foremen to ter-

[40] Ibid., report of Gigot, April 15, 1892.

[41] "Usine d'Ivry," Journal du gaz , no. 134 (July 5, 1898).

[42] Journal du gaz , no. 137 (August 20, 1898): 1; no. 142 (November 5, 1898): 1.

[43] Ibid., no. 135 (July 20, 1898): 1. Every issue thereafter (up to the strike of August 1899) had lengthy reports on these rallies.

rorize workers by threatening to fire them, deprive them of a bonus, or demote them to poorly paid work. The supervisors' arrogance, bribe taking, utter lack of civility and pleasure in seeing workers cower were common themes in the union press.^[44] Louis Sagot, a barely literate courtyard worker, complained to Director Godot that his patron, the team head, had laid him off while retaining a man who had far less than Sagot's seven years of seniority. Sagot felt the sting of the injustice all the more in that he had followed the team head's orders to frequent a particular café "Besides," Sagot wondered, "weren't layoffs supposed to be by seniority [par numéros] ?"^[45] The Journal du gaz may well have expressed a common sentiment among the native workers in linking this sort of complaint to immigrants. The charge was that foreign workers were especially supine, and their subservience brought them favors from supervisors while proud French workers suffered. The union press found young French stokers, newly arrived from the provinces, almost as culpable of forgetting their dignity and buying favors from foremen. The Journal du gaz fumed against spineless Auvergnats, "whose approach to the foreman is distinguished by heavy servile steps, and breath redolent of sauerkraut and sausage.^[46] Quite possibly, the union paper was projecting on a clearly identifiable minority the self-hatred gaziers felt as a result of their own subservience. In any case, the authority of supervisors was clearly a painful dilemma for all the PGC's workers. Unlike common laborers, stokers committed themselves to resisting it as the century drew to a close.

In truth, resentment of the power of immediate superiors was an international problem that inflamed industrial relations in all advanced countries of the late nineteenth century.^[47] Only in France, though, did the grievance precipitate a widespread industrial crisis, and the stokers were full participants in it. The stokers' resentment arose from a corporate power structure that retained strong face-to-face elements despite the firm's large size and bureaucratic division of labor. Within the PGC, at least, the distribution of authority was the result of management's conscious designs. We have seen that the director sought to distance himself

[44] See, for example, ibid., no. 11 (May 20, 1893): 3; no. 20 (October 5, 1893): 2; no. 29 (February 20, 1894): 2. The police were well aware of the grievance too. See Préfecture, B/a 1424, report of June 13, 1893.

[45] AP, V 8 O , no. 159, Louis Sagot to director, n.d.

[46] Journal du gaz , no. 68 (October 5, 1895): 3.

[47] See, for example, Walter Licht, Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1983), pp. 171, 254; Tamara Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time: The Relationship between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community (Cambridge, 1982), p. 304; Will Thorne, My Life's Battles (London, n.d.), p. 74.

from the management of individual factories. Responsibility for daily operations resided with the division head and plant superintendents. They, however, were preoccupied with a multitude of matters and in practice left personnel matters to immediate supervisors, foremen, team heads, and paymasters (pointeurs ). The rules of the corporation formally denied foremen the right to hire, lay off, or fire, but these powers came to be part of their duties. So much was this the case that both the engineers and the workers casually spoke of foremen doing the hiring and firing.^[48] Even when an engineer may have regretted his foreman's decision in a particular instance, he dared not reverse it for fear of calling authority into question. Before the union era the informal power of immediate supervisors had been a matter of convenience for busy engineers, but once workers began to organize, it became part of a managerial strategy to combat the union. The "good intentions" Darène attributed to Director Godot quickly disappeared down the hierarchical chain of command. Commitments made at the top were never enforced, and the director could defend himself by pro-claiming his powerlessness. Engineers eagerly harnessed the foremen's venom for the unions in their struggles to preserve what they could of authoritarian paternalism. Delegating authority in that way often meant losing control over supervisors and permitting them to use their command for personal gain.^[49] Yet the engineers accepted the abuses as a lesser evil.

Whether the corruption and oppression that the stokers denounced were as pervasive as they contended is impossible to say. There is no doubt, though, that their grievances had a basis in reality. The PGC disciplined a foreman and a paymaster for running cafes in 1888 and tried to prevent supervisors from operating shops near the gas factories.^[50] Yet as long as the engineers relied on foremen to intimidate workers, they could not easily control the supervisors' lives off the job. An incident that occurred in 1899 involving a union delegate substantiates the charges of venality The delegate was about to be laid off as a delayed punishment for his participation in the March strike, and he offered his foreman ten francs to retain his post. The factory engineers learned about the bribe and sought to use it to cast opprobrium on the union. Management ostentatiously challenged workers, "all too ready to accuse foremen and team

[48] AP, V 8 O , no. 763, "Rappel du règlement, 20 avril 1869"; no. 150, Darène to Lecoeur, February 16, 1893; no. 148, report of Cury, October 22, 1891; no. 151, "Revendications générales—personnei ouvrier."

[49] Workers often complained about foremen who exploited them for their personal interest, but the company never followed up on the charges. See Journal du gaz , no. 37 (June 20, 1894): 3; no. 148 (February 5, 1899): 2.

[50] AP, V 8 O , no. 685, deliberations of January 25, 1888.

heads of venality" to stop tempting supervisors.^[51] The company may have been successful at embarrassing the union, but it also admitted, in an oblique manner, that payoffs were a problem. There is no reason to sup-pose that the practice was of recent origin, but the stokers' unwillingness to abide the abuses any longer was new. Their militancy in 1898 was in effect a revolt against both the abuses and the very nature of face-to-face authority.

