A Workforce Divided: Community, Labor, and the State in Saint-Nazaire's Shipbuilding Industry, 1880-1910

A WORKFORCE DIVIDED

Recent Titles in Contributions in Labor Studies The American Labor Movement, 1955-1995 Walter Galenson The American Fund for Public Service: Charles Garland and Radical Philanthropy, 1922-1941 Gloria Garrett Samson Black Unemployment: Part of Unskilled Unemployment David Schwartzman The Quest for a Living Wage: The History of the Federal Minimum Wage Program Willis J. Nordlund Irish Voice and Organized Labor in America: A Biographical Study L.A. O'Donnell Economic Liberalization and Labor Markets Parviz Dabir-Alai and Mehmet Odekon, editors The American Work Ethic and the Changing Work Force: An Historical Perspective Herbert Applebaum Construction Workers, U.S.A. Herbert Applebaum Grand Master Workman: Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor Craig Phelan The Matriarchs of England's Cooperative Movement: A Study in Gender Politics and Female Leadership, 1883-1921 Barbara J. Blaszak Arab Employment in Israel: The Quest for Equal Employment Opportunity Benjamin W. Wolkinson Marketing Masculinities: Gender and Management Politics in Marketing Work Lee V Chalmers

A WORKFORCE DIVIDED Community, Labor, and the State in SaintNazaire's Shipbuilding Industry, 1880-1910 Leslie A. Schuster

Contributions in Labor Studies, Number 58

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schuster, Leslie A., 1954— A workforce divided : community, labor, and the state in Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding industry, 1880-1910 / Leslie A. Schuster. p. cm.—(Contributions in labor studies, ISSN 0886-8239 ; no. 58) (Northern Illinois University). Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-313-31775-5 (alk. paper) 1. Shipbuilding industry—France—Saint-Nazaire—Employees— History. 2. Shipbuilding industry—France—Saint-Nazaire— History. I. Title. II. Series. HD8039.S52F87 2002 331.7'62382'00944167—dc21 2001055618 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2002 by Leslie A. Schuster All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001055618 ISBN: 0-313-31775-5 ISSN: 0886-8239 First published in 2002 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America

@r The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright Acknowledgments An earlier version of the Chapter 4 appeared as "Workers and Community: The Case of the Peat-Cutters and the Shipbuilding Industry in Saint-Nazaire, 1881-1910," Journal of Social History 27 (1992): 777-797. The three photographs of the Riveter's strike are reprinted with permission from Patrick Pauvert.

For Adeline and Victor

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Contents Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

Chapter 1. An Industry Builds a Town: Shipbuilding and Saint-Nazaire

9

Chapter 2. Industrial Restructuring: State Intervention, Special Interests, and Unemployment

39

Chapter 3. Recasting the Shipbuilding Industry: The Labor Process and Social Relations

79

Chapter 4. Shipbuilder Communities: Urban Workers and Peat-Cutters

115

Chapter 5. Working-Class Politics

149

Chapter 6. Production, Community, Identity, and Strikes

175

Conclusion

195

Bibliography

201

Index

225

Photo section follows Chapter 3.

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Acknowledgments I am almost sorry to see this project come to an end, as the entire process has proven enormously gratifying. Not the least of the rewards are the many friends and colleagues who have accompanied me along the way, offering guidance, support, encouragement, a push here and there, and their unflagging enthusiasm and excitement. My great appreciation goes first to my adviser, J. Harvey Smith of Northern Illinois University, who guided me through the initial dissertation project and the reconstruction that became necessary once I came face-to-face with the sources. I am most thankful, however, for the care and extremely thorough reading that he gave to each chapter and for the many lessons that he imparted about clarity, presentation, and argument, lessons that have proven invaluable in my own teaching and in the later stages of this project. I have also profited tremendously from the suggestions, criticisms and generosity of many friends and colleagues. Their unstinting support and friendship over the many years and many miles have been a true pleasure and an unexpected benefit. Judith DeGroat, Elizabeth Colwill, Vicki Caron, and Jean Pedersen helped me find my way through the conflicts, contradictions, and loss of faith that often occur in the midst of research. Judy DeGroat provided the initial outline for this work, scratched on a cafe napkin one day when I was particularly disconsolate. Vicki Caron, Judy DeGroat, Eric Schuster, and Bruce C. Nelson read sections of this work at various stages of completion, each time offering valuable advice, direction, and encouragement. Fanny Montois and Patrick Baron welcomed me into their home and their family life year after year with great warmth and hospitality and I treasure our friendship. Colleagues at Rhode Island College, Ronald Dufour and George Kellner, have supported this project in innumerable ways, with their friendship, support, and with detailed reading of key chapters and discussions that nourished my own intellectual development. Early versions of portions of this study benefited from presentation and discussion at the French

x

Acknowledgments

Historical Studies Conference, Society for History of Technology, Wayne State Labor History Conference, and the European Studies Seminar at Cornell University. Special thanks go to Judith Stone for her careful comments and suggestions on several conference papers and to the anonymous readers of the manuscript whose observations and queries forced me to reevaluate portions of the work. I also want to thank Ann Marie Kordas who brought her editorial skills to the final stages and Patrick Pauvert who graciously permitted the reproduction of some of his images of Saint-Nazaire. A Rhode Island College Faculty Research Grant proved helpful at the final stage of the project. Last but certainly not least is that group of long-standing friends whose friendship, love, generosity of spirit, holiday parties, and vacation moments have profoundly marked and enriched my formative years: Sara and Dan Cohan, Michael Grejbowski, Phyllis Ladd, and Carolyn and Dick Panofsky. Special mention to Phyllis for the playbill and the musical score for Song of the Briere. My world was shaped first by Adeline and Victor Schuster (grandson of Ralph Sneller, the worker-peasant in my family, farmer by day and copper miner by night) and my grandmothers, Bubby Lazow and Mary Phillips. I thank each of them and my companion, Les Stasey, with love and gratitude for the lessons of humanity and courage and integrity, and the examples of individual survival in the face of tremendous hardships. I am proud that my mother carries on that tradition and in her daily adventures moves all those around her. I wish Anna and Maxwell the same spirits. Finally, I am profoundly saddened that my father did not see this come to fruition—remembering his pride and joy at other moments is a help but a mighty poor consolation. I know he would "pee with glee."

Introduction Shipbuilding workers in the port town of Saint-Nazaire in the thirty years before WWI hardly conformed to the stereotypical notion of workers as a homogenous class with common patterns of life and work and a willingness to battle with employers and state in the interests of a shared, radical political agenda. Instead, this workforce was divided between urban and rural settlements, fragmented by trade and skill level, armed with different priorities and dissimilar perspectives toward industrial employment, and advancing disparate, often contrary solutions to their situations. This sharp divergence in priorities, resources, and expectations is perhaps best illustrated by labor protests and work cultures. In June 1898, 118 adolescent boys who assisted the riveters in their work of fastening and sealing the hull of vessels under construction at one of the city's two industrial shipbuilding facilities struck to punctuate their demands for uniform salaries and raises. One local paper dismissed the protest, asking, "Who doesn't sing at that age?" but within a few days the young workers had convinced nearly 500 others, skilled and unskilled, adolescents and adults, all residents of Saint-Nazaire, to join the action. In that same year, a group of skilled workers from the yards, residents of a nearby agricultural region known as the Grande Briere, struck to dispense with a symbol of privilege and rank esteemed by skilled workers elsewhere, maintaining their own tools. Regarding this as an onerous and expensive responsibility rather than a badge of skill, the workers insisted that the company bear the cost of tools, as was standard policy for semi- and unskilled workers. Another protest took place in the spring of 1901, when one yard instituted its summer schedule of lengthened workdays and an extended midday break of one and a half hours. About one-third of the workforce struck to keep

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A Workforce Divided

the shorter midday break, while the remainder welcomed the schedule change. Finally, every fall shipyard workers from the Briere stayed home for several weeks to harvest the peat crop, the economic mainstay for residents of this community, and left shipyard management to bemoan the absence of a reliable labor force. These protest actions may appear unique and unconnected to one another, but, taken together, they exemplify some of the more notable characteristics of the workforce at Saint-Nazaire's shipyards. This study argues that the competing identities and divergent values and objectives evident among Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding workforce in the thirty years before World War I were fostered by the intersection between state programs, industrial production, and the patterns of work and life that workers pursued in the local realm, that is, by factors specific to the industry and to their communities. State legislation regulating the shipbuilding industry and the nature of industrial production itself shaped workers' experiences and their assessment of their position. At the same time, workers' viewpoints and activities as industrial workers were conditioned by the concerns, traditions, and values promoted and nurtured in their residential communities, in families, and in agricultural work groups. This intersection between national politics, industrial policies, and the local world of community and culture explains how and why Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding workforce came to hold and to express divergent perspectives. This book is thus a contribution to the expanding field of scholarship that has challenged and reformulated the traditional model of industrialization and, as a consequence, contested accepted notions of the operation of the workplace, of class formation, and of labor activity. Historians have largely discarded the classic model of industrial transformation where industrial processes and organizational structures are seen to be sudden and thorough, breaking with old patterns of production and of social relations. Recent studies have shown that the transition to industrial production followed neither a particular timetable nor a set pattern but was rather a fitful, complex, and highly variable process. In France, small-scale industry persisted throughout the nineteenth century. The standard indicators of industrialization, such as mechanization, standardized tasks, and the introduction of unskilled workers, proved uneven processes, and French workers did not share similar workplace experiences.1 The repudiation of this classic model of industrialization has brought greater scrutiny to other long-standing ideas about the world of the worker. For instance, many labor studies had long argued that the transformation to industrial production included a sudden and thorough assault on the prerogatives of the skilled, promoting the emergence of a political consciousness among these workers that then gave rise to labor organization and strikes.2 Reconsideration of the theory of rapid industrial change has jeopardized this depiction of the workplace interests and activity of the skilled. New studies have also criticized the practice of limiting the investigation of work to a focus on factory production and the identity of the worker to those employed outside the home, neglecting workers who were not visible in the

Introduction

3

public arena of worker activism. Other historians have more broadly questioned the "master" narrative for labor, that is, a concentrated focus on factory production and labor activity, arguing that workers are not singlefaceted, defined and understood solely by their appearance in industry or the political arena. These criticisms have resulted in an impressive array of new approaches to labor history and some bold thoughts on reconceptualizing the field's traditional parameters. Investigations that focus on the complex issues of how workers perceived their world and how they came to select particular strategies and activities have replaced studies that tended to foreground industrial transformation and work. Tessie Liu's study of western France, for instance, suggests that historians' prejudice toward notable moments and "dramatic successes" has overlooked the more widespread incidence of protoindustrialization, deindustrialization, and the social conflicts arising from these processes.3 Scholars such as James Lehning and Gerald Sider suggest that a careful examination of the private realm, the world of family and community, can help unravel the complex puzzle of class, identity, and political activity. The networks, values, and patterns of life specific to a community of workers, as defined by agricultural pursuits, common residential settlements, or similar social activities, shaped identities, interests, and behaviors, just as did national policy and shop floor conditions.4 Finally, scholars like Alf Liidtke and Hans Medick have urged historians to begin from the experience and perspective of the worker and to "decenter" the standard historical markers. They argue that studies that rely on the traditional signposts of historical change, such as national politics and economic and industrial patterns, may describe the environment of the worker, but they cannot reveal how workers viewed or responded to that environment.5 This investigation of Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding workforce argues that the intersection between the national and local realm forged workers' perceptions and choices. First, the experience of Saint-Nazaire's workers clearly demonstrates that official policies played a direct role in fashioning the industrial climate of this city and, as a by-product, shaped workers' relations with elites and with the state. In the case of shipbuilding, state intervention over a thirty-year period directed the pace and progress of the industry and influenced the form of labor relations. Second, this study provides the first systematic investigation of industrialization in France's shipbuilding industry and thus expands our understanding of the experience of industrial change in France. Ship production resembled workshop patterns of production in its work processes, in the activity of the shops, and in the structure of the labor force. Consequently, relations between workers and with management did not strictly correspond to an industrial environment but instead reflected a tension between the processes and conduct of the workshop and of industrial settings. Finally, the study reveals the widely divergent cultural traditions and community practices among workers who labored in Saint-Nazaire's yards. The shipbuilding workforce was divided between an urban workforce who had

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A Workforce Divided

migrated to Saint-Nazaire in search of employment and property-owning agricultural workers who commuted to the yards from the Brieron marshland. The traditions, practices and interests of these dissimilar groups of workers critically informed their experiences and responses to industrial employment and resulted in the emergence of sharply different allegiances and interests. Indeed, in Saint-Nazaire the move to industrial employment for many did not signify the dissolution of long-standing practices, work habits, and social relations in favor of a common class identity, but in some cases assured the retention of contrary interests. These different standards and contrary interests then found expression in dissimilar strike activities and objectives. The study begins with an examination of the structural forces— urbanization, national legislation, and work processes—that fashioned the identity and political behavior of Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding workforce. The first chapter links the erratic development of Saint-Nazaire to the economic activity generated by intermittent public works projects and irregular ship construction. In 1881 the installation of industrial shipyards brought sudden and spectacular expansion and a flood of migrants seeking shipbuilding work, yet the promise of steady industrial and urban growth was not to be fulfilled. Chapter 2 argues that the irregular development of the shipbuilding industry from this time can be traced to government programs that could only be considered ill conceived. The Third Republic's industrial policies promoted and recast the maritime industries, but over their thirty-year tenure these programs created sharp fluctuations in production, impeded technological progress, dictated construction priorities unsuited to the market, and caused frequent and elevated unemployment. Moreover, the resulting instability for the industry helped shape the focus and nature of labor activity. The frequent rounds of unemployment arising from policy shifts furthered shop floor discipline and hindered labor organizing. With government programs positioned as the primary source of employment, workers came to reject unions and socialist groups that promoted policies adversarial to management and state. Instead, workers sought conciliatory relations with state and local politicians to win shipbuilding contracts for Saint-Nazaire's yards. Chapter 3 investigates the process of production in shipbuilding, demonstrating the complexity of the industrial transformation and the multiplicity of workplace experiences. While capitalist methods of production and organization did transform this industry, the changes did not occur steadily or affect the entire workforce. Ship production still depended upon manual labor, complex tasks, and the utilization of hand tools. Most importantly, the workforce was not composed of semi- and unskilled labor but primarily of skilled and broadly trained semiskilled workers who moved about in the yard with a great measure of autonomy. This organization undercut the development of associations along skill lines yet allowed a particular segment of the workforce the capacity to associate and to lead labor activity. Unlike other shipyard workers, riveters and their assistants were not liable to the fragmentation that arose from the physical setting, the diversity of projects, and

Introduction

5

frequent unemployment. On the contrary, they enjoyed privileged work conditions that gave them a position of status in the shipyards and the opportunity to initiate protest. Chapter 4 explores the role of culture and community, illustrating that industrial work did not transform the allegiances and interests of all workers. The priorities and resources of the two distinct communities that supplied shipbuilding's workforce, urban Saint-Nazaire and the Briere marshland, produced clearly differentiated attitudes and political behavior. Patterns of work and life specific to the rural Briere, including collective landownership, self-government, shipbuilding skills, and marshland agriculture, particularly the harvesting and marketing of peat, were the basis of a commanding community identity that led residents to preserve the operation of their community against outside intrusions and economic crisis. Consequently, declining marshland production from the mid-nineteenth century did not, in this instance, signal the "disaggregation" of the rural community, as many French historians have argued.6 Instead of leaving their villages and their families and abandoning agricultural production in favor of employment in centers of industry, the Brierons, known as worker-peasants, turned to industrial employment precisely to maintain rural settlement and their patterns of life and work while remaining disinterested in many workplace issues and in strikes. Ship workers from urban Saint-Nazaire, on the other hand, were largely recent migrants divided by trade and place of origin and generally less skilled than the Brierons. Fewer resources and limited social networks produced a different relationship to industrial work and led them to labor organizing and strikes to achieve employment assurance, security, and stability. Thus, industrialization in Saint-Nazaire did not create a homogenous class with a similar consciousness. The two groups of workers, despite their common work experience, retained distinct identities and concerns. The final section of the book brings the examination of state policies, work processes, and culture, to an exploration of labor issues and strike activity. Chapter 5 details the role of working-class leaders and state programs in the emergence of a workforce manifestly indifferent to unions and socialist politics. Saint-Nazaire's labor and socialist leaders, who spent much of their time enmeshed in factional disputes, could do little to ameliorate high unemployment and so failed to meet the needs of their constituency. In sharp contrast, the state's power to relieve unemployment through subsidy legislation cultivated an association and dependence on state leaders and local elites. These forces, however, did not fashion a quiescent workforce—shipbuilding workers mounted regular strike activity over the thirty-year period. Chapter 6 examines shipbuilding strikes and labor demands, detailing how they replicated workers' conflicting identities, interests, and allegiances. Strikes typically engaged the two groups of workers separately, in accordance with the needs, capacities, and concerns of each. Scarce resources of urban workers led them to target improved work conditions in the form of advancement and job security for the youngest, least skilled workers in a family. The labor activity of the

6

A Workforce Divided

Brierons, on the other hand, reflected a desire to preserve their collective traditions and associations and to minimize the time spent in industrial employment. The shipbuilding workforce did not identify as a single working class or share a common political agenda, yet workers did on occasion find common terrain. This investigation of community and work in nineteenth-century SaintNazaire makes a number of contributions to French history and to cultural and labor history. First, it demonstrates the need for a reconsideration of national politics and economic and industrial development in shaping local social and labor history. At the same time, the study argues that workers regarded and digested these structural processes from the confines of cultural sensibilities and economic considerations, factors that then shaped their response. Finally, it suggests that these diverse factors did not operate independently but did in fact mediate and influence one another. In demonstrating the importance of these avenues of investigation, this study of industrialization in Saint-Nazaire serves to expand the questions and the tools that historians bring to the study of working people. NOTES 1. Charles Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin, "Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Industrialization," Past and Present 108 (August 1985): 137-176; Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufacturers: Industry, Innovation and Work in Britain, 1700-1820 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 19 Ira Katznelson and Aristide Zolberg, eds., Working-Class Formation (Princeton, N Princeton University Press, 1986); Raphael Samuels, "Workshop of the World: Steam Power and Hand-Technology in Mid-Victorian Britain," History Workshop 3 (1977), 72; Philip Scranton, "The Workplace, Technology, and Theory in American Labor History," International Labor and Working-Class History 35 (Spring 1989): 1 William H. Sewell Jr., "Artisans, Factory Workers, and the Formation of the Working Class, 1789-1848," in Katznelson and Zolberg, Working-Class Formation, 45-7 William Sewell, "Uneven Development, the Autonomy of Politics, and the Dockworkers of Nineteenth-Century Marseille," American Historical Review 93 (June 1988): 60 637; Lenard Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871-1914 (Baltimore: Joh Hopkins University Press, 1984), 24-25, 94-96; Lenard Berlanstein, Big Business an Industrial Conflict in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of Califor Press, 1991); Donald Reid, The Miners of Decazeville: A Geneaology of Deindustrialization (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985); Rondo Cameron, " New View of European Industrialization," Economic History Review 38 (1985): 4-6; Patrick O'Brien and Calgar Keyder, Economic Growth in Britain and France, 17 1914: Two Paths to the Twentieth Century (George Allen and Unwin, 1978); Rich Price, "The Labour Process and Labor History," Social History, 8, n. 1 (January 1983 57-75; Richard Price, "Rethinking Labour History: The Importance of Work," in Socia Conflict and Political Order in Modern Britain, edited by Jonathan Schneer (Lond Croom Helm, 1982); David Montgomery, Workers' Control in America: Studies in

Introduction

7

History of Work Technology, and Labor Struggles (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Maurice Daumas, Histoire Generate des Techniques, vols. 3-5 (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1968); Charles Singer, ed., A History of Technology, vol. 5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958); Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell Jr., eds., Technology in Western Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967). 2. Michael P. Hanagan, The Logic of Solidarity: Artisans and Industrial Workers in Three French Towns, 1871-1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980); Joan Wallach Scott, The Glassworkers of Carmaux (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974); Charles Shorter and Edward Tilly, Strikes in France, 1830-1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); Hartmut Kaelble, Industrialisation and Social Inequality in 19th'Century Europe, translated by Bruce Little (St. Martin's Press, 1986), 157-164. 3. Tessie P. Liu, The Weaver's Knot: The Contradictions of Class Struggle and Family Solidarity in Western France, 1750-1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 38. 4. Gerald M. Sider, "The Ties That Bind: Culture and Agriculture, Property and Propriety in the Newfoundland Village Fishery," Social History 5 (January 1980): 1-39; Tyler Stovall, "Triends, Neighbors, and Communists:' Community Formation in Suburban Paris during the Early Twentieth Century," Journal of Social History 22 (Winter 1988): 237-254; Alain Cottereau, "The Distinctiveness of Working-Class Cultures in France, 1848-1900," in Katznelson and Zolberg, Working-Class Formation, 113; Leslie Ann Schuster, "Workers and Community: The Case of the Peat-Cutters and the Shipbuilding Industry in Saint-Nazaire, 1881-1910," Journal of Social History 27, n. 4 (1994): 777-797; James R. Lehning, Peasant and French: Cultural Contact in Rural France during the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 78. 5. Alf Ludtke, ed., The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 5-6. 6. Raymond A. Jonas, Industry and Politics in Rural France: Peasants of the here, 1870-1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).

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Chapter 1 An Industry Builds a Town: Shipbuilding and Saint-Nazaire The development of the French shipbuilding town of Saint-Nazaire, located in Brittany, provides a valuable tool for examining the unmistakable links between industrial growth and urbanization. A small village known in 1840 only for its regional port and fishing industry, Saint-Nazaire became an industrial town of national importance by the 1880s due entirely to the installation of shipbuilding yards within its confines. Yet it also stands as an example of urban growth at odds with the emergence of many French cities during the nineteenth century. Here, industrialization and urbanization occurred first intermittently but became quite sudden and explosive after 1880, transforming the city and, within just a few decades, attracting thousands of working-class residents. This pattern of uneven development is most apparent in population statistics; the village of barely 1,000 residents in 1846 grew to 6,500 in 1861 and then in the next five years nearly doubled to 12,000 residents. Economic development came to a sudden halt in the late 1860s, actually reversing urban growth, and only with the installation of industrial shipyards in the city in 1881 did the population once again expand, to 16,000 by 1882, 20,000 by 1886, and 35,000 by 1903. Given the economic climate of western France, the evolution of the town of Saint-Nazaire from a small port into a major shipbuilding center in a few decades was particularly striking. Located at the mouth of the Loire, this town

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A Workforce Divided

became the fastest growing city in Brittany in the latter part of the century. Economic activity in the lower Loire Valley had long been centered in Nantes, a prominent national port in the eighteenth century and from the midnineteenth century the thriving hub of an iron and steel industry with a population of 118,000 in 1872.1 By the 1890s, however, Saint-Nazaire's maritime traffic and shipbuilding capacity had surpassed that of Nantes. While the 1880s and 1890s constituted the primary era of industrialization and urbanization for Saint-Nazaire, the foundations had been generated by two earlier periods of economic progress. The urban and industrial development of the 1850s and 1860s, though short-lived and resulting in stagnation, unemployment, and a considerable drop in population, was responsible for gathering and training the labor force and for establishing the city's industrial infrastructure—an international port and ship construction facilities.2 While the shipbuilding industry accounted for Saint-Nazaire's emergence after 1881 into an important urban center and port town, industrial expansion brought neither stability nor progressive economic growth. Industries other than shipbuilding did develop, including some ancillary enterprises, but they were few in number and transitory. The city's economy and the condition of the working class came to depend wholly on this single industry, represented by the Loire and the Penhouet shipyards, the latter owned by the largest corporation in the nation's maritime sector, the Compagnie Generate Transatlantique (Transat). Unfortunately, shipbuilding could not boast a record of steady growth or continuous employment. In the thirty years prior to the Great War, France's shipbuilding industry underwent several cycles of expansion and development, each followed by stagnation and crisis and with painful ramifications for this single-industry city and its working class. SaintNazaire's dependence on a single, unstable industry underscored the fragile underpinnings of its economic and urban growth. INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT Brittany's reputation in the nineteenth century as one of the most economically underdeveloped regions of the nation made Saint-Nazaire a most unlikely candidate for industrial development. A traditional, rural society prevailed, complete with a predominantly agricultural population, conservative nobility, and a small business class.3 Here the pace of industrialization and urban growth ranked among the slowest in France. One study described the region during this era as "a deliberately peasant society still tied to the rectory and the chateau," which showed "a congenital incapacity to stimulate the growth of large-scale industry."4 Comparisons with the rest of France highlight the dominance of agriculture in shaping the economy and patterns of life in the five Breton departements. By 1880 only 12 percent of Brittany's active population worked in industry, a figure that rose to only 23 percent thirty years later, far below the national average. Conversely, as of 1913, 57 percent

An Industry Builds a Town

11

of Brittany's population continued to live from agricultural production, compared with the national average of 40 percent. Urban development also lagged: only 27 percent of the Breton population lived in urban areas in 1911, far below the national figure of 44 percent. Contemporary travel guides capitalized on the slow pace of progress and promoted Brittany as a region alien to all facets of modern life and untouched by its complexities.5 They appealed to tourists with the promise of an unknown and unfamiliar land, complete with a hypnotic climate and landscape and a "simple race of people" described as sometimes savage and "forbidding." These proved compelling features, and the region attracted "poets and painters, even polite society, [who traveled] there in search of an exoticisme . . . [and] a renewal of inspiration through contact with primitive populations."6 Gustave Flaubert and Maxime du Camp voyaged there in 1847, drawn by the lure of a land "foreign and remote" and discovered it to be "three centuries behind the rest of France."7 So widespread was this characterization of a mysterious and primitive land that Dr. Emil Souvestre, a well-known resident of Brittany's largest city, Nantes, wryly commented that cultivated Parisians, entranced by the growing "mythomania" about Brittany, came in search of "people from the middle ages."8 In the first decades of the nineteenth century, mostly sailors, ships' captains, fishermen, and their families inhabited Saint-Nazaire. It held nothing of appeal to outsiders, and some of those who traveled there, like Maurice Stendhal in the 1830s, found it an "unpleasant village."9 In the mid-1840s economic links to the port of Nantes, only thirty-nine miles upstream, dissolved the insular life of this village and altered its course of development. Profiting from a steady increase in international maritime activity in the early 1800s, Nantes had quickly become a national center of shipping activity, transporting sugar and slaves for the Americas and importing a wide range of goods. From the 1830s, however, advances in the size of oceangoing vessels compromised the activity of this port. The bed of the Loire at the approach to Nantes proved too shallow and narrow, particularly at low tide, to accommodate the large steamers and cargo ships that now averaged over 300 tons.10 To forestall the diversion of maritime traffic to other ports and the eclipse of commercial life, Nantes' leaders sought to develop nearby Saint-Nazaire as an outer harbor to their own. Recognizing the need for an international port in the region, the state allocated 7 million francs in 1838 for the expansion of SaintNazaire's basin and dock facilities. Construction on the basin and on a regional rail network began in 1848 and brought hundreds of laborers to settle in Saint-Nazaire. While Nantes' leaders felt "obliged, under threat of total extinction" to support this new outer harbor, they also worked strenuously to preserve sole control of overseas trade, in part by preventing the installation of warehouses at Saint-Nazaire's port.11 So determined were Nantes' officials to protect this commercial monopoly that they objected strenuously when SaintNazaire's leaders tried to create a chamber of commerce to promote economic

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activities.12 Contemporary analysts regarded these two ports as serving complementary interests: Saint-Nazaire remained the head of the rapid overseas routes, the port used by the enormous cargoes transporting coal, and cargoes that in no case could be conveyed to Nantes until the river bed is improved: Nantes, on the other hand, became the transit port for heavy cargo, [which was] transported by boats of average tonnage [from SaintNazaire to Nantes] and then continued its travel into the interior.13 The restrictions on growth proved hazardous for Saint-Nazaire and its residents. Maritime traffic did expand sharply at Saint-Nazaire, with the port appearing "a forest of masts and of steamship smokestacks,"14 but completion of port facilities and the railroad in 1857 meant shrinking job opportunities and sudden and widespread unemployment for the workforce. As Nantes' businessmen had planned, Saint-Nazaire had been constrained to a transshipment center that received, unloaded, and transported merchandise by rail or boat upstream to Nantes.15 ECONOMIC GROWTH: 1860-1867 In 1860, the juncture of national interests and the enterprising activities of one company brought renewed promise to Saint-Nazaire. Colonial expansion and advances in international commerce from the first half of the nineteenth century had brought a rapid increase in maritime traffic and offered European merchants access to new trade opportunities and materials. Commerce between the United States and Europe doubled in the five years from 1830 to 1835. In this environment, shipping companies became as basic to national economic strength as the rail networks then being aggressively promoted and constructed throughout Europe. The French government, like many industrial nations at the time, actively encouraged nascent shipping companies and promoted national shipbuilding with a variety of direct and indirect subsidy programs, such as providing state funds for the operation of postal routes. In the business community, Emile and Isaac Pereire, leading investors in the economic expansion of the Second Empire and hugely successful in matching investment to economic opportunity, responded to the great need for national shipping services and to the state's willingness to provide funding for such ventures. In 1855 they established the Compagnie Generate Maritime (CGM), later, the Compagnie Generate Transatlantique and founder of Saint-Nazaire's Penhouet shipyard, proclaiming that "the most immediate reason for which our company was formed, was the creation, with the participation of the State, of great transatlantic lines so strongly demanded by commerce and industry."16 A government subsidy catapulted the Transat into shipbuilding and became the turning point for French shipbuilding and for Saint-Nazaire. In 1858 the first shipping company to operate postal routes for the French state to New York and Central America withdrew from the project, claiming financial

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difficulty. This coincided with the CGM's search for additional capital and allowed the Pereires to negotiate lucrative state funding.17 Eager to continue postal service and to secure the survival of a national shipper, the government revised the original 1855 subsidy for this route to the CGM's specifications. The company would receive 9.3 million francs annually for operating two postal routes over a twenty-year period as well as "an advance of capital equal to two years of subsidies, that is, 18.6 million francs, without interest and payable in twenty years" to cover the company's modernization and expansion.18 In this way, the Pereires acquired a substantial, interest-free government loan as well as annual funding to expand and restructure their company and to service a twenty-year contract to major commercial centers.19 At the same time, the Pereires lobbied to strike a provision requiring the purchase of eleven postal vessels constructed in French yards, arguing that French shipyards possessed neither the experience nor equipment to build transatlantic vessels in the allotted three years. Moreover, they believed that the substantially higher costs of French construction would jeopardize their financial stability.20 The government held fast to its goal of reinforcing shipbuilding but did reduce the construction requirement.21 Yet relying on French shipyards for even half the steamships required for the New York line proved difficult for the Transat. The Pereires found French shipyards deficient in technological expertise and equipped to construct only sailing vessels, tramps, and coasters. Transoceanic liners had vastly different specifications from those of their predecessors, sailing ships, and most French yards lacked the facilities, such as metal shops, enlarged construction slips, and skilled workers, to undertake the metalwork that dominated construction of iron hulls. Construction in French yards meant production delays, antiquated equipment, handlers unskilled in "exceptional construction," and an overall lack of experience in building transatlantic vessels.22 Furthermore, the cost averaged one-eighth to one-half more than for British vessels.23 At the Forges et Chantiers de la Mediterannee the estimated cost of vessel construction was 1 million francs over the British price of 245,000 francs. With existing yards deemed grossly inadequate and the success of the Transat's shipping business dependent on the "good construction of our steamships [and] their irreproachable sturdiness," the shipping company found that it had no choice but to turn shipbuilder.24 Saint-Nazaire presented a choice location for a shipyard for several reasons, in particular the presence of a captive and skilled shipbuilding workforce. Ship construction had long been a traditional industry in this corner of Brittany due to the geography of the Grande Briere, a marshland covering about 20,000 hectares just north of Saint-Nazaire. Briere residents lived on a dozen small islands in the marsh or in shoreline villages, traveling and working on the intricate canal and waterway system that lined the marsh. As a consequence of nearly year-round dependence on boats for transportation, communication, and sate of the marshland's single largest crop, peat for heating fuel, the Brierons had been building ships at private docksides for several hundred years. In the

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A Workforce Divided

first part of the century, the increasing importance of national maritime commerce and a growing market for large sailing vessels for ocean and coastal traffic had transformed this local artisanal industry. The 1820s and 1830s saw the consolidation of shipyards in the port towns of Mean and Rose, just east of Saint-Nazaire, which drew heavily on this population of experienced shipbuilders. In construction of wooden vessels, coasters, and barges as well as large oceangoing vessels, the new yards departed from older forms of production and organization. These were not dockside shops constructing small units one by one but shipyards that required capital for enlarged facilities and an expanded labor force. They engaged in volume production and nearly year-round work by catering to both international and regional shipping companies. Consequently, the builder became less a working shipwright than a businessman with substantial capital requirements, marketing concerns, and a labor force to maintain. By the 1840s the half-dozen yards at M6an and Ros6 and the two large yards at Nantes produced approximately one-quarter of all French vessels.25 By the time the Transat had begun its search for a locale for its shipyard, this community's expertise in ship construction had become widely recognized.26 In addition to a shipbuilding workforce, by 1860 Saint-Nazaire could offer the Transat rail connections to the interior and to Nantes' iron and steel industry, a recently modernized port, plans for an expanded second basin and dock, and ample space for construction facilities. Renting land on the peninsula of Penhouet on the northeastern edge of Saint-Nazaire, the Transat engaged John Scott, an internationally recognized Scottish shipbuilder, to develop and manage a shipbuilding facility equal to the advanced British yards. Scott agreed to provide some of the capital and take the risks in return for a promise that most of the Transat's construction business would go to his primary facility in Greenock, Scotland, and to the new Saint-Nazaire yard. Scott undertook the development of workshops and four construction slipways at Saint-Nazaire, equipped the yard with "powerful and advanced mechanical equipment" from England, and brought fifteen British foremen to instruct 600 Brierons in the new trade of metal shipbuilding.27 Town leaders were enthusiastic about the installation of an industrial facility in their city. Anticipating a "profitable" enterprise for the city at large, they financed the construction of a seawall to protect the new docks and slipways.28 Opening in September 1862, the Penhouet yard became the first regional shipyard, and one of the first nationwide, specializing in construction and repair of iron, oceangoing vessels. From 1862 to 1866, it constructed eight transatlantic steamers and repaired and modernized steam and sailing ships for shipping companies and for the French government.29 Despite the tremendous commitment of resources by city, state, and corporation, production at Saint-Nazaire's Penhouet was at first restrained and then collapsed entirely in 1866. The 1860freetrade treaty with Britain, which reduced tariffs and abolished France's transport monopoly with its colonies, sharply restricted demand for French vessels. By lowering operating costs for

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foreign vessels, the treaty made the already high-priced French vessels undesirable and prompted French shippers to contract with foreign builders. Consequently, from its opening in 1862 Penhouet suffered from a lack of demand and came to depend for work almost exclusively on its parent company, the Transat, and its contractual obligations with the state. While the shortage of work thwarted Scott's efforts to operate Penhouet, the Transat's inflexibility in business dealings undercut both Scott's company and Penhouet. In 1864, when Scott's Greenock yard failed to complete a Transat vessel on time, the company imposed the stipulated 1-million-franc penalty. Together the Transat penalty and Penhouet's infrequent construction and repair work created an untenable financial situation for the Scottish builder, and two years later, in 1866, he suspended work at Penhouet and filed for bankruptcy.30 It now fell to the Transat to sustain the shipyard. This proved difficult as the mid-1860s found the company in a precarious financial position. First, international politics and inclement weather jeopardized shipping routes and reduced profit margins sharply. The American Civil War upset communications with the United States, and trade with that nation fell from 657 million francs in 1860 to 177 million francs in 1863. Several years later the Mexican War caused a decline in passenger traffic and a two-thirds drop in revenues on the Vera Cruz line. In 1867 and 1868 an earthquake, a hurricane, and an epidemic of yellow fever impaired traffic on the Antilles line.31 Second, the state's decision to cancel all protections for French shippers worsened matters greatly. In 1866 the empire abolished the tariff on foreign vessels and the surtax on imported merchandise as well as a duty on imported vessel components, thus creating a crisis for already weakened and uncompetitive French shippers. The cost of transporting merchandise on foreign vessels plummeted from 100 francs per ton in 1867 to 40 francs by 1874. The low rates also meant more competition as the number of companies servicing the North Atlantic increased from five to thirteen from 1870 to 1872. With better cargo and passenger rates available on foreign lines, traffic on the Transat declined and, in just one year, company profits fell by nearly 66 percent, from 4 million francs to 1.6 million.32 Finally, the Pereires' poor business and management skills aggravated the weak climate for commerce and trade. Emile and Isaac Pereire had learned little of the financial or technological rudiments of shipping and shipbuilding since the company's inception. Their inattention, best illustrated by the Transat's construction of paddle steamers when most builders had adopted screw propeller steamships for transoceanic travel, made it less possible for the company to recoup the losses of the 1860s.33 Again, the state came to the aid of the Transat, advancing an interest-free loan of 4 million francs and granting the company a postal route to Panama that generated an annual subsidy of 750,000 francs.34 Saint-Nazaire's politicians and workforce expected the company to assume control of Penhouet and resume construction, but the Transat had little interest in a now foundering and risky industry and, ignoring pleas from Saint-

16

A Workforce Divided

Nazaire's city council, closed Penhouet to new construction in 1868. It concentrated its ship modernization and repair work at a Bordeaux yard and left only a small crew at Saint-Nazaire to attend to dockside repair and maintenance.35 Moreover, the company reacted to the abolition of price supports for shipbuilding by ordering most of their new vessels from British shipyards, including five vessels for about 5 million francs in 1872 alone.36 With local officials still reeling from the closure of Penhouet, the Transat chose to transfer the point of embarkation for its Antilles line from Saint-Nazaire to Le Havre, depriving Saint-Nazaire of the economic activity generated by passenger and commercial traffic. This through traffic, an estimated 30,000 passengers annually who assembled in the city for a night or two prior to each embarkation and in need of accommodations, food, and travel provisions, invariably sustained many merchants and constituted a substantial, if undocumented, source of income. The Transat's decisions produced the first in a series of bitter invectives from Saint-Nazaire leaders and public debates on the corporation's responsibility to the city and the workforce. The company's retreat from SaintNazaire angered and frightened local officials; it signified disregard for the fragile urban economy, for the "two-thirds of its population" who depended on the company for dockwork and ship construction, and for the merchants whose trade hinged on port activity. Once hailed as patron and guardian of SaintNazaire, the Transat now suffered indictment as an irresponsible monopoly intent solely on its own profits and thus dangerously poised to "leave [the city] in ruins."37 From the perspective of city residents, the company's dominant position in the local economy, providing jobs for the city's workers and bolstering local commerce, stipulated, much as a condition in a written contract, a responsibility for the survival of the city and its workforce. The most vocal and determined critic, Henri Duval, a Saint-Nazaire merchant who would lead the city's chamber of commerce during the economic resurgence of the early 1880s, had little sympathy for the company's claims that SaintNazaire had proven an unsound choice as head of the Antilles line.38 For Duval, the shipper's acceptance of government subsidies had subtly altered the company's responsibilities and denied it the freedom to conduct business as usual. Industrial activity, he argued, was circumscribed by "the general interest," which included the interest of the company's first city, SaintNazaire.39 The Transat's acceptance of "generous" state support meant that it was no longer liable only to shareholders and profit margins. Duval made a final appeal to the Transat on the basis of good conscience. The shipper's decision to close operations at Penhouet evidenced "bad will" toward SaintNazaire, while the city had "made every concession possible" to sustain Transat activities, evidenced by the vast public works program. Saint-Nazaire had provided the Transat the most beautiful and deepest docks, it had rented [the Transat] extensive and valuable tracts of land at a low price, [and put] all the port personnel at its permanent disposal.

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The piers of the first basin had been reconstructed for [the Transat]; the creation of the second basin is a result of the awarding of [Transat] services to Saint-Nazaire, the construction of the locks for this second basin are being rushed and undertaken quickly to furnish [the yard] with large areas for repairs.40 For Duval, Saint-Nazaire's commitment obligated the company to a fair return. Over the next forty years, this conflict between the corporation's accountability to stockholders and to its place of business and workforce erupted whenever the Transat considered scaling back maritime and shipbuilding operations at SaintNazaire. The city and its workforce remained hostage to the economic exigencies of its primary corporate presence. The establishment of Penhouet in the 1860s represented the transformation of French shipbuilding from a small-scale, artisanal trade, to a heavy industry dependent on large reserves of capital, expansive facilities, and a sizable labor force. At the same time, however, Penhouet's sudden demise prefigured the fragility of the transformed industry, just as many of the Transat's decisions underscored the fragility of Saint-Nazaire's economy. While the characteristics of modern shipbuilding—an industrialized setting, external markets, capital investments, a large workforce, and costly materials—illustrated the growing importance of capitalist production in France, they also heralded a new vulnerability for the industry. Subject to narrow international markets and fluctuations in maritime transport and heavily dependent on state aid, French shipbuilding had become a far more precarious and unstable industry than it had been during the era of small-scale yards. Without substantial funding and a steady stream of contracts, stagnation and unemployment would become regular features of this industry.41 French shipbuilding had substantially expanded its facilities and capabilities in this era, but in so doing it had developed into a far more fragile industrial sector. With Penhouet's closing, Saint-Nazaire experienced a new bout of severe unemployment and widespread poverty. Late in 1866, Penhouet laid off 1,200 of its workforce of 2,000. By spring 1867, the remaining 800 workers, most employed at ship repair, also faced dismissal, particularly difficult at a time when the region suffered from poor harvests and epidemics of cholera and smallpox. This halt in production meant that the yard no longer paid out an estimated 6,000 francs in daily wages, which had serious repercussions for workers as well as local businesses. Saint-Nazaire's few industries were incapable of absorbing the unemployed. An 1873 government report found only two industries operational in the city: a manufacturer of coal briquettes for railway engines that employed fifty workers and a foundry whose uncertain future made the dismissal of its four employees imminent.42 Maritime transport became Saint-Nazaire's largest employer by the 1870s. The expansion of port facilities, in 1857 and again in the 1870s, meant rapid increases in the number of vessels and the tonnage of merchandise arriving at Saint-Nazaire. In 1857, 467 oceangoing vessels passed through the port carrying 121,566 tons of merchandise, yet within only three years the port

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A Workforce Divided

serviced 1,541 vessels and 253,000 tons of goods. In the 1840s the arrival of a 500-ton vessel would have been an event for the port, drawing onlookers and much festivity, but by 1870, when port traffic had increased to 2,031 vessels and 655,000 tons of merchandise, it was commonplace to see several vessels over 800 tons arrive daily. So striking was this increase in maritime traffic that the prefet boasted of Saint-Nazaire as France's Liverpool.43 As maritime activity increased, the port at Saint-Nazaire rivaled, and then surpassed, Nantes. The 253,000 tons of merchandise received at the port in 1860 grew to nearly 1 million tons by 1880 and 1,670,000 tons by 1894. By 1890 SaintNazaire became the primary port of the region, handling 3,585 vessels and about 1,250,000 tons of merchandise, compared to only about 800,000 tons for Nantes. In fact, Saint-Nazaire became the nation's fourth busiest port as Nantes dropped to twelfth place.44 In all, between 1872 and 1913 maritime traffic at Saint-Nazaire almost tripled. With developments in passenger and merchandise traffic, Saint-Nazaire became known for an "air of prosperity that . . . charmed the traveler" rather than, as in earlier decades, its "puny and miserable" port.45 By the end of the century, residents could believe "that the future belonged to this genuine seaport while the port of the estuary [Nantes] was condemned to memory."46 Despite an impressive surge in maritime traffic, port activity remained a weak sector in the town. While the proposal of Nantes' businessmen to restrict Saint-Nazaire to a transit port had not become law, these shippers and merchants continued to control all commercial transactions, even for those goods intended for Saint-Nazaire's stores.47 The port's status as transshipment center impeded the growth of complementary industries and of a broad commercial base. Moreover, with maritime traffic limited to dockwork, that is, the loading and unloading of merchandise, the employment base also remained limited.48 One contemporary observer, Armand Audiganne, found that transshipment or receiving centers like Saint-Nazaire required far less labor than distribution ports like Le Havre or Marseilles, which employed, respectively, 4,000 and 12,000 dockworkers to receive, warehouse, and transport merchandise.49 Reliable employment figures for Saint-Nazaire's docks are scarce, but in 1907 the docks employed only 498 workers and as many as 1,500 casual laborers at moments of peak traffic. Comparison with the port of Rouen, which in 1907 employed over 2,000 dockworkers to unload and warehouse nearly double the tonnage cleared at Saint-Nazaire and shipped to Nantes, underscores the limitations of the industry here. Moreover, dockwork had always proved a highly irregular source of employment, for while SaintNazaire's Hailaust lumber company hired 400-500 men each time that they received a shipment, this amounted to only several days of work twice a month. In fact, the utilization of heavy cranes and the proximity of the rail system made unloading oceangoing vessels quicker and less labor-intensive than in earlier eras.50 For all these reasons, employment opportunities on SaintNazaire's docks remained irregular and could not cushion unemployment at the shipbuilding yards. Unemployed shipbuilders accustomed to a steadier income

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could scarcely find refuge in an industry chronically unable to guarantee work for an extended period.51 The residents of Saint-Nazaire suffered some very bleak years before its third era of economic expansion. ECONOMIC GROWTH FROM 1881 Saint-Nazaire's next period of development, markedly different from its predecessors, signaled the beginning of an era of sustained and expanded economic activity that lasted well into the twentieth century. It began in the mid-1870s, at first slowly. Public works projects funded the construction of a railroad line to the small Breton town of Guerande as well as a second basin to accommodate expanding maritime traffic, attracting hundreds of workers to jobs that the sous-prefet described as "difficult and perilous . . . [and that] very often . . . resulted in death."52 The resumption of ship production in SaintNazaire soon overshadowed these short-term construction projects.53 Shipbuilding returned to Saint-Nazaire in 1881, fortified with comprehensive government financing, a stronger international market, and, most importantly, two large, modernized construction yards capable of employing several thousand workers. The reopened Penhouet yard and a new yard, the Chantiers de la Loire, stimulated economic growth and urbanization in Saint-Nazaire beyond the capabilities of dockwork and public works, at long last allowing the city to become a prosperous industrial center. Two factors lay behind the 1881 reopening of Penhouet. First, the Transat emerged from reorganization and expansion in the late 1870s a more competitive and profitable firm and in need of construction and repair facilities.54 The new president, Isaac Pereire, eliminated the "quasi-autonomy" that had been enjoyed by branch offices at Le Havre and Saint-Nazaire, centralized the management structure, and began an aggressive program of expansion.55 The Transat acquired a Mediterranean postal contract worth an annual subsidy of nearly 1 million francs, absorbed part of a shipping line based in Marseilles, installed a maintenance yard there to attend to its vessels, acquired warehouse facilities in Algiers, and applied for renewal of the New York postal contract.56 While these measures made the company financially viable, Pereire also resolved concerns about the sturdiness of Transat vessels and the competence of its crews that had arisen after a Transat vessel sank in 1873. The company added beacons and electric lights to its vessels, stocked spare engine parts for emergencies, and provisioned each vessel with carrier pigeons to maintain contact between land and sea. The results of financial stability and improved customer confidence became quickly apparent. In the five years from 1875 to 1880 annual passenger traffic on the company's lines doubled from 22,000 to 47,000, and tonnage of merchandise carried tripled from 103,000 tons to 316,000.57 Receipts nearly doubled, and profits rose,

too

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A Workforce Divided

While this resurgence in performance and profits made the company's return to construction possible, the lure of hefty construction funds now available with state subsidy legislation constituted the determining factor. In 1881 the state passed the first of several subsidy laws designed to rebuild and support the shipbuilding industry. Long awaited by French shippers and shipbuilders alike, this law provided generous financing for the construction and operation of the French fleet and rewarded shippers for purchasing vessels from French yards. Confident that the government's commitment to French construction would assure continuous and expanded funding, Transat officials planned to reopen the Penhouet yard. The company devoted 8 million francs to expanding the facility and building administrative offices, metalworking and fitting shops, and six construction slipways to handle larger hulls and concurrent production. At the end of Penhouet's first year of operation, the Transat's Board announced that realized savings on repair and construction work, formerly done at a variety of French yards, had warranted initial costs. They estimated that undertaking repairs at the new yard had translated into a savings of 20 to 25 percent, while boiler construction at Penhouet, costing about 15 percent less than at outside contractors, could save 100,000 francs annually.59 Subsidy legislation also prompted the revival of many of Nantes' dormant shipbuilding companies and induced one, the Jollet et Babin shipyard, to open a second yard, La Societe des Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire, at SaintNazaire in 1882. Built adjacent to Penhouet, the Loire shipyard also had eleven hectares of land and six slipways. It employed up to 2,100 workers. Unlike Penhouet, which repaired and constructed primarily for the Transat, the Loire built ships for a more varied clientele, including the governments of Russia and Greece and various small shipping lines. The French military became one of its largest clients, providing half of the Loire's contracts through World War I.60 The combination of reduced maintenance and construction costs and the availability of state funding now made ship construction a rewarding business venture. Shipbuilding again became the dominant industrial presence and largest employer in this city of few industries. Saint-Nazaire's industrial establishments had increased in number from two to fourteen in the ten years since 1872, but together these industries employed fewer than 400 workers. The two largest industries, a foundry and a coal briquette manufacturer, had 239 workers, with the remaining nine factories averaging only 10.5 employees. Over the next several years, as Saint-Nazaire lost two of these factories, the industrial labor force dropped to 267.61 The resumption of ship production in 1881, then, brought an impressive rise in employment figures. The two yards began production with 1,330 workers but had the capacity to employ about 4,000. At the same time that these shipbuilding yards became Saint-Nazaire's primary industry in the decades preceding World War I, they also were among the nation's most important builders.62 Penhouet emerged as France's largest shipbuilder and by 1905 ranked second in the production of machines and

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engines. It ranked first and the Loire third in vessel and tonnage production for the French merchant marine from 1881 to 1903. Yet the installation of Penhouet and the Loire, a boon for Saint-Nazaire's economy and workers, meant trouble for the small shipyards at Mean, Rose, and Paimboeuf. This was a conflict not over customers, as the two sets of yards catered to different markets, but over the limited number of "skilled and serious" Brieron shipbuilders available for work.63 The Transat worked to draw the skilled Brieron workers from the smaller yards to Saint-Nazaire and sponsored competitions to attract skilled British foremen and a few British workers to help "train [France's] unskilled workers."64 The industrial yards won this battle for the local labor pool with the promise of higher wages.65 Consequently, most Briere carpenters left the Mean and Rose yards and began to commute to work in Saint-Nazaire, constituting a sizable proportion of Penhouet's workforce of 1,800 workers.66 Although shipbuilding had undergone a transformation as a result of new funding avenues and modernized facilities, this rejuvenation did not guarantee economic success or stability for the industry or the individual yards. In fact, the expanded scope of production and of investment requirements after 1881 created a new set of pressures for shipbuilding companies. French shipbuilding could now boast of being a modern industrial sector, but its narrow international markets, reliance on state aid, enormous capital investment costs, and the irregular and unpredictable production cycles, which often endangered investments and alarmed stockholders, forged an insecure and unstable industry. It became apparent by the late 1880s that French yards would neither capture the French market nor attract foreign buyers but would remain underutilized and frequently without orders. As a consequence, both Penhouet and the Loire experienced ongoing financial difficulties. The two yards attempted to resolve their problems with various degrees of reorganization and specialization and at the turn of the century even combined to stabilize the cost of materials by controlling local suppliers.67 For the Loire, diversification as well as consolidation within a larger corporation with greater assets became a solution. In 1899 a consortium of prominent metallurgical, rail, and banking companies purchased the Loire shipyard and its affiliate at Nantes.68 The new corporation acted aggressively to regularize production and increase profits, adding a shipyard at Saint-Denis, an industrial suburb of Paris, and a metalworking shop at Petit-Quevilly, near Rouen. The company also specialized production at the four sites, a factor central to the low cost and high quality of British ship production.69 Furthermore, to protect itself against the fluctuations inherent to shipbuilding, the new company broadened production to locomotive construction, machinery, and metalwork. Reorganization brought the company new profitability, with profits rising from a low of 5 percent in 1892 to 14 percent by 1908. Similar concerns prompted alterations in Penhouet's management structure over the next decades. In the late 1880s the Transat imposed cost-cutting measures at Penhouet and restructured the yard to function as an autonomous

22

A Workforce Divided

unit, but in 1891, when this did not produce the desired result, the company admitted that its "powerfully tooled, perfectly equipped" shipyard was underutilized and, except for rare occasions, occupied only with Transat orders.70 Yet without ready buyers, dissolving the financial link to Penhouet would have to wait.71 The Transat's financial plight worsened from 1896 and brought the issue of Penhouet to the forefront once again. In addition, increasing competition from German, British, and American shipping lines endangered passenger and merchandise traffic, while strikes of dockworkers and sailors, depression in the 1890s, and escalating costs of coal and other materials lowered profits substantially. Moreover, the government's decision to open several postal routes to competitive bidding, abrogating the Transat's monopoly, raised the specter of reduced subsidy revenues and restricted operations.72 The Transat finally succeeded in selling Penhouet, valued at 7 million francs, to an entity called the Societe des Chantiers et Ateliers de SaintNazaire-Penhouet, freeing itself, in the words of its officials, from "the difficult management of a delicate organism which requires special competence and an autonomous management."73 While shedding draining financial duties, the Transat became the new company's major stockholder, and for the next fifteen years Transat construction and repair orders had top priority at the yard. In this way, the shipper retained Penhouet as its private shipbuilding yard yet had few risks. The new shipbuilding Societe followed the lead of the Loire and other builders in broadening its client base and diversifying production to include locomotives and marine machinery. It also purchased the Chantiers de Normandie near Rouen and redeveloped Penhouet to specialize in the construction of large luxury liners. Diversification and expansion proved successful here, too, and dividends doubled from twenty-five francs per share in 1901 to fifty francs by 1911.74 URBAN DEVELOPMENT Economic development wholly transformed the city of Saint-Nazaire, creating a sizable working-class population, a wealthy bourgeoisie, and, from the late 1880s, a developed and prosperous urban center where a fishing village had stood only a half century earlier. Yet the intermittent and unstable pattern of economic expansion meant that urbanization also occurred in a piecemeal fashion. The population did not increase progressively, nor did urban development, housing, or municipal services, "elements" that, in the words of a contemporary observer "make up the moral existence of a city," keep pace with demand.75 On the contrary, urban development and social improvements at Saint-Nazaire occurred erratically, following the irregular pattern set by the city's leading industry. Saint-Nazaire's first population increase came in 1848, when construction of the first basin and of rail lines into Brittany and to Nantes attracted hundreds of unskilled laborers and their families to the city. By 1856, the year of the

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port's inauguration, the population had grown from barely 1,000 inhabitants in the early 1840s to 3,000.76 The Parisian journalist Eugene Fourcade likened Saint-Nazaire in this brief period to a gold rush town of the American West. Saint-Nazaire grew, he said, in the "inconsistent and spasmodic fashion in which a California city grows; a gathering of immigrants swelling at the wink of an eye."77 As in a gold rush town, Saint-Nazaire's city leaders proved unprepared for the sudden influx of new residents. Contemporary accounts declared the city in a "state of deplorable abandonment and dilapidation."78 One 1862 newspaper editorial wondered why the working class was still housed in "isolated, unhealthy housing . . . foyers of epidemics."79 The only evidence that leaders paid attention to the increase in population came in 1848, the year that port construction first lured hundreds of unskilled laborers to the city. Concerned that the influx of new residents would be disruptive, Saint-Nazaire's leaders stirred long enough to install a police force.80 Completion of the port and the rail system in 1857 translated into the city's first bout of widespread unemployment. The end of projects that had employed workers over a nine-year period had a devastating impact. The absence of alternative employment led some workers to move to northwestern Brittany, where construction of the railroad network continued. Others resorted to begging, an aspect of urban life that was to become a regular feature in SaintNazaire. Others, unable to relocate and with few options, turned to city leaders for charitable assistance, even though the city's record in this area was quite poor. During construction of the infrastructure, the city had refused relief to scores of working-class families made indigent by erratic work schedules and irregular funding. This pattern changed only in the winter of 1853, when workers awaiting the daily employment call, sharply reduced by poor weather conditions, massed on the steps to the mayor's office. The public display of poverty caused the city to create its first public assistance program, 3,000 francs in family assistance and another 1,000 francs for works projects such as leveling city streets, with free medical services for the poor added two years later. Requests for aid increased substantially after 1857, but assistance did not grow with demand. The swelling ranks of the unemployed inundated city officials and private charities with claims for work, food, and housing, yet relief programs remained inadequate. Saint-Nazaire's second phase of growth, marked by the opening of Penhouet and the expansion of dock facilities in 1862, brought yet another wave of new migrants. Workers came from neighboring departments of Morbihan and the Vendee and nearby cities of Nantes and Indret to work in the construction yards, and, for a short period, Saint-Nazaire became the fastest growing city in France. The population, which had reached 6,500 by 1861, nearly doubled with this second surge of activity to 11,600 by 1866.81 The lack of essential services, including drinking water, prompted the local press to urge the construction of "a church, a hospital, streets, a sewage system, public washhouses, a slaughterhouse, a fish market, a grain market, [and] covered markets" in the center of the city.82 As dock construction, however, provided short-term

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employment, and the shipbuilding industry had not yet proven a permanent force in the economy, there was little incentive to invest in services or housing. In 1862, at the outset of this period of expansion, the real estate company of Alphonse Cezaud purchased a substantial piece of land at the southeastern edge of the city and prepared an elaborate program for urban development. In the spirit of nineteenth-century urban planners, Cezaud's design for Saint-Nazaire would glorify and acclaim the meteoric rise of the city and its industry. The project, which would double the size of the city, called for eighty-two blocks for housing and the development of five public squares, several grand boulevards, twenty-five secondary streets, an expanded quay, public gardens, churches, public baths, a casino, a secondary school, a covered market stretching for several streets, a courthouse with prison, a water distribution center, a theater, and an elegant hotel. Not surprisingly, Cezaud's plans included substantial return for himself and his investors. In exchange for ceding the city land for development and subsidizing the construction of services and public buildings, Cezaud expected the rights to urban concessions, such as the sewer system and electric streetlights, as well as a ninety-nine-year lease on water services.83 Cezaud's company, however, soon went broke, and the redevelopment of SaintNazaire, not to mention decent housing and elemental services, had to wait another twenty years. As a consequence, from the first, the workers of SaintNazaire lived in "hastily constructed housing, most in wood [and] installed without order."84 The Transat soon discovered that the absence of suitable lodging thwarted the recruitment of "choice workers" and they constructed about twenty housing units for workers.85 In 1868, only six years after this new expansion had begun, the closure of Penhouet, the largest employer by far, brought high unemployment and a halt to growth. Causing the dismissal of half of the workforce of 2,000, Penhouet's closure affected 55 percent of Saint-Nazaire's households. Moreover, 300 workers employed on the basin lost their jobs in the spring, for a total of 2,500 unemployed. With no promise of fiiture employment, about one-fourth of Saint-Nazaire's working-class population moved out of the city. In one working-class district alone, the area known as Mean-Penhouet, the residential population fell from 2,524 in 1865 to 1,555. Begging increased again, and the city's charitable institutions could not meet the needs of the growing number of indigent.86 The closure of Penhouet left Saint-Nazaire resembling a dying town rather than a bustling city with a bright and promising future. Saint-Nazaire's third economic renewal, beginning in the mid-1870s, proved qualitatively different from its predecessors. Backed by government funding from 1881, ship production held the promise of greatly improved employment opportunities and progressive economic development.87 Once production began at the shipyards and at the nearby Trignac steel factory, which employed 800 workers in the manufacture of steel plates and bars, SaintNazaire's population increased from about 16,000 in 1882 to 20,182 in 1886 and then to nearly 35,000 by 1901. The population of the working-class district of Mean-Penhouet increased to 4,259 by 1896, more than double its size in

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1862. This time jobs in shipbuilding and steel production attracted more specialized workers, in contrast to the primarily unskilled population that had arrived in the 1870s to build the railroads and port. These new recruits included a "stable population of dockers, factory coalmen, laborers and specialists in naval construction and metallurgy,"88 but population growth continued to remain profoundly dependent on the fortunes of shipbuilding; in 1903 a decline in national ship production caused Saint-Nazaire's population to stabilize, and even fall slightly, for the first time in two decades.89 The city's inability to supply basic amenities like housing, sanitation, and retail establishments became more critical with the resumption of ship production in 1881. While city leaders had been attentive to the infrastructure elements essential for the industrial sector and, from 1862, had utilized municipal fiinds to construct new entries to the port, new locks, bridges, and piers, to deepen the basins, to extend the dock, and to provision them with railroad lines and cranes, they had invariably neglected urban services. Many districts remained undeveloped and without paved streets. An 1885 description by real estate entrepreneur Cezaud, whose urban development project had been unsuccessful twenty years earlier, illustrated the undeveloped and haphazard character of the city: "[N]umerous centers of population" are found on the edges of the city, and "residents float from one to the other of these centers looking in vain for what constitutes the principal district of the city." Housing posed a particular problem; in "the new quarters, somewhat level streets lead through the marshy or untilled fields to the cesspools of. . . fiiture quarters, presently foyers of illness, [which are] scattered" across an expanse of territory equal to a city of 50,000.90 The population of Mean-Penhouet had increased by 1,000 in the five years following 1881, yet the district had seen no housing starts in over fifteen years. In fact, limited housing construction began only in the mid-1880s, furnishing 151 units for this district by 1891 and one large project that housed up to 500. The rest of Saint-Nazaire's workers lived scattered throughout the city, sharing neighborhoods and housing with members of other trades, white-collar professionals, and shopkeepers.91 An inadequate water supply constituted another of the serious "drawbacks from which the town sufferfed]."92 The Loire River was salty at Saint-Nazaire, which meant that the city did not have access to a steady and economical source of water. This helps explain the absence of a developed manufacturing sector; the problem was so dire that the Transat sent the linens from its Saint-Nazaire vessels to laundries at Nantes. Insufficient water also posed a grave problem for residents as the city relied on reservoirs and a distribution system that did not meet demand. In 1907 barely 400 homes had the financial means to contract with a private water supplier, while the majority of households drew their water from one of twelve standing pipes connected to the reservoirs, but twelve taps for a population of 30,000 proved an unsatisfactory distribution. Moreover, the taps could be open only four hours per day due to short supplies of water.93 This led many poor families to turn to unsanitary local wells, and,

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as a result, Saint-Nazaire had a high rate of disease, including unusually high mortality from pulmonary tuberculosis.94 Saint-Nazaire's officials proved more energetic in commercial and administrative development, elements of the infrastructure essential to attract and support local industry. They extended many of the major streets. They won permanent stationing of the 64th infantry regiment for their city. Most importantly, local leaders took pains to construct an attractive center for the city, perhaps borrowing from Cezaud's development plans of 1862. Beginning slowly in 1875 and then accelerating under Mayor Gasnier in 1884, the "transformation and embellishment" of the city promoted the success of the burgeoning bourgeois population. Saint-Nazaire's small shopping district was transformed into a commercial and administrative center befitting a thriving regional center. By 1896 the city boasted new buildings to house the law courts, the chamber of commerce, and the post office, as well as a municipal library, an expansive covered market, and a public garden. The central business district housed new shops and services, including seven shoemakers, seven tailors, five department stores, several florists, numerous butchers, and five medical offices. Saint-Nazaire's prosperity and the number of travelers who passed through the city warranted the construction of an elegant casino and a hotel offering sixty guest rooms.95 While these developments undoubtedly improved life for residents, those traveling through the city in 1900 found little to recommend it. Douglas Goldring, a British travel writer, noted that the city's modern boulevards held a "desolating lack of interest" and pronounced Saint-Nazaire a "bleak," "poor, dull, [and] squalid place."96 British observers agreed. "The town [outside of the central quarter] has a somewhat monotonous and dreary appearance, and there is nothing except the beach to attract visitors."97 Besides determining the quality of life for Saint-Nazaire's workers and bourgeoisie, promoting infrastructure development, and stimulating population growth, the shipbuilding industry invaded and shaped the city's public life. The majority of citywide celebrations and festivals focused on shipbuilding and maritime hallmarks, such as the annual Great Maritime Week. Organized, sponsored, or funded by the shipyards, these events came to impose a notion of community identity fashioned by the shipyards and by business leaders. Occurring several times a year, these celebrations included port inaugurations, ship launchings, and receptions for the crew and officers of foreign vessels. They attracted thousands of participants and may have been the only occasions when workers and bourgeoisie gathered for the same event, though festival planners took care to segregate the two classes with different activities. The launching of Penhouet's first vessel, the Imperatrice-Eugenie, became the occasion for the city's first major celebration in 1864. The inauguration of the second basin was honored in May 1881 with "an allegorical and historical procession" and two days of sporting events attended by thousands of residents and visitors.98 In 1907 festivities to celebrate the new port entry drew 10,000 people. Three days of events followed, featuring parades, ballooning displays,

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competitions, and a shipside banquet for government officials. Ship launchings were by far the most important and commonplace of Saint-Nazaire's elaborate public ceremonies. The entire city often turned out, watching as shipwrights carefully guided the vessel off its berth and into the water. After listening to congratulatory speeches, the crowd attended athletic competitions and concerts while the shipbuilding company hosted a banquet for local officials and visiting dignitaries. Primarily occasions to showcase newly constructed vessels and to thank the workers, launching ceremonies also served as opportunities for shipbuilding companies to lobby visiting government officials for contracts and subsidies and to promote a corporate culture that would be embraced by both workers and residents. Company representatives and urban elites, however, may have been the only ones genuinely festive at launching ceremonies. For the workers, ship launching signified the end of work and the prospect of unemployment.99 The rise of large-scale shipbuilding in Saint-Nazaire both underscored and promoted the commanding position of a new industrial bourgeoisie composed of "industrialists, of rich merchants, of businessmen . . . [and] of managers of construction yards" who moved easily into positions of leadership.100 The municipal council and the chamber of commerce drew their members from among the city's business elite, and the city's mayors also began their public careers as businessmen. Fernand Gasnier, a conservative, four-term mayor, migrated to Saint-Nazaire to establish a business, most likely in the 1870s. He became a successful wood merchant, perhaps an importer, and in 1884, at the young age of thirty-one, began the first of sixteen years as mayor. Auguste Brichaux, mayor from 1909 to 1919, started as a merchant in his hometown of Decazeville. Brought to Saint-Nazaire in 1894 to manage the office of a British coal-importing house, Brichaux joined the municipal council in 1904 and won his first mayoral election only four years later.101 Personal rivalries and antagonisms often divided city leaders, but they did work vigorously to promote Saint-Nazaire and to assure economic stability. As witnessed by the continuous improvements to port, dock, and rail system from the 1860s on, Saint-Nazaire's officials protected their economic base and acted aggressively to safeguard and boost local industry. Mayor Gasnier, responsible for developing the city's core, exemplified the spirit of this business class. Gasnier's resignation in 1888, along with seven city councillors in a dispute with Nantes and the Chamber of Deputies over the autonomy of the port, illustrated the determination of local leaders to preserve a favorable maritime business climate. In the fall of 1888, Nantes' business leaders had proposed using thefiindsraised at both ports for construction at their port, which at long last would give ocean liners access upstream to Nantes. Saint-Nazaire's officials objected to the diversion of funds for a facility that would stiffen competition and reduce traffic at their port. Such a move would also reinforce the city's dependence on Nantes. Since Saint-Nazaire's port was a subsidiary of Nantes', however, without a voice in the expenditure of funds, city officials found that they had no option but a dramatic resignation. The theatrics had the

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intended effect—in Paris, the Chamber altered its stance and allowed tax funds from each port to be spent on improvements at that facility. Saint-Nazaire's politicians won this battle to guard their city from a devastating loss of economic activity.102 With continuous ship production as the cornerstone of Saint-Nazaire's economy, city leaders were also diligent in crusading for vessel contracts.1(b They saw that each production slowdown caused "deplorable" results for the city, "grievous consequences" for the workers, and, potentially, the ruin of the region.104 They understood "the great repercussions for workers' families, . . . and as a result, for local commerce, of [diminished] production in our shipyards."105 Consequently, Saint-Nazaire's political and business leaders did not remain idle while government agencies and shipping companies shaped their economic future. They campaigned for ship contracts, shipbuilding subsidies, and other specific legislation, such as postal subsidies, that benefited their port. They actively lobbied the legislature, the navy, the Department of Commerce, and the shipping companies for contracts for Saint-Nazaire's yards. City leaders were also attentive to contract cancellations, delays, and steps by shippers to reduce their use of the port. On many occasions Saint-Nazaire's mayors, councilmen, and business leaders pressured government officials, through petitions or by directly lobbying ministers in Paris, to look with favor on their city's shipyards.106 Historians and contemporaries have rightly heralded the pivotal role of the shipbuilding industry, specifically, the establishment of the Penhouet and Loire shipyards in 1881, in Saint-Nazaire's development.107 The two yards provided a durable economic base, supported regional auxiliary industries, and served as the impetus for population growth. They raised the economic promise of SaintNazaire and facilitated the development of a working class, a business community, and numerous small metalworking shops. They even became the focus of flamboyant citywide festivals. In short, the shipbuilding industry was responsible for the city's transformation from a fishing village and regional port to a major industrial community, but the cost of Saint-Nazaire's development was high. Just as shipbuilding had created the city, attracted a large laboring population, and set the format of civic celebrations, the future of the city and its population rose and fell with this one industry. Saint-Nazaire had become a single-industry town where the financial well-being of its merchants and working class depended wholly on the success and stability of shipbuilding. Their fiiture had become inextricably linked to the capacity of this industry to ensure continuous production and regular employment. The extent of the industry's ability to support the community with full employment and the role of government subsidies in its failure to do so are the subject of the next chapter.

