5 Elite Response to Social Problems
1. AN F1c V, Loire 1, "Analyse du mémoire du préfet sur l'industrie et des manufactures de ce département, l'an 9" (circa 1801).
2. Colin Lucas, The Structure of the Terror: The Example of Javogues and the Loire (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 39-53.
3. Stéphane Bertholon, Histoires de Saint-Chamond: notes et souvenirs d'un vieux couramiaud (Saint Etienne: n.p., 1927), p. 28; James Condamin, Histoire de Saint-Chamond et de la seigneurie de Jarez, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à nos jours (Paris: A. Picard, 1890), pp. 491-502.
4. AN F1c III, Loire 7, "Extrait des déliberations du conseil municipal de Saint-Chamond," April 1814. Four months later the municipal council asked the king for a royal blessing and the Decoration of the Lys, the "honorable and distinctive sign of friends of the Bourbon throne." Saint Chamond was recommended by "its industries, and by the purity of its morals, by its attachment to the religion of our fathers whose pure religion never ceased being practiced." See "Discours au Roi, prononcé par le President de la députation de la ville de Saint Chamond," 27 August 1814.
5. AN F1c III, Loire 7, April 1814, and AN F1c III, Loire 8, May 1814. Words of support for this restored monarchy came, not from a displaced nobility rejoicing in an apparent return to the old order, but from an elite whose wealth derived from commerce and industry. At least nine of the twenty-one members of the municipal council were not only merchants or industrialists in their own right but were the fathers or family members of future industrialists: François Morel, Guillaume Sirvanton, François Magnin, silk merchants; Jean Claude Pascal, Antoine Moret, Simon Pierre Berne, Jean Baptiste Chaland, Grégoire Bertholon, Charles François Richard, all ribbon or braid merchants; Antoine Neyrand, forge master. Many of these same names and those of other industrialists and merchants appeared on the list of "eligibles" just prior to the July Revolution of 1830: Jean Baptiste Chaland, ribbon merchant; Louis Maximilien Finaz, notary; Antoine Flachat, Pierre Joseph Marie Granjon, François Magnin, all silk merchants; Charles François Richard-Chambovet, pioneer braid manufacturer; Antoine Thiollière, nail merchant. In 1830, Saint Chamond had as its mayor Jean Marie Ardaillon, a forge master, who was also a Legitimist. In 1831 he won a seat in the Legislative Chamber, for which braid manufacturer Richard Chambovet also competed. See AN F1c III, Loire 4, list of eligibles for the Loire; and 28 May 1831-27 July 1831 for legislative elections.
6. F1c III, Loire 8, July and August 1814; 19 March 1815.
7. J. Duplessy, Essai statistique sur le département de la Loire (Montbrison: n.p., 1818), p. 152.
8. Archives du Ministère de la Guerre, Vincennes, MR1266, "Rapport sur la reconnaissance de la route de Saint-Etienne à Saint-Chamond," 1837.
9. See, for example, André Jardin and André-Jean Tudesq, Restoration and Reaction, 1815-1848, trans. Elborg Forster (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 277-78.
10. AN F1c V, Loire 1, "Analyse du mémoire du préfet sur l'industrie et des manufactures, l'an XI"; ADL G107, Hospice de la Charité, 1792-1868, 31 Oct. 1806. See also F. Raymond, Les hospices de Saint-Chamond: histoire, administration, origines, agrandissements, biens et revenus d'après les documents conservés dans leurs archives (Saint Chamond: A. Poméon, 1888), pp. 24, 31-33.
11. Duplessy, Essai statistique sur le département de la Loire, p. 393.
12. ADL, series S, Archives de la Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Etienne, carton 131 dossier 9, "Mémoire sur l'industrie," 10 March 1810; AN F1c V, Loire 1, report of the General Council to the minister of the interior, Nov. 1811; Raymond, Les hospices de Saint-Chamond, p. 33.
13. AN F1c V, Loire 1, reports of the General Council to the minister of the interior, 1819-1821; VII, Loire, reports of the subprefect of Saint Etienne to the district council of the arrondissement of Saint Etienne, 1840 and October 1848.