When the union began its round of mass meetings in response to the influx of stokers, the leaders' hope was to convince the new members that an eight-hour day was what they needed. The proposal entailed handling two four-hour charges a day instead of three. A serious drawback for the proposal was that stokers would have to accept a large pay cut for doing a third less work. Darène never tired of explaining to skeptical chargers that they were better off earning 7.50 francs for eight hours than 11.50 for twelve. He insisted that they would have to purchase only one restaurant meal a day. More important, cutting the workday would raise the number of posts the company needed to fill by a third. Thus, the stokers' jobs would be secure, and the chargers could easily get year-round work if they wished. Moreover, Darène reasoned that with the cruel physical toll of three charges a day reduced, stokers might expect to prolong their years in the distillation room.^[52] Such arguments might have been influential in 1890, when stokers had refrained from protesting the scoop, but the logic no longer convinced them. The urge to put supervisors in their place over-whelmed practical arguments this time.

The stokers barely disguised their impatience with the eight-hour proposal. Instead, they took over the rallies and focused the discussions on their own issue—the discriminatory authority of supervisors. Stokers complained about their humiliation at the hands of vindictive foremen. They lamented the unjust fines and arbitrary job assignments and bitterly recalled the many times supervisors had abused rules on layoffs. The stokers used the meetings to represent themselves as victims of venality, vanity, and vengence. Foremen, they asserted, rewarded the most subservient of workers and persecuted those who stood up for their rights. They argued forcefully that bribery permeated power relations on the shop floor. Supervisors required them to patronize the stores their wives ran, drink in cafes with which they had a financial connection, and lodge in boarding houses that made payments to the foreman. Avoiding a seasonal layoff, the stokers affirmed, required a bribe. The chargers made it clear in the

[51] Ibid., no. 159, report of Hadamar to Euchène, March 9, 1899.

[52] Journal du gaz , no. 133 (June 20, 1898): 2; no. 135 (July 20, 1898): 2.

fall of 1898 that the eight-hour day, even with its practical promise of steady work, was not what they cared about most deeply Instead, they manifested a powerful drive to gain control over the work experience— not in the sense of enforcing a "craft control" over production, which they had never enjoyed, but rather by compelling superiors to govern by fixed, uniform, and equitable rules to which workers had given their consent.^[53] Their surge of militancy was a gesture of rebellion against managerial authority.

So forceful was the stokers' expression of victimization that they compelled union leaders to abandon their own agenda. The leaders had to admit that the eight-hour day was not winning a commitment from the chargers. Already in June 1898 Darène announced his intention of using the union newspaper to expose the acts of arbitrariness committed by supervisors.^[54] Having been impressed by the urgency of the issue, Darène took it upon himself to raise it with Godot. By the end of the summer the union was claiming a victory: the director had promised to order superintendents to follow general rules and administer punishments uniformly,^[55] Yet Darène was not able to stem the rising tide of militancy because the new order brought no better results than had previous ones. Throughout the fall and winter the Journal du gaz lamented that vicious supervisors were destroying trust between the company and the union and forcing the latter to become confrontational. Finally Darène capitulated entirely to the stokers and adopted as the union's primary goal the implementation of fixed and uniform rules (règlement unique ) governing all aspects of work.^[56] The militant stokers had come to dominate the union after having ignored it for so long.

As we have seen, the stokers had always been practitioners of direct-action syndicalism avant la lettre, and true to their habits, they did not wait for reformist union leaders to guide, channel, or propose peaceful means of negotiating over authority. Instead, they began an incipient insurrection within the gas plants during the fall of 1898. It was this offensive that made Darène warn of "a revolutionary wind, the reign of dangerous agitation." He was not the only union official to lament the members' sudden will to "crush everything . . . to forment a revolution."^[57] Another

[53] Ibid., nos. 137-160. Licht, Working for the Railroad, pp. 260-271, makes the important distinction between control over the work process and control over the work experience .

[54] Journal du gaz , no. 133 (June 20, 1898): 2.

[55] Ibid., no. 137 (August 20, 1898): 2.

[56] Ibid., no. 150 (March 5, 1899): 1.

[57] Ibid., no. 148 (February 5, 1899): 1; no. 150 (March 5, 1899): 2.

reformist retrospectively described the situation prior to the strike of 1899 in precisely the terms that management might have used: "Workers burned with a desire to start a struggle. . .. In the factories, managers were no longer masters. . .. The acceptance of discipline had disappeared."^[58] The Socialist councilman Blondeau might have agreed with that account of a crisis of authority too. When he attended a mass meeting of stokers in March 1899, he was frightened by the soaring spirit of vengence and the cries of "Vive la grève générale!' Blondeau's calls for caution brought expressions of disdain from the assembled stokers.^[59]

Production engineers, for their part, were painfully aware that stokers had suddenly turned the tables on them and were administering some "salutary intimidation" of their own. The so-called Laurent affair of October 1898 was the opening round of the showdown that the engineers had long predicted. On the advice of a hated foreman, Laurent, the superintendent of the La Villette plant fired a stoker. His comrades viewed the firing as an act of injustice and put down their tools. The superintendent, now alarmed by the gravity and solidarity of the stokers, backed down and admitted that a mistake had been made.^[60] This incident, occurring at a moment of intense labor unrest in Paris, set a precedent for future confrontations in gas factories.