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NOTES 1. Jack Reece, The Bretons against France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 46. Nantes boasted eight foundries, several shipbuilding yards and four mechanical shops. Nearby industrial establishments included a forge at BasseIndre, lead works at Coueron, and a state munitions factory at Indret. 2. Many studies document the development of Saint-Nazaire and its port. See Marthe Barbance, Saint-Nazaire: Le Port, La Ville, Le Travail (Moulins: CrepinLeBlond, 1948); Georges Bastard, Saint-Nazaire: Son Histoire (Nantes: Imprimerie de V. Forest, 1881); Paul Bois, Histoire de Nantes (Toulouse: Privat, 1977); Elicio Colin, Nantes et Saint-Nazaire (Paris: Dunod, 1920); Fernand Gueriff, Historique de SaintNazaire: Des origines a la construction du port (Imprimerie de la Presqu'ile Guerandaise: Guerande, 1960); Henri Moret, Histoire de Saint-Nazaire et de la region environnante (Nantes: Imprimerie du commerce, 1925); Societe de Geographie Commerciale, Saint-Nazaire: Son Port, Son Commerce (Saint-Nazaire: Grande Imprimerie, 1907); Maurice de Brossard, De Nantes a Saint-Nazaire, I'estuaire de la Loire (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1983); Michelle Nolla and Daniel Sicard, "La Creation du Port de Saint-Nazaire; un Siecle de Travaux: 1835-1935," 303 3, trimestre 4(n.d.):14-23. 3. Christian Gras, "Les Disparites Economiques Regionales," in Histoire economique et sociale de la France, edited by Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979), 323, 339; Claude Geslin, "Le Syndicalisme Ouvrier en Bretagne Avant 1914" (These de Troisieme Cycle, Universite de Paris X, Nanterre, 1982), iv. 4. Gilbert Leguen, "D'une Revolution Manquee a une Revolution Possible," in Histoire de la Bretagne, edited by J. Delumeau (Toulouse: Privat, 1969), 464. 5. Reece, The Bretons against France, 46-47; Maryon McDonald, "We Are Not French!" Language, Culture and Identity in Brittany (London: Routledge, 1989), 4; Gras, "Les Disparites Economiques," 339; Leguen, "D'une Revolution Manquee," 468469; Michel Lagree, Religion et Cultures en Bretagne (1850-1950) (Paris: Fayard, 1992), 215. 6. Leguen, "D'une Revolution Manquee," 464. 7. Gustave Flaubert and Maxime du Camp, Par les Champs et Par les Greves, edited by Adrianne J. Tooke (Geneva: Droz, 1987), 25-26. The region was also known for the "filth of its inhabitants." 8. Quoted in Flaubert and du Camp, Par les Champs, 26. 9. Maurice Stendhal, Memoires d'un touriste (Paris: Dupont, 1838), 440. 10. Pierre Augustin Eusebe Girault de Saint-Fargeau, Dictionnaire Geographique, Historique, Administratif Industriel, et Commercial de toutes les Communes de la France (Paris: Librarie de Dutertre, 1851), vol. 3, 22; Notice sur le Developpement de Saint-Nazaire, 1820-1899 (Saint-Nazaire; Imprimerie de Fronteau, 1889), 4; Bois, Histoire de Nantes, 322-335; Roger Joxe and Jean Casevitz, "Nantes, la Ville et l'lndustrie," Annales de Geographie 38 (1929): 230-245; Abel Durand, "Le Port de Nantes," Extrait de Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie Commerciale de Paris 32, n. 5 (1910); Colin, Nantes et Saint-Nazaire, 28-35. 11. Etienne Port, Saint-Nazaire et la Loire Maritime (Angers: Germain, 1904), 8; Fernand Gueriff, Historique de Saint-Nazaire: De la Construction de Port a nos Jours.

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(Guerande: Imprimerie de la Presqu'ile, 1963), 199; Brossard, De Nantes a SaintNazaire, 291; Great Britain, Board of Trade, Cost of Living in French Towns (London, 1909), 318-319; Association de Recherche et d'Etudes du Mouvement Ouvrier de la Region de Saint-Nazaire, Saint-Nazaire et le Mouvement Ouvrier de 1848 a 1920 (Rennes: Imprimerie Commerciale, 1980), 17-20; Bois, Histoire de Nantes, 319-325. 12. Bois, Histoire de Nantes, 223-330; Gueriff, Historique de Saint-Nazaire: De la construction deport, 200; Colin, Nantes et Saint-Nazaire, 32; Fernand Gueriff, "SaintNazaire sous la Ille Republique," Le Memorial des Bretons (Rennes: Breizh, n.d.), 103105. 13. Quoted in Maurice Sarraut, Le Probleme de la Marine Marchande (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1901), 164. 14. Louis Simonin, "Les grands ports de commerce de la France: Nantes et le bassin de la Loire," Revue des Deux Mondes (15 November 1877): 425. 15. Notice sur le Developpement, 1-4. 16. AN 9AQ392 (140mi24) "Proces-verbaux, Comite de Direction," 23 May 1855; Rene Laurent, Evolution Chronologique de la Compagnie Generale Transatlantique Depuis Son Origine (1855) (Paris: Imprimerie Transatlantique, 1959), 9-10. Famous for financing the nation's first passenger railroad line, the Paris-Saint-Germain in 1835, as well as numerous other railroad concessions in France, Switzerland, and Austria, the Pereires are perhaps best known for establishing the Credit Mobilier in 1852. A leading spur to French economic development under the Second Empire, the Credit Mobilier gathered small investors to fund railroad construction and real estate ventures, as well as insurance companies and public utilities like gas and lighting. See Chapter 2 for more on the development of the CGM. 17. Marthe Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie Generale Transatlantique: un siecle dfexploitation maritime (Paris: Arts et Metiers Graphiques, 1955); 47; Jean Autin, Les Freres Pereire: le Bonheur d'Entreprendre (Paris: Librairie Academique Perrin, 1984), 167-168. This appeared good fortune for the CGM, but journalist A. Crampon claimed at the time that the Pereires had given a "round sum" to the owner of the company that held this contract from 1855 to discourage him from fulfilling the postal contract. A. Crampon, La Compagnie Transatlantique, son deficit et sa situation (Paris: Imprimerie Balitout Questroy, 1868), 6. 18. Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 48. 19. The Transat won another subsidy in February 1862 that provided 3.4 million francs annually for a postal line to Vera Cruz and an advance of 4 million francs. Journal de Saint-Nazaire (18 March 1862, 24 March 1871); Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 47-50; Laurent, Evolution Chronologique, 13-14; Crampon, La Compagnie Transatlantique, 6-9. 20. AN 9AQ3 "Rapport Presente par le Conseil D'Administration," 19 December 1861, 9-14. 21. This pleased the Transat but not all parties at Saint-Nazaire, one of the cities under consideration as the site for a shipyard. The local press argued that foreign yards should not be permitted to construct vessels that the "Minister obviously and very certainly understood as reserved to French industry" and suggested that the Transat had used "subterfuge" to maneuver favorable provisions. Journal de Saint-Nazaire (20 October 1861). 22. AN 9AQ3 "Rapport Presente par le Conseil D'Administration," 19 December 1861, 12; Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 42-44, 50-51.

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23. An 1862 French study found that ships built in Canada and finished in England sold at 250 francs per ton while vessels constructed in French yards cost 400 francs per ton. Ambroise Colin, La Navigation Commerciale au XIXe Siecle (Paris: Rousseau, 1901), 180; Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 51; Autin, Les Freres Pereire, 170— 171. 24. AN 9AQ3 "Rapport Presente par le Conseil D'Administration," 19 December 1861, 11. British shipbuilders often held stock in shipping companies as one way to assure repeat vessel contracts. The owner of the French shipping company Messageries Maritimes founded a shipbuilding yard at Marseilles in 1855. Louis Baudoin, Histoire generale de la seyne-sur-mer et de son port depuis les origines jusqu 'a la fin du XIXe siecle (Marseille: Louis Baudoin, 1965), 802-803; Sidney Pollard and Paul Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870-1914 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 92-96. 25. Alb. Larbaletrier, La Tourbe et les tourbieres (Paris: Masson, 1901), 57-60; Augustin Vince, "Entre Loire et Vilaine. Etude de Geographie Humaine: La Population dans la Presqu'ile Guerandaise et les Pays Bas" (These de Geographie, Universite de Poitiers, 1966), 234; Bois, Histoire de Nantes, 333. The output of the smaller yards is unknown, but the scale of demand in the Briere is suggested by the 5,000 sea and canal voyages made by Brierons in 1901 alone. 26. Armand Audiganne, La Region du bas de la Loire (Paris: J. Claye, 1869), 12; Augustin Vince, Brierons . . . Naguere (Saint-Nazaire: Jean Le Fur, 1981), 74. 27. Pollard and Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 12. This Greenock family firm, considered the world's oldest shipbuilder, had been in business since 1711. 28. Journal de Saint-Nazaire (21 July 1862). The Transat also contributed to the infrastructure, donating 1 million francs for the construction of locks to service the port and shipyard. 29. AN 9AQ392 (140mi25) "Proces-verbaux, Comite de Direction," 1 November 1863; Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 52-53; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 366-367. 30. From 1871 to 1873, half of the Transat's revenues came from postal subsidies. Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 83; Loire-Inferieure. Conseil General, Rapport et Proces-Verbaux des Seances du Conseil General de la Loire-Inferieure (Nantes: Mellinet, 1868) 155, 195-196, 201-202; AN 9AQ392 (140mi25) "Proces-verbaux, Comite de Direction," 3 December 1864; 9AQ369 (140mil) "Proces-verbaux du Conseil d'Administration," 14 April 1868, 18 August 1868. 31. Louis Girard, La Politique des Travaux Publics du Second Empire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1952), 371. The company struggled to stay afloat, in part by slashing freight rates 15 percent on its New York line, but to no avail. 32. New trade agreements promoted the establishment of more shipping companies, and by 1872 the North Atlantic trade, serviced by five companies in 1870, was divided among thirteen shippers. Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 278-280; Rene Girault, "Place et Role des Echanges Exterieurs," in Histoire Economique et Sociale de la France, edited by Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse, t. 4, vol. 1 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979), 204-205; C. Colson, "Measures Adopted by the Different Governments for the Protection of Ocean Navigation: Bounties," International Congress on Navigation (x) 2 sec. com 7 (Brussels: Printing Office, 1905), 1-2; Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 84-86; Girard, La Politique, 369-371; Autin, Les Freres Pereire, 175-177.

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33. Guy P. Palmade, French Capitalism in the Nineteenth Century, translated by Graeme M. Holmes (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1972), 147-148. In healthier economic times, the Pereires would have turned to the Credit Mobilier to bail out the Transat, but the financial house was itself in dire straits. With shares falling from 1,982 francs to 140 francs in less than one year, the banking institution could not salvage itself, much less throw a lifeline to the shipper. 34. Girard, La Politique, 369-370; Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 79-82; Laurent, Evolution Chronologique, 20-21; AN 9AQ358 "Hypotheques prises par l'Etat." 35. ADLA 1M520 "Rapport Mensuel," 2 February 1872; AREMORS, SaintNazaire, 31-33. The Transat rented Penhouet to a Bordeaux-based shipbuilding company that reopened the yard briefly in 1869. See Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 368. 36. AN 9AQ369 (140mil) Compagnie Generale Transatlantique "Proces-verbaux du Conseil d'Administration," 18 January 1872; 9AQ370 (140mi2) "Proces-verbaux du Conseil d'Administration," 13 December 1872, 6 January 1874, 118; Proces-verbaux des Seances du Conseil General de la Loire-Inferieure sessions de 1869 (Nantes: Mellinet, 1869), 299; session de 1868, 25. The Transat claimed that it had not abandoned French yards but in fact had expended 3.5 million francs on repair and modernization in national yards since 1871. 37. Henri Duval, Saint-Nazaire et la Compagnie Transatlantique (Saint-Nazaire: F. Girard, 1869), 5. 38. AN 9AQ369 (140mil) "Proces-verbaux du Conseil d'Administration," 18 January 1872; Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 87. 39. Duval, Saint-Nazaire, 3-4. 40. Ibid., 6. 41. Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 176; Brossard, De Nantes a Saint-Nazaire, 293; Girault, "Place et Role," passim. 42. Audiganne, La Region, 19; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 490; ADLA 1M2124 "Etat de la Situation Industrielle a Saint-Nazaire," 1873. Dockwork may have been overlooked because it provided irregular employment. 43. Justin Vincent and Eugene Orieux, Histoire et geographie de la LoireInferieure (Nantes: Grimaud, 1895), t. 2, 155; Journal de Saint-Nazaire (21 July 1861); Ministere des Travaux Publics. Ports Maritimes de la France, Notice sur le Port de Saint-Nazaire (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1883), 203; Audiganne, La Region, 10; AREMORS, Saint-Nazaire, 23-25; Colin, Nantes et Saint-Nazaire, 36-37. 44. Vincent and Orieux, Histoire et geographie, 155; Bois, Histoire de Nantes, 321; Maurice Le Lannou, Geographie de la Bretagne (Rennes: Plihon, 1952), vol. 2: Economie et Population, 225; Sarraut, Le Probleme, 164-165; Reece, Bretons, 46; Audiganne, La Region, 10; Durand, Le Port de Nantes, 14. 45. Sarraut, Le Probleme, 165. In addition, the hundreds of sailors and voyagers passing through the city each week gave rise to a vigorous nightlife. Travelers supported numerous portside cabarets, including cafe-concerts of "ill-fame," and an increasing number of prostitutes. 46. Le Lannou, Geographie de la Bretagne, 225. 47. Nantes industries depended upon the cheap transport of raw materials, including phosphates from Algeria and Tunis, pyrites from Spain, nitrates from Chile, wood and wheat from the United States, cocoa from Brazil, wood and phosphates from

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Argentina, and copper from the Philippines. The subsidiary benefits of this trade monopoly included the establishment of significant industries, such as sugar refining, biscuit-making, rice processing, and the manufacture of tin cans, soap, and phosphates, which by 1900 employed 17,500 workers. 48. Gueriff, "Saint-Nazaire sous la Ule Republique," 103-105; Durand, "Le Port de Saint-Nazaire," 14; Colin, Nantes et Saint-Nazaire, 32; Audiganne, La Region, 11; Sarraut, Le Probleme, 143; Board of Trade, Cost of Living, 230-234. 49. Board of Trade, Cost of Living, 145, 207, 291; Audiganne, La Region, 11. 50. Board of Trade, Cost of Living, 56, 210, 230, 288-291, 322; Societe de Geographie Commerciale, Saint-Nazaire, 52; Audiganne, La Region, 11. 51. The steady growth of Saint-Nazaire's maritime activity did little to alleviate widespread unemployment. William Sewell shows that in Marseilles in the 1840s increased maritime traffic meant an "increased level of employment" for dockers, rather than new hires. Saint-Nazaire may also have had an underemployed labor force on the docks. In addition, by the early part of the decade, machinery had become generalized in the handling of coal and other imported merchandise, requiring even fewer workers. See William H. Sewell, "Uneven Development, the Autonomy of Politics, and the Dockworkers of Nineteenth-Century Marseille," American Historical Review 93 (June 1988): 616; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 498. 52. ADLA 1M2309 "Sous-Prefet," 11 January 1879. 53. Penhouet had been reopened by the Transat in the late 1870s and employed 800-1,000 "workers of diverse professions" for repair and maintenance work. ADLA 1M520 "Commissaire special," 22 January 1878. 54. Recall that with free trade regulations of 1866, new competition from foreign shippers, declining revenues, and allegations of corporate irregularities, the Transat's capital had been depleted, Penhouet shut down, and shipping operations jeopardized. The minister of finance refused to modify the conditions for repayment of an 1867 loan and recommended economy measures. He also cancelled an unprofitable Pacific route and transferred the 844,000-franc subsidy to expanded service on the New York line. Interest-free loans granted in 1868 had smoothed out the company's financial difficulties only for a brief period and, by 1874, its reserve fiinds had been dissipated and its credit compromised. Under pressure from the state to economize and from shareholders irate over the declining value of stocks, the Transat's Board of Directors resigned, and Isaac Pereire took the reins of the company once again (followed by son Eugene in 1877) and spent 25 million francs modernizing and rationalizing operations. Barbance reports that foul language and fisticuffs marked the meeting between the stockholders and the Board of Directors. However, the Pereires and their allies controlled one-fourth to two-thirds of company shares. 55. Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 95. 56. CGM AH, CGM GG6 208, H. LeMasson, "Histoire de la Compaganie Generale Transatlantique jusqu'a 1933" (dactylographie, n.d.); CGM GG6 209 "Note," 29 December 1881; Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 103-105; Laurent, Evolution Chronologique, 26-27. 57. Although an important international carrier, the Transat never matched the mileage or revenue of Britain's Cunard line, and its share of emigration traffic remained limited. 58. Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 96-97.

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A Workforce Divided

59. Jean Latty, Regime de la Construction Navale en France: Traite D 'Economie Maritime, t. I: La Construction Navale (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1951), 683-684, 1003-1004; CGM AH, CGM GG6 209 "Note," 14, 29 December 1881, 1 December 1882; AN F12 5767 "Primes a la Construction, 1881-1885"; Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 122-124. 60. Between 1881 and 1903, the Loire yards at Nantes and Saint-Nazaire built 123 ships for the French navy, more than any other private company. Penhouet ranked third with 67 vessels. The Loire's production line included sailing ships, cruisers, tugboats, gunboats, battleships, and passenger steamships. Latty, Regime de la Construction, 250; Societe Anonyme des Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire, (Paris, 1910), 16-20. 61. ADLA 1M2128-2 "Situation Industrielle," 1882; ADLA 1M2130 "Situation Industrielle," March 1885, January 1886; AN F24513 "Situation Industrielle," 1883. Employment in the yards appears to have peaked at 4,500 in 1887. 62. In 1913 their combined capital stood at 24 million francs. Alphonse Merrheim, La Metallurgie. Son Origine et Son Developpement (Paris: Editions de la Federation des Metaux, 1913), 257-260. Company leaders became some of the most powerful leaders and advocates of the industry. They led the industry's employer federation, the Chambre Syndicale des Constructeurs de Navires et de Machines-Marines, an organization closely allied with the powerful Comite des Forges and the Union des Industries Metallurgiques et Minieres. In 1913, Jules Roux, then president of the Transat, became president of the Chambre Syndicale, while the Loire's director, M. Chaudoye, stood as vice president. With influential positions, these corporate leaders helped direct national policy on issues like tariffs and subsidies. Their representatives were always present during Chamber debates on maritime subsidies. 63. There are few figures on production at these yards, but in 1873 the yards at Mean built 30 ships of 250 tons. Yves Jean Beloiel-Benoist, "La Grande Briere de 1836 a 1936. Etude de L'Evolution Professionelle, Sociale et Economique" (These de doctorat, Universite de Nantes, 1985), 193. 64. CGM AH, CGM GG5 209 "Note," 15 December 1881. 65. ADLA 1M2309 "Sous-Prefet," August 1861; Fernand Gueriff, "Histoire du quartier de Mean-Penhouet et des anciens chantiers de la construction navale en bois," Bulletin de la Societe Archeologique et Historique de Nantes (1961): 92-94. Wages at the new Saint-Nazaire yard were also higher than at Nantes and, for some trades, higher than at Bordeaux. Mederic-Clement Lechalas, Nantes et la Loire (Nantes: C. Mellinet, 1870), 17. 66. AN 9AQ3 "Generale Ordinaire 1864"; ADLA 1M2309 "Sous-Prefet," 6 August 1861; Nicholas Faucier, Les Ouvriers de Saint-Nazaire, un siecle de luttes, de revokes, de dependance (Paris: Les Editions Syndicalistes, 1976), 13-14; Barbance, SaintNazaire, 367-368. 67. Gaining control of ancillary industries became yet another way for SaintNazaire's shipbuilding companies to stabilize production and guarantee their position in this highly volatile industry. The shipyards consolidated their command of resources by acquiring many of the region's local suppliers. In 1907 the two companies joined France's most prominent steel companies, Le Creusot, Denain et Anzin, and the Acieries du Nord et de l'Est, to create a corporate vehicle to purchase or establish local industries essential to ship production. The new company, the Societe des Usines Metallurgiques de la Basse-Loire (UMBL), first acquired the nearby Trignac steelworks, the primary supplier of sheet metal to regional shipbuilders, to assure

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prompt delivery and low-cost materials. For union leader Alphonse Merrheim, president of the Federation Nationale de la Metallurgie, the acquisition was "typical [of the type] of industrial and employer concentration" common to a heavily capitalized industry like shipbuilding. Concentration continued in 1912, when Penhouet and the UMBL established a local foundry to supply the yards with steel and cast-iron components for warships and ocean liners. The UMBL also moved into other local industries central to ship construction. It invested in an electrical power plant at SaintNazaire, an industry of growing importance to shipbuilding, and soon had the state concession to several mines in Meurthe-et-Moselle. Alphonse Merrheim, "La Cohue Ouvriere: Dans les Chantiers des Constructions Navales," La Bataille Syndicaliste 24 (February 1913): 3; Merrheim, La Metallurgie, 511. 68. The consortium included the Banque de 1'Union Parisienne, La Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, the Acieries Denain-Anzin, and La Compagnie des Chemins de Fer P-L.-M. 69. Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 371-373; Latty, Regime de la Construction, 783-784. Large military and commercial vessels fell to the Saint-Nazaire facility, while smaller vessels and engine work were delegated to Nantes and Saint-Denis. 70. AN 9AQ11 Rapport Presente par le Conseil d Administration, 28 April 1884 (Paris: 1884), 12; AN 9AQ372 (140mi4) "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'Administration," 1, 15 March 1887. 71. AN 9AQ372 (140mi5) "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'Administration," 10 March 1891. 72. CGM AH, CGM GG6 213 Paris, 15 October 1941. Indignant stockholders also accused Eugene Pereire of inattention to commercial considerations. Once again the state came to the rescue, with funding for new, faster vessels to help the Transat meet rising competition on the New York line. 73. AN 65AQM394 Societe Ateliers et Chantiers de Saint-Nazaire, Assemblee Generale, 25 September 1901. 74. Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 377-380. 75. Notice sur le Developpement de Saint-Nazaire, 4. 76. Vincent and Orieux, Histoire et geographie, 155; C.A. Oppermann, "Aggrandissement de la ville de Saint-Nazaire," Nouvelles annales de la construction 121 (January 1865): 1-3. 77. Eugene Fourcade, Revue des Deux Mondes (September 1858). 78. Journal de Saint-Nazaire (5 October 1862). 79. Journal de Saint-Nazaire (21 September 1862). Many of the indigent fell victim to the 1849 cholera epidemic. 80. Brossard, De Nantes a Saint-Nazaire, 290-291; Notice sur le Developpement, 6-7. 81. Notice sur le Developpement, 15; Journal de Saint-Nazaire (12 October 1862); Reece, The Bretons, 46. 82. Journal de Saint-Nazaire, (3 August 1862). 83. Oppermann, "Agrandissement de la ville," 1-2. Cezaud also expected tax exemptions on building materials. 84. Brossard, De Nantes a Saint-Nazaire, 290-291. 85. AN 9AQ392 (140mi25) "Proces-Verbaux, Comite de Direction," 4, 24 February 1863. The Transat's original plan was for worker housing. To retain its most skilled workforce, the Brierons, who commuted weekly from the Briere and lodged in

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A Workforce Divided

nearby M6an, the company built canteens and dining halls. AN 9AQ392 (140mi25) "Proces-Verbaux, Comite de Direction," 8 November 1863; CGM AH, CGM GG6 208 LeMasson, "Histoire de la Compagnie," 45; Journal de Saint-Nazaire (12 October 1862); Philippe Bataille, L1Intervention Patronale Dans la Question du Logement Ouvrier, 1861-1945 (Saint-Nazaire: Ecomusee, 1984), 1-15; Audiganne, La Region, 18. 86. Beloeil-Benoist, "La Grande Briere," 236; Notice sur le Developpement, 11; Gueriff, Historique de Saint-Nazaire: Des origines, 199-201; Jean Meyer, "Une Mutation Manquee," in Histoire de la Bretagne, edited by J. Delumeau (Toulouse: Privat, 1969), 405; Fernand Gueriff, La Marine en bois du brivet: navires et mar ins de Briere (Le Poulignen: Imprimerie J.-M Pierre, 1977), 58; AREMORS, Saint-Nazaire, 28-29, 60. In 1867 alone, at least 1,200 people appealed for assistance. 87. City leaders created a Conseil des Prud'hommes to mediate industrial conflict. Gueriff, Historique de Saint-Nazaire: De la Construction duport, 35-38. 88. Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 493. 89. Notice sur le Developpement, 16; Board of Trade, Cost of Living, 318; Gueriff, Historique de Saint-Nazaire: De la construction du port, 54. 90. Quoted in Gueriff, Historique de Saint-Nazaire: De la construction duport, 48. 91. Audiganne, La Region, 20; AREMORS, Saint-Nazaire, 61; Board of Trade, Cost of Living, 320-323; Gueriff, Historique de Saint-Nazaire: De la construction du port, 58-59; Gueriff, La Marine en Bois, 58. 92. Board of Trade, Cost of Living, 320. 93. Board of Trade, Cost of Living, 318-323; Journal de Saint-Nazaire (10 August 1862); La Democratic deVOuest (22 November 1907). 94. Water became a particularly pressing problem during hot summers and in 1909 caused a serious political crisis. In July, just after Saint-Nazaire residents approved the city's plan to administer a water concession, the city's water supply dried up. This time the dearth of water affected Saint-Nazaire's middle class, who, in previous years, had contracted with local water delivery companies and been untroubled by water shortages. Within a month, public outrage at the incompetent management of the limited resources forced the resignation of Mayor Lechat-Boileve, who had held that office for thirteen years, as well as the public works engineer and the engineer in charge of the water service. Gueriff, "Saint-Nazaire Sous la ITIe Republique," 102-104; Gueriff, Historique de Saint-Nazaire: De la construction du port, 56-57. 95. GueViff, Historique de Saint-Nazaire: De la construction duport, 41, 45-48. 96. Douglas Goldring, The Loire: The Record of a Pilgrimage (London: Constable, 1913), 321. 97. Board of Trade, Cost of Living, 318. 98. Moret, Histoire de Saint-Nazaire, 61. 99. These events became less frequent after 1900, when the Transat launched vessels from Marseilles and Le Havre. Gueriff, "Saint-Nazaire Sous la file Republique," 101-102; Le Petit Nazairien (12, 20 April 1909); Yannick Guin, "Culture et Rituels Ouvriers. Les lancements de navires en Basse-Loire, XlXe-XX siecles," Ethnologie Francaise XIV (1984): 161-176. 100. Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 297. 101. Gueriff, Historique de Saint-Nazaire: De la construction du port, 38-51, 58; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 294-297.

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102. After ten years of lobbying, the chamber of commerce won autonomy for the port in March 1889. Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 306; Moret, Histoire de Saint Nazaire, 898-899. 103. Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Nazaire, Compte-rendu des travaux de la Chambre, Seance du 2 Juillet 1887 (Saint-Nazaire, n.d.). 104. ADLA 1M2162 "Prefet," 1 August 1887; La Democratic de VOuest (8 February 1891). 105. La Democratic de VOuest (21 January 1912). 106. Chamber of commerce records and union and council meetings provide innumerable instances of this activity. See for example ADLA 1M2162 "Prefet," 1 August 1887; ADLA 1M620-621 "Commissariat special," 22 October 1896; AN F12 6773 "Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Nazaire, Seance du 2 Juillet 1887," 12 February 1898, 12 December 1894; "Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Nazaire," 12 February 1891; La Democratic de VOuest (19 March 1897); Le Progres de Nantes (2 June 1897); Moret, Histoire de Saint-Nazaire, 878. 107. Leguen, "D'une Revolution Manquee," 471-^472.

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Chapter 2 Industrial Restructuring: State Intervention,

Special Interests, and Unemployment Industrial shipbuilding, which began production in Saint-Nazaire in 1881 with the promise of economic development, received an enthusiastic welcome from businessmen and residents alike, yet, contrary to expectations, shipbuilding did not signal sound economic expansion or stable employment for the city. The life of this industry over the next thirty years was marked by erratic activity that encompassed both sudden spurts of production and extended periods of stagnation. Ironically, much of this instability was not the by-product of market factors common to builders internationally but of programs instituted by the state to promote and protect France's maritime and commercial interests. For SaintNazaire and for its residents and workers, inextricably bound to the welfare of this industry, state intervention brought both economic expansion and economic uncertainty. This state of affairs was certainly not the intention of Third Republic officials, who enacted a series of programs, beginning in 1881, to reverse the underdevelopment, even stagnation, of the nation's shipbuilding industry. Their activity to protect and fund these sectors transformed and rejuvenated shipbuilding, ending the "period of mourning" that had marked it since 1860, when Napoleon III abolished all protective legislation.1 Government programs and subsidies succeeded in promoting the expansion and modernization of construction yards and

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encouraging production of advanced, commercially viable oceangoing vessels. Construction of cargo and passenger vessels rose sharply, and, by 1913, shipbuilding had become an integrated, capital-intensive industry that met international standards and supported a sharply expanded workforce of 25,000 to 30,000, as well as countless ancillary industries.2 As a result of state programs, French shipbuilding became, like its counterparts in Britain and Germany, a strengthened resource that sustained and promoted the nation's military, commercial, and industrial sectors. Shipbuilding's resurgence also stimulated the development of shipbuilding towns like Saint-Nazaire and furthered the growth of cities like Le Havre and Marseilles. Yet within the framework of this dramatic transformation lies the story of shipbuilding's ongoing stagnation and decline. Although massive funding recast the industry, and each separate program revived production briefly, over the long term state programs jeopardized shipbuilding's position in the international arena. Promoted as the solution to slow and halting growth, government programs did not consistently encourage production, advance technological developments, or further capital accumulation. Instead, they created intermittent increases in demand and output, hindered technological progress, elevated unemployment, and dictated construction priorities unsuited to the market. In the thirty years prior to World War I, French shipbuilding emerged as a remarkably unstable industry. For the thousands of workers dependent on this industry, in Saint-Nazaire and other port towns, state programs translated into frequent and long-lasting rounds of unemployment. Moreover, the impact of state programs extended well beyond jobs to labor politics. As this vast industry proved unable to provide steady employment, Saint-Nazaire's workers learned to shy away from unions and pointof-production struggles. Instead, many came to favor labor peace, affiliating with municipal and state officials to lobby for funding for their shipyards. Unemployment also furthered shop floor discipline. As shipbuilding's workforce suffered the ravages of frequent layoffs, employers discovered in irregular production a valuable tool for discipline and for strengthening their hand in labor relations. This paradox—legislation that promoted expansion and modernization yet impeded consistent development—occurred because maritime programs became subsumed to changeable government policy on the state's role in economic development. This period in Third Republic history was distinguished by a fierce debate on the meaning of laissez-faire and appropriate economic policy, in particular whether the state should sanction free trade or act to shelter, even aggressively promote, key national industries. The fact that the debate was ongoing during the first decades of the Third Republic meant that government programs were not consistent in objective or method but shifted to reflect the political faction currently in power. Policy differences were not the only factors that translated into inconsistent maritime programs. This era also saw industry officials take forceful steps to reshape public policy. The nation's shippers and shipbuilders marshaled their political acumen to craft programs that would channel funds to their particular industry. Corporate self-interest also proved detrimental to national interests and to the health of the industry.

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This chapter investigates how the convergence of political and industrial interests succeeded in transforming, yet undermining, the nation's shipbuilding industry in the decades before World War I. In the 1870s, stagnation arising from national and international factors strengthened the call for state intervention. The format of maritime legislation was shaped by policy debates on state intervention and by the interests of the business community, yet state intervention was not consistently effective, and programs intended to revive shipbuilding and shipping instead fashioned a highly restrictive environment that blocked industrial development and stable employment. The Transat, the Pereires' maritime company that came to depend on state loans and subsidies, provides the national and corporate standpoint for this story. The local perspective comes from SaintNazaire's Penhouet and Loire shipyards and illustrates how maritime programs limited ship production, increased costs, restricted employment opportunities, and encouraged labor quiescence.

THE CALL FOR STATE INTERVENTION Serious risks accompanied the business of international transit in the nineteenth century. According to one British insurance policy, the dangers facing shippers included ""adventures and perils . . . of the sea, men-of-war, fires, enemies, pirates, rovers, thieves, jettisons, letters of mart and countermart, reprisals, takings at sea, arrests, restraints and detainments of all kings, princes and people.'"3 Shipbuilding also proved a financial risk, although less dramatically so. In fact, government subsidies for maritime enterprises can be traced to the mid-nineteenth century, when shipbuilders in most nations found themselves compromised by a variety of highly volatile factors. The first of these, inconsistent demand that caused cyclical production, had been the industry's most salient feature throughout the nineteenth century. The market for vessels fluctuated regularly with the state of national economies and political regimes, international freight and custom rates, and the pace of maritime commerce. Even Britain, which dominated world production of vessels during this period, was not immune to this changeable pattern of demand; the tonnage produced at British yards varied as much as 75 percent from year to year. These periods of reduced production, which became quite usual, restricted growth and posed difficulties for builders. The substantial capital investment costs necessary for heavy industries such as steel and shipbuilding to establish and maintain large, well-equipped construction facilities also impeded the industry's development. Irregular production made investment riskier. Unlike many industries, shipbuilding required specially designed equipment and facilities that, with a halt in production, would lay dormant or underutilized for months at a time. This pattern of repeated periods of reduced production discouraged investment, modernization, and expansion.4 Shipbuilding was also subject to a variety of specifically national factors that encouraged production in some nations and arrested development in others. Britain stands as the most successful instance of national factors buttressing shipbuilding. A reliable market, cheap raw materials, productive facilities, and

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long-standing government assistance account for Britain's preeminence. British shippers dominated international trade and commerce, owning 60 percent of the world's steam tonnage and carrying 50 percent of all oceangoing trade. Maritime supremacy supported an active pool of shipping companies that, in turn, supported dozens of national construction yards. In fact, British demand for vessels was so extensive that it allowed vessel specialization and division of labor among builders, a requisite for low-cost production and improved quality. Second, British builders benefited from cheap supplies of coal, iron, and steel and had access to the "developed iron, steel, and engineering" industries desirable for quality workmanship and low price.5 In addition, stable production and centralization furthered the emergence of a skilled shipbuilding labor force highly regarded for its experience and facility. Finally, British construction yards benefited from state support. Government subsidies begun as early as 1838 eased the countless risks confronting shippers and builders. One of the first programs subsidized mail transport and served as a conduit for funding builders by requiring the use of modern vessels. A few years later, subsidies promoted transport to the colonies and the construction of steam vessels, still in their early experimental stage. British builders' multiple advantages—demand, resources, and state aid—helped make them shipbuilders to the world; from 1900 to 1914 Britain's share of world vessel production reached 60 percent, with British vessels carrying 52 percent of all oceangoing trade.6 In contrast, circumstances in France restricted shipbuilding and intensified the irregularity of production cycles. First and foremost, France did not have a vigorous national shipping industry or a reliable market and the nation's shipping fleet remained a limited and uncertain enterprise. France held barely 10 percent of the world's sailing tonnage in 1850, compared to Britain's possession of nearly half. The figures were roughly similar for steam vessels. France had 68,025 tons in steamships in 1860, compared to 500,140 tons for the British fleet. In addition, the modest quantity of French exports, 3 million tons to Britain's 52 million tons in 1896, required shippers to charge higher freight rates and drove business to the competition.7 French shipbuilding also faced high production costs, an inexperienced workforce, and poorly equipped yards. Lacking advanced engineering industries and cheap coal resources, production costs proved prohibitive. According to an 1862 French government study, British ships sold at approximately 250 francs per ton, while French costs could reach as high as 400 francs per ton.8 The bids of French builders also varied greatly—from 2,850,000 to 4,332,000 francs for hull and machinery.9 This huge disparity in costs left even French shippers little option but to contract with lower-cost British yards. Inexperience with modern construction further constrained the nation's shipbuilding industry. A study commissioned by the Transat on the comparative merits of French and foreign shipyards in 1861 found that French yards had "acquired neither the organization nor importance" to produce the larger, durable iron vessels. British ship workers possessed "a specialty, experience, and means of action incomparably superior" to those of French workers, who remained grounded in the construction of wooden vessels, fast becoming outmoded.10 Lacking the appropriate tools, facilities, and experience, French workers could not construct

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cargo vessels and passenger liners as large as 5,500 tons or hulls to withstand high seas and rapid speeds. These deficiencies in equipment and expertise help explain why as late as 1880 France boasted only one modern construction yard.11 The slow pace of French shipping, costly raw materials, inadequate facilities, and high costs translated into low national demand for new and modernized vessels. French builders could not respond to the promise of international commerce with expansion and modernization, and national yards remained only "few and unimportant."12 Production figures reflected this: the construction capacity of France's private shipbuilding yards, 40,000 tons in 1864, equaled the capacity of just one of Britain's larger yards, the Thames ironworks.13 A British description of a French yard in 1867, despite its clear bias toward British yards, underscores this underdevelopment: [French shipyards] possess only the barest necessities. Two Canadian backwoodsmen with the greatest ease could lay out and complete for occupation and business a French shipbuilding yard in a week, and a ten pound note would go a long way towards paying for the material used. A French iron shipbuilding yard is a trifle more elaborate [with] some oldfashioned tools, bought on advantageous terms at a sale in Liverpool or elsewhere.14 Historically, the French state had not been blind or indifferent to the importance of the maritime sector and had, since the first navigation act of 1651, advanced a variety of solutions to promote its development. Eighteenth-century programs drew on prohibitions as well as heavy taxes to diminish foreign competition and encourage transport on French vessels. Louis XIV's minister, Colbert, argued that an advanced maritime industry was ""one of the most powerful means to carry abundance during peacetime and to make the force of a nation formidable during war'" and funded the construction of merchant vessels.15 In following decades, a host of protective measures, such as tariff exemptions for materials, duties on foreign vessels, monopoly of coastal and colonial traffic for French shippers, and preferential railway rates, encouraged demand at the nation's yards and promoted competitive transport.16 Yet by the 1850s, merchants and shippers bemoaned the desperate need for improved national services and expanded shipping tonnage, pointing to the grave dangers that an insufficient fleet posed to commercial prowess. The dearth of shipping services had even forced French merchants to transport their goods to the Americas in British vessels, a solution that raised costs and often doubled delivery time.17 The government responded by following the lead of Britain and other shipbuilding nations in instituting subsidy programs for mail transport. Postal subsidies were intended to support frequent travel to colonial and commercial centers, encourage the expansion of the fleet, foster shipping, and stimulate shipbuilding. France's initial programs, however, remained woefully underfunded. The problem is best illustrated by the plight of the Compagnie des Paquebot Transatlantique, a shipper granted a postal subsidy in 1847 for transport between Le Havre and New York. Even with state support, the shipper's rates for passenger and cargo transport exceeded those of American and British shippers while the Compagnie's vessels, equipped with less horsepower, took four days longer to make the transatlantic

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18

voyage. After only a few months, the Compagnie resigned from the contract, deeming it insufficient to match foreign capabilities for speed, cost, and cargo. Enterprising businessmen such as Emile and Isaac Pereire contributed to the clamor for state funding. The Pereires' establishment of countless rail lines had naturally brought them to consider the potential in shipping, while their experience with high tariffs on rail lines furthered their interest in state programs. With the first direct transatlantic voyage by a steam-powered vessel in 1838, rapid and punctual ocean travel had proven possible, while advances in technology permitted expanded cargo capacity and therefore greater profits. Attentive to the increase in maritime transport since the early 1800s, the inadequacy of the nation's shipping services, and the boundless financial opportunity, Emile and Isaac Pereire decided in 1855 to "turn capital towards great maritime enterprises."19 With the financial backing of the Credit Mobilier they established the Compagnie Generale Maritime with a capital of 30 million francs, counseling the state that "effective government protection" ought to be extended to the shipping industry.20 As with their railroad ventures, the Pereires promoted this new enterprise as vital to the economic strength and commercial progress of France. The Board of Directors asserted that an expanded national fleet would prove advantageous to the military, while regular communication with colonies and foreign ports would foster administrative links and advance international trade. Additionally, cheap foodstuffs imported on company vessels would benefit French consumers.21 The Pereires' management of the CGM during its inaugural years was hardly the work of cautious and sage businessmen. Contemporaries charged that the Pereires lacked the most basic understanding of shipping and maritime commerce and so had committed the company to constructing and chartering vessels, purchasing, transporting, and selling foodstuffs, and operating eight overseas commercial routes for a total of ninety international crossings per year, as well as engaging in the business of cod fishing and immigrant transport. The brothers' vision and entrepreneurial reach did not produce financial success or stability but compromised the nascent company as only two of these activities—cod fishing and immigrant transport—proved profitable.22 After two years of operation, the CGM fell victim to a financial crisis that jeopardized its future and revealed the Pereires' incompetent management. By April 1859, company stock had fallen to 80 francs from 330 francs of just one year earlier, and the CGM suffered a loss of 4-5 million francs.23 The kindest accounts of these years lay the blame on a worldwide economic crisis that, by way of sharp declines in the price of imported goods, caused shrinking freight revenues and a 50 percent drop in the line's passenger traffic by 1858, all occurring just as the United States raised duties on imported goods.24 Jean Autin, biographer of the Pereires, targets instead the brothers' poor business acumen. He suggests that the CGM would have been able to ride out the decline in international trade if the Pereires had been more judicious in their business ventures. Instead, their plans for the shipping company, characterized by Autin as "grandiose" choices arising "pell mell," were not tempered by an informed reading of international markets or the risks inherent in this highly competitive industry. Autin believed that the Pereires "knew basically nothing" about shipping and navigation.25 They paid exorbitant rates for their vessels while

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the company's multiple undertakings extended their financial obligations beyond what familiarity with international shipping or with patterns of French production and consumption would counsel.26 With company finances "worse than mediocre, a prelude to [financial] mayhem," even the Pereires conceded that their administration of the company had been improvised.27 This financial crisis buttressed the Pereires' conviction that French shippers could not compete with British and American shipping lines without government aid. Drawing on their experience with rail systems, the financiers renewed a campaign for government funding, arguing that only government subsidies could enable their newest company to keep pace with shippers who benefited from markets, materials, and state aid. They were not alone in insisting on state support. Government commissions and military and commercial leaders as well as the chambers of commerce of the nation's port cities had been lobbying for subsidies for transatlantic commerce since the 1840s. In this newest campaign of 1858 the brothers went so far as to prepare subsidy legislation for the state, including the amount of government funding that they believed would support service to the United States, Brazil, and Central America.28 At midcentury, however, Napoleon Ill's belief that free trade would promote economic growth brought the abolition of the haphazard system of protections for industry and commerce. The Anglo-French Treaty of 1860 abolished most protections for French shippers and penalties for foreign vessels and worsened the burden of restrictions already facing the maritime industries. Cast in the same spirit, 1861 legislation opened transport between France and its colonies, formerly reserved for French shippers, to foreign competition. The final blow came in 1866, when Napoleon repealed all remaining inducements for the shipbuilding industry. Tonnage duties were jettisoned, as were construction subsidies for ship machinery and engines, programs that had supported shipbuilders for twenty-five years. In addition, foreign vessels no longer faced a prohibitive registration fee but could carry the French flag for a minimal duty.29 While advocates of free trade foresaw a promising future for French commerce and industry, the reality brought sudden stagnation and crisis to the nation's shipbuilding industry. Most interested parties, such as the Conseil Generale of the Loire-Inferieure, recognized that the new policy enhanced the appeal of foreign yards and rendered French yards unable to survive without government funds and favor.30 While the long-term costs of stagnation in an industry dependent on technological advances can only be imagined, free trade legislation also had immediate and tangible ramifications. Ship production fell in the early 1860s by 56 percent and contributed to the closure of many yards, including Penhouet and yards at Marseilles and Bordeaux. At Nantes, builders found themselves without contracts and feared that their workforce would abandon the city. Moreover, this crippling legislation came at a critical moment in the evolution of naval architecture, namely, the transition from wood and sail vessels to the production of iron and steel steam liners. From midcentury, builders in industrial nations had begun to reduce production of wooden vessels in favor of rapid and durable iron and steel steam liners. By 1871, French vessel construction had fallen to 55,000 tons from 116,000 of 1857, and by the mid-1870s, 40 percent of the vessels

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operated by French shippers had been constructed abroad.31 In 1880, France had "only one construction yard that was able to support itself, [and only then] thanks to orders from the State."32 The impact for shipping also imperiled the national interest. Without support for shippers or for new construction, France's merchant fleet shrank from 1,050,000 tons in 1865, to 920,000 by 1880 and by 1879 carried only 27 percent of French commerce, down from 40 percent in 1865. This meant that 73 percent of France's merchandise now traveled on vessels constructed in foreign yards.33 The military risks became painfully evident during the Crimean War. With the national fleet capable of transporting only one-third of 300,000 soldiers to the Black Sea, Napoleon III had to charter British vessels to carry the troops.34 CONSTRUCTING INDUSTRIAL POLICY While state intervention on behalf of shipping and shipbuilding was clearly indicated, it is not easy to unravel how, in the early years of the Third Republic, industrial and commercial policy came to be formulated. Policy making appears to have fallen subject to two distinct political contests. One part of the story resides in an ongoing debate between protectionist and free trade interests over the proper role of the state in industrial and economic affairs. The future of the maritime industries became one piece of this battle, staged in both press and legislative bodies, to define the national interest and set economic policy directives for the Third Republic.35 The other side of the story can be traced to a contest between shipping and shipbuilding interests for the lion's share of government funding. Each industry worked diligently to influence the countless governmental bodies that evaluated maritime policy, drafted programs, and delegated funds, and each tried to shape the many discussions in the legislature and in the public arena so that the national interest was defined to suit corporate interests. The issue of economic policy and the appropriate level of state intervention became a wide-ranging national debate that engaged politicians, economists, business and military leaders, and regional officials. In the business community, the dispute revolved around two opposing interests: "outwardly directed commercial capitalists," the bourgeoisie in search of free trade and integration into the international economy, and businessmen intent on survival within a protected, circumscribed national market.36 The latter, composed of industrialists in mining, metallurgy, and textiles, had traditionally found themselves unable to compete in the international arena. In their view, the free trade direction of the 1860s had caused economic depression and jeopardized the limited local or regional market on which they had come to rely, and so they advocated high protectionist barriers to create and conserve a stable national market. In opposition, capitalists in international commerce, finance, and transport were concerned that France had fallen dangerously behind Britain and Germany in economic and military prowess. Joined by well-known political economists like Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the free trade camp supported sharply reduced customs duties. This strategy would liberate the nation's commercial and industrial

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interests, provide access to international markets and resources, and ultimately benefit consumers, workers, industrialists, and the military. Like other international businessmen, Emile and Isaac Pereire believed that protective tariffs, such as those for coal and iron, restricted industrialization and harmed economic growth.37 This segment of the French bourgeoisie opposed customs duties and firmly rejected protectionism, which they defined as state intervention that privileged one industry over another, however, their conception of free trade was neither doctrinaire nor single-minded. They embraced state intervention and a measure of protection, a modification of free trade that found the state responsible for maintaining profit and reducing risk to those industries essential to the national interest. A. de Lavison's 1900 study on the theory of subsidies clarified this complex position. Lavison explained that free traders took nonintervention as the guiding principle for government policy and concurred with protectionists that state initiative should not replace competition as a stimulant, however, they believed that the natural laws of economic activity would not always "safeguard" industries central to the public welfare. The principle of nonintervention, they argued, must not prohibit "exceptional" or "necessary intervention" for those industries linked to the public prosperity or public utility, such as shipping and shipbuilding.38 In an 1880 debate in the Chambre, Deputy Peulevey pleaded with legislators to recognize that the maintenance of these essential national industries took precedence over the "dogma of free trade."39 Once the public utility of an industry had been established, free traders believed that it became the state's duty to protect and secure it. The appropriate measure of state involvement was then defined as ongoing financial support in combination with a progressive reduction in duties. In this way, state intervention in the market became compatible with liberal policies. Emile Pereire articulated this view in a memorandum to Napoleon III in 1859, when the emperor was considering the Anglo-French treaty. Pereire suggested lower import duties and a program of subsidies for industries like shipping and shipbuilding that had been founded in a protective climate and stood at risk in a free trade environment. In the 1870s and 1880s, shipbuilders, politicians, and military experts in the free trade camp adopted this position and insisted that the route to expanded international trade and improved military capability depended on government support for the sectors that underlay these ventures, shipbuilding and shipping included.40 Policy decisions were not reached on theoretical merits alone. The objectives of the individual maritime industries also came into play. Shipbuilders supported protectionism to make foreign production prohibitive and assure their national market, while shippers advanced free trade and expanded international trade to guarantee the continued success and profitability of their industry. In some instances, the shippers' clamor for government subsidies also hid plans for immediate corporate gain. The Pereires, for example, manipulated national anxiety about commercial and military strength to use government programs for corporate profit. Historian Sanford Elwitt pointed out that Isaac Pereire's free trade arguments were considered "the deceptions of a monopolist and an international financier" whose economic interests were "the antithesis of a truly free and national industry."41 Two examples from midcentury illustrate how

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corporate needs and interests shaped the development of funding policy. By 1858 the Pereires had vastly overextended the new shipping company, and the Transat suffered huge losses of 4-5 million francs. Appealing to the state for assistance, the Transat's Board of Directors drew on the language of the national economic debate, arguing that the "active assistance that [the government] has continually lent bankers and large capital" ought to be extended to shipping.42 Remember, their opportunity came with the withdrawal of the shipper contracted for postal routes to New York. Preying on the state's need to continue the commercial routes and maintain a national shipper, the Pereires offered to operate the lines in return for capital to expand their operations. The government agreed to an increased annual subsidy of 9.3 million francs for twenty years and an "advance" of 18.6 million francs for development.43 In this instance, the Pereires successfully manipulated national concerns to alter the intent and scope of industrial policy for their benefit. They had engineered a loan, due in twenty years without interest, which resolved their financial crisis and provided capital for growth.44 In another instance, in the mid-1860s, when mismanagement and unstable international commerce again brought the Transat to the brink of bankruptcy, the shippers won another bailout from the state. This time questions about the personal integrity and business judgment of the Pereires raised doubts about whether the state would come to their rescue. The earlier failure of the Credit Mobilier had unleashed a frenzy of hostility among legislators, industrialists, and journalists toward the Pereires, their associates, and their business ventures. Deputy Augustin Pouyer-Quartier, a leading protectionist and long-standing opponent of the Pereires' business activities, proclaimed that the Transat was only one of several ""poisonous fruit[s]'" bred by the Pereires and the Credit Mobilier, and another critic demanded that the brothers be replaced by a management commission.45 Although this crisis brought allegations of corporate incompetence, neglect, and even criminal intent, fortunately for the Pereires', maintenance of a national shipping company overrode all considerations.46 Even the most irate legislators could not sanction dissolution of the company. Since its founding in 1858, the Transat had come to occupy a central place in the nation's economy; it serviced most of the nation's shipping and postal routes, maintained contact with the colonies, and, as the nation's largest shipper, transported a majority of its merchandise and passenger traffic. As a result, the state provided substantial aid; to compensate for the heavy losses incurred during the 1860s the Transat garnered an annual subsidy of 750,000 francs for operation of a new Pacific postal route and another interest-free loan, this time for 4 million francs. Although state aid did resolve the Pereires' corporate crisis and allow for expansion, the final agreement heeded the warnings of critics concerned about accountability. The contract made the state a lender, rather than caretaker, holding Transat vessels as collateral and requiring the Pereires to resign from management of the company.47 While through the end of the century these industrialists continued to wrap their interests in the cloak of national welfare, these instances are reminders that their support of economic programs was often motivated by concerns more immediate than the national good.

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THE 1881 LEGISLATION In 1881 free traders won a victory in the struggle over divergent economic policies. The republican majority that emerged in the late 1870s, which favored free trade, had gained control of several government posts, including the Ministries of Commerce and Finance, and in 1881 passed the general economic tariff. The new law reflected an "esprit assez conciliant? that is, the modified free trade position enunciated by international businessmen sanctioning state intervention and assistance to essential industries.48 After much debate and fifteen months of inquiry and expert testimony from builders, shippers, and industrialists, legislators also passed the first in a series of programs to rejuvenate the maritime industries, appearing to confirm the contention of historians Delorme and Andre that state intervention in these years came only in response to specific crisis, colonial expansion, and the need for an urban or industrial infrastructure. The maritime program suited qualified free traders like the Pereires, who advanced liberal economic policies yet argued for intervention.49 Recognizing the maritime industry as a central resource and infrastructure component in the development of commerce, lawmakers created a program of direct funding to provide shippers and builders the financial flexibility and muscle to compete. This system would assure a "protection that follows the fleet to foreign ports where [the prior system of protections and] taxes left it defenseless," but the subsidy program meant more than just renewed commitment to the nation's maritime industries.50 Past programs had involved only minimal financial obligations; the taxing bureaus collected duties on foreign vessels, while the legislature absolved French shippers of onerous taxes. The new system committed the state to expending enormous sums on shipping and shipbuilding.51 Designed to develop and promote the nation's shipbuilding and shipping industries, the maritime subsidy of 28 January 1881 provided ten years of aid to builders and owners. Like its successors of 1893 and 1902, it was constructed on the premise that only government assistance could redress the huge gap in price and quality between French and foreign builders and at the same time strengthen French shipping.52 Construction subsidies were formulated to revive the industry "like an electric current" by immediately reducing the cost of French vessels and discouraging foreign purchases.53 Legislators held fast to this premise over the next thirty years, and lowering the price of naval construction became "the standard approach for all legislation intended to guarantee the existence of [French] shipbuilding yards."54 In addition, the program also directed the industry's rejuvenation. By generously rewarding construction of steel-hulled, steampowered vessels used for transoceanic travel with a sixty-franc-per-ton subsidy, yet offering small indemnities of ten to twenty francs per ton for wooden vessels typically utilized for river and coastal traffic, the program encouraged modernization. It also indemnified builders for modernization of boilers or engines, crucial for energy efficiency and high speeds.55 The 1881 program also went beyond assistance to builders. Economists and shippers contended that keying additional bounties to international transport, in essence indemnifying shippers for the high cost of French construction and

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operation, would promote commerce and also strengthen shipbuilding. Legislators agreed and weighted funding packages toward shipping. Navigation subsidies funded shippers for operating transoceanic routes with vessels constructed in French shipyards. Payable at the rate of 1.50 francs per net ton and per nautical mile for each long-distance voyage, these subsidies provided multiple and longterm reimbursement to shipowners. Constituting three-fourths of the maritime subsidies expended through 1893, they became an important inducement for shippers to improve their operations and employ French yards. British builders considered this policy "aggression on the open seas" but were mollified by a small subsidy, a demi-prime, for foreign construction.56 During the term of the 1881 law shipowners received 89 million francs in subsidies, while builders garnered 31.5 million in construction funds.57 Subsidy legislation ended the stagnation that had plagued French shipbuilding since the late 1860s. Production levels rose once again as construction and navigation bounties, totaling 120 million francs for the years 1881 to 1893, attracted new investors and motivated yards to become equipped for iron and steel production. The program also prompted the establishment of new shipyards eager to partake of the funding, including Penhouet and the Loire at Saint-Nazaire. Employment opportunities increased dramatically with the rebirth of the industry. In the first two years of the subsidy, Saint-Nazaire's new yards employed at least 3,000 workers, while the yards at Le Havre came to employ a full 37 percent of the city's working-class population.58 Production statistics underscore the impact of this subsidy. French shipbuilders launched 325,000 tons of vessels per year in 1882 and 1883, a marked jump from 120,000 tons for 1880 and 1881. In 1882 alone, builders augmented the national fleet by 100 oceangoing steamships, a notable accomplishment for an industry that had lain dormant since the 1860s.59 In addition, sail production increased from 9,176 tons in 1881, to 40,000 tons in 1884. The legislation also stimulated the creation of new shipping companies and caused the tonnage of merchandise imported on French vessels to double in the law's first year.60 In just a few short years, the subsidy system made strides toward modernizing shipbuilding and enlarging France's fleet of iron and steel-hulled steamships. The Minister of the Navy lauded this subsidy for rescuing the shipbuilding industry from extinction. The statistics, however, misrepresent the full impact of this first subsidy. First, the program did not generate the anticipated level of construction. Despite the massive expansion and retooling of the industry that followed passage of the legislation, the rate of new ship construction could be considered only "mediocre."61 Although 1883 saw Saint-Nazaire's yards launch their first new vessel in twelve years, over the ten-year period the two yards engaged in desperate and ongoing competition for the few available construction projects. Moreover, after initial start-up, employment figures remained low, and the yards survived on intermittent repair and modernization work. The reason for this state of affairs is twofold. Legislators had established the subsidy as compensation for duties on imported materials, overlooking the numerous structural and financial factors that raised vessel costs 30 percent to 80 percent above those of British yards. As a result, the allocation could not generate an elevated and steady level of activity. By

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the account of Transat officials, funding was insufficient, by at least 13 percent, to reduce costs, attract contracts, redevelop facilities, and permit genuine competition.62 Second, the statistics mask a near standstill in production following initial expansion. Although national construction tonnage jumped from 312,000 tons in 1881, to 521,000 tons in 1891, about 80 percent of this increase occurred prior to 1885.63 According to Ambroise Colin and other contemporaries versed in the subsidy, the uncertainty of support beyond the program's ten-year tenure suppressed vessel demand midway through the 1880s and compromised the government's intention. The term limit dissuaded continuous investment by marking the program with "a provisional character inappropriate" for ongoing expansion and development.64 Moreover, with construction also driven by navigation subsidies, the 1891 expiration date of the program deprived shippers of continuous funding and restricted interest in new vessels. Navigation subsidies made shippers eager to order new vessels in the early 1880s so they could benefit from funding for the entire ten years and more than reluctant to invest after 1886, when benefits were limited to five years or less.65 Instead of placing new orders, they extended the life of older vessels, and many, including the Transat, replenished stock at foreign yards.66 Annual expenditures for construction subsidies reflect this decline from the mid-1880s. Disbursements from 1881 to 1884 totaled 12 million francs against only 5 million for 1885 to 1887, illustrating the degree to which funding limits suffocated national demand.67 In addition to failing to sustain production, this subsidy did not ensure modernization or stability. In fact, it introduced another element of instability— state intervention—into an already precarious industry and determined a disastrous decline in construction from the mid-1880s.68 The few years of increasing ship construction following the 1881 subsidy, aptly characterized as a "flash in the pan," were followed by a return to lower cost, smaller units, and the purchase of foreign-built vessels.69 According to one observer, the program ""so pauperized the shipping industry that it became the more helpless and needy, the more it was helped and the larger it grew.'"70 The program's failure to meet stated objectives arose from policymakers' inability to formulate a coherent industrial and commercial policy and from industrialists' interest in immediate gain. In terms of policy, the 1881 law reflected the limited vision of free trade that sanctioned the maintenance of national industries yet opposed strengthening them. In combination with the successful lobbying efforts of shipping interests, this meant that subsidies remained too modest to reduce costs, attract contracts, and satisfy commercial and military needs. The demi-prime catered to shipping interests by encouraging them to use the lower-cost British builders and so countered other efforts to make lasting headway against foreign production. In all, the absence of a coherent and effective commercial policy was particularly striking at a time when other nations had been more successful in promoting these industries.71 Furthermore, the process of policy making itself hampered the codification and implementation of consistent policies. The complicated task of formulating maritime policy was a joint effort of the ministers of the navy, commerce, public

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works, finance, interior, and justice. Some state officials contended that the multiple ministerial offices involved in policy making accounted for the ineffectiveness of resulting programs. Instead of sharing a common set of economic principles or objectives, each office was driven by a unique mission and subject to a distinct set of lobbyists, politics, and budget limitations. The 1881 program, for instance, emanated primarily from two ministries with distinctly different priorities—finance and commerce.72 Finance saw its mission as assuring revenue and a balanced budget. If expenditures did become necessary, officials here believed that they "should not disturb or unbalance the ordinary circuit of economic activity."73 Accordingly, they favored minimal funding for specific, limited goals rather than for long-term development. Although commerce saw its purpose as encouraging industry, this meant promotion work like organizing industrial exhibits and collecting statistics rather than active intervention. In addition, commerce was severely understaffed, with less than thirty officials in the 1880s, and exhibited a lack of technical expertise on industrial and commercial affairs. This diffusion of responsibilities between the administrative units of the Third Republic provided builders and owners a golden opportunity. They took advantage of deficiencies in technical and financial expertise and staffing to make themselves a central source of information for government bureaus, providing the economic data and program assessments that suited their needs. In sum, the absence of a coherent industrial policy, dependence on industry officials for research and guidance, and overlapping and contrary ministerial missions resulted in a subsidy program that failed to strengthen shipbuilding. THE 1893 LEGISLATION A shift in French politics and conflict between industrial interests account for the 1893 maritime package. The political climate in which the new program was conceived, termed by historian Herman Lebovics "a neoconservative hegemony," was decidedly different from that of the 1881 law.74 The economic stagnation that began in 1883 had banished free traders, "now considered prophets of calamity and dangerous patriots," from central political posts and gave protectionists a larger role in policy-making ministries like finance and commerce.75 This realignment culminated in the 1892 Meline tariff with protections for industry and agriculture.76 Although protectionists were clearly in the ascendancy, the 1893 maritime law was not strictly protectionist. Richard Kuisel's study of Third Republic commercial policies regards it as an accommodation between free traders and protectionists that reflected the desire to provide "a degree of prosperity for all major, viable economic interests without sacrificing anyone."77 It combined the protectionists' goal of defending French producers by "softening the impact of competition" with free traders' strategy of support for critical national sectors.78 While the compromise may have been construed as a positive political step, the resulting program showed that policymakers still had little knowledge of the maritime industries and had developed neither "the means nor the ambition for a long-range, constructive, coordinated program of development."79 Without a coherent

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economic program, they fell back on a compromise that, in effect, meant a contradictory approach: manipulating tariffs to ease competition while subsidizing, if not expansion and growth, the maintenance of endangered industries. Political shifts were not the only factors behind the 1893 law. Builders and shippers had a "serious difference of opinion" on the cure for the unstable, weak maritime sector and campaigned actively for their own particular interests.80 This time, though, builders claimed the victory as a result of an alliance with the nation's largest shippers, the Transat and the Messageries Maritimes. These shippers had developed their own construction yards in response to the appeal of subsidies and hoped to benefit from construction bounties as well as from navigation and postal subsidies. They also saw tremendous gain in restricting the purchase of foreign vessels. In the end, this coalition earned the desired revision.81 The abolition of the demi-prime for foreign vessels and increased construction funding handed builders a monopoly on construction and provided shippers a huge commercial advantage. Despite the shifts in policy, the 1893 legislation did greater long-term damage to shipping and shipbuilding than the first subsidy. Born out of an ill-informed assessment of shipbuilding and a compromise of sorts between opposing interests, the 1893 funding package "threw the [French] commercial marine into a crisis" and depressed ship production through 1903.82 Three provisions account for the damage. First, a 25 percent increase in construction funds demanded by builders insulated the industry from market forces and removed the incentive to match foreign costs and standards. Critics maintained that builders responded to generous protections by becoming "united in a trust" to boost costs and absorb available funds.83 As the director of one of Saint-Nazaire's yards put it, ""[W]e have . . . found a vein and we are exploiting it!'"84 Critics further contended that the subsidy accomplished the opposite of legislative objectives; it actually raised construction costs and reduced demand. Statistics confirm that French shipbuilding lost valuable ground in the international market as costs continued to rise.85 National ship production fell as France's yards built just 6,000 tons of new vessels in 1896, a substantial decline from the 44,000 tons launched in 1882 and just one-third of the commercial steamers constructed under the earlier program. By 1900 the French merchant marine had fallen from fourth to fifth among shipbuilding nations. Maritime commerce also suffered; the tonnage of French goods carried under the French flag fell from 12 percent, while nearly 75 percent was transported on foreign vessels.86 Second, while the law maintained navigation subsidies for shippers, it now calculated them on gross tonnage, an ill-conceived plan that garnered bonuses irrespective of freight. Not surprisingly, some shippers sent empty liners, known as fileurs de mille, or bonus-earners, across the Atlantic just to collect these bounties. It was even rumored that one shipper earned more from these subsidies than from carrying freight. Finally, the 1893 program impeded technical development by doubling the construction subsidy for the less marketable, less efficient sailing vessels to forty francs per ton, a provision that discouraged modernization and production of the steam-powered vessels best equipped for commercial and military use.87 "[GJrading the premiums in direct proportion to

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inefficiency," that is, allowing builders to recoup up to 25 percent of their investment on sailing vessels, meant subsidizing a mode of transportation that "progress had long condemned."88 As a consequence, construction of sailing ships rose 168 percent over the previous ten years, while production of steamships, the only vessels "thoroughly efficient and useful under present conditions of navigation," dropped by 56 percent.89 The 1893 funding package had immediate and expected ramifications for shipping and shipbuilding. With disincentives for steam-powered vessels, their production declined disproportionately, and the French fleet became sharply "diminished in utility."90 French sail tonnage rose from 120,000 tons in 1889, to 207,000 in 1906, just as most shipbuilding nations were replacing these outdated tools of commerce. Britain had reduced its sailing fleet by 600,000 tons in a fiveyear period, while German yards decreased sail output from 123,000 to 40,000 tons in a decade.91 Observers rightly characterized this legislation as inattentive to the state of the industry.92 Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, political economist and free trader, argued that it retarded industrial and commercial development. He suggested that if the interventionist spirit of this law were extended to other sectors, the nation would soon see a ""return to pikes and crossbows [for military use]; or better yet subsidies to replace mechanical trades in factories with the manual trades.'"93 For Ambroise Colin, government policy had produced an "industry without its own [internal] vitality."94 LEGISLATION OF 1902 AND 1906 The policy shift of 1893 created such a grave economic climate for the maritime industries that in 1897 the chamber appointed an extraparliamentary commission to examine the "decadence of our merchant fleet" and suggest a remedy.95 The commission's roster, which included leading figures from the nation's shipping and shipbuilding industries, like Emile Pereire of the Transat, as well as government and municipal officials, demonstrated that this was considered a high-stakes policy battle.96 The commission heard testimony from business and civic leaders with differing interests: builders, shippers, directors of metallurgy companies like the forges of Denain et d'Anzin and the Societe Francaise d'Electro-Metallurgie, spokesmen for the chambers of commerce and city councils of major ports, and union officials safeguarding the employment opportunities of sailors and ship construction workers. The final, 1,600-page report brought to light the opposition of interests between builders and shippers. It belied the premise of the legislation of 1881 and 1893 that the two industries suffered from a single set of problems and instead pointed to the futility of resolving their concerns with one comprehensive policy. The shipper Duprat summarized the testimony: shipbuilders and shippers did not suffer from common problems but had been forced into an unhappy "marriage" by an ill-informed legislative policy that paired the two industries. As witnesses attested, policies that one industry considered conducive and supportive were seen as hazardous to the survival of the other.97 Another recurring theme was the inconsistency and frequent reversals in

