1
Peasants, Workers, and the Agricultural Revolution in the Aude

In the twilight of the ancien régime, before the great harvest failures that helped to bring down the monarchy, the intendant of Languedoc, Charles Ballainvilliers, wrote to the king, "There is no area in France which can be compared for the abundance of its harvests in grains to the fertile plain of Coursan, although . . . none produces more beautiful wheat than [the plain of] Narbonne."^[1] In the mixed economy of the Aude in the eighteenth century, fields of wheat stretched for miles on either side of the Route Royale from Carcassonne to Narbonne and on up to Béziers in the Hérault. Here and there the regular pattern was broken by hectares of lucerne, vines, and olive trees. A variety of small rural industries—most notably drapery—flourished in the small villages that dotted the map of the Aude, providing the protoindustrial economic bases of the hilly west and southwest of the department, around the towns of Chalabre and Quillan.

A century later the physiognomy of the Aude had changed radically. Instead of the gold and buff of wheat and rye broken occasionally by rows of olive trees, now miles of green vineyards prospered under the hot Mediterranean sun in the eastern plain of Narbonne. In the west, the drapery industry was but a shadow of its former self; everywhere, rural industry was now largely tailored to serve the vineyard economy. This agricultural revolution marked the beginning of the Aude's transition to the modern world of capitalist agriculture, with its conflicts and economic crises. It altered the rhythms of the work year, gave birth to a whole series of specialized work skills and new forms of labor, and influenced patterns of landownership in the department. Virtually all social groups benefited from the "golden age

of the vine." How and why did that agricultural revolution come about, and how did it affect landownership, social structure, and work patterns in the Aude?

The Aude Before Vineyard Monoculture

The grain-growing economy of the Aude was in part a product of the mercantilist policy of the ancien régime, where governments strictly controlled the planting of vineyards and even fined peasants for planting new vines without government authorization. Once these restrictions disappeared with the revolution of 1789, however, grains continued to dominate the Audois economy for the next fifty years, and vines remained "une affaire de gagne petit," something to bring in a bit of money on the side.^[2] In fact, most southern wine never appeared on Audois tables but went off to distilleries in Narbonne and Carcassonne, to produce eau de vie and the 3/6 liqueur for which the department was known; these products were then shipped to Bordeaux, Rouen, Paris, and sometimes abroad.^[3] Thus, unlike the self-sufficient peasant economies of other parts of France, the mixed capitalist agricultural economy of the Aude was already highly commercial and market-oriented at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Wheat also brought Audois farmers and merchants important commercial links with the region and with the rest of France. Audois wheat growers regularly exported their surpluses to other Mediterranean departments—the Hérault, Gard, Bouches-du-Rhône, and the Alpes-Maritimes—via the bustling commercial centers of Carcassonne and Narbonne. In either town they could link up with the Canal du Midi, the lifeline by which goods traveled to markets east and west; or they could take their goods by road to the port of La Nouvelle, just south of Narbonne, where they could reach Cette, Marseille, and Toulon by boat. In addition to their agricultural commerce, towns like Carcassonne, Limoux, Montolieu, Cennes-Monesties, and Chalabre, possessed large-scale draperies that also carried on a lively export trade. Finally, small-scale protoindustry, most of it homebased, flourished in Audois villages in the first half of the nineteenth century: forges in the southwest near Quillan; masonry,

caskmaking, and carpentry; tailoring, shoemaking, and dressmaking. In 1836, the census of Coursan listed four blacksmiths, four butchers, three carpenters and cabinetmakers, two turners, two coopers, two weavers, three locksmiths, three harnessmakers, a wigmaker, a miller, and two seamstresses! There was one café in the village.^[4] Generally speaking, then, commercial exchange was central to the economy of large towns like Carcassonne and Narbonne, as well as to the economy of smaller bourgs in the eastern half of the department, such as Coursan and Lézignan.