14. F. Raymond, Les hospices de Saint-Chamond, pp. 9-14.
15. Ibid., pp. 101-76.
16. ADL 24j (E), carton 59 and registers 30bis and 30ter; also Raymond, Les hospices de Saint-Chamond, pp. 159-62.
17. Raymond, Les hospices de Saint-Chamond, p. 159.
18. ADL G107, Hospice de la Charité, 31 Oct. 1806.
19. Ibid.; for the product of children's labor, see Raymond, Les hospices de Saint-Chamond, p. 179.
20. AN F1c V, Loire 1, report of the General Council of the Loire to the minister of the interior, 1807; report of the subprefect to the district council of the arrondissement of Saint Etienne, 1819; VII, Loire, General Council of the arrondissement of Saint Etienne, report of the subprefect to the council, meeting in 1836; report of the subprefect of the arrondissement of Saint Etienne to the district council of the arrondissement, meeting of 1839.
21. ADL 10M 21, general report to the prefect, 7 April 1831. According to the author of this report, the local clergy influenced opinion through women, who were "devoted to their priests and thought just like them." These women in turn exercised "an empire over their husbands" who, well educated and enlightened, would otherwise be "liberal." This informant read poorly the depth of Catholic and Legitimist sentiment among Saint Chamond's ruling elite.
22. For Catholic reaction to the July Monarchy on the issue of education, see Robert Gildea, Education in Provincial France, 1800-1914: A Study of Three Departments (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 39-42. For the increase in the presence of religious orders in Saint Chamond, see Bertholon, Histoires de Saint-Chamond, p. 150; Condamin, Histoire de Saint-Chamond, pp. 550-53.
23. Gildea, Education in Provincial France, pp. 39-42.
24. Since the Revolution of 1789, the parish of Saint Ennemond had been joined with that of Saint Pierre. For instruction in Saint Chamond see Condamin, Historie de Saint-Chamond, p. 553, and M. Fournier, L'Essor d'une ville ouvrière: l'oeuvre sociale de la municipalité de Saint-Chamond (Saint Etienne: Imprimerie de la Loire Républicaine, 1934), p. 14.
25. Condamin, Histoire de Saint-Chamond, p. 553. These schools received attention and praise in AN F17 9327, report on primary instruction, arrondissement of Saint Etienne, 1855. For "blackmail" from Brothers of the Christian Schools, see J. Donzelot, The Policing of Families, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1979), pp. 33, 77.
26. See Chapter 1.
27. ADL, series S, Archives de la Chambre de Commerce de Saint Etienne, carton 59 dossier 1, 22 Dec. 1833; 27 March 1834; 12 April 1834; 13 April 1834. See also A. Audiganne, Les populations ouvrières et les industries de la France dans le mouvement social du XIXe siècle (Paris: Capelle, 1854), p. 328. For the uprising of silk workers in Lyon, see Robert J. Bezucha, The Lyon Uprising of 1834: Social and Political Conflict in the Early July Monarchy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974).
28. See, for example, John M. Merriman, "The Demoiselles of the Ariège," in 1830 in France, ed. John M. Merriman (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), pp. 87-118; and William M. Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture: The Textile Trade and French Society, 1750-1900 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 113-15.
29. Audiganne, Les populations ouvrières, p. 7.
30. William Coleman, Death Is a Social Disease: Public Health and Political Economy in Early Industrial France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), pp. 73-82.
31. Donzelot, The Policing of Families, p. 66.
32. AN F1c VII, Loire, report of the subprefect to the district council of the arrondissement of Saint Etienne, 1840. Efforts to rationalize charity assumed concrete form in the department of the Loire. The attempt to reorganize the arrangements for abandoned and orphaned children provides a case in point. Officials assumed that parents who abandoned their children, especially when they were infants, lacked family sentiment. They believed that if they made abandonment more difficult, parents would be encouraged to keep their children, which in turn would promote a stronger sense of family.
Parents gave up their children to charitable institutions in two ways: either they left infants at tours, revolving windows which insured anonymity, or they brought their identified children to the hospice with the intention of reclaiming them at some future point. Officials believed parents retrieved their children in order to put them to work. In 1840 the prefect complained that the cost of supporting these children was becoming exorbitant. He and the hospice administrators in Saint Etienne, which took in all abandoned children under age six from the entire arrondissement, had a twofold goal: reducing the costs of keeping the children, and forcing parents to assume responsibility for them.