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government policy, which were seen to have paralyzed "all [industrial] initiative." One witness noted that instead of furthering progress, maritime policies taught industrialists to move cautiously for fear that policies would be reversed and funds diverted. In addition, some witnesses noted that short-term legislation did not provide the time "necessary for the organization of a serious [business] venture."98 The sharply divergent perspectives of shipping and shipbuilding became clear in the hearings. The shippers targeted "unrelenting competition" as their primary obstacle, in particular, from British shipping companies that possessed multiple advantages and resources.99 They favored strategic government supports, not tariffs, to promote their integration in the international market. They applauded the maritime legislation of 1881, in particular, the demi-prime, because it indemnified shippers more than builders, a key factor, they believed, in expanding the nation's fleet and assuring competitiveness. From their perspective, the 1893 policy had been a tragic return to protectionism. The only lasting solution, they argued, was to expand shipping subsidies, increase navigation funds, return to the demi-prime, and improve the nation's rail and port facilities.100 Shipbuilders and their allies among the shippers disagreed with this interpretation and this solution. They criticized previous legislation for subsidizing the "exodus" of jobs and industry to foreign shores, holding fast to the notion that only government protection could resurrect the nation's shipbuilding industry.101 They vehemently opposed subsidies for foreign vessels, predicting that the demiprime would send contracts to foreign yards and destroy French shipbuilding. Builders also argued that shippers misrepresented the quality and cost of French shipbuilding. By their calculations, construction prices were not inflated but accurately reflected the higher quality of production and the problems specific to the nation's industry. On this occasion, builders found their struggle supported by workers and unions, also intent on securing stable production. Union leaders joined management to testify against the demi-prime and what they considered the shipper's monopoly of political influence. Charles Brunelliere, head of Nantes' Bourse du Travail, expressed alarm that private interests had claimed such a large role in public policy determinations. He contended that they obstructed the national interest by disregarding similarly invested groups, such as builders and workers, who would suffer when a renewed demi-prime would close 80 percent of the nation's yards.102 He warned legislators to prohibit this faction from dictating national policy. The sharply contradictory positions complicated the commission's task. Duprat's suggestion to create two distinct policies, rather than emulate past programs that had satisfied neither but brought calamity to both, went unheard. After considering nearly a dozen compromise solutions, the commission returned to earlier advice of Dupuy de Lome, renowned naval architect, to first classify the competing interests by their importance to the national welfare. With this formula, the commission came down on the side of the shippers, urging a reversal of 1893 policy. Commission vice-president Charles-Roux announced that the problems of maritime commerce and armament warranted the greatest attention. The commission proposed a variety of inducements for shippers, including an increase in navigation subsidies for vessels constructed in France and compensation for

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foreign vessels. In place of the demi-prime, a special equipment subsidy, compensation d}armament, would reimburse vessels operating under the French flag for military duties and other taxes that raised operating costs. The recommendations also incorporated lessons learned from the ill-fated 1893 policy. Equipment funding could be accorded only to iron or steel steamships engaged in international traffic, with the rate determined by the number of days in operation rather than length of voyage.103 These proposals favored shippers, and builders were certain to see fewer future projects. Disagreement over the proposal kept the ruinous 1893 legislation in place until 1902, when the legislature did follow the commission's counsel. The 1902 program adopted the equipment subsidy, jettisoned the "technically retrograde" provision that favored sailing vessels, and required subsidized vessels to carry cargo.104 In order to mollify fears that subsidies could drain the treasury, the legislation included a ceiling on funding equal to 600,000 tons of shipping. Unfortunately, an egregious miscalculation in draft legislation crippled the program. The error went unnoticed, and the law went into effect, providing funding for only 273,221 tons of shipping, short-changing the shipbuilding industry by half the promised funds. In fact, the funding ceiling barely topped the 172 million francs spent under the 1893 law, a period when production of costly ocean liners had fallen to an all-time low. For this upcoming twelve-year term, the miscalculation made available only 150 million francs for navigation subsidies and the reinstated foreign vessel bounty and 50 million for construction.105 Critics warned that funds would run out quickly, especially since steel and iron vessels, by virtue of their size and weight, absorbed more funding than sailing vessels and that investors would once again turn to foreign producers. They rightly feared that "the slips [of the shipbuilding yards] will become empty and their workers without work."106 The results were as predicted. The 1902 maritime policy precipitated another decline in construction. The funding discrepancy brought an explosion of orders at first as shipping companies tried to reserve a place in the funding line, in the words of observers, to "grasp their share of what the law offered them."107 Construction subsidies for that first year reached 2,944,185 francs, a dramatic increase from the 1 million franc averages for the previous nine years. As early as 1903, however, half the nation's construction slips were empty.108 In 1904, Saint-Nazaire's yards launched just 27,000 tons in vessels, down from 42,000 tons in 1902. m By 1905, construction subsidies had fallen to 1,034,000 francs and then 500,000 francs one year later.110 Again, an ill-conceived subsidy program had induced "an abnormal crisis,"111 in this case an "almost complete cessation of work,"112 born not of market requirements but of government intervention. As the absence of state funds prohibited replenishment of stock, production at French yards diminished sharply, many yards began to close, foreign yards produced half of the fleet's new steam tonnage, and industry experts warned that the fleet was in danger of losing the little tonnage that it had gained over the previous decade.113 The catastrophic situation was not lost on the government. It cautioned builders against additional capital investment and in 1906 appointed yet another commission to investigate this

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crisis.114 Alexandre Millerand, who headed the 1906 Extraparliamentary Commission, summarized the impact of the 1902 law: The [financial] limitations introduced into the law of 1902 and their incongruity produced unexpected and disastrous results, which even threatened the existence of French building yards. Part of the workforce was discharged, the others threatened with idleness, and the mercantile marine in danger.115 The commission held the lack of funding responsible for the reduction in the fleet. The law supported 280,000 tons of new construction over ten years, yet the natural decline in tonnage from loss and aging was estimated at 600,000 tons. Consequently, France's merchant fleet had decreased by approximately 320,000 tons. The commission further criticized the program for sheltering shipbuilders from the realities of the market and encouraging construction at a time when other nations were responding to "excess of tonnage [as] compared with commercial requirements" by reducing production. If builders had produced according to demand, which in 1902 was "lowness of freight," "[l]ess would have been built during the infancy of the law, but [shipbuilding would have been carried on without interruption to the end." Instead, the "effect of the law . . . [was] once and for all exhausted" in its first years as builders raced to absorb available bounties.116 Two years later legislators abrogated the 1902 program and, following the counsel of shipbuilder Duprat, dissolved the legislative pairing of the maritime industries.117 Concluding that the problems plaguing shipbuilding were indigenous to the industry and distinct from those facing maritime traffic, legislators reversed the direction of the 1897 commission and of previous programs. Subsidizing ocean voyages could not resolve high construction costs, out-of-date production facilities, and delivery delays. Funding to "balance the customs duties on materials imported" had not permitted modernization of facilities nor advancements in production, design, and quality. The 1906 law, then, represented a new approach to the ills of the shipbuilding industry and became, in the words of a prominent naval engineer, the "only law that understood exactly the problem posed by naval construction in France and gave an equitable solution."118 Focusing on construction, it addressed the disparity in unit cost between British and French yards and also gave builders the income to upgrade facilities and machinery. The construction subsidy more than doubled from 65 francs to 145 francs per ton for steamships and from 15 francs to 27.5 francs per 100 kilos on boilers and engines. In this way, French builders could produce at competitive prices yet also earmark a portion of the bounty for retooling and redevelopment of capital facilities. Furthermore, legislators had become convinced that navigation subsidies had boosted demand only for short periods and so abolished them entirely. The success of the new policy cannot be fully measured by construction and expenditure levels, as it was geared toward long-term modernization and development. Even so, in comparison with the terms of the 1893 program, construction subsidies for 1902 through 1913 increased by a full one-third, to 134 million francs. In 1913, SaintNazaire's yards launched eleven vessels of 53,000 tons and five large liners of 58,000 tons. At that point war needs forced the suspension of the program, and

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A Workforce Divided

French shipyards concentrated on building and repairing naval vessels and producing munitions. During this thirty-year period, the state also employed various indirect strategies to stimulate ship production and commerce, which, like construction and navigation subsidies, encouraged shipbuilding as they enhanced instability. Postal subsidies to maintain routes to foreign ports were the most significant of these methods. By the 1880s, the financial benefits that they provided builders and shippers were "both greater in amount and more influential upon ship-building" than construction subsidies.119 Averaging 26 million francs annually from about 1880 to 1905, these "bounties disguised as postal subsidies" surpassed the estimated 15 million francs spent annually on both construction and navigation subsidies in the late 1890s.120 In these amounts, 500 million francs in the 1880s and 1890s, and in long contracts of fifteen to twenty years, postal subsidies figured prominently in the development of France's shipping companies. They constituted half of the Transat's income through 1872. The company's first postal contract, negotiated in 1861 for a twenty-year term, provided 9.3 million francs annually in return for twenty-six annual voyages between France and New York with service to Cuba and Mexico. While the percentage of income from postal funds diminished over time, these contracts remained highly lucrative for the nation's shippers, witnessed by the competitive bidding between shippers.121 Stipulating that postal vessels be constructed in French shipyards, these subsidies had secondary benefits for builders. For many yards, including Penhouet, first established in 1862 in response to the potential of these programs, the postal funds constituted a significant source of contracts.122 Complete figures are unavailable, but in 1895 the Transat collected 35 percent of its construction costs for some postal vessels and 25 percent five years later. Yet despite the industry's dependence on this method of support, the renewal of each postal contract was marked by legislative indecision and deferral. This had a discernible impact on construction activity, particularly in yards like Penhouet that relied almost exclusively on contracts from shippers.123 The postal program promoted the installment of new yards and encouraged construction, but, like other government subsidies, it also could bring production to a standstill. Subsidies for renovation became another method of financing. Legislators recognized that high costs impeded the modernization necessary to produce a rapid, technologically advanced fleet. To induce shippers to "maintain [their] equipment at the level of advancement realized" by foreign shipping industries, the legislature offered incentives to modernize and upgrade outmoded vessels, a process that often included reworking the hull and adding larger, more efficient steam engines.124 At the same time, a subsidy known as the prime de vitesse, an allowance for rapid transport, supported the construction of liners with speeds equal to those of the fastest British and American liners. With the first subsidy of this kind in 1883, French shippers could collect as much as 1.2 million francs annually. Both subsidies supported French shippers and multiplied the work available to builders.125 In the thirty years prior to World War I, enormous sums were funneled from the state treasury to the nation's shipping and shipbuilding industries. From 1884

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to 1904, the state disbursed 381 million francs in construction and navigation subsidies and at least 500 million in postal subsidies. Legislators could argue that an expanded commercial fleet, the installation of fourteen modern shipyards with a construction capacity of 300,000 tons, and increased tonnage in military vessels warranted the expenditure, but for those intent on progressively expanding maritime traffic, improved naval construction, and a developed merchant marine, the subsidy program had been far from successful.126 Subsidies had failed to assure steady growth in demand, stable and ongoing production, or even competitive costs. Far from nurturing a mature, capital-intensive industry, subsidy legislation made shipbuilding prisoner to the state's "financial and industrial ignorance" and the political machinations of builders and owners.127 One contemporary critique concluded that the "French subsidy policy seems to have developed inefficiency and corruption rather than the French merchant marine."128 While we cannot know how the French shipbuilding industry would have fared had the state not become involved in investment, production, and design, it seems clear that in this case state programs accounted for a great measure of production instability and shifting and ill-considered construction and design goals. SUBSIDIES AND EMPLOYMENT From the perspective of ship workers, the subsidy system was a total failure. Saint-Nazaire's workers did not need a government commission to tell them that "[t]here is not an industry more vulnerable to unemployment crisis than shipbuilding."129 The subsidy system enhanced the cyclical nature of production and contributed to chronic and elevated unemployment (see Table 2.1). Moreover, with the industry's growth since 1881, layoffs cast a wider shadow, affecting 30,000 workers nationally in both the yards and related ancillary industries. In fact, in the eyes of French metalworkers, the industry staggered through the thirty years prior to the war in a state of constant crisis with short periods of nearly full production followed by layoffs affecting as much as 60 percent of the workforce. It is not a surprise that workers became "more interested . . . in assuring the stability of production" and regular paydays than did the industrialists, whose subsidy revenues did not hinge on continuous production.130 In Marseilles, Le Havre, and Nantes, the impact of shipbuilding unemployment may have been alleviated by the presence of other industries, but in a singleindustry town such as Saint-Nazaire, where "a majority of [the workforce] depend entirely on the yards for their livelihood," slack periods meant only disaster.131 From the outset, the subsidy programs failed to maintain an expanded and stable labor force at Saint-Nazaire's yards. Despite the promise of the 1881 program, initial production at Penhouet was confined to repair and refashioning work for the Transat. Employment opportunities remained low, rising substantially only with the yard's first construction contract in 1882, yet project completion in the summer of 1883 meant dismissal for one-fifth of the workforce of 2,000, with the majority unemployed for more than six months.132 Penhouet's workforce reached nearly 2,500 in late 1884, but, this too, was short-lived and followed by substantial layoffs

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in 1886. At the Loire, the subsidy generated only one contract by 1884. City officials complained bitterly that production was not meeting expectations and that erratic employment continued to be the norm in the industry.133 The sharp reduction in navigation bounties that went into effect after 1885, combined with the program's uncertain future, precluded ongoing production and steady employment. For the next several years, shipyards survived on refashioning projects and infrequent government contracts. Transformation work such as installing steam engines, electric lights, steel hulls, and light machinery kept yards at Saint-Nazaire and elsewhere operational with a reduced and transient workforce. Le Havre's shipyards laid off hundreds of workers in the mid-1880s, and in 1887 the "absence of orders" forced one yard to shorten the workday.134 At SaintNazaire's yards, government programs fueled production. Military vessel construction occupied the Loire, absorbing 65 percent of labor hours from 1881 to 1909.135 At Penhouet, other forms of state funding played the key role. Two orders from the Transat under the auspices of the speed allowance and a government contract increased the workforce to 2,800 by June 1890 and 3,800 in January 1891. Contract completion caused the dismissal of nearly the entire workforce of 2,500 over a five-month period, "most of whom remained unemployed and with no other resource."136 The magnitude of layoffs, 1,500 in the middle of winter alone, so alarmed Saint Nazaire's chamber of commerce that they lodged complaints with the minister of commerce and the Transat's Board of Directors. The dim prospects for recovery prompted a local journalist to advise young workers in search of industrial employment that it would be best to leave Saint-Nazaire.137 The next subsidy, the 1893 program, also did not lessen unemployment. On the contrary, it contributed to unprecedented unemployment in France's yards. With bounties for sail vessels now outweighing those for ocean liners, shipping contracts dried up quickly, and Penhouet dismissed 800 workers by the spring of 1894. Repair and renovation work supported a minimum workforce of about 1,000 through the end of the year, but at reduced wages. Unemployment at the Loire also remained elevated as its military and cargo contracts required less labor than ocean liners.138 Builders in Marseilles, facing unrelenting competition and 40 percent unemployment among their workforce, considered a 15 percent reduction in vessel price to attract new business. Within a short time, one Marseilles yard reduced the hours of some of its workers by 50 percent, and Bordeaux builders dismissed several hundred workers. Shipyard workers nationwide hoped that postal contracts would precipitate new orders, but deferral of a contract in 1896 halted production at Saint-Nazaire. Penhouet laid off one-fifth of its workforce as management recognized that this "period of unemployment would be of long duration."139 The Loire followed suit with cuts in the workweek and further layoffs.140 Unemployment continued into 1897, and by April, Saint-Nazaire could count 1,400 unemployed shipbuilders. Prospects for the resumption of production remained dim, and the city's bakers began refusing credit to unemployed workers.141 The national metalworkers union, the Federation Nationale des Ouvriers Metallurgistes, put the number of unemployed metallurgists in Saint-

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Table 2.1 Employment in Saint-Nazaire's Shipbuilding Yards, 1881-1912

NUMBER EMPLOYED PENHOUET TOTAL

DATE 1882 1883 1883 1883 1884 1884 1884 1887 1889 1890 1891 1891 1891 1893 1894 1894 1896 1897 1897 1899 1899 1902 1902 1902 1903 1904 1904 1904 1908 1910 1910 1911 1912

Spring Spring Summer Fall October Winter Spring Spring June June January Spring Summer June Spring Fall Fall April June January March Jan-Aug Fall Winter January January November Winter Fall January December January

2,000 2,200 1,900

1,330 2,800 3,450 400 2,800 900 3,100

1,872 2,800 3,400 3,800 2,300 1,300 2,070 1,270 1,000

NUMBER OF LAYOFFS PENHOUET TOTAL

400 300

628

1,500 1,000 800 270 350

1,100

3,400 3,329

2,244 2,381 3,129 1,840 2,800

1,400 2,100 200 140 2,800

5,693 2,100 3,761 4,764 4,000 2,340

2,500 2,500

460

2,260 2,500 472

2,352* 6,100

* Penhouet had 2,352 workers on maintenance and construction of the vessels France and Rochambeau. The total workforce exceeded this figure.

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Nazaire at 2,800 out of 5,000, with many of the employed working a reduced week of forty-eight hours.142 Saint-Nazaire and its residents responded to this "industrial crisis" with a variety of relief efforts.143 Acknowledging that "the trouble is great and requires urgent" solutions, the chamber of commerce donated 5,000 francs to relief organizations.144 For the first time, some of Saint-Nazaire's residents came to the aid of their working-class neighbors. In addition to individual contributions of money and coal, a charity bazaar raised 2,600 francs, the local casino sponsored a benefit, and the mayor announced a lottery for the "victims of prolonged unemployment from our naval construction yards."145 At least one local newspaper began a collection drive, as did several workshops at Penhouet. Personal contributions came from the prefect, sub-prefect, and even the president of the Republic, Felix Faure. Isaac Pereire and the minister of the interior, representing the agencies responsible for contracts and funding for local yards, also donated 3,000 and 1,000 francs, respectively. Despite these efforts, contributions did not meet the 100,000 francs per month needed to support unemployed shipbuilders and their families.146 Once again government intervention, in this case renewal of the Transat's New York postal route in 1898, brought a reduction in unemployment. By March, Penhouet had hired 3,400 workers to construct two 11,000-ton ocean liners, La Lorraine and La Savoie. Work proceeded steadily for almost two years, during which time metallurgy workers lived "free of poverty" and the "daily concern for bread."147 Predictably, however, project completion in the fall of 1900 meant layoffs and a reduced workday. Dismissals affected 500 workers at first but soon reached 1,000. In September 1901, a local paper reported that the "great quantity of [metallurgy] workers thrown out on the street" had created another "intense unemployment crisis."148 Shipyards elsewhere experienced the same reduction in employment. While unemployment at Bordeaux stood at 10 percent in the summer of 1899, it topped 20 percent for most of 1900 and 1901.149 The 1902 subsidy, as we have seen, was designed to sponsor the industry's growth over the long term rather than generate an instant boost in production. Builders and workers, however, were concerned about the immediate future. Workers in Marseilles' mechanical engineering and boilermaking industries feared that the law would prohibit new business.150 Saint-Nazaire's workers predicted that without funds for the immediate future, the law would "throw more than 6,000 [regional] metallurgists out of work, without counting those in other corporations connected to naval construction."151 Shipbuilding workers at Le Havre and Bordeaux, suffering unemployment rates of 45 percent and 55 percent, respectively, at the end of 1902, also foresaw continued high unemployment. Fears that the shipyards and workers would be without work were realized. The shipyards at Le Havre, capable of occupying a workforce of 2,100, employed only 350 workers in 1903. The Forges et Chantiers de la Mediterranee at La Seyne near Marseilles dismissed nearly 2,000 in the program's first two years.152 At Saint-Nazaire, unemployment among shipyard workers reached an astounding 60 percent, about 2,500 citywide. Moreover, those ship workers fortunate enough to hold on to their jobs faced reductions in wages and hours, while workers in related industries saw lower wages. The city's Bureau de

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Bienfaisance received requests from 2,000 unemployed, but public lotteries, donations from the community, and municipal assistance, supplemented by an increase of 150 percent or 40,000 francs, did not cover all those in need. The situation improved somewhat in the fall of 1903, when the speed allowance funded construction of a 7,600-foot, high-speed luxury liner, and by January 1904, SaintNazaire's two yards employed 2,300 workers each. As was typical for the industry, though, this respite from high unemployment proved brief. The Loire and Penhouet both reduced their labor force by the summer, and shipbuilding unemployment rose to 20 percent.153 The same pattern was visible at other French yards. Many turned to repair work, while some, like those at Marseilles, cut wages and reduced their workforce 30 percent to 50 percent, and yet others, including those at Nantes, closed indefinitely. Nationally, nearly half of the nation's shipyard workers found themselves unemployed. At Saint-Nazaire, this extended reduction in employment brought population growth to a halt, the first cessation in urban expansion since the 1860s.154 Shipbuilding employment in France continued to mirror the pattern familiar to this subsidized industry: brief periods of full production followed by sudden and enormous layoffs. Saint-Nazaire's yards were considered "very active" in 1906 and launched three vessels of 23,000 tons. The Loire had a string of contracts with shippers as well as orders for skiffs, canoes, railroad cars, and boilers.155 The next year, 1907, opened to a "notable revival" in Saint-Nazaire's yards, with unemployment holding steady at about 10 percent. This surge of activity was replaced in 1908 with extensive layoffs and 30 percent unemployment, which lasted into 1909.156 At Marseilles, diminished production beginning in 1907 prompted one yard to reduce its workforce by 50 percent. Shipbuilders and workers apparently saw little future in ship construction; in Marseilles many ship workers migrated to automobile factories in Paris and Lyon, while builders began to transform facilities and diversify their product line to include automobile engines, diesel motors for submersibles, refrigerator holds, small crafts, cranes, military vehicles, locomotives, compressors, and hangars. At Saint-Nazaire, the final period of extraordinary shipbuilding unemployment prior to the war came in 1910, when the government again failed to renew a postal contract with the Transat, causing deferral of construction. High unemployment held fast despite production of three vessels, including Penhouet's biggest project, the France. Although the France was the largest Transat ocean liner to date, a 24,000-ton luxury liner designed to accommodate 1,965 passengers and a crew of 600, its construction was insufficient to end unemployment. Twenty-five percent of the city's shipbuilders remained without work through 1910 and into 1911,157 The increase in shipyard employment from 1911 can be ascribed not to the wisdom or efficacy of the newest funding law but to military preparation and diversification. National ship production rose 40 percent over the previous year. For the first time in years, the Forges et Chantiers de la Mediterranee at Marseilles reported full employment and a seventy-two-hour workweek. The shipyards in Le Havre also experienced a "resumption of activity" after years of diminished activity.158 The same held true for Saint-Nazaire. In January 1912, a local newspaper heralded new ship contracts at the yard and foresaw "[a]n [a]ir of

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[prosperity for Saint Nazaire."159 Even completion of the battleship Diderot in 1911 at Penhouet and the anticipated completion of the France did not bring "the specter of unemployment," as both yards had contracts for a year's work.160 By the end of 1912, Saint-Nazaire officials reported full employment in the shipyards, a record 6,100 employees. War preparation and diversification accomplished what subsidies had been unable to do; they increased and stabilized production and ended cyclical unemployment. By the end of 1913, shipbuilders at Saint-Nazaire and Marseilles were struggling with an unfamiliar problem: a shortage of labor.161 SUBSIDIES AND THE WORKFORCE The impact of unemployment for workers went beyond the economic difficulties that accompany dismissals and uncertain job prospects. In SaintNazaire's yards, regular and elevated unemployment also played a key role in subduing labor activity and protest. Most obviously, unemployment limited workers' ability to act independently as a group. Ship workers facing layoffs on a regular basis had few resources to contribute to protest. Furthermore, persistent unemployment in an industry marked by erratic production meant that loyalty and quiescence, rather than protest and defense of trade interests, became tools of survival. Workers could not risk jeopardizing their jobs, present or future, with protests or union membership.162 The warnings inherent in unemployment certainly contributed to workers' decision not to affiliate with unions. Of the 4,000-5,000 workers at the city's yards, just 1,400 had joined unions by the mid18908. Moreover, the fear of unemployment, a daily concern for workers, became a valuable disciplinary tool for management. One tactic was to use layoffs selectively to punish undesirable behavior and reward compliance. At one point, Nantes' shipyard management made it known that in dismissing workers they would retain '"good workers'" or "'the sound part of the worker population.'"163 Penhouet utilized the same strategy in 1894. Management selected for dismissal "all those workers, and they are numerous, who drew attention to themselves by their lack of discipline and inertia in [construction] work on the Normandie" and then cautioned the remainder about recent incidents of dissension on the shop floor.164 The threat to job security could not have been more clear. Management also employed layoffs to blunt and dampen collective activity. During an 1899 strike, the Loire let it be known that "other trade groups would have to lay down their tools if the shipwrights did not return to work," using dismissals to divide the workforce and undermine strike efforts.165 Under pressure to begin layoffs in April 1906, shipbuilders in Marseilles warned that participation in upcoming May Day festivities would be grounds for dismissal. In 1894, when painters at Penhouet appealed in writing for a pay raise and then walked off the job, management laid off all the signatories, refusing to negotiate with workers "who had been laid off for refusing work."166 In the same year, Penhouet warned that it stood ready to meet labor disputes with layoffs and, the ultimate threat, with permanent closure of the yard. Management also suggested that it would respond

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to labor protest or other unsuitable workshop conduct, defined here as "ill will," by refusing new construction. It reminded workers how labor activity could harm them and their families: In the presence of ill will on the part of personnel to conduct themselves in a suitable fashion, I hesitate greatly to accept work. . . . [By] continuing to show themselves as troublemakers, the workers do themselves the greatest harm, and the foremen should not fail to explain to them that foreign yards are currently taking away all our orders for new construction; and if things continue, we will even lose our repair business.167 Management's readiness to turn unemployment into a weapon against labor activity was also evident in a 1907 strike at Penhouet. In this case, workers in one large shop appeared poised to join several hundred of their colleagues already on strike. To forestall this, management suspended all the shop's workers. This had the desired effect, and within two days the initial group of strikers returned to work.168 Shipbuilding companies preyed on unemployment and fears about closure of the yards to strengthen their control of the shop floor and to minimize the impact of those resisting management directives. Municipal officials in shipbuilding towns also fixed on unemployment as a political tool. They made use of the promise of municipal assistance to separate workers from socialists and labor leaders who tried to organize around the issue of unemployment. Meeting with a delegation of workers in 1910 to discuss works projects for the unemployed, Saint-Nazaire's mayor Brichaux prepared to offer aid only to those who he believed suffered "involuntarily" from unemployment and warned that he would not award city-sponsored jobs or receive as spokespersons for the unemployed those he considered the "professionals of unemployment and the political agitators," that is, those workers involved in relief activity and in organizing.169 While reluctant to jeopardize their jobs, both present and future, shipbuilding workers did not abandon the struggle to improve and protect work conditions. Recognizing that their leverage improved during the brief periods when construction contracts came due and when management could ill afford disruptions, they struck often at this time. They knew full well that deadlines translated into a favorable strike climate, especially as management was eager to collect bonuses for rapid completion and avoid the costly penalties built into most contracts. But the issue of unemployment intruded even during strikes, and workers often chose to return to their jobs in lieu of lengthy strikes and the uncertainty of success. "[C]ontinual requests [for work] made by unemployed [workers]" ended an 1894 Penhouet strike without a settlement as strikers chose employment, regardless of the work conditions. In this instance and many others, unemployment allowed management the luxury of refusing negotiations, confident that the presence of unemployed at the gate would elicit quick "submission."170 The subsidy programs and the high incidence of unemployment also fostered an alternative labor ideology among Saint-Nazaire's shipyard workforce. Despite the many hazards that subsidies imposed on the industry, state subsidies remained the strongest guarantor of renewed production. For the workforce, the local

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A Workforce Divided

community, and for shipbuilders, the state and its representatives emerged as the true employer in this industry. Given the industry's revival at the hands of government programs, it is not surprising that workers came to acknowledge the primacy of the state in determining industrial production and, as a result, created liaisons with the government to benefit their yards. During periods of extremely high unemployment, such as in 1894, 1897, 1902, and at critical moments for maritime legislation, shipyard workers and community leaders aggressively lobbied the state for contracts and funding. In this way, the industry's dependence on state funds, reinforced by each surge in activity after 1881, rendered protest and oppositional politics irrelevant to workers intent on renewed production and expanded employment. Ship workers' unions seconded these activities, appealing often to the state on behalf of their constituency, holding it responsible for reduced production and, more significantly, expecting it to reverse the trend. Nantes' ship workers' unions, larger and better organized than those at Saint-Nazaire, first spoke to national officials about state support as early as the 1880s. In 1889, while monitoring Transat construction projects, Nantes' unions discovered that the company had shifted some of its contracts to British yards. They went before the minister of commerce, contending that as a beneficiary of state funds the Transat was obliged to contract with French shipyards.171 In 1901, these unions again swung into action to protest the small incentive for construction in the 1902 subsidy. A labor committee to defend the interests of shipbuilding workers sent delegates to meet with the minister of commerce in Paris. They also approached labor groups in other shipbuilding cities, including Saint-Nazaire, encouraging them to join the protest to forestall reduced production. Saint-Nazaire's workers lobbied state agencies for contracts, too. A delegation of unemployed shipbuilding workers accompanied the prefet and Saint-Nazaire's mayor to Paris in 1901 to speak on behalf of the city's yards. The group met with the ministers of the navy and commerce and officials of the Transat to underscore the dangers inherent in the law.'72 Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding workers and unions worked diligently to bring construction contracts to the city. In the 1900s, labor leaders considered the formation of a committee to work with government agencies to secure successive vessel contracts for Saint-Nazaire's yards. During the unemployment crisis of 1903, 1,500 workers joined with city merchants to sponsor another delegation to Paris. The worker delegates, chosen at meetings of the newly created Committee of the Unemployed, spent four days in talks with the president of the cabinet, the ministers of the navy, commerce, and the interior, and the undersecretary of the post and telegraph.173 The following spring, the city's unions participated in the Congres des Chomeurs de le Region de l'Ouest, held at Saint-Nazaire. In 1909, Saint-Nazaire's unions pressured the state to renew a postal contract that would bring new construction to Penhouet, a project later taken up by Saint-Nazaire's committee of the unemployed. This important work of persuading government agencies of the need for contracts and funding for Saint-Nazaire's yards was not restricted to union leaders. The city's socialists also lobbied government officials for contracts. In fact, at one point they insisted that their organization, rather than

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the mayor, deserved credit for Penhouet's contract for the luxury liner France, citing the intervention of the socialist deputy Jean Allemane on their behalf.174 The mixed results of these ventures are less important than the consistent and vigorous efforts made by municipal officials and labor leaders to acquire state contracts. Both public officials and labor leaders understood that the future stability of their community and their different constituencies depended on continuous production at the shipyards. Union leaders and local elites also recognized that defending jobs gave them more credibility among their constituents, and their choice of remedies evolved naturally from shipbuilding's dependence on the state. Government programs that sustained industrial production led workers and local elites to see the state as the solution to ongoing unemployment. This certainty that the only answer lay with consistent state funding drew the workforce ever closer to the state and to those local officials who could help generate contracts. As a result, Saint-Nazaire's workers had a reason to shy away from independent politics or labor activity, fearful that these engagements would alienate those officials who made funding decisions. Government subsidies had become the decisive factor in the progress of the French shipbuilding industry since 1880 and, some believed, had saved the industry from slow, but, certain, extinction.175 However, subsidies had also turned out to be a double-edged sword, earning the label "morphine of the merchant marine" from free trader Joseph Caillaux.176 From their inception in 1881, they kept the industry from developing as the market for vessels or the state of naval architecture determined. Government programs dictated regular cycles of reduced production, disuse of resources, erratic capital investment, production of outdated vessels, and, time and again, massive unemployment. In fact, extensive unemployment was a serious consequence of the pattern of state-supported funding. Not surprisingly, from the perspective of industrialists and workers, the only remedy to this paradox of state-sponsored industrial underdevelopment was more state assistance. Accordingly, the subsidy programs held the workforce to a pattern of labor quiescence and bound them to the state, which they rightly saw as the only power capable of easing unemployment. Responsibility for the shape of maritime programs lay with Third Republic policy uncertainties, its "financial and industrial ignorance," and influential industrial interests.177 Industrial policy and, as a by-product, maritime policy constituted part of the battleground between free traders and protectionists as they struggled to define and impose their economic and industrial objectives. In addition, legislators fell subject to powerful industrial concerns, shippers and builders, each with diametrically opposed interests and solutions, and with changing measures of power. At the same time, state planning agencies were without coherent economic guidelines, administrative competence, or the technical and industrial expertise to mediate these various battles. From 1880 to the Great War, France's shipbuilding industry remained costly, profoundly underutilized, and unable to compete with the quality and price of foreign yards.178 Ultimately, the result of thirty years of government programs created the most terrible paradox of ail: state intervention had equipped France with shipbuilding facilities that far surpassed national demand.

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NOTES 1. Rene Girault, "Place et Role des Echanges Exterieurs," in Histoire economique et sociale de la France, edited by Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse, 4, vol. 1 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979), 204. 2. Alphonse Merrheim, Le Metallurgie. Son Origine et Son Developpement (Paris: Edition de la Federation des Metaux, 1913), 260. 3. Quoted in H.C. Calvin and E.G. Stuart, The Merchant Shipping Industry (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1925), 216. 4. Paul Laurence Robertson, "The Management of Manpower in British Shipbuilding 1870-1914: A Study in the Organization of Human Resources under Conditions of Changing Technology" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1972), 54; F. Cyril James, "Cyclical Fluctuations in the Shipping and Shipbuilding Industries" (Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1927), 41-42; Alastair Reid "The Division of Labour in the Shipbuilding Industry, 1880-1920, with Special Reference to Clydeside" (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1980), 43-45; Sidney Pollard and Paul Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1890-1914 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 25-48. 5. Sidney Pollard, "British and World ShipbuUding, 1890-1914: A Study in Comparative Costs," Journal of Economic History 17 (December 1957): 433; Commission d'Enquete Parlementaire sur la Marine Marchande, Enquete Parlementaire sur la Marine Marchande: Seance du samedi 2 juillet 1870 (Paris: Delagrave, 1870), 990-992; S.G. Sturmey, British Shipping and World Competition (London: Athlone, 1962), 15; Ambroise Colin, La Navigation Commerciale au XIXe Siecle (Paris: Rousseau, 1902), 178. Disparities in the cost of supplies persisted at least through 1901. British industries produced shipbuilding sheet metal at 120 francs per ton, while French costs ranged as high as 230 francs. 6. Grosvenor Jones, Government Aid to Merchant Shipping (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1925), 15-23. Britain first offered postal subsidies in 1838, America in 1847, and by the 1860s, Spain, Portugal, and Italy supported transatlantic transport. Conseil Superieur de 1'agriculture, du commerce et de l'industrie, Enquete sur la Marine Marchande, 3 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1863-1865), 1-7; Gratien Candace, La Marine Marchande Francaise et Son Importance dans la Vie Nationale (Paris: Payot, 1930), 468-488; Robertson, "The Management of Manpower," 38, 258; Sydney Pollard, "Laissez-Faire and Shipbuilding," Economic History Review 5 (1952— 1953): 98-100. For debates in America on maritime support, see Edward P. Crapol and Howard Schonberger, "The Shift to Global Expansion, 1865-1900," in From Colony to Empire: Essays in the History of American Foreign Relations, edited by William Appleman Williams, (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1972), 157-202. 7. Pollard, "British and World Shipbuilding," 433; Edward H. Lorenz, "The Labour Process and Industrial Relations in the British and French Shipbuilding Industries from 1880 to 1970" (Ph.D thesis, University of Cambridge, 1983); Edward H. Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development: The Labour Process in the British and French Shipbuilding Industries, 1880 to 1930," Journal of European Economic History 13, n. 3 (1984): 599-634; Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 45; Jones, Government Aid, 136-138; Sturmey, British Shipping, 15-23; Simon Ville, Transport and the Development of the European Economy, 1750-1850 (New York: St Martin's Press, 1990), 48-113; Ministere du Commerce, de Findustrie, des postes et des telegraphes, Commission extraparlementaire de la marine marchande, Sous-commission d'enquete: Proces-verbaux des seances (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1897), 331-332; Adolphe Thiers, Discours prononces par M. Thiers dans la session 1866, sur les principes de 1789, Vetat de Vagriculture en France, la marine

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marchande, et la politique exterieure (Paris: L'heureux, 1866), 54-57; Charles de la Porte, Loi du 19 Avril 1906 sur la Marine Marchande (Paris: Larose, 1906), 32-41. Shippers also bore higher port costs as maritime traffic was divided among countless small facilities rather than centralized at a few well-equipped ports. 8. Ministere du Commerce, de Pindustrie, des postes et des telegraphes, Direction du Commerce et de Pindustrie, Commission Extra-Parlementaire de la marine marchande, Sous-Commission des Primes, Rapport Presente par M. Emmanuel Rousseau (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1904,) 72-75; Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 180. 9. Conseil Sup£rieur de Vagriculture, du commerce et de l'industrie, Enquete sur la marine marchande, 13-15; AN 9AQ3, Rapport Presente par le Conseil d 'Administration, 19 Decembre 1861, Paris: 1861, 9-14; Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 180; Maurice Sarraut, Le Probleme de la Marine Marchande (Paris: Berger Levrault, 1901), 184. 10. AN 9AQ3, Rapport Presente par le Conseil d 'Administration, 19 Decembre 1861, 9-14. 11. Jacques Fierain, "L'Action de l'Etat dans la Construction Navale (1866-1975)," in Etats, fiscalites, economies: actes du cinquieme congres de Vassociation francaise des historiens economistes, 1983, edited by Jean Bouvier and J.-C. Perrot (Paris: Sorbonne, 1985), 271. 12. Patrick Barry, The Dockyards, Shipyards and Marine of France (London: Simpkin, 1864), 171. 13. Ibid., 173-174. 14. Ibid., 176-177. 15. Quoted in Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 275. 16. Edwin M. Bacon, Manual of Ship Subsidies. An Historical Summary of the Systems ofAll Nations (Chicago: McClurg, 1911), 26; Jones, Government Aid, 135-139. 17. Royal Meeker, "History of Shipping Subsidies," Political Science Quarterly 20, n. 4 (1905): 594-611; Marthe Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie Generale Transatlantique: un siecle d'exploitation maritime (Paris: Arts et Metiers Graphiques, 1955), 29-32; Pollard and Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 222-226; Jean Autin, Les Freres Pereire: Le Bonheur d 'Entreprendre (Paris: Librairie AcadSmique Perrin, 1984), 165. 18. Jones, Government Aid, 150-155; Rene Laurent, Evolution Chronologique des Transports Maritimes et Aeriens (en Passagers) sur VAtlantique Nord (1840-1861), vol.1 (Paris: Imprimerie Transatlantique, n.d.), 6-7. The debut voyage did little to reward legislative support; the crossing took twenty-nine days instead of the expected seventeen because the vessel ran out of coal and had to rely on sail power. 19. Autin, Les Freres Pereire, 36. 20. Compagnie Generale Maritime, Rapport Par le Conseil d'Administration. Resolutions de VAssemblee (Paris, 1855), 4-5. 21. The Messageries Maritimes, established in 1851, was the only large French shipping company at this time. Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 171; Barrie M. Ratcliffe, "The Origins of the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1860: A Reassessment," in Great Britain and Her World 1750-1914: Essays in Honour ofW.O. Henderson, edited by Barrie M. Ratcliffe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975), 125-151; Compagnie Generale Maritime, Rapport par le Conseil d 'Administration. Resolutions de VAssemblee, 5-7; Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 39-42. 22. AN 9AQ392 (140mi24), "Proces-verbaux, Comite de Direction," 23 May 1855; Rene" Laurent, Evolution Chronologique de la Compagnie Generale Transatlantique (Paris: Imprimerie Transatlantique, 1959), 9-10.

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23. A Crampon, La Compagnie Transatlantique: son deficit et sa situation (Paris: Imprimerie Balitout, 1868), 5; Autin, Les Freres Pereire, 164-169; Louis Girard, La Politique des Travaux Publics du Second Empire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1952), 222. 24. Ch. de la Morandiere, Les origines de la Compagnie Generale Transatlantique (Bayeux: Colas, n.d.); Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 40-42; Laurent, Evolution Chronologique de la Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 10; Edmond Lanier, Compagnie Generale Transatlantique: de la peche a la morue au paquebot "France" (Paris: Plon, 1962), 14-15. The price of wheat fell from 50 to 33 francs, sugar from 77 to 35 francs, rice from 52 to 34 francs. 25. Autin, Les Freres Pereire, 165-168. 26. Critics argued that the Pdreires failed to grasp two factors limiting commerce: the value of French goods in the international market and limited national consumption patterns. 27. Autin, Les Freres Pereire, 167. 28. Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 44. In 1857, the minister of the navy, Chasseloup-Laubat, responded to public pressure to strengthen France's fleet with funding for the operation of postal routes, one of the programs favored by the Pereires. Although the Pereires supported this first subsidy, the CGM judged the subsidy of 14 million francs, for postal service on the New York, South America, and Central America routes, as well as construction of twenty-six vessels with a total of 127,000 horsepower, woefully insufficient. The subsidy was awarded to the Union Maritime, a company founded in response to the financial potential of this government program, but it went bankrupt three years later. 29. Bacon, Manual of Ship Subsidies, 28; Pierre Jacques Charliat, Trois Siecles d'Economie Maritime Francaise (Paris: Marcel Rivi&re, 1939), 157-158; Louis-Joseph Gras, Histoire Economique de la Metallurgie de la Loire, (St. Etienne: Th6olier, 1908), 104-106. 30. Proces-Verbaux des Seances du Conseil General de la Loire-Inferieure (Nantes Mellinet, 1868), 288-289. 31. Commission d'Enquete Parlementaire sur la Marine Marchande, Enquete Parlementaire sur la Marine Marchande. Depositions Ecrites (Paris: C. Delagrave, 1870), 81, 988-996; Commission d'Enqu6te Parlementaire sur la Marine Marchande, Enquete Parlementaire sur la Marine Marchande. Seances du Samedi 2 Juillet 1870, 990-991; Proces-Verbaux des Seances du Conseil General, 288-289; Journal Officiel de la Republique Francaise (1 March 1897): 1562; Gras, Histoire Economique, 104-106; Bacon, Manual of Ship Subsidies, 28-29; Charliat, Trois Siecles, 158; Louis Simonin, "Les grands ports de commerce de la France: Nantes et le bassin de la Loire," Revue des Deux Mondes (15 November 1877): 419. 32. Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 280. 33. Journal Officiel de la Republique Francaise (1 March 1897): 1557-1559; Lucie Lefol, La protection de la construction navale en France et a Vetranger (fin 1928) (Paris Les Presse Modernes, 1928), 14-16; de la Porte, Loi du 19 Avril 1906, 13-15; Albert Anthiaume, Le Navire: sa construction au Havre (Paris: E. Dumont, 1925X 17; A de Lavison, La protection par les primes: theorie et histoire des primes, primes a la marine marchande, primes a la sericulture et a la filature de la sole, primes a Vexportation de sucres (Paris: Rousseau, 1900), 18-24; Charliat, Trois Siecles, 157-158. 34. Theodore Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy: French Naval Policy, 187 1904 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1987), 62; Autin, Les Freres Pereire, 165; Lavison, La protection par les primes, 168-187; C.I. Hamilton, Anglo-French Naval Rivalry, 18401870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 219. It was estimated that an expanded fleet available for military needs would save the state 14-16 million francs. 35. Bacon, Manual of Ship Subsidies, 28-29; Charliat, Trois Siecles, 158; Colin, La

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Navigation Commerciale, 280; Alfred Neymarck, Finances Contemporaines: Trente Annees Financieres, 1872-1901 (Paris: Guillaumin, 1903), 109-110; Shepard Bancroft Clough, France: A History of National Economics, 1789-1939 (New York: Scribner, 1939), 239-240; Fierain, "L'Action de l'Etat," 271; H.D. Peiter, "Institutions and Attitudes: The Consolidation of the Business Community in Bourgeois France, 1880-1914," Journal of Social History 9, n. 4 (June 1976): 510-525; Denis Woronoff, Histoire de L 'Industrie e France: Du XVI siecle a nos jours (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1994), 365-366; Dan Warshaw, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu and Established Liberalism in France (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991), 21; Lavison, La protection par les primes, 6-24, 68-91, 164-210; Claude Fohlen, "Bourgeoisie Francaise, liberte economique et intervention de l'etat," Revue economique (1956): 415-424. 36. Michael S. Smith, "Free Trade versus Protection in the Early Third Republic: Economic Interests, Tariff Policy, and the Making of the Republican Synthesis," French Historical Studies 10, n. 2 (Fall 1977): 307. 37. Michael S. Smith, Tariff Reform in France, 1860-1900: The Politics of Economi Interest (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 108-110; Ratcliffe, "The Origins of the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1860," 125-151. Dan Warshaw suggests the coexistence of three currents of nineteenth-century liberal thought—classic, established, and reformist. Warshaw, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. 3 8. Lavison, La protection par les primes, 7-23. 39. Ibid., 7-24, 189-201; Journal Officiel de la Republique Francaise, Chambre Debats (23 June 1880): 6886-6887. 40. The treaty did not include Pereire's proposals for graduated changes in the nation's commercial regime. De la Porte, Loi du 19 Avril 1906, 15-17; Ratcliffe, "The Origins of the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1860," 139-142. 41. Sanford Elwitt, The Making of the Third Republic: Class and Politics in France, 1868-1884 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975), 234. 42. AN F12 6772, Rapport par le Conseil d'Administration: Resolutions de VAssemblee (1855), 4-5. 43. Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 47; Journal de Saint-Nazaire (24 March 1871). 44. This long-term, no-cost loan resolved the Pereires' financial crisis and secured a potentially boundless funding source that sustained the shipping company for decades. The contract proved a boon to the company in yet another way. The business association with the government redeemed the Pereires' tarnished reputation and credit It assured a favorable response to a public sale of 64,000 stocks and bonds, which increased the shipper's capital by 29.6 million francs. In a savvy publicrelationsmove, the Pdreires took this opportunity to dissolve their links to the financially discredited CGM and endow the company with a new corporate identity. The shipper would now be known as the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique. 45. Guy P. Palmade, French Capitalism in the Nineteenth Century, translated by Graeme M. Holmes (New York: Barnes and Nobles, 1972), 148. 46. Most politicians believed that the company's insolvency hadrepercussionsbeyond the Transat: the P6reires' mismanagement had also endangered the French economy. Some critics went further, charging that the brothers' culpability for this crisis extended beyond a repeat of the poor management seen in 1858 to questionable, and perhaps illegal, financial dealings. One critic, A. Crampon, published an account of the Transat's shady financial history, charging that the current emergency originated in the Pereires' manipulation of the insolvent CGM. At the time of the company's liquidation, the Pereires sharply overvalued CGM stock to minimize the degree of the company's failure. Although CGM property was

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worth only 7 million francs, the Pereires valued it at 24 million. Crampon asserted that the Pereires "masked" the Transat's opening deficit of 17 million francs through a series of irregular transactions involving fictitious shares, intending to close the remaining gap with a sale of bonds. The resignation of some of the company's administrators and engineers suggested internal knowledge of the impending financial collapse and bolstered widely held notions about the illegality of the Pereires' dealings. 47. Girard, La Politique, 369-370; Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 79-82; Laurent, Evolution Chronologique de la Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 20-21; AN 9AQ358, "Hypotheques prises par l'Etat." 48. Jean Bouvier, Histoire economique et sociale de la France, vol. IV: L 'ere industrielle et la societe d'aujourd'hui (Siecle 1880-1980), (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980), 216-217. 49. Robert Delorme and Christine Andre, L 'etat et Veconomic un essai d'explication de Vevolution des depenses publiques en France (1870-1980) (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1983), 216-217. 50. Lucien Brocard, "La repartition des primes entre les armateurs et les constructeurs de navires dans la legislation francaise," Revue d'economie politique 14 (1900): 530. 51. An 1874 maritime commission first advanced these provisions. Lefol, La protection, 16-17; Charles le Roux de Bretagne, Les Primes a la Marine Marchande en France: Etude Historique et Critique (Paris: Girard, 1900), 60-63; Neymarck, Finances Contemporaines, 109-111, 118-121; Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 281; Brocard, "La repartition des primes," 530-532; Smith, Tariff Reform, 180. 52. Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 280-281. 53. Brocard, "La repartition des primes," 531. 54. E. Verge, Rapport Presente Par la Chambre Syndicale des Constructeurs de Navires et de Machines Marines, Situation de I'Industrie de la Construction Navale, 1929-1930 (Paris: Conseil National Economique, 1930), 19-20. 55. An average-sized vessel brought a shipyard 2,000 to 5,000 francs, and while the rate for boilers and wooden vessels was similar, the lower weight earned a smaller subsidy. For example, an 881-ton wooden boat built in 1883 earned 88 francs in subsidies, while the average boiler modernized at Penhouet, 6,203,569 tons, brought 2,441 francs. C. Colson, "Measures adopted by the different governments for the protection of ocean navigation: Bounties," International Congress on Navigation (x) 2-7, (Brussels: Printing Office, 1905), 3-5; AN F12 5767, Marine Marchande, "Primes a la Construction," 1883, 1881-1887. 56. French builders considered the demi-primes and disproportionate subsidies for shippers contrary to the spirit of the law. Robert A. Macfie, Cries, in a Crisis, for Statemanship Popular and Patriotic to Test and Contest Free-Trade in Manufacturers, 2nd ed. (London: Stanford, 1881), 40. 57. Brocard, "La repartition des primes," 534; Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 294-296; Gras, Histoire Economique, 104-108; Latty, Regime de la Construction Navale, vol. 1,679-684; Meeker, "History of Shipping Subsidies," 600. 58. Rene Fould, La Construction Navale Francaise d'Hier et de Demain (Paris: Academie de Marine, 1949), 24; Brocard, "La repartition des primes," 535; Girault, "Place et Role," 205; L 'Avenir de VArrondissement de Saint-Nazaire (1 October 1882); Charliat, Trois Siecles, 176; Lavison, La protection par les primes, 202-203. Yards were also established at Bordeaux, Nantes, and Le Havre; Christiane Maubant and Frank Duboc, Navails: cinq siecles de construction navale au Havre (Le Havre: Musee des Beaux Arts, 1988), 297. 59. This figure included older vessels refashioned with steam engines or strengthened hulls. Charliat, Trois Siecles, 179.

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60. Clough, France, 242; Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 290-296, 298. 61. Fierain, "L'Action de l'Etat," 270-271. 62. CGM AH GG6 209, "Note," 15, 21 December 1881; Fierain, "L'Action de l'Etat," 270-271. 63. Gaston Coste, "Le Probleme de la Marine Marchande: Les Primes, Les Subventions Postales" (These pour le doctorat, Montpelier, 1909), 112-114. 64. Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 296-297. A shift toward protectionism, evident in 1885 and 1887 legislation, made it difficult for free traders to rectify the term limit. 65. Legislators extended navigation subsidies through 1893, but they came too late to stimulate new construction. 66. ADLA 1M2368, "Chambre Syndicale des Forgerons et Aides-Forgerons, Nantes," 8 March 1889. 67. Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 295-296. 68. Fould, La Construction Navale, 24; Coste, "Le Probleme," 109-114; Gras, Histoire Economique, 104-110; Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 295-300; Meeker, "History of Shipping Subsidies," 554. 69. Girault, "Place et Role," 205; Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Nazaire, Traites de Commerce. Reponse au Questionnaire du Conseil Superieure du Commerce et de Vlndustrie (Saint-Nazaire, 1890), 21-24; Coste, "Le Probleme," 112-114. 70. Quoted in Calvin and Stuart, The Merchant Shipping Industry, 241. 71. CGM GG6 209 "Notes," 15, 21 December 1881; Macfie, Cries, 178-179. 72. Ministere de 1' agriculture et du commerce. Division du commerce exterieur. Expose presente a la commission d 'enquete sur la marine marchande. Seance du 22 Octobre 1851 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1851), 9-13; M. De Fonmartin de L'Espinasse, Appel au gouvernment et aux chambres sur notre marine marchande (Paris: Bachelier, 1846), 9-11; Sarraut, Le Probleme, 101; Richard Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 13; Pierre Gousset, "Pour une Histoire des Ministeres: Evolution historique de 1'administration centrale du commerce et de l'industrie," La Revue Administrative 14 (March-April 1961): 132-137. 73. Kuisel, Capitalism and the State, 13. 74. Herman Lebovics, The Alliance of Iron and Wheat in the French Third Republic 1860-1914: Origins of the New Conservatism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 4. 75. Neymarck, Finances Contemporaines, 250. 76. Smith, Tariff Reform, 312-313. 77. Kuisel, Capitalism and the State, 19. 78. Smith, Tariff Reform, 206-235; Kuisel, Capitalism and the State, 18-19. 79. Kuisel, Capitalism and the State, 19-20. 80. Jules Charles-Roux, Notre Marine Marchande (Paris: Colin, 1898), 76. 81. Ibid., 76, 86-89. 82. Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 297. 83. Meeker, "History of Shipping Subsidies," 600, 602. Under the 1893 subsidy, the government spent 55 million francs on construction subsidies and 117 million francs on navigation subsidies. 84. Quoted in Sarraut, Le Probleme, 170. 85. Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 182-183, 300-306; Gras, Histoire Economique, 108; Meeker, "History of Shipping Subsidies," 602. 86. Ministere du Commerce, de l'industrie, des postes et des telegraphes. Commission extraparlementaire de la marine marchande. Sous-commission d'etudes de la marine

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marchande. Rapports Presenter a la commission de la marine marchande (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1899), 34-36; Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 303; de la Porte, Loidu 19 Avril 1906,23-25. 87. Charliat, Trois Siecles, 181; Clough, France, 242; Meeker, "History of Shipping Subsidies," 562; Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 300. The sailing subsidy may have been justified by the use of these vessels as "training ground" for sailors. 88. Meeker, "History of Shipping Subsidies," 562. 89. Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 297-298; Chambre des Deputes de la Seance du 28 Octobre 1901, "Disposition du Projet de Loi Relatif a la Marine Marchande," 2004. 90. Meeker, "History of Shipping Subsidies," 601. The example of the port at Le Havre illustrates this; tonnage of sailing ships from 1893 to 1896 rose from 20,000 tons to 28,000, while steamship tonnage fell from 161,000 to 134,000 tons. Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 30491. Mark Hirsch, "Sailmakers: The Maintenance of the Craft Traditions in the Age of Steam," in Divisions of Labour: Skilled Workers and Technological Change in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Royden Harrison and Jonathan Zeitlin (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 97; Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 304-305; Colson, Measures adopted by the different governments, 7-8. British sailing vessels in excess of 100 tons fell from 184,000 tons in 1885, to 2,500 in 1898. In brief, the 1893 program led France to increase its sail tonnage by 108 percent as other shipbuilding nations decreased their sail fleet by 21 percent. 92. Latty, Regime de la Construction, 684. 93. Quoted in Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 305-306. 94. Ibid., 306. 95. Sarraut, Le Probleme, 105. 96. The business leaders included shipping magnates Duprat of the Societe des Chargeurs-Reunis and Lefevre-Pontalis of the Messageries Maritimes. Shipbuilding interests were represented by Jouet-Pastre, president of the Board of Directors of the Forges et Chantiers de la Mediterranee, Chaudoye, the director of Saint-Nazaire's Loire yard, Nantes shipbuilder Dubigeon, and Comte de Bondy, president of the Board of Directors of the Societe des Chantiers et Ateliers de la Gironde. Representatives from the chambers of commerce of major port cities, seventeen deputies, and other high-ranking officials from relevant government bureaus also sat on this body. 97. Sarraut, Le Probleme, 107; de la Porte, Loi du 19 Avril 1906, 26-27; CharlesRoux, Notre Marine Marchande, 81-90; Paul Coq, Resume analytique de Venquete parlementaire sur le regime economique de la France, en 1870; coton, laine, I'm, chanvre, jute, soie, marine marchande (Paris: Guillaumin, 1872), 347. 98. Ministere du Commerce, de l'industrie, des postes et des telegraphes, Commission extraparlementaire de la marine marchande, Sous-Commission d'Enquete: Proces-Verbaux des seances, 37-39. 99. Sarraut, Le Probleme, 108. 100. Ministere du Commerce, de l'industrie, des postes et des telegraphes, Commission extraparlementaire de la marine marchande, Sous-commission d'enquete. Proces-Verbaux des seances, 33-35, 322, and Sous-commission d'etudes de la marine marchande. Rapports presentes a la commission de la marine marchande, 14-36. 101. Sarraut, Le Probleme, 120. 102. Ministere du Commerce, de l'industrie, des postes et des telegraphes, Commission extraparlementaire de la marine marchande, Sous-commission d'enquete. Proces-Verbaux des seances, 326-336. 103. Charles-Roux, Notre Marine Marchande, 98-109; Sarraut, Le Probleme, 123-

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128; Jones, Government Aid, 145-147. De Lome maintained that French shipyards would prosper once the merchant marine was flourishing. 104. Girault, "Place et Role," 205. 105. N. Soliani, "Steps taken by Governments to Protect Ocean Navigation: Bounties," International Congress on Navigation (x) 2, 7 (Brussels: Printing Office, 1905), 12; de la Porte, Loi du 19 Avril 1906, 26-27; Jones, Government Aid, 147; Meeker, "Shipping Subsidies," 600; Gras, Histoire Economique, 115; Bacon, Manual of Ship Subsidies, 34. 106. Latty, Regime de la Construction, 684; Gras, Histoire Economique, 115. 107. Quoted in Jones, Government Aid, 147-148. 108. AN F7 11765, "Commissaire special," January, 9 February 1902; Le Petit Phare (7 July 1900); Latty, Regime de la Construction, 684; Gras, Histoire Economique, 115. 109. Vessel tonnage is not a precise indicator as many took over a year to complete and were registered only in the final year. Pierre Thebault, "L'activite economique de la BasseLoire de 1852 a 1939" (Memoire de maitrise d'histoire, Universitede Nantes, 1975), 6771. 110. Jones, Government Aid, 143. 111. Colson, "Measures Adopted," 12. 112. Soliani, "Steps Taken by Governments," 7; Fierain, "L'Action de l'Etat," 272. 113. AN 9AQ11, "Rapport Presente par le Conseil d'Administration, 24 Avril 1908," 14-15. France gained "a true steamship fleet" in these years-it increased from 1,299 vessels of 547,000 tons in 1902, to 1,471 vessels of 711,000 tons in 1905-but much of it came from foreign construction produced under the foreign subsidy. In 1901, foreign yards built one-half of the nation's steam tonnage. See Coste, "Le probleme," 129; Meeker, "History of Shipping Subsidies," 562; Latty, Regime de la Construction Navale, 684-685. 114. R. Dugas, Enquete du Conseil Nationale Economique: L'industrie de la Construction Navale (Paris: Chambre Syndicale des Constructeurs de Navires, 1930), 66. 115. Quoted in Jones, Government Aid, 147. 116. Ibid., 148. Other nations reduced their ship production in response to an "excess of tonnage compared with commercial requirements." 117. Fierain implies that commerce overrode finance to establish this policy. In addition, builders and shippers may have found another strategy to influence public policy. In 1899, a national employers federation, the Chambre Syndicale des Constructeurs de Navires et de Machines Marines, was formed to monitor state programs and plan for future concerns. Meeting minutes indicate that builders had also begun lobbying on labor laws— dispensation for overtime at some yards and opposition to a ten-hour day. Chambre Syndicale des Constructeurs de Navires et de Machines Marines, Rapport du Conseil, 1905-1916 (Paris, 1916). 118. Jean Latty, Regime de la Construction Navale en France: Traite D'Economie Maritime, Vol. \,La Construction Navale (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1951), 685-686. 119. Meeker, "History of Shipping Subsidies," 573. 120. Ibid.., 582. 121. Ibid., 574, 582; and "History of Shipping Subsidies," 602-603; Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 286, 288; Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 122, 197. Service to Algeria from 1881 paid 880,000 francs annually, weekly service to New York from 1886 paid 5.5 million francs, and service to the Antilles earned the company another 4.5 million francs annually. 122. This is not to imply that the funding level satisfied builders. The Transat contended in 1881 that construction subsidies were inadequate to meet the speed and safety requirements of postal vessels. In 1913, the Transat complained about the "'handicap'" and the ""numerous obligations imposed by the State in return'" for postal funds. Jones,

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Government Aid, 160-161; CGM GG6 209 "Note," 14, 15 December 1881. 123. Unemployment statistics at Saint-Nazaire for 1897 and 1898 bear this out. C. Ferrand, "L'industrie des Constructions Navales en France," La revue politique et parlementaire 90 (January 1917), 175-177. 124. AN 9AQ20, Supplement a Marine Moniteur, 5 December 1897; Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 290. 125. See Colin, La Navigation Commerciale, 290. 126. A.M. Thackara, "Subsidies of the French Line of Steamers," Monthly Consular Reports, vol. 8 (1898): 210; Fierain, "L'Action de l'Etat," 272-273; Bacon, Manual of Ship Subsidies, 35. 127. Ferrand, "L'industrie des Constructions Navales," 172; Fierain, "L'Action de l'Etat," 271. 128. Calvin and Stuart, The Merchant Shipping Industry, 240. 129. Ferrand, "L'industrie des Constructions Navales," 29. Unemployment and cyclical production had been endemic to shipbuilding and a part of life for Saint-Nazaire's ship workers well before the 1881 subsidy program. Conseil General de la Loire Atlantique, Rapports et Proces-Verbaux du Conseil General de la Loire-Inferieure, 1863, 154-156; 1864, 195-196; 1866, 232; 1869, 299. 130. Ferrand, "L'industrie des Constructions Navales," 29. 131. AN F12 6773, "Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Nazaire," 12 February 1891; Bernard Hazo, Les Anarchistes Bleus, 1880-1914: Le Mouvement Ouvrier a Saint-Nazaire et en Loire-Inferieure (La Baule: Editions des Paludiers, 1980), 27. 132. The same was true for shipyards at Le Havre, where the impact of the program for employment was not felt until 1883. 133. ADLA 1M2129, "Sur la situation de l'industrie," 14 October, 30 November 1884; "Sous-Prefet," 10 November 1884; "Situation Industrielle," 19 November 1884. 134. Maubant and Duboc, Navalis, 296-298; Jean Legoy, Le peuple du Havre et son histoire: du negoce a l'industrie, 1800-1914, vol. 2 (Le Havre: EDIP, 1982), 201. 135. Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Nazaire, Traites de Commerce, 5-6; Fierain, "L'Action de l'Etat," 272. 136. Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Nazaire, Compte-rendu des travaux 1882-1908, Seance du Jeudi 12 Fevrier 1891. 137. La Democratic de VOuest (8, 15 February 1891); Marthe Barbance, SaintNazaire: Le Port, La Ville, Le Travail (Moulins: Crepin-LeBlond, 1948), 494. 138. AN 9AQ11, Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, Rapport Presente Par le Conseil d 'Administration 29 June 1893 (Paris, 1893), 11-12; 30 March 1894, 11-12; 19 June 1895, 11-12; ADLA 1M2137, "Situation Industrielle"; Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Nazaire, 177; Ministere du Commerce, Office du Travail, Bulletin de VOffice du Travail, (December 1894): 615; (February 1895): 94; (April 1895): 208, 219. 139. ADLA 1M620-621, "Commissaire special," 22 October 1896. 140. Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (November 1895): 616; (March 1896): 149; (April 1896): 209; (August 1896): 463; (September 1896): 526; (January 1897): 13; L'Echo (6 June 1897); Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development," 599-634. 141. Summer hirings at the Loire totaled only 220, and a state contract for cargo boats could not ease the "anxiety" felt by workers and city leaders. The situation was as bleak at Le Havre, where the yards laid off about 600 workers from 1895 to 1897. Marseilles' industry also suffered, while production increased at Bordeaux by virtue of warship contracts. L 'Echo (16, 30 May, 24 June, 16, 22 Jury 1897); Progres de Nantes (1,5 June 1897); Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (July 1897): 428; (November 1897): 680; (February 1898): 94; (April 1898): 242; Legoy, Le Peuple du Havre, 231; La Democratic de VOuest,

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19 March 1897. 142. L'Echo claimed on 3 June 1897 that 3,500 to 4,000 were unemployed. The correct figure may lie somewhere in between. Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Nazaire, Compte-rendu des travaux de la Chambre, 1882-1908, "Seance Extraordinaire du Jeudi 3 Juin 1897," (Saint-Nazaire, 1899); Bulletin Officiel de la Federation Nationale des Ouvriers Metallurgistes en France (June 1897); Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (July 1897): 428. 143. ADLA 1M624, "Commissaire central," 3 June 1897. 144. Z/£c/zo (6 May 1897). 145. I 'Echo (29 September 1897); Le Progres de Nantes (13 June 1897). 146. ADLA 1M624, "Commissaire central," 3 June 1897; Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Nazaire, Compte-rendu, "Seance Extraordinaire du Jeudi, 3 Juin 1897"; L'Echo (27 March, 2 May, 6, 20 June, 1897). 147. Le Reveil Social (15 September 1901). 148. Ibid. 149. ADLA 1M622, "Commissaire special," 24 February, 23 March, 16-31 March 1898; L'Echo (6 April 1898); Le Reveil Social (17 February 1901); Barbance, Histoire de la Compagnie, 148-150, 197; Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (April 1898): 244; (May 1898): 332; (September 1899): 799; (February 1900): 198; (October 1900): 1028, 1040; (November 1900): 1040, 1144; (November 1899): 1041; (February 1900): 204; (August 1900): 869; (June 1901): 449. The postal subsidy paid the Transat for 20% of the cost of La Lorraine. 150. Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (September 1902): 634-635. 151. Le Petit Phare (7 July 1900), Ironically, Saint-Nazaire's workers petitioned for, and obtained, a two-month deferment on reduced sail subsidies to protect sailing contracts and hundreds of local jobs. AN F7 11765, "Commissaire special," January, 9 February 1902. 152. AN F7 12765, "Commissaire Special," 28 July 1904; Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (September 1902): 634-635; (December 1902): 924; (January 1903): 66; Maubant and Duboc, Navalis, 301. 153. AN F7 12765, "Commissaire Central," 3 December 1904; Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (August 1902): 561; (March 1903): 247; (June 1903): 525-527; (September 1903): 763; (February 1904): 166; (June 1904): 558; (September 1904): 826; Barbance, SaintNazaire, 495-496; Moret, Histoire de Saint-Nazaire, 947-949. Unemployment among port workers reached 40 percent. 154. Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (October 1904): 904; (March 1905): 255; (May 1903): 431; Great Britian, Board of Trade, Cost of Living in French Towns, 232, 318; Fierain, "L'Action de l'Etat," 272. 155. Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 373; Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (June 1906): 627; (November 1908): 1153. 156. Bulletin de VOffice du Travail, (June 1907): 621; (May 1908): 497-498; (July 1908): 684; (September 1908): 925; (July 1909): 806; (March 1910): 322; (November 1910): 1264-1265; Chambre Syndicale des Constructeurs de Navires et de Machines Marines, Rapport du Conseil, 14 December 1908, 9; Le Travailleur (29 August 1909); Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 497. 157. Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (March 1907): 274; (April 1908): 385-386; (February 1910): 200-210; (March 1910): 322; (July 1910): 775; (August 1910): 885-886; (September 1910): 1009; (December 1910): 1363-1364, 1368; (July 1911): 732; (October 1911): 1014-1015; Thebault, "L'Activite Economique," 67-71. 158. Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (August 1911): 828; (April 1912): 424;

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(November 1912): 1227. 159. La Democratic de VOuest (21 January 1912). 160. Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (July 1911): 732; (May 1912): 419. La Democratic de VOuest reported on 10 April 1912 that "work [at Penhouet] is yet far from being insufficient and it is no longer necessary to fear the specter of unemployment, despite the completion of the France." 161. Thebault, "L'Activite Economique," 67-71; Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (January 1913): 84; (April 1913): 430. 162. For a discussion of unemployment in industrializing America, see Alexander Keyssar, Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment of Unemployment in Massachusetts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 163. Quoted in Philippe Lardin, "Le Mouvement Ouvrier a Nantes et Saint-Nazaire de 1878 a 1895" (Memoire de maitrise, Universite de Nantes, 1974), 10. 164. La Democratic de VOuest (25 April 1894). 165. Le Phare de la Loire (16 September 1889). 166. ADLA 1M23111, "Commissaire special," 12, 17 February 1894. 167. La Democratic de VOuest (25 April 1894). 168. ADLA 1M2317, "Sous-Prefet," 26, 27 March 1907. 169. La Democratic de I 'Ouest (30 January 1910). 170. ADLA 1M234, "Commissaire special," 12 February 1894. 171. Their attitude was illustrated by the slogan "The British will do the work, the French sing for their supper." ADLA IM 2368, "Chambre Syndicale Des Forgerons et Aides-Forgerons," 8 March 1889; "Ministere du Commerce," 20 April 1889. 172. AN F7 12765, "Commissaire Special," 1, 5 December 1901; l e Petit Phare (8 December 1901); Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 496-497. 173. ADLA 1M629, "Commissaire Special adjoint," 19 May 1903. 174. AN F6 13606, "Commissaire Central," 1 April 1904; ADLA 1M527, "Sousprefet," 1 January 1909; Le Travailleur (28 March 1909). Ship workers in Brittany were not alone in these efforts. Ship workers in Le Havre corresponded with their deputy over provisions of the 1902 law, and in 1910, workers at La Seyne monitored their representative's stance on additional postal contracts. F7 12765 "Commissaire special," 20 November 1901; "Mairie de Firminy," 17 January 1910. 175. Fierain, "L'Action de l'Etat," 273. An observer of international transport commented in 1924 that if "government aid could of itself create a large merchant marine, France should to-day have one of the largest." Jones, Government Aid, 135. 176. Quoted in Bouvier, Histoire economique et sociale, 206. 177. Ferrand, "L'industrie des Constructions Navales," 172; Fierain, "L'Action de l'Etat," 271. 178. ADLA 1M2129, "Situation Industrielle," premier trimestre, 1883; "Commissaire Central de Nantes," 31 October 1884; Ferrand, "L'industrie des Constructions Navales," 173; Anthony Rowley, Evolution economique de la France du milieu du XIXe siecle a 1914 (Paris: Societe d'edition d'enseignement superieur, 1982), 377-378; Dugas, L Industrie de la Construction Navale, passim.