During the early 1800s, in the period of mixed agricultural capitalism, virtually everyone in most Audois villages owned some land—artisans, tradesmen, shepherds, workers, and even unskilled laborers (Table 1).^[5] In Coursan, only foremen (ramonets ) and farmhands (domestiques )—individuals who usually came from outside the department—did not make their way into the ranks of landowners in this period. Most propertyholders in Coursan in these years owned tiny pieces of land (less than one hectare). About one-third of the landowners held larger properties of between one and five hectares, and they relied on family labor. Baptiste Rouge, for example, a shoemaker, owned two hectares, which he farmed part-time with his wife, Louise, and their twelve-year-old son. Antoine Hérail, a harnessmaker, his eighteen-year-old son Antoine, also a harnessmaker, and his wife, Claire, worked that family's two and one-half hectares.^[6] Ownership of even a small piece of land for most of these people could provide a comfortable supplement to income and a cushion against unemployment.

Owners of properties of between six and twenty hectares and larger required wage labor and mules or horses to cultivate their land. Most of these holdings consisted of small parcels scattered throughout the village (biens du village ), although a few proprietors owned large estates of over twenty hectares en bloc . These independent property owners dominated the cereal-based economy in Coursan. In Coursan, eight large farms employed local, unskilled wage laborers (brassiers ) for plowing, sowing, and harvesting. Not surprisingly, as in all societies in which the ownership of land is a major determinant of social status, the owners of these large farms occupied positions of power and prestige in

the local community, dominating local politics. Men such as Esprit Tapié, André Salaman, and Antoine Givernais from Coursan canton sat on the department Conseil général and on municipal councils and served as justices of the peace and mayors (as did Henri Emmanuel Sabatier and Joseph Hérail, of Coursan). Few of these men actually tilled the soil themselves.

Nonlandowning workers and tradesmen in the previneyard years relied on wages that were barely adequate for subsistence. Although skilled workers like masons and carpenters earned respectable daily wages of between 2.75 and 4 francs, in the late 1840s agricultural workers in the Aude earned only from 1 to 1.50 francs per day (at this time a two-kilogram loaf of bread cost about 20 centimes). Occasionally employers paid agricultural workers in kind with potatoes and beans or gave them meals on the farm. Even worse, male workers in the local textile industry earned only 75 centimes per day, and women 50 centimes.^[7] Employers were able to keep wages low because they could rely on these workers' labor all year round and did not need to hire them away from tilling their own land.

The Agricultural Revolution in the Aude

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the economy of the Aude had entered a period of profound transformation. During the Restoration and the July Monarchy, two factors led Audois farmers in the eastern half of the department to put their money into vineyards. First, in the 1820s and 1830s, as the national consumption of wine slowly began to increase, wine prices also rose from late-eighteenth-century levels of 8–10 francs to 20–25 francs per hectoliter. Income from vines could be almost double that from wheat (400 versus 225 francs per hectare). Local farmers became convinced (and they were partly correct) that they could make a fortune within two or three years.^[8] Second, state policy, by which Restoration monarchs strove to balance the divergent interests of burgeoning industrial free traders and agricultural protectionists and to prevent a repetition of late-eighteenth-century crises de subsistance by insuring adequate domestic grain supplies, favored the transition to winegrowing as well. The sliding scale of import duties established under the July Monarchy clearly favored commercial over domestic agricultural interests, allowing Russian wheat, for example, to sell below the price of French wheat on the domestic market.^[9] Although both wheat and wine prices dropped in subsequent years (especially during the nationwide agricultural depression of 1847–1853, hectoliter for hectoliter, wine remained more prof-

itable.^[10] By 1830, the transformation of the Aude's economy was under way; in the breadbasket region of the Narbonnais, vineyards began to replace grain fields (Table 2).

Under the Second Empire, three additional factors intervened to complete the transformation. A fungal disease of vines, oidium, seriously reduced harvests between 1851 and 1856 and pushed wine prices up to 45 and 50 francs per hectoliter (Table 3). Farmers who accumulated capital during the crisis used it to plant vines. Second, the expansion of railroads allowed south-

erners to buy wheat from the north and center of France more cheaply than previously, thus ending the Aude's previous domination of the southern wheat market. The opening of the Bordeaux-Cette rail line in April 1857, connecting the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranean line to the Compagnie du Midi, which ran through Carcassonne, Narbonne, and Béziers, also extended the market for Audois wine. Now producers along the line in towns like Lézignan brought their wine directly to the local railway station for distribution to the rest of France, and profited from the preferential rates accorded southern wine by the Compagnie du Midi. Finally, the commercial treaties of the 1860s also encouraged the expansion of vineyards. Treaties with England in 1860, Belgium in 1862, Prussia in 1864, and Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway in 1865 opened foreign markets that Audois growers had previously only marginally exploited because of high protective tariffs.^[11] For the first time, southern wines competed with the wines of Burgundy.^[12] Not surprisingly, during this period of vineyard expansion the vineyard bourgeoisie in the Aude, anxious to profit from new commercial opportunities, earnestly advocated free trade and protested against the high duties (octrois ) levied on wines entering towns and cities, especially in the east and north, which raised the cost of southern wine in those regions.

