1
Labor and Family among Artisan Workers, 1815–1840

In 1807, Jean-François Richard-Chambovet, a prominent ribbon merchant in Saint Chamond, traveled to Paris, a journey few Saint-Chamonais of the nineteenth century ever made. He certainly had the leisure to travel during this year, for revolution and war had nearly decimated his business. While wandering about Paris trying to distract himself from commercial troubles, Richard-Chambovet came upon a shop of antiques and used goods. There a curiosity caught his eye: a loom with thirteen spindles. How strange this mechanism appeared to him, for it was completely unlike the ribbon looms with which he had great familiarity. The shop had three of these looms; Richard-Chambovet purchased them all, for the hefty sum of 390 francs apiece, and brought them back to Saint Chamond.^[1]

Little did this ribbon merchant know that his simple purchase would eventually reshape the economy of his native town and, indeed, change the direction of its history. These looms braided threads rather than weaving them. Their arrival coincided with the introduction of steam power. Much less delicate than ribbon looms, braid mechanisms adapted well to steam. By 1820, Richard-Chambovet had a factory with 298 braid looms. A decade later, steam powered 4,000 spindles in Saint Chamond, and by 1860 this number had multiplied by no less than one hundred. Mechanically produced braids did not replace the shinier and more delicate woven ribbons. Indeed, the Restoration brought a return to fancier tastes, and the ribbon industry experienced a golden age between 1815 and 1825. But by the 1840s factory-produced braids replaced ribbons as the primary textile industry of Saint Chamond.^[2]

The Saint Chamond economy simultaneously expanded in the metallurgical sector. The extensive coal deposits of the Stéphanois region attracted entrepreneurs who introduced blast furnaces and

rolling mills in the 1820s and 1830s. They built English forges in Saint Chamond and the surrounding communes of Terrenoire, Lorette, Izieux, Saint-Julien-en-Jarrez, and Saint-Paul-en-Jarrez. By 1831, large-scale industry in two sectors vital to the French economy, textiles and metal, had been installed in Saint Chamond. Meanwhile, the two traditional craft industries that had established Saint Chamond as a commercial town, nail making and ribbon weaving, had all but disappeared by 1850.^[3]

During the first half of the nineteenth century the basis of the Saint Chamond economy thus became transformed from domestic production to large-scale factory production. Capital and labor were transferred from craft to mechanized industries. In this complex process, the choices, activities, and capital of Saint Chamond's merchants and entrepreneurs played a decisive role. The transfer of labor, however, required a distinctly human shift and thus entailed the decisions, choices, and will of workers in Saint Chamond as well. Industrialists certainly felt pleased with this town's technological transformation; but how did workers experience it?

In some other parts of France where industrial capitalism similarly transformed industries and local economies, artisans resisted change and retarded its effects by maintaining control over their own labor. Although the Le Chapelier Law of 1791 was intended to abolish guilds and other worker associations, many persisted. Craft guilds, confraternities, compagnonnages , and other quasi-religious associations helped artisans extend their work identity to a sense of fellowship with other members of their trade. Associations enabled them to maintain some control over their work by regulating entry into the craft through apprenticeships and by regulating standards of production.^[4]

In other cases, however, economic development alone undermined the power of worker associations to preserve their way of life. In Saint Chamond, for example, merchants controlled raw materials, imposed standards of work, and monopolized the sale of finished products. Confréries persisted throughout the nineteenth century, but they came to be dominated by employers and confined themselves primarily to religious functions.^[5] As associations weakened, the family assumed more significance as a repository for culture centered around work, and particularly as a main source for apprenticeships. Consciously or not, it developed into the primary

theater in which tactics for preserving a way of life became formulated; equally, it became the arena in which workers relinquished their way of life. How they responded to economic change in large part depended on the degree to which the family operated as a production unit and on the extent of their success in passing skills on to new generations.

While during the course of the nineteenth century industrialization reshaped family life, what happened within the family also largely determined the fate of domestic industries. In Saint Chamond, the majority of men and women devoted themselves to some stage in the production of nails, ribbons, and the processing of silk. Most work took place in the home, and in both silk processing and iron working, parents passed skills on to their children. Each craft, however, responded to economic change in Saint Chamond very differently. Despite a decline in the ribbon industry, weavers clung to their trade and persisted in passing it on to their children. Nail makers and their sons more readily abandoned their craft.

One reason for the divergent patterns in these responses stems from the nature of the work itself. In the end products as well as in the labor that created them, these two crafts could not have differed more. Ribbon weavers turned organic material into beautiful luxury items that had little utilitarian purpose beyond the satisfaction of consumer vanity. Their value was subject to the whims of constantly changing fashion. At the same time, their production required lengthy apprenticeship, highly developed skills, dexterity, patience, and, for the best ribbons, a true artistic talent. Nail makers turned inorganic material into an exclusively utilitarian object with little aesthetic value. Only seasoned nail makers appreciated aesthetic qualities in details of difference among the thousand or so varieties. Their indispensability insured more consistent employment. The creation of nails, however, required more practice than training, more brute force than talent.

Ribbon weavers indeed felt more pride in their work, which partly explains their greater attachment to it. But this attachment did not stem from the nature of the work alone. The relationship between family and work among both nail makers and ribbon weavers provides insight into cultural approaches that informed their behavior. A key difference between the two crafts helps to

explain their divergent responses to economic change: though both industries took place in the home, ribbon weaving depended upon the family as a unit, while nail making relied primarily on adult male labor. To survive in the face of technological change and loss of control over various stages of production, ribbon weavers drew more heavily on the productive capacities of their wives and children. Nail makers, on the other hand, turned outward from the family and tended to seek opportunities that were less domestically oriented.

From the preparation of raw materials to the marketing of the final product, ribbon production had a complex organization, of which weaving constituted but one stage. It was this stage, however, that involved the family most completely as a work unit. A master weaver usually owned three to six looms on which he, his family, and his journeymen worked. His wife and children provided invaluable assistance in auxiliary tasks such as winding bobbins. Wives also supplemented the family income by spinning or warping silk for merchants.^[6] As heads of a family enterprise, weavers exercised considerable independence.