Chapter 3 Recasting the Shipbuilding Industry: The Labor Process and Social Relations By the latter part of the nineteenth century, changes in the process of production, as a consequence of developments in the product line and in materials, had transformed the shipbuilding industry. An expanded workforce, the inclusion of new trades such as engineering and metalwork, a vast increase in the scale of the facility and of production, greater complexity and precision in work processes, and the utilization of electrical machine tools and dockside cranes came to characterize production. Despite the presence of factors typically indicative of industrial production, ship production also remained marked by the workshop model of production: manual labor, complex tasks, the retention of hand tools, and a workforce of skilled and broadly trained semiskilled workers who operated with a large measure of workplace autonomy.1 The coexistence of artisanal and industrial models of operation appears to have been common to many industries in the late nineteenth century.2 The introduction of capitalist methods of production did not transform all industries in a parallel manner and, as importantly, affected the diverse work processes and shops within those industries according to vastly different timetables. Shipbuilding stands as one industry in which artisanal modes of production shaped workplace operations and processes.3 Not surprisingly, the persistence of artisanal modes of operation in industrial facilities had important ramifications for labor relations and associations. Historians have shown that the process of production and the workplace

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experience were fundamental variables in shaping workers' consciousness, organizational skills, and militancy and in fashioning their interests and objectives. One of the earliest studies in this vein, Shorter and Tilly's Strikes in France, suggested a connection between industrial production and the nature and object of strikes. According to this view, the transformation to industrialization was marked by management's attempts to redesign procedures and facilities to gain control of production and of the workforce. Their methods included the adoption of standardized tasks, mechanized equipment, new wage systems, and surveillance systems, as well as replacing skilled workers with unskilled and semiskilled workers. Aware that these new patterns of work would affect job status and security, artisans and the skilled capitalized on their economic resources, associations, and organizational experience to resist management's advances. In many instances, semi- and unskilled workers came to join the skilled in labor coalitions, however, this perspective continues, once unskilled workers became the dominant workforce in industrial facilities, labor protest changed. Without resources, experience, and market power, these workers held less frequent and shorter strikes that focused more often on political issues resolvable at the national level than wage and shop floor concerns.4 This representation of workers' resources and patterns of labor activity has not received much attention in recent years, primarily because it is reliant on a model of industrial transformation, sudden, progressive, and clearly defined, that has been largely discarded. The conversion to an industrial mode of production, in shipbuilding as in other industries, followed neither a particular timetable nor a set pattern but was a fitful, complex, and highly variable process. As a consequence, it is no longer possible to discuss a blanket assault on the traditional prerogatives of the skilled, even in the textile industry, or to expect that workers had similar experiences in the workshop. However, a reconsideration of the role of the shop floor and of production in association and protest has not followed this recognition that industrialization was a highly specific and diverse process. For instance, in shipbuilding the arrangement of production did not systematically divest skilled workers of their jobs or threaten their status but promoted the emergence of new categories of workers, many possessing privileges and autonomy resembling that of artisans. The example of the French shipbuilding industry demonstrates the complexity of the industrial transformation, and the multiplicity of workplace experiences and, in so doing, illustrates the need to reevaluate the impact of the workplace on labor associations and activity. In the shipbuilding industry in Saint-Nazaire, the production process divided the workforce and restricted associations but, at the same time, facilitated organization and labor activity among one particular segment of the workforce.

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EVOLUTION OF THE MARKET Developments in construction materials and in the function of vessels altered the process of ship production and the composition of the workforce. The transformation of shipyards from portside carpentry shops employing fifty workers, to huge industrial facilities with dozens of shops and a workforce of 2,000-3,000 began in the 1850s and 1860s. As international shipping became a more viable and ready means of communication and transport, builders addressed the limitations that wood vessels placed on speed and cargo capacity. Wooden hulls typically strained under the stress of high speeds, causing the structure to warp and jeopardizing safety. Wood construction also restricted vessel size; vessels above two to three hundred feet in length experienced arching or drooping. In the search for lighter and stronger construction materials, builders experimented first with iron. Used in French shipyards from the 1840s, iron proved advantageous and became the primary material in hull construction by the 1870s. It assured greater rigidity and a more durable vessel by allowing for longer keel planks. Iron sheets could also be fastened more securely than wooden segments, providing a watertight vessel even under the stress of high seas. Finally, the lighter iron hull permitted increases in both ship dimension and strength. Cargo capacity expanded 35 percent with iron hulls, crucial in an era of rapidly developing commercial activity.5 Substituting steel for iron hulls' proved the next major advance and allowed for larger vessels with even greater strength, speed, and cargo space.6 The military shipyards at Lorient and Brest produced France's first steel-hulled vessels in 1874, and within a few short years, steel had been widely accepted by the nation's builders. By 1905, steel had replaced iron as the primary material in vessel construction. The benefits of steel over iron replicated those of iron over wood. The advantages for the commercial shipping industry were obvious: expanded cargo holds increased earning capacity, while higher speeds reduced operating costs. Shipyards no longer shaped and secured wooden planks but fashioned iron and steel components. The growing popularity of overseas travel on passenger liners from the 1870s also affected ship construction. The appeal of passenger transport lay in the speed of travel as well as the special appliances and accommodations installed for comfort and luxury. Construction of these grandiose liners, different from wooden sailing vessels in function, materials, and accessories, transformed production, particularly at shipyards like Saint-Nazaire's Penhouet, which specialized in luxurious transoceanic vessels for the Transat line. Scale was the most dramatic change. In the 1860s, Transat liners carried 211 passengers on a voyage to New York, while twenty years later Transat liners housed about 1,200 passengers and crew members. On the eve of World War I, vessels like the much-publicized and luxurious France, constructed in 1912, accommodated 2,026.7 In addition to this increase in size, liners had multiple services and comforts that made them "equivalent in size and complexity to a small town."8 A host of accessories necessary for the operation

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and provisioning of each vessel became standard features. For transatlantic voyages it was necessary to store everything [needed for the voyage] on board, to make the bread there, to kill the animals that were brought on board alive, to have iceboxes, [and] cellars. It was necessary to assure the operation of the machines and the numerous personnel that they employ, the loading of coal, [and] the removal of soot; to position the hatches for the storage of merchandise, to reserve the passage necessary for their unloading, to position the masts conveniently so they are not in the way of the engines, the boilers, or the chambers; to allow for the installation of kilometers of pipes for steam,freshwater, distilled water, salt water, [and] for heat.9 Furthermore, elegant and sumptuous accessories became primary considerations in construction. Ship designers and shipbuilders had the task of creating lavish environments that accommodated over 1,000 passengers for weeks at a time. Most luxury hotels would have had difficulty duplicating the broad range of equipment, services, and creature comforts considered usual on these vessels. Liners were equipped with beauty salons, meeting rooms, grand ballrooms, and, for first-class passengers, grandiose furnishings and cabins likened to Versailles and the palaces of Oriental sultans.10 The Transat line even published a daily newspaper for its passengers. Oceanic transport was also class-conscious, like other forms of travel, and vessels separated first-class patrons from the poor migrants traveling in steerage. Vessels were designed "to lodge [these classes] in different and separate parts [of the vessel], to feed them differently, to furnish them with places to walk where they would have no contact with other classes, where they would circulate by special and distinct stairways, to light the central part of various floors during the day . . . to heat these large spaces, to light them during the night with electric light."11 Multiple daily operations made design and production more complex and elaborate compared to the small and, in contrast, relatively austere sailing vessels. As early as 1886, Charles Noel noted that "the difficulties of conception [involved in ocean liners make] it . . . easy to understand that the execution is complicated, long and costly. Meticulous care is indispensable, the details are innumerable and arise, at each instant, unexpectedly."12 DEVELOPMENTS IN PRODUCTION AND THE WORKFORCE French shipyards had alternated between production of wooden boats and metal-hulled vessels as late as the 1860s, but by the 1880s this was not possible "without 'reconstruction'" of facilities.13 Shipyards geared to constructing wooden vessels could not accommodate the expanded scale of production, and the skilled trade known as shipwrights could not fashion metal components and engines. The shift in materials and product brought a new physical setting, an increase in the scale of yards, shops, and components, more complicated and precise procedures, and, perhaps most significantly, the adoption of a workforce

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specializing in metalwork. As a member of the London Bridgebuilders Union noted in 1895, shipbuilding became "really a new industry by the substitution of iron for wooden ships."14 However, there remained great continuity with the earlier mode of production. Construction continued to depend on manual labor, hand tools, and a mix of skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers, and the activity in many shops replicated artisanal modes of operation. The most dramatic changes could be found in the infrastructure of the yard. Sheet metal as large as 25 x 8 feet replaced short wooden planks, and masts and boiler units stood several stories high, weighing as much as 100 tons. As a result, shipyards were no longer small work sites where fifty workers labored in one or two open construction berths but became, by the 1880s, huge industrial facilities as sizable as many small towns.16 Saint-Nazaire's two shipyards, the Loire and the reconstructed Penhouet, sat on 110 acres fronting on the Loire River. Penhouet's new facilities were so expansive that workers often used bicycles to travel between shops. In addition to housing forges and hangarsized workshops half an acre large, the well-equipped yard now had multiple dry docks for assembly work and an intrayard rail system. Penhouet boasted six miles of internal rail, linked to the regional rail system, to carry sheet metal, components, and machinery between shops and to the slips. Modern yards had multiple ship berths. The Loire and Penhouet yards opened with six berths each to accommodate construction, repair, and cleaning projects. In addition, the weight of components, some as heavy as five tons, called for the installation of enormous cranes to lift and position frames, boilers, engines, smokestacks, and turrets. The Loire's Titan crane, one of the largest at the time of its installation in the early 1900s, could lift 180 tons.17 Reconfiguring the workforce became a central element in the switch from wooden to metal-clad vessels. Wooden ship construction, essentially a "work of carpentry," had depended on the knowledge, experience, and precision of the skilled shipwright, or charpentier de na\ire}% Until the 1860s, the shipwrights single-handedly directed the work of wooden yards, and their empirical skill and workplace autonomy brought them recognition as a "worker aristocracy." These artisans designed seaworthy vessels to the specifications of the client, prepared models and wooden templates, built the keels and scaffolding to match assembly requirements, determined the position for attachment of the frames, and lastly, launched the completed product.19 Extensive preconstruction planning and design remained minimal, and builders instead relied on the shipwright to sight the timbers and frames for errors in curve and assembly after construction.20 The seaworthiness of the vessel hinged on the shipwright's ability to ascertain "[based on] their experience, at a glance, the form necessary for the [frame supports and] the ribs [and whether] to make alterations [and] to correct the curvatures."21 While yards often turned to sawmills for cutting timber, small mechanical tools to feshion metal fittings, and equipment to lift and haul the frames, the core work of preparation and assembly had been accomplished without machinery.22 Shipwrights utilized an assortment of woodworking tools for shaping, beveling, and fastening the

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wooden components and, consequently, at midcentury "manual power reigned supreme in the largest and best equipped" wooden shipyards of Great Britain and France.23 In the 1860s and 1870s, shipwrights saw their numbers and importance diminish as the switch to metal hull construction and engine building dictated the introduction of dozens of new trades from the metalworking industry. In a period of fifteen years, Le Havre's yards came to employ 50 percent fewer shipwrights, and shipwright training fell so sharply that in 1897 half of the shipwrights employed at a Bordeaux yard had apprenticed in other woodworking trades.24 The new shipyard trades, such as angle-ironsmiths, platers, riveters, holder-ups, came from metalworking and engineering industries where workers had been trained in the preparation and assembly of railroad cars, locomotives, engines, and bridges.25 Significantly, many shipwrights responded to the changing labor demands of their industry by learning iron construction and in this way assuring themselves a relatively secure and well-paid position in the new yards. Heinrich's study of Philadelphia's shipyards found that the yards resembled a "kindergarten" as shipwrights learned the process of iron construction.26 Some former shipwrights came to dominate berth work and tracing. Building the berth required skill with wood and knowledge of the principles of hull construction, as assembly and smooth launching depended on the shape of the keel, and so berth work remained one of the "more technically skilled branches of hull construction."27 Wooden construction skills also enabled shipwrights to work as tracers, a job preferred by Saint-Nazaire's shipwrights. Drawing the dimensions of every curve and angle required skill and exactitude; mistakes in calculation or marking would delay or damage components.28 Auguste Nerreire, a shipyard worker at the turn of the century, described the shipwrights-tracers at his yard in southern France, all of who came from the Saint-Nazaire region, as "elite workers." Their skills made them more "draftsmen than carpenters."29 The process of ship production after 1880, that is, work with metal components, diverged sharply from the work of preparing and assembling timbers. While both involved ccthe cutting of the flat piece according to the desired dimensions, the bending, . . . and punching the riveting holes necessary for assemblage," metalwork dictated a different set of tools and techniques.30 The differences are most apparent in the first stages of production: design and planning. Metal ship work was more exacting since iron did not permit postassembly adjustment. Designers drew a full-size version of the hull to plot the specifications for the thousands of metal components. Tracers then carved a two-dimensional template of the vessel, noting every curve, joint, frame, and angle, on an assembly of planks called the scrieve-board. This template would later guide metalworkers as they cut, shaped, and bent the components.31 In wooden construction, shipwrights turned next to forests and sawmills to select and cut the timbers. For iron vessels, the scene moved to forges and foundries like Trignac, just outside Saint-Nazaire, and Le Creusot, which manufactured

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the metal bars, girders, corner irons, and plates. The components arrived at the yard in rough form for metalworkers to refashion and prepare, a task vastly more intricate than readying timbers for assembly. Cutting, beveling, punching, marking, and piercing thousands of plates and angles to match the shape and curve of the model required great skill and precision, especially since iron hulls could not be "sighted" and corrected after construction. This work was completed with a variety of different measures, including small forges and hand and machine tools. The sheer magnitude of the modern vessel further complicated the process. Tradesmen had to ready as many as 17,000 plates and angles for construction of a vessel.32 The next phase of construction, assembling the frame and fastening the joints, bore no resemblance to wood joining. Positioning heavy and cumbersome metal sheets meant large crews of handlers operating on multistoried scaffolding at the berth as well as dockside cranes and winches to assist. For fastening, shipyards turned to iron construction workers, known as riveters, the same tradesmen responsible for raising the Eiffel Tower for the Paris Exposition of 1889. These workers operated from the scaffolding surrounding the vessel. With portable stoves to heat the rivets, crews moved along the narrow scaffolding, hammering each rivet into position, fashioning the head for tightness and repeating this process 250 to 300 times per day.33 The number of rivets per vessel varied greatly. A 10,000-ton vessel needed about 65,000 rivets, while cargo vessels required 975,000, and the 30,000-ton passenger liner Mauretania had over 4 million.34 Engine construction and installation followed assembly. No longer gigantic cargo holds powered by sail, vessels had become "'huge complicated machine[s], with immense installations of steam, hydraulic, and electric machinery.'"35 French yards had initially contracted with mechanical engineering shops, then considered "an accessory" to the industry, for engine machinery, but this situation changed in the late 1880s.36 Cost-saving led shippers to diversify into construction of steam machinery and boilers, incorporating yet another trade group, mechanical engineers, into the yard. Saint-Nazaire's two shipyards established large boiler shops to construct, install, and repair engines, boilers, and piping. The last stage of ship construction, known as outfitting, encompassed a varied and often complex set of jobs. "Outfitter" was a general term indicating all the craftsmen called on to fabricate and install the interior accessories common to all vessels, which initially meant the ladders, doors, deck planking, trimming, and portholes. The number of outfitters and their importance to production increased, as refrigerated rooms, plumbing and ventilation systems, and insulation for turbines and fireplaces became standard equipment. Outfitting at yards such as Saint-Nazaire's Penhouet, which specialized in luxury passenger liners like the France, known as the "chateau of the Atlantic," illustrated other contributions.37 In addition to building and equipping kitchens, bakeries, laundry rooms, wine cellars, and passenger cabins, outfitters included the carpenters, woodworkers, furniture makers, and fine metalworkers responsible for creating a sumptuous environment. On luxury liners, their

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work could include an ornate three-story staircase with a bronze-filigree banister, a grand dining salon in the style of Louis XIV, drawing rooms copied from a Touraine chateau, private dining rooms in the style of the empire, Turkish baths, a Moroccan tearoom complete with a running fountain, and elevators to carry first-class passengers between decks. In shipbuilding, the modernization of production meant the replacement of most wooden construction procedures with metal processes and the replacement of the shipwright with dozens of metal trades. It did not, however, herald a reduction in skill and autonomy or the standardization of procedures that often accompanied industrialization. Three factors assured the continuing importance of skilled labor and the retention of workshop methods of production. First, the custom-made product prohibited standardization and the utilization of vast numbers of unskilled workers. Ships were individually designed units with particular specifications for size, cargo capacity, engine power, military hardware, passenger comfort, and interior fittings. Since it was not possible to routinize the design, preparation, and assembly of each frame, rivet, boiler, and cabin, yards depended on a more generally skilled workforce knowledgeable in many aspects of production. In fact, the wide range of tasks expected of workers hindered the introduction of scientific management. Popularized at the turn of the century by Frederick Winslow Taylor, scientific management drew the attention of Penhouet's management in 1916. Taylor's procedures for rationalizing production stressed standardization of tasks, division of labor, and the use of machinery.38 The engineers studying production at Penhouet, however, concluded that the "diversity of work undertaken by the yard" stood in the way of mass production techniques.39 They found that "the methods of mass production could not he fully applied in the [various shipbuilding] trades which undertake, on a daily basis, a disparate variety of work."40 Custom units typified French ship construction well into the twentieth century, and shipbuilding remained "distant from those other industries . . . where mass production limited the number of professionals."41 As late as the 1930s, industry studies still complained about the absence of mass production techniques and specialization in the nation's shipyards.42 Second, the cyclical character of production impeded the use of automated equipment and of a largely unskilled workforce. As French builders struggled with a small and highly erratic market, they found it unreasonable to mechanize. Regular fluctuations in demand meant that shipbuilding facilities could remain unused or underutilized, often for long stretches of time. Even British shipbuilding companies, which suffered far less from this cyclical pattern and produced more vessels, utilized only 70 percent of their productive capacity in the ten years from 1903 to 1913.43 Instead of investing heavily in equipment that would permit the employment of less skilled machine tenders but could lie idle for long periods, builders determined the "stable and predictable component of demand"44 and then selected "risk-averting strategies."45 These strategies, which included a broadly skilled workforce and dual technologies, that is, a mix of manual tools and mechanized equipment,

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Recasting the Shipbuilding Industry 46

provided flexibility and lessened the risks in the market. The erratic market also stood as a disincentive to standardization. In Britain, shipyards could specialize in vessel production, such as warships or passenger liners, because by 1890 their industry controlled over 80 percent of the world market.47 France, however, had a small and irregular market that precluded specialization and standardization, making "it usually impossible to eliminate skilled labor from the production process."48 Construction then depended on the intervention of skill at every level, and each yard needed to maintain a broadly skilled workforce. Finally, an insufficient labor force and one new to industrial work hindered the division of tasks and restricted the role of unskilled laborers in France's yards. Many shipyard workers at Saint-Nazaire's yards had only recently migrated from nearby rural communities and had little experience with industrial employment. A French naval engineer reported in the 1880s, when shipbuilding encompassed metal trades, that French yards lacked "a labor force raised at the doors of the factory, seeing work in iron since their youth, instructed by tradition, driven by competition."49 This portrait of unfamiliarity with the factory system and with industrial discipline was not uncommon in France and reflected the experience of workers in the region of Saint-Nazaire.50 In addition, the demand for labor was neither consistent nor year-round, making it more difficult for builders to maintain a workforce, skilled or unskilled. In Britain, shipbuilding regions housed numerous yards, one on the Clyde River in Scotland and one on England's northeast coast, and could gather a large, captive labor force. In France, however, persistent unemployment, which often forced workers to relocate following layoffs, combined with the geographic dispersion of yards, meant an unreliable and inelastic labor supply.51 French builders had to recruit workers anew for each project, fully aware that with project completion, part of that workforce might again relocate. In 1910, for instance, following a period of layoffs at SaintNazaire's yards, Penhouet was unable to hire a handful of riveters, apparently because so many had recently left the region to seek work at other yards.52 CONTINUITIES IN PRODUCTION AND LABOR RELATIONS Despite the enormity of changes that the shipbuilding industry experienced in the late nineteenth century, production continued to resemble the workshop model of activity. Manual tasks, mechanized tools, and standardized procedures remained noticeably absent, and skilled labor and machinery requiring knowledgeable and experienced guidance characterized French yards through the war.53 At the same time, Raphael Samuel and other scholars have shown that as industrial development caused the destruction of some skills, like those of the shipwright in shipbuilding, in some instances it created, as in shipbuilding, new trades and crafts, many of which came to be practiced in industrial facilities organized according to workshop standards and practices.54

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A Workforce Divided

These conditions of production held important ramifications for labor relations and protest in this newly transformed industry. In Britain skilled trades made up 50 percent of the shipbuilding workforce in 1886, while standardized tasks and a less skilled labor force did not predominate in French yards until the 1930s.55 It is undisputed that French yards relied on a mix of skilled and semiskilled workers to perform a range of manual and mechanical operations, but it is difficult to establish the precise level of skill required of each trade in this newly transformed industry. The presence of machinery has often been utilized as a scheme of classification: semi- and unskilled workers used automated machinery, while hand tools were reserved for the skilled. In ship production, however, skilled workers operated machinery, and semiskilled machine operators possessed a high degree of skill. Job titles and trades also prove unreliable guides. In ship production the degree of skill needed was neither static nor particular to the trade but varied according to the task. In addition, metalworking trade titles—engineer, engine-builder, machine-builder, ironworker, and boilermaker—were too general to elucidate the degree of skill demanded of this new workforce.56 Moreover, the industry and the workforce evolved so rapidly from the 1860s that job titles did not reliably reflect changes in the activity of the trade. In 1881 census records, Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding workers identified themselves as shipwrights and caulkers, traditional titles from wooden yards that signified the skilled shipbuilder. Platers, fitters, ironsmiths, assemblers, tracers, and the host of other metalworking trades employed at the city's yards, were not named in this census. Since these trades could hardly have been absent from yards producing steel vessels, it appears that workers held on to the terminology of wooden construction, perhaps as a way to assert skill and status.57 Comparing shipbuilding trades with trades in other metal industries also foils to clarify the tasks and the degree of skill. For many metal tradesmen, ship construction meant responsibilities and work processes that differed from those of the metal industries and promised more variety as well as more discretion and autonomy. The remarks of an ironworker employed at the Forges et Chantiers de la Mediterranee in the decades after World War I illustrate the divergence in skill and tasks between industries. While in the shipyard, a worker's trade title may be ironsmith, "in reality it is not ironwork, one [works] aboard the ship; [rather] work for us is the fabrication of doors, the installation of portholes, of different things, it is not ironsmith work of the city. [In city work] one has blueprints, one works a normal day."58 In this description, the shipyard ironsmith required judgment, flexibility, and the application of intellectual and manual skill, while for "city work" blueprints set the activity and restricted the worker. The term chauffeur, for stoker or heater, also designated different activities and skills according to the industry. In the steel industry it described the skilled workers responsible for maintaining forges and smelting furnaces, and in shipbuilding it indicated the young boys who heated rivets for assembly.59

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A 1917 trade classification schedule further illustrates the problems associated with assuming trade similarities across industries. To set wartime salaries for metalworkers, France's minister of war, Albert Thomas, classified the nation's metal trades by skill. He designated skilled workers as those who could "read a design, work on a plan, prepare and adjust" their tools, and work independently.60 This schedule, however, proved inappropriate for shipbuilding as it encompassed only hand-tool workers, specifically, electricians, fitters, and turners, and omitted other shipyard workers considered skilled. Thomas' designation for semiskilled, those who needed to follow a design, and could not adjust or assemble their machinery or work outside the precise limits of the trade, was also ill-suited to the industry. Thomas included fitters, strikers, drillers, cutters, piercers, riveters, turners, tracers, and bevelers in this category, but in shipyards, many workers with these titles operated as skilled workers. Shipyard tracers, for instance, contrary to Thomas' assessment, were considered highly skilled, not semiskilled, tradesmen who worked with hand tools and enjoyed considerable autonomy. Shipbuilding production determined an arrangement of skills and trades different from those of other metal trades.61 A more suitable approach to skill assessment in the shipyard can be found in an 1893 government report, which advanced a flexible classification. Skilled workers were designated as those whose tasks required "great experience of the trade and developed intellectual qualities" and who did not work with the aid of machinery.62 This included fitters, boilermakers, and forge workers. Fitters, particularly before the 1890s, were skilled workers who used hand chisels and files to finish the metal components or plates. The report also divided machine tool workers into two categories, with the advanced group requiring judgment, understanding of design, and a long training period. This encompassed the majority of the shipbuilding workforce, including piercers, drillers, cutters, bevelers, and punchers, most of whom executed a variety of tasks dependent on facility with both machine and hand tools. Punchers, for instance, guided the machinery that perforated sheet metal and components to make rivet holes, a job that drew on skill, experience, and dexterity—a moment's carelessness could ruin the component and set back assembly for weeks. Autonomy and decision-making power were integral to this category of workers. In his memoirs of shipyard work at the turn of the century, Auguste Nerreire recalled an incident when a new foreman reprimanded a driller for working from a seated position. Those working nearby loudly defended the driller's right to decide how to best perform his work, and against this resistance, the foreman had no choice but to retreat.63 In this instance, the foreman had tried to diminish the workers' "'mental labour'" power, that is, the ability to determine the circumstances and processes of work.64 The second category of machine tool workers comprised those who used machinery to fabricate identical components, operations that had little place in French shipbuilding, at least through 1900. Even the riveter's assistants in the yard had to be highly practiced and experienced. The report's conclusion was particularly apt for shipbuilding. It determined that the division between unskilled and skilled

90

A Workforce Divided

workers necessitated, in the words of historian Michelle Perrot, "a delicate interpretation."65 A study of nineteenth-century British shipbuilding seconded this perspective, noting that it was not possible to "draw a simple contrast between the skilled and the unskilled when looking at levels of technical" ability. For example, adult assistants of fitters, boilermakers, and forge workers were not unskilled. They possessed "task-specific aptitudes" important in the execution of their work.66 Conversely, in those British yards that used hydraulic or pneumatic riveting equipment, riveters functioned as experienced machine operators rather than more skilled workers responsible for ship assembly. In shipbuilding the degree of skill requisite to each trade was not measured solely by the use of machinery or design knowledge, as in other industries. The 1893 government report remains valuable precisely because it recognized subtle shadings of skill between the various metal trades, gradations that went unreflected in job titles. As Yves Lequin has argued, "everything we learn about daily life in a nineteenth century French factory confirms this reliance on human skill and knowledge."67 With the industrialization of ship production, it becomes tempting to view the shipyard as no longer a carpentry shop but instead as an "industrial city where all the trades are represented and divided among at least 50 specialties."68 This image of an "industrial city" suggested that the trades and shops marched to an industrial scheme—subject to a central authority, a standard set of procedures, a time clock, and the discipline of foremen, all occupying the yard at the same time and working alongside one another. This was not the case. Shipbuilding may have no longer been the exclusive domain of the carpentry shop, but production still revolved around the activity of independent and insular shops, each with a measure of autonomy. The half dozen shops, berths, and outdoor assembly hangars were responsible for operations and functions that they carried out separately and in different stages from the shops around them. The operations of, and relationships between, the various trades and shops indicated continuity rather than transformation. Yves Lequin cautions against viewing this early version of industrial production as a break with the patterns of the workshop. Instead, he describes the nineteenthcentury factory as a "gathering together of the separate professional workshops of the old industries." Like the workshop, production depended on "a coordination of different teams of workmen, each of which reproduces a workshop model." In steelworks and glassworks, as in the shipyard, it was not the function of the individual trades that distinguished the workshop from an industrial facility but "their proximity [to each other] that was new, for the traditional divisions of labor, work organization, and circulation of knowledge were kept largely intact."69 Lequin also considers the presence of the apprenticeship system in the nineteenth-century factory, even with its shift in focus to professional training, as further testimony of the ongoing reliance on skill and of continuity with older forms of production. In earlier days, the skill of the shipwright was handed down from father to son. In industrial yards, the

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multiplicity of trades and tasks and the scale of production and of investment made it imperative for builders to produce a trained and knowledgeable workforce. The shipyards at Marseilles were among the first to organize worker training. As early as 1862, the Forges et Chantiers de la Mediterranee established a school for its workforce and offered night courses. By the end of the century, several yards provided both technical and general education to apprentices and workers.70 The impact of machinery in production is another indicator of continuity with workshop patterns. Shipbuilding machinery was not installed as part of a broad management strategy to control the production process, intensify labor, and decrease dependence on skilled workers. In fact, rather than posing a threat to skilled metalworkers, the dual technology of shipyard machinery reinforced their position. In many shops, such as the tolerie, or platers shop, manual tools like the hammer remained the principal equipment. In other shops, mechanized equipment like punch presses and shearing, bending, and rolling machines for metalwork appeared as early as the 1860s, yet these machines could not be considered automatic equipment that produced identical components.71 Shipyard equipment manipulated and shaped an assortment of components under the direction of knowledgeable workers. It was "only more powerful and precise than the hand tool and not the automatic apparatus which scarcely requires supervision."72 Heinrich's study of Philadelphia shipyards confirms that technology "enhanced" the role of skilled labor.73 In fact, the imprecision of these machines left fitting work for the fabrication shops, much of which was accomplished by hand tools, and, as a result, the industry remained dependent on skilled and versatile workers. Even the upkeep of machinery was complex work not separate from the process of production.74 As one historian has noted, the "absence of standardization in ship production ensured that shipyard machine tools had to remain sufficiently versatile."75 In shipbuilding, the workforce, rather than machinery or the foremen, dictated the pace of production and determined when fashioning work was completed. Cutting, bending, and shaping machinery improved in size and power between 1880 and World War I but depended on the "manual aptitudes and expertise" of the workforce.76 Machinery could not function without the skilled handlers who guided the equipment and read the drawings for the angle and size of each curve. Maurice Sarraut, lawyer and journalist, visited French and English shipyards near the turn of the century and confirmed the limitations of machinery. Machinery "multiplies tremendously the efforts [of the skilled workers]; but it is their responsibility to direct this effort, to regulate the use [of the machines] according to their technical knowledge." He added that the "distinctive mark of [these ironworking] industries" is that machines put "great strength at the service of a worker [who is] skilled and capable of judgment. . . which is founded in long experience and special skills. Frankly, it is the machine that serves the worker."77 For various reasons, shipyards did introduce machinery into their facilities in the thirty years before World War I, but advances in shipbuilding technology

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A Workforce Divided

usually meant refinements in standard equipment and procedures rather than increased automation or standardization. In loading and haulage operations, hand winches began to be replaced in the mid-1880s, and within a few years most yards had hydraulically powered mobile cranes.78 This machinery translated into loss of job opportunities for unskilled haulers as the "more routinized tasks" of transporting, lifting, and installing proved more susceptible to mechanization than did production and fashioning. Over the years, changes in the scale of the product also forced shipbuilding companies to add mechanized equipment. In 1880, the average plate measured 12 x 4 feet, dimensions that permitted workers to maneuver materials and perform operations by hand, but over the next twenty years, components and plates doubled in size and increased in weight eightfold. As a result, builders had to renovate and upgrade their facilities, adding larger and more powerful machines to shape, form, punch, and maneuver the components, but these machines did not alter the production process.79 For example, for construction of La Lorraine, Penhouet's director, M. Daymard, ordered new bending and punching machines, a traveling crane, and several winches, none of which performed new functions or replaced trades. The bending machine was "absolutely indispensable given the length of sheet metal" in La Lorraine™ Shipyards also improved facilities and added machinery to show clients that they were abreast of new developments, critical in an intensely competitive industry. In 1908, Penhouet's fitting shop purchased new tools to "shape larger and thicker plates than those which have been manufactured up until then."81 The yard also expanded its tracing shop and lengthened its berths several times to accommodate larger models. Diversification into construction of locomotives and turbines also necessitated additional equipment yet did not change methods of production.82 Since the process of ship production restricted the use of machinery and the deskilling of production processes, management on occasion sought other methods to address concerns about low productivity. In the summer of 1910, Penhouet's director Lannes imported British shipbuilders to streamline production so that the yard could better compete. The British engineers, foremen, and shipyard workers were expected to make "numerous reforms" and teach Penhouet's workers the methods of efficient and rapid production.83 Lannes explained that "everyone knows, in France and elsewhere, that the English are past masters in the art of naval construction, they work faster [and] better, thanks to the procedures acquired by their persevering effort, by their great experience in this work, in a word, by a methodical training which is difficult to find in shipyards of other nations."84 In their review of production methods, the British workers expressed surprise at the work habits and costly production methods that they encountered. They thought management wasteful for keeping designers on the payroll when they had no work. They criticized the number of foremen and their power to protect work crews and to slow production. British builders also censured the workforce, complaining that workers did not show the "energy" of British workers. They pointed to

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workers' use of work time to dress and prepare tools and their tendency to slow the pace of work near the end of projects in order to delay layoffs. Their solutions stressed professionalization of procedures and improved surveillance and control. They modified accounting and wage systems, consolidated bookkeeping operations, increased shop floor surveillance, and eliminated lax timekeeping procedures. They also appear to have played a role in the development of a professional staff of foremen paid directly by management and with few affiliations to the work crew. Penhouet's workforce had only contempt for these new procedures, which, they argued, "scorn[ed] the 'finished' production of French workers" as well as the right to make determinations about that production.85 The nature of production in shipbuilding shaped the conditions for labor relations, both between workers and with management. The continuities with workshop operations, in particular the autonomy of many skilled trades and their immunity to displacement by the unskilled or machines, provided workers a measure of protection and security. The skilled did not find their positions jeopardized and had little need to contest the control of operations with management. In this industry, defense of skill and fear of replacement could not constitute the source of worker association, and workplace grievances came to emerge from a different set of issues. DISCONnNUITIES IN PRODUCTION AND LABOR RELATIONS The discrete processes of production, composition of the workforce, and continuity with workshop activity were not the only conditions affecting labor affiliation and activity. On the contrary, numerous other elements of shipbuilding, including a physical plant stretching several acres, numerous and simultaneous projects in each shop, elevated rates of unemployment, and multiple systems of remuneration, also played a role in determining the patterns of labor association and the focus that labor activity took at SaintNazaire's yards. For the workforce, these features of ship construction posed barriers to labor affiliation and protest. The physical setting constituted the most obvious impediment to workplace association. An industrial facility spread across dozens of acres made regular contact between all but small fractions of the workforce unlikely. Rather than toiling under one roof, the workforce of 2,000-3,000 was split up among a halfdozen shops, berths, and outdoor assembly hangars, each too large and often too noisy to permit friendships beyond the immediate work area. The positioning of different sectors of the workforce within the yard also militated against workplace associations. As we have seen, ship production required nearly fifty disparate trades.86 While the work of shipwrights was specific to sections of the yard and facilitated trade or shop identification, most metal tradesmen did not work alongside others of the same skill or trade specialty on a regular basis. Rather, they moved among any number of shops. While the

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A Workforce Divided

services of shearers, bevelers, punchers, fitters, riveters, rivet-heaters, holderson, and strikers were required in each metal shop, their employment term was not constant but varied according to the stage of production. Shifting workers across the yard in this way limited affiliations. In addition, the specialty workers hired as outfitters were largely foreign to the yard and had few links to the metalworking labor force. Many of these workers fabricated accessories in their shops, delivering the product to the shipyard for installation, while those in the decorative industries often joined the shipyard for short periods.87 The diversity of projects within each shop served as another barrier to workplace association and social cohesion. Typically, a shop was engaged in numerous projects at one time, like the plating shop, where preparation and assembly responsibilities split the workforce between indoor shops and berth work. In January 1911, workers from Penhouet's plating shop worked berthside on the vessel France installing watertight metal partitions and deck roofs, while others worked inside the shop finishing partitions for the hull of Rochambeau. At the same time, the boiler shop divided its workforce between insulating boilers and installing ventilation shafts on France and assembling and riveting casings for nine of Rochambeau*s boilers.88 This arrangement gave workers little opportunity to associate with those of like trades or even with workers of the same trade for more than part of a project. It would be a mistake to overlook the power of unemployment in separating workers. The persistent unemployment common to Saint-Nazaire's shipyards repeatedly shattered whatever bonds may have arisen among workers. Workbased ties could only dissolve during the frequent slack production periods, when many workers faced unemployment for long stretches and when some sought work at other yards.89 As we have seen, an erratic market and inconsistent funding programs meant that the nation's shipyards rarely had enough work to operate at full capacity, and, even during a project, SaintNazaire's workers became habituated to frequent and extended layoffs. The situation was the same elsewhere. One yard at Le Havre employed 11,500 in 1900 but without new contracts retained only 350 workers two years later. The Chantiers et Ateliers de Provence, which had the capacity to employ 900 workers at the beginning of the century, dismissed and then rehired fully onethird of its workforce—300 workers—each year.90 Procedural unemployment, that is, employment opportunities that changed with each new stage of production, stood to reinforce the segmentation of the workforce. Unlike most industries, ship production did not provide constant or sequential employment but became known for a revolving pattern of hirings and dismissals (see Table 3,1). Production took place in distinct stages where the multiple tasks of fabricating and fashioning the metal components were "autonomous processes] of work independent of the whole" and of each other.91 As a result, the number and type of tradesmen hired, as well as their employment terms, fluctuated with the tasks specific to each stage. To an unusual degree, therefore, unemployment posed a special problem in shipbuilding since even during production, the "activity of various ateliers or

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Table 3.1 Number of Workers in Construction and Repair of Two Penhouet Vessels, 19111912

DATE

NUMBERS EMPLOYED

1911

France

Rochambeau

January February March April May June July August September October November December

1,020 980 1,100 1,040 950 870 650 850 1,150 1,100 1,080 1,000

900 920 1,080 1,100 920 1,090 1,150 700 LAUNCHED

1912 January February April

1,200 250 LAUNCHED

Source: AN 9AQ 37 "Rapport au Comite de Direction, January 1911-April 1912."

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A Workforce Divided

services [in a shipyard] was not regular."93 Examples of procedural unemployment and its impact on worker association are innumerable. While it typically took two to three years to construct and launch an 11,000-ton oceangoing vessel, the majority of the workforce was employed only irregularly during that time. Following the initial work of pattern making and marking, shipyards dismissed many of the skilled shipwrights and rehired them only to launch the assembled vessel. Fitters found themselves without work upon the completion of metal fitting and fabrication work. The end of one stage at one Saint-Nazaire yard in 1896 translated into layoffs for about 350 fitters. When Penhouet completed the hull on the battleship Diderot, it laid off several hundred shipwrights and metallurgy workers. At the same time, the yard retained workers in the fitting shops for adjustment of components and for machine construction. The transition between stages in 1899 meant hiring sheet metal workers and dismissing joiners, riveters, fitters, painters, and boilermakers. The completion of one part of assembly on France at Penhouet in 1909 caused the dismissal of riveters but the retention of a sizable workforce of boilermakers and fitters for the next stage.94 In addition, the construction of certain types of vessels provided work for some trades yet excluded or sharply limited the opportunities of others. Unions opposed the 1893 state subsidy favoring sailing vessels because sail construction provided "work only for the riveters and their assistants" and little for the hundreds of metalworkers who prepared components and built engines and other machinery.95 Similarly, outfitters and woodworkers found themselves in great demand for luxury passenger liners, but cargo liners and military vessels had less demand for their services. Penhouet's maintenance and repair schedules illustrate the extent of procedural unemployment and the obstacles to workplace association (see Table 3.2). In January 1911, maintenance at Penhouet required 432 variously skilled workers. Unskilled laborers were deployed on the most dangerous job in the industry, scraping rust off a ship's hull, while riveters and plumbers repaired bulkheads and driveshaft bearings and replaced boiler pipes. February maintenance differed greatly. Caulking, mast extension, installing anchoring equipment, and painting required a distinctly different combination of tradesmen, numbering only 250. March maintenance entailed a larger staff of 360. In July, workers numbered 400 but a new mix of trades: boilermakers, plumbers, and painters.96 Not only did workers occupy the facility in shifts, but employment terms were often limited to a few months or an irregular succession of weeks. As a result, the work group in any given shop was not the same familiar crew month after month but changed with great regularity. These shifting labor patterns posed obstacles to the development of affiliations within shops and across the yard. The various systems of remuneration common to French shipyards also constituted barriers to workplace solidarities. In shipbuilding, where many of the trades exercised skill and autonomy and where both the process and the facilities impeded strict surveillance, a fixed daily rate would not resolve

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Table 3.2 Maintenance and Repair Schedule at Penhouet DATE

NUMBER OF WORKERS

PROJECTS

1-11-1911

432

Repair driveshafts, boiler pipes, bulkheads, and install refrigeration units.

2-22-1911

250

Install hawse-hole for mooring and undertake mast extension and caulking work.

3-22-1911

360

Repair and clean boilers, repair shelter and promenade bridge and clean hull.

4-05-1911

400

Unknown

4-19-1911

330

Unknown

5-03-1911

300

Repair and clean boilers and reconstruct keel and watertight components.

6-28-1911

280

Unknown

7-12-1911

400

Repair boilers, repair and paint replace piping, and inspect propeller shaft.

8-09-1911

450

Unknown

9-06-1911

200

Repair and clean boiler units and keels, remove cabins for renovation, examine propeller shaft, and repair sheltered bridge.

9-20-1911

300

Unknown

10-04-1911

300

Paint and repair work on boilers and replace rivets on cracked hull.

A Workforce Divided

98 Table 3.2 continued DATE

NUMBER OF WORKERS

PROJECTS

11-03-1911

250

Unknown

11-20-1911

360

Unknown

12-13-1911

300

Continue repair on exterior planking, assembly of keel, and repair of damaged starboard side.

12-28-1911

400

Unknown

2-21-1912

380

Caulk bridges, finish work on boil units, and inspect propeller shaft.

3-05-1912

290

Repair boiler units, keel, and punctured ceiling and paint keel.

4-24-1912

150

Unknown

5-29-1912

150

Replace stern-posts, repair ballast tank, install motors, and replace cabin fittings.

8-07-1912

300

Repair pipes carrying saltwater slipway, transform and furnish kitchen for first class, install dummy waiter and washrooms for steerage passengers.

9-04-1912

450

Unknown

10-30-1912

300

Install boilers and 104 berths for troop transport, repair refrigerated units, motors and dynamos.

11-13-1912

270

Repair boilers.

Source: AN 9AQ 37 Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, "Rapport au Comite de Direction," January 1911 —ApriI 1912.

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concerns about discipline and productivity. Instead, management relied on a series of pay schemes to "compel regular and constant work."98 The largest component of a worker's income came from fixed daily rates, but most earned a mixture of piece rates, subcontracting, production bonuses, and fixed rewards. As a result, workers in the same shops often labored at different and even contrary pay systems, and, inevitably, simplified and standardized wages became a common strike demand among Saint-Nazaire's workers." Piece rates, common in most French yards, served management by encouraging productivity and limiting workers' independence. Piecework proved particularly suited for industries like shipbuilding where work processes required flexibility and for workers who maintained a measure of professional autonomy, such as machine-tool workers and those engaged in fitting and assembly. The benefit for labor was an improvement in salaries, as much as 40 to 50 percent in one yard in the 1870s. Similarly, employers found subcontracting enormously advantageous, while some trades welcomed the opportunity to work autonomously.100 Built on semiautonomous crews, this system of work relations gave the head of the crew, the subcontractor, or petit patron, responsibility for disciplining the workforce and directing production. The subcontractors bid against one another for projects, recruited their crews, and distributed salaries. This shifted much of management's responsibilities to the subcontractor while compelling efficient and competitive production. Subcontracting proved useful for those processes that could be split off from the larger project, divided into small assignments, and auctioned to subcontractors. It was most common to areas of the yard where surveillance proved impossible, like on the scaffolding and at the bottom of the slip. As a result, subcontracting was restricted to a select group of workers and tasks, most commonly, riveters and their crews and occasionally joiners and boilermakers.101 Over the years, piecework came to be applied in conjunction with a host of bonus systems that furthered productivity yet at the same divided workers by changeable pay systems.102 Bonuses were geared specifically to savings on labor and construction costs. Most construction and repair contracts paid bonuses to the shipbuilding company for finishing projects before the completion date and imposed penalties for delays in delivery. To meet these deadlines, management promised select trades, those essential to critical projects or to critical stages of production, a proportion of the company's indemnity in return for efficiency and speed.103 One remuneration schedule promised workers a share of management's earnings for executing tasks by a specific date. Penhouet's version of this system was dubbed marc le franc, or proportion of the franc, meaning that workers received a proportion of company earnings. A similar system, the prime de vitesse was a subsidy for rapid production that hinged on savings that would result from timely production. Instances of these systems are numerous. In 1893, the Transat's Board of Directors pledged 18,000 francs to be distributed among workers for the rapid production of six vessels. A few years later, the board tried to encourage speed; for a savings of .5 million francs for the shipyard, workers would share a 10

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percent bonus, 15 percent for a savings of 1 million francs, and 20 percent for a savings of 1.5 million francs. In August 1898, the Transat's board pledged a 1,000-franc bonus to the design office for completing work by 1 October. A year later, they promoted a bonus of 10,500 francs to be divided among Penhouet workers if they succeeded in launching La Lorraine by September of the following year. The board also targeted specific trades, promising a 6,000franc bonus for the "most worthy" workers in the machine shop upon mounting and assembling the machinery on La Lorraine}^104 In 1904, management promised workers a share of 50 percent of the savings on a project, up to a set figure, and at the same time established other bonuses for specific groups of workers.105 Bonuses for management personnel may have also worked against workplace association. In the 1860s and 1870s, bonuses went primarily to foremen for their contribution to the pace and quality of work and most likely translated into intensification of discipline and surveillance. The head of one shop earned nearly one-third his salary in bonuses in 1886. Shipyards also rewarded management for rapid execution and economy of operations.106 In Penhouet's first years Director M. Daymard received a 2,500-franc bonus at project completion and later shared a prime d'economie, an economizing bonus, with the project manager for cost savings on construction.107 On occasion, this bonus was extended to workers. Workers and management laboring on Lafayette in 1873 shared, albeit unequally, a reward of 10,000 francs. In 1876, the technical personnel, perhaps tracers and members of the design shop, shared a completion bonus.108 The lure of bonuses that ranged from 15 to 60 percent of workers' salaries held a variety of benefits for shipbuilding companies. Bonus systems enhanced the influence of foremen because in most cases they held the power to determine the individual amounts. Granting awards to the most worthy, presumably the most efficient workers, promoted rapid production and may have created tension between workers. In addition, linking bonuses to productivity and behavior at the last stages of a project was a strategy to reduce the slowdowns or strikes that often came as workers, now with more leverage, tried to delay end-of-project layoffs and negotiate better conditions. However, as bonuses could constitute a boon for workers, they also posed a huge risk, as workers received no guarantees.109 A Bordeaux yard once announced a bonus for a project expected to last fourteen months, prompting workers to labor at an elevated pace for the entire period without any certainty that the deadline would be met and the bonus awarded.110 In seeking the origins of labor solidarity and activity, historians have often pointed to the dominant role of skilled tradesmen. Their advantageous standing in the workplace, originating in high wages, status, and autonomy, helped them initiate labor activity and mobilize other, generally less skilled workers. Yet in shipbuilding the emergence of industrial yards and the subsequent change in workforce and in construction processes meant that the skilled workforce, the shipwrights, lost the position and authority that they had

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exercised in wooden yards.111 In fact, shipwrights became peripheral to preparation and assembly as industrial yards came to employ over 1,000 skilled workers from dozens of metal trades. After 1880, shipwrights participated in only about 10 percent of production and occupied sections of the yard distant from the main body of workers and isolated from centers of activity and power. It is important to recognize, however, that the new metal trades, like fitters, shearers, bevelers, and platers, did not replace or stand in the stead of the shipwright. The new workforce of metalworkers, divided among fifty separate trades, did not occupy a discrete or central position in construction, nor did they possess familiarity with the entire process or with the workforce. RIVETERS The shift in production methods meant that there was no longer a dominant skilled trade that occupied a central position in production and had regular contact with other workers and the capacity and influence to set labor agendas. The structure of production, however, did grant one trade group, the riveters, the authority and the prominence to develop work-based associations and to shape political goals and activities among a segment of the workforce.112 Riveters' technical expertise, critical station in production, and multiple resources brought them respect and influence in the yard and helped make them, much like miners and stokers in the Parisian Gas Company, "like craftsmen in their confrontations with managers" and in their relationship with other workers.113 Held in high regard by the workforce, riveters' ability to influence other workers and to organize collective activity brought them closest to the stature of shipwright. Importantly, these tradesmen were not skilled but semiskilled workers and had, according to Jean Domenichino, historian of the Chantiers et Ateliers de Provence at Port-du-Bouc, "a professional qualification which it [would] not [be] insulting to characterize as very average."114 Not surprisingly, French shipwrights avoided riveting when they began to learn metalworking trades, as did the ship carpenters in Philadelphia's yards.115 Despite the poor standing of the trade, riveters did share many of the other attributes that had helped make skilled workers central to labor protest. The riveters' singular standing in the yard emanated, first and foremost, from their "essential" position in production, what historian Lenard Berlanstein characterizes in regard to the Parisian stokers as "market power."116 Every repair and construction project turned on the involvement of the riveters in one process or another, with the final stage in particular dependent on their timely participation.117 At the same time, their monopoly of craft had not faced serious challenges in the thirty years from 1880 to World War I. While the shift from iron to steel plates had initially reduced the number of rivets by 25 percent, expanded vessel size and output from the 1880s increased the workload once again. More significantly, in French yards the majority of riveting proceeded without machinery through the early 1900s, though by the

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1890s, mechanized riveting in British yards had the potential to displace onefifth of shipyard riveters, but even riveting machinery did not lend itself to the deck and frame assembly performed at the berth. The new equipment could not countersink, that is, make the rivets flush with the steel, without damaging the shell plate. It also proved too heavy for transport to the outdoor berth, the site of most riveting. As a result, power riveting "amounted to only around 5 per cent of total riveting" and remained limited to preassembly work performed indoors.118 Machine riveting in French yards advanced even more slowly. Penhouet's riveters first had reason to be concerned about their jobs or their control of the trade in 1909, when the yard experimented with pneumatic riveting equipment.119 The danger and difficulty of riveting further promoted riveters' market power as well as their standing among the workforce. The work of fastening and riveting the newly raised vessel from narrow and unsteady scaffolding required tremendous skill, stamina, and strength. Riveters faced inclement weather, the constant threat of tools and components falling from upper levels of the scaffolding, and the many hazards associated with maneuvering from high and unstable platforms.120 These dangers won them considerable esteem and led riveters to be considered "bold" and "daring."121 In the words of a former French shipyard worker, riveters were known for "extreme fatigue and frequent risk of accidents. The acrobats. The body mutilated, the fear of a fracture. At the same time, work on board; it was proof of youth, a way of delaying age."122 Similarly, British sources described riveting at the turn of the century as ""a difficult trade to learn, a hard and exhausting one to follow, [and] wearing a man out in his youth, for no one ever saw an old riveter.'"123 More regular employment also proved a vital asset to this trade. Riveting was a constant in shipbuilding, required for construction of all vessels as well as repair and renovation projects, and, consequently, riveters suffered less from procedural unemployment than other shipyard workers. The number of riveters hired and their employment terms varied, but shipyards had a steady need of riveters to fasten and assemble the hull, decks, and boilers. In addition, riveters could find employment in most metal shops.124 The fitting, plater, and boiler shops offered work beyond hull assembly and buffered riveters against the hardships of structural unemployment. Riveters also functioned as independent tradesmen distinct from the larger workforce and free from many of the yard's rules and regulations. Unlike most metal tradesmen, a riveter headed a "practically autonomous crew," which "permitted] him to organize the production and express his knowledge" on all phases of riveting without interference from management.125 Riveting crews spent their workday alone on the narrow platforms that surrounded the vessel, heating and hammering rivets into place, and sealing connections to prevent leakage.126 They experienced less supervision and were envied for their workplace autonomy. In addition to this independence of action, historian Domenichino suggests that riveters may have benefited from the legendary or "mythic representation" of shipbuilding, which recognized work undertaken on

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the vessel, rather than in the shops, as the "heart of construction."127 In this way, these workers who spent their day clambering on scaffolding and on vessels were identified and even honored as representing the soul of the trade. Two additional factors distinguished riveters. First, the work conditions of riveters provided the opportunity to develop lasting work-based ties and associations. This came about because riveters worked under the subcontracting system, which, in contrast to piecework, rewarded the activities of the team and promoted reliance on crew members. In addition, riveters were the only shipbuilding workers who worked with the same crew, typically family members or long-standing work partners.128 These connections undoubtedly withstood the disruptions of regular unemployment and made for more durable labor associations. Second, riveters and their assistants were the only permanent trade group with the capacity to affiliate regularly with other workers. Working in both centers of activity, the berths and shops, familiarized riveters with the status of each new project and gave them the opportunity to circulate in the entire yard and to communicate with a broad sector of the workforce. Roger Cornu, a French sociologist who studied the Port-de-Bouc shipyard near Marseilles, found that freedom of movement made riveters highly visible, allowed them to act as liaisons between various trades, and positioned them to take a leading role in labor activity.129 The riveters' authority in the yard profited greatly from the unusual stature of their assistants, the rivet-heaters, commonly known as mousses. These unskilled members of the crew, typically young boys of thirteen to seventeen years of age, heated the rivets at outdoor ovens and then passed them to the riveters for positioning. Despite their rank at the bottom of the shipyard trades, with salaries to match, rivet-heaters were deemed critical to production, as "riveters and strikers could not work without the assistance of mousses and manual laborers." The importance of this unskilled crew derived from their experience and facility. Mousses undertook arduous work that required quick and incessant motion and was "more easily accomplished by adolescents than adults."130 In addition, the young assistants constituted a nearly irreplaceable workforce. In instances of absence or work stoppages by the rivet-heaters, shipyards encountered difficulty finding similarly experienced metal tradesmen willing to accept jobs that required physical strength and dexterity yet brought little status and low wages. For these reasons, rivet-heaters and other unskilled crew members won recognition within the industry as the "mainspring of the yards" and, in relation to their age and skill, occupied an inordinately powerful position.131 The assistants also shared in the riveter's autonomy and prestige. Mostly sons and relatives of riveters, assistants held jobs acknowledged as avenues of advancement, if not formal apprenticeships.132 As a consequence, rivet-heaters and rivet-holders identified with the riveters and shared similar workplace concerns.133 Unlike most workers in industrial settings, riveters and their crew benefited from control of their craft, workplace autonomy, lower rates of unemployment, opportunity to work with the same crew, and access to a cross-section of the

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workforce. They were the most privileged and widely known trade group in the shipyard. The riveters' stature and position in production explain how a workforce that was not highly skilled succeeded in "imposing on other workers, and on management, a recognition of their trade which was translated into a more advantageous classification."134 As scholars have shown for the case of miners and for dockworkers, "the unevenness of capitalist development . . . create[d] privileged niches" for some workers at specific and discrete moments in industrial development.135 The example of French shipbuilding illustrates that the organization of production did not follow a pattern or structure standard to the era of industrialization but grew out of the construction and labor requirements specific to this industry. Although no longer a portside industry with a small workforce, shipbuilding in Saint-Nazaire demonstrated great continuity with older forms of production. Vessel construction depended on an intelligent and skilled labor force that deployed a combination of manual and power tools. Machinery required a skilled operator to adjust the settings, guide the apparatus, and read the plans. As a result, shipbuilding continued to require a highly flexible and experienced workforce and remained invulnerable to standardization. The relative stability and continuity in production processes, which meant that the new workforce did not fear displacement by machines or reorganization, challenge some widely accepted notions about the foundations of labor association and protest. A simple differentiation between skilled and unskilled workers and between workshop and factory proves of little value here in articulating association and fragmentation. The case of shipbuilding demonstrates that the origins of labor solidarity and activity are found in factors particular to the industrial facility and to the labor process. The process of production, the degree of mechanization, the composition of the workforce, the patterns of employment and circulation, the topography of the facility, and the location of the trades all contributed to shaping social cohesion and, in turn, labor activity. The work environment favored riveters and their assistants and promoted them to a leadership position. However, while it is clear that shop floor factors both limited and fashioned the nature of labor activity, this arena offers only part of the explanation for how workers understood and evaluated their work situation. Workers experience of, and response to, shop floor and industrial concerns also arose from the cultural constraints, resources, and values learned in their residential communities. For Saint-Nazaire's yards, this requires examining two shipyard communities: the shipyard workers living in the urban environment and those rural workers commuting from the Briere.

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NOTES 1. Edward H. Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development: The Labour Process in the British and French Shipbuilding Industries, 1880 to 1930," Journal of European Economic History 13, n. 3 (1984): 606; Alastair Reid, "The Division of Labour in the Shipbuilding Industry, 1880 to 1920, with Special Reference to Clydeside" (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1980), 22. 2. Charles Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin, "Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Industrialization," Past and Present (August 1985): 133-176; Rondo Cameron, "A New View of European Industrialization," Economic History Review 38 (1985): 4-6; Patrick O'Brien and Calgar Keyder, Economic Growth in Britain and France 1780-1914: Two Paths to the Twentieth Century (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978); Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufacturers: Industry, Innovation and Work in Britain, 1700-1820 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985); Raphael Samuels, "Workshop of the World: Steam Power and HandTechnology in Mid-Victorian Britain," History Workshop 3 (1977): 6-72; Philip Scranton, "The Workplace, Technology, and Theory in American Labor History," International Labor and Working-Class History 35 (Spring 1989): 3-22; Richard Price, "The Labour Process and Labor History," Social History 8, n. 1 (January 1983): 57-75; Richard Price, "Rethinking Labour History: The Importance of Work," in Social Conflict and Political Order in Modern Britain, edited by Jonathan Schneer (London: Croom Helm, 1982); William H. Sewell Jr., "Artisans, Factory Workers, and the Formation of the Working Class, 1789-1848," in Working-Class Formation, edited by Ira Katznelson and Aristide Zolberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 4570; William Sewell, "Uneven Development, the Autonomy of Politics, and the Dockworkers of Nineteenth-Century Marseille," American Historical Review 93 (June 1988): 604-637; Lenard Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871-1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 24-25, 94-96; Lenard R. Berlanstein, Big Business and Industrial Conflict in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Michael Hanagan, "Urbanization, Worker Settlement Patterns, and Social Protest in Nineteenth Century France," in French Cities in the Nineteenth Century, edited by John M. Merriman (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981), 212-214; Tessie P. Liu, The Weaver's Knot: The Contradictions of Class Struggle and Family Solidarity in Western France, 1750-1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 38; Donald Reid, The Miners of Decazeville: A Genealogy of Deindustrialization (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985); Charles Shorter and Edward Tilly, Strikes in France, 1830-1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 202. 3. William M. Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture: The textile trade and French society, 1750-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1-15; David Montgomery, Workers' Control in America: Studies in the history of work, technology, and labor struggles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Samuels, "Workshop of the World"; Maurice Daumas, Histoire Generale des Techniques, t. 3-5 (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1968); Charles Singer, ed., A History of Technology, vol. 5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958); Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell Jr., eds., Technology in Western Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967); Berlanstein, Working People; Shorter and Tilly, Strikes, 209-215. 4. Bernard Moss, The Origins of the French Labor Movement, 1830-1914: The

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Socialism of Skilled Workers (Berkeley: University of California, 1976); Michael P. Hanagan, The Logic of Solidarity: Artisans and Industrial Workers in Three French Towns, 1871-1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980); Joan Wallach Scott, The Glassworkers of Carmaux (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974); Hartmut Kaelble, Industrialisation and Social Inequality in 19th-century Europe, translated by Bruce Little (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), 157-164. 5. A.M. Robb, "Ship-Building," in A History of Technology, vol. 5, edited by Charles Singer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), 355-363; A. Campbell Holmes, Practical Shipbuilding: A Treatise in the Structural Design and Building of Modern Steel Vessels (London: Longmans, 1918), 1-2, 306; David Pollock, The Shipbuilding Industry (London: Muethen, 1905), 29-40; Sidney Pollard and Paul Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870-1914 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); Charles Pierre Levebre de Laboulaye, Dictionnaire des arts et manufactures et d'agriculture, formant un traite complet de technologie, 3rd ed. (Paris: Encyclopedic Technologique, 1867), 99. 6. Holmes, Practical Shipbuilding, 569; David Pollock, Modern Shipbuilding and the Men Engaged in It (London: Spon, 1884), 1-27; Pollock, The Shipbuilding Industry, 68; Roy Willmarth Kelly and Frederick J. Allen, The Shipbuilding Industry (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), 73-103; Pollard and Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 15-16. Steel reduced hull weight by 15 percent. 7. Steerage accounted for much of the passenger traffic in the twenty years before World War I. For example, 800 of the 2,062 passengers on France rode in steerage. 8. Reid, "The Division of Labour," 43. 9. Charles Noel, Les Nouveaux Paquebots de la Compagnie Generale Transatlantique pour le service du Havre a New York (Paris: Le Genie Civil, 1886), 7. 10. Melvin Maddocks, The Great Liners (New York: Time-Life Books, 1987), 94; "Une Visite Au Paquebot 4Le France/" La Democratic de VOuest (3 April 1912). In the 1870s the Transat had the first liners to feature refrigerated cargo holds and electric ceiling lights. 11. Noel, Les Nouveaux Paquebots, 6. 12. Ibid., 7. 13. Patrick Barry, The Dockyards, Shipyards and Marine of France (London: Simpkin, 1864), 211. 14. Reid, "Two Patterns of Development," 64. 15. Reid, "Two Patterns of Development," 64. 16. Ambroise Colin, La Navigation Commerciale au XIXe Siecle (Paris: Rousseau, 1901), 177; John R. Hume, "Shipbuilding Machine Tools," in Scottish Themes: Essays in Honor of Professor S.G.E. Lythe, edited by John Butt and J.T. Ward (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1976), 168-169. 17. Ecomusee de Saint-Nazaire. L 'Espace Industriel des Chantiers de Construction Navale en Basse-Loire (Saint-Nazaire, Paimboeuf Mean, Roze) des Origines a la Deuxieme Guerre Mondiale (Saint-Nazaire, 1984), 62; Marthe Barbance, SaintNazaire: LePort, La Ville, Le Travail (Moulins: Crepin-LeBlond, 1948), 370-376. 18. Ministere du Travail et de la Prevoyance Sociale, Statistique Generale de la France, Repertoire Technologique des Noms dIndustries et de Professions (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1909), 255. 19. Paul Laurence Robertson, "The Management of Manpower in British Shipbuilding 1870-1914: A Study in the Organization of Human Resources under

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Conditions of Changing Technology" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1972), 4; J.F. Clarke, "Workers in the Tyneside Shipyards," in Essays in Tyneside Labour History, edited by Norman McCord (Newcastle: Newcastle-upon-Tyne Polytechnic, 1977), 111; Maurice Sarraut, Le Probleme de la Marine Marchande, (Paris: BergerLevrault, 1901), 308-309; Daumas, Histoire Generale des Techniques, t. 3, 359-364; John C. Cantwell, Notes on Wooden Ship-building and Nomenclature of the Ship (Washington, DC: Gibson Bros., 1888), 1-14; Fred W. Wallace, Wooden Ships andiron Men (Boston: Lauriat, 1937), 24-30. While shipwrights had responsibility for design, assembly, and "all that which concerns the carpentry of ships," yards did call on other tradesmen, like hewers, bevelers, and cutters for timber preparation, blacksmiths for iron fittings, joiners for interior work, and skilled luxury tradesmen for outfitting. Ministere du Travail, Repertoire Technologique des Noms, 255. 20. Kelly and Allen, The Shipbuilding Industry, 110; Noel, Les Nouveaux Paquebots, 6; Roger Burlingame, "Locomotives, Railways, and Steamships," in Technology in Western Civilization, edited by Kranzberg and Pursell. 21. Gerard Tripoteau and Alain Normand, "Le Montage sur Cale d'un Navire d'avant 1950," 303 (trimester 4): 25. 22. Jean-Yves Clement and Patrick Paille, Les Chantiers Navals du Littoral Vendeen, XIX-XX Siecles: Une Mutation (La Roche sur Yon: Centre du Documentation du Mouvement Ouvrier et du Travail en Vendee, 1987), 17; Noel, Les Nouveaux Paquebots, 236-242. 23. William H. White, "The Connection between Mechanical Engineering and Modern Shipbuilding," The Engineer (5 May, 1899): 434. 24. Ministere du Travail, Repertoire Technologique des Noms d'Industrie, 324325; Keith McClelland and Alastair Reid, "Wood, Iron and Steel: Technology, Labour and Trade Union Organization in the Shipbuilding Industry, 1840-1914," in Divisions of Labour, edited by Royden Harrison and Jonathan Zeitlin (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 154, 158-159; Robertson, "The Management of Manpower," 130; Clement and Paille, Les Chantiers Navals, 15-16; Jean Legoy, Le Peuple du Havre et son Histoire: Du Negoce a l'industrie, 1800-1914, vol. 2 (Le Havre: EDIP, 1982), 296; Ministere du Commerce, Office du Travail. Statistique des greves (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1897). Robertson suggests that shipwrights were only 10 percent of the workforce in iron construction. 25. Jean Domenichino, Une Ville en Chantiers: La Construction Navale a Port-deBouc, 1900-1966 (Edisud: Aix-en-Provence, 1989), 108-109; C. Ferrand, "L'industrie des Constructions Navales en France," La revue politique et parlementaire 90 (10 December 1916), 364-365; Tony Judt, Marxism and the French Left: Studies in Labour and Politics in France, 1830-1981 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 28, 42; Sarraut, Le Probleme, 321. 26. Thomas R. Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas: Philadelphia Shipbuilding in the Age of Industrial Capitalism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 46. 27. Reid, "The Division of Labour," 147. 28. Phanette de Bonnault-Cornu, "Du Charpentier-Bois a L'Ordinateur: Du Tracage des Navires," Sociologie du Sud-Est 31-32 (January-June 1982): 44; Ecomusee, L 'Espace Industriel, 45; Reid, "The Division of Labour," 82-84. 29. Pierre Nerriere, Construction et Reparations Mecaniques. Souvenirs d Auguste Nerriere, 1892-1904 (Paris: Durand, 1976), 48. 30. L. Callou, Cours de Construction du Navire (Ecole d'Application du Genie