Two points must be added to this picture of agricultural revolution. First, whereas the eastern Aude almost completely abandoned grain growing, farmers in the west (Castelnaudary) continued to produce grain almost exclusively, and those in both Limoux and Carcassonne arrondissements grew both wheat and wine. These agricultural differences gave rise to striking social and political differences later in the nineteenth century.

Second, the importance of the agricultural revolution lay not only in the increasing area devoted to vineyards but also in the fact that viticulture began to dominate the local economy in virtually all respects. Wine became the very basis of wealth in the south. Local investors rushed to put their money into vineyards, as did investors from more distant regional cities like Bordeaux and Toulouse. Narbonne and Montpellier (in the Hérault) changed from exclusively commercial centers into cities dominated by propriétaires-viticulteurs —large vineyard entrepreneurs

who preferred to live in major centers where they could maintain their contacts with wine dealers, keep abreast of wine prices, and oversee the sale of their wines. By the end of the nineteenth century, virtually all regional investment was in the hands of the grande bourgeoisie vinicole .^[13]

The agricultural revolution also changed local industry. By the late 1870s, the drapery and ceramics industries in Chalabre and Castelnaudary that had flourished in the first half of that century began to decline. Although several factors affected the demise of the drapery industry in the Aude—the 1860 free trade treaty with Britain, for example, which opened local drapers to British competition, and the cancellation of government orders of cloth for the military—an immediate cause was a serious labor shortage that developed as underpaid textile workers sought higher wages as vineyard workers (at 3.50–4 francs per day).^[14]

Nonetheless, the development of viticulture did not bring about the "deindustrialization" of the Aude. In this respect there was more continuity than change in the wake of the region's agricultural transformation. By 1882 the Aude still boasted forty-two draperies and fourteen hat factories. More important, in large towns like Narbonne local industries connected with the vineyards, particularly caskmaking, harnessmaking, masonry, and ceramics, flourished with the growth of vineyards. In 1876 in Coursan, for example, ten household heads worked as coopers (as opposed to eight in 1866), and the number of household heads who worked as masons grew from twelve in 1836 to twenty-seven in 1876. With the corresponding growth of commercial activity in wine, the number of commissionnaires de vin (wine commission agents) in Coursan increased from two in 1866 to seven a decade later.^[15] Thus, the "ruralization" of the countryside that Philippe Pinchemel observed in Picardie, in the north of France, did not occur throughout lower Languedoc, and certainly not in the vinegrowing Aude.^[16]

The Vineyard Revolution, Landownership, and Social Structure

Patterns of landownership and social structure naturally bore the imprint of the vineyard revolution. Many of the vineyards

that came to dominate the economy of the Aude in the second half of the nineteenth century were planted on land previously farmed in grain. Even though some large wheat farmers sold and divided their land during the agricultural transformation of 1850–1880, large estates continued to exist side by side with small properties of five hectares and less. The coexistence of these two forms of property was a fundamental feature of the prosperous expansion years.^[17] Thus, the process of capital concentration that ultimately accompanied the development of the modern, "industrial" twentieth-century vineyard, and the parallel process of parceling of vineyard property, were both well under way by 1880 (Tables 4 and 5).