A repetition of the general features of the Laurent affair next March pushed tensions to the breaking point as far as management was concerned. This outburst occurred at the Clichy plant, which was run by the most severe superintendent, Hadamar, and by the most vindictive fore-men. Correspondingly, the spirit of revolt was strongest among the stokers of that factory, according to Darène.^[61] Under these circumstances the aggressive behavior of Hadamar was exceedingly provocative—probably intentionally so. The superintendent had planned for some time to fire two general laborers for poor work and insolence. Instead of taking the step at the moment of their offense, Hadamar waited for the slow season to commence and laid them off in spite of six and twelve years of seniority. Stokers, highly sensitive to the principle under attack and in no mood to compromise, immediately issued an ultimatum to rehire the workers or face a strike. The next day 200 of the 230 stokers left their posts. At least half of their comrades at the La Villette and Landy (Saint-Denis) plants joined them. Hadamar was more than eager to pursue the fight, but the director could not allow the conflict to continue because of negotiations

[58] Ibid., no. 164 (October 5, 1899): 2.

[59] AP, V 8 O , no. 159, "Rapport sur la réunion du 21 mars 1899."

[60] Journal du gaz , no. 141 (October 20, 1898): 2-3.

[61] Ibid., no. 148 (February 5, 1899): 2.

with the city. He ordered the rehiring of the two workers and allowed all the strikers to return to their jobs. The superintendent and foremen had to overcome their sense of humiliation in the face of the reported "insolence" as the workers triumphantly reentered the plant.^[62] At this point the engineers concluded bitterly that the stokers had become their masters. Though the stokers had previously called foremen their patrons, they now seemed resolved to escape such subordination.

These victories gave stokers not only a heightened sense of power—the "insolence" to which the engineers referred—but also a sense of elation and even generosity. The latter sentiments emerged when they tested authority one more time before the disastrous strike of August. In the wake of the strike at Clichy, superintendents prepared for more agitation by substituting a smaller and lighter scoop, which could be handled by workers of average strength. Stokers were quite aware of the strategic implications of the new tool and, in addition, found that it prolonged their work routine.^[63] Thus, delegations at each plant asked superintendents to return to the large scoop. Significantly, the delegations bypassed normal union channels and went directly to the plant managers. Once again the superintendents backed down (though perhaps only because they now had a more sinister trap in mind).^[64] The manager of the Passy plant could not help noticing how congenial his stokers became the moment their request was granted: the stokers treated the large scoops with great care and worked with renewed energy. He reported that the workers lost the "scowling air" they had had for the past weeks. Now, the superintendent noted, the stokers had become "good-natured; they banter with the fore-men—something they had not done for a long time."^[65] Evidently; the stokers were basking in their newly discovered power. It did not take much to make these physical giants satisfied—even submissive. Unfortunately for all concerned, managers were not the least bit inclined to compromise even when they recognized that the stokers were easily appeased by token gestures and quick to obey those who accorded them a modicum of respect.

That the eight-hour day was the subject of the last and fateful test of authority shows how little power the stokers had, in the end, to shape issues. Yet that was hardly the only peculiar feature of the strike of August 1899. "What a bizarre strike it was," asserted Darène when it was

[62] AP, V 8 O , no. 159, "Grève, mars 1899."

[63] It took two fillings of the large scoop to load a retort and three fillings of the small scoop.

[64] AP, V 8 O , no. 160, "Renseignements sur le service."

[65] Ibid., report of Bodin to Gigot, July 1, 1899.

over. "Its cause was a demand for lower pay!"^[66] In a superficial sense the strike broke out over a trivial pay demand; but that demand ultimately stood for the issue of authority at the workplace. It will be recalled that the engineers, probably following a plan to manipulate the stokers into striking, initiated a companywide trial of the eight-hour day with two charges.^[67] Management did this in mid-July even though the union was no longer pressing the issue. The company decreed a pay formula for the trial that was bound to be confusing and inflammatory. Workers would receive four francs per metric ton of coal distilled for the first 1,750 kilo-grams and then only 3.30 francs for each additional ton. It was inevitably troubling that the base pay was higher than the incentive rate. Stokers understandably believed rumors that the company was prepared to pay four francs for each ton.^[68] To the extent that the seventy-centime difference directly contributed to the strike, it was because the higher pay cushioned a bit the one-third reduction in earnings that would result from the eight-hour day.

The pay issue became confused with larger matters when the union hastily sanctioned a strike over the demand for four francs. That action in itself was a sign of events spinning tragically out of control, for the union leaders were not at all favorable to aggressive action. At a poorly attended general meeting at the Bourse du Travail on the night of August 7, the demand for four francs was made, and Darène solemnly warned against it. The eight-hour day was part of the accord he wished to make with the company, in return for which he would put the union behind a renewed charter for the PGC. Moreover, he had been urging management for some time to bolster the prestige of the moderates and calm the "winds of revolution" in the union. Darène apparently believed that the eight-hour trial was the answer to his pleas. When that very concession produced further agitation, he became paralyzed. Late in the night he allowed the handful of workers present to take a strike vote, and it passed, 40 to 15. Then Darène fatefully committed the union to the action he had just op-posed, a move that would later be the basis for charges that he was cooperating with the company to rid the PGC of its militants. About 750 out of 1,100 stokers answered the union's strike call.^[69]

[66] Journal du gaz , no. 161 (August 20, 1899): 2.

[67] On the likelihood that managers plotted to foment the strike, see chapter 4.

[68] There are some suggestions that the union leaders themselves spread the notion that the PGC would pay workers four francs, perhaps to promote enthusiasm for the eight-hour trial. See AP, V 8 O , no. 151, report of Euchène to Hadamar, July 24, 1899.

[69] Ibid., no. 159, "Pièces adressées à Monsieur le juge de paix du XV Arrondissement"; "Réunion extraordinaire du 7 août," Journal du gaz , no. 161 (August 20, 1899): 1.