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Maritime) (Paris: Challamel, 1904), 565. 31. Ministere du Travail, Repertoire Technologique des Noms, 316-7, 324-5; Noel, Les Nouveaux Paquebots, 6; Robb, "Ship-Building," 365-369; Callou, Cours de Construction du Navire, 500-533; Holmes, Practical Shipbuilding, 350-360; de Bonnault-Cornu, "Du Charpentier-Bois," 41-43; Jean Chardonnet, L 'Economic Francaise, vol. 2: Les Grandes Industries (Paris: Dalloz, 1971), 390-392; Burlingame, "Locomotives, Railways, and Steamships," 435. 32. The Eiffel Tower contained 15,000 iron structural components, while a medium-sized British cargo ship built in 1893 had 17,000 plates and angles. Hume, "Shipbuilding Machine Tools," 160; Joseph Harriss, The Tallest Tower (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), 230. 33. Ministere du Travail, Repertoire Technologique des Noms, 316-317; Chambre des Deputes, Disposition du Projet de Loi Relatif a la Marine Marchande, Seance du 28Octobrel901. 34. The magnitude of the task is suggested by the fact that each team installed a maximum of 300 rivets per day. Kelly and Allen, The Shipbuilding Industry, 186; Hume, "Shipbuilding Machine Tools," 160; Robertson, "The Management of Manpower," 32. 35. Reid, "The Division of Labour," 10. 36. Jean Latty, Regime de la Construction Navale en France: Traite D 'Economic Maritime, vol. 1: La Construction Navale (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1955), 479; Marthe Barbance, Histoire de La Compagnie Generale Transatlantique: un siecle d 'exploitation maritime (Paris: Arts et Metiers Graphiques, 1955), 124. 37. John Malcolm Brirtnin, The Sway of the Grand Saloon: A Social History of the North Atlantic (New York: Deiacorte, 1971), 389-90. 38. Chardonnet, L'Economie Francaise, 390; Ministere de l'agriculture et du commerce, Exposition Universelle Internationale de 1878 a Paris, Rapport sur les machines et les appareils de la mecanique generale (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1883), 565; Pollard and Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 166; Daniel Nelson, Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980). 39. L. Lavalee, "Resultats Obtenus," 444. 40. Ibid., 446. 41. Numero des Annales Techniques de la Marine Marchande, specialement consacre a la construction navale en France 25/26 (1949): 513. 42. E. Verge, Rapport Presente Par la Chambre Syndicale des Constructeurs de Navires et de Machines Marines, Situation de l'industrie de la Construction Navale, 1929-1930 (Paris: Conseil National Economique, 1930), passim. 43. Pollard and Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 118. See Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development," 614. 44. Suzanne Berger and Michael J. Piore, Dualism and Discontinuity in Industrial Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 8. 45. Liu, The Weaver's Knot, 38. 46. Reid, "The Division of Labour," 198; Edward H. Lorenz, "L'offre de travail et les strategies d'emploi dans la construction navale en France et en Grande-Bretagne (1890-1970)," Le Mouvement Social 138 (1987): 21-39. 47. Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development," 603-604, 609; Pollard and Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 25-29; Edward Lorenz and Frank Wilkinson, "The

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Shipbuilding Industry 1880-1965," in The Decline of the British Economy, edited by Bernard Elbaum and William Lazonick (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1986), 109. 48. Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development," 606. 49. Louis-Emile Bertin, "Rapport sur une seconde mission en Angleterre: 5 Aout-15 Septembre 1884," Memorial du Genie Maritime 4 (Bibliotheque de la Marine Marchande, 1885). 50. Hanagan, "Urbanization, Worker Settlement Patterns and Social Protest," 221— 223. 51. Gratien Candace, La Marine Marchande Francaise et Son Importance dans la Vie Nationale (Paris: Payot, 1930), 487. 52. Le Petit Nazairien (25 April 1909); Sarraut, Le Probleme, 183; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 499. 53. Domenichino, Une Ville en Chantiers, 109-110; Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development," 606-609. 54. Samuels, "Workshop"; Berlanstein, Big Business, 268-274; Sewell, "Uneven Development"; Kaelble, Industrialisation and Social Inequality, 51. 55. Keith McClelland, "Time to Work, Time to Live: Some Aspects of Work and the Re-Formation of Class in Britain, 1850-1880," in The Historical Meanings of Work, edited by Patrick Joyce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 181; McClelland and Reid, "Wood, Iron and Steel," 158-160; Robertson, "The Management of Manpower," 4, 129-130, 215; Pollard and Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 116-129. Robertson notes that in British yards the percentage of hand labor rose from 24 percent in 1873, to 34 percent by 1887. In 1892, 58 percent of the workers in eight British yards were classified as skilled. For a more recent analysis of French procedures and the absence of mass production techniques, see Verge, Rapport Presente, 20-22; R. Dugas, "Enquete du Conseil National Economique 1929-1930," L 'Industrie de la Construction Navale (Paris: Chambre Syndicale des Constructeurs de Navires, Circulaire 11B, 1930). 56. McClelland, "Time to Work, Time to Live," 182; Sarraut, Le Probleme, 311; Domenichino, Une Ville en Chantiers, 109-110; Verge, Situation de l'industrie, 95. 57. Michael Sonenscher points out that eighteenth-century journeymen saw the "proficiency of workers and qualities of work" as one. He also notes that the sharp distinction between skilled and unskilled workers dates to the era of World War I. Michael Sonenscher, "Mythical Work: Workshop Production and the Compagnonnages of Eighteenth-Century France," in The Historical Meanings of Work, edited by Patrick Joyce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 50. 58. Patrick Martinenq, Place de la Lune: aspect de I'histoire de La Seyne-sur-Mer (Toulouse: ERG, 1983), 382 59. Yves Jean Beloiel-Benoist, "La Grande Briere de 1836 a 1936: Etude de L'Evolution Professionelle, Sociale et Economique" (These de doctorat, Universite de Nantes, 1985), 365. 60. AN F14 1335, Ministere de l'Armement et des Fabrications de Guerre, "Tarif des Salaires Applicables dans les Usines de Guerre de l'Arrondissement d'Alais 13 Novembre 1917." Alphonse Merrheim of the metallurgy workers union helped Thomas create these schedules. See Nicholas Papayanis, Alphonse Merrheim (Boston: Dordrecht, 1985), 108-109. 61. For a discussion of the results of mechanization and standardization in the

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metal trades see Edward Tilly and Charles Shorter, Strikes in France, 1830-1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 211-212. 62. Ministere du Commerce, Direction du travail, Salaires et Duree Du Travail Dans L 'Industrie Francaise t. 1 Departement de la Seine (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1893), 408. 63. Nerriere, Construction et Reparation, 54. 64. McClelland, "Time to Work, Time to Live," 191. 65. Ministere du Commerce, Salaires et Duree Du Travail, 33. For further discussion see Michelle Perrot, "Les Classes Populaires Urbaines," in Histoire economique et sociale de la France, vol. 3: L'avenement de Vere industrielle 1789annees 1880, edited by Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976), 475. 66. McClelland and Reid, "Wood, Iron and Steel," 179. See also Tilly and Shorter, Strikes in France, 212; Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development," 201. 67. Yves Lequin, "Apprenticeship in Nineteenth-Century France: A Continuing Tradition or a Break with the Past?," in Work in France: Representations, Meaning, Organization and Practice, edited by Steven Laurence Kaplan and Cynthia J. Koepp (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 470. 68. M. Lavalee, "Resultats Obtenus par 1'Application des Nouvelles Methodes de Travail dans un Chantier de 3,000 Ouvriers," Bulletin de la Societe d'Encouragement Pour l'industrie Nationale 131, 1 (May-June 1919): 445. 69. Lequin, "Apprenticeship in Nineteenth-Century France," 468. 70. Louis Baudoin, Histoire generale de La Seyne-sur-Mer et de son port depuis les origines jusqu'a la fin du XIXe siecle (La Seyne-sur-Mer: Societe des amis de La Seyne ancienne et moderne, 1965), 802; Lucien Gaillard, La Vie quotidienne des ouvriers provenqaux au XIX siecle (Paris: Hachette, 1981), 105; Domenichino, Une Ville en Chantiers, 73; Paul L. Robertson, "Technical Education in the British Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Industries, 1863-1914," Economic History Review 27 (1974): 221— 235; F.B. Artz, The Development of Technical Education in France, 1500-1850 (Cleveland: Society for the History of Technology, 1966), 265-266. Gaillard argues that education did not liberate workers but made them more loyal to the yards. 71. Martinenq and Domenichino find enormous variation in processes between shops, some nearly artisanal and others relying more extensively on machinery. Martinenq, Place de la Lune, 123, 134; White, "The Connection Between Mechanical Engineering," 434-435; Pollock, Modern Shipbuilding, 129-133; Julien Turgan, Les Grandes usines de France: Etudes industridles en France et a I'etranger, vol.7 (Paris: Levy Freres, 1870), 308-309; Daumas, Histoire Generale des Techniques, 97-119; Holmes, Practical Shipbuilding, 548-551. 72. Ministere du Travail, Repertoire Technologique des Noms, 333. 73. Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas, 107. 74. Ibid., 471. 75. Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development," 608; Daumas, Histoire Generale des Techniques, vol. 4, 97-119. 76. Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development," 608. 77. Sarraut, Le Probleme, 309. See also Robertson, "The Management of Manpower," 18. 78. Reid, "The Division of Labour," 115; Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development," 605^609; Samuels, "Workshop of the World," 19-20; Lorenz and Wilkinson, "The

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Shipbuilding Industry, 1880—1965," 113; Daumas, Histoire Generale des Techniques, 129; Pollock, Modern Shipbuilding, 148-149; White, "The Connection between Mechanical Engineering," 434; Hume, "Shipbuilding Machine Tools," 168-169; Alphonse Merrheim, La Metallurgie: Son Origine et Son Developpement (Paris: Edition de la Federation des Metaux, 1913), 459. The extent of layoffs is unknown, but at Saint-Nazaire it undoubtedly increased after 1910, when the two yards acquired dockside cranes of 150 and 180 tons. 79. From 1902 to 1914, the average launching weight of vessels increased by over 50 percent and the number of passengers ships over 10,000 tons doubled annually. Hume, "Shipbuilding Machine Tools," 161-168; Robertson, "The Management of Manpower," 31. 80. AN 9AQ34, "Notes et rapports adresses par le service technique au President CGT," 23 August 1897. 81. AN AQ65 M394, Societe Anonyme des Chantiers et Ateliers de Saint-Nazaire (Penhouet), Assemblee Generale Extraordinaire des Actionnaires du 13 Avril 1908, "Rapport Presente par le Conseil d'Administration." 82. AN 9AQ11, Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, Assemblee Generale des Actionnaires, Rapport Presente par le Conseil d 'Administration (Paris: Imprimerie Parisienne, 1896-1911); "Rapport Presente par le Conseil d'Administration au Service Technique, 1885-1905"; "Rapport Presente par le Conseil d'Administration," 30 June 1898; AN 9AQ34, Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, "Notes et rapports adresses par le service technique au President CGT, 1897-1898"; AN AQ65 M394, "Rapport Presente par le Conseil;" La Democratic de VOuest, 25 April 1906, 2 February 1910; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 384. 83. ADLA 1M528, "Commissaire Special," 8 June 1910. 84. La Democratic de VOuest (7 June 1910). 85. ADLA 1M528, "Commissaire special," 8 June 1910; "Commissaire central," 9 June 1910; La Democratic de VOuest (7 June 1910). Shipyard workers were not the only ones upset by moves toward greater efficiency. Within weeks of the arrival of the British builders, both the director of accounting and Lannes' secretary resigned. 86. Fleury contends that Saint-Nazaire's yards employed seventy-three separate trades. Jean-Pierre Fleury, Jean-Paul Molinari, and Christian Moriniere, "Conditions de Vie et de Travail des Ouvriers Brierons," Cahiers de VObservation du Changement Social 4 (1982/1984): 291. 87. L. Callou, Technologie navale, physique et chimie industrielles, matieres premieres (Paris: Challamel, 1904), 610, 735-754; Office du Travail, Statistique des Greves, passim; Lavalee, "Resultats Obtenus," 445-446; Ministere du Travail, Repertoire Technologique des Noms, 317, 324-326; AN 9AQ36, "Rapport au Comite de Direction," 10 July 1912. 88. AN 9AQ36, "Rapport au Comite de Direction," 11 January 1911; Callou, Technologie Navale, 610, 735-754. 89. ADLA 1M2291, "Rapport de la Mairie de Chantenay," 18 May 1901. 90. Christiane Maubant, and Frank Duboc, Navalis: cinq siecles de construction navale au Havre (Le Havre: Musee des Beaux Arts, 1988), 301; Domenichino, Une Ville en Chantiers, 100-101. 91. Domenichino, Une Ville en Chantiers, 109-110. 92. Paul Augustin-Normand, L'Organisation corporative, son application particulaire a l'industrie des constructions navales (Paris: Academie de marine, 1941),

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45. 93. Paul Augustin-Normand, L'Organisation corporative, son application particulaire a l'industrie des constructions navales (Paris: Academie de marine, 1941), 45. 94. ADLA 1M620-621, "Commissaire special," 22 October 1896; Direction du Travail, Bulletin de VOffice du Travail, March 1899, 206; Le Travailleur (29 October 1909). Production delays typically caused layoffs or delayed hirings at subsequent stages. For instance, the failure of Loire shipwrights to meet their schedule in September 1889 brought the layoff of a "large enough number" of workers at successive stages. Le Phare de la Loire (16 September 1889); Le Reveil Social (28 January 1900). 95. Le Populaire (20 January 1901). 96. AN 9AQ 36, "Rapport au Comite de Direction, 11 Janvier 1911^1 Mars 1914." 97. Martinenq, Place de la Lune, 151. 98. Martinenq, Place de la Lune, 151. 99. Bernard Mottez, Systemes de salaire et politiques patronales: essai sur Vevolution des pratiques et des ideologies patronales (Paris: CNRS, 1966), 12; Martinenq, Place de la Lune, 205-210. Multiple wage systems also jeopardized full payment of workers' salaries. Management typically paid workers a weekly minimum, doling out the remainder when the project was completed and costs were calculated. The changeability of the wage systems according to the job and the shop, together with delayed payment, made calculating individual wages so complicated that workers had trouble verifying if they received the correct amount. 100. The literature on nineteenth-century subcontracting is extensive. Justin Allais, "La Question du marchandage" (These pour le doctorat, Universite de Paris, 1898); Jules Brodu, "Du Marchandage" (These pour le doctorat, Universite de Paris, 1898); Rene Descoust, "Marchandage et sweating system" (These pour le doctorat, Universite de Paris, 1918); J. Euverte, "De L'Organisation de la main d'oeuvre dans la grande industrie," Journal des Economistes (July-Sept 1870): 340-389; Arthur Fraysse, "Le Marchandage dans L'industrie du Batiment" (These pour le doctorat, Universite de Paris, 1911); Charles-Henri Gigot, "Du Marchandage" (These pour le doctorat, Universite de Paris, 1903); M. Labeuf, "Note sur le travail a la tache dans les travaux de construction navale," Bulletin de Vassociation technique maritime 18 (session 1907): 115-127; Ministere du Commerce, Conseil Superieure du Travail, Note de Voffice du travail sur le marchandage (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1899); Mottez, Systemes de salaire et politiques patronales', Bernard Mottez, "Du Marchandage au salaire au rendement," Sociologie du travail 2 (1960): 206-215; Bernard Mottez, "L'Evolution des Formes de Remuneration: Essai sur les pratiques et les ideologies patronales" (These pour le doctorat, Universite de Paris, 1966); Raymond Saint-Paul, Un mode progresifde remuneration du travail (Paris: Dunod, 1910); AN 9AQ 369-378, "Procesverbaux des deliberations du Conseil d'Administration du Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 1867-1914"; Martinenq, Place de la Lune, 101, 151-154; Sarraut, Le Probleme, 330-340. 101. Louis Reybaud, La Fer et la Houille ((Saint-Pierre-de-Salerne: Monfort, 1874), 144-146; Sarraut, Le Probleme, 325-327. 102. Great Britain, Board of Trade, Cost of Living in French Towns. Report of an Enquiry by the Board of Trade into Working Class Rents, Housing and Retail Prices Together with the Rates of Wages in Certain Occupations in the Principal Inudstrial Towns of France (Observations made in 1905) (London, 1909), 78, 145, 208; Gaillard,

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La Vie Quotidienne, 103; Labeuf, "Note sur le travail," 115-127; Sarraut, Le Probleme, 320-330; Bertin, "Rapport sur une seconde mission," 175; P. Barry, Dockyard Economy and Naval Power (London: Sampson Low, 1863), 151. Piecework remained the dominant system of remuneration in British yards. 103. Martinenq, Place de la Lune, 132-134, 151-154, 384-386; David F. Schloss, Methods of Industrial Renumeration (Oxford: Williams and Norgate, 1898). 104. AN 9AQ 373 (140mi5), "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'administration," 28 March 1893; 9AQ 375 (140mi7), "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'administration," 26 October 1898; 9AQ 392 (140mi26) "Proces-verbaux, Comite de Direction," 8 August 1904; Sarraut, Le Probleme, 171, 335. 105. In 1909, the Transat made its Penhouet and Provence yards responsible for two-thirds of the 300,000 francs in penalties incurred for late delivery of four vessels. A year later the board held Penhouet responsible for a 550,000 francs penalty for late execution. AN 9AQ 375 (140mi7), "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'administration," 17 October 1900; 9AQ 377 (140mi9), "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'administration," 6 January 1909, 22 June 1910. 106. AN 9AQ 392 (140mi25), "Proces-verbaux, Comite de Direction," 30 June 1863, 26 June 1866; 9AQ 370 (140mi2), "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'administration," 15 September 1876, 390; AN 9AQ 372 (140mi4), "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'administration," 29 January 1884; 9AQ 375 (140mi7), "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'administration," 31 May 1899. 107. AN 9AQ 370 (140mi2), "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'administration," 28 April 1876, 359; 9AQ 374, "Primes d'economie," 15 January 1895; 9AQ 375 (140mi7), "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'administration," 17 August 1898, 18 October 1899. In 1898, the Transat pledged a 5,000-franc bonus to the chief engineer and his colleagues if current projects were ready in the spring and, in 1899, promised the new director a 3,000-franc bonus for speedy completion of La Lorraine. 108. Bonuses granted in 1882 give some idea of the scale of inequality: the yard's director earned one-third of the sum slated to be shared by the entire workforce. AN 9AQ 370 (140mi3), "Primes," 21 April 1882; 9AQ 374 (140mi4), "Revision des primes," 31 August 1886; AN 9AQ 369 (140mi2), "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'administration," 19 August 1873; 9AQ 370 (140mi2), "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'administration," 28 April 1876. 109. AN 9AQ 375 (140mi7), "Proces-verbaux, Conseil d'administration," 22 June 1898, 17 August 1898, 14 June 1899, 7 February 1900. 110. Board of Trade, Cost of Living, 56. 111. De Bonnault-Cornu, "Du Charpentier-Bois," 44. 112. Ibid., 41-44; Reid, "The Division of Labour," 18; Pollard, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 152-153; Pollock, Modern Shipbuilding, 75-90; Robertson, "The Management of Manpower," 129. 113. Berlanstein, Big Business, 270. 114. Domenichino, Une Ville en Chantiers, 85. 115. Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas, 47. 116. Berlanstein, Big Business, 275-284. 117. Domenichino, Une Ville en Chantiers, 85. 118. McClelland and Reid, "Wood, Iron, and Steel," 171-172; Reid, "The Division of Labour," 132-134; Pollard, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 122. 119. Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 386. Deployment of riveting machinery here saved

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an estimated 125,000 francs. 120. Office du Travail, Statistique des greves (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1890— 1914); Reid, "The Division of Labour," 442; ADLA 1M2287, "Etat des Accidents, Arrondissement de Saint-Nazaire, 1890-1894." 121. Pollard, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 121-122; Martinenq, Place de la Lune, 3^1. 122. Martinenq, Place de la Lune, 382. Robertson, in "The Management of Manpower," notes that in British yards, riveting proved too strenuous for older workers. 123. McClelland, "Time to Work," 184. 124. Robertson found that in British yards shell and inside riveting involved separate crews. There is no evidence that this was the case in French yards. 125. Domenichino, Une Ville en Chantiers, 85. 126. Robb, "Shipbuilding," 365-369; Martinenq, Place de la Lune, 382. 127. Domenichino, Une Ville en Chantiers, 110-111. 128. Labeuf, "Note sur le travail a la tache," 115-127; Schloss, Methods of Industrial Remuneration; Gigot, "Du Marchandage," 60-65; Mottez, "Du Marchandage," 206-215; L 'Echo (12 November 1896, 27 May 1897). 129. Cornu considers the riveters and their assistants "the last of the trades" but not equal to the elevated status of other skilled workers. This reading of their status, in conjunction with labor activity based in workplace mobility, challenges the notion that the skilled played the leading role in labor activity. See Roger Cornu, "L'Espace du Syndicalisme a Port-de-Bouc," Le Monde Alpin et Rhodanien 3/4 (1984): 89; Domenichino, Une Ville en Chantiers, 85. 130. Progres de Nantes (2 July 1898). 131. Ibid. 132. AN F12 4685, "Commissaire special," 1 July, 1898; Le Courrier de SaintNazaire (2 July 1898). French sociologist Phanette de Bonnault-Cornu contends that the term mousse indicated an apprenticeship, but for an opposing view, see Roger Noulin. Phanette De Bonnault-Cornu, "Langage de travail et culture ouvriere," Le Monde Alpin et Rhodanien 3^4 (1984): 80; Roger Noulin, "La construction navale a Saint-Nazaire," Bibliotheque du Travail 424 (February 20, 1959): 24. 133. ADLA 1M2315, "Greve des chauffeurs de rivets," January 1900; ADLA 1M2314, 7 March 1899; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 521. 134. Domenichino, Une Ville en Chantiers, 85. 135. William Sewell, "Uneven Development, the Autonomy of Politics and the Radicalization of Workers," in The Industrial Revolution and Work in NineteenthCentury Europe, edited by Lenard Berlanstein (London: Routledge, 1992), 154.

Saint-Nazaire—maritime activity made this port one of the most flourishing of the Atlantic.

View of Chantiers et Ateliers de 1'Atlantique (Loire).

Saint-Nazaire—transatlantic liner in dry dock.

Saint-Joachim—the Briere flooded at the village of Vinces.

Riveter's strike (March-April 1907). Strikers leaving a meeting at the Bourse du Travail.

Riveter's strike (March-April 1907). Strikers awaiting the distribution of food, which was organized by the Bourse du Travail.

Riveter's strike (March-April 1907). Les soupes communistes for striking workers.

Chapter 4 Shipbuilder Communities: Urban Workers and Peat-Cutters While national industrial policies and workshop processes created a distinct industrial experience for workers in the shipbuilding industry, these factors are not sufficient to explain the formation of identity, values, and labor goals among Saint-Nazaire's workforce. Community and a community identity also shaped workers' identification and influenced their choices and behaviors and therefore should be considered as significant and "as real as the larger economic, political, social and demographic structures" that affected workers.1 This perspective is particularly germane for SaintNazaire because the workforce here could not be regarded as a homogeneous group. Shipyard workers lived in two separate residential communities, and each possessed a distinct set of resources and priorities that came to inform their behaviors and objectives at the workplace. Workers may have spent long hours in the same industrial facility, but they were raised, educated, and lived outside the shipyard gates in communities that supported values, norms, and resources dissimilar from one another and that translated into different expectations of industrial employment. THE STUDY OF COMMUNITY Exploring the meaning of community and everyday activities and patterns, as well as the substance of these activities, of associations, and of membership in that community, is not a new avenue for historians or social scientists. Scholars have long recognized that a wide variety of relationships and activities generate the affiliations and identifications that fashion behaviors and goals. A host of studies have investigated residential settlement patterns, social ties, religious affiliations, kinship networks, household structure, and economic patterns to reconstruct both the settings

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to select strategies and behaviors.2 Efforts to clarify and resolve the three issues that appear at the heart of these discussions—the substance of community membership, the origins of this identification, and the means by which community can be identified—have brought various suggestions and cautions. Scholars have come to divergent conclusions regarding the content of community membership, with some arguing that community signals shared patterns and interests, identifiable to some degree in most relationships, while others contend that it denotes mutuality and interdependence.3 The work of C.J. Calhoun underscores a broad "commonality of purpose," while that of Thomas Bender explains community as a "network of social relations marked by mutuality and emotional bonds" and "a sense of obligation."4 P.M. Jones' study of neighborhoods in Paris in the seventeenth century supports an inclusive reading of the term, presenting it as a "way of life" that may encompass knowledge, customs, attitudes, reactions, and manners as well as apprehensions held in common.5 Other studies direct our attention to identifying the existence of community and determining whether it is similarly perceptible across groups, activities, locales, and eras. Some models indicate that community identity is most discernible in instances of a relatively isolated existence where similar daily patterns blur the distinctions between economic, personal, and social roles and create an all-encompassing community identity.6 P.M. Jones suggests that though people participate in several interconnected cultures at once, that of the nation, the region, and their particular residential locale, the term "community" has relevance only for the discrete, local culture and way of life where work, family, and social relations are interwoven to create stable and exclusive networks. It would be mistaken, however, to conclude that scholars have limited their discovery of community to the confines of the rural world. David Garrioch's study of fifteenth-century Paris shows that the norms, behaviors, and expectations particular to a community did not derive solely from interdependent relations. In this setting, community became composed of a series of overlapping relations following the multiple and fluid lines of social interaction. In addition to this debate on the location of community, scholars debate the appropriate strategy for detection of community. One method has been to seek articulation in associations and activities. From this angle, the task of identifying community in sociability and affiliation appears at first glance a relatively straightforward one. Sociability and interrelatedness are revealed in the countless activities and tasks arising from the pursuit of everyday life and work. The measure of community—the degree of interaction, interdependence, and shared connection— varies from the intimate and interdependent bonds associated with family, kin, and daily pursuits, to the less frequent and casual communications made in the neighborhood, cafe, market, and workshop. However, seeking the meaning of community in "shared stuff,"7 that is, looking for substance at the site of activity, links community and identity to infinitely changeable relations and processes and may fail to discover their substance. In search of the source of community, Robin Pearson and Gerald Sider advise a shift in focus from culture and sociability to economics. Pearson shows that for clothiers in eighteenth-century Leeds, community identity both arose from, and was circumscribed by, the economic structure of the domestic system. Here, community was "rooted in productive relations," with social relations and patterns of life and work arising directly from these productive arrangements.8 Gerald Sider's work also

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supports the primacy of economics, demonstrating that culture, or community, was shaped by political and economic arrangements. He points to the example of the eighteenth-century Newfoundland fishing village to demonstrate that the values and behaviors of a community, that is, the manner in which groups and individuals identify and relate to the multiple cultures in which they participate, derived from material relations and the organization of property and production. Sider contends that the limits placed by British rulers on the economic activity of indigenous populations circumscribed their social relations and assured their dependence on the British fishin industry.9 While this shift toward economics greatly enhances our understanding of the origins and function of community, an exclusive reliance on economic structures may overlook the intersections between local culture and the outside world as well as the agency and power of community members in the delineation of community. Scholars of rural history urge a careful reconsideration of the study of urban and rural communities, with renewed emphasis on the perspective or the worldview particular to each community. Until recently, studies of working people in the nineteenth century have stressed what has been seen as inevitable and normative: an industrial working class in an urban setting. From this angle, the inexorable power of the industrial economy drew peasants into the urban arena and caused the dissolution of the physical community as well as of peasant culture and kinship ties. Yet James Lehning's work on rural dwellers in the Loire demonstrates that evaluating peasant communities by national values and the structures of the urban industrial world skews understanding of rural life and its inhabitants. Instead, the emphasis should be placed on the issues and culture internal to the community in question. Moreover, appreciating the economic and demographic structures relevant to the rural community brings peasants to the center of the narrative and credits them with agency, options, and a history of their own. For instance, Eric Van Young demonstrates that Mexican peasants at the end of the colonial regime did not view themselves as connected to national structures and processes. On the contrary, their "intensely localocentric worldview" shaped a particular community identity and set of attitudes toward the outside world.10 Tessie Liu's study of rural workers in the Choletais region of France is a superb illustration of the need for a close study of the coherence and continuity of rural life on its own terms. Liu found that rural communities in the Choletais did not dissolve under the weight of external forces but actively resisted migration, urban resettlement, and dependence on industrial wages. This struggle demonstrates that some peasant and farming communities, when confronted with a declining rural economy and marketplace logic, drew on patterns of work and resources intrinsic to their community to maintain themselves on the land.11 Liu's study also confirms the work of other historians that proletarianization cannot be considered "the final social product" of industrialization for all communities of peasants.12 Like the rural Brierons who came to work in Saint-Nazaire's shipyards, residents of the Cholet were neither eager nor compelled to embrace industrial employment and instead chose to preserve their rural community by integrating agrarian production with industrial wages. The resources, commitments, and priorities embedded in these communities provided strategies to address economic concerns and precluded immersion in the industrial world. Again, the charge is to investigate the community from within, focusing on its own structures and internal dynamics and the relationships that maintain, sustain, and delineate.

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While notions of community can be so fluid and inclusive as to evade definition and value, several cautions help fashion it into a useful analytical tool. First, community is neither ahistorical nor static. Inquiries into community affiliation and identity cannot be held to a single time frame or be bound to specific patterns of sociability. Rather than being fixed, identity and patterns of association evolve as members "actively construct" and reconstruct the shared meanings and relations in the process of their daily activities.13 Furthermore, community does not indicate that agreement or reason exists among members but "that [community] members engage in the same argument, the same discourse'" that embodies their values and goals.14 It encompasses the relationships, resources, and values that link people as well as the changes in these elements over time. Importantly, and often overlooked, communities do not function in isolation but arise from the intersection between the activities and interests of the specific group and the external world, relations that may be political and economic as well as social. The multiple points of intersection with the external world, however minimal and infrequent, shape community identity and deserve serious consideration. As Alan Macfarlane asserts, communities always interact with "[i]deas, food, government, kinship relations, [which] all overflowed" the boundaries.15 Hans Medick's comments on the scrutiny of culture make the point more strongly. He argues that culture, and I would add community, has typically been considered "only in the sense of a social subsystem that is relatively static and closed off upon itself." In this view, it is acted upon and shaped by the "great historical events" that center historical studies. Medick shows that culture must be seen "as a central dynamic and formative factor in the everyday 'realization' and transformation of social, economic, and political relations."16 Not only are culture and community not merely respondents to the external, but they also shape and reproduce those relations. The interstices between community and the outside world, the points of unanimity, as well as of tension and conflict, illuminate the structures and patterns specific to that community and the manner in which it sustains and redefines itself over time. Finally, several historians remind us that the study of resistance is a valuable approach to community. As the outside world imposes itself and struggles to reshape or absorb the community, resistance becomes an ideal site to seek the meaning of community. Those aspects of community life and work that generate resistance and defense, such as markets, political systems, and traditions, underscore the substance of community and its particular manifestations. The workforce of Saint-Nazaire's shipyards presents a unique opportunity to investigate the meaning and operation of community because it did not become, under pressure of industrial employment, one homogeneous workforce with a common identity and similar values and priorities. The shipbuilding workforce came to work every day from distinctly different residential settings: neighborhoods in Saint-Nazaire and rural villages north of Saint-Nazaire in the region known as the Briere marshland. In 1911 Saint-Nazaire's two yards employed 61 percent of male heads of household in Saint-Nazaire and 75 percent in Saint-Joachim, the largest of the seventeen Briere communes.17 Different settlements meant more than dissimilar housing stock or amenities; these two environments meant that workers developed different patterns of work, social relations, interests, relations to industrial work, and, importantly, divergent notions of their own identity. In the Briere, the substance of community and identity evolved from agricultural production, industrial pursuits, and the

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management of common land and production. Community identity arose from, and found daily expression in, shared patterns of life and work. It was an allencompassing identity that bound individuals and families to the community by way of similar and interdependent economic and social activities. As Eric Van Young's study of Mexican peasants demonstrated, community became a "conflation of economic, cultural, and personal identity in community membership."18 Community identity here also arose from an appreciation of the long-standing patterns of work and land management that had been central to marshland residents for generations, much like the case of Pearson's clothiers whose identity stemmed from historic patterns of production.19 Life in the Briere meant habits of life and work—collective landownership, self-government, a mix of industrial and agricultural pursuits, autonomy, and isolation—that gave residents a specific set of priorities, resources, and patterns of activity. These habits and resources shaped their adaptation to industrial work, to economic distress, and to other social groups and allowed them to successfully resist migration and proletarianization.20 Although the majority of male workers in the Saint Joachim commune found work in Saint-Nazaire's yards, they did not identify as members of the working class, and their responses to workplace issues and strike actions reflected this. They pursued agricultural production and maintained their identity as agricultural workers and landholders well into the twentieth century. The example of Saint-Nazaire's urban shipyard workers illustrates a different construction of the term "community." Mostly semi- and unskilled workers who had recently migrated to Saint-Nazaire in response to employment opportunities, these workers could hardly be construed as a largely homogeneous group like the Brierons, who identified with one another on the basis of a network of overlapping and inclusive connections. Urban workers faced each other in Saint-Nazaire not as a similar group with a history of personal attachments but divided by place of origin, by the different circumstances and experiences that brought them to the city, and by the fragmentatio imposed at the workplace.21 This is not to minimize the common experience of migration, separation from the land and family, immersion in an unfamiliar urban world, and dependence on an industrial wage, but these differences and the spatial divisions present at work and in the urban districts proved too great for the development of a sense of community and a shared identity. Instead, community became a set of connections newly constructed as families settled into their urban and industrial surroundings, drawing, of course, on these broadly similar experiences but not exclusive to them. In this instance, community identity did not arise from and encompass, all the features of work, family, and social relations as in the Briere. It was far more circumscribed and became just one of many identities—as immigrants, as workers, as denizens of a particular district—that shaped the behavior and attitudes of residents. THE BRIERON COMM UNITY Residents of the Grande Briere have been long and widely regarded as a population at odds with the French nation. Contemporaries attributed this to a variety of factors. In 1832, one commentator found that isolation and tradition had made the Brierons "doleful and stupid. Certainly to the observer, the Brieron goes better than a

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dolmen. Very often the incoming tides become his tomb: such is the life of a Brieron: do what his father did . . . . The present and the future are bound by a narrow circle from which he can never extract himself."22 Most observers, however, accounted for the unique characteristics of this population by reference to their relationship to the land and to their patterns of work. In Les populations agricole de la France, published in 1885, Henri Baudrillart characterized the Brierons as "a veritable tribe, distinct" from other populations due to "their work, their customs, and system of property ownership."23 Another contemporary believed that the traditions of this "completely distinctive" agricultural community derived from collective production and management of the land, while others ascribed their fierce independence and cultural autonomy to a difficult and secluded life in the marshland.24 Armand Audiganne's investigation of the Loire region declared the Brierons a "world apart, [with] their [own] traditional customs." He found that autonomy had become an essential component of Brieron life because of "the daily conditions of life that provide the individual an independence which can scarcely be enjoyed in the midst of our modern societies."25 The exceptional features of daily life noted by observers, which became the foundation for community identity here, begin with the unusual geography of the region. La Grande Briere, situated due north of Saint-Nazaire, covered roughly 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) and extended about fifteen kilometers, yet nearly half of this territory, 8,000 hectares, was marshland, a factor that sharply restricted the land available for settlement, cultivation, and transportation. The 15,000 residents lived in villages scattered along the edge of the marsh or on a dozen small islands in the marsh interior. The most densely populated area was the principal Briere archipelago, seven islands clustered in the eastern portion of the marsh, the commune of Saint-Joachim, with a population around 4,500 at midcentury. Although the Briere was in close proximity to Nantes and Saint-Nazaire, residents, particularly those of Saint-Joachim, lived in almost year-round isolation. The marsh impeded communication with villages and cities outside the Briere, whilefloodingseven months of the year limited travel possibilities and made a roadway system unreasonable. As a consequence, boats and waterways dominated life in the marshland. An intricate series of canals provided passageways through the thick swampland and served as the only route in and out of the area. In 1868, the construction of a road in the eastern corner of the marsh made winter travel outside the region more possible but did little to transform the long-standing patterns of isolation.26 The unique history and structure of landholding also contributed to the development of "class consciousness" among the Brierons.27 In 1461, Francois II of Brittany granted the seventeen Briere communes title to La Grande Briere, both marshland and islands, largely because the land was considered without value.28 This grant was confirmed in 1784, and the "sovereign powers recognized that residents of the neighboring parishes of the Briere had sole ownership, possession, and use of the marsh" and all the crops produced there.29 In this way, the Brierons found themselves free of the aristocracy and in undisputed possession of an extensive tract of land. The seventeen communes established a system of landholding that guaranteed residents equal access to the limited resources. Each family enjoyed a small plot of arable land adjacent to its home, while the remainder was maintained for use by the whole commune, typically for livestock but, in areas with farm land, for cultivation also. In addition, residents shared cultivation rights of the marsh itself While the amount of

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arable and marshland that families enjoyed varied with the topography of the area, it appears that the communes struck a balance in dividing their agricultural resources. For instance, those villages and communes with less arable land, such as the commun of Saint-Joachim, were recompensed with a larger tract of marshland for agricultural production, which in their area proved of great depth and productivity.30 The system of communal and private landholding proved indispensable to villages so short on arable land. At the same time, it bound residents together in a common body intent o survival and assured that all families became enmeshed in the operations of the whol of La Grande Briere, thus creating a community with membership privileges and responsibilities. This system of land division and management was maintained well into the nineteenth century, and as late as 1946,77 percent of landholdings over fift hectares in the commune of Saint-Joachim were held and worked collectively.31 Under the system of collective ownership, residents shared the resources that mad up their livelihoods and held a common interest in the preservation and productivity o those resources. Self-governance took community membership beyond common interests and resources; by instituting policies and procedures for management and communication, self-governance demanded the involvement and attention of all residents and created an identifiable body and set of codes to which all residents subscribed. Unlike other villages in France, subjectfirstto the aristocracy and after the Revolution to an intrusive and centralized state, the Brierons had been administering their marshland resources since the fifteenth century. The earliest governing structures and policies are not known, but it appears that they focused on preserving the physical environment and traditional activities. Collective land use and common cultivation proceeded with few disputes prior to 1820, with the exception of a 1748 attempt by local aristocrats to reclaim the land. In the following decades, however, shared landholding faced serious challenges as some residents supported a partition of the marshland, others hoped to reclaim the marsh through drainage, and residents of one commune vandalized sections ofthe marshland to prohibit cultivation by members of another commune. In 1838, in response to mounting discord over land use, the seventeen Briere communes created a formal body, the Syndicat Intercommunal de la Grande Briere, to protect their holdings and oversee the disposition of the marshland. The far-reaching responsibilities of the elected Syndicat explain how observers described the marshland community as a "small republic." The Syndicat, which to this day remains the primary governing body for the marshland, had jurisdiction over most aspects of work and property in th Briere. It regulated the location, quantity, and time of marshland cultivation and saw to the preservation of the marsh, limiting cultivation when necessary and maintaining and extending the canal system. The Syndicat also presided over hunting and pasture rights, the sale of all marshland products, and the collection and distribution of tax revenue.32 The Syndicat spent a great deal of its energies adjudicating disputes between residents of Saint-Joachim and the other communes over appropriate cultivation of the land and the ongoing problem of whether to drain and divide the territory or maintain it as communally held and administered. Disharmony and conflict aside, governance by the Syndicat drew all families into a single unit with shared concerns and into the active mediation of those problems and therefore proved key in the construction of community identification. Collective administration of shared economic interests made the community a forceful and visible presence in all daily activities and nurtured profound and persistent links between the Grande Brier

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as a whole and the individual communes and families. Self-government also fostered important traditions of independence among the Brierons.33 Similar patterns of work constituted another element in the web of connections and traditions that became community membership. As the dearth of land restricted traditional cultivation, residents had for centuries fashioned a living from a mix of economic pursuits, with the balance in each commune dependent on the extent of arable land and marshland. In the marsh itself, Brieron families cultivated black oak trees, leeches for medicinal purposes, reeds for bedding and roofing, and peat for heating fuel and fertilizer, while on the land they farmed and raised livestock. The only year-round industries, fishing and hunting, were available to all, and their products made their way to the family table as well as to regional markets.34 Brierons also engaged in boat construction in response to their dependence on water transport. From shipyards that held just one vessel and a few workers, Brierons constructed the wooden boats and barges that carried crops to distant markets, men and women to harvests, livestock between islands, neighbors on visiting trips, and children to school, as well as the occasional funeral cortege.35 Although it is not possible to pinpoint the number of vessels produced here, the quantity is suggested by the pace of local commerce; in one year near the end of the century, 5,000 Brieron boats laden with peat passed through the corridor connecting the Briere to the Loire River and the outside world. Like rural families elsewhere, Brieron families depended on the concurrent pursuit of two or three trades and the participation of all family members. Young boys caught frogs and collected eggs for sale, while girls cared for livestock and gardens. Women tended garden plots and on the Saint-Joachim islands caught fish and eels for sale at local markets. Women also had responsibility for agriculture, livestock, and marshland cultivation during winter months, when men devoted more time to ship construction.36 The cultivation of peat, however, ranked as the Briere's principal agricultural crop and further cemented residents' identification of themselves as a distinct community. In fact, in the mid-nineteenth century the Briere produced one-fifth of the national peat harvest. Utilized throughout France as low-cost heating fuel, peat was in particular demand in Brittany and other coastal areas that suffered from a scarcity of wood. In the 1770s, .5 million people from Brest to Bordeaux relied on the peat motte, or brick, to heat their homes. 7 Local industries utilized the product in steam engines and forges until the end of the century, and peat was also marketed as a food preservative, a substitute for straw in bedding and litters, and an absorbent in medical dressing. Like other marshland crops, the cultivation of peat, known as tourbage, varied greatly from one Briere commune to the next. For the commune of Saint-Joachim, with only enough arable land to feed its population for three months out of the year, the production and sale of peat constituted its "sole resource."38 In fact, residents of Saint Joachim were considered quintessential Brierons because they divided their time between peat production and shipbuilding, the agricultural and industrial trades most characteristic to the region.39 Harvest statistics further demonstrate the importance of the peat crop to this one commune. In 1840, as the other sixteen Briere communes harvested an average of 8,700 cubic meters of peat each, primarily for their own heating needs, the Saint-Joachim commune harvested 50,000 cubic meters, nearly one-third of the total for the Briere, transporting it on boats from Brest to La Rochelle or bartering it for foodstuffs at nearby markets like Nantes and Vannes.40 A government report underscored the significance of peat production for the Saint-

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Joachim economy in the 1830s; by its account, 95 percent of the 300,000 peat bricks harvested annually by each of 600 families were sold in regional markets as heating fuel. This commune also produced most of the 15,000 to 20,000 tons of peat byproduct, known as "black peat dust," harvested annually in the Briere.41 Rich in humus and carbonates, this product was used by industry in fertilizers. Given the value of the peat crop to this community, it is not surprising that residents committed all their time and energies to the short harvest season; villages emptied at harvest time as men, women, and children invaded the marshland to cut, extract, dry, and prepare thousands of peat mottes for market. Some residents hired outside help for the harvest, paying in peat, but reliance on the combined labors of family members proved more typical. Men dug trenches and excavated and cut the peat into bricks, while women and children helped with transport and arranged the bricks in pyramids onshore for drying and storage. The deployment of so many residents and family members underscores the centrality of this crop to the Brieron economy. In the 1890s, a point when peat production had been in decline for several decades, the number of harvesting permits still numbered over 4,000, the average of the mid-1870s. In fact, Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilders complained bitterly in the 1860s and again in the 1880s about Briere shipyard workers' abandoning the yards at harvest time to work in the marsh.42 Although the central position of peat production in the Saint-Joachim economy is undisputed, the income that it afforded the tourbeur, those Brierons whose survival hinged on this crop, is less clear. In 1800, a family-sized harvest of about 200,000 peat bricks sold for an estimated 100 francs, certainly inadequate to support a family for a year.43 A government report issued in 1841 presented a sober survey of the crop's value. Deducting the cost of transporting the crop to markets, it estimated that each tourbeur earned 1.5 francs daily, equivalent to the daily wage of an agricultural laborer, "the least paid work" in the departement.44 A report from the same period noted that the sale of peat, "'far from improving the position of those who deliver it, keeps them, on the contrary, in poverty.'"45 While in 1860, Armand Audiganne characterized Briere resources, both individual and collective, as "a genuine fortune," it is likely that he was referring not to income but instead to the significance of this resource in sustaining residents.46 A government report from the late eighteenth century seconded this perspective, noting that if the Brierons had been denied this resource, they would be "forced to leave their land."47 The Brierons did not secure wealth from peat production; harvests proved unpredictable and alternate resources scanty, and families had to scramble between several activities to produce enough to survive. The value of the peat crop, then, lay not in great financial return, but in supplying the margin of survival between impoverishment and subsistence and in preserving the community.48 This method of landholding and management and the interdependent patterns of life and work meant that community was not an abstraction only occasionally brought to bear but an identifiable and everyday force for residents of the Briere. Community here went beyond common interests to encompass shared resources, activities, and associations as well as involvement in the economic life of other communes and families. This was readily apparent to residents both in their daily pursuits and communications as well as in the organization and activities bent on resolving these concerns. Community membership in the Briere emerged from a "conflation of economic, cultural, and personal identity."49 It arose from property ownership, self-

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governance, the unusual mix of agricultural resources, and the connections that developed between and within communes and villages as families were drawn together, sometimes in opposition, by the policies of the Syndicat. The existence of a palpable and comprehensive community identity, however, did not exclude the refashioning of that identity over time and the development of sharp differences and tensions. Significant lines of disjuncture among the seventeen Briere communes, which arose from divergent perspectives on appropriate use of the marshland, created a subset of the broader community identity specific to Saint-Joachim. The presence of a local culture forged by specific local forces and dissimilar in some ways from the shared community identity has been demonstrated by P.M. Jones, who noted the presence of a two-tiered community in his study of the Massif Central.50 This appears to have been the case in Saint-Joachim, where dependence on marshland production and the peat crop in particular distinguished these residents from the Brierons as a whole, fashioning a specifically local community identity and fostering fracture lines and tensions. THE SAINT-JOACHIM COMMUNITY: FROM PEAT-CUTTERS TO SHIPBUILDERS The existence and content of membership for the discrete community of SaintJoachim are amply illustrated by ongoing and bitter disputes between the commune of Saint-Joachim, known as Briere des lies, and the landed Brieron communes, Briere des Terres, over disposition of the marshland. The first documented conflict over land usage appeared in the 1770s, when several communes came to consider communally held land an impediment to economic development and proposed draining and dividing the marsh for individual farming and grazing. For the peatcutters, or tourbeurs, of Saint-Joachim, drainage and division meant economic disaster. Their survival, as well as the preservation of their community, was predicated on traditional land management and unrestricted cultivation and sale of marsh agriculture. They feared a reduction in the territory available for peat cultivation and the loss of cultivation rights, which they regarded as their birthright. Although outnumbered in the Syndicat, the Saint-Joachim commune struggled to halt modification in land use, the regulation of production, and the imposition of new taxes. When the Compagnie Debray began to drain sections of the southern border of the marsh, Saint-Joachim families defended their rights by petitioning,filingsuits in court, and, finally, gathering together to physically frighten drainage workers out of the marshland.51 In the first half of the nineteenth century, the peat-cutters did not shrink from extralegal tactics to protect their agricultural resources. Their struggle to protect cultivation rights and marshland usage reflected a realistic reading of their precarious economic situation, as even state officials recognized that to deprive Saint-Joachim of access to peat would mean their "economic ruin."52 The conflict resurfaced when many of the landed communes without ready access to the marshland renewed their battle to end traditional landholding arrangements, at first uniting to support the drainage and sale of land to pay off debts and to attract local industry. In 1832, 700 men and women from Saint-Joachim heaved peat into the canals to block the thoroughfares and prohibit a drainage company that had been hired by other

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communes from bringing heavy equipment and workmen into the marsh. SaintJoachim residents mounted their most vigorous defense of the marshland and their central resource in 1834. With drainage of sections of the marsh about to begin anew, ""1,700 tourbeurs [both men and women from Saint-Joachim] armed with scythes, pitchforks.. .and other weapons'" blocked the drainage ditches and attacked drainage workers.53 Residents of Sainte-Chapelle, a nearby commune, commented that SaintJoachim residents "imagine that all of the Briere belongs to them alone," a sentiment that may have been widely shared.54 In that same year, Saint-Joachim residents destroyed the roads leading into the heart of the marsh to prevent Brierons from other communes, most of whom traveled by wagon, from entering the area to harvest and haul away the peat.55 They even took their case before the Conseil d'Etat in 1836, but the court rejected their suit and saddled them with court costs. This ongoing conflict between Saint-Joachim and the other Brieron communes contributed, in 1838, to the establishment of the Syndicat Intercommunal de la Grande Briere to oversee and administer marshland activities. The history of conflict and antagonism between Saint-Joachim residents and the Syndicat illustrates the content of this distinct community identity. While all Briere residents claimed membership in the larger community, represented by the Syndicat, which managed the marsh and worked toward equitable use of its resources, in reality this often meant restrictions for the residents of Saint-Joachim, specifically, regulations of the process and locale of cultivation and the quantity of peat extracted. As a result, they came to identify with, and claim membership in, a distinctive community founded on the interests and concerns of their own villages and islands. The Saint-Joachim community found the Syndicat's first decision, requiring residents to purchase a license to harvest peat, as an infringement on traditional prerogatives. What had long been a traditional right suddenly became a criminal act. Residents responded by first repudiating the jurisdiction of the Syndicat and then harvesting peat without the requisite license. The Syndicat levied fines for harvesting without a permit and in 1845 assessed Saint-Joachim cultivators Jean Moyon and Francois Tremandeux a 100-franc fine, a hefty sum. 56 When fines proved ineffective in halting cultivation, the Syndicat raised the stakes and met "pillage," their term for production without a license, with a penalty bound to devastate any family—a one-year prohibition on peat cultivation. Saint-Joachim peat-cutters also battled to protect other traditional privileges: they questioned the Syndicat's right to tax peat headed for market (which reduced their income), physically challenged officials who tried to tax and regulate the sale of peat, and continued to resist claims for drainage and division.57 The Syndicat vowed to defend what they considered communal rights "against the pretensions of the commune of Saint-Joachim," but they had little enforcement power.58 Finally, over a period of several years in the late 1860s, in protest over past Syndicat policies as well as allocation of its taxes to drainage, the Saint-Joachim peat-cutters withheld tax payments. Local officials and other Brieron communes became so enraged, in large part because this tax strike made it nearly impossible to pay off the debt to the drainage companies, that the prefet considered suspending Saint-Joachim mayor Aoustin Joseph Sauzereau, a supporter of the revolt, and employing soldiers to collect taxes from each delinquent family.59 Though the prefet condemned the peat-cutters and characterized them as "ignorant and almost savage," he did appreciate their motives, that is, that "peat is [their] only resource."60

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The content of membership in the Saint-Joachim community also included a history of refusing to submit to external authorities. When Saint-Joachim came under the administration of the nearby village of Montoir, the region's commercial seat, in 1793, it "ignored every administrative constraint, refusing to make declarations to the etat civil and to accept all documents" from Montoir.61 The families of Saint-Joachim consistently rejected interference in local governance and relied on each other in their daily activities. Saint-Joachim cultivators "did not subject themselves to the influence of the clergy, the protection of notables, or the authority of the administration."62 This pattern of community independence and resistance was most apparent through 1870, when interference from local and national authorities, including the selection of SaintJoachim's mayoral candidates by the prefet, resulted in countless petitions, annulled elections, and resignations. In the early 1830s, residents rejected a candidate who favored drainage and then rejected the candidate who opposed it, prompting the sousprefet to acknowledge the difficulty of administering Saint-Joachim. In 1837, residents organized opposition to one mayor because he supported drainage and prohibited them from harassing drainage workers. The presence of soldiers eased the tension temporarily. Conflict continued through the next decades; 1840 saw new protests against mayoral candidates, 1843 the suspension of the mayor by residents, a mayoral resignation in 1854, and in 1865 the invalidation of elections following the recognition by one candidate that in "Saint-Joachim it is not easy to occupy [the post of mayor]."63 While the residents of Saint-Joachim fended off most challenges to their marshland prerogatives through midcentury, the erosion of the agricultural economy from the 1850s as a result of a steady decline in peat demand and cultivation posed yet another challenge to this community. Peat cultivation nationwide underwent a sharp drop from midcentury; from 1856 to 1860, production fell 20 percent, and the downward slide continued over the next forty years. The problem was particularly serious in the Briere. In the 1840s and 1850s, annual production had averaged 106,000 tons or 129,214,000 mottes, peaking at 170,000 tons in 1844.64 Yet by 1865, local production had plummeted to just 6,000 tons (see Table 4.1). The natural shrinkage of marshland stood at the center of this crisis. There are no estimates on the loss of Briere marshland, but national shrinkage rates suggest the trend. In the ten years from 1882 to 1892, French bogs lost 8,000 hectares, one-sixth of their total area. Furthermore, as the Briere marsh dried up, it also decreased in depth by about 75 percent to only one-half meter. Since peat could be cultivated only in the deepest sections, this development further restricted extraction.65 A concurrent drop in demand intensified the crisis. Coal had begun to supplant the use of peat, and even local consumption was now "restrained." While production did recover slightly from the sharp drop of 1860, stabilizing near 25,000 tons during the 1880s, it never returned to earlier levels. The 1860 crop presaged a future of continuously shrinking marshland and poor harvests for the Brierons, and up until the war, residents rarely extracted more than a quarter of the 100,000-ton average of the 1850s. Local production of peat dust underwent a 50 percent reduction in the same period.67 Critically, the steady drop in peat production after 1860, specifically, the loss of three-fourths of the Briere's principal crop, had a clear and immediate impact on the local economy. Henri Baudrillart found the decrease in peat production so severe by 1881 that it threatened the community's survival, and Andouard's 1889 study found that "peat cultivation [in this region] has less importance . . . than previously."68

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Table 4.1 Annual Peat Production in France and in the Briere

YEAR

FRANCE IN TONS

BRIERE IN TONS

BRIERE IN PEAT BRICKS

606,379 455,789

139,450 97,000 170,000 91,000 85,000

170,000,000 118,291,500 207,315,000 103,616,000 60,000,000

1854 1855 1860 1862 1865

459,356 491,918 351,920 436,910 353,386

82,000 82,000 6,000 80,000 15,000

100,000,000 100,000,000 7,314,000 97,560,000 18,292,500

1867 1872 1878 1879 1880

326,743 324,333 296,241 234,369 248,122

18,000 18,000 20,000 7,000 28,500

21,942,000 21,942,000 24,380,000 8,530,000 34,714,500

1881 1883 1884 1885 1886

233,121 201,371 196,691 190,196 175,311

26,295 25,000 26,000 22,000 12,661

32,053,605 30,475,000 31,694,000 16,818,000 15,433,759

1888 1890 1894 1899 1904 1909 1914 1918

159,658 157,701 131,717 99,230 95,119 78,593 36,716 129,044

22,000 18,000 10,000

16,818,000 21,942,000 12,190,000

NA NA NA NA NA

NA NA NA NA NA

1840 1842 1844 1845 1850

418,458

NA NA

Sources: Andouard, "Les progres," 48; Vince, Brierons, 41; Directions des Mines, Les Tourbieres Francaises, 169; Fleury "Ouvriers-Paysans," 285.

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Recent studies confirm this, arguing that the loss of this crop made the Brierons "a poverty-stricken population."69 Migration, however, was not a consideration for residents, instead, the peat-cutters sought alternate survival strategies within the marshland. While continuing to lobby against drainage and defend their access to marshland cultivation, now more critical than ever, the Saint-Joachim community attempted to fashion solutions from the material of their region and their community. One obvious resource was the larger marshland community. Saint-Joachim looked to the Syndicat and neighboring communes for assistance, but their history of combativeness and tax delinquency did not command a favorable response. The municipal council then sought to add other industries into the mix of economic resources to reduce the "long bouts of unemployment" plaguing local peat-cutters. They even considered excavating additional canals to entice commerce and industry to the area.70 These projects reveal that for the Saint-Joachim peat-cutters the solution to the sudden privation of their primary crop lay in alternate activities within the confines of the Briere, not dissolution of the community or abandonment of their agricultural activities. Their identity as propertied agricultural producers with resources and patterns of work embedded in ownership and management of the land determined their response to the agricultural crisis and, importantly, determined the range of possible solutions. Long before industrial employment at Saint-Nazaire became an option, Saint-Joachim residents had made evident their desire to preserve their community and their habits of work and association. As production and commerce of peat diminished and plans for economic development came to naught, shipbuilding emerged as the single largest employer of Saint-Joachim men. Shipbuilding had been a necessary and central activity in the Briere for generations; transportation required that each family own at least one boat, and the majority of men included shipbuilding among their skills. In the 1830s, three shipyards had been established in the port villages of Mean, Rose, and Paimboeuf at the southern edge of the marsh, supplanting the small construction sites in the Briere and drawing off its labor force. The yards constructed about thirty vessels per year for use in local commerce as well as by regional shipping companies. Shipbuilding quickly became the single largest supplemental trade for Briere families, with 175 of the 211 tradesmen and artisans in this community employed in the yards.71 Declining peat harvests pushed the workforce to rely more heavily on industrial employment, and, over the next decades, the number of shipwrights increased to 344 by 1860.72 In that year alone, more than 100 men from the Briere took up work as shipwrights or laborers in Saint-Nazaire. By the time that the Penhouet yard opened in SaintNazaire, Brieron shipbuilders had developed a reputation among employers as "accurate, thrifty, hostile to voluntary unemployment and [to] the harmful habit of missing [work on] Monday."73 The logic of industrial employment became more compelling for these skilled workers by the mid-1860s. As peat production fell to one-fifth of that of a decade earlier, the element of choice in industrial employment lessened. Declining harvests, erosion of the marshland, and the promise of wages higher than in the smaller yards brought hundreds of Briere shipwrights to Penhouet in 1862. Pierre Corbille, 22year-old son of Marianne Thomas, worked as a shipwright to help support his widowed mother, who described herself as a cultivatrice, or cultivator, and three siblings. Two of the three sons ofcultivateurs Joseph Vince and Modeste Mahe also appear to have found little promise in agricultural production and so took work as

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shipwrights in the 1860s. Oldest son Joachim, who as an adolescent had worked in the marshland alongside his two siblings, now supported a wife and child on his shipbuilding wage. Brother Jean lived with their parents and sister and contributed his shipbuilding income to their support. With so many of Saint-Joachim's men seeking employment in shipbuilding, it is not surprising that oldest daughter Angelique married a shipwright.74 As we have seen, industrial jobs disappeared again with Penhouet's closure in 1867, forcing some Brieron shipwrights to return to the smaller yards in Mean and Rose and others to seek work at shipyards elsewhere in France. Job instability in the smaller yards and the ongoing decline in peat production drew the Brierons back to Saint-Nazaire in even greater numbers after 1881, when government subsidies rejuvenated shipbuilding and prompted the reopening of Penhouet and the establishment of the Loire yard.75 Many sailors from Saint-Joachim also signed on at the yards as the switch to steam vessels for ocean travel had begun to restrict the call for large crews.76 All told, over 900 of the 1,200 men employed by the Loire yard in 1884 came from the Briere, and at Penhouet, Brierons made up the largest regional group.77 The "stampede" of Brieron workers to the Penhouet and Loire shipyards in the early 1880s brought important changes to the life and work of Briere residents but also underscored the strength and resilience of community and the unwillingness of residents to shed this membership.78 At the forefront of these changes was a dramatic shift in occupations affecting men, women, and children and amply illustrated in marriage and census records.79 In 1836, before the decline in peat production, 78 percent of Saint-Joachim's population characterized themselves as cultivateurs. In 1851, agricultural production was the economic mainstay, occupying 52 percent of male heads of household compared to 29 percent in ship construction and 14 percent in maritime work. By 1886, however, the total agricultural population had dropped below 50 percent, and by 1896, industrial shipbuilding had become the primary employer in Saint-Joachim.80 In that year, only four male heads of household, just 3 percent of the total, listed cultivateur as their primary occupation, while 86 percent worked in shipbuilding.81 Skilled shipbuilding trades employed 60 percent of male heads of household in Saint-Joachim, while 23 percent worked as manoeuvres, or unskilled industrial laborers. On the eve of the Great War, Saint-Joachim's occupational transformation had been completed. Agriculture, for generations the economic backbone of this community, had been reduced to a supplementary activity that occupied barely 200 residents on a full-time basis.82 In fact, in 1892, the Saint-Joachim city council voted against establishing medical services because the "greatest number of inhabitants are workers at [the] Penhouet shipyard," which provided that service. Yet as shipbuilding stood as the primary source of industrial employment, work at the yards remained too unreliable for the Brierons to forsake marshland agriculture, even if they had desired to do so.83 Instead, fishing, hunting, and agricultural production continued as essential activities and, as was the case for worker-peasants in other regions, constituted a buffer against frequent and long bouts of shipbuilding unemployment.84 The annual peat harvest remained indispensable to the family economy, and Brierons left the shipyards each fall to participate.85 Saint-Joachim workers faced industrial employment with resources such as community associations, property, and agricultural production unavailable to most

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industrial workers. In addition, training in shipbuilding made it possible for them to enter the yards with valuable skills and to avoid low-paying, unskilled work. For a period during the 1880s, the Saint-Joachim community operated a municipal training program in which shipbuilders taught the principles of industrial design and shipbuilding to neighbors, sons, and cousins.86 This protective strategy proved successful. By the turn of the century, the majority of male Brierons employed outside agriculture worked in this skilled trade. Census and marriage records show that an overwhelming number of Saint-Joachim shipyard workers, 93 percent of heads of household in 1896, were charpentiers, or skilled shipwrights.87 The story of SaintJoachim's younger generation testifies to the benefits of community ties and industrial experience. Despite the myriad of new metalworking trades added to shipbuilding in the 1880s, the vast majority of younger men, 98 percent of sons ofcharpentiers, also worked in this trade.88 By the turn of the century, Saint-Joachim's young workers came to exercise an expanded range of skilled and semiskilled metal trades. At the same time, the number of charpentiers among heads of household rose slightly, confirming that dependence on industrial work led workers to acquire skilled and well-paid positions.89 These various resources assured that the Brierons would not become proletarianized by industrial employment.90 Only briefly in the 1890s did the number of unskilled shipbuilding workers in the Saint-Joachim community rise to 20 percent of household heads, a trend that proved short-lived. Importantly, though, those SaintJoachim workers who did move into unskilled posts appear to have come from difficult or precarious economic circumstances and were thrust suddenly into industrial work. Of nineteen unskilled laborers in 1911, nine camefromfamilies with an unemployed head of the household; four were sons of day laborers, and one of a cultivateur. For the majority of Saint-Joachim men, however, the activities and resources of the community allowed them to secure skilled, well-paid positions. In fact, by 1911, the number of workers employed in unskilled trades had declined, and only 13 percent of male heads of household in industrial employment, half the 1896 rate, worked as unskilled. The resources of the community, both industrial skills and the apprenticeship program, made this possible. The economic challenges facing Saint-Joachim residents also meant changing patterns of work for the commune's women. Declining crop production, the absence of men from marshland cultivation, often for a week at a time as many boarded near Saint-Nazaire's shipyards rather than undertake the twelve-kilometer trip twice daily, and the instability of industrial employment led women to broaden their contribution to the family economy.91 A study of northern Italian worker-peasants, involved in both industrial and agricultural production, found the expanded home and farming duties of women an essential component of the worker-peasant family economy. The multiple responsibilities of these women freed male members of the household for industrial work. At the same time, the men often worked in industries with irregular or flexible schedules, much like shipbuilding work, which allowed them to return to the fields at key times.92 This aptly describes the situation in the Briere commune of Saint-Joachim. Women adopted a variety of new and expanded economic activities, including shouldering greater responsibility for agricultural production. Consequently, they no longer described themselves to census enumerators as cultivatrice but rather identified under the broad rubric of menagere, or housewife, signifying multiple duties related to family support. In the period from 1872 to 1886, in two Saint-

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Joachim villages, Fedrun and Rose, the percentage of female workers identified as cultivatrice declined, respectively, from 79 percent to 37 percent andfrom92 percent to 2 percent.93 In 1881, about 75 percent of Saint-Joachim's married women pursued agricultural duties, while 25 percent described themselves as menagere. By 1911, only two women identified agriculture as their primary occupation, and 97 percent classified themselves as menagere?A A few examples illustrate the evolution for women. Although Pierre Francois worked as a shipwright, irregular and seasonal employment made it necessary for his family to continue marshland cultivation. Like most local women, Pierre's wife, Rose Taconet, took on responsibility for fishing, farming, and peat cultivation, as well as expeditions to nearby communities to market the fish. By assuming a variety of activities essential to the household, Rose and other Saint-Joachim women now best described themselves as menagere. The duties of women in primarily agricultural households also expanded. In 1851, Jeanne Aoustin and her husband, Julien Moyon, supported themselves and their two-year-old son, Etienne, on marshland production. Fifteen years later, when the family had grown to five, the census reported Julien as the sole agricultural producer but Jeanne as a menagere. It is likely that both family size and poor marshland conditions required Jeanne to undertake marketing duties and to increase her agricultural responsibilities. The term menagere became an appropriate description for the diversity of tasks in the home, the fields, and the markets that Jeanne Aoustin, Rose Taconet, and other Saint-Joachim women pursued. The meaning of menagere, therefore, did not signal a reduction of responsibilities but instead a broader range of economic duties connected to the survival of the household. As Saint-Joachim's married women assumed greater responsibility for marsh and home work, younger women responded to changing economic opportunities by turning to occupations outside the home and marsh. 5 As we have seen, Saint-Nazaire did not offer employment opportunities for women but remained a single-industry town where, according to a 1905 British report on the condition ofthe French working class, the "employment of women in factories [was] non-existent."96 Even common industries like laundry work did not exist because of the insufficient water supply, but work outside the home had become imperative. By 1896, the number of newly married women from Saint-Joachim employed outside the home had risen to 40 percent from 16 percent in 1881, surpassing even the 27 percent classed as menageres. Younger women, too, sought more skilled occupations. By 1896, fewer newly married women were working in unskilled jobs, a mere 4 percent, while those employed as tailors, a trade requiring apprenticeship, had increased to 27 percent.97 In 1911, the number employed in jobs requiring a measure of skill—tailors, seamstresses, and flower-makers—had risen to 34 percent. Census records suggest the same evolution in employment patterns for unmarried women. By 1896, 25 percent of all single women listing an occupation described themselves as tailors and flower-makers.98 From the 1880s, the local flower-making industry, which offered high wages and stable employment, became a desired trade for Saint-Joachim women. In 1895, Julien-Henri Mahe, a local wine merchant banking on the presence of a ready female labor force, established aflower-makingfactory in the center of the village of Saint-Joachim, just across from the church, and ran it with the help of his nephews, the Moyon brothers, or, as they were better known, Moyon-des-Fleurs. A rival shop opened in the same period, and together the two employed as many as 138 local

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women. Although Mahe struggled to mechanize his operations and intensify production, these jobs remained much sought after by young women, as they conferred both status and high wages. Photographs of these flower-makers at work suggest another attraction of the trade; it brought groups of women together under one roof, providing an opportunity to develop friendships in a way that agricultural and household work did not.99 Habits of affiliation within Saint-Joachim also proved stable during this period, with marriage patterns and overlapping family and work associations unchanged from 1880 to the war. Family ties in particular remained persistent and all-encompassing. Brieron villages and hamlets could be described as "small and relatively isolated "face-to-face' communities," where a "complex web" of connections and associations linked individual residents.100 Primarily settlements of relatives, the Saint-Joachim villages constituted a "true community of relatives, so much that neighborhood and cousinhood [were] confused."101 The handful of family names in each village attests to the strength of family connections.102 In most Saint-Joachim villages, households represented a connection between six families; Moyon, Vince, Aoustin, Mahe, Ollivaud, and Halgand. In one village in the commune of La Chapelle-des-Marais in 1866, 165 households bore only three family names. Interwoven familial and social relations continued to dominate, and Saint-Joachim residents remained "confined to nearby relations for the essentials of [their] social life." In fact, a "rigorous endogamy" sustained this complex network of family and social relations.103 Onethird of Saint-Joachim's marriages from 1860 to 1880 were unions of cousins, a pattern that continued unchallenged through the first thirty years of industrialization.104 In 1881, all marriages in Saint-Joachim were made between individuals born in the commune.105 This pattern persisted, and by 1911, just 7 percent of grooms came from outside the commune.106 That family and social affiliations remained entwined and unaffected by the shift in occupations is further evident in the prevalence of family and community members among witnesses at marriage ceremonies. In more than 75 percent of marriages in 1881, 1896, and 1911, the required four witnesses were all relatives of the couple, and over 85 percent of them came from Saint-Joachim. Only in very rare cases did friends or work colleagues from outside the Briere stand as witnesses. Here, the preservation of the community meant that family and social affiliations remained intact, even in the face of daily encounters with hundreds of people in an urban, industrial setting. Family and community associations in Saint-Joachim also intersected with occupational life. Just as most neighbors were relatives, so most men worked in the yards as charpentiers. Several examples illustrate these overlapping connections. In 1896 Jean Baptiste Mahe lived next-door to his sister, Modeste, and brother-in-law, Pierre Duloc, in the commune of Saint-Joachim. Both men worked as shipwrights. In 1911, Genereux Mahe and his relative and next-door neighbor, Henri Mahe, commuted to Saint-Nazaire, where they both worked as shipwrights at the Penhouet yard. Marriage records offer additional proof of interlocking family, community, and work associations. The male witnesses at weddings, the majority of whom were relatives, typically worked in the same occupation or industry as the groom. In fact, the number of witnesses employed in shipbuilding rose from 29 percent in 1881, to 48 percent in 1896, and 61 percent in 1911, mirroring the occupational shift. When M. LeMignon, a ship worker, married Mile. Aoustin in May 1911, half of the witnesses practiced the same shipbuilding trade as LeMignon. Three of the four witnesses

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attending the marriage of a 31 -year-old Brieron shipwright in May 1896 also worked as shipwrights. Family affiliations and social and workplace alliances overlapped in Saint-Joachim and remained the dominant association. Saint-Joachim families faced serious challenges in the years after 1860. Their community and their resources—landownership, patterns of work, and habits of isolation and self-management—led them to integrate shipyard work within the pattern of rural work and life and protected them from severe economic hardships that, for many rural workers, dictated migration and a radical restructuring of household and socialization patterns. The coherence and strength of the Saint-Joachim community and its insistence on maintaining the traditional patterns of life were evident in early collective efforts to protect resources and to fashion new ones. However, it is important to be cautious here and not credit community with undue power. While community identity and long-standing patterns of life and work shaped the decision to persevere on the land, the economic resources in landownership and agriculture made fulfillment of that goal possible. These critical resources gave families the time to shape a new mix of economic activities as peat production declined and later made it more possible for families to wait out shipbuilding layoffs. The irregular labor demands of regional shipbuilders also helped assure preservation of the rural community. Male workers depended on shipbuilding wages yet could be certain that layoffs would allow them to tend to marshland pursuits. Familiar patterns of life and association, landownership, and agricultural production provided the "cultural continuity" essential to workers and their families as they struggled to create a family economy that incorporated both industrial employment and agricultural activities.107 Saint-Joachim's residents weathered these challenges to their economy and to their patterns of life and work with community values and associations, rather than work, serving as the primary basis for affiliation and for adaptation to their new circumstances. The reconfiguration of economic resources in the Briere did not rupture longstanding social and household patterns. The move to industrial work neither impoverished Saint-Joachim's inhabitants nor disrupted family and household structures. In fact, measurements of family organization and of association demonstrate that the transition to ship production preserved this rural community by providing an alternative to migration and dislocation. Despite restructured occupational patterns for men and women, family, community, and socialization patterns remained stable, and Briere workers and families did not become urban dwellers or come to identify as workers. Household organization, marriage patterns, and social affiliations underwent minimal readjustment. Industrial work had not brought dislocation or caused the male shipbuilders or other members oftheir families to shed their traditional activities or their primary identity as rural dwellers and landowners. In fact, the experience of industrial work—daily contact with employers and hundreds of workers, the rigors of industrial labor, and confrontation with the unfamiliar urban setting—was not an experience of the whole family or community but predominately limited to the male worker. The Brierons chose work strategies that protected their families from social upheaval and the harsh and trying circumstances that often accompanied the transition to a wage-based economy.108 The sharp separation between work and family life, both the physical divide and the sexual division of labor, minimized the intrusions and threats to traditional household and community arrangements posed by an industrial economy. In this way, the Brieron

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community remained the framework from which male workers responded to industrial employment and to their coworkers. COMMUNITY AMONG URBAN WORKERS Community had a vastly different meaning among urban shipyard workers. Shipyard workers who settled in Saint-Nazaire and its working-class quarter, MeanPenhouet, came with divergent histories and then, as a consequence, had different experiences in the first decades of industrialization from the cultivateurs of the Briere. For these workers, primarily rural dwellers from all across Brittany who came to Saint-Nazaire in search of employment, associational networks and household structures did not survive migration and resettlement. The portrait that emerges from census and marriage records is one of adjustment to the difficulties and uncertainties of urban industrial life and the subsequent development of new forms of community ties. The meaning and substance of community could not be described as intimate connections and predictable patterns that arose from the intersections between work, association, residence, and family but about broadly similar experiences and casual connections. While these shipbuilding workers did not constitute a community with profound and overlapping connections, the social links and experiences of the urban industrial world brought residents together in a community of workers and fostered shared interests and goals that found expression in labor activity. Saint-Nazaire's urban workers came from rural villages and towns throughout Brittany and shared a history of rural poverty as well as the dislocations of migration. From midcentury, demographic pressures on the land, low wages, and the collapse of rural domestic industries increased poverty in Brittany and accelerated migration. In the Cotes du Nord and He et Vilaine near midcentury, 11 percent and 13 percent, respectively, of the population were considered poverty-stricken or beggars. In the departement of Morbihan, 60 percent rural in 1906, growing rural poverty and an absence of industrial employment promoted immigration. From 1852 to 1922, 450,000 people abandoned Brittany, with Paris and Le Havre the most popular destinations. Many Bretons, though, did not travel far and chose to settle in the region's urban areas. The percentage of internal migrants from within the LoireInferieure itself stood at 70 percent in 1896 and 1911, while the largest single group arriving in Saint-Nazaire came from Morbihan—a minimum of 50 percent of the city's newcomers right up until the war.109 Although many migrants to Nantes and Saint-Nazaire had not left the physical limits of Brittany, the extent oftheir dislocation in terms of associations and networks, living arrangements, and employment was great. These Bretons were clearly identifiable as recent rural denizens and unwelcome in their new city. Nantes' citizens considered those from lower Brittany ""poor, ignorant and [badly] dressed, dirty, and often devoted to crude vices,'" yet not all of Saint-Nazaire's new residents were from rural villages.110 About 35 percent of couples that married in 1881 came from towns in Morbihan and other Breton departements with populations over 10,000. They, too, were drawn by SaintNazaire's shipbuilding and engineering industries, which paid among the highest wages in the region, comparable to those in Nantes and Paris.111 The pattern of residential settlement specific to Saint-Nazaire worked against the development of a coherent working-class community. As we have seen, workers

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arrived first in response to port and railroad construction in the 1850s and 1860s.112 In the 1880s, the shipyards, the Trignac steelworks, the munitions factory at Indret, and countless metalworking shops attracted workers anew. Urban growth was at firs irregular and then quite rapid; Saint-Nazaire's population rose from 17,000 in 1876, to 29,000 in 1896, and then 37,000 by 1911.113 In 1881, when the shipyards opened, migrants constituted over 86 percent of those marrying in the city, and by 1911, the figure had fallen only to 70 percent. As a result of intermittent expansion, SaintNazaire's residential districts could best be described as amalgams of migrants at different stages in the process of settling and carving out a life in an unknown and inhospitable setting. Working-class families were scattered throughout the city and shipbuilding families shared neighborhoods and housing stock with white-collar workers, shopkeepers, and skilled and unskilled workers. Shipbuilding workers did not inhabit a discrete district of the city but became part of mixed, heterogeneous neighborhoods housing a mix of professions and classes.114 At the same time, a sizable minority of migrants did settle in one working-class community, the suburb of Mean-Penhouet. Located on the eastern edge ofthe city, the villages of Mean and Penhouet grew with Saint-Nazaire's economy. They were settled first by ship captains and sailors in the early 1800s, then by shipbuilding workers from the Mean and Rose yards in the 1830s, and then, in the 1860s, by workers employed at Saint-Nazaire's first yard and manual laborers engaged in works projects. These adjacent villages grew quickly, and by 1865, with a population of 2,524, they were annexed to Saint-Nazaire. In 1867, with Penhouet's closure, the population declined, and 970 residents, one-third of the total population, left the district in the first year to seek employment elsewhere, and many of those remaining turned to begging. Repopulation began fifteen years later in 1881, and MeanPenhouet grew to 4,259 residents by 1896. In contrast to the mix of classes and professions in Saint-Nazaire, Mean-Penhouet became a working-class district with a growing percentage of unskilled laborers. This district had a greater majority of working-class households than Saint-Nazaire, with shipbuilding workers and the unskilled heading 71 percent of households in 1881, in contrast to only about 50 percent in Saint-Nazaire. Furthermore, Mean-Penhouet had a large and steadily increasing number of unskilled households. *15 Conversely, professionals, white-collar workers, and shopkeepers headed only 10 percent of households compared to over 25 percent for Saint-Nazaire's occupationally mixed districts. Language is yet another factor to consider in the nature of connections that developed between urban shipbuilding workers while in the city and in the yards. Although reports from Saint-Nazaire officials are silent on this issue, the complex linguistic history of the various regions within Brittany makes it fairly certain that workers encountered some difficulty communicating with one another. Accounts of the state of language in the revolutionary era point to the prevalence of patois in the countryside and to numerous dialects of Breton, still the language of the church, in many towns and villages, and this situation may have remained relatively unchanged through the nineteenth century.116 Workers who migrated to Saint-Nazaire from Brittany and Morbihan may have encountered multiple language barriers that could only impede the development of associations both in their residential districts and at work. However, it is likely that men from the rural villages of Saint-Joachim had facility with other dialects and with French as a consequence of decades of marketing peat up and down the coast.