The agricultural revolution modified the existing patterns of capitalist agriculture in Coursan within the elite of large pro-

ducers. Four of the village's large wheat farms changed hands by 1880; all but one were broken up and sold, parcel by parcel.^[18] The estate of Auriac remained intact and became one of the most important estate vineyards in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.^[19] Of the four estates still in the hands of the original owners (that is, from the 1830s and 1840s), all became large vineyards. The Salaman family, owners of the estate of La Vié, planted vines where once they had sown wheat, as did the Podénas family, owners of the 66-hectare Pontserme estate. The enormous 190-hectare estate of the Propriétaires de la Tour and the large estate owned by Pierre Joseph Fabre from Cuxac d'Aude, who purchased a 63-hectare farm from Honoré Laserre, a lawyer from Narbonne, each became huge vineyards, the latter being called La Coutelle. Of the ten largest vineyards in Coursan at the turn of the century, eight were built before

1880.^[20] The importance of these estates lay not only in their surface area, but also in their large-scale production of wine.^[21] These new vineyard barons built expensive homes that resembled small châteaux, surrounded by luxurious gardens planted in cypress and fruit trees. Their high roofs and towers stood out incongruously above the vineyards, contrasting sharply with the more humble dwellings of small peasants and workers in nearby villages.

In some respects the estate vineyards did not differ significantly from the large grain farms that had preceded them. Located outside of the village center, some large estates in the vinegrowing Aude, such as Celeyran in Salles d'Aude or Grand Caumon near Lézignan, included dormitories for housing unskilled farmhands, barns for storing equipment and housing work animals, a distillery and cellar for winemaking, a chicken coop, and a small vegetable garden. But in contrast to the wheat farms with their relatively small number of workers, the large vineyards employed anywhere from fifty to seventy skilled workers and another ten to twenty unskilled farmhands. Not only were the estate vineyards the largest employers of wage labor, but they also dominated the economic life of Audois villages as consumers of local masonry, cooperage, and harnessmaking. As concentrated property, the estate could operate much more efficiently than large properties composed of fragmented parcels in virtually all aspects of production, ranging from cultivation, pruning, and fertilizing to winemaking.^[22]

In addition to transforming large farms into large estate vineyards, the agricultural revolution in the Aude led to the increasing subdivision of property (Table 4).^[23] As Table 5 shows, the number of properties of less than one hectare grew significantly In the expansion years, partly because vines could be grown profitably in a relatively small area, whereas grains could not, but also because the mad rush to acquire vines caused land prices to skyrocket. Grain fields that had sold for 3,000 francs per hectare before 1850 commanded prices of between 6,000 and 8,000 francs per hectare when planted in vines; particularly rich land could fetch up to 20,000 francs a hectare.^[24] Between 1851 and 1880, of the 873 individuals who entered the land records of Coursan for the first time, 84.3 percent made purchases of

under one hectare; only 2.3 percent made purchases of over six hectares.^[25] One wonders how modest workers and artisans managed to scrape together the money to buy. Some, like the brothers Louis and Hilaire Bertrand, pooled their funds; others obtained loans from wealthy estate owners who in turn earned a sizable portion of their income from interest on loans.^[26] Considering the profits to be made, the "gold rush" mentality of these years is not hard to comprehend.

Families who owned less than a hectare could not expect to support themselves from working their vines alone, but income from what they did grow could contribute substantially to the household's total earnings (see also Chapter 4). In the early 1870s, the owner of a hectare of vines could hope to make between 1,460 and 1,685 francs a year. Owners of over a hectare could live on their vineyard income as independent petty producers, cultivateurs . Very large estate owners (over twenty hectares) typically referred to themselves as propriétaires . These individuals produced a commercial product designed to be marketed. Even those who initially bought only tiny plots of land, however, managed to accumulate more property over the years. Jean Bauderuc, a mason, for example, bought 71 ares in 1857; by 1870 he owned 2.38 hectares, and by 1899, just over 4 hectares.^[27] His case was not exceptional.

Indeed, one of the most significant features of the agricultural revolution in the Aude was the continued spread of landownership among all social and occupational groups—vineyard workers, artisans, tradesmen, and professional men—a phenomenon that created a strong community of interests among rural dwellers of the winegrowing Aude. As Table 1 shows, vineyard workers in Coursan became the largest group of landowners in the expansion years (about 26 percent of all landowners in 1876); these men owned an average of 0.65 hectares, which they worked part-time. Artisans and tradesmen made up the next largest group.

As Harvey Smith has noted in his study of Cruzy, Hérault, men who acquired vines in the age of vineyard expansion differed from earlier vinegrowers in the more mixed economy.^[28] These new vignerons paid more attention to the skills and profits of vine cultivation. Their social backgrounds also changed. In

the peak years of vineyard expansion, men marrying in Coursan who were the sons of artisans and tradesmen increasingly turned their talents to vinedressing (Table 6). In addition, whereas in the 1850s sons of small vineyard owners and cultivateurs marrying in Coursan had become farmhands or manual laborers, in the 1860s and 1870s they increasingly followed their fathers in the trade.