There can be no doubt that authority, not pay, was the real issue in the strike. The action was entirely out of proportion to the demand. With four francs stokers would have earned fifteen to thirty centimes more a day, a pittance considering they were already taking a huge pay cut. The strike was a gesture of insubordination. Stokers disliked the way the company had suddenly disrupted their work routines. They resented the peculiar pay scale, about which the company had been absolutely inflexible, and they were indignant about having to face such a deep pay reduction. With the union having committed itself to the strike, the stokers felt they had its authority to uphold. Above all, the stokers were attempting to maintain the momentum of the Laurent affair and the March strike. They were unwilling to allow a return to the company's authoritarian paternalism. Management understood the strike in precisely that manner. The engineers explained it as being rooted in a "spirit of indiscipline," which was raging out of control. Granting four francs would have trivial financial consequences, the chief of production admitted, but "the loss of authority would be incalculable." In his view, the strikers were truly "rebels" who physically threatened foremen and were 'a danger for the company, for Paris, for society."^[70]

The engineers' inveterate pessimism about workers' character at last yielded genuine insight. Though the strike was not about wages, neither was it simply about regular, uniform work rules. There is a case to be made that stokers looked past the matters of security and equity to engage in a gesture of rebellion for its own sake. For several years they had disregarded the blandishments of politicians intent on being generous to la-borers. They had given no support to the campaign for an eight-hour day, despite its practical promises. And their alarming militancy, which terrorized normally self-confident managers in 1898-1899, signaled an anger that transcended reasoned calculation of interests. The stokers surely wanted an application of the règlement unique, but they were also groping to declare their utter opposition to managerial authority.

The strike of August 8 had little chance of success. Stokers were divided and perplexed by the eight-hour issue with such a steep reduction in pay. Those at the Passy plant chose not even to participate in the trial.^[71] The demand for four francs addressed no basic issue whatsoever. The company,

[70] AP, V 8 O , no. 159, "Grèves de mars et août 1899," report of Euchène, September 14, 1899.

[71] Ibid., "Instructions è Messieurs les régisseurs (7 août 1899)."

for its part, had made excellent preparations. It quickly rounded up seasonal stokers from the provinces and promised them year-round jobs. During the especially steamy weeks of August 1899, demand for gas was minimal anyway. Moreover, the union treasurer absconding with the strike funds devastated morale. It is little wonder that superintendents found the atmosphere in the distillation rooms entirely transformed after the strike was over Workers were "respectful" of the foremen and happy to have jobs.^[72]

Management was adamant about excluding many strikers from the gas plants, not only in the immediate aftermath of the strike but also permanently.^[73] The municipal council passed one resolution after another over the next decade in favor of the unemployed strikers and even appropriated funds to aid their families, but the engineers could not be moved. They held to their view of the strikers as dangerous rebels who attacked legitimate authority. Indeed, the managers were ultimately ready to pay the price of career security to defend the principle of authoritarian paternal-ism. The PGC came to an end in 1907 without having rehired all the strikers of 1899.

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

The militancy of 1898-1899 was at once complex, puzzling, and revealing. It is time to proceed from narrative to analysis in order to explore the implications of the gas workers' protests. Examining the strike from the perspective of the gas firm alone is inadequate. By no means were the stokers unique in challenging managerial authority as the nineteenth century drew to a close. We have seen that gas clerks and other white-collar employees had already been protesting discretionary power when the stokers' militancy surfaced. Manual workers were also turbulent. The Laurent affair occurred just as Paris was in the grips of an upsurge in labor unrest. Navvies had declared a strike; railroad and construction workers had followed them in the fall of 1898. This was the first nationwide at-tempt at a general strike. Stokers first forced gas management to back down in a city filled with more than forty thousand strikers.^[74] Challenges to the authority of foremen had already been a major theme in Parisian strikes for several years, and workers' aggressiveness on the issue climaxed as stokers were rallying to Darène's union. The machine-building

[72] Ibid., "Grèves de 1899—articles de journaux."

[73] Ibid., report of Gigot to director, November 10, 1899. The company considered 147 stokers too "dangerous" to rehire.

[74] France, Office du travail, Statistique des grèves et des recours à la conciliation et à l'arbitrage survenus pendant l'année 1898 (Paris, 1899), pp. 108-109, 112, 252-270.

industry of Paris and the suburbs erupted just before the PGC did. At the beginning of 1899 automobile workers at one firm walked out because a foreman fired a worker for being five minutes late. Only a few weeks be-fore the stokers initiated their ill-fated strike, mechanics at the imposing Dion-Bouton Automobile Company just outside Paris insisted on the firing of a foreman whom they despised. The haughty marquis de Dion could not crush their revolt and in the end yielded. The militancy against industrial authority persisted for several more years in the automobile plants.^[75] Gas managers were quite correct to view the Laurent affair and the March strike in Clichy as part of a generalized movement against fore-men.^[76] The engineers clearly saw that their right to dominate skilled in-dustrial workers would have to be defended with force.

The challenge to managerial authority was especially strong in Paris, but it was not confined to the capital. The stokers' offensive coincided with a decisive takeoff in union membership throughout France as a whole. The unions they entered were increasingly radical; revolutionaries were pushing aside the proponents of cooperation with a reform-minded govern-ment.^[77] What that radicalization meant on a local level is well illustrated by the revolutionary tide in Limoges. John Merriman has found that between 1895 and 1905 "economic, social, and political conflict seemed to merge with everyday life" in that provincial city.^[78] The tumultuous decade contained not only angry confrontations between workers and the bourgeois state but also a series of violent strikes led by skilled porcelain workers. "The most explosive strike issue," Merriman notes, "was that of industrial discipline, particularly the role of the foreman, who emerged as the most visible and vexing representation of the boss."^[79] Part of the same general confrontation were the angry and highly publicized strikes of Le Creusot and Monceau-les-Mines in 1899. As at the PGC, workers in the company towns were resisting the heavy hand of managerial paternalism. The steel workers of Le Creusot insisted on union recognition, respectful treatment from their superiors, and suppression of the employer's private

[75] Lenard R. Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris , 1871-1914 (Baltimore, 1984), pp. 173-188.