Yet because weaving was only one stage in ribbon production and, indeed, dependent upon the other stages, weavers could not enjoy complete autonomy. All phases of ribbon production were seasonal, contingent on the silk harvest between May and July as well as on orders from fashion houses in London, Paris, and New York. Silk preparation lasted from three to six months, and looms operated for about eight months of the year. It was in silk preparation and marketing that merchants had gained considerable control by the end of the eighteenth century. Called maîtres faiseur fabricant —they put others to work, or they "put work out"—they had come to direct the bulk of the Saint Chamond labor force that worked in silk. The fabricant experimented with patterns, textures, and colors and decided which ones he would have produced for firms in Paris, London, and New York. He then had raw silk prepared and dyed according to the specifications of the pattern and hired a weaver to produce it. The leading ribbon fabricants of Saint Chamond—especially the Dugas brothers, Dugas-Vialis and Co., Bancel, Gillier and Sons, and David-Dubouchet—were the wealthiest and most important in France.^[7]

After purchasing the silk cocoons, the fabricant hired young girls

to unravel their single threads and wind them onto skeins. This work lasted approximately three months after the cocoon harvest and was the most distasteful in the silk preparation process. The worker first had to find the end of the single strand that composed the cocoon. She took about six cocoons at once and plunged them in extremely hot water to loosen the gum. She next unraveled all six cocoons while twisting the strands together and then placed them on a skein.^[8]

Workers could perform this task in their own homes, but increasingly fabricants employed them in workshops. By the 1830s skeining workshops were equipped with motorized spools and furnaces for centralized heating of water basins. This job especially relied upon migrant labor—young girls who usually returned to their rural villages after the season. As such, skeiners "belonged to the poorest class" and suffered the most miserable conditions. The stench of cocoons permeated the workshop and penetrated their clothing. The constant submersion of their hands into nearly boiling water caused chronic pain. Soaking them in red wine and cold water during breaks and after work provided meager relief. Skeiners earned 60 to 90 centimes for their sixteen-hour workday. Fabricants usually lodged them, but under conditions Villermé described as miserable. They slept two together in beds of straw and ate meals consisting of "weak bouillon, legumes, potatoes, potherbs, a few milk products and sometimes a little codfish."^[9]

After having the silk skeined, the fabricant then sent it to a miller. Silk millers exercised a profession in their own right, but they too came under the direction of fabricants —they worked as jobbers, fulfilling precise orders. Millers "threw" silk for merchants in Lyon and Saint Etienne as well as for those in Saint Chamond. They too relied on a female labor force, most of whom worked under their supervision in a workshop. Workers placed the skeined strands of silk on a mill consisting of rotating vertical spindles and bobbins. The mill twisted each thread in one of two directions to form the warp and weft, respectively. The tightness of the twist depended on the kind of thread required for the weave of a particular design.^[10]

Water powered the spindles that twisted the silk, so the millers clustered along the Gier River, where they employed and lodged in workshops at least eight to ten workers, and sometimes as many

as thirty or forty, who each supervised up to sixteen spindles. The women who worked for silk millers suffered conditions not much better than those of the skeiners. They too labored a sixteen-hour day for 90 centimes. Their employment lasted about six months.^[11]

Once the miller completed the job he sent the silk back to the fabricant , who in turn sent it out to a dyer. After scouring, cleaning, and dyeing the silk, the dyer returned it, still on skeins, to the fabricant . There the warp thread underwent one further stage of twisting on wooden spindles. Finally, warpers (ourdisseuses ) performed the delicate task of placing all the strands in a parallel fashion and stretching them with equal tension. Spinners and warpers worked either in their own homes, on the premises of the fabricant , or in the workshops of headmistresses. These processes too became increasingly centralized in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Because their work required skill, practice, and patience, warpers fared somewhat better than skeiners, mill workers, and spinners. They earned 1f40 per day, and some of the older, more experienced women were permitted to work in their own homes. Their work also lasted only six months.^[12]

After warping, the fabricant finally sold both the warp and the weft to the weaver. The weaver wove the silk into ribbons which he sold back to the fabricant , who then again employed a female labor force to perform the finishing, including folding and packaging the ribbons for marketing.

With the exception of the weaving and dyeing, this industry from start to finish relied upon an extensive, protean female labor force drawn from both town and country. The women could perform almost all these preparatory processes in their homes, provided they could obtain the proper materials and equipment. But in the first half of the nineteenth century, fabricants and silk millers increasingly organized these workers into workshops. A number of factors made centralization more practical. Most important, fabricants could better supervise the workers as well as the silk itself. In addition, silk could not tolerate changes in temperature or humidity, and keeping the raw materials under the fabricant's supervision assured proper treatment. The concentration of workers in shops also helped prevent the theft of silk and its waste products.^[13]

The government inquiry of 1848 reported, not surprisingly, very poor conditions among the mill workers, skeiners, and spinners

who labored in workshops. Respondents complained of overly strict supervision, stomach ailments, and leg varices induced by having to stand for long periods of time or by pumping the spinning-wheel pedal. Because silk could not tolerate atmospheric variations, these women suffered winter cold, summer heat, and high levels of humidity and breathed foul air because windows and doors had to be kept closed. Silk particles caused serious chest irritation. Long hours and workshop discipline surely made conditions there worse than those in workers' own homes.^[14]

The history of family and occupational life in Saint Chamond can be retrieved from marriage records, especially when used in conjunction with birth and death records for the purpose of reconstituting families. Records from couples who married between 1816 and 1825 and proceeded to have families in Saint Chamond through the first half of the century provide insight into the relationship between work and family life and into family responses to the technological change that took place during these years. Of the 539 women who married in Saint Chamond between 1816 and 1825, nearly 50 percent declared their occupation as silk workers of some kind (Table 1). Of those, 20 percent wove silk and the remainder declared jobs as silk worker, warper, skeiner, or spinner. Forty-one percent had fathers who wove ribbons.^[15] It is impossible to know how many of these women worked in their own homes and how many in workshops; no doubt those who came from ribbon-weaving families assisted their parents when they were needed and worked outside the home during various periods as well.

Whether these women wove ribbons in their own homes or skeined silk in the workshops of fabricants , or both, they could bring valuable knowledge and experience into a marriage with a ribbon weaver. The assistance of a weaver's wife and children played a particularly important role in his productivity. Once the fabricant sold the prepared weft and warp to the weaver, the family had to operate as a tightly coordinated unit. Fabricants habitually gave weavers last-minute rush orders and ruthlessly demanded that deadlines be met. The weaver first had to "mount" the loom according to the pattern and type of ribbon specified in the order. This process took anywhere from one day to more than a week, depending on whether plain or patterned ribbons had been ordered. The task was accordingly painstaking.^[16]

In addition to weaving, wives assisted their husbands in a number of other indispensable ways. As the weaver set up the loom, his wife worked over a canetière , a mechanism that passed the weft thread from the bobbin onto canettes , smaller bobbins that fit into the interior of the loom shuttle. Once her husband finished a ribbon, she picked floss and impurities from it (émouchetage ). Throughout the ribbon production process, she also ran important errands. She often obtained the thread and other materials from the fabricant and did the negotiating with him over prices of materials and labor. Here she could draw on her own experience, either from having grown up in a ribbon-weaving family or from having previously worked under a fabricant . Nearly 60 percent of the ribbon weavers who married between 1816 and 1825 chose brides who had already worked with silk; nearly 40 percent married the daughters of ribbon weavers. The importance of a wife's skills in this trade is even reflected in the literacy rates: 40.2 percent of ribbon weavers' wives were able to sign their marriage records, a rate more than twice as high as that of nail makers' wives. Ribbon weavers themselves were more literate than other types of workers,

because of the accounts they had to keep; it helped if their wives also had such skills.^[17] Indeed, marriage served as the point of departure for a family enterprise, for ribbon production depended heavily on the participation of all family members.