The double spread of vineyards and landownership meant both upward mobility for these men and subtle shifts in the occupational structure of vinegrowing villages. Most important, the term used to identify agricultural workers changed, reflecting the recognition of vinedressers' new status as skilled workers. Whereas unskilled agricultural workers known as journaliers agricoles constituted the majority of village workers prior to the 1870s, officials now referred to the new, skilled agricultural workers as cultivateurs . Although the term signified the actual landowning status of vinedressers, officials used it to describe vineyard workers whether or not they owned land. Assuming that the vineyard labor force in Coursan increased proportionally to the overall increase in population between 1851 and 1881, the years of vineyard expansion (see Table 9), and that the 1876 census did not record all occupations in Coursan, the village labor force appears to have grown dramatically by 40 percent between 1876 and 1886. A high demand for skilled labor in the vineyards of the 1860s and 1870s likewise led to an

increase in the proportion of men and women who worked as cultivateurs in Coursan during those decades (Table 7; see also Table 12). If landownership contributed to the relatively high status that vineyard workers enjoyed in these years, so did changes in work patterns that came with the spread of vineyards during the agricultural revolution.

The Transformation of Vinedressing

Vinegrowing has often been described as the aristocracy of agriculture, and the vinedresser as the peasant aristocrat. As one nineteenth-century scholar of vines and vineyards, Jules Guyot, noted, "The cultivation of vines is . . . the complement of all good agriculture; it is master by virtue of the money that it produces; it is the force and resource of agriculture by virtue of the . . . mouths that it feeds."^[29] But the peasant aristocrat had to deal with a temperamental product. As Arthur Young remarked in 1789,

There is scarcely any product so variable as that of wine. Corn lands and meadow have their good and bad years, but they always yield something, and the average produce is rarely far removed from that of any particular year. With vines, the difference is enormous; this year yields nothing; in another, perhaps the casks . . . contain the exuberant produce of the vintage; now the price is extravagantly high, and again so low as to menace with poverty all who are concerned in it.^[30]

In fact, Young was right. Vinegrowing involved considerable risks. Too much rain in spring could prevent flowering; fungal diseases, frost, or hail could easily destroy an entire crop. In addition, unlike other crops that could be planted, cultivated, and then forgotten until harvest or where the work rhythm involved alternate periods of intense activity and rest, vines had to be cared for individually, regularly, and throughout the year, following a prescribed routine. These characteristics of vinegrowing shaped the work and mentality of the vinedresser. Thus, the rise of vineyard monoculture not only changed patterns of landownership and capitalist production; it also meant the adaptation of both owners and workers to different techniques, skills, and work rhythms. Workers who tilled wheat fields and dressed vines in the 1840s acquired new skills and developed new expertise in vinedressing just as did the sons of skilled artisans who acquired vines for the first time in the 1860s.

The vinegrower's year commonly ran from one harvest to another. The work year in the Aude began in late October or early November, immediately following the grape harvest, with the first pruning, or l'époudassage , designed primarily to permit access to the vines for cultivating and cleaning.^[31] At this time, southern vinedressers aggressively pruned their vines in the "goblet" shape of three or four main branches typical of vines in lower Languedoc, cultivated the soil, and began winemaking once the crushed grapes were placed in large cisterns to ferment. In December they pruned and cultivated again and performed the first drawing off of the wine (premier soutirage ). In winter they planted new vines and fertilized; winter prunings continued into February and March, and in March came the final drawing off of wine in the cellar. Throughout pruning, workers cleared fallen

branches from the vines, gathered them into bundles, and sold them as kindling, if the vineyard owner did not keep them.