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While the Brierons faced the adjustment to industrial work with valuable assets like economic resources, associations, landownership, habits of self-management, and some training opportunities, the urban workforce had no such advantages. The structure of occupations in Mean-Penhouet and Saint-Nazaire illustrates how the sharp differences in resources affected these workers. One consequence was a skill gap between Briere workers and urban workers. The Brierons dominated the most skilled professions in the yards, and urban workers, with less skill and without the resources and autonomy that accompanied landownership, were in no position to choose their trades or to face regular periods of unemployment with few concerns. Saint-Nazaire and Mean-Penhouet became settlements of less skilled shipbuilding workers. This skill gap grew even more pronounced in the thirty years prior to the war as the proportion of skilled shipbuilders in Mean-Penhouet fell from 35 percent to 25 percent and in Saint-Nazaire from 45 percent to 40 percent. In Mean-Penhouet over the same period, the number of unskilled heads of household among shipbuilding families rose from 39 percent to 67 percent. The situation for women in these families is less clear. The evidence indicates that working-class married women did not work outside the home but were centered on home and family. The 1881 census reports that 63 percent of Saint-Nazaire's married women listed no profession (only 12 percent listed household duties as occupation), while 3 percent took in boarders, and 7 percent worked in one of the seamstress trades. In 1911, 90 percent appeared without an occupation, while just 2 percent found employment in the seamstress trades. The same pattern held for married women in Mean-Penhouet, where more than 85 percent listed no occupation over the same thirty-year period. It is difficult to know how many of these women worked in domestic service since census records located women in the household in which they worked. The pattern was very different, however, for working-class single women. Single women in both Saint-Nazaire and Mean-Penhouet sought employment, and in 1881,60 percent of the women marrying in Saint-Nazaire worked primarily as tailors, servants, or linen maids.117 At the same time, however, the number of young women without a profession rose sharply from 20 percent to 63 percent by 1911. Few working-class families, especially those dependent on an industry plagued by regular unemployment, could survive without the economic contributions of wives and children. In this light, the high rate of unemployment among single and married working-class women raises some questions.11 The explanation lies, very simply, in remembering the unusual dearth of employment opportunities for women in SaintNazaire. In nearby Nantes, women found work in the food-processing, chemical, and clothing industries and in 1907 constituted 26 percent of all industrial workers in that city. Saint-Nazaire, however, offers the alternative example: a monoindustrial city with almost no employment opportunities for women. The metalworking and shipbuilding industries did not typically employ women, and of the 9,000 industrial jobs in the city women filled only 72. Saint-Nazaire also lacked domestic industries, such as textiles or small manufacturing, which could expand women's opportunities. As already mentioned, even a traditional activity like laundry work, potentially a large industry because of the dozens of passenger ships docking at Saint-Nazaire, was not an option because of the city's insufficient water supply.119 One group of women most in need of a steady income, widows, took in boarders.120 Limited industrial opportunities in Saint-Nazaire also extended to children, who constituted only 11

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percent of industrial workers, about 1,000 total, compared to 16 percent in Nantes' industry.121 The absence of industrial and home work for women and children undoubtedly increased the economic pressure on working families, making the urban setting and industrial employment more complicated to negotiate. In this light, the situation of Briere families appears quite positive; not only did male workers generally earn higher wages and hold skilled positions, but women's work in the flower-making industry and in expanded agricultural duties contributed to the family economy. Household structure among working-class families in Saint-Nazaire and Mean-Penhouet from 1881 suggests that families had few strategies for coping with economic and social disruption. The predominance of nuclear households shows families unable to turn to multiple households to soften the hardships of migration and industrial work.122 The exception was numerous extended households among skilled workers in MeanPenhouet, 40 percent in 1881 and 86 percent in 1911. We can speculate that in these instances possession of skill and greater certainty of securing employment encouraged families to migrate in groups rather than singly or in couples. Two other indicators of family life in Saint-Nazaire and Mean-Penhouet, marriage age and family size, underscore the centrality of resources and skill in mediating the industrial and urban experience. As skilled workers benefited from steadier work and higher wages, marriage age among this group of shipyard workers resembled the pattern for residents of the Briere. The mean marrying age for men and women stood at twenty-eight and twenty-five, respectively, in 1881, dropping slightly to twenty-five and twenty-three by 1911. For unskilled households, industrialization meant greater disruption and readjustment.123 Unskilled urban workers married later, as their tenuous economic position, especially during the first decade of industrialization, necessitated delayed marriages. In 1881, the mean marriage age among this group stood at thirty-four for men and thirty for women, six to seven years later than for urban skilled workers and their landowning colleagues in the Briere. By 1896, marriage age among the unskilled nearly equaled that of the skilled, but it is unclear if this signaled economic stability or mimicked national patterns. Similarly, family size illustrates a divergence between the urban workers and the Brierons as well as among urban households themselves. With advantages of skill, land, agricultural resources, and more opportunity for women to contribute to the household economy, Briere families had a mean of three children.124 Working-class families in Saint-Nazaire and Mean-Penhouet averaged 2.5 children throughout this period, yet the picture changes if we distinguish between skilled and unskilled families. Unskilled families averaged more children than did skilled families. A shipbuilding worker's possession of skill suggests that he had begun his work life at industrial facilities before coming to Saint-Nazaire, at which time the pressures of urban and industrial life may have led his family to reduce the number of offspring. For most unskilled workers, however, Saint-Nazaire was their first experience with urban settlement and industrial employment, and family patterns continued to reflect rural origins. In the early years of Saint-Nazaire's industrialization, family size among unskilled households, 3.4 children, more closely resembled that of the rural Briere community than their neighbors in Saint-Nazaire, but unskilled families did not retain these patterns for long, and over the next three decades their family size fell slightly.125 In the Briere, the meaning of community encompassed associational patterns that emerged from a series of interconnected networks based in family, work, and

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landownership. For urban, working-class families, however, the process of migration had severed or disrupted kinship networks and affiliations. Marriage records illustrate that family was much less conspicuous here. Only one-fifth of Saint-Nazaire marriages saw family members fill the four witness spots, compared to the presence of family members in over 75 percent of Saint-Joachim marriages. Migration had forced this nascent working class to look elsewhere for associations, but family networks were not replaced with similarly comprehensive associations based in the workplace. In Saint-Joachim, the occupation of witnesses indicates that workplace and social contacts were one and the same, but in the case of urban shipyard workers, witnesses reflected neither workplace affiliations nor the dominant presence of family. Instead, the choice of witnesses points to affiliations arising from neighborhood and residence. When metalworker Louis-Marie Jacobert married Julie Melanie Maillot, for example, in Saint-Nazaire in June 1896, their witnesses included the bride's brother-in-law, a sailor, and three friends from the city—a water carrier, a musician, and a manual laborer. The contacts fostered on the street, in sports clubs, or at the cafe, that is, in the residential district, became central in generating associations.126 These contacts replaced kin and provided all four witnesses in 55 percent to 70 percent of marriages over the thirty-year period. Here there were fewer marriages where all four witnesses were family members than in the Briere. It occurred in only 27 percent of SaintNazaire marriages in 1881 and 20 percent by 1911. Moreover, the low percentage of witnesses from shipbuilding, a full 20 percent to 30 percent below the number of grooms from the industry, illustrates that workplace affiliations did not constitute workers' primary associational group but had become just one of many new networks. As a result, community in the urban setting was not a comprehensive identity that encompassed patterns of life and work, as in the Briere, but a far more limited membership founded almost entirely on recently formed urban links. The development of shipbuilding in Saint-Nazaire after 1881 affected urban and rural communities of workers very differently. For workers in both Saint-Nazaire and Mean-Penhouet industrial work and urban settlement created immediate and numerous hardships. These recent migrants faced urban settlement, insufficient housing, irregular employment for men, limited options for women, and the absence of family and community support systems. They did, however, adapt to their circumstances by bearing fewer children and, for the unskilled, delaying marriage. As migration upset most family networks, Saint-Nazaire's working class was left to forge new alliances from work and community. The shape of production and the unemployment endemic to the industry dictated that new alliances did not emerge from the workplace but were part of a varied network that arose from neighborhood connections. At the same time, industrial work and increased dependence on a cash economy altered family and employment patterns in the Briere as both men and women took up occupations outside the home and fields, but here industrial employment did not require the same sacrifices or cause the dislocation as it did for workers and their families in Saint-Nazaire and Mean-Penhouet. In fact, shipyard employment proved a fortuitous event. It supplemented family income at a critical moment and protected the Brierons from migration, thereby preserving the physical settlement as well as the traditions and patterns of the community. Instead of dissolving community and family networks, industrial work added yet another layer, that of workplace associations, to an already tightly woven community identity.

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This dissimilarity in the priorities and resources also became evident in the way that the two groups of workers coped with unemployment. Dismissals in the shipyards often left nearly 50 percent of heads of household in all three communities unemployed. The urban working class found being "deprived of their [shipbuilding] jobs" particularly difficult.127 Saint-Nazaire lacked industries to absorb hundreds of laid-off shipyard workers, and only small numbers of workers won jobs in other workshops or short-term work on the docks. In fact, reduced activity at the shipyards translated into additional layoffs at metalworking shops and at the Trignac steelworks. As a result, unemployed shipyard workers often found themselves searching for work alongside hundreds of their colleagues and rarely found jobs in Saint-Nazaire. Some left the city for jobs in other cities and on occasion found work in shipyards at La Rochelle, Marseilles, Le Havre, and Nantes, but finding work during periods of unemployment appears to have been a rare occurrence, and the majority remained unemployed for the duration.128 Most urban workers, therefore, had little option but to rely on the limited charitable assistance available. After 1897, the city of Saint-Nazaire provided shelters, public works, and support to charitable institutions. During severe episodes of unemployment the entire city became involved, supporting lotteries, subscriptions, bazaars, and collections for those without work, but public and private contributions rarely matched need. In 1897, the budget of Saint-Nazaire's charity bureau fell short of the estimated 100,000 francs per month needed to feed the 3,000 children and adults hit by unemployment. In fact, municipal contributions for the unemployed in 1902 and 1903, years when unemployment nearly matched that of the high of 1897, totaled only 50,000 francs.129 From 1903, urban workers adopted a more active stance and began to pressure city officials for increased assistance. Although transitory and limited, the efforts of the unemployed to demand more work and aid reflected the recognition by shipbuilding workers of the direct link between the state and employment opportunities. During the unemployment of 1903, workers formed an organization called Ouvriers sans travail, which gathered 300 unemployed to request assistance from city hall.130 In 1910, unemployed workers again established a committee to "attend to the most pressing needs of the unemployed," estimated at 3,000. A delegation to the mayor requested "work or bread," while a series of meetings focusing on unemployment attracted as many as 1,000 workers.131 In fact, in this year, the activity of the unemployed so alarmed local officials that they provided police protection for the mayor when he held private meetings and negotiations with unemployed workers.132 In contrast, workers in the Briere did not suffer the "same consequences as other [shipyard] workers" from shipbuilding layoffs.133 As experienced and skilled shipbuilders, the Brierons had less difficulty finding employment at state or private shipbuilding yards across France.134 Most importantly, though, the Brierons "suffered less from these bad periods than their colleagues newly arrived [in the city because] they returned to their small farms" and the alternative resources there.135 While the Brierons probably intensified cultivation of all marshland crops during periods of unemployment, a temporary expansion of the local fishing industry was key in offsetting industrial unemployment. Paul Prioux, a clerk in Saint-Joachim's municipal administration, explained in 1908 that "[Revenues from fishing [in the Briere] are like the skeleton of the body; they permit [the Briere community] to await the coming of

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better times with the end of unemployment and prevent the migration of [shipbuilding] personnel."136 He added that while these activities protected the community against fluctuations in the industry, the shipyards also reaped important benefits. Agricultural activities suited the interests of shipbuilding companies that wanted to "keep a labor force that they could call upon immediately" when production resumed.137 Furthermore, the Brierons' decision to leave the yards for the peat harvest and their slow return to work after most strikes suggests that they may have welcomed layoffs. Industrial employment in Saint-Nazaire from 1881 did not lead to the formation of a single, cohesive working class with shared concerns and objectives. On the contrary, the demand for a shipbuilding labor force created distinct communities with opposing identities and contrasting responses to the process of industrialization and to the hazards of unemployment. Although new economic pressures facing the Briere community necessitated alterations in the occupational life of both men and women, residents chose strategies that did not dissolve the community or traditional patterns of life. The Brierons' landholdings and agricultural resources allowed them to persist in their rural community. Instead of being absorbed by an urban environment or by industrial work and its concomitant ideology, the Brierons successfully incorporated industrial employment into patterns of life and work long traditional to their community. In this case, the turn to industrial employment was not a "prelude" to the "disaggregation" of rural society.138 On the other hand, urban families in SaintNazaire and Mean-Penhouet did not have resources or support systems to ease adjustment to urban and industrial life. Census and marriage records show that their experience with industrial work was far harsher and more severe. Shipbuilding expansion may have created a single workforce, but the resources, networks, experiences, and strategies of adaptation particular to each group of workers assured that shipbuilding workers developed differing identities and objectives. Just as these two communities of workers responded differently to industrial employment, they also had different reactions to working-class activity and organizations. The next two chapters examine how the intersection of community, state, and workplace issues shaped divergent responses to working-class organizations and to labor activity. NOTES 1. James Lehning, Peasant and French: Cultural Contact in Rural France dur Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambrexperiences in the first decades of industrialization from the cultivateurs of the Briere. idge University Press, 1995), 78. 2. James R. Barrett, Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packing Workers, 1894-1922 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987); Michael P. Han Logic ofSolidarity: Artisans and Industrial Workers in Three Industrial Towns 18 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), 87-125; Jeffrey Haydu, Between Craft and Cl Skilled Workers and Factory Politics in the United States and Britain, 1890-1922 University of California Press, 1988); Temma Kaplan, Anarchists ofAndalusia, 1868-19 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977); Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Cultu Politics and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1994), 35-53; Alan Daw Class and Community in Lynn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976); David Cre Town in the Ruhr: A Social History ofBochum, 1860-1914 (New York: Columbia Press, 1979); David Garrioch, Neighbourhood and Community in Paris, 1740-1

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(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Marion A. Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Richard Whipp, "Labour Markets and Communities: an Historical View," Sociological Review 4 (November 1985): 768-791. 3. P.M. Jones, Politics and Rural Society: The Southern Massif Central, c. 1750-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 107-111. 4. Thomas Bender, Community and Social Change in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1978), 7; C.J. Calhoun, "Community: Toward a Variable Conceptualization for Comparative Research," Social History 5, n. 1 (January 1980): 111. 5. Jones, Politics and Rural Society, 107-108. 6. Garrioch, Neighbourhood and Community in Paris, 4-5; Alan Macfarlane, "History, Anthropology and the Study of Communities," Social History 2, n. 5 (1977): 638. 7. Gerry Kearns and Charles W.J. Withers, "Class, Community and the Process of Urbanisation," in Urbanising Britain: Essays on Class and Community in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Gerry Kearns and Charles W.J. Withers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 11. 8. Robin Pearson, "Knowing One's Place: Perceptions of Community in the Industrial Suburbs of Leeds, 1790-1890," Journal of Social History 27 (Winter 1993): 221. 9. Gerald M. Sider, "The Ties That Bind: Culture and Agriculture, Property and Propriety in the Newfoundland Village Fishery," Social History 5 (January 1980): 1-39. 10. Eric Van Young, "Agrarian Rebellion and Defense of Community: Meaning and Collective Violence in Late Colonial and Independence-Era Mexico," Journal of Social History 27, n. 2 (Winter 1993): 257. 11. Tessie P. Liu, The Weaver fs Knot: The Contradictions of Class Struggle and Family Solidarity in Western France, 1750-1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Michelle Perrot, "Une Naissance Difficile: La Formation de la Classe Ouvriere Lyonnaise," Annales ESC (July-August 1978): 830-837; Jean H. Quataert, "A New View of Industrialization: 'Protoindustry' in the Role of Small-Scale Labor Intensive Manufacture in the Capitalist Environment," International Labor and Working-Class History 33 (Spring 1988), 3 21; Jean H. Quataert, "Combining Agrarian and Industrial Livelihood: Rural Households in the Saxon Oberlausitz in the Nineteenth Century," Journal of Family History 10, n. 2 (1985): 145162; Jean H. Quataert, "A New Look at Working-Class Formation: Reflections on the Historical Perspective," International Labor and Working Class History 27 (Spring 1985): 72-76; Douglas R. Holmes, "A Peasant-Worker Model in a Northern Italian Context," American Ethnologist 10, n. 4 (1983): 734-748; Douglas R. Holmes and Jean H. Quataert, "An Approach to Modern Labor: Worker Peasantries in Historic Saxony and the Friuli Region over Three Centuries," Comparative Studies in Society and History 28 (1986): 192-216; Wanda Minge-Kalman, "Household Economy during the Peasant-to-Worker Transition in the Swiss Alps," Ethnology 17, n. 2 (1978): 183-197; Tony Judt, Marxism and the French Left: Studie in Labour and Politics in France, 1830-1981 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 37-41; Tamara K. Haraven, "The History of the Family and the Complexity of Social Change," American Historical Review 1 (February 1991): 95-124. 12. Quataert, "A New View of Industrialization," 11. 13. Pearson, "Knowing One's Place," 222. 14. Cynthia Bouton, The Flour War: Gender, Class, and Community in Late Ancien Regime French Society (University Park, PA: Pennyslvania State University Press, 1993), 166. 15. Macfarlane, "History, Anthropology and the Study of Communities," 647. 16. Hans Medick, "Missionaries in the Rowboat?' Ethnological Ways of Knowing as a Challenge to Social History," in The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life, edited by Alf Ludtke (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 44.

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17. ADLA2M207,2M274,2M341, "Denombrement de la population, Saint-Joachim" ; ADLA 2M211, 2M279, 2M344, 2M345, "Denombrement de la population, Saint-Nazaire." 18. Van Young, "Agrarian Rebellion," 257. 19. Pearson, "Knowing One's Place," 229. 20. Holmes and Quataert, "An Approach to Modern Labor," 192. 21. Although half of these workers listed themselves as unemployed, pervasive unemployment and the absence of other industry in the area allow us to consider them part of the shipbuilding workforce. 22. Quoted in Gerard Locu and Nadine Froger, A la Decouverte de la Briere (La Baule: Editions des Paludiers, 1976), 16. 23. Henri Baudrillart, Les populations agricoles de la France, vol. 1: Normandie et Bretagne (Paris: Hachette, 1885), 555. 24. M.D. Barthelemy, "Briere et Brierons," Bulletin de la Societe Archeologique et Histoire de Nantes 76 (1936): 4-5. 25. Armand Audiganne, La Region du bas de la Loire (Paris: J. Claye, 1869), 10. More recently, historian Fernand Gueriff found that the Bridrons' administrative and economic system contributed to a "compulsory quasi-autarky." Fernand Gueriff, Briere de brumes et de reves (Nantes: Bellanger, 1979), 283. 26. Alphonse de Chateaubriant, The Peat-Cutters, translated by F. Mabel Robinson (New York: Dial Press, 1927), 28; A. Andouard, "Les progres de Y agriculture dans la Loire-Inferieure, depuis un siecle," Annales de la Societe Academique de Nantes 10(1889): 45; Alb. Larbatetier, La Tourbe et les Tourbieres (Paris: Masson, 1901), 57; Audiganne, La Region, 7; Baudrillart, Les populations, 555; "Saint-Joachim," Les Annales de Nantes 163 (1971): 27; ADLAF1355 "Population des Communes Propri&aire de la Grande Briere, 1866"; Gueriff, "Briere de Brumes," 155-156; Yves Jean Beloeil-Benoist, "La Grande Briere de 1836 a 1936. Etude de 1'evolution professionnelie, sociale et economique" (These de doctorat, Universite de Nantes, 1995), 350. 27. A. Gernoux, "La Grande-Briere," Les Annales de Nantes et du Pays Nantais 163 (1971), 30. 28. This grant was affirmed by Francois I in 1538, Charles IX in 1566, and Louis XIII in 1629. It is unclear if these are validations of the original grant or additional grants of land. Chateaubriant, The Peat-Cutters, 82; Locu and Froger, A la Decouverte, 60; Association de Recherches et d'Studes du mouvement ouvrier de la region de Saint-Nazaire Etudes et documents sur la revolution a Saint-Nazaire et dans sa region, 1789-1794 (Saint-Nazaire: AREMORS, 1988). 29. "Saint-Joachim," 27-38. 30. Jean-Pierre Fleury, Jean-Paul Molinari, Christian Moriniere, "Conditions de Vie et de Travail des Ouvriers Brierons," Cahiers de VObservation du Changement Social 4 (1982/1984): 306-310. 31. Only 3 percent of property under six hectares was undivided. Jean-Pierre Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans, Ouvriers Ruraux de Briere. 'Les Brierons,' essai d'approche d'une communaute ouvriere et rurale" (These du Troisieme Cycle, Sociologie, Universite de Nantes, 1980), 310; Anne-Marie Charaud "L'Habitat et la Structure Agraire de la Grande Briere et des Marais de Donges," Annales de Geographie 57 (1948): 120. 32. ADLA S1706, "Syndicat de la Grande-Briere," 15 December 1866; ADLA F1355, "Ordonnance du roi de 3 Octobre 1838"; Abbe Pierre Blais, De la frairie des marais a la Chappelle: Histoire d'une commune de Briere et de ses environs (Pontchateau, 1984), 185. Paxton shows that peasants had large networks of organizations and connections that gained official recognition and power from 1884, following the legalization of unions. Robert O. Paxton, French Peasant Fascism: Henry Dorgeres 's Greenshirts and the Crises of French Agriculture, 7929-7939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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33. Leon Maitre, "Notice sur la Grande Briere Mottiere et le Brivet," Societe de Geographie Commerciale de Nantes (1897): 159; Albert Guihaire, "La Briere dans le Droit Coutumier" (These pour le doctorat, Universite* de Rennes, 1942), 10; Audiganne, La Region, 10-11; Augustin Vince, Brierons. . . Naguere: Etude realisee avec le concours du Pare Naturel Regional de Briere (Saint-Nazaire: Jean Le Fur, 1981), 27-31; Gernoux, "La Grande Briere," 31; Baudrillart, Les populations, 557-558; ADLA S1706, "Syndicat de la GrandBriere," 15 December 1866; Charaud, "L'Habitat," 122; Barthelemy, "Briere et Brierons," 4^-5. 34. Reeds supplied a steady, if limited, income, while leeches, exported as far as England, ranked among the smallest marsh crops. Fishing and hunting grew in importance from the 1860s, when construction of the Nantes-to-Saint-Nazaire railroad made quicker transport to Paris markets possible. Paul Joanne, Dictionnaire geographique et administratifde la Fran et ses colonies, voL 1 (Paris: Hachette, 1890-1905), 628; Audiganne, La Region, 9; Vince, Brierons, 66, 92; Baudrillart, Les Populations, 550. 35. Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans," 66-68; Vince, Brierons, 110, 118. 36. Holmes and Quataert found a greater sharing of work responsibilities in worker-peasant households than in peasant or urban families. Holmes and Quataert, "An Approach to Modern Labor," 192-194; Quataert, "Combining Agrarian and Industrial Livelihood," 149-150; Vince, Brierons, 23-41, 87-92, 105-129. 37. Ministere de l'industrie et du Commerce, Direction des mines, Les Tourbieres Frangaises, vol 2 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1941), 20-271, 159-160; Andouard, "Les Progres," 47; Jean Baptiste Bielawaski, Auvergne et plateau central: Les Tourbieres et la tourbe (Clermont-Ferrand: G. Mont-Louis, 1892), 118-120; Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans," 66. In the 1880s, France had 600 peat bogs on 38,000 to 46,000 hectares of land. Larbaletrier, La Tourbe, 57-59; Pierre Guieu, La Tourbe: prospection, extraction, traitements, utilisatio (Paris: Gamier, 1918), 10; Chas. Berthelot, La Tourbe, exploitation et conditionnement(Paris Dunod, 1943), 25. 38. Archives de la Commission Syndicale de la Grande-Briere Mottiere-Donges (ACSGB), "Enquete," 20 April 1834; Vince, Brierons, 29. 39. ADLAS1 1706, "Syndicat de la Grande-Briere," 15 December 1866; Vince, Brierons, 32, 75, 123, 234; Audiganne, La Region, 12. Chateaubriant focused on the Saint-Joachim island village of Fedrun to describe the history, agriculture, and industry of the Briere peatcutters in his novel The Peat-Cutters. 40. These figures reflect an exceptionally good harvest year, when the Briere produced 170,000 cubic meters of peat. Vince, Brierons, 31-32; Beloeil-Benoist, "La Grande Briere," 172; Locu and Froger, A la Decouverte, 21-22. 41. ADLA S1 1706, "Rapport de I'Ingenieur des Mines," 13 August 1839; Baudrillart, Les populations, 556. 42. Joanne, Dictionnaire Geographique, vol. 1,628; Proces-Verbaux du Conseil Gene du Department de la Loire-Inferieure (Nantes: Mellinet, 1873), 220; 1874, 184; 1876, 210; Baudrillart, Les populations, 557; Edward H. Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development: The Labour Process in the British and French Shipbuilding Industries, 1880 to 1930," Journal of European Economic History 13, n. 3 (1984): 614; Chateaubriant, The Peat-Cutters, 24. 43. Andouard, Les Progres, 47; Bulletin de la Federation Nationale des Ouvriers Metallurgistes en France, 15 July 1894. 44. Beloeil-Benoist, "La Grande Briere," 170-180. 45. Quoted in Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans," 63, 66. 46. Audiganne calculated that a family of five earned 60 francs from the sale of the peat while saving 60 francs in fuel costs. Audiganne, La Region, 12. 47. Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans," 66. 48. Vince, Brierons, 147. 49. Van Young, "Agrarian Rebellion," 257.

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50. Jones, Politics and Rural Society, 107-108; Alf Ludtke, "Introduction: What Is the History of Everyday Life and Who Are Its Practitioners?" and Wolfgang Kaschuba, "Popular Culture and Workers' Culture as Symbolic Orders," in The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life, edited by Alf Ludtke (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1995), 11, 174. 51. ADLA S1 1706, "Syndicat de la Grande Briere," 15 December 1866; Locu and Froger, A la Decouverte, 21. 52. ACSGB, "Enquete," 29 April 1834. 53. Vince, Brierons, 26. 54. Blais, De lafrairie des marais, 185. 55. ACSGB, "Ingenieur des Mines," 29 Septembre 1834. 56. ADLA SI 1717, "Prefet," 18 July 1873; ADLA SI 1706, "Prefet," 26 June 1846. 57. ADLA SI 1717, "Commission Syndicale de la Grande-Briere," 29 June 1849; SI 1706, "Ingenieur des Mines," 28 March 1842; S1 1712, "Conseil Municipal de Saint-Joachim," 1 March, 24 August 1884; "Prefet," 8 August 1854; "Maire de Saint-Joachim," 5 September 1854; Proces- Verbaux du Conseil General du Departement de la Loire-Inferieure, April 186 150,355-356. 58. ADLA SI 1712, 29 June 1854. 59. According to the president of the Syndicat, mistrust of Saint-Joachim residents continues to this day and explains why the seventeen Briere communes never elected a SaintJoachim resident as Syndicat president. Interview with Lucien Gerard, president de Commission Syndicale de la Grande-Briere-Mottiere, 14 June 1992; ADLAS1 1717, "Syndicat, 1873," 25 September 1873; "Taxes," 22 January 1874; "Prefet," 28 May 1873; Proces-Verbaux des Seances du Conseil General de la Loire-Inferieure, 1868,219-220. 60. Vince, Brierons, 29. 61. Andre Moyon, Les lies de Briere sous la Revolution, 1789-1800 (Nantes: Edition des Paludiers, 1988), 220. 62. Vince, Brierons, 185; Abbe Jean-Baptiste Alain, Un Seul Pasteur, Un Seul Troupeau La Briere Catholique au XIXe Siecle: le journal de I'Abbe Alain, cure de Crossac, 18331880, presente par Marcel Launay (Nantes: Vivant, 1984); Augustin Vince, "Entre Loire et Vilaine. Etude de Geographie Humaine: La Population dans la Presqu'ile Guerandaise et les Pays Bas" (These de Geographie, Universite de Poitiers, 1966), 254-256. 63. Vince, Brierons, 184. 64. This is based on seven years from the 1840s and 1850s. Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans," 285; Andouard, Les Progres, 48. 65. "Saint-Joachim," 27. The Ingenieurs des Mines believed that shrinkage of the marsh arose in part from thirty years of unregulated cultivation. ADLA F13 5 5, "Circulaire," 27 Apri 1908; Pierre de Montgolfier, La tourbe et son utilisation (Paris: Dunod, 1918), 25; Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans," 285; Andouard, "LesProges" 48; Ministere de F Industrie, te Tourbieres Frangaises, 169; Larbaletrier, La Tourbe, 58. 66. Vince contends that peat commerce had largely ceased by 1917, and an article entitled "Terre qui Meurt" in La Democratic de VOuest on 13 March 1912 suggests that shrinkage of the marshland rather than decreasing demand accounted for this. See Vince, Brierons, 34. 67. Maitre, "Notice sur la Grande Briere," 160. 68. Andouard, "Les Progres," 48; Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans," 25; Baudrillart, Les Populations, 559; ADLA SI 1717, "Syndicat de la Grande-Briere-Mottiere," 7 August 1871. 69. Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans," 25. 70. Archives Municipales de Saint-Joachim, "Conseil Municipal," 24 December 1882,14 August 1892; ADLA S1 1717, "Deliberation," 24 December 1882; "Taxes," 22 January 1874; SI 1712, "Maire," 18 November 1894. Saint-Joachim had not paid Syndicat taxes from 1867 through at least 1873.

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71. ADLA 1N62, "Conseil d'arrondissement de Saint-Nazaire, 1873"; Daniel Sicard, "L'industrie Navale et le Developpement de la Ville de Saint-Nazaire, 1862-1939," in SaintNazaire et la Construction Navale, edited by Ecomusee de Saint-Nazaire (Nantes: Imprimerie Chiffoleau, 1991), 56; Yves Durand, "Les structures familiales dans les marais atlantiques au XIX siecle," Enquetes et Documents 4, (1978): 98. 72. These workers undertook shipbuilding, sailing, and other industrial trades in conjunction with agricultural work. In 1861,25 percent of heads of household or 34 percent of those laboring outside agriculture worked as shipwrights. Durand, "Les structures familiales," 98; Beloeil-Benoist, "La Grande Briere," 172. 73. Audiganne, La Region, 12. 74. ADLA 2M207, 2M274,2M341, "Denombrement de la population, Saint-Joachim." Brieron adolescents from seventeen Briere communes followed their elders into the shipbuilding yards "under pressure of financial obligation," as was the case in Saint-Joachim. Yves Jean Beloeil-Benoist, "Les effets de 1'industrialisation et des lois Ferry sur les enfants et adolescents de Grande-Briere, 1800-1939," Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de VOuest 9, n. 1 (1990): 80-88. 75. See Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans," 525; Vince, Brierons, 237; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 367. 76. Pierre LeConte, Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire (Paris: Societe Anonyme des Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire, 1931), 19; Vince, "Entre Loire et Vilaine," 220; Baudrillart, Les Populations, 559. By 1881, only five heads of households worked as sailors. Pierre Jacques Charliat, Trois Siecles d'Economie Maritime Frangaise (Paris: Marcel Riviere, 1939), 170171. 77. Vince, Brierons, 231; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 493. 78. Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans," 104. 79. ADLA 2M207, 2M274, 2M341, "Denombrement de la population, Saint-Joachim"; Archives Municipales de Saint-Nazaire, "Etat Civil-Actes de Mariages," 1881, 1896, 1911. Marriage records for Saint-Joachim apply to the entire commune, while census figures have been taken only for the commune's largest island communities: Saint-Joachim, Pendille, les Vinces, la Claie de Mazin, le Lony, He de Bais, He de Menac, He de F6drun, He de la Lande Renais, Pintre, Rochette, Moyons, and Pouet. 80. Vince, Brierons, 231 \ Archives Municipales de Saint-Nazaire, "Etat Civil-Actes de Mariages," 1881. 81. This excludes artisanal and commercial activities yet includes manoeuvre, the unskilled worker, as industrial labor. Marriage records underscore this occupational transition. Agriculture occupied only 4 percent of men married in 1896, while 68 percent worked in shipbuilding. ADLA 2M207, 2M274, 2M341, "Denombrement de la population, SaintJoachim"; Archives Municipales de Saint-Nazaire, "Etat Civil-Actes de Mariages," 1881,1896, 1911. 82. See Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans," 525; Vince, Brierons, 237. 83. Archives Municipales de Saint-Joachim, "Conseil Municipal de la Commune de SaintJoachim," 14 August 1894. 84. Industrial work brought more cash into the family economy, permitting Briere families to purchase bread and textiles. See Vince, Brierons, 146; Quataert, "Combining Agrarian and Industrial Livelihood," 149-157; Raymond A. Jonas, Industry and Politics in Rural France: Peasants of the Isere, 1870-1914, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 89. 85. They also continued to protest the Syndicat's right to regulate peat, canals, cattle grazing, and taxation. Pare Naturel Regional de Briere, "Compagnie des Marais des Donges," 1 August 1919; Baudrillart, Les Populations, 557; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 509-510; Lorenz, "Two Patterns of Development," 614. 86. There is some evidence that this program prepared workers for the skilled trade of tracing and exerted some control over hiring. Jean Varnier, "Aoustin le Jeune: Enfant de la

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Briere," Bibliotheque du Travail416, n. 1 (December 1958): 21; Jean Aubin, "LeMouvement Ouvrier a Saint-Nazaire," Cahiers d 'Histoire de I Tnstitut de Recherches Marxistes 22 (1985): 129-150. 87. All Saint-Joachim grooms and fathers of brides and grooms in 1881 who worked in the yards described themselves as charpentiers, with the exception of one riveter. Census records show three caulkers among Saint-Joachim heads of household. In 1901, 89 Brieron charpentiers worked at shipyards in Lorient, Rouen, Le Havre, Paris, Bordeaux, Boulogne, Nantes, and Chantenay. Vince, Brierons, 231. While I question the validity of this designation when applied to the larger workforce, it appears wholly credible for the Brieron population because of their history as skilled shipwrights and because of the many observers who described them this way. 88. This figure fell to 81 percent by 1911. 89. The 1911 situation mirrored that of 1896, with 75 percent of sons entering skilled and semiskilled shipbuilding trades and 25 percent working as unskilled manoeuvres. 90. None of the adult males employed in the shipyards in 1881 worked as unskilled laborers. 91. La Democratic de VOuest (17 March 1912). 92. Holmes, "A Peasant-Worker Model," 741-742. 93. Fleury, "Ouvriers-Paysans," 104-106; Aoustin Vince "Evolution de la Population etdu Genre de Vie a 1' Industrialisation de la Region Nazairienne pour ce que Concerne la Localite de St. Malo de Guersac" (unpublished, Maison du Pare de la Pare Naturel Regional de Briere, 1958), 4-5; Augustin Vince, "La Briere: Origines des Marais; son Habitat, Temoin d'un Genre de Vie Abandonne," Norois 31 (1961): 335. 94. Occupations of younger women, brides in particular, followed this pattern. Those brides identifying agriculture as their primary occupation fell sharply in the thirty years prior to the war; 71 percent in 1881 became only 3 percent by 1911. This was accompanied by a jump in the number of menageres from none in 1881 to 53 percent in 1911. ADLA 2M207,2M274, 2M341, "Denombrement de la population, Saint-Joachim"; Archives Municipales de SaintNazaire, "Etat Civil-Actes de Mariages," 1881,1896, 1911. 95. For a discussion of the economic contribution of women to the working-class home, see Jeanne Boydston, "To Earn Her Daily Bread: Housework and Antebellum Working-Class Subsistence," Radical History Review 35 (1986): 7-25. 96. Great Britain, Board of Trade, Cost of Living in French Towns. Report of an Enquiry by the Board of Trade into Working Class Rents, Housing and Retail Prices Together with Rates of Wages in Certain Occupations in the Principal Inudstrial Towns of France (Observations made in 1905) (London, 1909), 233-234, 320. 97. Vince, Brierons, 117. 98. Thisfiguremay be misleading, for we have no sense of how many daughters worked in family agricultural production but did not consider this employment. 99. Herve Olivaud and Christine Durand, "Les fleurs d'oranger: une industrie rurale en Briere," ArMen 25 (1990): 36-43; Marilyn J. Boxer, "Women in Industrial Homework: The Fbwermakers of Paris in the Belle Epoque," French Historical Studies 12 (1982): 401-423; Vince, Brierons, 237-238; Beloeil-Benoist, "Les Effets," 86-87. 100. Roger Price, A Social History of Nineteenth-Century France (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1987), 169; Haraven, "History of the Family," 103, 108. 101. Vince, Brierons, 120. 102. One measurement of dislocation and hardship has often been an increase in nuclear over multiple families. However, nuclear families remained the norm. In 1836 nuclear familie made up 70 percent of households in nine Briere communes, a pattern only strengthened by industrialization as families had less need to collect relatives under a single roof. By 1881, 86 percent of Saint-Joachim households were nuclear, while extended families of three generations numbered only 11 percent. Vince, Brierons, 114.

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103. Ibid., 128. 104. These required dispensation from the church. Before 1878, marriages requiring dispensation were mainly unions of third and fourth cousins, but marriages between second cousins dominated dispensation requests after this date. Vince, Brierons, 120-129. 105. Marriage age also suggests better conditions for many. Parents appear to have depended less on the wages of their offspring and could permit their children to marry earlier. The mean marrying age for men dropped from twenty-eight in 1881, to twenty-five by 1911 and for women, from twenty-five to twenty-three. The slightly younger age at which women bore their first children, down from a mean of twenty-four to twenty-three, may also point to improved opportunities in Saint-Joachim. The mean number of children per famUy hovered near three from 1881 to 1911, a drop from six to eight in the years before 1860. The significance of family size is difficult to know. It could indicate a measure of "distress," a strategy to sustain families, or decreasing dependence on agriculture. Elinor Accampo, Industrialization, Family Life, and Class Relations: Saint Chamond, 1815-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 12; Beloeil-Benoist, "Les Effets," 79, 85. 106. Given the history of relations between the communes, it is not surprising that marriage rates attest to a "suspicion" between residents of Saint-Joachim and other communes. BeloeilBenoist, "La Demographie," 79. 107. Accampo, Industrialization, Family Life, and Class Relations, 10. 108. In his study of Lyon workers, Yves Lequin found that the destruction ofthe traditional rural community precipitated the creation of a modern industrial working class. See the discussion of Lequin in Perrot, "Une Naissance Difficile," 835. 109. Michel Lagree, Religion et Cultures en Bretagne (1850-1950) (Paris: Fayard, 1992), 334-337; Jack Reece, The Bretons against France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 46-49; Christian Gras, "Les Disparites Economiques Regionales," in Histoire economique et sociale de la France, edited by Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979), 339; Gilbert Leguen, "D'une Revolution Manquee a une Revolution Possible," in Histoire de la Bretagne, edited by J. Delumeau (Toulouse: Privat, 1969); 467-468; Bernard Hazo, Les Anarchistes Bleus, 1880-1914: Le Mouvement Ouvrier a Saint-Nazaire et en Loire-Inferieure (Editions des Paludiers, 1980), 30-31. 110. Quoted in Lagree, Religion et Cultures, 340. 111. Board of Trade, Cost of Living, 373; ADLA 1M520, "Prefet," 20 October 1894. Salaries at Nantes and Saint-Nazaire were higher than elsewhere in Brittany and from 1884 to 1894 increased by an estimated 16 percent. 112. ADLA 2M211,2M279,2M344,2M345, "Denombrements de la population, SaintNazaire"; Archives Municipales de Saint-Nazaire, "Etat Civil: Actes de Mariage," 1881,1896, 1911. Marriage records for Saint-Nazaire encompassed the entire Saint-Nazaire commune. 113. Ministere de 1'agriculture et du commerce. Service de la statistique generale de la France, Annuaire Statistique de la France (Paris: Ministere de 1'agriculture et du commerce, 1878-1899). 114. "Shipbuilding family" indicates all households where the head or the sons worked in one of the numerous shipbuilding trades or as manoeuvres. The city's tenements housed a median of five families, while the majority contained less than three shipbuilding households. 115. Unskilled households increased from 31 percent in 1881 to 45 percent by 1911 while in Saint-Nazaire unskilled households hovered around 15 percent through 1911. 116. A. Gazier, Lettres a Gregoire sur les patois de France, 1790-1794: documents inedits sur la langue, les moeurs et I 'etat des esprits dans les diverses regions de la France, debut de la revolution (Paris: Durand et Pedone-Lauriel, 1880), 281-287; Baudrillart, Les populations, 549. 117. Tailoring became the single largest occupation for women by 1911 as unskilled trades, including servants and maids, fell to a negligible number. 118. Although some women may have copied their bourgeois counterparts by identifying

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themselves as unemployed for government officials, it is unlikely that this explanation applied to the entire population. 119. The inadequate water supply impeded the establishment of local industry and forced shipping companies to contract with laundry services in Nantes. La Democratic de I 'Ouest (20 November 1907). 120. This was the primary activity among widows listing an occupation and more significant in working-class M6an-Penhouet, but it still remained quite limited. In MeanPenhouet, 36 percent of female heads of household took in boarders in 1896, compared to 2 percent in Saint-Nazaire for the same year. The rate in Saint-Nazaire had been much higher, 14 percent, in 1881. In M6an-Penhouet, 11 percent of married women in 1896 took in boarders. 121. Board of Trade, Cost of Living, 233, 320. 122. Multiple families made up less than 2 percent in all instances. 123. Mean-Penhouet was considered a district within Saint-Nazaire, and so the marriage records are not separate. 124. Census records provide only the number of children living at home. To determine the number per family, I turned to families where the woman was under 45 years of age, assuming that all children resided at home during these years. 125. Moreover, Mean-Penhouet families, both skilled and unskilled, appear to have suffered more in the early 1880s than their counterparts in Saint-Nazaire. The mean number of children here was 3.5 and 4.1, respectively, for unskilled families. In addition, a greater proportion of children under the age of 18 were employed in 1881 and 1896. 126. W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Cafe: Sociability among the French Worki Class, 1789-1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). 127. ADLA 1M2309, "Commissaire special," 7 March 1887. 128. ADLA 1M2291, "Rapport du Maire de Chantenay," 18 May 1901; ADLA 1M2129, "Commissaire special," 3, 7 March 1881; "Prefet," 1884. 129. ADLA 1M624, "Chambre de Commerce de Saint-Nazaire, Seance extraordinaire du 3 Juin 1897"; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 496. 130. The first regional instance of workers demanding assistance occurred in Nantes in 1887, when a petition signed by 4,242 "industriels, entrepreneurs et ouvriers de tous corps d'etat" requested public works for the unemployed. Archives Municipales de Nantes F7 C17, Dl, 9 November 1887; ADLA 1M629, "Commissaire special," 18 April 1903. 131. ADLA 1M528, "Sous-Prefet," 14 January 1910. 132. le Travailleur (16,23 January 1910); La Democratic de I 'Ouest (30 January 1910). 133. ADLA 1M620-621, "Commissaire Special," 22 October 1896. 134. Le Petit Nazairien (8 November 1908). It is unclear if Holmes and Quataert's discontinuous worker-peasant strategy, where male workers found industrial employment in regions distant from the rural community, applies to the Briere. There are many references, both census and anecdotal, to Brierons working in distant shipyards, but the extent and frequency are unknown. 135. Vince, Brierons, 266. 136. Le Petit Nazairien (29 March 1908). 137. Le Progres de Nantes (16 September 1889). 138. Jonas, Industry and Politics, ix, 106—107.

Chapter 5 Working-Class Politics The history of the labor movement in the nineteenth century presents many occasions where unions and political organizations provided the organization, ideology, and leadership to rally and embolden workers and to surmount the barriers to labor association and activity posed by the structure of production and by a heterogeneous workforce.1 This scenario played out in many industrial cities in Europe and America in the nineteenth century but did not prove the case in Saint-Nazaire. Here, labor unions and socialist groups proved neither popular nor dynamic and, as a result, could not overcome or mediate the fragmentation created by the production process or by the sharp contrast in goals and priorities between shipyard workers. Institutional weakness, internal divisions, a hostile urban climate, and powerful business leaders hampered the efforts of Saint-Nazaire's working-class organizations, and, consequently, shipbuilding workers remained estranged from working-class leaders and indifferent to the organizations created to protect and further their interests. The story of working-class politics in Saint-Nazaire in the thirty years prior to the war opened with signs of promise yet quickly turned to worker disaffection and disinterest that lasted from the mid-1890s to the war. The first period, the 1880s through the early 1890s, saw the founding of the Bourse du Travail and a socialist group. Shipbuilding workers created nearly eighteen metalworking unions and launched strikes that spread to a majority of the workforce. Yet striking workers faced formidable obstacles, won only minimal concessions, and do not seem to have developed lasting ties to the newly established institutions. The frequent bouts of unemployment common to the shipbuilding industry presented a persistent

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and authoritative disincentive to organization and protest. Finally, the resounding defeat of afifty-four-daystrike at the steelworks in nearby Trignac in 1894, a strike that garnered national attention and controversy, taught Saint-Nazaire's workers to be wary of the promises and the activity of unionists and socialists. It also illustrated with brutal clarity the formidable economic and political resources that companies like Penhouet and the Loire could draw on in labor disputes. In the 1890s, as the French labor movement as a whole entered a period of growing militancy and activity, Saint-Nazaire's shipyard workers kept their distance from working-class organizations and from labor activity. A variety of factors combined to weaken working-class politics, sap rank-and-file interest, and undermine workers' confidence in strikes, socialism, and their leadership. SaintNazaire's politicians and employers launched a series of assaults on labor, using various measures to gag and restrict worker's organizations. The city threatened the funding for the Bourse du Travail nearly every year from 1900, while employers advanced rival unions and employment bureaus. Long periods of unemployment, especially in 1902 and 1903, led workers away from unions and socialist politics and drew them closer to employers and politicians as the avenue to steady employment. Finally, an extended dispute between ranking socialists fueled worker disinterest. As a result, shipyard strikes evolved, from the large, multiple trade actions that marked the 1880s and early 1890s, to smaller events that encompassed only a few trade groups, allowing local authorities to describe Saint-Nazaire's working class as indifferent to protest. PROMISE AND STALEMATE In the first years of industrial production, Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding workers organized both trade and industrial unions, founding unions for fitters and turners, riveters and bevelers, machine-tool operators, painters, joiners, modelers, and casters, as well as two trade unions that targeted metallurgy workers by residential setting, Saint-Nazaire and the neighboring Penhouet district.2 By 1899, ship workers had established at least seventeen unions, including one for the unskilled. Saint-Nazaire's Bourse du Travail, a center for labor activities, was also installed in these first years. Remy Larcher and Paul Lafargue, leading socialists from Paris, initiated the campaign for the Bourse in 1892 in a conference tour that stopped at Saint-Nazaire. Larcher and Lafargue pointed to the value of a labor hall, a common physical space, for workers to gather and to pursue economic and professional concerns. The Bourse would serve as a headquarters for unions, support a newspaper, a printing house, a library, and a full-time secretary dedicated to helping workers find employment, and to provide "assistance to strikers."3 City officials envisioned the Bourse as "a purely philanthropic labor institution" and so agreed to supply the hall. The Bourse opened in 1892 with 350 members.4 Within a year, with the affiliation of nineteen unions representing 2,000 workers, SaintNazaire's Bourse had established itself as a vocal and contentious participant in local politics.5

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Union growth appeared promising, too, and by 1895, 2,136 workers had affiliated with unions, but the presence of labor organizations and the Bourse did not signal workers' interest or willingness to affiliate. In fact, Saint-Nazaire's workforce proved largely unreceptive to unions. By 1890, eight years after the first unionization drive, only 200 of Saint-Nazaire's 7,000 workers had joined, and the prefet described unions in the Loire-Inferieure as "nominal and decorative."6 Unionization in 1895 may have seemed high, but the 2,000 members at that time represented eighteen separate unions, thirteen of them metallurgy unions, and membership in individual unions remained quite low. The Union Syndical Metallurgique began operations with eighty members, as did the metal turners union. One of Saint-Nazaire's first labor associations set itself a maximum membership of 200 but it need not have bothered. In most years membership just topped 140. A forge workers' union founded with 27 members had scarcely 130 members after nine years of operation. In fact, the largest metalworkers' unions, the fitters and the riveters, had 193 and 231 adherents, respectively, in the peak membership year of 1896. Unionization among ship workers was restricted in another way: ship workers from the Briere did not enlist. In 1892, eager to bring the entire workforce together in labor alliance, labor leaders helped found a SaintJoachim union, but local enthusiasm was sorely wanting, and the organization disappeared almost immediately.7 Working-class organizations like unions, intent on improving the conditions of industrial employment, held little appeal for the Brierons, who regarded themselves as property owners with multiple economic resources. Socialist politics also had an institutional presence in Saint-Nazaire in these early years. Fernand Pelloutier, the son of a postal worker who went on to lead the Federation des Bourses du Travail, and Aristide Briand, a future socialist minister, both spent the 1880s and 1890s in Saint-Nazaire appealing to the city's workers through the local press: La Democratic de VOuest, at that time a radical anticlerical paper, as well as Phare de la Loire and L 'Ouest Republican. Here, they promulgated their ideas about the general strike and the relationship between electoral politics and socialism, and Pelloutier extolled the primacy of economic struggles. Pelloutier gave the region its first full-fledged socialist newspaper when in 1892 he turned La Democratic de I 'Ouest into a left-wing forum that covered labor activities and published articles by leading socialists.8 The creation of a socialist group in 1891 animated working-class politics and raised new possibilities. A Saint-Nazaire section of Jules Guesde's Parti Ouvrier Francais (POF), known as L'Emancipation Sociale, was founded with the help of Pelloutier, who also served as first secretary.9 Stressing the electoral path to socialism, this small group plunged into the 1892 elections, working diligently to elect socialist candidates to local office. Their efforts paralleled a nationwide campaign backed by the POF to win municipal posts for socialist and worker candidates. The election of worker representatives became a potent rallying cry in working-class communities throughout France, and workers elected socialist candidates to the municipal council in sixty communes. In Saint-Nazaire, voters placed six worker candidates on the twenty-four-member council, all skilled shipbuilding tradesmen at the forefront of the city's nascent labor movement.10

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Three held leadership posts in metallurgy unions, and one doubled as secretary of the Bourse du Travail.11 Not surprisingly, the city council did not receive its working-class colleagues enthusiastically. In fact, the council changed its meeting day from the traditional Sunday to a weekday, to make it difficult for the new councillors to attend. In the fall of 1892, one of the new councillors, mechanic Adolphe Abraham, came to head L'Emancipation when Pelloutier left to lead the Federation des Bourses du Travail in Paris. Abraham brought new energy to the group, increasing its involvement in local and legislative elections, actively supporting nearly every strike at the shipyards and docks, organizing regular forums for visiting socialist deputies, holding "fraternal punches" for workers, and helping to direct Saint-Nazaire's Bourse.12 Workers appear to have regarded these efforts to draw them into local politics with wariness and disinterest. In 1885, the prefet's surveillance of working-class neighborhoods and of shipyard workers assured him that the city's few socialist activists would receive a chilly reception. So inhospitable was the environment, the prefet bragged, that if socialist "troublemakers" did try to spread their doctrine in his city, they would "be brought to their senses by the workers themselves."13 While most prefets hoped this to be true of their region, this evaluation was borne out by an 1887 regional speaking tour by socialist deputies, the first organized effort to recruit the city's workers to socialism. M. Planteau, socialist deputy from the Haut-Vienne, and M. Odin, socialist from Paris, addressed about 250 SaintNazaire workers on the "stages of the [development of the] proletariat" and the "exploited and the tyrants." The prefet reported that the socialists did not appeal to the workers, who responded to the talk with hostility and laughter. One worker, apparently voicing the sentiments of many, accused M. Odin of "revolutionary language" and declared that workers at Saint-Nazaire "want none of it." At the end of the night, much to the prefet's satisfaction, just fifty workers supported a declaration favoring unionization and the emancipation of the proletariat.14 At the same time that Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding workers were wary of labor and working-class politics, they did not hesitate to launch strikes over wages and work conditions. From the opening of the yards in 1881, shipbuilding workers engaged in a series of protracted strikes that, in most cases, included a majority of the workforce and, in a few instances, encompassed the urban workforce as well as workers from the Briere. In 1882, the Loire's 1,200 workers struck to protest a shortened workday. Three years later as many as 2,000 workers from both yards struck over a variety of workshop issues, including salaries, piecework, subcontracting, hours, and the rights of foremen. In 1892 the removal of two interior doors in a Loire workshop in the interests of improved surveillance prompted a strike of 1,200. The following year, shortened hours again became an issue and led the Loire's 1,500 workers to strike. Most of these strikes arose suddenly and without prior consultation with unions or labor leaders. In the 1880s and early 1890s, Saint-Nazaire saw the establishment of the Bourse, the socialist group L'Emancipation, nearly twenty unions, and witnessed several sizable shipbuilding strikes. Contemporaries believed that these developments signified that labor had begun to develop purpose and strength, even considering a measure of worker disinterest, and would soon result in greater

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worker participation and interest. The promise, however, was not to be fulfilled. The following years saw deterioration in the strength and authority of unions and the Bourse and a sharp decline in strike activity. The 1894 strike at the Trignac steelworks, pervasive unemployment, and the minimal gains achieved by strikes account for the stagnation and timidity of the labor movement. The 1894 Trignac strike, a long and bitter event, had a profound impact on Saint-Nazaire's workers. The connection to Trignac began in 1879 when Les Forges et Acieries de Trignac opened and recruited its workers from both SaintNazaire and the village of Trignac. Union connections came to provide another important link. Saint-Nazaire's working-class leaders viewed Trignac as an integral part of the regional labor movement and often carried socialist conferences and union campaigns to that town, such as the Larcher and Lafargue tour on behalf of the Bourse, and Trignac's labor movement grew along with Saint-Nazaire's. The unionization drive of the early 1890s brought the establishment of the Chambre Syndicale des Ouvriers Metallurgistes de Trignac, but by 1893, it had already experienced "serious defections."15 The strike began in March 1894, when, in the interests of reducing operational costs, the steelworks took steps to eliminate the fifty-man puddling shop, dismiss one-third of the workforce, and relocate the remainder to jobs paying eight francs a day, a reduction of four francs.16 Workers responded at first with a series of protests, but management returned with a bold threat to close the entire factory if protests continued to interrupt the work schedule. On 30 March, 1,020 of Trignac's 1,170 workers struck in solidarity with the puddlers. This majority support encouraged the union to broaden its focus, adding raises, abolition of subcontracting, dismissal of certain foremen, and two-week pay periods to the demands. A stalemate ensued, though, when management insisted on limiting negotiations to the issue of the puddling shop. Within two weeks, the sous-prefet and Trignac's mayor had brought the two parties together in a tentative agreement. Management held to the dismissals and salary cuts but agreed to delay layoffs for three months so workers could find alternative employment. They also consented to raises for manual laborers and two-week pay periods and would consider raises for other workers once production had resumed. The strike delegation accepted management's proposition, and work was to begin the following day, 12 April, pending workers' approval of the settlement. Local officials believed that nearly two weeks of striking had diminished the resolve of workers, but it is more conceivable that the hardships associated with an extended strike made a settlement attractive.17 Strikers were certainly correct to fear the personal sacrifices associated with a lengthy strike, including job loss and eviction for families in company-owned housing.18 In addition, regional workers' familiarity with pervasive and elevated unemployment enhanced the appeal of a settlement. From the perspective of leadership, the business of maintaining a strike of 1,000 to 1,200 families in a small community, that is, obtaining food for up to 6,000 people daily, made a powerful argument for accepting the terms. Workers may have also recognized this as the best offer that they could expect, given the strength and resources of the Trignac steelworks.