If marriage served to consolidate skills, family formation perpetuated them. Of all the ribbon weavers in the older generation present at the weddings celebrated between 1816 and 1825, 83 percent had passed their skills onto a new generation. More than two-thirds of them had daughters who declared occupations in the silk industry. Of ribbon-weaving grooms whose fathers declared professions, 65 percent also wove ribbons.^[18] Although the information about fathers' occupations remains incomplete, it does indicate a strong degree of occupational inheritance. As these figures suggest, apprenticeship almost always took place within the family. It began at about age fifteen or sixteen and lasted two to five years. Each of the specialties—plain ribbons, patterned or velvet ribbons, and, later, elastic—required a separate apprenticeship. Though training usually prepared the young weaver to be a journeyman before he reached age twenty, according to one observer it often took three generations to produce an able ribbon-weaver. The ability to weave the fanciest ribbons depended not just on skills learned from one's father but on inborn artistic talent. Occupational inheritance served as the wellspring for each generation of weavers. It also helped shape the industry. In his 1929 thesis on the silk ribbon production Henri Guitton attributed loom innovations to "modest workers who watched looms working under the hands of their fathers, and who, remaining the rest of their lives in their presence … felt the perfection that technology demanded as a function of the needs and possibilities of the moment."^[19]

If occupational inheritance helped weavers become inventors and entrepreneurs, innovations in this industry in turn, ironically, made it more difficult for weavers to become masters and to pass skills on to their sons. Although some workers exploited new opportunities and attained a higher status, innovations during the first three decades of the nineteenth century had some negative consequences for the average weaver: looms became less affordable, their greater complexity made the traditional apprenticeship insufficient, and the weaver lost further control over the production

process to an increasing number of middlemen. While ribbon production remained a family enterprise, survival became more difficult and fewer sons carried on the trade.

The first major technological change that ultimately began to proletarianize the weaver came with the Zurich or high warp loom, which brothers Jean-Baptiste and Jacques Dugas first introduced to Saint Chamond in 1765. This loom made possible the simultaneous production of thirty-two ribbons. A single bar in the front that the weaver raised and pushed moved its numerous shuttles. This new loom held such importance for the industry that Louis XVI ennobled the Dugas brothers and the government granted premiums of 70 francs annually for eight years to anyone who would obtain one. By 1777, Saint Chamond's fabricants supplied silk to 2,400 Zurich looms in and around the town.^[20]

Their size and complexity made Zurich looms much more expensive than the low warp or tambour looms. Moreover, the simpler looms continued to operate because the shuttles of the Zurich could not produce the same variety in size and patterns. Jacquard originally designed his mechanism for the looms in Lyon that wove single pieces of fabric. Its adaptation to the Zurich took several years, but it ultimately improved the versatility. Weavers in the Stéphanois began using the Jacquard with a single shuttle for simple designs in 1824. The same loom with several shuttles for large designs and brocades became standard throughout the region within the next eight years (see figure 3).^[21]

As a result of the Jacquard, the situation of ribbon weavers became worse in some respects than that of silk weavers in Lyon. By the 1850s, looms in Lyon cost 250 or 300 francs. But in Saint Chamond and Saint Etienne, because of the adaptations made in order to produce numerous ribbons simultaneously, the Zurich and Jacquard looms cost 1,000 francs. Those made of walnut or mahogany sold for 2,000 to 3,000 francs. Such enormous capital outlay began as early as the French Revolution to restrict the number of loom owners, especially since government premiums had ceased by this time.^[22]

In addition to raising the price of looms, the Jacquard mechanism made them much more complex. Its main innovative characteristic was that it reproduced patterns automatically. Two specialized workers, a sketcher (dessinateur ) and reader (liseur ) performed

the preliminary work to set up the mechanism. Their task bore similarity to that of a modern computer programmer. The sketcher drew the design on graph paper with conventional symbols to indicate how the weft thread would produce the pattern. Using a mechanical language, the reader punched into cardboard the intended movement of the warp threads during the passage of the loom shuttle. He then placed this program on a cylinder in the loom, and the pattern reproduced itself automatically as the weaver moved the shuttle. This job required more skill than that of the sketcher and at least three years of apprenticeship—as much training as most weavers required.^[23]

The Jacquard mechanism thus removed from weavers one of the stages in ribbon production: implementation of the designs. As one observer put it, with the Jacquard "the ribbon weaver has no need to know how to read the cardboard designs in order to reproduce them. He is no longer anything but a simple agent who executes an operation."^[24] Instead, the sketcher and reader took over this task in the fabrication of patterned ribbons. They too were hired by the fabricant . The reader in particular became a key intermediary between the fabricant and the weaver, for he installed the punched cardboard for the latter. This mechanism also made the job of mounting looms far more painstaking, because the weaver had to avoid damaging the punched cardboard and the cylinder. Fabricants imposed stiff financial penalties if any damage did occur.^[25]

Though weavers continued to work in small family workshops, these technical advances divided the labor by gender and by geography. Women mostly wove on the low warp and tambour looms, which produced plain ribbons. Looms fit for patterned ribbons became increasingly difficult for them to operate because decorative and metallic thread made the shuttles weigh at least 130 pounds. In addition to becoming male-dominated, the production of patterned ribbons became urban-centered. Their delicacy required closer supervision both in their production and in regulation of the patterns themselves—in the hilly and mountainous countryside within a radius of five or six kilometers from Saint Chamond, weavers tended to plagiarize designs. Thus advances in loom mechanisms during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century were concentrated in towns and cities; weaving in some of

the rural areas outside Saint Chamond became exclusively a female occupation, while in the city itself it became predominantly male.^[26]

From about 1830, when the Jacquard loom became standard in Saint Chamond, the multiplication of processes carried out by others complicated the weaver's task and denied him access to some of the specializations. Once he had received an order, for example, he had to make as many as twenty errands to the fabricant 's shop to obtain the necessary silk and loom pieces. Often he would be promised silk in the morning and then waste an entire day standing at the shop's door waiting for it. Sometimes it took ten to fifteen days to collect all the necessary prepared pieces just to begin weaving. As respondents to the government inquiry of 1848 put it, the time a weaver spent running errands and waiting cut into his work, "his only property."^[27]

The ribbon weaver was held fully responsible for the quality of the finished ribbon. If the dyer, sketcher, reader, or warper had made mistakes, the weaver had to correct them or see that they were corrected, which stole more time from his weaving. His wife's contribution toward these time-consuming chores, particularly the running of errands, became ever more important as the fabrique grew more complex.