In April, vinedressers cultivated again and began the "green pruning," cutting back unproductive shoots from unproductive wood and pruning woody stems from the base of the vine to encourage more prolific growth on top where leaves and fruit could more easily receive the hot southern sun. The vinedresser spread sulphur in the vines in May and June as a preventive measure against oidium; a third sulphuring would follow in July, and additional cultivation. Finally, in August, if the season had been unusually damp, the vinedresser might give the vines a fourth sulphuring, prepare material for the harvest, and ready the winemaking vessels and equipment in the cave . Then at the end of September came the harvest, the busiest time of the year, lasting about twenty days. And once it was over, the cycle began again.^[32]

The cultivation of vines thus required continuous, regular work throughout the year. Before the 1880s, pruning was the most important of all vinedressing skills; the primary means by which the vinedresser controlled both quality and yield, it required specialized knowledge of the plant and some training.^[33] In the late 1850s, agricultural societies (comices agricoles ) in Carcassonne and Narbonne gave courses in pruning to agricultural workers and vinedressers. Yet the increasingly complex work of the vinedresser in the "golden age of the vine" did not immediately transform tools and equipment, and until the 1870s vinedressers used traditional methods and ancient tools, performing all operations by hand. In the 1860s vinedressers still used wooden swing plows and cultivated by hand, with spades.^[34] Gradually the agricultural revolution brought changes in this domain as well.

As wine prices rose in the 1870s and vineyard owners became more concerned to turn a profit, vinedressers improved techniques. They began to use new equipment, such as the sécateur , a special curved knife for pruning, and the iron plow, and they cared for their vines still more intensively. Now they fertilized their vines regularly and frequently, pruned aggressively, and planted prolific varieties such as the Aramon and Carignan

grapes, to replace older, less productive Terret and Grenache grapes. In order to cultivate with plows, vineyard owners began to plant their vines farther apart in the 1860s and 1870s. Vinedressers in general took a greater interest in increasing yields, and, as Table 3 shows, wine production steadily increased. Partly as a result of more intensive cultivation and the expansion of vineyards between 1860 and 1880, owners of large properties relied on growing numbers of skilled workers. This factor, plus the tremendous profitability of vines in this period, pushed wages up and, as contemporaries themselves observed, accounted for an increased willingness to improve techniques and equipment.^[35] The agricultural revolution and the gradual transformation of vinedressing also affected the labor structure of the estate vineyard.

Division of Labor and the New Vineyard Laborer

The division of labor on large estate vineyards reflected nuances of skill in vinedressing. In fact, the estate vineyard in the period of expansion came to resemble a small industrial establishment, with its sophisticated division of labor and work discipline. In the last two decades of the century, as workers became ever more dependent on the large estates for work, the industrial analogy would become even more appropriate. The potential for conflict between groups of workers, as well as for the formation of class solidarity, was built into the productive relations of the estate vineyard.

Increasingly over the nineteenth century, absentee proprietors of estates in the Aude who lived in large towns like Carcassonne, Narbonne, Béziers, or Montpellier delegated the direction of the vineyard to a manager, the régisseur .^[36] These estate managers, themselves former small landowners or older workers, generally came from the Aude, and even though they had no formal training for their job, they occupied a position of high status and some privilege as the representatives of the patron .

The manager's responsibilities included directing work in the vines, distributing tools, paying wages, and keeping the vineyard's account books. In addition, he supervised the upkeep of the cave and the delivery of wine to the wholesaler (the proprie-

tor carried out the sale of wine himself). As the representative of the owner's authority on the estate, he had to be able to deal firmly with workers and suppress arguments among personnel, a role that brought him into conflict with striking workers on more than one occasion between 1903 and 1914. Hired on a yearly contract, the manager and his family lived on the estate. received unlimited wine for their own use, and were permitted use of the work animals on the estate to cultivate their own land. By 1880, an estate manager could earn a yearly salary of between 1,000 and 1,500 francs, to which might be added a bonus of 500 francs in a good harvest year.^[37] A well-paid manager could accumulate substantial savings. Jean-Pierre Aribaud, for example, régisseur on the estate of Lastours in Coursan, left 8,000 francs to his heirs in 1911.^[38] Materially, the manager was quite comfortable in comparison with other estate workers.

On those Audois vineyards where owners lived directly on the estate or in the village, the tasks of looking after work animals and resident workers were delegated to an overseer or foreman, the ramonet . These men usually came from the surrounding mountain areas of the Tarn or the Ariège, although later, after the turn of the century, Spanish immigrants often came on as overseers. If the overseer was married, his wife (the ramonette ) prepared meals for the resident personnel on the domaine and served as the head of a team of women workers.^[39] Although the ramonet was of a slightly higher status than the other resident workers, he did not have the same privileged position as the régisseur , and in the labor conflicts that filled the prewar years overseers usually sided with workers.