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Work did not resume on 12 April. From the outset, the battle of Trignac had been waged in socialist and labor journals and labor halls across the nation, debated in the Chamber of Deputies as well as the courts of the Loire-Inferieure. As a result, workers appear to have lost control of their own action. Socialist figures had turned the action into a national cause celebre, presenting the strike as a classic instance of the struggle between capital and labor or, in the words of a leader of the Federation des Syndicats de Paris, between labor and "capitalist feudality."19 The meaning that socialists ascribed to this strike is best illustrated by the comment of socialist deputy Millerand, exaggerated as it was, that the strike was proof ""of the conquest of Brittany by socialism.'"20 The national socialist press, including La Petite Republique, was involved from the start, running subscriptions for financial aid and championing the cause of the strikers.21 Unions and socialist groups around France solicited donations for the strike. Moreover, at least a dozen socialist deputies came to Trignac to lend their support. Working-class organizations and leaders did not just laud the strikers and underscore the political importance of the strike but also participated energetically at Trignac. Bourse leaders from both Nantes and Saint-Nazaire, involved from the strike's first days, convened daily rallies. Socialist deputies arrived in Trignac and launched speaking tours throughout the area, meeting with workers in Trignac, Saint-Nazaire, and Nantes, intensifying regional fever over the strike, and stimulating local interest in working-class politics and in labor activism. They "attacked government, administration, magistrature, capitalism, [and] company" and presented unionization and strike solidarity as the only solution for workers.22 As historian Marthe Barbance describes it, the whole "region became an enormous tribune" for socialists and union activists.23 Regional circulation for La Petite Republique rose from 1,200 issues before the strike to 7,740 in July 1894.24 National unions sent both delegates and financial assistance. The Federation des Syndicats de Paris sent 1,000 francs and promises of future economic aid. The Federation de la Metallurgie dispatched a representative with 10,000 francs and orders to see the strike to the end.25 By mid-April, the village of Trignac had hosted Jules Guesde of the POF, representatives from Paris' Bourse, numerous leaders from the metalworkers' union, and thirteen socialist deputies. The daily rallies and the parade of socialists and union leaders through the region kept the prefet and his assistants quite busy with surveillance, interception of telegrams, and with daily reports to officials in Paris.26 Labor leaders and socialists were not alone in extending encouragement and assistance. The Chamber of Deputies championed the cause of the company, defending its right to make business decisions without interference. The government also provided critical services, dispatching nine brigades of soldiers to Trignac to assure that the strike would not become a national threat to state and industry. Furthermore, the Chamber facilitated the arrest of one socialist deputy, Edmond Toussaint, for interfering with the right to work. Suspension of his parliamentary immunity elicited a storm of protest in the politically charged atmosphere surrounding the strike.27 The intense publicity and the intervention of national figures altered the character of the strike as well as its resolution. The strike could no longer be

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considered a dispute between workers and employers at Trignac where the participants could determine the outcome. Instead, the struggle of Trignac workers for job security and improved wages was played out in the national arena between socialist leadership and the government and industry. Although strike delegates had initially approved management's concessions, and ratification was expected, socialist leaders and deputies in attendance at the 12 April meeting—Edmond Toussaint, Albert Poulain, Marcel Sembat, Arthur Groussier, and Jules Coutant— urged rejection of the company's offer.28 At the meeting, Toussaint took the floor to question the company's good faith. He warned of a "trap" and "urged workers to carry the strike to the end." Moreover, he rallied the crowd with the promise of additional financial support, which he did not have at the ready but may have hoped would come from union donations. The prefet's informants reported that this promise "produced a result that the propaganda of past days could not and [the prefet's perspective, a workforce that he had deemed reasonable when they made their decision to return to work had been made aggressive and unrealistic by the presence of socialist leaders. The strikers "disavowed] their delegates, refus[ed] to accept the [11 April] accord" and voted to proceed with the strike.29 The decision was not unanimous, however, and a "great number of workers" were "exasperate[d] by the decision" to continue, with strikers' wives in particular showing themselves "dissatisfied" with the decision.30 While socialist and union leaders helped to extend the strike, they proved unable to lessen the privations of a prolonged action. Economic hardships and strike-related arrests and convictions multiplied over the next five and a half weeks. In addition, the company withdrew its offer of 11 April and instead took steps to close the puddling shop entirely and dismiss the workforce. Finally, shrinking resources, an intractable management, and a small, but steady, stream of workers returning to the steelworks (165 by mid-April) led workers to end the strike on 21 May, fifty-four days after it had begun and forty days after management had presented the settlement. Workers won a two-week pay period, and manual laborers received a slight hike in salary. The arduous seven-week strike netted only minimal concessions and could best be described as a stinging defeat, certainly in comparison to the 11 April offer of delayed dismissal for workers and future consideration on other concerns. Management's victory did not end here. In the wake of their success, Trignac management embarked on a heightened assault on labor that extended well into the next year. The strike defeat and the huge debt now weighing down the union gave the steelworks great latitude to restructure production and eliminate remaining worker resistance. Just a few months after the strike, Trignac's director announced a factory-wide salary reduction. In the face of strenuous objections, he closed the steelworks and then reopened with a new workforce, including unskilled workers recruitedfromBelgium at the lower salary. The union could make no response. In February 1895, when management instituted yet another salary cut, the Metallurgy Federation, represented by Remy Larcher, advised workers to accept the lowered wage and preserve their jobs. Within a year, management had completely broken organized resistance and assured a compliant workforce.31

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This strike defeat had a powerful impact on workers' interest in labor issues, and, in the wake of the strike, a "numbness" or "drowsiness" engulfed SaintNazaire's labor movement.32 The strike also led many to harsh conclusions about the utility of working-class politics. In public discussions in the months after the strike, workers at Saint-Nazaire and Trignac reevaluated the action and the leaders, many agreeing with the prefet that the "prolongation of the strike [was] due to the meddling of the socialist deputies, especially Toussaint."33 The agreement of 11 April, which would have spared strikers five weeks of economic distress and provided delayed dismissals, came to be recognized as a missed opportunity, an assessment no doubt influenced by local officials who publicly condemned labor leaders and socialists as opportunists. The paper La Democratic de VOuest contended that Trignac workers, as the ""plaything of ambitious men,'" suffered unnecessarily.34 Government reports targeted specific leaders for manipulating the strike for personal objectives. Police officials and the Chamber criticized Toussaint, while other accounts blamed Abraham, Saint-Nazaire's most active working-class leader. One report asserted that Abraham, who held "no convictions," played the role of "revolutionary socialist" to further his own political career.35 The public prosecutor of Rennes, who presided over the numerous trials that arose from the Trignac dispute, labeled Abraham "one of the provocateurs of the present movement and the inspiration" of resistance.36 The fate of shipyard strikes, coupled with persistent unemployment in the industry, furthered workers' mistrust of labor leaders and of strikes. In a shipbuilding strike in 1889, only the intervention of the prefet and sous-prefet brought a settlement, promoting politicians and government leaders as invaluable in urging management to the table. Workers may have also been alienated by the hesitation of socialist leaders to come to their aid in an 1892 strike at the Loire yard. Bourse activists and socialist councillors supported the strike of 1,500 workers, but the Parti Ouvrier of Saint-Nazaire remained distant, for they "[did] not want to interfere in a purely corporative issue."37 A stronger caution against association and political activity came in the form of unemployment, the most critical and pressing problem facing shipyard workers. Its cause and resolution raised serious questions about the value of unions and labor activism, neither of which could generate contracts or extend employment terms. Moreover, as we have seen, ongoing unemployment in this industry oriented workers toward affiliation with government officials. In addition, workers had learned that labor activity could endanger them, jeopardizing job prospects and making activists the first targets of dismissal. Given these liabilities, unions and political affiliations appeared a hazard rather than a source of strength. Unsuccessful strikes, unemployment, the failure at Trignac, and the inability of unions and political groups to improve working conditions caused workers to become increasingly indifferent. For the remainder of the 1890s, declining membership and a pervasive disinterest plagued working-class organizations. By the spring of 1895, the sous-prefet characterized local unions as weak and failing, and observers noted "a certain discouragement" engulfing the labor movement.38 The ""genuine fatigue . . . in the functioning of the labor unions'" manifested itself in infrequently paid dues and the demise of five unions in 1896 alone.39 By

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December 1898, the Bourse reached its lowest point in terms of membership, surviving this period only by limiting its conferences and organizational work. Apathy also hurt working-class politics in Saint-Nazaire. When socialists convened a meeting just a few months after the Trignac strike, they faced workers who were not enthusiastic but "glum."40 By the fall of 1895, L'Emancipation was seen to have lost its "moral importance" among workers as well as "much of its influence," and the organization dissolved in 1896. Yet while workers did not pledge their time or energy to socialist politics, better conditions in their workplace and neighborhoods did interest them.41 They responded to the 1896 socialist platform of urban improvements and strict labor regulations to elect seven socialists to the city council.42 DISILLUSIONMENT AND DISAFFECTION Over the next twenty years, the city's labor and socialist organizations foundered. In the decades before World War I, two protracted battles, one a decade-long campaign to undermine labor associations and the other a personal and ideological feud between the city's leading socialists, diminished the energy and appeal of working-class organizations, making it difficult for them to survive, much less attract new adherents. The first of these battles, assaults against unions and the Bourse by local officials, began in the 1890s and continued until 1911, absorbing much of the Bourse's time and jeopardizing daily operations. Municipal leaders had come to view the Bourse du Travail as the source of all political dissension in their city and endeavored at first to reduce its authority among workers and then later to destroy it completely. City officials had welcomed the Bourse in 1892 on condition that it "remain absolutely foreign to political movements and that instead of fomenting strikes it apply itself to ending disagreements between employers and workers."43 Within months, however, the organization demonstrated that it did not "adhere to the thought that presided at its creation." The Bourse considered local politics a central part of its mission and, as a result, in the words of the prefet, "intervene[d] in all elections...to support and defend revolutionary candidates."44 In fact, local officials regarded the Bourse as a "trompe l'oeil"45 and suggested that its economic concerns were a "cover" for the true goal of creating a socialist electoral army. A year later, officials testified that "political or electoral preoccupations dominate [at the Bourse]" and as proof, pointed to a list of socialists who had spoken at its conferences.46 There was other evidence that the Bourse was far from apolitical. The organization asked employers to close workshops in honor of May Day, the workers' holiday, and sent delegates to the 1894 Congres des Bourses du Travail de France, where one delegate supported the general strike. They also sponsored conferences and public meetings where, according to the sous-prefet, the orators "revile our institutions, incite the hatred of our citizens [and] advocate the general strike and even assassination."47 By 1895, Saint-Nazaire's Mayor Gasnier could turn to a host of evidence showing the Bourse at the forefront of local politics. One government report described the Bourse as "an electoral committee, [a] branch of

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the revolutionary committee at Paris" led by Guesde and Lafargue.48 Another interpreted Bourse programs as "not only of advanced socialism but still of support for the Commune."49 Government officials also condemned the Bourse for its labor activities. Again, the Bourse did not fulfill the expected role of professional development or strike deterrence. Instead, they asserted, it focused on establishing unions and pursuing strikes, that is, inciting workers, building its organization, and enhancing its stature. According to the prefet, the Bourse had instigated and led every SaintNazaire strike since its establishment in 1892, a cunning strategy, dubbed "collective baptism," to introduce workers to labor conflict.50 Local leaders pointed to the 1893 strikes of crew workers and dockers, which the Bourse "prolonged and aggravated" in order to foster unionization.51 The Bourse's part in escalating events at Trignac in 1894, that is, inspiring resistance and forging a national issue from a local conflict, stood as added proof that it must be curtailed.52 Furthermore, city leaders charged the organization with failing to attend to the needs of workers. They contended that even workers understood the Bourse's electioneering, conference sponsorship, and union drives as disinterest in workshop issues. As a result, ""the worker is left to bring his [financial] share to an organization which up until now has only profited Trignac and from which he has derived no benefits.'"53 The prefet was forthright in his antipathy: the Bourse "has done nothing to ameliorate the conditions of work at Saint-Nazaire."54 The city continued to fund the Bourse for a few years despite Mayor Gasnier's declaration that "personally, he preferred the total abolition" of the Bourse subsidy.55 By 1898, however, the election of workers to the city council, strike activity, and more fears that the Bourse had become a tool of the Socialist Party, a "foyer of revolutionary and socialist propaganda," gave Gasnier a new idea for the Bourse's future.56 He planned to remake it into an employment bureau: "We estimated that the best means of avoiding misunderstandings [and] strike conflicts, was to give workers the ability to locate employment [and] facilitate their professional education, . . . and to this end, permit them to have a man constantly at their disposal to enlighten and instruct them."57 Moreover, greater city control of the office would augment surveillance of workers and perhaps further labor's integration into the Republic. The city council agreed and increased the Bourse's subsidy by 50 percent to cover rent, electricity, professional training, and a new library and a year later granted an additional 1,500 francs for a permanent secretary. Not all factions of the local elite applauded this new approach, however. M. Tournadour, a staunch adversary of unions and socialism, warned that a paid post at the Bourse would create "a political agent... who, if not intent on inciting strikes, will . . . certainly be a perpetual source of agitation."58 Tournadour's predictions proved correct. The Bourse continued to spearhead labor activity and socialist projects, now with city funds. It held political conferences, sponsored May Day celebrations, organized anticlerical marches, supported demonstrations for the mandatory closure of stores on Sundays to benefit the clerks, and, in 1899 and 1900, assisted in at least eight dockworkers' strikes. At this point, Gasnier and the council moved to repeal funding altogether.

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The first of five battles to deny funding and arrest the organization's intervention in strikes and politics began in the fall of 1900 after a strike of coal haulers at Nantes and Saint-Nazaire. While the dispute at Nantes was settled within two weeks, Saint-Nazaire's Bourse backed the action for five weeks, which compromised maritime commerce and, reminiscent of the 1894 Trignac strike, brought workers five centimes an hour less than management offered at the strike's outset.59 Furious with Bourse secretary LeMener for jeopardizing Saint-Nazaire's maritime economy, council leaders determined to revoke his salary. Mayor Lechat-Boileve, who succeeded Gasnier when he stepped down in 1896, decried LeMener's "intrigues" and "encouragement" on behalf of the coal haulers but made it clear that this had been only the final provocation.60 "[The Bourse] has ruined strikes, most of which it prolonged and made purposeless, it has lost the coal haulers 5 and almost 10 centimes an hour. It has threatened our local commerce, it has nearly ruined our port. It has grossly insulted those who wanted to intervene in public reunions to calm the workers it had excited. This is what the Bourse du Travail at Saint-Nazaire has done. I have had enough of it."61 LechatBoileve expected the Bourse to act as a booster for industrial development. He contended that it "w not necessary that [unions] practice their action to the detriment of the interests of an entire city, above all when this city, still in its [industrial] development, needs tranquility, [and] a good reputation . . . . [T]he least shocks could be the occasion for a halt in [Saint-Nazaire's] evolution and [cause] its stagnation."62 The council, however, proved reluctant to abolish its link to the city's workers and offered to continue financial aid in return for a cessation of strike activities and the replacement of LeMener. Yet at the last minute the council's resolve faded, perhaps in response to testaments about the "serious programs" and services provided workers, and it extended funds for another year.63 City leaders apparently found the risk of continued social disruption preferable to alienating Saint-Nazaire's sizable working class.64 Hasty action would only obviate any future alliances with this constituency. Limiting the scope and impact of the Bourse remained the council's policy. A few months later, the council revoked the secretary's salary for 1902, citing "the preponderant role that the Bourse, in the person of its successive secretaries, has taken in popular movements."65 In particular, it pointed to a preoccupation with politics over job placement and dock strikes that made Saint-Nazaire "first among French ports for the frequency of strikes."66 The issue of the Bourse returned to the political arena in 1904, when republican council members approached the socialists about an electoral coalition to defeat reactionary candidate Nouteau.67 The socialists agreed to back the republicans in the second round of elections in return for "the immediate reinstatement of the salary for the [Bourse] secretary."68 In a politically motivated turnabout, the council reinstated funding in the middle of the fiscal year for a post now occupied by Henri Gautier, a boilermaker trained in Paris who had come to Saint-Nazaire in 1896 to work in the shipyards, and described by police officials as a member of a revolutionary socialist organization. The council stipulated that the secretary "create no agitation harmful to the interests" of Saint-Nazaire and "not use his title for political purposes," but the Bourse did not take any steps to conform to this policy.69

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City leaders endured the Bourse for a few more years, but in 1908, the "unflagging propaganda of comrade Gautier"70 prompted more discussion about curtailing funding to "diminish, to a great degree, the means of action [of Bourse leaders]; so much that it is allowed to ask how [it] will accomplish its goals, and if it will even be able to continue its work for long." As in 1898, however, the value of access to the city's workers led the council to trade funding for surveillance and command of Bourse operations.71 The mayor would oversee operations and financial expenditures and make surprise visits to the organization's offices, while the Bourse would supply the names of all workers registered in its education programs. When Gautier and the Bourse rejected these conditions, the council carried out its initial threat, repealing the 1909 operating subsidy yet funding the post of secretary until June 1909, ostensibly to sustain the employment bureau.72 At that point, however, a thirty-two-day strike by 1,000 Saint-Nazaire sailors, vigorously supported by Gautier, forced their hand. Asserting that the "secretary of the Bourse du Travail had pushed the sailors into [the strike]," the city council withdrew all funding and left labor's central organization without any public funds.73 Other government officials joined in these disabling attacks; in 1910, the minister of the navy withdrew funding for a sailor's employment bureau housed at the Bourse. In the following years, city officials continued to assault the Bourse, claiming that its leaders did "everything they can to maintain a state of turbulence among workers."74 Saint-Nazaire's elite believed that the organization functioned to incite strikes, a notion best illustrated by a conversation imagined by the now conservative La Democratic de VOuest between a worker and a Bourse official: A worker presents himself at the Bourse du Travail. —What strike are you involved in? [asks the Bourse official]. —But I am not on strike! —What, you are not on strike and you come to the Bourse du Travail!75 For Mayor Brichaux, elected in 1909, the organization's association with the Maison du Peuple, a consumer cooperative founded in 1908, the labor-oriented newspaper Le Travailleur de VOuest (all sharing the same building), the socialist group L'Egaux Social, and the Parti Social Unifie testified that the Bourse had abandoned education and employment assistance for socialist politics. City officials found it "difficult... even impossible, to know exactly where the relations between the Bourse and the other exclusively political organizations begin or end."76 The mayor offered to fund the Bourse in 1910 if it relocated its offices and if Gautier no longer wrote for Le Travailleur, regarded as the "organ of SaintNazaire's working-class."77 The Bourse refused. Intent on maintaining access to workers, the council tried to redirect Bourse funding to the city's unions, in particular, those with placement services. Saint-Nazaire's unions, however, rejected funds that did not pass through the Bourse. Finally, in 1911, after a decade of unsuccessful efforts to establish relations with workers, diminish the influence of unions, and assure labor peace, Saint-Nazaire's city council eliminated the 4,190-franc Bourse subsidy entirely from the budget.78

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Local business leaders promoted company unions and an independent employment bureau to accomplish the same goal of circumventing the Bourse. In the spring of 1900, they instituted free employment services in order to "check the harmful efforts of leaders of the Bourse in regard to strikes."79 Local businessmen were aware that the search for employment was an urgent and daily concern at Saint-Nazaire, reflected in the huge number of requests for work received at the Bourse, 1,127 and 3,630 in 1896 and 1897, respectively. They therefore saw the establishment of a new bureau as a way to "replace and even abolish" SaintNazaire's unions and to sever workers' connections with the ""Bourse des Greves,'" as they dubbed it.80 Various "threats and inducements," in the words of the socialist press, including low-cost meals, direct coercion, and threats of dismissal, encouraged workers to patronize the new office.81 The Hailaust Company, for instance, the largest local employer of dockworkers, hired only workers bearing credentials from the new office. While pressure from employers did build a constituency for the agency, it is likely that many workers joined the new bureau in the first months of 1901 simply because this presented another avenue to obtain work. As the skyrocketing unemployment of 1901 left the shipyards nearly empty, the new employment office placed as many as thirty workers in one week, nearly a "miracle" in this monoindustrial town.82 Claims that the office "prospered" are unfounded, however. Just a few months after its debut, the agency trimmed its hours to one hour per day and shortly thereafter closed its doors entirely. Le Reveil Social interpreted the termination of services as proof of workers' loyalty to the Bourse, but it is more probable that ongoing, elevated unemployment gave the office little to offer workers.83 Saint-Nazaire's employers also worked to offset the local labor movement by promoting the development of "independent," or yellow, unions. A mechanics' union was founded in 1901 to "reconcile the interests of capital and labor," and the dozen members backed management's call for a thirteen-hour day on the grounds that it would benefit workers so often battered by unemployment.84 By 1905, when workers had failed to respond in sufficient numbers to these efforts, employers contacted the national independent union for assistance. An agent with a record of founding these unions throughout France came to Saint-Nazaire to organize "anti-revolutionary" unions but met only minimal response.85 The few independent associations that emerged in this period, a dockers' union and a Maison du Peuple at Mean-Penhouet, survived for barely six months.86 SaintNazaire's workers had no reason to embrace the independent union movement. Like the city's other unions, it was unable to provide jobs or better work conditions. Assaults from business and political leaders were not the only challenges posed to working-class activity in Saint-Nazaire after 1900. Conflicts between workingclass organizations and between leaders also compromised the movement's credibility. The schism plaguing Saint-Nazaire's socialists echoed the national battle over the meaning and methodology of socialism. At the center of this battle stood a doctrinal dispute regarding the merit of electoral politics and trade unions in improving the condition of the working class and bringing about a revolution. During the early 1890s, this conflict was played out in the national arena with Jules

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Guesde and the POF, who had moved from an initial belief in revolution to electoral struggle, representing one faction. The POF stressed electoral politics and municipal reforms, yet found unions and economic struggles desirable in augmenting political awareness. Jean Allemane rejected this reliance on parliamentary tactics. In establishing the Parti Ouvrier Socialiste Revolutionnaire (POSR) in 1890, he underscored the centrality of revolution, militant economic action, and class struggle, yet did not bar socialists from electoral activity or participation in government. Allemane contended that the true locus of revolutionary struggle was in the economic arena. In this view, unions and the general strike, tactics illustrative of direct democracy, were the genuine revolutionary weapon rather than the ballot and social reforms.87 The policies and activities of Saint-Nazaire's labor leaders, Adolphe Abraham and Henri Gautier, mirrored these opposing perspectives. Abraham first gained notoriety in the Trignac strike and in 1892 headed the city's socialist group L'Emancipation, which had affiliated with Guesde's POF and embraced parliamentary activity. The group contended that "the future for the socialist party belong[ed] with the ballot which will bring the worker into the heart" of government.88 With access to power the objective, L'Emancipation worked to elect socialist candidates to both legislative and municipal posts, beginning with the 1892 city council election. Abraham and L'Emancipation constituted the main current of socialism in Saint-Nazaire until 1897, when a few socialists made known their opposition to the group's policies. Labeling L'Emancipation a school for "students of the bourgeois" and not "a place that a socialist could frequent," the new group formed an informal "independent committee" to monitor the politics and programs of Abraham and L'Emancipation.89 The most prominent member of the new group was Henry Gautier, who had joined Allemane's POSR at the age of sixteen. Soon thereafter, declaring his opposition to Abraham, Gautier took on the leadership of the Bourse and the dockworkers' union and tried to bring revolution and class struggle to the language of socialism in Saint-Nazaire. Gautier was loath to consider electoral coalitions with bourgeois parties and focused on wresting gains from the bourgeoisie through union strength and strike activity. He formed the new socialist group as a precaution against further violations of socialist policy by Abraham and his associates.90 Policy differences between the two socialist factions exploded into a public battle in 1898 as Abraham struggled to rebuild L'Emancipation following a period of inactivity and of criticism from national and regional socialist leaders. Abraham and fellow socialist and deputy mayor Bertreux backed an electoral coalition that they believed would attract followers and recapture a central political role for the group. Instead, their decision bitterly divided Saint-Nazaire's socialists, prompted the informal socialist opposition to establish itself as a rival faction, and had enduring consequences for the future of socialism in the city.91 The story begins with the 1898 legislative elections, which pitted Fernand Gasnier, Saint-Nazaire's mayor from 1884 to 1896, against reactionary candidate Anthime Menard. A staunch supporter of the policy of Ralliement and an anti-Dreyfusard, newspaper editor and lawyer Menard was regarded as one of the "worst reactionaries" by no less an established member of the elite than the commissaire special.92

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L'Emancipation, however, considered Gasnier "without relief [to be] the most harmful [politician], the most resistant to all ideas of progress" and made his defeat their electoral mission.93 A decade of political confrontations lay behind this conclusion. As mayor, Gasnier had never been anything but hostile to labor and to socialist councillors. He engineered numerous attempts to deprive the Bourse of municipal funding and in 1892 approved the city council's decision to hold all meetings at a day and time inconvenient for the new worker councillors. A personal feud between Abraham and Gasnier also fueled L'Emancipation's electoral policy. The two leaders had been opponents in local politics since Abraham had joined the council in 1892, and Abraham's 1896 defeat by Gasnier in legislative elections only worsened matters.94 In the 1898 elections, then, the personal and the political came together, and L'Emancipation devoted its energies to ousting this republican candidate by encouraging working-class support for his reactionary opponent. With both candidates on record endorsing policies counter to the interests of labor, the decision to throw socialist support to one by means of an alliance with conservatives angered many local socialists and alarmed some members of L'Emancipation. Abraham's certainty that Menard's defeat would follow once Gasnier had been banished from the political arena did not quiet the outcry. Many socialists split with L'Emancipation, refusing to condone this "fall into reactionary hands" or approve the "retrograde" policies of "bourgeois leaders" like Abraham and Bertreux.95 Led by Gautier, they pledged their loyalty to socialist doctrine and rejected collaboration with bourgeois parties. To this end, they formed a new group called L'Egaux, affiliated with the POSR and Allemanist policy, to challenge L'Emancipation for the leadership of socialism in Saint-Nazaire just as Gautier challenged Abraham for the loyalty of Saint-Nazaire's workers. Conflict between the two groups for the right to define socialist policies and programs escalated into a decade-long clash that, by its end, became as much a contest between the two men as a battle over ideology. In Saint-Nazaire, this dispute, both in intensity and persistence, further estranged the working class and distanced them from their leadership. L'Egaux tried to create a viable and united socialist movement in Saint-Nazaire first by censuring L'Emancipation's electoral policy and then by suggesting alliance. They brought their case for censure to regional leader Charles Brunelliere, head of the Federation Socialiste de Nantes (FSN), also affiliated with the POSR, and M. Tuleve, union leader and head of Nantes' Bourse since 1895. Gautier expected these authorities to "remind Bertreux, Abraham and their friends of their socialist duties,"96 but Brunelliere opposed sectarianism and, in fact, had established the FSN in 1894 as a broad-based alliance uniting disparate socialist factions, including Guesdists, Allemanists, and independent socialists.97 Siding with one or another would have jeopardized the harmony of the FSN, and the two leaders refused to affirm either policy. Gautier and L'Egaux's next strategy, an alliance with L'Emancipation, also failed to resolve the dispute. At a meeting sponsored by the FSN in December, L'Emancipation and L'Egaux agreed on unification and took steps toward a formal alliance, but when Gautier and Abraham reverted to the familiar debate on socialist policy and challenged each other's

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commitment to socialism, the accord broke down. Abraham insisted that the electoral alliance with Menard, which he claimed had been approved at a public meeting of 1,500 Saint-Nazaire residents, was politically necessary and did not call into question his revolutionary ardor. Gautier countered that L'Emancipation had jeopardized socialism in Saint-Nazaire and announced that L'Egaux would now take on the responsibility of salvaging and developing socialism in the city.98 The alliance did not materialize, and working-class politics in Saint-Nazaire came to be defined by the presence of two contrary and hostile socialist currents. The feud escalated over the next few months.99 Abraham urged a close examination of Gautier's socialist loyalties, alleging that Gautier had accepted money from Gasnier to denounce L'Emancipation and its electoral coalition. He then held Gautier responsible for the schism among socialists.100 This outrageous charge shook the conciliatory FSN from its neutrality. An investigating committee saluted Henri Gautier for devoting his life to "serving the cause of the proletariat" and publicly denounced Abraham as a "so-called socialist" who in 1898 had promoted a diluted political platform.101 It held him responsible for the dissension among Saint-Nazaire's socialists and, as a consequence, they argued, for the oppression of the city's working class.102 In February 1900, Brunelliere and the FSN suggested that a halt in hostilities would best serve the common political agenda. Yet again, ongoing animosity precluded the search for common ground. In another series of public meetings, Gautier underscored his intolerance of electoral coalitions, while Abraham insisted that socialists must be flexible enough to "separate themselves, if necessary, from pure and simple doctrine" for electoral advances.103 Accordingly, the FSN acknowledged the "uselessness of efforts to bring the two associations to a common accord" and washed their hands of "l'affaire de Saint-Nazaire."104 The Federation Socialiste de Bretonne (FSB), a regional federation created by Brunelliere that leaned toward electoral coalitions, then took up the issue, if only briefly. At the annual meeting, Aristide Briand urged conciliation, warning that this divisive "tempest" was "prejudicial" to socialism at Saint-Nazaire. In the end, however, the FSB could not provide a solution either as its members were also debating whether socialism permitted affiliation with other parties.105 All in all, the policies pursued by Saint-Nazaire's socialists had a profound impact on their ability to attract and sustain rank-and-file support. From its inception, L'Emancipation had not been met by great interest from workers. The mismanagement of the 1894 Trignac strike and the defeat of Saint-Nazaire strikes, all noteworthy for Abraham's leadership, had bred disillusionment and disaffection. L'Emancipation's campaign for the reactionary Menard in 1898 and subsequent feud with L'Egaux furthered the "eclipse" of socialism and the breach between leadership and workers.106 L'Emancipation encountered defections at the March 1900 FSB conference, where Briand counseled reconciliation. Moreover, in the spring of 1900, Abraham took a surprising public stand against labor. In the city council debate on Bourse funding, Abraham and other socialist councillors sided with Mayor Lechat-Boileve and conservative councillors in demanding the resignation of Bourse secretary LeMener. Furthermore, in what was seen as a direct attack on the city's workers, Abraham backed the council's demand that the

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Bourse withdraw from all labor activity. The new labor stance of the socialist did not escape notice. The POSR expressed alarm at the councillor's "striking feebleness" and moved to eject socialist councillor Bertreux.107 One socialist paper commented that Abraham had found a "peculiar" way to defend the working class, and even the commissaire special believed he had "turned his back on his friends."108 With his reelection to the city council now in jeopardy, Abraham hurried to remind his constituents that he had worked to improve their lives in his eight years as city councillor.109 Although Abraham denied charges of collusion with the bourgeoisie, public confidence in him had dissolved, and in 1900 he lost his bid for reelection.110 With the decline of L'Emancipation and Abraham's electoral defeat, Henri Gautier became Saint-Nazaire's unchallenged workingclass leader.111 Despite his estrangement from workers and his distance from socialist politics, Abraham continued to represent himself as a socialist. As such, his actions presented socialism to Saint-Nazaire's workers as electoral, reformist, and disinterested, perhaps even hostile to labor issues.112 His authority faded only gradually among workers, extending a full decade beyond his electoral defeat. Only in 1909, did the Socialist Federation de Loire-Inferieure (FSLI) exclude him from their association and Gautier succeed in having him expelled from SaintNazaire's socialist group. Importantly, the first recorded instance of workers' public rejection of him does not appear until three years after these groups banished him. In 1912, a packed meeting of workers denied Abraham the right to speak and then chased him from the room.113 Finally, Abraham's political conversion and association with the local elite allowed him to exchange his occupation as fitter and mechanic for improved opportunities; he was elected by the city council to administer the local hospice, a home for the elderly, and later went on to open his own bicycle shop.114 Abraham's political evolution over a period of decades offered workers a model of socialism that was reformist, even conservative, and, in the end, unsuccessful and demoralizing. At the same time, the intransigent, principled socialism of Henri Gautier also failed to generate interest and support from SaintNazaire's workers. As leader of the Bourse from 1902 to 1921, Gautier tried to make it the seat of community and labor activity, establishing several consumer cooperatives and publishing the newspaper Le Travailleur de VOuest. He brought the Bourse into every local strike, most notably, those of shipbuilders, store clerks, and dockworkers, and also headed the dockworkers' union. Yet in the eyes of workers and socialists, Gautier had appointed himself the guardian of socialism in Saint-Nazaire and appeared doctrinaire and unyielding in all matters.115 He made his position on reformism clear with a warning that he would not "permit [socialism in Saint-Nazaire] to be dirtied as it had already" been in 1898.116 Moreover, Gautier was quick to publicly criticize socialists for violations of doctrine. In 1905, he denounced Nantes' Brunelliere for participating in a municipal ceremony honoring the director of the Loire shipyard, which for Brunelliere provided an opportunity to lobby the minister of the navy for vessel contracts. Three years later, in 1908, the decision by Brunelliere and the FSN to affiliate with republican and radical parties in the first round of legislative elections

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brought Gautier's condemnation. He attacked the alliance as "apostasy," charging that those capable of such treason could not be socialists but only "mercenaries, renegades, [and] shirkers."117 He described the electoral policy as one of personal gain by those who had forgotten that the socialist party was one of revolution and wondered aloud if socialism had now become "synonymous with collaboration."118 When the FSLI refused to reprimand the Nantes local for their "antisocialist action," as Gautier had demanded, he resigned from the organization.119 Gautier also used public forums to openly castigate workers for their inattention to socialism and the labor movement. He regularly accused them of disinterest and commented in 1901 that "if the revolution broke out it would not, unfortunately, break out at Saint-Nazaire."120 A year later, he held Saint-Nazaire's workers responsible for their poor work conditions, charging that their "reprehensible indifference" and lack of militancy allowed employers great latitude to "augment exploitation" on the shop floor.121 When the Loire shipyard laid off a group of workers after job-related injuries left them unable to work for a week, Gautier criticized the workers' decision to seek security in their associations with foremen instead of protesting to management.122 Gautier's assessment of the political commitment of local workers may have been accurate, but it ignored the hard realities of frequent and elevated unemployment and industrial dependence on state funding. An article in the leftist Combat de Nantes in 1912 explained that Gautier's doctrinal purity and inflexibility had become onerous and a detriment to labor organization. It lauded the leader's dedication and sincerity but found that his rigidity, opposition to electoral coalitions, and "spirit of domination and authority" had alienated socialism's constituency. The evidence demonstrated that "Gautier's influence on Saint-Nazaire's labor and socialist movement was absolutely harmful."123 The city's two working-class leaders, Gautier and Abraham, had failed to present a vision of socialism that was meaningful, constructive, and credible to Saint-Nazaire's workers. While Abraham's policies and associations may have disillusioned workers, Gautier's rigid political stance also proved difficult to bear. Public challenges to the credibility of working-class leaders also fed workers' impassiveness to political activity. The press, the state, and even other workingclass leaders questioned the commitment of Saint-Nazaire's leaders, charging that they manipulated workers and unions for personal gain. Abraham first came under scrutiny by police and judicial officials in 1894, when he was denounced for using the Trignac strike to advance himself and Saint-Nazaire's Bourse. In later years, Gautier capitalized on a trip that Abraham made to Nice to advance the perception of his rival as a "former worker [but] today [a] well-to-do bourgeois."124 In 1908, labor factions battling with Gautier for the loyalty of Saint-Nazaire's dockworkers contended that he stole from the maritime union to build himself a chalet, and a newspaper characterized working-class leaders as unprincipled opportunists in the "business of emancipation."125 In a climate where workers had expressed both mistrust and disinterest in working-class politics, these attacks assuredly had great resonance. Workers' inattention to working-class politics is sharply illustrated by the union campaign of 1910.126 Determined to revive the labor movement, the Bourse

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undertook several campaigns aimed at workers in all trades, from dockwork to white-collar jobs. The organizing drive among shipbuilding workers, conducted in conjunction with the national Federation des Ouvriers des Metaux, proved the most active and well-publicized effort. Organizers arranged meetings in each of the shipbuilding communities, including distant Saint-Joachim, as they had done in 1892. In addition to addressing the different communities and neighborhoods, organizers orchestrated special campaigns to target individual trades and skilled and unskilled workers and brought Alphonse Merrheim of the metallurgy union to speak at several meetings. But these efforts did not break the pattern of indifference already well established. The union meeting in the Briere attracted mostly younger shipbuilding workers, who proved "reticent."127 The wellpublicized conferences in Saint-Nazaire were poorly attended, and many meetings, including those at which Merrheim was scheduled to appear, were canceled for lack of interest. The drive failed, and membership figures remained unchanged. Worker disaffection can also be measured by the silence that met the annual municipal assaults on Bourse funding, especially in 1900, the year when the council canceled Bourse funding. Despite an aggressive union drive that year that raised the issue of representation, workers did not respond to the city's decision to abolish funding for their central labor association.128 In addition, after 1900 the socialist group encountered problems simply maintaining a presence and often had to cancel meetings because nobody came. The socialist bid for the legislature in 1893, before Trignac, had brought Abraham 34 percent of the vote, but by 1906, candidate Gautier garnered only 5 percent of the vote. Government and press accounts attest to the "indifference" with which workers regarded both labor and socialism.129 Strike defeats and two disputed notions of socialism contributed to the reluctance of shipyard workers to join working-class institutions or become politically active. The development of the labor movement and of socialist politics in SaintNazaire provides a central piece of the explanation for workers' distance from labor activity. Persistent unemployment and the conditions of production divided workers and kept them wary of organization and labor unions, while socialists proved unable to afford workers with solid reasons to join their organizations. At first, in the 1890s, labor organizations struggled to gather and lead workers but quickly found their purpose and strategies called into question. The failure of Trignac and the outcome of shipyard strikes in these earlier years made workers cautious and turned them away from affiliation and protest. Moreover, labor's inability to resolve the single most pressing problem for Saint-Nazaire's workers— unemployment—provided little cause for workers to join in the first place. Beginning in the late 1890s, city and industrial leaders set out to decimate labor and its organizations. Deeming the political activities of the Bourse a danger to local commerce and politics, city officials tried to re-create it as an apolitical employment office. When that proved unattainable, they resorted to the only remaining solution, destroying the Bourse by denying its funding. The result was to further weaken an already besieged set of institutions. Ongoing feuds between socialist leaders over policy and tactics also alienated workers. Abraham's willingness to ally with the bourgeois enemies of labor estranged many, while

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Gautier's abrasive personality, exacting critique of workers, and doctrinal rigidity posed an equally serious barrier. At best, these leaders were dogmatic and antagonistic; at worst, self-interested and ineffectual. In all, they were not capable of offering guidance and leadership and did not embolden workers but frightened and alienated them. Saint-Nazaire's working-class institutions became feeble as well as ineffective. While formal labor associations remained weak in Saint-Nazaire, labor activity was not—on the contrary. Against a background of minimal organization and inadequate support and direction, shipbuilding workers nevertheless joined together to launch numerous strikes. Labor protest, coming at a time when workers were clearly disinterested in unions and distrustful of labor leaders, is a fundamental and puzzling characteristic of Saint-Nazaire's labor movement in these decades of rapid industrialization. NOTES 1. John R. Commons, History of Labour in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1935); Philip Taft, Organized Labor in American History (New York: Harper and Row, 1964); David Montgomery, "The Conventional Wisdom," Labor History 13, n. 1 (Winter 1972): 107-136; David Brody, "The Old History and the New: In Search of the American Working-Class," Labor History 20 (1979): 111-126; Bob Zieger, "Workers and Scholars: Recent Trends in American Labor Historiography," Labor History 13, n. 1 (1972): 245266; Joan Wallach Scott, The Glassworkers ofCarmaux (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974); Val Lorwin, The French Labor Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954). 2. ADLA 1M2376, "Syndicats Professionals," n.d.; ADLA 1M2378, "Syndicats Professionals," 1 January 1887; ADLA 1M2378, "Statuts de la Chambre Syndicale des Ouvriers Forgerons et Aides-Forgerons," 1884. 3. ADLA 1M2387, "Prefet," 24 April 1892. 4. La Democratic de VOuest (13 January 1893). The majority of Bourse officials came from the shipbuilding trades. 5. ADLA 1M2387, "Prefet," 24 April 1892; "Prefet," 7 March, 17 June 1893; "Bourse du Travail," n.d.; Fernand Pelloutier, Histoire des Bourses du Travail (Paris: Costes, 1946); Marthe Barbance, Saint-Nazaire: Le Port, La Ville, Le Travail (Moulins: CrepinLeBlond, 1948), 506-507. 6. ADLA 1M2379, "Rapport sur f ensemble des syndicats de la Loire-Inferieure," February 1890. 7. AN F7 13606, "Prefet," 17 March 1893; ADLA 1M2378, 1884, n.d; ADLA 1M2387, "Sous-Prefet," 1895; ADLA 1M2379, 1906; ADLA 1M2376, "Chambre Syndicale," 1 January 1887; ADLA 1M2374, "Syndicats Professionals"; ADLA 1M2370, "Syndicats Professionals"; Michelle Perrot, Les Ouvriers en greve, vol. 2 (Paris: Mouton, 1974), 439; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 507. The dockers' and coal haulers' unions had the largest membership. 8. James C. Butler, "Fernand Pelloutier and the Emergence of the French Syndicalist Movement, 1880-1906" (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1960), 150-165; Jeremy Jennings, Syndicalism in France: A Study in Ideas (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990);

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Bernard Moss, The Origins of the French Labor Movement, 1830-1914: The Socialism of Skilled Workers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 119. 9. Nicholas Faucier, Les Ouvriers de Saint-Nazaire, un siecle de luttes, de revoltes, de dependance (Paris: Les Editions Syndicalistes, 1976), 26; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 326, 503-506. 10. Joan Wallach Scott, "Mayors versus Police Chiefs: Socialist Municipalities Confront the French State," in French Cities in the Nineteenth Century, edited by John M. Merriman (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1989), 230-245. 11. ADLA 1M370, "Elections Municipales," 1892; Fernand Gueriff, Historique de Saint-Nazaire; De la Construction de Port a nos Jours, vol. 2 (Guerande: Imprimerie Presqu'ile, 1963), 42. In 1889, metalworker Pierre Gourdon became the first worker elected to the municipal council. The workers elected in 1892 included two fitters, a boilermaker, a turner, and a mechanic. 12. ADLA 1M693, "Commissaire special," 19 March, 14 December 1893. 13. ADLA 1M579, "Commissaire special," 4 June 1885. By 1894, Saint-Nazaire's expanded police surveillance included a "regular service of information" from the shipyards and "unpaid informants" in the Bourse du Travail. ADLA 1M579, "Prefet," 17 July 1894. 14. ADLA 1M579, "Prefet," 28 March 1887. 15. ADLA 1M2368; ADLA 1M2387, "Commissaire special," 7 February, 2 March 1893; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 506-07. 16. For accounts of the Trignac strike, see the extensive police reports in ADLA 1M2311, 1M2368, 1M693; AN F12 4674, BB18 1970. For a summary, see Office du Travail, Statistique des Greves (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1894), 245-252; for daily coverage, see Phare de la Loire. The following accounts are also valuable: Association de Recherches et d'etudes du mouvement ouvrier de la region de Saint-Nazaire, Etudes et documents sur Saint-Nazaire et le Mouvement Ouvrier de 1848 a 1920 (Rennes: Imprimerie Commerciale, 1980), 187-197; "La Greve du Trignac en 1894: Origines, consequences et repercussions d'un conflit exemplaire," 4 Cahier de VAREMORS, n.d; Claude Geslin, "Une reprise en mains reussie: les consequences de la Greve de MontoirTrignac (Loire-Atlantique) en 1894," Enquetes et Documents de VUniversite de Nantes 3 (1980): 183-192; Faucier, Les Ouvriers de Saint-Nazaire, 28-35; Bernard Hazo, Le Mouvement Ouvrier a Trignac (Reflexions sur VHegemonie Sociale-Democratique): formation socio-politique de la France de VOuest, vol. 8, (Nantes: Faculte de Droit et des Sciences Politiques, 1978); J-P. Courtheoux, "Privileges et miseres d'un metier siderurgique au XIXe siecle: le puddleur," Revue d'Histoire Economique et Sociale (1979): 161-183. 17. ADLA IM 620-621, "Commissaire special," 8 January 1893. 18. L'Union Bretonne (22 April 1894). Trignac management began to evict workers from its housing on May 8. 19. AN BB18 1970, "Procureur General," 2 May 1894. 20. Quoted in Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 517. 21. La Lanterne, L Tntransigeant, and La Libre Parole also covered the strike. 22. AN F12 4674, "Prefet," 15 April 1894. 23. Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 516. 24. Claude Geslin, "Le Syndicalisme Ouvrier en Bretagne avant 1914" (These de Troisieme Cycle, Universite de Paris X, Nanterre, 1982), 194-196. 25. AN F12 4764, "Prefet," 6 April 1894; Office du Travail, Statistique des Greves (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1894), 247-252; Claude Willard, editor, La Correspondance de Charles Brunelliere, 1880-1917 (Paris: C. Klincksiek, 1968), 79.

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26. AN F7 13606, "Commissaire special," 28 March 1895; Willard, La Correspondance, 79. Participating deputies included Toussaint, Groussier, Faberol, Avez, Dejeante, Vaillant, Baudin, Thivrier, Chauvin, Millerand, and Viviani. The latter two later defended Abraham against charges arising from the strike. 27. Journal Officiel, Chambre des Deputes, Seance du 24 Avril 1894, 613-616; Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 513-514. 28. Sembat was responsible for making La Petite Republique a socialist journal and Groussier was first secretary of the Federation Nationale des Ouvriers Metallurgistes. 29. AN F12 4674, "Prefet," 12 April 1894. See also ADLA 1M2311, "Prefet," "Greve des Acieries de Trignac," 22 April 1894, "Sous-Prefet," 14 April 1894. 30. ADLA 1M2311, "Sous-Prefet," 14 April 1894; Journal Officiel (27 April 1894); AN F12 4674, "Prefet," 15 April 1894. 31. ADLA 1M2311, "Sous-Prefet," 9 October 1894; Geslin, "Une reprise en mains reussie." 32. Geslin, "Le Syndicalisme Ouvrier en Bretagne," 227-238. 33. ADLA 1M2311, "Prefet," 11 April 1894. Historian Claude Geslin seconds the criticism of the socialists. Claude Geslin, "Le Mouvement Ouvrier de 1815 a 1914," in Histoire de la Bretagne et des Pays Celtiques de 1789 a 1914 (Morlaix: Skol Vreizh, 1980), 194. 34. Quoted in Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 518. La Democratic de VOuest had recently changed hands, and editorial policy now opposed the Bourse and the socialists. 35. ADLA 1M2312, 25 February 1895. 36. AN BB18 1970, "Procureur General," 13 April 1894. By this time, Abraham had been charged twice with hindering freedom of expression and insulting officials. 37. La Democratic de VOuest (5 August 1892). 38. ADLA 1M2387, "Commissaire special," 25 August 1894. 39. Geslin, "Le Syndicalisme Ouvrier en Bretagne," 230; ADLA 1M2387, n.d; AN F7 13606,3 September 1896. 40. ADLA 1M693, "Commissaire central," August 1894. 41. ADLA 1M2312, "Commissaire special," 2 October 1895; 1M620-621 2, 5 March 1897. 42. L 'Echo de Saint-Nazaire (3 May 1896). The platform targeted labor issues as well as urban conditions: minimum wages, Bourse funding, free medical services, public baths, and day nurseries. 43. ADLA 1M2387, "Sous-Prefet," 20 February 1896. 44. ADLA 1M2387, "Bourse du Travail," 24 April 1892. 45. ADLA 1M2387, 1893. 46. AN F7 13606, "Bourse du Travail," 17 March 1893. 47. AN F7 13606, "Sous-Prefet," 8 September 1896. 48. ADLA 1M2387, "Bourse du Travail," n.d. Although this report found the Bourse allied with the Guesdists, an 1892 account believed Allemanists to be most influential. See ADLA 1M2387, 1892. 49. AN F7 13606 "Commissaire special," 28 May 1895. 50. ADLA 1M2387, "Bourse du Travail," n.d. 51. ADLA 1M2387, "Bourse du Travail," n.d; ADLA 1M520, "Prefet," 20 October 1894. 52. ADLA 1M2387, "Bourse du Travail," 24 April 1892; AN F7 13606, "Commissaire special," 28 May 1895, "Sous-Prefet," 8 September 1896. One local official believed that the Bourse was not to be feared because Secretary Domange had "limited mental powers" and was "without initiative." AN F713606, 10 June 1897.

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53. Quoted in Geslin, "Le Syndicalisme Ouvrier en Bretagne," 230. 54. ADLA 1M2387, "Prefet," 14 June 1895. 55. AN F7 13606, "Commissariat special," 29 November 1893. 56. AN F7 13606, "Sous-Prefet," 8 September 1896. 51. La Democratic de VOuest (21 November 1900). 58. AN F7 13606, "Commissaire special de Nantes," 30 November 1899. 59. ADLA 1M626, "Commissaire special adjoint," 19 November 1900; Statistique des Greves, 1900, 544. 60. ADLA 1M626, "Commissaire special adjoint," 18 November 1900. 61. La Democratic de I 'Ouest (13 February 1901). 62. La Democratic de VOuest (21 November 1900). 63. Le Reveil Social (25 November 1900); ADLA 1M626 "Commissaire special," 21 November 1900. 64. ADLA 1M626, "Commissaire special," 20 November 1900; AN F7 13606, "Commissaire special," 10 February 1901. 65. AN F7 13606, "Commissaire central," 2 December 1901. 66. La Democratic de VOuest (13 February 1901). 67. Le Petit Phare (6 May 1904); Le Reveil Social (5 January 1902). 68. Le Travailleur (15 November 1908). 69. Le Petit Phare (14 June 1904). 70. La Voix du Peuple (12 April 1908). 71. ADLA 1M527, "Sous-Prefet," December 1909. 72. Le Petit Nazairien (22 November 1908); L 'Humanite (16 March 1910). 73. Le Petit Nazairien (6 June 1909). 74. ADLA 1M527, "Sous-Prefet," December 1909. 15. La Democratic de I 'Ouest (7 May 1911). 76. La Democratic de VOuest (21 January 1910). 77. La Voix du Peuple (20 March 1910). 78. Le Travailleur de VOuest (1908); AN F7 13570, n.d; La Democratic de VOuest (21 January 1910, 1 January 1911); La Voix du Peuple (20 March 1911); AN F7 13606, "Prefet," 9 October 1911. 79. ADLA 1M627, "Commissaire special," 5 December 1902. They had supported the creation of an independent employment service when the city council first raised the idea. ADLA 1M2379, 1896; 10 February 1898; La Democratic de VOuest (21 November 1900). 80. La Democratic de VOuest (21 March 1901); Le Reveil Social (21 April, 14 July 1901); ADLA 1M2376, "Syndicats Professionnels," 1901. U. Le Reveil Social (14 July 1901). 82. Le Reveil Social (22 September 1901). 83. AN F7 13606, "Commissaire Central," 2 December 1901; l e Reveil Social (22 September, 6 October, 9 December 1901); A. R. E. M. O. R. S., Etudes et Documents, 230. 84. Four company unions existed in 1892, but they were small and considered "absolutely precarious" by the sous-prefet. ADLA IN 2381, "Sous-Prefet," 7 January 1892; Le Reveil Social (6 January 1901). 85. ADLA 1M2383, "Syndicat Independant," n.d.; ADLA 1M2316 "Commissaire special," 7 August 1905. 86. AN F7 13606, 5 September 1906; L 'Union Ouvriere de Saint-Nazaire (30 December 1905); Le Travailleur de VOuest (4 July 1908). There is no confirmation of the independent union's claim that it had recruited 800 Saint-Nazaire workers.

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87. Moss, Origins of the French Labor Movement, 102-155; Jean-Marie Mayeur and Madeleine Reberioux, The Third Republic from its Origins to the Great War 1871-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 137-146; Claude Willard, Les Guesdists: Le Mouvement Socialiste en France, 1893-1905: (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1965), passim. 88. ADLA 1M693, "Sous-Prefet," 14 July 1894. 89. ADLA 1M620-621, 15, 18, 19, 23 March, 6 April, 16 May 1897. 90. Jean Maitron, Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Francais, vol.12 (Paris: Les Editions Ouvrieres, 1974). 91. Charles Brunelliere, leader of Nantes' Socialist Party, and Fernand Pelloutier both criticized Saint-Nazaire's socialists for political inactivity during this period. ADLA 1M620621, "Commissaire special," 2 March 1897. 92. ADLA 1M626, "Commissaire special," 3 February 1900; ADLA 1M104, "1898 Legislative elections." In 1901, Le Reveil Social commented that workers had traded a oneeyed horse for a blind man. 93. Lutte Sociale (6 May 1906); Le Reveil Social (8 October 1899). 94. Gueriff, Historique, vol. 2,41. 95. Lutte Sociale (6 May 1906); Le Reveil Social (8 October 1899); ADLA 1M620621, "Commissaire special adjoint," 15 March 1897, "Commissaire special," 18 March, 6 April 1897; ADLA 1M622, "Commissaire special adjoint," 1-15 May, "Commissaire special," 16 April-1 May, 1898; ADLA 1M626, "Commissaire special," 3 February 1900. 96. ADLA 1M620-621, "Commissaire special," 23 March 1897. 97. Maitron, Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Franqais, vol. 1.; Willard, La Correspondance, 19-22; Willard, Les Guesdistes, 315; L'Avant-Garde de Nantes et de I 'Ouest (15 March 1903). 98. ADLA 1M620-621, "Commissaire special," 23 March, 6 April 1897; ADLA 1M623, "Commissaire special adjoint," 21 December 1899; Le Reveil Social (15 October, 5 November 1899,10 December 1899). 99. An article in Le Reveil Social on 12 January 1902 argued that the real issue was not one of principles or tactics but of personality. 100. Gasnier lost the election, earning only 8,156 votes to Menard's 9,162. ADLA 1M104 ,"1898 Legislative elections." 101. ADLA 1M626, "Les Egaux," 23 January 1900. Gautier also had friends among national leaders. A high-ranking POSR official, Charles Corde, added his voice to the growing number of Gautier supporters, affirming that he had adhered to the socialist program in opposing alliances with bourgeois parties. ADLA 1M626, "Les Egaux," 23 January 1900, "Parti ouvrier socialiste revolutionnaire," 30 January 1900, "Commissaire special," 3 February 1900. 102. Moss, Origins, passim. 103. ADLA 1M626, "Commissaire special," 7 February 1900. 104. ADLA 1M626, "Commissaire special," 8 February 1900; 5 March 1900. 105. The FSB encompassed Saint-Nazaire, Nantes, Coueron, Trignac, Penhouet, Lorient, Morlaix, Brest, and Rennes. Socialist deputy Renon argued that Saint-Nazaire's "tempest" had brought an urgency to the national debate over socialist doctrine, the role of elections, and the meaning of class struggle. ADLA 1M626, "Commissaire special," 22 February, 5 March 1900. 106. Le Reveil Social (22 December 1901). 107. ADLA 1M626. "Commissaire special," 20 December 1900. The ejection was for this recent act and for backing employers in a dispute with coalers.

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108. ADLA 1M626, "Commissaire special," 20 December 1900; Le Reveil Social (2 December 1900. 109. L'Echo (12 November 1896). In particular, he could point to an 1896 proposal establishing a minimum wage for manual laborers. 110. Le Reveil Social (10 May, 3 June 1900, 22 December 1901); ADLA 1M626, "Commissaire special adjoint," 3, 5 May 1900. The socialists on the city council promoted many social improvements, including the establishment of a maternity hospital, a library, and the extension of city services to far-flung urban districts. 111. The nature of Abraham's involvement in Saint-Nazaire politics over the next few years offers additional testament to his divorce from socialist policies and labor goals. In 1904 he urged socialists to ally with the Republican Party. He encouraged Mayor Brichaux in 1908 to trade Bourse funding for municipal oversight of the organization. Upon reelection to the council in 1910, Abraham backed a request from the Loire shipyard to suspend the lunch hour in the interest of accelerating production. In that same year, the former socialist voted to suppress Bourse funding, causing Gautier to label him an "employer exploiter." Abraham also sat on the committee that tried to divert Bourse funds to unions. A Guesdist socialist who, in 1892, stressed parliamentary politics, Abraham had, by the turn of the century, become a leader with unabashed hostility to working-class concerns. Le Travailleur (4 April 1909, 2, 9, 21 January, 6 February 1910); Le Petit Nazairien (22 November 1908). 112. Le Travailleur (9 January 1910). In 1904, he joined other prominent political figures like Gautier and Mayor Lechat-Boileve to discuss how to defeat the "reactionary and clerical" candidates in upcoming elections. He also participated in a public meeting called by socialists to discuss their electoral stance. 113. l e Reveil Social (12 January 1902); Le Travailleur (11 May 1912). 114. ADLA F7 12500, "Commissaire special," 18 March 1904; Le Reveil Social (3 June 1900); Lutte Sociale (April 1906). 115. Faucier, Les Ouvriers de Saint-Nazaire', Maitron, Dictionnaire Biographique v. 12; A. R. E. M. O. R. S., Saint-Nazaire, 242-244, 255-268. 116. Le Reveil Social (4 November 1900). He insisted on a strictly socialist ticket in all elections, even when he ran for a seat on the Conseil d'arrondissement in 1901, losing to the reactionary candidate by a vote of 2,269 to 587. Ml. Le Travailleur (18 July 1908). 118. l e Travailleur (23 May, 25 July 1908). 119. Le Travailleur (11 July 1908). It was said that he lost his "former influence" among workers by 1910. ADLA 1M527, March 1910; l e Travailleur (11 April, 2, 16, 23 May, 20 June, 11, 25 July 1908). 120. ADLA 1M627, "Reunion socialiste," 22 December 1901; ADLA 1M528, "Maison du Peuple," 5 August 1911. Geslin notes that Breton militants constantly referred to workers as apathetic. 121. ADLA 1M628,4 April 1902; Le Travailleur (18 April 1909). 122. Le Travailleur (14 February 1909). 123. The author found Gautier rough, brutal, and commanding in his personal relations, traits that "could not allow even one other to [work].. . with or next to" him. Combat de Nantes (26 May \9\2). 124. L 'Echo de Saint-Nazaire (8 March 1896); Le Travailleur (6 February 1910). 125. ADLA 1M528, "Commissaire central," 17 November, 30 December 1911; Le Petit Nazairien (23 February 1908). 126. ADLA 1M527, 3 January 1910.

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127. Geslin, "Syndicalisme Ouvrier en Bretagne," 608; Claude Geslin, "Syndicalisme Ouvrier dans l'industrie metallurgique de 1900 a 1914," Enquetes et Documents de VUniversite"de Nantes 10 (1984): 142-145. 128. Le Travailleur (15 May 1910); AN F7 13606, "Commissaire central," 1 April 1904; ADLA 1M528, "Commissariat central," 24 December 1911; ADLA 1M620, 25 April 1909; ADLA 1M527, October, December 1909; AN F7 13774, "Commissaire special," 10 March, 29 April 1912; Geslin, "Syndicalisme Ouvrier en Bretagne," 379. 129. Alain Bergerat, "Le Mouvement Ouvrier de Loire-Inferieure devant le choix de Tours," Cahiers d'Histoire de ITnstitut de Recherches Marxistes 14, n. 4 (1981): 65-68; ADLA 1M527, "Bourse," November 1909; "Rapport Mensuel," December 1909, "Rapport Mensuel," January 1910; l e Reveil Social (30 September 1900).

Chapter 6 Production, Community, Identity, and Strikes Subsidy legislation, the process of ship production, the problems that beset local working-class organizations, and the divergent interests of the two residential groups of workers combined to impede labor organization and activity among Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding workforce. The state's subsidy programs undermined association and labor protest by precipitating frequent and elevated unemployment and presenting state and local politicians as the most appropriate resource for resolution of this most critical labor problem. The process of production limited the commonality of the work experience and the potential for association in multiple ways. Workers were hired for specific stages of production rather than as steady employees and so rarely had the same group of coworkers for long. Moreover, the patterns of life and work and the concerns specific to the distinct communities of workers meant that workers did not come to the workplace with shared experiences and predicaments that could facilitate association, understanding, or labor solidarity. Finally, a real fear of jeopardizing job prospects and a pragmatic assessment of the abilities and potential of working-class organizations to effect change also turned workers against affiliating with one other. Strikingly, while these elements appear to foretell workers' acquiescence to management prerogatives and a measure of labor peace in Saint-Nazaire's yards, shipbuilding workers did not refrain from labor protest and resistance but launched nearly thirty strikes in the years from 1881 to 1913. It remains, then, to investigate the source and the objectives of this labor activity.

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Labor studies have traditionally targeted the transition to industrial production and viewed the resultant challenges to the knowledge and status of the skilled as causal factors in the emergence and shape of strike activity. Scholars have argued that skilled workers had the greatest propensity to strike and the most success in wresting concessions from management. It has been suggested that financial resources, skill, autonomy, status, established labor organizations and leadership, and, often, experience in political and economic struggles equipped skilled workers to launch strikes in the interests of protecting and maintaining workplace control and autonomy. According to this argument, strike patterns, objectives, and outcomes changed radically with the eclipse of the skilled in industrial production. With fewer resources, alliances, and limited organizational experience, unskilled workers struck less often and engaged in smaller and briefer actions. They struck to put forward wage claims and to pressure national authorities on political issues of concern to labor.1 The example of Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding workers challenges this characterization of the activity and objectives of the industrial labor force on a number of levels. In shipbuilding, the resources and abilities to launch strikes and the concerns that motivated this activity were not connected with skill levels. Instead, the issues, opportunities, and associations of labor activity at Saint-Nazaire arose from workshop concerns and community interests. In most cases, strike leadership emerged from one group of semiskilled workers who, due to the structure of production in this industry, had the means and opportunity to initiate strikes. Finally, the importance of community and family resources in fashioning strike demands and objectives meant the absence of shared concerns. Workers did not behave as one in strike actions. The different capacities, priorities, and resources of the communities produced separate, rather than coordinated, strikes with only a few instances of joint protests. The strikes of Brieron workers most frequently arose when the workplace interfered with their agricultural and familial responsibilities in the distant Briere, and only rarely did they join the larger workforce in common strike actions. On the other hand, urban shipyard workers, generally the less skilled workers, struck for economic security and advancement, seeking to improve employment and promotion conditions and thereby safeguard their families. The source and configuration of shipbuilding strikes in Saint-Nazaire suggest new guidelines for unpacking the complex host of issues and structures involved in labor activity, in particular, for unveiling the often contrary priorities of workers and for discerning patterns of protest. URBAN WORKERS: ISSUES AND PROTEST ACTIVITY The issues and processes of the fifteen strikes held by urban-based shipyard workers from 1882 to 1907 followed a singular pattern. Riveters and their assistants stood at the forefront of these actions, initiating seven of the fifteen

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trade strikes, often as workers neared completion on a project. As we saw earlier, riveters had greater resources and affiliations than most shipyard workers, sharing many of the assets and strengths of skilled or elite workers in other industries. Recall that riveters and their crews occupied an influential position in shipbuilding. Responsible for the component work necessary for many shops and for final ship assembly, they could, at nearly any stage in production, bring the entire yard to a halt simply by laying down their tools and refusing to proceed. Moreover, the entire crew profited from steadier demand for their services and had a broader associational network than most ship workers. The only trade with access to the entire yard, riveters circulated freely and could maintain regular contact with other workers. They also had more intimate connections within their own crews, often bound by family ties. Furthermore, the less skilled and youngest members of the riveting crew, the mousses, also occupied this central and irreplaceable position in the yard and so had the capacity to block production. Though the strikes were often led by mousses, it would be a mistake to view them as frivolous activities begun on a lark by foolhardy youngsters, as observers often charged. Workers sought a secure and sufficient family income for current and successive workers and so targeted improvements in wages, in advancement schedules, and in the subcontracting system, typically concentrating on the situation of the youngest and most unprotected workers. The strikes constituted resolute actions that held promise for many workers, found backing and resources in the workshop, and earned broad support in the urban community. While it appears certain that riveters called on their strategic links inside the yard to sustain and even extend strikes begun by the mousses, other shipyard workers recognized that a temporary affiliation with this trade meant that they could also negotiate from a position of strength. Together, these elements made the riveters and their crews capable of precipitating and sustaining industry-wide strikes. The process was replicated time and again, and management feared strikes by this workforce precisely because their associations and central role in production meant that each action would spread rapidly and draw in a large proportion of the workforce. The first instance of this configuration of issues and workforce—pursuit of a secure family income and advancement for lesser skilled workers, leadership from riveters and their crews, and support from other urban-based ship workers —came in 1889. On 30 August, about 500 riveters struck the Loire shipyard, presenting claims that had wide appeal across the shipyard.2 Riveters objected to the payment of subcontracting wages and supplementary hours on a bimonthly or even quarterly basis and sought minimum wages for young assistants. Strikers also contested the foremen's right to decide matters of wages and insisted that they earn a salary separate from subcontracting, features that would diminish their investment in the crew's productivity. The combination of workers' most basic concerns and riveters' extensive associational networks assured that the strike spread quickly. Within the first days, the riveters brought out all 2,000 workers from the Loire and another 300

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from Penhouet. As in most shipyard strikes, workers organized the action on the shop floor without union leadership. Management at the Loire made some concessions early on, but strikers held out for the entire package of demands and an agreement in writing. WTien Penhouet's director Andrade refused further discussion, strikers increased the pressure: they blocked the gates and prevented access, in effect, closing the yards. Threats to workers crossing the strike line and occasional violence prompted local officials to requisition four brigades of mounted police to keep order. Although strikers did not succeed in bringing work to a complete standstill, their commitment sustained the action for almost three weeks. Loire strikers earned only minor improvements in the subcontracting system, and Penhouet strikers made no gains, but this strike showed semiskilled riveters, not skilled tradesmen, uniting a fragmented workforce behind common workplace concerns and leading them in a lengthy action against management.3 The basis of association and activity here was not skill, trade, or shop but similar resources and the shared predicament of a contested future in the workplace. Nine years later, in June 1898, riveters and their crews led another strike. In this instance, 118 twelve- to fifteen-year-old mousses initiated the action. One local paper discounted the young strikers, who had taken to the streets demonstrating and singing, demanding, "Wlio doesn't sing at that age?"4 The Loire's director Guichard, however, recognized that wtthere is nothing more contagious than a strike," especially at a moment when the "Loire had never had so much work," and acted promptly.5 Suspecting that the riveters had guided the mousses and that they might also go out soon, he granted raises to twenty of the oldest mousses and to some rivet-holders. The mousses, however, rejected these concessions, and within four days nearly 470 of the Loire's workers, both skilled and unskilled, young workers and adults, had joined the action.6 This strike expressed the concerns common to these workers and served to unite workers of different trades and skill levels. Mousses and other young workers, like driller's aides, known as "mousses of the workshop," demanded a five-centime per hour raise but set their sights on the establishment of a uniform wage scale for assistants in many trades, that is, for "equitable salary categories based on age and length of service."7 The focus on conditions of the youngest and most unskilled, a central concern to working-class families, helps explain why older and more skilled workers made up two-thirds of the strikers.8 The latter seconded the salary demands of their assistants and apprentices, often their children and relations. Riveters backed the rivetholders' request for a uniform salary of thirty-eight centimes to replace the rate of twenty to thirty centimes currently in place. Forge workers supported their young assistants' demand for higher salaries by refusing to work alongside their replacements.9 Painters and their aides also joined the coalition of variously skilled workers, acting together for a uniform salary schedule and increased wages for assistants and adult workers alike. The solidarity that existed between younger workers and their seniors in age and skill also appeared in negotiations with management. Although the

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individual trades had their own distinct wage demands, and some added other claims, like the abolition of subcontracting for painters and a bonus system for forge workers, strikers presented their claims "en bloc" to management.10 A key demand for all was a shipyard minimum salary. Strikers refused increases for individual workers or groups, firmly insisting that increases be "applicable to all workers presently on strike and those who will be hired by the yards in the future."11 The labor coalition notwithstanding, management rejected the concept of a uniform wage scale. Guichard declared the company to be the lone judge of salaries and, in an affront to strikers' demands, rewarded the "best workers" with raises.12 In this strike, urban shipbuilding workers failed to better the working conditions of their less skilled colleagues but did establish the principle of wage schedules and joint demands on behalf of the entire shipyard.13 The same goals and patterns of activity fueled a strike in March 1899. The mousses at Penhouet began the action at a time when the yard had an enormous workload, including several vessels with scheduled launching dates. Again, the press discounted the strike, describing the fifty-five mousses who began the strike as "schoolboys on vacation," and again the timing and evolution of the strike proved that these critics had underestimated the young workers and their associations.14 As before, the primary demands included uniform salaries and raises for unskilled as well as skilled trades. Strikers expected that the possibility of damaging the yard's production schedule, which would mean heavy fines for management, would prompt "a great number of workers" to join the action.15 By the second day, the strike had spread to 370 workers at Penhouet and 50 at the Loire, again encompassing apprentices and young and unskilled workers from a variety of trades.16 As in previous strikes, management perceived these issues as a challenge to its authority to set wages on an individual basis and offered raises to the oldest and most experienced mousses. At strike's end, the mousses' frustration with their inability to achieve their primary objective led to discussions about forming a union to promote their interests.17 Urban workers employed at Penhouet returned to the issue of uniform salaries in August of that same year. As in earlier strikes, the company was vulnerable to "labor dissension" because of its rigid production schedule, in this case two vessels with scheduled launching dates.18 Rivet-heaters and unskilled workers numbering 140 and 160, respectively, initiated the strike, while widespread "solidarity between workers" assured that "skilled workers [would] follow the movement."19 Again, strikers sought uniform pay scales and minimum salaries for the unskilled (thirty-five centimes for those under eighteen, forty-two centimes for those under twenty, and fifty-five centimes for older workers) and a reduction in foremen's power to set salaries. As in the past, management refused to relinquish their command of hiring and wages and tried to short-circuit the strike by offering selective pay raises. The strike spread quickly to 1,500 workers from both yards, including skilled and unskilled workers from every shop as well as shipwrights from the Briere.