Eliminating tours would, they believed, deter mothers from abandoning their children because they would no longer be able to do so anonymously. A second idea applied to those who brought children to the hospice hoping to retrieve them later: these children would be exchanged with those in distant hospices, on the assumption that geographical separation would discourage parents from giving up their children in the first place. Third, administrators decided that parents who came to reclaim a child would be charged for the expenses that child had incurred during his or her stay in the hospice. These administrators thus took every possible measure to reduce, in Donzelot's words, "the social cost of ... reproduction" among the poor and "obtain an optimum number of workers at minimum public expense": Donzelot, The Policing of Families, p. 16.
These efforts failed completely in the Loire. Exchanges of children with other hospices in order to send them farther away from parents entailed only inconvenience, with none of the desired results. Nor did they eliminate tours. "It is difficult," the prefect lamented, "to try to execute these measures in a region where workers live hand to mouth." Hospice administrators did ask for reimbursement from parents who came to reclaim their children but did not demand it of those who obviously could not pay. The prefect concluded that the "true remedy for abandoned children as well as for their illegitimate procreation, which is one of the causes for abandonment, is in the moralization [of the poor], in the organization of savings accounts, in mutual aid [societies], in schools, in mendicity depots, and in the development of industry and commerce." See AN F1c V, Loire 1, year IX; F1c VII, Loire, report of 1840 and report of 1848.
The imperatives of economic cycles and the harsh reality of periodic unemployment made rationalization of charity along utilitarian principles impossible. Saint Etienne's tour finally closed in 1846, when entries to the foundling hospital rose by 50 percent (from 62 to 92) and withdrawals declined by 50 percent (from 42 to 18). Its closure, the prefect noted, hardly inspired "rebirth of family sentiment" at a time of high unemployment; the situation resulted from "misery rather than depravity": AN F1c VII, Loire, report of 1848. On abandoned children see also Rachel Fuchs, Abandoned Children: Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984).
33. Condamin, Histoire de Saint-Chamond, pp. 550-53.
34. ADL, series S, Archives de la Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Etienne, carton 131 dossier 9, Chambre Consultative des Arts et Manufactures, "Situation industrielle," 15 June 1837; carton 59 dossier 1, "Notes de la séance," 14 Sept. 1837; AN F1c VII, Loire, report of the subprefect to the district council of the arrondissement of Saint Etienne, 1840.
35. Condamin, Histoire de Saint-Chamond, p. 553. A catechism class "for the preservation of young girls" was added to the ouvroir of the Filles de la Charité in 1847.
36. ADL G107, Hospice de la Charité, dossier 1, 31 Dec. 1839; see also 24j (E), carton 59 dossier 3, 5 Oct. 1880; 17 May 1884; Feb. 1885; 7 Dec. 1885; registre 30bis, April 1884; June 1886; Aug. 1886; June 1887; Oct. 1888; Dec. 1891.
37. AN F1c VII, Loire, report of the subprefect to the district council of the arrondissement of Saint Etienne, 1840.
38. Archives Paroissiales du Rhône, diocèse de Lyon, parish report for Saint Pierre by curé Antoine Adolphe, 1844.
39. ADL 24j (E), carton 59 dossier 4, 2 May 1848; see also 3 May 1848; 1 June 1848; and 10 June 1848.
40. Archives du Ministère de la Guerre, Vincennes, MR1266, "Rapport sur la reconnaissance de la route de Saint-Etienne à Saint-Chamond," 1837.
41. Raymond, Les hospices de Saint-Chamond, pp. 174-75, 159-61.
42. Peter Stearns makes this argument in Paths to Authority: The Middle Class and the Industrial Labor Force in France, 1820-1848 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978); see especially pp. 36-46, 139-40. For problems in the Saint Chamond ribbon industry, see my Chapter 1.