The increased need to supervise the production of patterned ribbons led to the introduction of a third middle person between the weaver and fabricant : the commis de barre , who took over functions the weaver had once performed himself. Barre referred to the bar on the front of the loom that moved the numerous shuttles. The commis found "bars"—weavers—to carry out the orders for the fabricants . In addition to scouting for weavers, the commis negotiated prices, surveyed the work, and regulated disputes on behalf of the fabricant . Most often the commis had been a ribbon weaver himself and continued to oversee a workshop. He might own three or four looms worked by his family and journeymen. His own experience as a weaver had taught him the commercial side of the industry. He had learned to negotiate shrewdly with fabricants and commis and had acquired a business sense about the prices of raw materials and the market for finished products.^[28]

The increased reliance on commis caused considerable vexation. They received 5 percent of the price the fabricant paid the weaver for ribbons, further cutting into the weaver's wages. More complaints

had to do with the humiliation to which commis subjected weavers. It was the commis who often demanded the order be filled within an unreasonably short period of time so that he could then extract more from the weaver's pay as a fine. Under pressure from the fabricant , the commis also went out of his way to detect imperfections in the ribbon. He frequently cheated the weaver by finding fault with the ribbon's color, texture, or pattern and holding him responsible for mistakes the sketcher, reader, dyer, or warper had made. Most often the weaver would not risk going before the Conseil des Prud'hommes to complain, for fear that the fabricant or commis would stop giving him orders. Although weavers worked successively for several fabricants , they could not afford to alienate any of them for fear that they would not be chosen to work during the commercial slowdowns that came so frequently in the ribbon industry.^[29]

The higher prices of looms, the increased subdivision of work into specialties, and the greater reliance on commis began to influence the ribbon industry most profoundly after the Jacquard loom became a mainstay in the Stéphanois region during the 1820s and early 1830s. Responses to the government inquiry of 1848 reflect their impact. Most complaints referred to the cheating commis . Saint-Chamonais described the relationship between weavers and commis as "feudalistic": weavers received "protection" if they were family members of the commis or if they had provided certain "services" to the commis or fabricant , particularly sexual favors from their wives or daughters.^[30]

Weavers also expressed deep concern about their loss of control over specializations and their decreasing ability to equip their children with the skills necessary to operate the more complex looms. They deplored the traditional methods of apprenticeship for their arbitrariness. In other words, inheriting skills from a family did not adequately equip a young weaver for the new technology. A father's knowledge and experience no longer sufficed. They called for a professional school that would provide theoretical as well as practical instruction in all types of looms, in punching cards for the Jacquard (mise en carte ), in designing patterns, and in loom mechanics.^[31]

Respondents to the government inquiry also complained bitterly about the occupational hazards of ribbon weaving, some of which

had always plagued weavers, others of which intensified with technological change. Silk work rendered homes extremely insalubrious. Workers lived in tall, narrow apartments, built to accommodate looms rather than people. Just as in silk workshops, doors and windows had to be kept closed to maintain an even temperature and level of humidity and to shut out the pervasive dirt and ash from the increasing number of forges in the town. Inside, silk dust thickened the air and depleted it of oxygen. Journeymen and children slept on soupentes , platforms suspended from the walls near the ceiling. Though this arrangement well suited the operation of looms, it placed those who slept on soupentes in even greater jeopardy. Warm air rose and brought with it more of the deadly silk particles. Weavers contracted a number of degenerative illnesses from these conditions. Most common was the disease whose symptoms modern medicine now recognizes as those of tuberculosis.^[32]

Operating Zurich and Jacquard looms entailed new physical hardships for the weaver. To the government inquiry, Saint Chamond's ribbon weavers reported that for the production of the fanciest ribbons, they had to manipulate up to 650 pounds of silk when lifting and pushing the wooden bar in front of these looms. At the same time they had to move it evenly and continuously without becoming winded. "A large number of workers do not have enough strength for this," the report stated, "and when they do, they can only do it for three or four years." To move the bar even with threads that weighed much less, workers had to lean on it with their stomachs and do this constantly over a period of several days at a time. Mounting the looms and tying broken threads also compressed the stomach. Such constant pressure caused internal membranes to thicken and become cancerous.^[33]

Weavers risked other hazards as well, such as varices in their limbs and scrotum, especially when they began work at too young an age. Production of the fancier ribbons ruined the eyesight. The delicate silk threads often broke, and the weaver had to reattach the broken ones to those of matching color, grouped together in a large bundle. The government inquiry noted that "To this rude labor the worker is in some way attached like a best of burden, which ruins temperaments and decimates a good number of individuals

in the flower of their age. Usually by 48 or 50, a man can no longer work in this state, whether by weakness of temperament or by failing eyesight that prevents him from functioning properly."^[34]

Ribbon weavers in Saint Chamond faced a further dilemma which those in the rest of the Stéphanois basin suffered only much later: the local decline of the industry itself. Fierce rivalry between Saint Chamond and Saint Etienne began in the second half of the eighteenth century and intensified after the Revolution, to Saint Chamond's disadvantage. One of the most frequently cited reasons for the lead Saint Etienne took in this competition is that the ribbon industry in Saint Chamond continued to respect guild regulations while Saint Etienne's did not, and wages and prices in Saint Etienne responded more effectively to the market. As the capital of ribbon weaving long before Saint Etienne started producing ribbons, traditions in the small town had become more firmly imbedded. By 1813, the Consultative Chamber of Arts and Manufactures in Saint Chamond requested that the prefect enforce regulations in the Saint Etienne ribbon industry. They bitterly referred to their Stéphanois counterparts as "oppressors" who engaged in a "war of ribbons" that threatened "1,200 fathers of families." The competition developed beyond wages and prices, for manufacturers in Saint Etienne made a practice of stealing some of the designs made in Saint Chamond.^[35] Other factors further weakened the Saint Chamond ribbon industry. One local historian thought the building of the railway between Lyon and Saint Etienne in 1827 enabled buyers to ignore the small town. Another suggested that they purposely avoided Saint Chamond because its hotels did not offer enough luxury and because Saint Etienne had a more centrally located and convenient train station.^[36]

By 1840, ribbon production in Saint Chamond had declined to one-tenth the size of the trade in Saint Etienne. A military officer sent to report on the region in 1843 noted that the "population of Saint Chamond had been diminishing appreciably for a dozen years because of the almost complete ruin of its ribbon trade." It lost a fifth of its population, which fell from 10,000 inhabitants to 8,000. Many ribbon manufacturers simply liquidated their businesses; some changed over to new industries, particularly the

mechanical production of braids and cords. By 1848, only eight ribbon-manufacturing firms, fewer than half of what had existed in the 1830s, remained in Saint Chamond.^[37]

The ribbon weavers who married between 1816 and 1825 began their conjugal lives at a time of relative prosperity and promise but bore and raised many of their children when the Jacquard loom and industrial capitalism began to have their most intensive effects. The greater obstacles to buying looms and mastering necessary skills, the loss of control over production, and the shrinking of the industry itself challenged not only the traditional organization of work but the very basis of family life among weavers and silk workers.