[76] AP, V 8 O , no. 160, report of Masse to Gigot, September 5, 1899; report of Maubert to Lévy, July 22, 1899.

[77] Yves Lequin, Les Ouvriers de la région lyonnaise , 2 vols. (Lyon, 1977), 2:304-307. The entry of the Socialist Alexandre Millerand into the government in 1899 set off a struggle between syndicalists eager to cooperate and those who feared entanglement.

[78] John Merriman, The Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century (New York, 1985), p. 183.

[79] Ibid., p. 219.

police force during their vigorous September strike. The confrontation ended with the creation of a workers' council to advise management on disciplinary measures. Premier René Waldeck-Rousseau, who arbitrated that dispute, was well aware that the job actions at this moment had more than immediate gains at their roots. He sensed that they engaged the wage-earning population emotionally. Daily demonstrations by workers monopolized the streets of Saint-Etienne, Le Havre, Carmaux, Vienne, and Marseille for times in late 1899. Strikes in the Nord, the Loire, the Saône-et-Loire, and the Doubs provoked repeated rallies and fund-raising activities of exceptional magnitude. The manifestations of class solidarity persisted until 1901.^[80] Clearly, the last years of the nineteenth century— known mainly for the dramas of the Dreyfus Affair—also contained a crisis of skilled factory workers, who rebelled against their subordination at the workplace.

To the limited extent historians have discussed the crisis of industrial discipline, they have portrayed it essentially as resistance to proletarianization.^[81] Skilled laborers were presumably protesting their employers' efforts to rationalize manufacturing, tighten discipline, and curtail their mastery of the production process. The crisis, in this view, was a stage in the inevitable evolution of capitalism, with industry progressing to the point of intensive mechanization, international competition, and excessive capacity. Foremen were caught between employers, who tried to assert greater control over production, and workers, who were unaccustomed to tight discipline and unwilling to accept it. As the most accessible symbols of managerial authority, they bore the brunt of workers' resistance.

The labor disturbances at the turn-of-the-century gas plants do not sustain this interpretation and instead advance a very different one. The intensification of work and the interference of supervisors were not closely connected to the stokers' attack on managerial authority. Both developments had long histories prior to 1890. Proletarianization did not impinge on stokers in 1898; they had experienced a deterioration in their work situation long before. Indeed, the most thoroughgoing act of deskilling undertaken by the company, the introduction of the scoop, passed without

[80] Léon de Seilhac, Les Grèves (Paris, 1903), pp. 152-229; Pierre Sorlin, Waldeck-Rousseau (Paris, 1966), pp. 467-469; Reddy, Market Culture , pp. 309-323.

[81] Michelle Perrot, "The Three Ages of Industrial Discipline in Nineteenth-Century France," in Consciousness and Class Experience in Nineteenth-Century Europe , ed. John Merriman (New York, 1980), pp. 149-168; Merriman, Red City , chap. 7; Berlanstein, Working People, chap. 5.

incident. Far from being the result of the rationalization of production, the stokers' militancy was the direct cause of a new round of it, with the precipitous introduction of the stoking machines. In short, the crisis of industrial discipline at the PGC was not the outcome of a particular moment in capitalistic development.^[82]

The crisis, rather, was an emotional manifestation of rising aspirations on the part of the stokers. The arbitrary power of supervisors had always been a fundamental feature of their work experience. They had to put up with foremen who insulted them, discriminated against them, and made crucial decisions about their lives. The stokers, along with many other sorts of wage earners and employees across France, were now willing to take steps to end or reduce their subordination. Vengeance against the supervisors was on their minds. Whether spontaneously or not, they came to accept the goal of fixed bureaucratic rules to which they had consented as the proper solution to their oppression. In 1899 the stokers believed—and their superiors fearedwthat a new form of managerial authority, promising predictability and equity, was within their grasp.

The problem of industrial discipline flared into a general conflagration in turn-of-the-century France because of exceptional political circumstances. It was a moment of hope, restlessness, and tension on the part of republicans. For several years the Republic had sympathetically considered ways to make the industrial order more acceptable to the masses, and the rise of Nationalist agitation before and during the Dreyfus Affair tilted the regime still more to the left. Wage-earners, along with other working people, had long hoped for a further round of republicanization of the social order, extending even to the workplace. Sensitive to the emerging possibilities as the liberal order foundered, wage earners and employees were quick to force their agenda to the fore.^[83] It was certainly not a coincidence that stokers exploded over their subordination to foremen just as the Chamber of Deputies was considering a bill to regulate finings and firings. Indeed, Maurice Claverie saw in the legislation the solution to the antiauthoritarian grievances that were stirring the gas workers,^[84] The

[82] See chapter 4 for a discussion of technological change within the PGC. The crisis of discipline of 1899 was not simply a matter of a sudden revival of the business cycle. If it had been, the stokers' militancy would have surfaced in 1896. See appendix, fig. A3.

[83] Michelle Perrot, Workers on Strike , p. 314, points out that strike waves often coincided with left-leaning governments. She condudes that the strikes "though rarely political in their objective . . . frequently had political origins." The finding is relevant to the gas workers at the turn of the century.

[84] AP, V 8 O , no. 149, Claverie to president of Conseil al'administration, July 20, 1899.

turn of the century was a moment when le peuple came to expect much from their Republic—more than republican politicians were ultimately prepared to deliver.