The social construction of authority relations between husbands and wives dictated that even though the ramonet and ramonette performed distinct tasks, only the man received the wage, from 480 to 600 francs a year.^[40] He also received the wheat, oil, salt, and wine allocation from the estate owner, which he then passed on to his wife. Besides not receiving a separate wage, the ramonette was allocated only half the amount of food accorded to the male workers whom she had to feed, a condition that lasted into the twentieth century and that was indicative of contemporary beliefs about gender differences in food requirements.^[41] Perhaps she had her revenge on this unjust system

after all, however, for "she took her pay from the economies she was able to make in the food allocations of others. One understands how this system was defective. . . . Even on vineyards where the well-intentioned proprietor gave out sufficient quantities [for the upkeep of workers] . . . the food was often terrible!"^[42] Still, in the final analysis the ramonette 's situation was better than that of the unskilled farmhands for whom she cooked.

Most unskilled labor of digging and cultivation on large estates fell to the migrant farmhand, or domestique . Some in this reserve army of labor, gagés , worked on yearly contracts (their name came from the gages —yearly wages—that they were paid); others, mésadiers , were hired and paid by the month. Most of these workers were men; generally, vineyard owners preferred to hire women on an even less permanent basis, by the day.^[43] In addition to performing unskilled hand labor, domestiques drove the wagons used for carrying tools and grapes at harvest and spread chemicals in the vines. Despite the importance of their jobs in the vineyard, these workers occupied the lowest status of all. One contemporary claimed, "A woman's work is worth more than the work of one of these men"; another emphasized that farmhands were "not as capable when it comes to the proper cultivation of the vine, which demands care and attention. These [folks] are laborers and not vignerons ."^[44] Skilled workers also looked down on the migrant farmhands as gavaches , a pejorative term meaning careless and crude. As Abel Chatelain has noted, apart from the economic threat to the local laboring population that these "foreigners" posed, as migrants they were inherently less respectable and socially inferior.^[45]

Estate owners, though, saw advantages to hiring such workers. Employers paid them less than the local skilled workers, viewing them as a submissive or passive work force that would do their bidding and then obediently return to their mountain homes in the Tarn, the Ariège, or the Aveyron. Sometimes estate owners and managers attempted to use farmhands to influence the outcome of elections. One manager from Narbonne boasted that he hired his mésadiers in October so that when elections occurred in April or May they would have the six months of

residence necessary to vote, obviously for the candidate of the manager's preference.^[46]

The working conditions and pay of these workers were deplorable. They typically worked a twelve-hour day (as opposed to six or eight hours for the day laborers), and the annual wage of thegagés , which could reach 650 francs per year (plus wheat, wine, and beans) in the expansion years, was about 300 francs less than skilled laborers' earnings. Mésadiers made even less, some 380 francs per year, and often tried to supplement these wages with piecework.^[47] Housed in dormitories or haylofts, they slept on straw, without even the barest sanitary amenities. Although their conditions improved somewhat around the turn of the century, overall the domestique remained the lumpenproletarian of the vineyards into the early twentieth century.

The condition of skilled day laborers (vinedressers), who made up the majority of workers on large estate vineyards, could not have contrasted more sharply with that of the farmhands. In Coursan, skilled journaliers were the largest occupational group in the village in 1866, 37 percent of the working population, and ten years later they stood at just under 45 percent. In the vineyard expansion years these men were mainly local dwellers who had been born and raised in the villages in which they worked. They enjoyed a comfortable and stable position thanks not only to the prosperity of the growing vineyard economy, rising wages, and job security, but also to the special position many of them occupied as both wage workers and property owners.