What strategies did they adopt to meet these challenges? Surprisingly few took the apparently logical step of leaving the town or changing professions. Only 8 percent of the ribbon weavers who married failed to start having families in Saint Chamond, and at least 43 per cent of them showed evidence of their presence in 1850 or later. Among those who started families in Saint Chamond, only eight of them, or 17.5 percent, met the new challenges of the industry by assuming seventeen other occupations: baker, schoolteacher, publican, grocer, café keeper, gardener, nail maker, mattress maker, carter, charcoal merchant, mason, iron worker, day laborer, dyer, wood mechanic, braid maker, and braid tagger. The last four occupations derived from their experience in the ribbon industry. Menuisier, menuisier-mécanicien , and mécanicien sur bois referred to the job of loom mechanic, an occupation that grew more specialized and important as looms became more complex. Although ribbon looms began to decrease in Saint Chamond, the number of braid looms multiplied rapidly. Since weavers had to become masters of their looms, specializing as a loom mechanic even for the braid industry exhibited a continuity in their occupational history.^[38]

Among the few who did change occupations, about half alternated their jobs with ribbon weaving. Michel Bonnard, for example, declared his occupation as ribbon weaver at the time of his marriage in 1819. Ten years later he worked as a tavernkeeper, then as a schoolteacher. Through 1838 he alternately declared these two occupations. In 1839 he worked as a grocer and once again declared himself a ribbon weaver in 1841. His occupation appeared upon the registration of his death in 1844 as "former teacher and tavernkeeper."

A ribbon weaver at the time of his marriage in 1820, Claude Marie Labeaune declared himself to be a joiner (menuisier ) two years later and in 1828 again referred to himself as a ribbon weaver. From 1833 to 1869 he alternately listed his occupation as joiner, as mechanic, and, finally, as ex-menuisier-sur-bois .^[39]

Given the increased hardships in the profession of ribbon weaving, that more did not abandon it is remarkable, especially since the expansion in the braid and metallurgical industries provided new employment opportunities. Assuming that they were highly motivated to remain in their craft, what made it possible for weavers to do so? Apart from the increased cost of looms and loss of control over several stages of production, the specific changes ribbon weavers faced in their industry entailed an increase in the time spent mounting looms and in the number of troublesome errands and negotiations. These latter chores were activities that the wife could perform in addition to the auxiliary tasks she had always done for her husband. Thus ribbon weavers increased the efficiency of their production by relying more on their wives. Their family structure suggests that such was the case. In comparison with the rest of the Saint-Chamonais, ribbon-weaving couples had fewer children, spaced them more deliberately, and tended to send more of them to wet nurses. Mothers thus limited their reproductive obligations so that they could devote more attention to productive responsibilities.^[40]

A continued high rate of occupational inheritance in the second generation, remarkable in itself, further indicates that ribbon production persisted by virtue of that fact that it remained family-intensive. Offspring of the generation who married between 1816 and 1825 grew to adulthood in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s. Only 20 percent of all male children, regardless of father's occupation, married in Saint Chamond. Despite the hardships of their local trade, a surprisingly higher proportion of ribbon weavers' sons (23 percent) married in town.^[41] Of 38 sons who married, more than half declared their occupations as ribbon weaver. Others declared closely related activities: reader, braid tagger, dyer. Even joiners and mechanics performed work related to passementerie, because they worked on wooden looms. Workers and employees in rubber manufacturing performed tasks related to the weaving of elastic—an extension of ribbon weaving. If these related jobs are included

as an indirect form of inheritance, 75 percent of these sons in some manner carried on skills to which their fathers had exposed them. Conspicuously absent is any entry into metal working, small or large; this absence is noteworthy because heavy metallurgy, like loom construction and elastic production, had begun to expand by this point. One exception stands out. Jean Marie Chavanne wed a second time in 1865, at which point he stated his occupation as "ex-ribbon weaver, turner at the Petin forges." His first wife had died in Bourg Argental, which suggests that he had married and settled in that town as a ribbon weaver. After his wife's death, he returned to Saint Chamond where metal work, at this point, offered the only opportunity for employment.^[42]

Daughters born to the cohort of couples who married between 1816 and 1825, regardless of father's occupation, wed in Saint Chamond at a rate of 21.4 percent, slightly higher than that of sons. But only 19 percent of the ribbon weavers' daughters married there, a percentage lower than that of their brothers. Many of the daughters who did marry in their native town, like their brothers and fathers, adhered to the craft traditions originating with the family. Forty-three percent of them married ribbon weavers or workers with associated skills. Many of the others married men in petit-bourgeois or even middle-class occupations, suggesting a measure of upward mobility.^[43]

If the power of family resources and work traditions made it possible for ribbon weavers to continue practicing their craft in Saint Chamond, one must still ask what motivated them to become masters in the face of so many obstacles and to withstand numerous hardships after attaining that status. What, indeed, made so many ribbon weavers and their sons stay in Saint Chamond, "attached to this rude labor like beasts of burden"? Ribbon weavers lived in a paradoxical world. They could command among the highest of wages, yet because they produced luxury items the work available to them fluctuated with the whims of fashion. A sudden downturn in commerce could wipe out the money they had saved to buy looms and homes. In the middle of the century, weavers received about 13 centimes per meter of patterned ribbon or 8 centimes for plain ribbon. They could produce about sixty meters of plain ribbon and only about thirty-six meters of patterned ribbon in one day. For both, wages per day of work thus ranged from

about 4f70 to 4f80. Since ribbon weavers worked only eight months out of the year, this wage averaged about 3f60 a day overall unless they took on other jobs in the off season.^[44]

However, particularly skillful and efficient ribbon weavers could weave more and acquire more work. Herein lay the source of their pride: the ambition to do well at their craft, if not to perfect it. They lived in the constant hope that their superior talents would bring them work even during hard times. Inheritance of tools as well as skills could also place them in an advantageous position, as could extensive assistance from their wives and children.