Hatred of the kind of power that foremen wielded was not simply learned on the shop floor from experience. There is the visceral nature of the workers' emotions to consider. The stokers' outburst expressed a political culture that was profoundly antiauthoritarian and antihierarchical. The skilled workmen contested not just abuses of authority but also the principle of discretionary authority itself. Their categorical rejection of the legitimacy of face-to-face authority differentiated them from labor aristocrats in Britain or from the members of the Freie Gewerkschaften. At the same time, stokers shared their aversions with French white-collar employees, with whom they did not otherwise identify For all their differences, the two groups accepted a binary vision of authority: there could be either equality or arbitrariness. This political culture found expression even in the highest circles of power as the twentieth century dawned. Only in France did prominent members of the governing party, now the Radicals, denounce personal authority as an unacceptable privilege. In this sense the crisis of 1899 was the outcome not only of shop-floor strife but also of a distinctive political culture that had deep roots in popular politics and flourished temporarily under the Radical Republic.

There is an irony in the stokers sharing an ideology of legitimate authority with office clerks and with petit bourgeois politicians while failing to join with their unskilled comrades at the gas plant in united action. An account of protest at the PGC testifies to the palpable weakness of factory labor as an experience that could forge a cohesive working class. However much the stokers and common hands shared on and off the job, they could not find a basis for agreeing on interests, strategies, and goals. The cleavages were largely the result of differences in their situation at the work-place. The stokers' bargaining power allowed them to contest grievances when the laborers were helpless and to formulate goals that the unskilled could not hope to redress even under the best of circumstances. Factory labor produced compartmentalization, not a melding of differences among the exploited.

Political realities after 1890 reinforced the cleavages created by the work situation. General laborers surmounted their suspicion of the state because they had no other options. Powerless before their employer, the only form of collective action open to them was the sort the authorities sanctioned. Hence they consented to patient organization building and sent their reformist leaders to negotiate for them. The skilled workers, by contrast, had the option of using their own proficiencies to extract conces-

sions from the company. Hopes for small improvements in pay or even for pensions did not entice them to abandon direct action. The stokers set their own agenda, and at its core was control over the work experience. Different political options and uneven workplace power operated in tandem to keep the gas workers divided.

Not only did the gaziers fail to unite as a class; they also failed to grow progressively in class consciousness. The convention of taking the linear development of the working class as normative, so common in labor studies, does not receive support from the case of the stokers.^[85] These workers simply did not evolve from a preindustrial stage to a class-conscious one. The stokers of the 1860s, even as peasant-workers, were fully capable of frustrating the designs of their stern superiors. Their status as independent workers made them interested in wages, and they pursued the agenda with sophistication and success. The stokers of the 1890s had nothing to teach the earlier generation in terms of tactics and consciousness. The later generation had not become notably more interested in organization nor more likely to identify their concerns with those of other sorts of laborers. The stokers of the 1890s had a different agenda because they were now dependent workers, and they pursued their interests as best they could. Common hands, for their part, were no less responsive to immediate circumstances when they rallied to their union in the 1890s. Alain Cottereau proposes that historians put aside the preoccupation with de-grees of consciousness and focus on "how the practices of workers proceed from the logics and strategies adapted to the situation they confront."^[86] His situational approach to class formation accurately characterizes social conflict at the Parisian gas plants.

A final irony of 1899 is that it completely misrepresented the stokers' future. The tensions and antipathies expressed during the strike linked stokers to many sorts of working people throughout France. The stokers' action reflected the principal contours of the French labor movement as a whole—its local autonomy its ephemeral commitment to trade unions,

[85] Older and current works in labor history reflect the expectation of linear development, hut the questioning of that convention has recently become intense. In-deed, class analysis itself has been subjected to serious scrutiny, with the assertion that class is an externally imposed category, not a lived experienced. See William Sewell, "Uneven Development, Autonomy of Politics, and the Dockworkers of Nineteenth-Century Marseille," American Historical Review 93 (1988): 604-637; William Reddy, Money and Liberty in Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987); Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class (Cambridge, 1983); Joan Wallach Scott, "On Language, Gender, and Working-Class History," in Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), pp. 53-67.

[86] Cottereau, "Working-Class Cultures," p. 113.

and its direct action. Yet the strike of 1899 was their last outburst with such features. As the twentieth century began, the stokers would no longer exemplify the labor movement as it currently stood. Instead, they would point to its future by rallying to a bureaucratized union that operated within the parameters set by the bourgeois state. This change, too, was a legacy of the pursuit of social peace by a Radical Republic at its height of social experimentation.

Advancements in Political Integration

The engineers should have realized that their victory over the union would inevitably be Pyrrhic. The rank and file wanted a union, and since political realities deprived the company of the weapon of intimidation, the workers would have one again. The principal question was what kind it would be. Darène's organization had fallen apart after the August strike, and two options existed after that disaster and after the Nationalists' municipal victory in May 1900. Some of Darène's associates formed a union that sought close ties to the corporation. Whether this was a bona fide com-pany (or "yellow") union remains unclear since its official relations with the PGC were tenuous at best. Nonetheless, the leaders did not hesitate to proclaim, "We are 'yellow' and we don't get 'red' about it."^[87] They argued, as management did, that the fatal strike had been the fault of dangerously rebellious laborers. The company unionists believed that the municipal revolution of 1900 presented a golden opportunity for workers to support the PGC in its negotiations with the city and be rewarded for doing so. They imagined that the company would accept all the workers' legitimate demands and that the engineers would learn to cooperate with the personnel. Only a few general laborers rallied to the company union. The firm's failure to rehire the strikers of 1899 may have discouraged membership. Moreover, the option lacked warm support from management and from the Nationalist councilmen. The disintegration of the Nationalist move-ment in Paris after 1902 undermined its raison d'être entirely.^[88]

Far and away the more successful option was the revival of reformist syndicalism under the leadership of Louis Lajarrigue. This former mechanic for the PGC had joined the strike of 1899 without enthusiasm but out of a sense of duty. The yellows subsequently attacked him as a radical, but he was nothing of the sort. In fact, he became a worthy successor to

[87] Journal du gaz , no. 186 (November 5, 1901): 2. On the yellow unions, see Zeev Sternheil, La Droite révolutionnaire: Les Origines françaises du Fascisme (Paris, 1978), chap. 4.