43. Jardin and Tudesq, Restoration and Reaction, p. 278.
44. Audiganne, Les populations ouvrières, p. 341.
45. ADL 28M 1, letter to the prefect from the police commissioner of Saint Chamond, 31 March 1843.
46. Despite the absence of overt political activity, Saint Chamond did harbor a distinctly left-wing group. In May 1849, the mayor complained to the prefect that the Montagnard party had made unexpected progress and that the "police had closed their eyes to certain meetings." But while popular demonstrations and insurrections occurred on 13-15 June in Paris and Lyon, nothing happened in Saint Chamond. During the following months the government outlawed clubs and police systematically repressed them. The police commissioner of Saint Chamond noted only one republican club and by October still had not succeeded in finding its meeting place. But he assured the prefect that the club exercised "little influence" in the town. He did, however, take the precaution of seizing the writings of Louis Blanc and other socialist and republican materials from a bookstore. See ADL 10M 28, letter from the mayor of Saint Chamond to the subprefect, 18 Sept. 1848; 10M 31, police of Saint Chamond to the subprefect, 29 Dec. 1849; 10M 30, mayor of Saint Chamond to the prefect, 15 May 1849. For repression during the Second Republic throughout France, see John M. Merriman, The Agony of the Republic: The Repression of the Left in Revolutionary France, 1848-1851 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978). The only incident of actual disorder that broke out prior to Louis Napoleon's coup occurred when a priest failed to appear at a forge worker's funeral arranged by the municipality. Rumor spread that the priest did not arrive because the worker was a republican. Whether workers blamed the priest or the municipality is not clear, but they began to riot and several were arrested. See AN BB30 361, "Parquet de la cour d'appel, Lyon au garde des sceaux," 20 July 1850. On the presidential elections in 1848, see F1c III, Loire 4, letter from the prefect to the minister of the interior, 16 July 1850. Although local officials in Saint Chamond, as in other places of workingclass concentration, took precautions to insure peace at the time of Louis Napoleon's coup d'état in 1851, most Saint-Chamonais received the news with apathy, and others welcomed it. Only a few protested. For this and for the reaction of the upper classes to the coup, see ADL 10M 36, police commissioner of Saint Chamond to the prefect, 4 Dec. 1851, and document 20, 6 Dec. 1851.
47. Condamin, Histoire de Saint-Chamond, p. 557. Local notables easily found their niche in the emperor's government. Legitimist Victor Dugas was elected to the General Council of the Loire in 1852, and when he retired because of his age the following year, the minister of the interior warmly supported forge master Antoine Neyrand, another champion of Legitimist politics, as his replacement. See AN F1c III, Loire 4, elections, 22 April 1853.
48. AN F1c III, Loire 8, bimonthly report of the subprefect of Saint Etienne, 28 Oct. 1854.
49. Condamin, Historie de Saint-Chamond, p. 569; J. Valserres, Les industries de la Loire (Saint Etienne: n.p., 1862), p. 42.
50. L. Turgan, "Les établissements Oriol et Alamagny," in his Les grandes usines de la France, 16 vols. (Paris: Michel Levy, 1865-1884), 15:53.
51. ADL 10M 147, "Extrait du registre des délibérations du conseil municipal de Saint Chamond," Feb. 1864.
52. Fournier, L'Essor d'une ville ouvrière, p. 41.
53. ADL 40M 147, letter from the mayor of Saint Chamond to the prefect, 10 March 1864.
54. ADL 40M 147, "Extraits du registre des délibérations du conseil municipal de la ville de Saint Chamond," 1875-1879.
55. AN C3022, "Enquête sur la situation ouvrière," Loire, 1872-1875; ADL 92M 12, 4 and 6 August 1869; 88M 8, procès-verbaux against Bethenod, Balas, Dubouchet, March 1883. For contrasting and more "paternalistic" attitudes toward women, see Nancy Fitch, "The Effects of Capitalist Development on Family Life in Central France," paper presented at the Social Science History Association Meeting, 24 November 1985; see also Bonnie Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 123-61.
56. Bibliothèque de la Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Etienne, Association des Fabricants de Lacets, Question du travail de nuit dans les frabriques de lacets de Saint-Chamond, petition no. 2, 12 March 1887 (Saint Etienne, 1890), pp. 24-25.
57. Ibid., pp. 25-27; see also ADL 88M 18, petition to the minister of commerce and industry from the braid manufacturers in Saint Chamond, June 1886. These industrialists concerned themselves particularly with competition from Germany.