Ribbon weavers' pride in their work and the commitment to stay with it derived from the looms, the training, and the traditions they had inherited from their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers. Young weavers in Saint Chamond after 1830 would not have tried to establish themselves as masters if their own fathers had not already encouraged their talents, instilling a respect for the work they performed and an appreciation of its beauty. They spoke of their products with a language of love: "rich and sumptuous brocades, the most iridescent satins, taffetas of delicate tones."^[45] They took pride in making twills and satins for epaulets, gold braid for hats, velvet ribbons with fine gold for church ornaments; they were proud that their products found use in haute couture.

Silk working and its products posed a curious and problematic juxtaposition to the other major industry of Saint Chamond, metal working. Travelers through the Stéphanois region continually expressed shock to find "workshops of silk ribbons and laces … where so many forges fed by coal continually pour black and dirty smoke into the atmosphere." Silk working in Saint Chamond and Saint Etienne had to locate itself as far as possible from "smoky places where metal is cast."^[46] Even the small domestic forges posed difficulties over the centuries during which these two industries cohabited, and the introduction of large forges in the nineteenth century brought new dimensions to their conflict. As one "Monsieur Capnophobe" protested to a newspaper in 1854, fabricants did not want to give orders to ribbon weavers living in any proximity to the forges, when a "gaping mouth will at every instant vomit smoke and soot on their dwellings, and [ruin] the delicate colors of rose, white, lilac, that require so much care and precaution to conserve

their beautiful and pleasant brightness which delights the elegant Parisians."^[47]

Bitter controversies between the two industries led to somewhat unfair characterizations about the life-styles and personalities of those who worked with metal and silk. Early in the nineteenth century, Duplessy declared the silk worker as "more gentle, more disciplined than the iron worker. He shows more thought, invention, and intelligence. Maker of delicate fabrics, he carries this work to a high degree of perfection, while the works of ironmongery … remain imperfect and unfinished; the men who occupy themselves with this work earn little and hardly dream of perfecting it, a type of carelessness which seems to reflect these words of Holy Writ: 'He who works iron, sits near the anvil and gazes upon the fire that he works up; the fumes from the fire parch his flesh and nevertheless he delights in the intense heat of the oven.'"^[48] Others noted that iron workers behaved in a "coarse and noisy manner," while ribbon weavers had expensive habits and a "pronounced taste for all that shines."^[49] Iron workers crowded into "low and humid places on clayish soil," where they "breathed" iron; ribbon weavers worked in clean and well-lit apartments and touched only silk, "whose emanations are not harmful."^[50]

As late as 1871, in his travels through Saint Chamond and the Stéphanois valley Louis Reybaud associated silk working with the family and metal working exclusively with men: "Family life is often identified with [the work of the] weaver; women and children become involved with it and find in the works of detail a use for their time and the opportunity for a little profit. But the iron industry is more harsh and less accessible. It hardly ever admits anyone but men built for services which demand … strong arms."^[51]

These characterizations contain no small amount of caricature. Duplessy's description almost suggests that iron workers felt attracted to hell. Some ribbon weavers' apartments may have been well lit, but none were clean. And the "emanations" from silk certainly harmed their occupants. These observers no doubt nostalgically romanticized silk working for its juxtaposition to the more palpably industrial craft. Distortions aside, nail makers did have a relationship with their work that was different from that of ribbon weavers in at least two ways: their work did not organize itself as much around family life, and they manifested a much weaker attachment

to their craft. The particular nature of their work-family relationship also shaped their response to the industrialization of Saint Chamond in a manner distinct from that of ribbon weavers.

Insofar as nail making was a putting-out industry, it bore some resemblance to ribbon weaving in its organization. Nail merchants—fabricants —received orders for nails from retailers in the bourgs and villages of the Massif Central and from Lyon. They bought iron from the Bourgogne or Dauphiné and had it split into bars or fine rods in splitting mills. These splitting mills, equipped with a tilt-hammer and usually operated by water, employed five to ten workers each. In 1818, eleven such mills operated in the arrondissement of Saint Etienne. Two prominent Saint-Chamonais families, Neyrand and Thiollière, were among the owners of these mills and as fabricants also sold the split iron to nail makers.^[52]

Like ribbon fabricants in Saint Chamond, nail fabricants employed workers in the countryside as well as in the town. Geographical dispersion did not, however, produce a division of labor as it did in the ribbon industry. Instead, the amount of time devoted to forging distinguished country from city. Overpopulation in the countryside pressed peasant cultivators into supplementing their income with nail forging during winter and in the evenings. But in Saint Chamond itself, most nail makers devoted full time to their task.^[53] Nail making employed the second largest proportion—19 percent—of the men who married between 1816 and 1825 (see Table 1).

Typically, the nail maker bought about twenty-five kilos of iron, which he then carried to his workplace, a home and workshop combined. Often a forge occupied the first floor of his home, and the family cooked and slept upstairs. Over the forge, the worker first heated the nail blank and hammered it out to a thin strip. He sharpened the four edges of the stem, shortened it to its required length by breaking it off, and then hammered the head onto it.^[54]

The energy required to forge nails depended on their type. They were manufactured in hundreds of different forms for uses ranging from shoes, horseshoes, and bellows to ships, roofs, and floors. Those more difficult to shape brought better wages. Some workers did develop their own specializations, but the types of nails workers produced depended largely on what merchants ordered. In Saint Chamond, most forgers made nails for shipbuilding. The

work required little skill, but it did demand enormous strength and a good deal of patience and attention. Once the forger had heated the iron he had to work it continuously or it would cool and turn brittle. The hammer weighed nearly five pounds, making it difficult to strike the metal smoothly and evenly. Though nail-making tools did not compare in their complexity or technology with Jacquard looms, they required constant conditioning: the worker had to tighten the nail anvil about every two weeks but avoid adjusting it to the point that it would dent and twist the nail stem.