[88] Préffecture, B/a 1424, report of April 12, 1903.

Brard and a supportive colleague to Claverie, of the clerks' union. Lajarrigue's proposed solution to the gas question was dose to Claverie's call to give "the gas works to the gas workers." He accepted much of the class collaboration Claverie envisioned without duplicating Darène's naive trust in the engineers' goodwill.^[89] Lajarrigue would never attempt to initiate deals with the company that could alienate the councilmen. The former mechanic took over Brard's seat on the municipal council when the latter died (in 1903) and continued his pragmatic defense of organized workers' interests. Lajarrigue was no closer to the Socialist aldermen than Brard had been, but his syndicalism scrupulously respected political realities.^[90]

The new union secretary's success derived from his judicious assess-ment of the political situation. He foresaw that Parisian councilmen would bestow on gas workers benefits that were well beyond realistic expectations for wage earners in other industries. With the strike of 1899 having served to reinforce public sympathy for the PGC's personnel, gaziers would receive decent pay, civil-servant status, job tenure, bureaucratic rules regulating work conditions, and retirement benefits. These advantages would be guaranteed in the charter of whatever firm carried on gas production, and the engineers would have to accept them as final. Lajarrigue correctly envisioned that the gas company would become a quasi-public service that used some profits to support a privileged personnel. By the time the PGC's old charter had expired, Lajarrigue's expectations had been entirely realized.^[91]

Not surprisingly, common laborers rallied to a union that operated within that framework, as they had before 1900. This time, however, so did most of the stokers. Perhaps the PGC's intransigence on rehiring had eliminated or intimidated the most militant of them, but the positive reasons for accepting the path of moderation were surely dominant. The striking stokers of 1899 had belatedly achieved their goals by other means. The ones who labored in the distillation rooms in 1906 no longer had to face supervisors who held arbitrary power over them. Wage earners at the PGC had fixed careers, clear and uniform rules governing the work experience, and a review board to resolve disputes when irregularities arose. The gaziers had gained far more security, better pay, and more control over their work conditions than impoverished immigrants to the capital had

[89] AP, V 8 O , no. 1632, "Personnel, 1906-1920"; no. 150, "Rapport sur la manifestation en faveur de la paix, accompagnè des renseignements sur l'industrie du gaz à Londres."

[90] See Conseil municipal , July 3, 1903, for votes on which Lajarrigue and the Socialist group of aldermen parted company

[91] AP, V 8 O , nos. 162-163.

any right to expect. Even the stokers seemed to recognize their good for-tune and now protected it within the context of a bureaucratic and reformist union.

The impulse for direct action and the anarchic rage characteristic of 1899 had not disappeared entirely among the stokers. A small group re-mained outside Lajarrigue's organization. Some established contacts with the revolutionary wing of the Confédération générale du travail and tried to win their comrades to class conformation. Their militancy was not simply a legacy of the recent past; it was also the response to a new problem that younger stokers confronted—technological displacement. The PGC and its successor firm speeded the introduction of stoking machines in the decade prior to World War I. Even in the face of the new threat, most stokers no longer supported taking matters into their own hands and spiting a regime that offered valuable benefits. The militants proved to be no more than a minor annoyance to the reformists.^[92]

Lajarrigue held to an ambitious and idealistic vision for his union that was not altogether compatible with the consummate pragmatism of his policies. He wanted Parisian gas workers to help gaziers all over France obtain similar benefits. To this end he participated in the formation of, and presided over, a national federation.^[93] Furthermore, he strove to make his privileged corporation into a model and an inspiration for the syndicalist world. He set about using the growing wealth of the gas union to build workers' institutions. Under his direction the union established a vacation home by the sea and a retirement colony for aged gaziers. During Aristide Briand's ministry Lajarrigue read the premier's Socialist tracts and claimed inspiration from them when he proposed that workers serve on the board of directors of the new gas company.^[94] Of course, Lajarrigue was never able to explain how other sorts of workers could obtain the advantages his followers enjoyed while operating within legal and pacific channels. There were also clear limits to his idealistic endeavors. He never asked members to make sacrifices to the larger working-class movement,

[92] Les Travailleurs du gaz: Organe officiel de la chambre syndicale des travailleurs de la Compagnie du gaz, no. 147 (April-May 1906): 1; no. 153, (September 5, 1906): 1.

[93] Actually, the impetus for a national federation appears to have come from the provinces following a protracted strike among gas workers in Bordeaux, but Lajarrigue was happy to lead the movement. See Journal du gaz, no. 125 (February 20, 1898): 1.

[94] AP. V 8 O , no. 1257, "Project de maisons ouvrières"; Travailleurs du gaz , no. 253 (April 20, 1910): 1; Préfecture, B/a 1425, report of February 24, 1911. On Briand's project, see M. Dezès, "Participation et démocratie sociale: L'Expérience Briand de 1909," Le Mouvement social, no. 87 (1974): 109-136.

nor did he take steps to come to the aid of oppressed wage earners outside the gas company. Most stokers willingly followed his lead.