58. Gaudet's treatment of workers provides an early example of what large-scale industrialization would bring to Saint Chamond. In 1848, when the Petin forges were in Rive-de-Gier, Gaudet virtually bribed the workers away from what he considered the "dangerous effects of republican ideas" by providing financial assistance to any who needed it. Apparently these employers often provided such aid. Gaudet's biographer eulogized, "[These two men] were not alone in their success. How many workers achieved comfort, and can today, in their old age, enjoy a secure rest! How many others, less fortunate, received aid and assistance from [their] generous hands! For these two men, having been workers themselves, knew well the condition and needs of the worker, and knew also how to relieve their miseries." See Jules du Chevalard, Notice biographique sur M. J.-M. Gaudet, ancien maître des forges de Rive-de-Gier (Saint Etienne: n.p., 1887), pp. 14-22.
59. Quoted in AN C3022, "Enquêete sur la situation ouvrière," 1872-1875, Départment de la Loire, arrondissement de Saint-Etienne.
60. L. Jury, "L'Industrie des lacets," in L'Association pour l'Avancement des Sciences, XXVIe session tenue à Saint-Etienne, août 1897, 2 vols. (Saint Chamond: A. Poméon, 1898), 2:19.
61. Condamin, Histoire de Saint-Chamond, p. 607.
62. Bertholon, Histoires de Saint-Chamond, p. 265.
63. M. Fournier, Tableaux de la vie saint-chamonaise (Saint Chamond: Bordron, 1949), p. 106.
64. In 1875, Emile Alamagny donated 100,000 francs and the Oriol-Gillier family gave 50,000 francs for the care of the sick and 20,000 francs for the aged. Braid manufacturer Irenée Brun donated 3,000 francs in 1885, and Oriol fils provided 150,000 francs for the construction of a new wing for the aged in 1901. See ADL 24j (E), carton 59 dossier 3, 7 Dec. 1885; register 30bis, 18 May 1856 and 18 Aug. 1886; register 30ter, 1898; see also La Croix de Saint-Chamond, 30 Jan. 1903; and for a list of other donors through 1888, see Raymond, Les hospices de Saint Chamond, pp. 167-73, 176-77.
An example of direct assistance, similar to actions taken in the first half of the century, came with the crisis of the early 1880s. It became so serious that in February 1885 the hospice administrative commission allocated 4,500 francs to hire unemployed workers to cultivate 3,000 square meters of hospice domains at 3f per day. In March they supplied another 4,500 francs to employ workers. In April they distributed 9,000 francs in direct charity. Serving on the commission at this time were Oriol fils, conservative republican and Catholic; Louis Jury, president of the Association of Braid Manufacturers, Catholic and monarchist; radical republican Bergé; opportunist republicans Fabreguettes, Imbert, Jean Louis Loubet, and the future mayor, Vial; and radical Charles Rochefort. They rationalized their decision by saying that the hospice would profit from improved lands and that if they did not spend this money on workers' wages, they would have to spend it on charity within the home. See ADL 24j (E), carton 59 dossier 3, 5 Feb. 1885; register 30bis, 6 March 1885; 7 April 1885.
65. For payments from Déplace, Thiollière, Imbert, Gelas, and Garas to the hospital between 1873 and 1876, see ADL 24j (F), carton 106 dossier 2. Receipts for payments from the Aciéries de la Marine, the forges of l'Horme, the Neyrand brothers, the coal mines of Saint Chamond, the Imbert brothers, Joseph Lanet, and Olagnier for the year 1882 are in Series X, Saint Chamond Hospices, 1873-1893. These archives are quite disorganized, and records for other payments are either lost or scattered throughout other cartons, many of which are no longer available to the public. The listing of some mutual aid societies can be found in 28M 4, "Sociétés mutuels, Saint Chamond," Nov. 1891. In June 1896, a group of Catholic Workers founded a "Caisse de famille de Notre Dame du Travail" for "utilitarian, moral and religious purposes," which was dominated by monarchist employers. See 10M 115, report of the police commissioner, 19 Feb. 1897.