Like their counterparts in ribbon production, nail fabricants held forgers responsible for all imperfections. They added to nail makers' frustrations by providing poor-quality split iron that required great delicacy in handling. At the same time, they paid less for damaged nails and expected orders to be filled with precision. Nail making paid poorly. Estimates of wages between 1815 and 1855 ranged from 1 to 2 francs per day, depending on the amount of time workers devoted to the forge. Nail makers in Saint Chamond earned slightly more since they spent full time at it, but they earned only half to two-thirds the wages of ribbon weavers and suffered a lower standard of living. Their conditions also depended on the extent to which they could control their own work. Like ribbon weaving, nail making required capital investment. Nail makers had to buy hammers, files, anvils, and bellows, as well as fish oil to grease the bellows and seven to eight kilos of coal for each day's work. They also had to have enough capital to purchase the iron.^[55]

As in ribbon weaving, workers' status ranged from that of the chef d'atelier who employed his own family and other workers to the day laborer who only made nails at someone else's forge when he could find no other work. Even for those who acquired the proper tools, the investment necessary for buying the iron generally exceeded their means. Most nail makers had to make their purchases from day to day or buy on credit, which cost them an additional 10 percent of their wages.^[56]

Although the work depleted strength and the workday sometimes lasted from 5 A.M. to 10 P.M. , forgers did not labor under the pressures endured by ribbon weavers. Testimony from former nail makers suggests that most of those who practiced the trade resigned

themselves to permanent low wages. Unlike ribbon weaving, this craft offered no room for improvement either in the nails or in the tools that produced them. Indeed, Duplessy and others condemned nail makers for their unwillingness to "perfect" their work. What attracted nail makers to their craft was the relative freedom it provided. They could work when and for how long they pleased. And although they put in long, exhausting days, especially when they relied on forging full time as they did in Saint Chamond, the forge became a fulcrum of sociability. Men would drink wine and gossip as they made nails and then together celebrate at taverns after having delivered the nails. This sociability in turn produced marriages built around nail making. Forty-five percent of the nail makers' daughters who married between 1816 and 1825 married nail makers, a proportion higher than that of the ribbon weavers' daughters who married into their father's profession.^[57]

The social life built around nail making thus provided a basis for family formation. Moreover, forging took place in the home and often grouped the entire family around it. Adolescents and children placed rods in the fire, operated the bellows, and recharged the coal furnace. Wives, just like those of ribbon weavers, often ran errands such as delivering nails and negotiating with merchants.^[58]

The work of nail makers, however, did not build upon marriage and family life in the same manner that it did among ribbon weavers. Only very rarely did women do any forging and hammering themselves. In fact, in Saint Chamond the bulk of their contribution to the family income came from silk production. Wives and daughters worked seasonally in the silk-milling, skeining, spinning, and warping workshops. Well over half of the nail-making fathers between 1816 and 1825 had daughters who worked in the textile industry. Sixty-five percent of the nail makers who married between 1816 and 1825 wedded silk workers, and many of these women continued working with silk after their weddings. Local testimony even confirms that women spun silk on the second stories of houses in which forging took place on the first, despite problems of dust and ash dirtying the silk.^[59] Although wives contributed to the family income through silk work in the home or in workshops and although they helped to perform the tasks involved in nail making, they did not assist their husbands with the same

intensity as did ribbon weavers' wives. Marriage did not combine skills in the same manner it did among silk workers and ribbon weavers.^[60]

The family nonetheless remained the single most important vehicle through which skills passed from one generation to another. No formal apprenticeship existed in nail making; it was the older who taught the young, and most usually fathers taught sons. Nail making was not difficult to learn, but it required strength, endurance, and many hours of practice in hammering steadily and regularly. Boys usually took up the hammer only in late adolescence after having spent years watching their fathers closely. Among fathers present at the marriages between 1816 and 1825, 71 percent of those who declared their occupation as nail maker passed their skills on to their sons. Fifty-six percent of the nail makers who married had inherited skills from their fathers. These rates fall below those of ribbon weavers but clearly highlight the predominance of occupational inheritance in this industry.^[61]

The generation of nail makers who married between 1816 and 1825 and started families in Saint Chamond did not face the same structural transformations in their craft as did ribbon weavers. The organization of their work remained constant and they had no need to acquire new skills. Lower wages made living conditions more miserable for nail makers, but they did not suffer the same pressures ribbon weavers faced from commercial fluctuations due to changes in fashion, increasingly expensive looms, more specialized technology, and a larger number of middlemen who put a tighter squeeze on their wages.

In a structural sense, therefore, the craft of nail making remained more stable than that of ribbon weaving. In the latter craft, technological change and local commercial decline forced many weavers to take their skills to Saint Etienne, Lyon, or Paris. Less skilled, and less attached to their skills, nail makers had a greater tendency to remain in Saint Chamond but changed jobs more frequently. Ninety-three percent of those who married remained in Saint Chamond to begin families. At least 61 percent, in contrast to the ribbon weavers' 43 percent, showed evidence of their presence in Saint Chamond in 1850 or later.^[62] The willingness to change occupations made this geographical stability possible. Unlike ribbon

weavers, who remained doggedly attached to their craft despite its decline, nail makers responded to the expanding and diversifying economy of Saint Chamond by changing their jobs more frequently. Of the eighty who left ample evidence of their occupational histories in the état civil (through births, deaths, and marriages of their children or through their own deaths in the town), 54 percent—a proportion more than three times as great as that of ribbon weavers—changed occupations. This pattern bears a remarkable similarity to that in another community of artisans, Salem, Massachusetts. Artisans who engaged in crafts requiring lesser skills had a lower tendency to pass those skills on to their children and also had less impetus to leave the community.^[63]

Like the ribbon weavers who did change occupations, many Saint-Chamonais nail makers continued to alternate their original craft with other work, especially as day laborers in a wide assortment of jobs. Of the seventy-four who changed jobs, only fourteen moved into other types of metal work. Excluding those who declared themselves to be day laborers, forty-two nail makers registered thirty different occupations unrelated to metal. Rather than entering the new metal and braid industries, nail makers revealed an attachment to jobs in traditional economic sectors. Examples from reconstituted families illustrate the variety of their paths. Over a forty-two-year period, Claude Journoud listed his occupation as nail maker, stonecutter, charcoal burner, and then, finally, scraper at the steel plant. He alternated among these occupations and mentioned nail making until 1843. Other nail makers clearly moved upward in abandoning their craft. Jean Marie Preynat became a master mason and tavernkeeper. Less than ten years after his marriage, Etienne Preynat became a dyer. Jacques Monnier became a municipal employee and then a police inspector. Between his marriage in 1816 and his death in 1869, Michel Virieux listed his profession as tavernkeeper (1830), café keeper (1843), and exnail merchant (1861). Significantly, in their choice of jobs these individuals tended to stay in trades and occupations untouched by technological change. The expanding heavy metallurgical and braid industries accounted for only 21 percent of the jobs they listed.^[64]

Sons as well as fathers exhibited geographical stability. Of those born to couples married between 1816 and 1825, 27.8 percent married

in Saint Chamond, 5 percent more than the sons of ribbon weavers. Fewer of these sons, however—only 20 percent—inherited their father's craft.