As skilled workers, vinedressers performed all the delicate hand operations: pruning, certain types of cultivation and chemical treatments, planting, cellar work, and, after 1880, grafting. Not all journaliers were skilled, however, for a clear gender division of labor left unskilled work—such as gathering branches that fell to the ground during pruning, spreading fertilizer in the vines, sulphuring against oidium and mildew, and harvesting—to women. (Their work is discussed more fully in Chapter 4.) Contemporaries considered male vinedressers to be the real artisans of the vineyard and assumed skill in vineyard work to be exclusively masculine. The fact that many male vineyard workers were also landowners—in Coursan in 1876, at least 41 percent

(and probably more) of vineyard workers owned a parcel of vines—only reinforced their status as artisans.^[48] Indeed, in addition to defining skill in gendered terms, contemporaries consciously associated skill and landownership. As one turn-of-the-century observer remarked, "The day laborer doesn't complain about work that he will later perform for himself. . . . His pride is engaged; . . . how can he appear capable of working his own property if he works clumsily or badly the property of others?"^[49]

In the golden age of vineyard expansion, landowning journaliers prospered. As wage earners they could earn 25 centimes more per day than propertyless day laborers, the wage bonus being a reward for the expertise that was presumed to come from ownership of vines. Moreover, income from their vines in the expansion years could be considerable. Assuming production costs of one hectare of vines to be 340 francs, a worker who owned one hectare of vines in 1872, harvested forty-five hectoliters of wine, and sold it at 45 francs per hectoliter could have made 1,685 francs, considerably more than a propertyless worker could have earned in a year.^[50] These workers generally enjoyed a shorter workday than other estate workers (six as opposed to eight hours) so that they might cultivate their own vines; as Smith has noted for Cruzy, the shorter workday was an important feature of the status that these skilled workers enjoyed during the Second Empire.^[51] In addition to the material security and status that landownership provided, it gave vinedressers an important measure of psychological independence from wage labor. Moreover, landowning skilled workers who did work for wages were not entirely dependent on the large estate vineyards for work, given the numerous large, nonestate enterprises that regularly hired workers. In fact, during the 1860s and 1870s the term journalier virtually disappeared from official records. Manuscript census and agricultural surveys henceforth used the term cultivateur , meaning small proprietor or small proprietor-vinedresser, whether or not the individual owned land.^[52] The shift in terminology reflected both a blurring of class distinctions and the perception of the vinedresser as a skilled worker.

Vinedressers in the Aude in the golden age of the vine enjoyed a comfortable material situation. In this period of wide-

spread landownership when labor was in relatively short supply, the high demand for skilled workers helped to keep wages high. Nominal wages rose almost consistently between 1850 and 1880 (see Table 11), comparing favorably with the national average wage of agricultural workers (1.63 francs a day in 1862, 3.11 francs a day in 1882) and with the wages of local artisans, which stagnated over the same period.^[53] Pride in the craft of vinedressing distinguished these workers from the migrant domestiques , as did their permanent residence and social roots in local vinegrowing communities.

The status, flexibility, and freedom of the vinedresser also contrasted sharply with the situation of other skilled workers in France at this time, such as textile workers, metal workers, tailors, and printers, all of whom began to feel the effects of mechanization, devaluation of skill, and new methods of work organization and supervision.^[54] Vinedressers had the advantage of creating a product for which demand continuously rose in these years but where the nature of production precluded mechanization. Ironically, these comfortable rural workers profited from the misery of their urban counterparts, who, by calling on the fruits of the vine to escape the troubles of the workplace, raised the demand for southern wine.^[55]

During the years when vineyard capitalism came to dominate the Mediterranean economy, the Aude experienced a growth and prosperity almost unparalleled in its history. By the 1860s, inspectors from the Banque de France enthusiastically reported that whatever the cost of a piece of land, a cultivateur could easily pay for it with two harvests. Vinegrowers made fortunes right and left, creating "un luxe insensé." In 1875 the government inspector A. Ditandy reported, "Land of great wealth and hard work, land of wine and of gold, the Narbonnais appears to neighboring populations as a sort of El Dorado or Promised Land, where the poor man becomes rich and the rich man becomes a millionaire."^[56] Indeed, the agricultural revolution with its accompanying changes in the forms of capitalist production, property distribution, and social structure benefited a broad spectrum of peasants, artisans, and workers in the Aude. Most important, it brought forth a new group of agricultural workers:

skilled vinedressers. These changes had profound consequences for the politics of vinegrowing communities as vinedressers joined forces with other small landowners and the artisans of prosperous wine-producing villages to defend their common interests as producers. Thus, the development of vineyard capitalism created the conditions in which left-wing—démoc soc and republican—political movements would thrive.