66. Turgan, "Les établissements Oriol et Alamagny," pp. 37-39.
67. La Croix de Saint-Chamond, 7 July 1891; 27 Jan. 1901; 3 Feb. 1901; L'Eclaireur, 7 July 1891.
68. Bertholon, Histoires de Saint-Chamond, pp. 134, 221; Condamin, Histoire de Saint-Chamond, p. 569; La Croix de Saint-Chamond, 23 Nov. 1902; Turgan, "Les établissements Oriol et Alamagny," p. 39.
69. The history of this family has been reconstructed from ADL 3E 208, marriage no. 69, 28 Sept. 1864, and subsequent births and deaths in the family. For an explanation of family reconstitution see Chapter 2 and Appendix A. Jean-Marie R.'s case can be found in ADL 24j (E), register 30ter, 1 Feb. 1900.
70. Ibid.; ADL 49M 285, census of 1891.
71. The widower's case is in ADL, 24j (E), register 30bis, October 1894 and December 1898; the quote about his aid is in the Dec. 1898 register entry. Marie Anne L.'s case has been reconstructed from register 30ter, 22 Sept. 1898, and her reconstituted family beginning with 3E 208, marriage no. 16, 21 Jan. 1862; 49M 285, census of 1891. The quote about her condition is from the 22 Sept. 1898 register entry.
72. This case appears in ADL 24j (E), register 30bis, June 1885. Further information about François C.'s family and their occupational histories are derived from his reconstituted family, beginning with 3E 208, marriage no. 53; 49M 285, census of 1891.
73. An article in La Croix de Saint Chamond, 17 March 1901, indicated that someone jumped out "of the only window at the hospices that did not have a grill." M. Fournier had no good words to describe the hospital, "which filled with dread the sick who crossed its threshold": L'Essor d'une ville ouvrière, p. 22. The strict "rules of order and discipline" in the hospices may be found in ADL 24j (E), carton 59 dossier 3.
74. Jean Imbert, Histoire des hôpitaux en France (Toulouse: Editions Privat, 1982), p. 339. In Saint Chamond, those for whom there was no space in the hospital or charity were sent to Lyon; they also received aid from the bureau de bienfaisance, the various religious orders, or the private charity for which Mme. Oriol and other ladies bountiful were so renowned. See Raymond, Les hospices de Saint-Chamond, pp. 94-99. See also ADL 24j (E), register 30bis, 11 Oct. 1887 and 26 June 1889, on the lack of beds and the problems of administering medical aid outside the hospital.
75. Imbert, Histoire des hôpitaux, p. 344.
76. ADL 24j (H), carton 102; 24j (E), carton 59 dossier 3; 24j (F), carton 106 dossier 4; Imbert, Histoire des hôpitaux, p. 339. Records of employers' payment for sick days are scattered throughout the hospice archives, so a systematic analysis of payments is not possible. One sample set of receipts indicates that in 1882, eight employers paid for 970 sick days; see Series X, 1873-1883.
77. ADL 24j (F), carton 106 dossier 2, 23 June 1876; see also dossier 9, 1863.
78. ADL 24j (E), register 30bis, March 1886; February 1891; June 1894; March 1895; register 30ter, November 1898.
79. ADL 24j (E), register 30bis, July 1894. Numerous similar examples may be found throughout these registers. The uncle of two children requested custody, and the investigation of his circumstances took two months; see register 30bis, June 1893.
80. ADL 24j (E), register 30bis, 3 Dec. 1890; 4 Feb. 1891.
81. ADL 24j (E), register 30ter, 18 Aug. 1889.
82. M. Fournier, La vallée ardente: scènes de la vie populaire (Saint Etienne: Librairie Dubouchet, 1938), pp. 64-65.
83. Ibid., p. 158.
84. Le Moniteur de la Loire et al Haute-Loire, 16 Aug. 1877.
85. AN F17 9327, report on primary instruction, arrondissement of Saint Etienne, 1855. Members of the municipal council came from the old, well-established Saint-Chamonais families of Gillier, Richard, Thiollière, Neyrand, and Dugas-Vialis. They adhered to Legitimist politics and practiced Catholicism devoutly. The new braid industrialists who appeared—Oriol and Brun—were equally Catholic and reactionary. For lists of municipal council members, see ADL 6M 20.