According to nail makers' testimonies, low wages, the coercive nature of their relationship with merchants, and the tediousness of the work itself ultimately tempted younger nail makers or sons of nail makers into factory work. Nail production as a handicraft began to decline, not when nails came to be produced mechanically, at the end of the century, but when heavy metallurgy started to develop in the Stéphanois region after 1815. Regular and salaried work, according to these testimonies, apparently held more appeal for many of the younger workers than did nail making. They preferred the rigidity of impersonal factory labor to the repetition and strain of hammering. The factory alternative seemed to make the young less patient with artisanal nail making and all the difficulties it entailed. Fabricants shared these perceptions. As early as 1825, they complained that "the workers are becoming more and more rare, the large industrial establishments which are forming in the arrondissement [of Saint Etienne] are employing the best among them and few new nail makers are being trained."^[65]

Contrary to this testimony, however, not many sons of nail makers actually entered modern metallurgy. Occupations recorded for those who married, died, or served as witnesses to the registration of births, deaths, and marriages indicate a remarkable tenacity in traditional jobs. Large-scale metallurgy did lure more nail makers' sons away from their fathers' craft than ribbon weavers and their sons, but the former entered new plants at the same low rate as did their fathers: only 21 percent took work in heavy metallurgy. The vast majority in both generations assumed any of a large array of jobs in the traditional sectors.^[66]

Though nail makers and their sons did not flock to the new industries, neither did they manifest the same kind of attachment to their craft as ribbon weavers. Nail making also ceased to bring couples together in the second generation. Fewer daughters of nail makers (24.4 percent) remained in Saint Chamond to marry than did their brothers. The number of those who married nail makers dropped from 45 percent in their mothers' generation to 34 percent. The distribution of occupations among the men they married

repeated that of their husbands and fathers: only 23 percent entered the new metal industries, and the remainder practiced a variety of occupations in the traditional sectors.^[67]

Nail makers and their sons willingly abandoned their craft but, contrary to contemporary perceptions, not as a direct result of large-scale metal production. The labor force for the new industries came not from native Saint-Chamonais but from migrants to the city. The resulting population growth after 1840 helped to expand traditional sectors of the economy such as building, carting, stone-cutting, tavern- and cafe-keeping. It was for these occupations that workers deserted the domestic forge.

The logic behind decisions or the circumstances surrounding them are not always immediately discernible to the historian. Surely economic need and economic opportunity narrowed the workers' realm of choices and often dictated those choices. But work-associated traditions also affected them. Family life composed a major part of these traditions because work frequently took place in or around the home and families often worked as a unit. Family structure served as a natural basis for work organization. For most families in any trade, domestic production took precedence over work outside the home. When wives and children were needed for domestic production, they were available. Demand for labor was often seasonal, and family members left the home only when their labor could not be used there.

No industry illustrates the importance of family-related work traditions better than ribbon production. Weaving relied on the family as a work unit, on the cooperation of men, women, and children, and especially on the teamwork between wife and husband. Work traditions contributed to family formation, and family formation in turn reinforced work traditions. Passing the craft from generation to generation, the family provided a physical as well as psychological space in which men, women, and children labored. A man's sense of identity as a ribbon weaver developed more intensely if he had learned the craft from his father and grandfather beginning in his early childhood. As an adult, his identification with ribbon weaving grew stronger if his wife had come from the same environment and if she participated in creating the same product through silk throwing, spinning, warping, or weaving.

The artisan had a further stake in his skills if he expected them to provide a source of livelihood for his children as well. Skills constituted a form of family property unlike money or land. Rather than being divided through inheritance, skills became more consolidated, and because they had a nonmaterial base, they fostered strong familial bonds and solidarity.^[68] Family life consisted of parents not simply reproducing and raising children but reproducing and cultivating skills and traditions as well.

The importance of work traditions rooted in family life varied considerably by craft. Apart from the raw materials and end products which so distinguished the iron and silk industries, a key difference set them apart: nail production did not involve as much family cooperation as silk work. Though production took place in a domestic context and required the assistance of family members, women and children devoted themselves primarily to tasks unrelated to the nail maker's work. Social relationships formed around the forge, but marriage and family formation did not reinforce work organization.

Varying degrees of family involvement influenced workers' attachment to their craft and in turn informed their responses to economic change. Within Saint Chamond's very mixed environment, ribbon weavers and nail makers responded in distinctly different patterns. In greater numbers than did their nail-making counter-parts, weavers and their children left Saint Chamond so that they could continue to exercise their skills. But the majority remained, and did so in the face of numerous obstacles. When conditions grew worse for ribbon weavers in Saint Chamond, family-related work traditions informed their manner of coping with crisis. Drawing further on labor resources of the family provided not only a more logical but an easier alternative to leaving the town or changing occupations.

Nail makers and their children more frequently remained in Saint Chamond, but they readily deserted their craft, whose perpetuation, like that of ribbon weaving, depended on the transmission of skills through the family. By leaving nail production, they contributed to its decline. About one out of five entered the new metallurgical plants and in so doing at least continued a tradition of working with metal. But the majority assumed different skilled

or unskilled jobs in the traditional sector, some of which moved them upward in social and economic status. Nail makers and their offspring thus met economic challenges in Saint Chamond not only in leaving their trade more readily but in pursuing opportunities outside the realm of family-oriented production. It is noteworthy that both older and younger generations in silk and metal mostly shunned the new metallurgical industries that offered steadier employment.

The economic history of Saint Chamond illustrates concretely a process central to European industrialization: the transfer of raw materials, capital, and labor power from domestic craft to large-scale mechanized production. It also affords the opportunity to compare this process in two very different industries, textiles and metal. One salient point that emerges from the occupational histories of metal and textile workers is the flexibility and variability in survival strategies. The skilled or unskilled occupation with which an individual entered adulthood did not in any strict manner define or determine his or her future. The mixed nature of the Saint Chamond economy—iron and silk, domestic and factory industries—permitted and in many instances forced workers to change or to alternate occupations frequently, sometimes to practice crafts of contrasting or even opposite natures, such as nail making and ribbon weaving.

The strength or weakness in work-related family traditions at least in part explains why workers in these industries took divergent paths in their response to the economic transformation of Saint Chamond. The differences in their work organization and their work-family relationships suggest, furthermore, that pre-industrial and proto-industrial artisans had a wide variety of experiences with family and work even as they became proletarianized. In Saint Chamond, as in most of France, industrialization did not assume revolutionary forms. Instead, it consisted of numerous families taking relatively small steps to adjust to new economic situations. In some cases, against all odds, families remained attached to the old craft industries. They did not make decisions based on the logic of economic gain but, rather, on the logic of work organized around family life and structure. In other cases, workers willingly left old industries for the new ones, perceiving opportunities

for employment or for a better life. Whatever their response to Saint Chamond's changing economy, the relationship between work and family and the traditions that this relationship cultivated informed their choices. So too, as the next chapter will show, did it shape the very structures of their families: the number of children they had, when they had them, and the chances their children had for survival into adulthood.