Though Lajarrigue hesitated to admit it, his aspirations and strategies virtually precluded the use of the strike as an instrument of class action. He intended to rely on reasonable demands, impressive displays of solidarity, and, above all, on political pressure. Of course, he had to be careful to distance his union from any public demonstration of "revolutionary" in-tent. Thus, he kept his followers out of the massive May Day strike move-ment of 1906, the denouement of the crisis of industrial discipline.^[95] When the electrical workers struck the next year, Emile Pataud, the head of their union, pleaded with gaziers to support the action, but without success. Relaying orders from his vacation house in Brittany Lajarrigue made sure that gas workers remained aloof.^[96] He even conspired in the exploitation of other wage earners to maintain the advantages of his privileged following. The tenure system under which the gas personnel operated soon became bloated with laborers who had the requisite one year of seniority. Lajarrigue protected his membership by arranging with the Parisian Gas Society (the successor to the PGC) to penalize newly hired la-borers. They would be fired on their 364th day of work so that the pool of workers with "permanent" status would shrink. Some laborers were to be fired at once to hasten the process.^[97] There seemed to be little discontent within the tenured rank and file over these pragmatic—even egocentric— decisions.

As a national figure who claimed to represent the future of syndicalism, the leader of the gas union came to have prominent enemies. Revolutionary syndicalists like Victor Griffuelhes saw in Lajarrigue all that was wrong with reformism. Lajarrigue became the particular bête noire of Pataud, the "prince of darkness" who had led the electricity strike. This revolutionary believed that the gaziers had become "incapable of any energetic action. . .. All their activity consisted of appeals to the authorities." He concluded that Lajarrigue's respect for legality and gradualism had "mummified [the workers] in attitudes of submission." The only hope Pataud saw for the gaziers resided in a handful of militant stokers.^[98]

[95] Préfecture, B/a 1424, report of April 23, 1906. The police reports (as well as the union newspaper) make it clear that Lajarrigue had to overcome some internal opposition to his decision not to participate in the strike. For a good description of May Day 1906 and its context, see Tilly, Contentious French , pp. 315-321.

[96] Prefecture, B/a 1424, report of October 5, 1907.

[97] AP, V 8 O , no. 1632, Rouland to prefect, June 14, 1910; report of Keck to prefect, lanuary 17, 1910; report of Rouland to prefect, June 30, 1910.

[98] Emile Pataud and Emile Pouget, Comment nous ferons la révolution (Paris, 1909), pp. 37, 42.

Thus, the gas workers' union survived the PGC. It became large, influential, and rich. Admirers of British unionism regularly cited it as an ex-ample of what French workers could achieve. Radical critics saw in it a model of how easily wage earners could succumb to bourgeois egoism if leaders did not pursue the tactics of class confrontation. The stokers had eventually followed the lead of the common hands. So recently the practitioners of unmediated conflict in disregard of the political consequences, the stokers now settled for sending leaders of a formal organization with national affiliations to negotiate for them. They became indirect contenders for power within a capitalistic and parliamentary regime. The stokers may have extracted an exceptional price for such behavior, but their choice was in step with many other skilled industrial workers in France.^[99]

Conclusion

The case of the gaziers demonstrates that French factory proletarians did not readily entrust their fate to a centralized political party Nor were the more qualified industrial workers quick to renounce localized, direct action as their principal means of resolving grievances. Even the common hands looked to indigenous leaders who were resolutely syndicalist, not Socialist. So little respect did the leaders have for Socialists that they cooperated more easily with Radicals and with Nationalists on the municipal council. The widespread commitment to workplace-centered action (whether direct or not) probably owed much to workers' long-standing sense of internal exile within the republic and also to the revolutionary inheritance within French political culture.^[100]

Two contradictory features marked the gas workers and many other French laborers around the turn of the century. On the one hand, some wage earners tried to attack managerial authority, a cause that brought stiff resistance from employers and public charges of outright "rebellion." On the other hand, many workers relaxed their fundamental distrust of the state and committed themselves to large, organized interest groups working within channels established by the state. The synthesis of syndicalism and socialism toward which the leftist parliamentary leader, Jean Jaurès, had been building became increasingly relevant under the circumstances.^[101] The second trend did not simply reflect underlying structural

[99] Merriman, Red City , pp. 245-250.

[100] Tony ludt develops this explanation for the weakness of socialism in "The Labor Movement in the Nineteenth Century," in Marxism and the French Left (Oxford, 1986), pp. 24-114.

[101] Michelle Perrot, "On the Formation of the French Working Class," in Working Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States, ed. Ira Katznelson and Aristide Zolberg (Princeton, 1986), pp. 108-110.

shifts from a nineteenth-century artisanal economy to a twentieth-century industrial economy. The gas workers, quintessential nineteenth-century factory proletarians, passed through each phase of the transition from direct action to a nationally organized labor movement.

Both of these turn-of-the-century features had their source in the intensified involvement of the state in pacifying industrial society. Even the rather modest reforms of the Radical republicans had important repercussions. A serious problem for the reformers was the failure of factory work to generate a unified working class and, still less, one that was uniformly attracted by practical gains. Depending on whether laborers had much or little bargaining power at the workplace, they took the favor of the state as a signal either to challenge their employers' mastery or to build bridges to politicians of whatever stripe who promised benefits. To the extent that the public authorities appeared to be encouraging "rebellion" against industrial discipline, they had to draw back from efforts to encourage moderation. This paradox plagued the Radical Republic.^[102]

By no means was the insurrectionary impulse put aside once and for all, even though political integration achieved decisive gains around the turn of the century The events of the 1890s at the Parisian gas plants illustrated the waves of action and disengagement that characterized the protest of industrial workers.^[103] Later, the shocks of World War I and of the world depression would spark new bouts of unrest. The gas workers' experience showed that only exceptional benefits from the state could permanently reconcile industrial workers to their subordination at the work-place. Rarely was the liberal order in France so thoroughly shaken that it would generalize such concessions.

[102] For Ciemenceau's experience, see David Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London, 1974), pp. 169-206.

[103] See Noiriel, Ouvriers dans la société franqaise , pp. 263-267, on the cycles of militancy and quiescence among workers.