86. ADL T718, cantonal delegates for Saint Chamond in 1850; 17 March 1875; T721, 23 Feb. 1872.
87. AN F17 9327, report on primary instruction, arrondissement of Saint Etienne, 1855.
88. AN F17 9347, inspection of primary schools, arrondissement of Saint Etienne, 1860. Comments here about the psychological effect of abandoning patois are admittedly speculative. Eugen Weber discusses the importance among villagers in the Loire of continuing to speak patois. He quotes an 1864 report on instruction from the Loire: "In villages, anyone who tried to speak French wouldn't escape the jeers of his neighbors. He would be turned to ridicule": Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), p. 312. It follows that abandoning patois would also have had great symbolic importance for the migrant. In his account of life in a Breton village, Pierre-Jakez Hélias stresses the humiliation of not knowing French, the "bourgeois" language. "Every time they had to deal with a city civil-servant and every time they ventured into a city, they were exposed to sly smiles and to jeers of all kinds. They were called 'straw-choppers,' for example, or 'gorse-grinders,' since their language seemed uncouth to those who didn't understand it." It is inconceivable that language and all it symbolized did not play a profound role in the integration of migrants into an urban setting. This subject is certainly one that merits more systematic exploration. As Hélias reminds us, "Like all populations who never express themselves other than orally, [the Bretons] were very sensitive to language, very heedful of it." See The Horse of Pride: Life in a Breton Village, trans. June Guicharnaud (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 151-52.
89. AN F17 9327, report on primary instruction, arrondissement of Saint Etienne, 1855; 20 Jan. 1857, 1859, 1860; F17 9338, report on instruction, arroundissement of Saint Etienne, 1857; F17 9347, inspection of primary schools, arrondissement of Saint Etienne, 1860.
90. ADL T883, adult education, 1864-1867; letter to inspector of primary schools from Emma Canel, 13 June 1872; Bertholon, Histoires de Saint-Chamond, p. 134.
91. H. Rollet, L'Action sociale des catholiques en France, 1871-1901 (Paris: Bovin, 1947), p. 286; Pierre Pierrard, L'Eglise et les ouvriers en France (1840-1940) (Paris: Hachette, 1984), pp. 295-356.
92. ADL M244, tr. 427/6.
93. ADL 27M 2, police commissioner of Saint Chamond to the prefect, 28 April 1880; 10M 113, police of Saint Chamond, 15 July 1896; 10M 115, police of Saint Chamond, 13 Jan. 1897; Bertholon, Histoires de Saint-Chamond, pp. 176-78; Yves Lequin, Les ouvriers de la région lyonnaise (1848-1914). Vol. 2: Les intérêts de classe et de la république (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1977), pp. 337-41, 468.
94. Rollet, L'Action sociale des catholiques en France, pp. 29-30.
95. Ibid. See also Pierrard, L'Eglise et les ouvriers, pp. 286-309.
96. Rollet, L'Action sociale des catholiques en France, pp. 255, 686-90; ADL 21M 48, police commissioner of Saint Chamond to prefect, 27 June 1903. This report did not state what kind of workers belonged to the cercles.
97. Rollet, L'Action sociale des catholiques en France, p. 83; Pierrard, L'Eglise et les ouvriers, pp. 343-53.
98. Rollet, L'Action sociale des catholiques en France, p. 286.
99. AN BB18 1932A 96, "Patrons catholiques," 1892.
100. AN BB18 1932A 96, "Oeuvre des cercles catholiques d'ouvriers: le Comité de Saint-Chamond, Association de Patrons," 1877.
101. Ibid., "Parquet de la cour d'appel de Lyon," arrondissement of Saint Etienne, 1892.
102. For example, a local notary in 1867 credited the work of religious orders with the city's harmony and implied that workers there shared their employers' beliefs: "It is thanks to them, to their lessons, to the training of youth by the moral and religious education that they have given it, that we owe the truly extraordinary tranquility which our city has always enjoyed, even during the troubled days of 1848." Quoted in Bertholon, Histoires de Saint-Chamond, p. 36.
103. Archives du Ministère de la Guerre, Vincennes, MR1266, "Rapport sur les environs de Saint-Chamond," 1843.