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Management responded to this expression of cross-trade unity by offering a uniform raise of about two centimes for young workers but steadfastly reserved the privilege to pay new hires at the old rates.20 After the turn of the century, the model of strike activity among urban workers underwent some shifts. For reasons that are not entirely clear, riveters appear to have retreated from their dominant position as labor organizers, only to have the lesser-skilled members of the crew fulfill that post. Strikes also became smaller, perhaps because the riveters who had been so effective in rallying large numbers of workers to strike calls had now withdrawn. In January 1900, nearly eighty teen-aged mousses working as rivet-heaters at Penhouet struck for a standard hourly wage of twenty-five centimes and the establishment of a new job category, aides-ouvriers, or worker assistants, to provide recognition and an appropriate salary for the oldest and most experienced assistants. Again, the local press expressed its contempt, describing the young strikers as brats and truant schoolboys suited only for playing in the streets. Within three days, about 250 workers were on strike, including rivet-heaters from the Loire. Management feared that the strike would result in a shutdown of operations and tried to stem the tide with wage concessions and threats to hire adult workers to replace the mousses, but strikers knew that adult workers could not sustain the energy and activity required of mousses and so "persisted in their ambitions for raises for all."21 In the end, this two-week strike earned workers some gains, perhaps because the company was trying to avoid project delays. The strike brought a uniform salary and promotion ladder for some young workers, raises for workers over the age of seventeen in the tolerie, or sheet metal shop, and creation of aidesouvriers as a distinct category, yet with the stipulation that the new policy would not extend to new hires.22 A few months later urban shipyard workers struck again in the interests of "above all. . . unskilled and young workers."23 In May 1900, about 100 skilled boiler workers and 200-300 unskilled assistants at Penhouet capitalized on the upcoming launch of a postal liner to press wage demands. At the same time, tinsmiths, ironworkers, plumbers, bevelers, riveters, and their assistants, totaling about 300, joined the conflict in pursuit of uniform salaries for young workers according to their age and raises for apprentices and unskilled adult workers. Moreover, they insisted that apprentices reaching the age of eighteen be promoted to "petit ouvriers" with an adult salary of forty-five centimes, acknowledgment that these workers, too, held permanent positions on a recognized advancement ladder.24 Despite the inclusion of wage claims for skilled workers and demands for the dismissal of a shop foreman considered "too severe for workers," the focus of the strike was clearly the unskilled and young workers.25 Adult strikers even offered to forgo their own wage claims and end the strike if young workers received raises, but, as had now become standard policy, management offered individual raises of two to three centimes according to age and seniority. On 21 May, the company brought in 100

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replacement workers from Paris and brought the two-week-long strike to an end.26 The concerns of urban workers—advancement ladders, minimum salaries, and standardized wages for the youngest and least skilled—took center stage again in a July 1906 strike at the Loire instigated by 120 rivet-heaters. This action extended first to manual laborers, bevelers, strikers, and drillers at the Loire and then to workers at Penhouet and within two days involved 1,000 workers. A general strike and Penhouet's director Lannes' greatest fear, a "general increase in salaries" appeared a distinct possibility.27 Management met with delegates from the individual trades each day, but, as in the past, "it was always the question of standardization of salaries that comes up for discussion."28 As in the past, uniform salaries remained non-negotiable for management, as this would mean ceding control over the workforce and over production. This three-week strike ended without monetary gains. The alliance generated by common workplace experiences and family connections did not always serve these workers and in 1907 was trumped by the prospect of extensive layoffs. The strike in March 1907 of urban-based workers, which lasted fifty-five days, signaled a division within the riveting crews. Originating in Penhouet's tolerie shop with 150 mousses, the strike was immediately labeled a "greve de gamins," a strike of kids.29 Again, a uniform wage for young workers was the principal objective, with strikers targeting the inclusion of new hires, displeased that they had been excluded from past settlements. On the second day, the mousses tried to rally the entire crew to their cause, vaulting the metal gates surrounding the repair basins, overturning portable stoves, and breaking electric lamps but persuading only seventy-six rivet-holders to put down their tools. With many shops already short on work and layoffs expected at the Loire within the month, the expansion of the strike was not automatic as in the past. Strikers appealed to remaining crew members on the grounds that the struggle for uniform salaries would improve the welfare and the "greater well-being of your family."30 They cautioned workers who might consider returning to work, suggesting that, as replacements, workers would then become "the executioners of [their] own children or parents, for the most part [already] on strike."31 At its peak, the strike embraced 200 skilled workers and another 500 semiskilled and unskilled from the fitting, boiler works, sheet metal, and carpentry shops, but Penhouet's management had no reason to yield. Hoping to limit the action, Director Lannes dismissed thirty carpentry workers for "agitation"32 and "forcefully refused all concessions,"33 announcing that he would "prefer to close . . . the shipyard and its workshops for a month or two" than discuss a minimum wage.34 Without the pressure of imminent project deadlines and with workers facing more dismissals and perhaps even closure of the facility, the strike began to unravel. By early April, layoffs had increased, and the sous-prefet reported "a certain weariness" among strikers.35 At the end of the month, a third of the strikers had returned to work, and by 10, May 200 riveters and rivet-holders followed, leaving only the original group of mousses. Given Lannes' threat of closure and lacking support

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throughout the yard, the mousses ended the strike without achieving their

goa

THE BRIERONS: ISSUES AND PROTEST ACTIVITY Property ownership, collective management, and agricultural resources afforded Brieron shipbuilding workers priorities and workplace concerns vastly different from those of urban workers. Although heavily dependent on skilled industrial work since the 1860s, patterns of life and work within the Briere mitigated their relationship to industrial work. This was clearly reflected in labor objectives and strike activity. Strikes of the Brierons did not resemble the model of protest set by Saint-Nazaire's urban-based shipyard workers or that of other skilled industrial workers who, as historians have shown, typically organized to retain traditional prerogatives.37 Instead, the Brierons' concerns and behavior make sense within the context of their identity as landowners and as agricultural producers, not their position as industrial workers. Two examples illustrate this. In 1861 at harvest season, about 100 Brieron workers struck the yards at Nantes and Saint-Nazaire for a reduced workday to allow them the time necessary to harvest the peat crop. By this action, they insisted that the shipbuilding companies recognize them as agricultural producers first and foremost and reconstruct the industrial schedule to fit their agricultural timetable.38 Nearly forty years later, in 1899, fifty-two Brieron shipwrights struck Penhouet for raises and to demand that the company provision them with tools free of cost, as it did for most semiskilled and unskilled workers. Uninterested in the badges and insignia of skill, precisely because they did not identify themselves primarily as industrial workers, they sought to diminish the burdensome costs of employment. These workers regarded possession of their tools as an expense, rather than a symbol of skill and status that merited retention.39 Many of the strike actions of the Brierons reflect their identification as rural dwellers who found agricultural responsibilities more pressing and appealing than their position as industrial employees. In this light, preserving the time to continue agricultural production and minimizing the costs of industrial employment must be considered "a rational, not an atavistic, choice."40 The discrepancy between the workplace concerns of the Brierons and those of their urban-based colleagues was most apparent in the strikes of 1893 and 1901. In December 1893, the Loire yard cut its workday to eight hours, which meant the loss of an hour's pay for the Brierons, who worked a nine-hour day outside in the ship berths, and two hours' loss for most of the urban workforce of about 1,100, who worked ten-hour days in lighted workshops. Management claimed that the change was motivated by shorter daylight hours and, in an effort to gain workers' consent, the preservation of several hundred jobs. Shipyard workers found common cause in opposition to the new schedule, as a shorter workday endangered the income of all. In fact, "the needs of workers

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[for salaries] increase during the winter," when the Briere marsh and urban garden plots provided less food for the tables of shipyard workers.41 Claiming that "the salary earned from an eight-hour day was not high enough," nearly all of the Loire's 1,600 workers joined the strike, and the Brierons returned to their marshland villages to await concessions from management.42 The strike was marked by workers' "sentiments of solidarity," but, in an odd turn of events, Director Guichard's capitulation to workers' demands and return to the original schedule of nine and ten hours brought an end to this harmony of interests.43 While urban shipyard workers prepared to return to work, the Brierons reconsidered and requested an extended ten-hour day, perhaps because they felt the loss of agricultural income so sharply. They notified their fellow workers by telegram of their intention to hold out for longer hours and, in a spirit of unity, "hoped that the workers of Saint-Nazaire would do the same."44 Urban workers felt little solidarity with this raising of the stakes and promptly returned to work. In so doing, they condemned the Brierons' claim for a tenhour day and their efforts to modify the work schedule to compensate for diminished agricultural resources.45 The divide between the Brierons and Saint-Nazaire's urban workers became evident again in 1901 in an incident that illustrated the sharply different arrangements of work and family life that each pursued. In the winter of 1900, in response to reduced daylight hours, Penhouet shortened the workday and, to maximize work time, cut the midday break from one and one-half hour to one hour. A few months later, in February 1901, the yard returned to the extended break, prompting protest described as "very different [in] character" from that of most other shipyard strikes. Four hundred to 500 shipwrights and a small number of assistants, all from the Briere, struck to show their displeasure with "the length of the interruption of the workday," preferring the shorter break because it reduced their workday and thus the time that they spent in SaintNazaire.46 Employment in Saint-Nazaire kept these workers at a great distance from their families and their homes for an extended day. Their day began at five in the morning with the commute to Saint-Nazaire, and since they could not return home for the afternoon meal, they hoped for a shorter break so they could get on with their work and begin the trek home all the sooner. Within a few days of the start of the strike, further consideration led the Brierons to put forward another schedule that would even better suit their needs and interests as producers and rural dwellers. This time, they proposed reducing the midday break by yet another half hour and adding that time to the workday. Both proposals ran against the interests and habits of urban workers, who preferred the longer break to return to their homes. They refused to join this action, and the Brierons' effort failed. In both strikes of 1893 and 1901, the priorities and objectives of shipyard workers were so divergent as to prevent alliance and unified action.47 The riveters' strike in August 1889 discussed earlier further demonstrates the divergent agendas of the two communities of workers, agendas that often worked against the interests of the other. The riveters initiated this strike with

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demands, such as standardized pay schedules and modification of subcontracting, that appealed to the entire shipyard community and brought out most of the workers at the Loire and several hundred at Penhouet. Ten days into the strike, about 400 Brieron shipwrights took advantage of this auspicious moment and added their own claims to the conflict, including raises, the exclusion of foremen from bonuses, and overtime for work on Sunday. At this point, however, urban strikers reconsidered a proposal from management that they had previously rejected, deemed it satisfactory, and returned to work the very next day. Caught by surprise, the Brierons resolved to persevere until they were accorded a five-centime raise. Predictably, their coworkers' return to work weakened their leverage, and their strike collapsed after only a week.48 Given the absence of a pressing self-interest or a pattern of affiliation, a coalition of the two groups could be considered only an unlikely and precarious reality. On more than one occasion, the divide between the two groups and the want of habits of association enabled shipbuilders to turn one group against the other and defeat protest. Shipyard management was well aware of the benefits that it wrought from a divided workforce, as was the commissaire speciale, who, in 1888 at the election of Boulanger, maintained that it was "most fortunate that the worker population" did not live alongside one another for then the city, and the yards, would have more to fear.49 In 1892, in the first days of a strike, management sent its foremen into the Briere to falsely "announce the end of the conflict and the return to work."50 Believing the news, residents returned to the yard the next morning, eroding the negotiating power of remaining strikers. Once the Brierons realized what had transpired, they were "'furious at being tricked,'" but strikers by then had accepted management's offer.51 In 1893, Loire director Guichard capitalized on a tenuous labor alliance to break a strike. Recall that in this strike, just as management agreed to restore the standard nine-hour workday, the Brierons chose to pursue a ten-hour day. Guichard informed the Brierons that the yard could manage without their services until spring yet publicly suggested, in a statement intended for the consumption of the urban-based workforce, that their refusal to return to work could bring wider dismissals. This prompted urban workers, who did not have the resources to risk their jobs and hold out for a settlement favorable to the Brierons, to return to work, and, as Guichard had hoped, the strike collapsed.52 In 1898, the Loire yard again exploited the divergent priorities and infrequent association between the two groups of workers. This time management tried to recruit replacement workers from the Briere, where news of the strike had not yet spread, to pressure the riveters and mousses to accept their former salaries.53 LABOR SOLIDARITY The shipyard workers of Saint-Nazaire and of the Briere, despite their profound differences, did on occasion make common cause and develop strike

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alliances, primarily in response to alterations in the work schedule or work process. Unified action marked the strike of 1882, when nearly all of the Loire's 1,100 workers struck to protest a reduction in the workday from ten to nine hours during the winter months. A workers' delegation demanded a return to the ten-hour day, noting that it remained standard in Nantes' yards even during the winter months. Since neither the workers from Saint-Nazaire nor those from the Briere could afford a seasonal reduction in pay, they worked together to maintain this strike, unlike in the action of 1893. In this instance, management reinstated the ten-hour day in January rather than the originally scheduled May because the workforce threatened a near shutdown of operations.54 The longest and most complex allied action was the strike in August 1892, which the company broke by deceiving the Brierons and engineering an early return to work. It erupted in the Loire's forge shop when management removed the doors between two work areas in order to facilitate what they considered "necessary surveillance." Forge workers vehemently protested this infringement on their autonomy, and, as a secondary concern or to broaden the appeal of the strike beyond their trade, they raised concerns about the "dangerous currents of air" that would now circulate freely through the entire shop.55 Within three days, the company faced a strike by 1,000 of its 1,300 workers.56 Strike demands reflected urban workers' interest in job security and higher minimum wages for younger, unskilled workers as well as broader concerns about workplace control and labor autonomy. Strikers asked that professional foremen replace subcontractors and be paid directly by management to prohibit them from imposing speedups to benefit their own wages. Workers also looked to block management from treading heavily on traditional patterns of production and hiring by requesting quick payment on subcontracting work, weekly payment of bonuses, and the elimination of a complex subcontracting system, which workers believed intensified production. In addition, strikers directed management to rehire two forge workers fired for protesting the removal of the doors, dismiss the foreman who had fired them, and reinstall the two doors. They also sought to eliminate the medical exam for new hires, a requirement that strengthened management's authority over hiring. Finally, in a most unusual strike demand, workers demanded the "planting of a mature chestnut tree" in the shipyard.57 The request for a shade tree in the midst of this enormous industrial facility is difficult to understand, and it is unclear whether workers saw this as a bit of fun or a serious request. Most likely, it was a means for workers to shape their work environment, in this instance by creating a spot in the yard that could be considered outside management's domain, where they could relax and congregate rather than bend to management's strict notions about the proper use of the yard.58 In fact, Director Guichard asserted that all the demands were prejudicial to management's authority and "incompatible with the order and discipline that must reign" in the shipyard.59 Although workers did sustain the strike for a week and even began a campaign to harass those attempting to return to work,

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they were frightened by management's threats of layoffs and settled the action soon thereafter.60 The 1892 strike proved a rare instance when the two communities of workers acted in concert to support a broad range of issues, but the conclusion was less than a victory for labor. Management refused to rehire the dismissed forge workers and left the issue of the medical exam to the discretion of the foremen, which augmented their authority on the shop floor. The company granted a minimum hourly salary for each "homme de peine," or unskilled worker over twenty-one, weekly distribution of bonuses, quick payment of subcontracting wages, and semiannual promotion reviews. They also agreed to plant a chestnut tree. The settlement, however, did not divert the company from its mission to enhance surveillance; soon after the strike, it replaced the wooden doors in the forge with glass panels and positioned the foremen's office in the center of the workshop to monitor production. Management was willing to concede on issues of wages and their distribution yet proved resistant to compromise on the more fundamental issue of who possessed the authority to control production and to manage the workforce.61 The two groups of shipyard workers joined together in two more strikes, both initiated by the riveters. In the August 1899 strike, which moved from Penhouet to the Loire, several hundred Briere shipwrights took advantage of the opportunity created by the riveters to pose their own salary claims. The strike was described as one of "solidarity between workers," but while this momentary convergence of interests explains the strike's rapid expansion, it could not assure substantive concessions.62 In the July 1906 strike at the Loire, the participation of Briere shipwrights and their aides nearly brought operations at the yard to a halt. The Brierons objected to mandatory medical exams and the dismissal of workers who had sustained job-related injuries, issues that won widespread support. Management found these demands circumscribed in their impact and less threatening than the persistent claims to restructure the wage scale and so seized upon them to settle the strike without conceding their prerogatives. The Loire agreed to retain injured workers and jettison the medical exams, avoiding the central, more dangerous issue of wage systems. Workers again failed to obtain satisfaction on wage issues, and, as in most previous strikes, the Loire granted raises to individual workers. Moreover, in this instance, management found a way to reassert its authority over production and the shop floor. It decreed that the signal for workers to lay down their tools at day's end would no longer come from workers on the shop floor but from the shipyard bell.63 SHIFT IN LABOR ACTIVITY From about 1910, the form and goal of shipbuilding strikes underwent alterations as a result of management initiatives to rationalize production and a new organizational strategy adopted by the metalworking unions. The conflicts

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of 1906 and 1910 became the last protests dominated by issues of work control and of autonomy and the final instance where Brieron and urban-based ship workers acted in concert. Moreover, strikes no longer developed from the interests and resources of the two communities of workers but from the limited interests of specific trades. From the standpoint of the industry, an increasing demand for ship construction in this era seemed to foretell a promising future. More numerous contracts and deadline pressures equaled steady work at the yards and a renewed demand for labor. This had the potential to give workers greater leverage and deny management the leeway to ignore work stoppages. However, management buttressed their authority with a few key alterations in workplace processes, curtailing workers' command of the industrial environment and, as a result, their ability to conduct strikes. In 1910, Penhouet's director hired British shipbuilders, "masters in the art of naval construction," to assess and improve procedures at the yard.64 As ship production prohibited the modernization and rationalization of production, for reasons discussed earlier, British shipbuilders proposed timekeeping methods, stricter work schedules, improved surveillance, and some changes in work methods, for example, painters bypassing a thorough cleaning of the vessel before painting. Riveters became subject to greater surveillance and increased productivity quotas, factors that reduced their capacity to initiate protest activity. Finally, in 1911, the yard that had been unwilling to shorten the midday lunch break in 1901 did just that and constructed a lunchroom to keep workers onsite.65 Management was thrilled with the increase in output credited to the new policies, one-fifth in the joining shop alone, yet rightly feared that worker's strenuous objections to the new procedures, marked by "discontent" and "great agitation," might extend to a general strike.66 Workers contested the rationalization of production, strict timekeeping, and permanent reductions in the workforce proposed by British consultants. They believed that the policies jeopardized job security and challenged their privileges and control. They also claimed that the "English system" sacrificed quality and dictated sloppy practices. These changes in production had clear ramifications for the workforce; they limited the commonality of the work experience, further fragmented workers, and restricted the potential for association and coalitions. While in previous decades, shipbuilding's workforce had been able to overcome these workplace divisions, more rational, efficient work procedures disrupted the patterns of work and association responsible for labor activity. New policies challenged the autonomy and security of the riveters, up until this point the "lynchpin" of labor strikes, and consequently their ability to initiate and maintain strikes. They also brought anxiety that "personnel might be reduced in the future," a fear fueled by Director Lannes when he cautioned that retiring workers would not be replaced.67 This notion of a shrinking demand for labor was troubling for workers, who were all too familiar with unemployment and limited job prospects, and certainly made them less willing to strike in the interests of their younger, less secure colleagues, as had been the protest format. The specter of

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British workers skilled in advanced techniques flocking to French yards may have also quashed considerations of strike activity, particularly in a singleindustry town like Saint-Nazaire, where fewer jobs in the yards meant that workers and their families would have to move elsewhere for employment.68 In 1910, the segmentation fostered by new workplace methods was reinforced by a unionization campaign led by Saint-Nazaire's Bourse, the local unions, and the national metalworkers' union. The goal was to construct a single metalworkers' union with distinct professional or trade sections, in effect to organize workers along trade lines. Leaders argued that the creation of "professional sections" would be a "singular means of [both] defending our corporative interests and of engendering close ties between all metallurgy workers."69 The strategy was to target the concerns of the separate trades while advancing common interests in a single industrial union. To judge by conference attendance and union membership, this drive did not break the habit of worker indifference, again because of long-standing concerns about employment and the pattern of alliances with employers and politicians for contracts. In the end, though, this attempt to reconstruct labor activity around exclusive trade groups only furthered the trend evident in the workplace toward labor segmentation. Together, changes in work processes, which both isolated workers and made them fearful for their jobs, and the new tactics of unions altered the shape and purpose of labor activity. After 1910, the locus of organization shifted from the shipyard and the community to individual trade groups. Ship workers retreated from strikes that included a broad cross-section of the workforce and now struck singly by trade, with each group advancing claims exclusive to their trade. The object changed, too. With less organizational power and fewer shop floor resources to challenge management on issues of control and authority, workers turned to wage claims and discrete trade goals, restricting any chance for cross-trade solidarity and larger actions. Significantly, riveters no longer took center stage in labor conflicts. Finally, multiple limitations on workers' ability to voice their concerns contributed to a new pattern of strike activity. Capitalizing on the greatest moment of leverage for each trade in the production process, workers began to strike in stages, and rolling strikes prevailed after 1911. Inevitably, strikes became shorter and involved fewer workers. In all, the labor movement also lost the spontaneity and inclusiveness of the previous era. Strikes in 1911 in Saint-Nazaire's shipyards became a series of short actions by individual trades. That year saw seven concurrent strikes in shipbuilding, all prompted by discrete trade groups. Penhouet had five strikes in a six-week period, which occurred as rolling or successive strikes, one launched on the back of another, as the 1,000 strikers sought to forge a form of concerted action in the new work climate.70 The situation was the same at the Loire, where the trades advanced separate grievances in that year's two strikes. Riveters and strikers demanded uniform salaries, plumbers struck for the dismissal of a foreman, and electricians, shipwrights, and fitters all wanted

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raises. Rather than combining their actions as in the past, the trades now linked them only in time, promoting their specific demands and negotiating separately with management.71 Shipbuilding strikes followed much the same pattern in 1912. The steady flow of military contracts to local shipyards and forges made this a fitting moment for workers to present their grievances to management. The Federation Nationale des Ouvriers Metallurgistes and the Confederation Generale du Travail intensified their unionization campaign in the Basse-Loire and pressed for the semaine anglaise, & five-and-a-half-day workweek. The Federation's leader, Alphonse Merrheim, spent nearly the entire year in permanent residence in the Nantes-Saint-Nazaire region directing this campaign. Despite a monumental organizing effort, including countless union meetings at Saint-Nazaire and Saint Joachim, the 1912 strikes indicate that workers had, to some degree, rejected the direction of local and national unions. The new configuration of production and the trade emphasis of organized labor restricted broader objectives, and most strikes now sought wage increases.72 Moreover, the many meetings and speeches by Merrheim advancing the general strike and work control do not appear to have been key in the high number of strikes staged in this year. More likely, the year's ten strikes, with 1,400 strikers, came in response to the wealth of military contracts, which enhanced workers' negotiating strength. Recognizing that multiple contracts put management at a disadvantage and gave them little option but to meet strikers' demands, workers returned to holding strikes in close proximity to completion yet still in a successive pattern, with one striking trade relieving another.73 The following year, strikes declined in number to only four with 500 workers, but these, too, originated in limited trade affiliations and did not address wide-ranging issues of job security or work autonomy. The Brieron workforce was noticeably absent from strikes in this later period. Their inactivity underscores the altered strike climate and the different priorities of the two groups of workers. While urban workers responded to increased pressure from management with smaller and distinct strikes, often seizing on the occasion of an improved market, the Brierons' interest in scheduling industrial work to suit their needs as agricultural producers and commuters appears to have found some satisfaction in these years. Steadier employment became a welcome option that provided workers more latitude in responding to the call to work from the shipyard. Furthermore, while these workers had won concessions before 1910, in part by attaching their actions to yard-wide strikes, the transition to individual trade strikes translated into less leverage for them too, and helps to account for their reluctance to engage in labor activity Historians have often found unions, political parties, and skilled trades a key force in the mobilization and the process of labor protest. This was not the case in Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding industry. Here the divergent identities, interests, and resources specific to the two groups of workers determined labor

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issues, while the process of ship production shaped the course of labor contests. For urban workers, limited resources and the irregularity of employment options led them to safeguard the work conditions of their trades. Urban workers sought minimum wages, uniform salaries, and advancement ladders for young and less skilled shipyard workers in various trades in order to guarantee the livelihood of current and fiiture generations of workers. The course of labor activity among this workforce consistently emerged from the riveters and their assistants, whose prominent position in production and in the yard allowed them to initiate and to popularize strikes. For the Brierons, property, agricultural resources, and overlapping patterns of work and association brought a different commitment to industrial production and a unique set of concerns that caused them to strike separately, and often in opposition, to urban workers. Wages concerned these workers less than minimizing the time spent away from their families and their land, yet as they found family economies threatened by the diminishing demand for and production of peat, they also struggled to maintain traditional patterns of production, hiring, and work relations. NOTES 1. Edward Tilly and Charles Shorter, Strikes in France, 1830-1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); see in particular Chapters 3 and 7. 2. There is some suggestion that politician Aristide Briand encouraged this strike in hopes that it would rally working-class support for his election campaign. 3. ADLA 1M2309, "Capitaine Verand," 30 August, 27 September 1889, "Commissaire special," 31 August 1889, "Chef d'escadron," 15, 16 September 1889; AN F12 4665, "Statistiques des greves, 1889"; Phare de la Loire (2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18 September 1889); La Democratic de VOuest (8, 10, 12 September 1889); Le Petit Nazairien (28 September 1889); L'Avenir (1, 6 September 1889); Le Progres de Nantes (5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16 September 1889). 4. Le Progres de Nantes (1 July 1898). 5. La Democratic de I 'Ouest (3 July 1898). 6. Phare de la Loire (1, 2 July 1898); AN F12 4685, "Prefet," 2 July 1898; ADLA 1M2311, "Capitaine Kurz," 30 June 1898; "Sous-Prefet," 30 June 1898; ADLA 1M2313, "Sous-Prefet," 2, 1 July 1898, "Commissaire special," 4 July 1898; AN F12 4685, "Prefet," 2, 4 July 1898; "Sous-Prefet," 9 July 1898; Le Progres de Nantes (1 July 1898); La Democratic de VOuest (1 July 1898). Support for this strike was limited as workers feared that the company would retract wage increases granted three years earlier. 7. Le Progres de Nantes (1 July 1898); Le Courrier de Saint-Nazaire (2 July 1898); Marthe Barbance, Saint-Nazaire: Le Port, La Ville, Le Travail (Moulins: CrepinLeBlond, 1948), 521. 8. ADLA 1M2313, 1 August 1898; "Commissaire special," 4 July 1898; AN F12 4685, "Saint-Nazaire greve," 18 July 1898; Phare de la Loire (4 July 1898); Le Progres de Nantes (6 July 1898). Strikers included manual laborers, rivet-heaters, rivet-holders, striker-riveters, driller-aides, forge worker-aides, apprentice shipwrights, apprentice

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fitters, manual strikers, and painters as well as 200 ironworkers and forge workers. One-third of the strikers were under the age of eighteen. 9. Assistant forge workers earned half the salary of forge workers, who also received a full 20 percent of the bonus awarded the team. Phare de la Loire (6 July 1898). 10. Le Progres de Nantes (8 July 1898). 11. AN F12 4685, "Le Juge de Paix," 17 July 1898. Those members of the riveting crew who did receive raises continued on strike "in spirit of solidarity" with remaining strikers. ADLA, "Sous-Prefet," 7 July 1898. 12. AN F12 4685, "Liste des revendications demandees," July 1898, "SaintNazaire, Chantiers de la Loire," 30 July 1898. 13. Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (1898), 678; Ministere du Commerce, Office du Travail, Statistique des greves 1898, 229-230; AN F12 4685, "Commissaire special," 1 July 1898, "PreTet," 5, 9, 15 July 1898, "Juge de Paix," 7 July 1898; AN BB18 2082, "Procureur General," 2 July 1898; AN BB18 1170, "Juge de Paix," 15 July 1898; ADLA 1M2313, "Capitaine Kurz," 1 July 1898, "Sous-Prefet," 9, 12, 13 July 1898; Phare de la Loire (7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 18 July 1898); Le Progres de Nantes (2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 18 July 1898); La Democratic de VOuest (6, 8, 13 July 1898); Le Courrier de SaintNazaire (2, 16 July 1898); L 'Avenir (3 July 1898). 14. Le Courrier de Saint-Nazaire (11 March 1899). 15. Le Progres de Nantes (8 March 1899); ADLA 1M2314, "Commissaire special," 7 March 1899. Workers expected their strike to spread at least among their own crews, despite assurances to officials that "on the contrary, they did not seek to spread the strike to other trades." See Phare de la Loire (9 March 1899). 16. The small number of riveting workers at Penhouet at the time may explain why this strike never grew beyond 400. Penhouet's riveting crew totaled only about 300 workers at this time, far smaller than the 400 to 500 riveters at the Loire in 1898 who led a yardwide strike. Nevertheless, Le Progres de Nantes (8 March 1899) dubbed this an "important strike." 17. Statistique des Greves 1899, 324; Bulletin de VOffice du Travail (April 1899): 334-335; AN BB18 2118, (601A99), 8, 14 March 1899, "Le Procureur General," 14 March 1899; ADLA 1M2314, 7, 10 March 1899, "Saint-Nazaire Metallurgiste Greve," 1899; Le Progres de Nantes (8, 9, 12 March 1899); L'Avenir (12 March 1899); Le Courrier de Saint-Nazaire (11 March 1899). Rivet-heaters, rivet-holders, and strikers earned two and one-half centimes, while five centimes went to bevelers and as much as ten centimes to riveters. Mousses over the age of fifteen with six month's apprenticeship earned raises. 18. ADLA 1M2314, "Commissaire special," 21, 23 August 1899. 19. Phare de la Loire (26, 27 August 1899). 20. AN BB18 2118 (601 A99), 28 August 1899; ADLA 1M2314, "Commissaire special," 23, 25 August 1899, "Greve des metallurgistes," 1899, "Brigadier Riou," 19 August 1899, "Commissaire central," 21 August 1899; Statistique des Greves, 1899; Phare de la Loire (24, 27 August 1899); Le Courrier de Saint-Nazaire (26 August, 2 September 1899); Le Reveil Social (17, 27 August, 3 September 1899). This defeat propelled some metallurgy workers to form a union for the unskilled, but it attracted only forty-seven members and soon disappeared. 21. Le Reveil Social (28 January 1900); L 'Avenir (4 February 1900). 22. Statistique des Greves, 1900; AN BB18 2118, (601 A99), 27 January 1900;

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ADLA 1M2315, "Greve des chauffeurs de rivets," 5 February 1900, "Commissaire central," 2 February 1900; La Democratic de VOuest (26, 31 January, 7 February 1900); Le Progres de Nantes (1 February 1900, 26 January 1900); Le Courrier de SaintNazaire (3 February 1900); Le Reveil Social (28 January 1900). 23. ADLA 1M2315, "Commissaire central," 18 May 1900. 24. Bulletin Officiel de la Federation Nationale des Ouvriers Metallurgistes (May 1900). They also requested forty-five centimes for adult workers and, for apprentices, a beginning rate of fifteen centimes. 25. ADLA 1M2315, "Commissaire special," 9 May 1900. 26. AN BB18 2154 (644 A1900), "Cour d'Appel de Rennes," 12 May 1900; ADLA 1M2315, "Commissaire special," 13, 18, 21 May 1900, "Commissaire central," 18 May 1900; Le Reveil Social (11 May 1900); La Democratic de VOuest (11, 13 May 1900); Statistique des Greves 1900, 423-424. Management contracted with a boiler shop in Paris to complete work on La Lorraine and offered raises to some workers to encourage them to return to the yard. 27. La Democratic de VOuest (8 July 1906). Riveters and workers in the fitters' shop, unhappy that striking mousses had been replaced with manual laborers at a higher salary, seemed ready to join the strike. 28. La Democratic de I 'Ouest (20 July 1906). 29. L 'Avenir (23 March 1907). 30. Le Petit Phare (24 March 1907). 31. Ibid. 32. ADLA 1M2317, "Sous-Prefet," 26 March 1907. 33. ADLA 1M2317, "Sous-Prefet," 13 April 1907. 34. Le Populaire (23 March 1907). 35. ADLA 1M2317, "Sous-Prefet," 8 April 1907. 36. AN F12 168, "Rapport de Greve," May 1907; ADLA 1M2317, "Sous-Prefet," 2 April, 8, 10, 13 May 1907; ADLA 1M527, "Sous-Prefet," 7 June 1907; Phare de la Loire (5 April 1907); L Express de VOuest (23 March 1907); Le Populaire (25 March 1907); La Democratic de VOuest (22 March 1907). Gautier had suggested lessening the burden on strikers by sending their children to board with workers in neighboring towns. ADLA 1M2317, "Sous-Prefet," 3 May 1907; La Democratic de VOuest (15 May 1907). 37. Phare de la Loire (25 February, 4 March 1909); ADLA 1M527, "Sous-Prefet," January-April 1909. 38. ADLA 1M2309, "Sous-Prefet," 3 July, 3, 7 August 1861. 39. La Democratic de VOuest (21, 25 June 1899); Phare de la Loire (21, 22 June 1899); ADLA 1M2314, 20 June, 18 July 1899. 40. Donald Reid, Miners of Decazeville: A Genealogy of Deindustrialization (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 61. 41. L Avenir (24 December 1882). 42. ADLA 1M2311, "Gendarmerie," 14 December 1893. 43. Le Courrier de Saint-Nazaire (16, 30 December 1893). 44. ADLA 1M2311, "Prefet," 16, 20 December 1893. 45. Statistique des Greves, 1893, 324-325; AN BB 18 1932, 16 December 1893; ADLA 1M2311, "Sous-Prefet," 16 December 1893, "Prefet," 16, 18 December 1893, "Commissaire special," 16, 17 December 1893, "Greve des ouvriers," December 1893;

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Le Populaire (15 December 1893); Le Courrier de Saint-Nazaire (16, 30 December 1893). 46. La Democratic de VOuest (8 February 1901). 47. ADLA 1M627, "Commissaire special," 15 February 1901; Le Progres de Nantes (8, 17 February 1901); Phare de la Loire (8 February 1901); La Democratic de VOuest (8, 10 February 1901); L'Avenir (10 February 1901); Le Courrier de SaintNazaire (9 February 1901). 48. ADLA 1M2309, "Chef d'escadron," 15, 16 September 1889; Phare de la Loire (14, 16 September 1889); Le Progres de Nantes (11, 13, 15, 16, 18 September 1889). The Brierons' decision to proceed with the strike blocked the start of the staged construction work, forcing management to dismiss a "large enough number" of workers within a few days of the riveters' return. 49. ADLA 1M619, 29 August 1888. 50. Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 509-510. 51. Ibid. 52. ADLA 1M2311, "Commissaire special," 17 December 1893; L 'Union Bretonne (20 December 1893); Le Progres de Nantes (21 December 1893); Phare de la Loire (17, 18, 27 December 1893). Although about fifty Brierons returned to work a week later, it is unknown if they had accepted the nine-hour workday. 53. Le Progres de Nantes (1 July 1898); La Democratic de VOuest (8 July 1898); AN F12 4685, "Prefet," 9 July 1898. 54. AN F7 4658, "Prefet," 19-21 December 1882; ADLA 1M2309, 20 December 1882, January 1884; L Avenir (23 December 1882). 55. L 'Avenir (1 August 1892); Phare de la Loire (4 August 1892). 56. The first strike meeting attracted 900 workers from both communities, who unanimously supported a general strike. Mayor Gasnier also attended and, eager to halt the strike, suggested the selection of a negotiating committee. Protesting this "deception," workers instead asked Gasnier if he would "pay the baker" for all unemployed workers for the duration of the committee's hearings. See La Democratic de VOuest (3 August 1892). 57. La Democratic de VOuest (3, 1 August 1892); Le Courrier de Saint-Nazaire (6 August 1892); ADLA 1M2310, "Sous-Prefet," 8 August 1892. 58. The word for the chestnut, marron, also refers to the metal tokens that, much like a modern-day time clock, recorded each worker's arrival at his post. Thus, when workers "take their tokens," they were going on strike. 59. Le Courrier de Saint-Nazaire (6 August 1892). 60. Phare de la Loire (4 August 1892); Le Progres de Nantes (1 August 1892); ADLA 1M2310, "Capitaine Verand," 4 August 1892; L Avenir (7 August 1892). Guichard did reinstall the two doors in the shop after a week. 61. ADLA 1M2310, "Capitaine Verand," 10 August 1892, "Sous-Prefet," 13 August 1892; La Democratic de VOuest (1, 8, 12 August 1892); Le Progres de Nantes (8, 13 August 1892); L Avenir (1 August 1892); Phare de la Loire (8 August 1892). 62. Le Progres de Nantes (24 August 1899); Phare de la Loire (17 August 1899); L Avenir (17 August 1899); Le Reveil Social (27 August 1899); ADLA 1M2314, "Commissaire special," 23 August 1899. 63. La Democratic de VOuest (6, 11, 13, 18, 20, 22, 25 July 1906); L Avenir (1, 21 July 1906); Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 521; Bulletin de VOffice du Travail, August 1906, 798-799; Statistique des Greves, 1906.

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64. La Democratic de I 'Ouest (8 June 1910). 65. Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 389. 66. ADLA 1M528, "Commissaire special," 9, 13 June 1910; "Commissaire central," 9 June 1910. 67. ADLA 1M528, "Commissaire special," 13 June 1910; "Commissaire central," 9 June 1910. 68. Barbance, Saint-Nazaire, 387-388; Le Travailleur de VOuest (5, 7 June 1910); La Democratic de VOuest (1, 8 June 1910); ADLA 1M528, "Commissaire special," 13 June 1910, "Sous-Prefet," 9 June 1910, "Commissaire central," 9, 14 June 1910. 69. Le Travailleur de VOuest (29 May 1910). 70. Riveters at Penhouet struck first in early August, followed by strikers on 9 August, more strikers and fitters on 4 September, electricians on 13 September, and finally shipwrights and their aides on 12 September. At the Loire, riveters and a core of less skilled workers struck on 16 August, with fitters and unskilled workers striking two weeks later. 71. Le Travailleur de VOuest (5 August, 9 September 1911); La Democratic de VOuest (18, 23, 30 August, 10, 13, 15 September, 4, 20 October 1911); ADLA 1M528, "Commissaire central," 2 September 1911. 72. Claude Geslin, "Syndicalisme Ouvrier dans la Metallurgie Industrie de 1900 a 1919," Enquetes et Documents de VUniversite de Nantes 10 (1984): 141-157; La Democratic de VOuest (6, 19, 25 March, 15, 19, 24 May, 30 June, 3 July, 7, 25 August, 6 October 1912); Le Travailleur de VOuest (15, 29 June, 6, 20, 27 July 1912). The exception was a strike of fitters at Penhouet, where the claims for uniform salaries and reduced hours in place of layoffs recalled earlier strikes of urban workers to protect family incomes. 73. The conflicts began with strikers and then forge workers at the Loire in February 1912. Bevelers from both yards followed in March; riveting crews and forge workers in May; plumbers and ironworkers in June; piercers, strikers, the unskilled, and machinists in September.

Conclusion Just as industrialization can no longer be considered a uniform, linear process that began with the first signs of factory smoke and found completion in the emergence of an urbanized, industrial workforce, its impact on workers' associations, family structures, work experiences, and political beliefs and behavior was far from a foregone conclusion. Workers did not routinely respond to the economic and social relationships characteristic of industrial society by becoming aware of themselves as a working-class, by adopting common priorities and interests, or by turning to united labor action against their employers or state. On the contrary, the story of shipbuilding workers at SaintNazaire, the making of workers, shows that workers' consciousness, identity, and political behavior hinged on the interaction between national structures and specific local conditions. In this instance, the intersection between state policies, industrial development, and culture and community fostered among workers competing identities and sharply divergent interests and political objectives. Connecting the "large-scale social processes with the struggles of day-to-day existence," which Tessie Liu has described as the imperative of social history, puts the state in the forefront of inquiries into the interests and activities of workers.1 This study of French shipbuilding demonstrates that the state was largely responsible for constructing the particular economic climate that, after 1881, promoted the shipbuilding industry, but did so in a manner that also promoted unemployment and impeded labor association. From mid-century, Saint-Nazaire's economy had grown intermittently through several distinct stages of boom and bust, at one point the decline so severe that the town registered a drop in population. Then subsidy legislation in 1881 sponsored the installation of industrial shipyards, and the town experienced sudden and spectacular expansion. Yet while government funding transformed Saint-

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Nazaire into an industrial center and revived a national industry in serious jeopardy, the nature of that support meant irregular and unstable activity for this critical national industry. Shifting perspectives among leaders of the Third Republic on the nature of state intervention resulted in radical policy swings from 1881 to 1906 that, over the long term, caused regular fluctuations in production, obstructed technical advances in the product line, and prompted construction goals inappropriate to the market. From the perspective of workers, these shifting objectives weakened the industry and made frequent and elevated unemployment the dominant feature of work. Workers came to understand the state and the shipbuilding companies as the only institutions capable, through the manipulation of subsidies and contracts, of easing unemployment and assuring steady wages and continuous production. This recognition effectively forbid association and labor organization. In this instance, the state did not stand as a backdrop to workers' experiences but rather directly fashioned the industrial and political environment in which they lived and worked and continued to affect the contours of that environment with each new legislative policy and production contract. The structure of production furthered workers' segmentation and impeded association in numerous ways. The multiple sites of operation in the shipyard as well as the distinct stages in which production occurred, with only sections of the workforce present in the yard at a time, limited the opportunity to associate and undermined the commonality of the workplace experience. The complex arrangement of pay schedules, even among workers sharing the same skills, encouraged an atmosphere, in the words of an observer, "absolutely incompatible with the spirit of solidarity and equality."2 Persistent unemployment also served as a powerful caution against labor organization and, though unemployment eased somewhat after 1900, workers knew that a return to hard times could be right around the corner and took care not to alienate arrangements with foremen and crew leaders/ Even Henri Gautier, try as he might to draw workers to the labor movement, recognized that "workers deserted their unions for fear of not having jobs."4 Finally, while workers in many industries turned to association when management sought control of production, recruitment, and salaries, shipbuilding did not present management this same opportunity. Even as it became an industrialized concern, ship production continued to rely on artisanal operations that required a generally skilled workforce and preserved workers' autonomy. Shipbuilding management could not challenge its workforce with replacement by less skilled workers or reduced wages and, consequently, did not afford them this reason to overcome segmentation and to nurture alliances. Further, the study of culture and community demonstrates that shipbuilding workers came to industrial employment equipped with competing identities and interests that remained solidly in place from 1881 to 1910. The habits and concerns of life and work specific to the Briere marshland furnished residents with interests and objectives that did not become transformed or muted in the experience of industrialization. The Brierons' world was exemplified by property ownership, abundant agricultural resources, powerful community associations and traditions, an ongoing vigilance for their preservation, and a

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notable dislike, even suspicion, of foreigners, which for residents of SaintJoachim included Brierons from other communes. After 1881, the assortment of economic activities pursued by most families also included shipbuilding. Though shipbuilding work became significant to the Brierons, in its contribution to the family economy and in requiring a huge expenditure of time outside of the Briere, marshland agriculture remained the primary focus. Industrial employment was embraced as a resource that assured the survival of the Brieron community and, as a result, was not allowed to transform longstanding patterns of life and work. It became incorporated, or subsumed, within the broad array of economic pursuits with little disruption to associational life, family structure or to the Brierons' identity as property-owners and cultivateurs. In the case of the shipyard's urban dwellers, by contrast, community did not indicate like patterns of activity and support networks, but broadly similar experiences of migration, urban settlement, and industrial work. Formerly peasants and rural dwellers, these workers arrived in Saint-Nazaire generally unskilled and lacking resources and family support. Without the opportunity to seek skilled trades, urban workers continued to dominate semi- and unskilled trades, and the hardships that resulted came to be felt in shifts in marriage patterns, family structures, and in women's search for employment. At the same time, the process of production furthered the emergence of community-based rather than workplace affiliations. Thus, Saint-Nazaire's working-class organizations possessed neither the remedies for workers' concerns nor the thoughtful and prudent leadership to counter, or even diminish, the "profound" divisions fostered by state, industry, and divergent community interests. Unions held promise through the early 1890s, but their inability to wring successful conclusions from strikes and the tragic failure of the Trignac strike, presented by the press and state as proof that unions and socialists would eagerly betray workers for their own political objectives, became cogent arguments against working-class politics. In later years, the primacy of ideological disputes between working-class leaders and the continuous challenges posed by municipal authorities did little to draw workers to unions and socialist politics. These factors certainly account for workers' profound alienation and distrust of working-class organizations, but whether workers possessed a "deep-rooted" "hatred of unions,"5 as some contemporaries believed, is unknown and perhaps beside the point. However, it is crucial to recognize that the industry's record of recurring unemployment—seasonal, staged, or a consequence of legislation—provided a compelling motive for permanent disinterest in unions and working-class politics. While unions may have been able to surmount the multiple layers of workforce segmentation with different leadership or more flexible positions, in the end the force of persistent unemployment determined workers' stance towards political activity. Given these numerous challenges, how then to explain that Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding workers did strike and did act collectively against management? Close examination of strike activity reveals that shipbuilding workers embarked on strike action in discrete and coherent groups with claims particular to that group and only rarely acted as a unified workforce. This pattern of labor protest and the particular workplace concerns directly reflected the interests and

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resources of the two communities of workers. Urban workers struck to safeguard present and future employment conditions within the limitations of this single industry town and the unpredictable character of shipbuilding production. They advanced many of the same protections as skilled corporations, yet their goals were the preservation of the work conditions and income of their families and their residential community rather than that of a single trade. Urban workers struggled for minimum wages, uniform salaries, and advancement ladders for the young and the less skilled shipyard workers— in other words, to insure decent wages and work conditions for themselves and the next generation of workers. Among this workforce, only one trade had leadership potential. The prominent position of the riveting crew in production and in the yard endowed them with the capacity to lead and to popularize strikes beyond their trade. Their consistent focus on issues relevant to the entire urban workforce accounts for their success in generating support and extending their strikes. On the other hand, the Brierons' identification as rural property-owners with responsibilities in marshland agriculture resulted in strikes that often came in opposition to the interests of urban workers and featured separate goals. Briere workers expressed little concern for the particulars of their work experience as long as shipbuilding satisfied their major requirement for industrial labor—a much-needed additional income and the preservation of their marshland community. In actuality, they may have found work conditions onerous but shipbuilding employment so perfectly suited their needs that they restricted their protest to key issues. Unlike skilled workers traditionally, wages concerned them less than the work schedule and minimizing the time spent away from their families and community. Over time, diminishing peat production stimulated them to concentrate on assuring a decent livelihood for the next generation of shipyard workers and maintaining traditional patterns of production, hiring, and work relations. For his part, Gautier argued that the culture of these rural workers included an admiration for private property that lay at the heart of their indifference toward organization and protest. He implied that property ownership and the status it accrued made this workforce conservative, "submissive," and less inclined to strike.6 What he mistook for submission and passivity could best be described as a rational and conscious choice; acquiescence to some workplace conditions came exactly because shipbuilding employment suited their patterns of life and work in the marshland. The process of becoming workers for those in Saint-Nazaire's shipyards was complex, dynamic, and highly variable. One measure of this is evident in the contrasting significance of the term 'worker' for the two communities of shipworkers. Though they worked long hours in the shipyards, the Brierons considered themselves cultivateurs, specifically tourbeurs, first and foremost. Press and police accounts as well as nineteenth-century travel guides and local histories consistently referred to them as Brierons, a designation that signified their isolation as well as their pursuit of both peat-cutting and shipbuilding. For urban shipworkers, however, 'worker' signaled a common self-identification as laborers dependent on industrial employment. Thus, the intersection between these groups of workers and the broad historical structures of state, economy,

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and industry convincingly demonstrates that the factors relevant to workers' political choices and behaviors are highly specific and relative. Their histories suggest certain cautions for future research. Many labor studies have cast a spotlight on skill to comprehend labor activity, rather than taking a broad view of resources and opportunities generated at the workplace. The case of Saint-Nazaire provides a variety of compelling reasons to reject this narrow and exclusive line of inquiry. Primarily, reference to skill presumes political activity for some workers and therefore neglects the interests and experiences of a segment of the workforce. The profile of shipbuilding's less skilled and young workers contradicts traditional notions of this workforce as a group without aptitudes, resources, or community assets. In addition, skill has mistakenly come to imply more than possession of a skilled trade but a variety of resources, such as association, organizational traditions, and influence over production. These resources often enabled strike activity but did not constitute the property of all skilled workers, including those in Saint-Nazaire's yards. Moreover, focusing on the nature of the workforce minimizes and even precludes factors that are singular to an industry, a region, or a workplace. Reliance on skill as an investigative tool in Saint-Nazaire's shipyard strikes would fail to notice the variety of other circumstances that promoted labor activity as well as the many occasions when semi-skilled and unskilled workers engaged in job actions. Strikes in Saint-Nazaire persuasively illustrate that the set of resources and challenges available to workers was both rich and varied. Yet in order to unpack and appreciate the entire package, historians must continue to move the structural forces that affect daily living and shape the experiences and choices of workers—state policies, industrial development, technology, and the operations of production—away from the background of labor studies and toward the center of the worker's world. State policies and programs constructed the economic and political climate in which workers settled in urban neighborhoods or communities, sought employment, sent their children out to work, made social contacts, built families, and weathered unemployment and economic downturns. The process and pattern of industrial development nationally, locally, and within each shop, also shaped workers' expectations and choices. Moreover, government programs and priorities helped fashion the cultural climate, the lens through which workers understood and viewed their accomplishments and hardships. At the same time, historians need to take a more thoughtful look at technologies and the various operations of production specific to an industry and to its various workshops. As the example of shipbuilding demonstrates, it is misleading to assume that the application of machinery automatically denotes a particular set of operations or relations between workers or, conversely, that reliance on manual tools signifies a different model of production, labor relations, and workplace conditions. It is more instructive to attend first to the experience of workers in the workshop or factory as it relates to management, operations of production, and other workers. From this we have learned that workers functioned within multiple and often contradictory sets of relations, operations, and processes. Similarly, resources and circumstances other than

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skill and the conditions of industrial development directly affected workers' options, perceptions, and behaviors. Shipbuilding in Saint-Nazaire did not give birth to a unified workforce but a divided one, each group informed by a distinct set of resources and priorities that fed divergent strike objectives and different rates of activity. In sum, our investigations must encompass the worker's world: the historical structures of economy and industry as well as worker's perceptions of the broad structures and the daily patterns of work and life as well as worker's appreciation of these patterns. To more fully comprehend workers' identifications, dispositions, and perspectives, historians must spend as much time investigating strikes and workplace conditions as the neighborhoods, associations, and activities that constituted the substance of everyday life. NOTES 1. Tessie Liu, The Weaver's Knot: The Contradictions of Class Struggle and Family Solidarity in Western France, 1750-1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994) 251. 2. L'Echo(21 May 1897). 3. Le Travailleur de VOuest (14 March 1908); ADLA 1M528, "Commissaire central," 17 November 1911. 4. ADLA 1M628, 4 April 1902. 5. Le Travailleur de I 'Ouest (23 March 1912). 6. Le Progres de Nantes (1July 1898); Le Travailleur de VOuest (14 March 1908).

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Index Abraham, Adolphe, 151, 156, 162-167, 169n.26, 170n.36, 173 nn.Ill, 119 Allemane, Jean, 67, 161-163, 170 n.48 Andouard, 126 Apprentices; 178-180, 190 n.8, 191 n.24; apprenticeships, 90-91, 114 n.130, 130, 190n.l7 Artisanal production. See Ship production; Workplace Audiganne, Armand, 18, 120, 123, 143 n.46 Autin, Jean, 44 Automobile production, 62 Barbance, Marthe, 154 Baudrillart, Henri, 120, 126 Bender, Thomas, 116 Berlanstein, Lenard, 101 Bertreux, 162-64 Boilers, 57 Bonus, 99-100, 113 nn. 106-107, 183, 190 n.9. See also Wages Bourse du Travail, 149-54, 156-59, 164-67, 168 n.4, 169 n. 13, 170 nn.34,48,52, 173 n.ll 1,188 Briand, Aristide, 151, 164, 189 n.2 Brichaux, Auguste, 27, 65, 163-64, 173 n.lll Briere; agricultural production, 118, 120;

aristocracy, 120-21; division of, 124-25; drainage of, 124-26, 128; erosion, 126-27; geography, 13, 120; partition, 121; residents, 120; title, 120, 142n.28. See also Brierons; Marshland Brierons; association, 137; autonomy, 120; agricultural production, 2, 120, 122, 125-30,137, 139-40, 143 n.34, 144nn.65, 85, 182, 189; collective production, 120-21; communes, 124-25; community, 3 4, 118, 121, 123-24, 129-34, 13740, 197-98; commute, 183; compared to urban workers, 119, 138, 198; disputes, 124-26; economy, 122-23, 126-27, 143 n.46; flower-making, 131-32, 137; household, 130-33; identity, 119, 128, 181-82, 196; income, 123; independence, 120, 122, 126; industrial work, 5, 118, 133, 140, 182, 189; isolation, 119-20; labor unions, 151, 167; land, 118, 120, 142 n.28; landholding system, 120— 21,124, 142 n.31, 198; local industry, 124; occupations, 120, 134; pattern of work, 5, 119-20, 122-23, 128,175, 196; peat cultivation, 124-27;

226 proletarianization, 119; resistance, 124-26; resources, 119, 123, 139, 181,184; self-government, 119, 121-22; shipbuilding, 36 n.85, 122, 128-29, 138, 146 n.86, 197; shipwrights, 128, 145 n.72, 146 n.87, 185-86; shipyards, 123, 128; shipyard workers, 117, 123, 136; strike activity, 1, 140, 152, 176, 179, 181-84, 188-89, 192 nn.48, 52, 198; strike agenda, 1, 5-6, 181-83, 186, 188-89,198; trades, 136; unemployment, 128, 136, 139; women, 130-32, 136, 146n.94. See also Family; Marriage; Marshland; Shipwright; Syndicat Intercommunal de la Grande Briere; Women; Worker-peasant Brittany; economic development, 10-11, 22; descriptions of, 11; urbanization, 11; language, 135; peat cultivation, 122; migration, 134. See also Nantes; Peat; Saint-Nazaire, Brunelliere, Charles, 55, 163, 165, 172 n.91 Caillaux, Joseph, 67 Calhoun, C.J., 116 Canals, 120 Cezaud, Alphonse, 24 Chamber of Deputies, 27, 153-54, 156 Chambre Syndicale des Constructeurs de Navires et de Machines Marines, 75 n.117 Chambre Syndicale des Ouvriers Metallurgistes de Trignac, 153 La Chapelle-des-Marais, 132 Charles-Roux, 55 Chateaubriant, Alphonse de, 143 n.39 Children, 1, 103, 122-123, 136-37, 148 n.125, 177-81 Clyde River, 87 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 43 Colin, Ambroise, 51, 54 Combat de Nantes, 166 Commissions, maritime; 1874, 72 n.51; 1897, 54-56; 1899, 57; 1906, 5657 Community; among Brierons, 118-34; debate on, 3-5, 115-18, 147 n.108, 196; identity, 5, 115, 118;

Index intersection, 118; membership, 116, 121,123,125; patterns, 117; residential, 104; resistance, 118; resources, 117; in strikes, 176—78; two-tiered, 124; among urban workers, 134-40 Compagnie Debray, 124 Compagnie Generale Maritime, 12-13, 31n.l7,44,70n.28,71nn.44-45. See also Transat; Penhouet Compagnie Generale Transatlantique. See Transat Confederation Generale du Travail, 188 Congres des Bourses du Travail de France, 157 Congres des Chomeurs de le Region de P Ouest, 66 Conseil d'Etat, 125 Conseil Generale of the Loire-Inferieure, 45 Cornu, Roger, 103, 114 n. 127 Cotes duNord, 134 Coutant, Jules, 155 Crampon, A., 71 n.46 Cranes, 79, 83, 85,92,110 n.78 Credit Mobilier, 44, 48 Le Creusot, 84 Crimean War, 46 Cultivateur, 128-29 Cultivatrice, 129-30 Daymard, M. 92, 100 Demi-prime, 50-51, 55-56, 75 n.l 13. See also Foreign Construction; Subsidies La Democratic de L 'Ouest, 151, 156, 160, 170n.34 Denain et d'Anzin, 54 Dockwork, 16-18, 34 n.51, 104, 161, 166 Domenichino, Jean, 101-2 Domestic system, 116 Dry docks, 83 Duprat, 54, 57, 74 n.96 Dupuy de Lome, 55, 75 n.l03 Duval, Henri, 16-17 L'Egaux Social, 160, 163-64 Eiffel Tower, 85, 108 n.32 Elections, 151, 157-58,160, 162-65, 167, 170 nn.42, 92, 100, 193 n.70

227

Index L'Emancipation Social, 151-52, 157, 162^65 Employers. See Shipbuilding companies; Shipping companies; Transat; Penhouet; Loire Employment; docks, 18; levels, 95; pattern, 104; riveters, 102; shipyards, 59-64; term, 93, 96. See also Unemployment Engineering industry, 79, 84-85 Factory, 104 Family; Brieron, 132, 145 n.74, 146 n.102; family economy, 122, 130— 31, 133, 137, 145n.84, 146n.98; Saint-Joachim, 133, 138, 147 nn.102, 105; Saint-Nazaire, 137-38; Urban workers, 136-137, 140, 17778,190n.73 Faure, Felix, 62 Federation des Bourses du Travail, 151 Federation des Syndicats de Paris, 154 Federation Nationale des Ouvriers Metallurgists, 60, 170 n.28, 189. See also Merrheim Federation Socialiste de Bretonne, 164, 172n.l05 Federation Socialiste de Loire-Inferieure, 164-66 Federation Socialiste de Nantes, 163-65 Flaubert, Gustave, 11 Foreign construction, 49, 56, 65, 75 n. 113. See also Demi-prime; Shipyards; Shipbuilding, Great Britain Foremen, 14, 21, 65, 89, 100, 152-53, 180, 183-84, 188, 196 Les Forges et Aceries de Trignac. See Trignac Fourcade, Eugene, 23 France; commerce, 46, 70 n.26; merchant fleet, 46, 53, 57, 70 n.34; military, 46; sail tonnage, 74 nn.9091. See also Ministry Francois II of Brittany, 120 Free trade interests, 46-47, 51-52, 67, 73 n.64 Garrioch, David, 116 Gautier, Henri, 159-60, 162-67, 172 n.101, 173 nn.111-112, 116,123,

191 n.36, 196,198 Goldring, Douglas, 26 La Grande Briere. See Briere Great Britain; 13, cargo ship, 108 n.2; fishing industry, 117; industrial resources, 41-42; international trade, 42; Thames Ironworks, 43; vessel tonnage, 42. See also Shipbuilding Industry; Great Britain Great Maritime Week, 26 Groussier, Arthur, 154, 169 n.26, 170 n.28 Guerande, 19 Gueriff, Fernand, 142 n.25 Guesdc, Jules, 151, 154, 157, 161-62, 170 n.48 Hailust Lumber Company, 18, 160 Le Havre, 16,43, 50, 59-60, 74 n.90, 76n.l41,78n.l71,94, 134 Heinrich, Thomas R., 84, 91 Household, 135-37, 146 n. 102. See also Family Identity; competing, 2, trade, 93, shop, 93. See also Brierons; Community; Urban workers He et Vilaine, 134 Immigration, 134 Indret, 23 Industrial development, 2-4, 6, 80, 87, 104, 133, 140, 195, 199 International commerce, 15, 41 Jones, P.M., 116, 124 Kuisel, Richard, 52 Labor activity, 2-4, 80, 93, 100, 103-4, 175-89, 196-99. See also Labor Unions; Strikes Labor association, 93, 103-4, 195 Labor history, 2-4, 6 Labor unions; appeals to state, 66; campaign, 166-67, 187-88; creation, 149-51; disinterest in, 197; and 1893 subsidy, 96; leaders, 197; membership, 64, 150-51, 168 n.7; popularity, 149, 167-68; trade, 18788; and unemployment, 156, 161, 167, 196; unskilled, 191 n.20;

Index

228 weakness, 152-53, 197; yellow, 161,171nn.84,86. Lafargue, Paul, 150,153, 157 Language, 135 Lannes, M., 92, 180-81,187 Larcher, Remy, 150, 153, 155 Lavison, A. de, 47 Lebovics, Herman, 52 Legislation, maritime; 1651, 43; 18th century, 43; 1860's, 45; demands for, 45; 1881, 49-52, 59-60; 1893, 52-54, 60-62, 73 nn.68, 69; 1902, 54-57, 62-63; 1906, 57-58, 63. See also Subsidies Lehning, James, 3, 117 LeMener, 159, 164 Lequin, Yves, 90, 147 n.l08 Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul, 46, 54 Liu, Tessie, 3, 117 Loire River, 122 Loire shipyard; Brierons, 129; establishment, 20-21; hiring 76 n.141; layoffs, 60, 111 n.93, 166, 181; leaders, 74 n.96, 165; modernization, 83, 184; operation 40-67 passim; production 34 n.60; reorganization 35 n.67, 62-63, 173 n.l 11; strikes, 64, 152, 156, 17782, 184-86, 188; urban workers, 176 Loire-Infdrieure, 134, 151-53 London Bridgebuilders Union, 83 Ludtke, Alf, 3 Lyon, 63 Machinery, 88, 91, 104 Mah4 Julien-Henri, 131-32 Maison du Peuple, 160-61 Maritime; commerce, 12, 53; industry, 47, 49; transport; 17; tonnage, 17, 43 Marriage; Brieron, 132-33, 137, 146 n.94, 147 nn. 104-105; SaintJoachim, 132, 138, 145 n.79; SaintNazaire, 136-38, 146, n.87; Urban workers, 137-38, 197 Marshland, 13, 119-26, 128, 144 nn.65-66. See also Briere; Brieron; Peat May Day, 157-58 Mayor; Gasnier, Fernand, 26-27, 157—

59, 162-63, 172 n.100, 192 n.56; Guichard, 177-78, 182, 184-85, 19° n.60; Lechat-Boileve, 37 n.94, 15*. 164, 173 n.l 12. See also Sam -Nazaire Mean, 13 20, 135 Mean-Pen louet, 24-25, 123, 125, 13438, 14Snn.l20 Mechanization, 80 Medick, Hans, 3, 118 Meline tariff, 52 Menagere, 130-31 Menard, Anthime, 162-63, 172 n.100 Merchant fleet, 46 Merrheim, Alphonse, 35 n.67, 109 n.60, 166, 188 Mexican War, 15 Migration, 119 Millerand, Alexandre, 57, 153, 169 n.26 Miners, 104 Ministry of Commerce, 49, 52, 66, 75 n.117 Ministry of Finance, 49, 52, 75 n.l 17 Ministry of the Navy, 50, 66, 70 n 28, 160 Ministry of War, 88 Montoir, 126 Morbihan, 23, 134-35 Mousses,U, 103, 114n.l30, 176-81, 190n.l7, 191n.27. See also Riveters Moyon brothers, 131 Nantes; Bourse du Travail, 55, 163; children, 137; economic development, 10, industry, 30 n.l, 33 n.47; maritime activity, 11; migration to, 134; population, 10; port 11-12, 18, 27; shipyards, 20, 45, 139; and Saint-Nazaire, 11-12, 27; socialists, 154, 172 n.91; strikes, 158; unemployment, 59, 148 n.130; unions, 66; wages, 147 n. 111; women, 136; workers, 23 Napoleon III, 39, 45-47 Nerreire, Auguste, 84, 89 Noel, Charles, 82 Odin, M., 152 LyOuest Republican, 151

Index Paris, 63, 134 Paris Exposition of 1889, 85 Parisian Gas Company, 101 Parti Ouvrier Francais, 151, 156, 16162 Parti Ouvrier Socialiste Revolutionnaire, 161-64, 172 n.IOl Parti Social Unifie, 160 Passenger transport, 81, 106 n.7 Patois, 135 Pearson, Robin, 116, 119 Peat; cultivation, 13, 122, 126; demand, 126, 144, n.66; harvest, 2, 122-26, 139, 143n.40, 145 n.85, 182; marketing, 135; production, 126-28, 143 n.46, 144 n.64, 189, 197; peat dust, 126; peat-cutter, 124-26, 128, 143 n.39; uses, 122. See also Brieron; Marshland Pelloutier, Fernand, 151-52, 172 n.91 Penhouet yard, 14, 16-17, 19-21, 128; bonus, 99; Brierons, 129, 132; closure, 45, J35; contracts, 67; equipment, 92; expansion, 20-23, 50,92; hiring, 60, 62, 87,95; launchings, 26, 33 nn.35-36; layoffs, 24, 59-64, 87, 95; luxury liners, 81; modernization, 83, 9 1 93; operation, 40-67 passim; outfitting, 85; penalty, 112 n.103; pneumatic riveting, 101; production 34 n.60, 78n.l60,96; reorganization, 35 n.67, 1816; repair, 96-98; strikes, 64-65,17780, 183, 185, 188; scientific management, 86; subsidies, 57-58, 77 n.149; threat of closure, 64-65; workers, 34 n.53, 92-93, 128. See also Transat; Loire Pereire, Emile and Isaac, 12-13, 19, 31 nn. 16-17, 32 n.33,44-45, 47-49, 54, 62, 70 nn.26, 28, 71 nn.40, 4445 Perrot, Michelle, 89 La Petite Republique, 154, 170 n.28 Peulevey, Deputy, 47 Phare de la Loire, 151 Piecework, 99, 103, 152-53 Planteau, M., 152 Postal routes, 12, 19,48,62 Poulain, Albert, 155

229 Pouyer-Quartier, Augustin, 48 Prioux, Paul, 139 Proletarianization, 119 Protectionism, 46-47, 52, 67, 73 n.64 Puddlers, 153. See also Trignac Le Reveil Social, 161 Riveters, 1, 4-5, 84^85, 87, 89-90, 96, 99, 101^1, 108 n.34,114 n.127, 146n.87, 150-51, 176-81, 183, 185-89, 190 nn.l 1,16-17, 191 n.27, 192 n.48, 193 nn.70, 73, 198. See also Mousses', Shipbuilding trades Rivet-heater, 93, 103, 179-81, 190nn.8, 17. Rivet-holder, 103, 178, 181, 190nn.8, 17, 191 n.17. Riveting; 90; rivets, 85, 97-98, 108 n.34 Rose, 13,21,128-129, 131, 135 Rouen, 18,22 Rural history, 117 Sailors, 11, 129, 160 Saint-Denis, 21 Sainte-Chappelle, 125 Saint-Joachim, 119-22, 124-34, 143 n.39; associations, 132, 138; community, 132-33, 144 n.59; labor unions, 151, 166, 188; language, 135; occupations, 13 0-3 2; resources, 133; shipbuilding, 122, 128-29, 145 n.74; relations with Brierons, 124-26, 128, 144 n.70, 147 n.l06, 197. See also Brierons; Community; Family; Marriage; Peat Saint-Nazaire; begging, 23-24, 134-35; bourgeoisie, 27; Bureau de Bienfaisance, 62-63; chamber of commerce, 16, 27, 60, 62; city council, 16,27, 151-52, 158-59, 163-65, 169n.ll, 172 n.l 10, 173 n. 111; city leaders, 5, 67,150, 157, 160; Committee of the Unemployed, 66; docks, 16, 18, 139; economic development, 4, 9-12, 19-22, 23, 196; elections, 151, 157-58,162; employment bureau, 158, 160, 171 n.79; housing, 23-25; industry, 20, 139; infrastructure, 10; labor unions, 66-67, 150-51, 157, 160, 167;

230 layoffs, 96, 110 n.78, 139^10; maritime traffic, 12, 16, 18; merchants, 60, 66; migration to, 4, 119, 134; occupations, 136; police, 23,159, 166, 169n.l3, 178; population growth, 9, 22-25, 63, 134; port 11-12, 16, 18, 23, 27, 37 n.l02, 135; poverty, 23; public assistance, 23, 36 n.86, 62, 139; public celebrations 26; public health, 25-26; public works, 4, 65; relief organizations, 62; residential settlement, 13 4-3 5; sh ipbu ilders, 123; ship launchings, 27; ship production, 56-57, 60, 104; shipwrights, 84; shipyards, 117; socialists, 5, 67, 154, 156-57, 164, 172 n.105; strikes, 158-60, 199; trades, 111, n.86; transshipment center, 18; Transat, 16; urbanization, 4, 22-28; urban community, 119; unemployment, 17, 28, 34 n. 51, 59-64, 76 n.123, 94, 129, 139, 150, 187; wages, 147 n.l 11; water supply, 25; 37 n.94, 131, 148 n.l 19; women, 131, 136, 148nn.ll8, 120, 125; working-class politics, 155, 156, 162-63; workforce, 1-2, 20, 23-25, 50, 59, 66-67, 77 n.149, 87, 115, 118, 136-37. See also Bourse du Travail; Family; Marriage; Mayor; Urban workers Samuel, Raphael, 87 Sarraut, Maurice, 91 Sauzereau, Aoustin Joseph, 125 Scientific management, 86 Scotland, 14, 87 Scott, John, 14, 32n.27 Sembat, Marcel, 155 Sheet metal shop, 180-81 Ship construction; assembly, 83-84; components, 84-85, 91, 108 n.32; deadlines, 65, 179, 186; engine construction, 85; machinery, 89-91; output, 186-87; rate of, 63, 100, 196; requirements, 104; scaffolding, 85, 102; site, 196; stages, 93, 192 n.48; steel and iron, 45, 49, 81-84, 88, 107 n.24; tools, 83, 90; wooden, 42, 45, 49, 84. See also Ship production; Workplace

Index Ship contracts, 28 Ship production, process; continuities in 87-93, 104; costs, 31 n.23,42,49; cyclical, 42, 45, 76 n.l29, 86, 196; discontinuities, 93-101; diversification, 62; diversity of projects, 94; dual technologies, 86, 91, 110,n.71, 199; efficiency, 111 n.86; 'English system,' 187; industrialized 79-80, 86, 90, 101, 103, 195; in labor relations, 4, 93, 187; manual operations, 87, 103; pace, 91; modernization, 49, 57, 60, 86, 186-87; processes, 4-5, 79-80, 93, 100-1; repair, 60, 96-98; representation, 102; in segmenting workers, 4-5, 84-87, 93-101, 175, 187, 196; stages, 93-94, 175, 196; standardization, 86, 91, 104, 18687; strength in, 102-3; workshop model, 86-87, 90; rewards, 99. See also Ship construction; Workers Ship repair, 17, 60, 83, 95-98, 102 Shipbuilding companies; Chantiers et Ateliers de Provence, 94, 101; Chantiers de Normandie, 22; Forges et Chantiers de la Mediterannee, 13, 62-63, 74 n.96, 88, 91; Marseilles, 60,64, 100; and strikes, 150; Societe des Chantiers et Ateliers de Saint-Nazaire-Penhouet, 22. See also Transat; Shipyards Shipbuilding industry, France; 13-14, 195; costs, 42; demand, 43, 67; diversification, 21-22, 57, 85, 186; expertise, 42^13; impact on public policy, 39, 46; labor relations, 40; layoffs, 111 n.93, 133, 139; mechanization, 104; modernized, 17; monopoly of traffic, 45, organization of production, 104; personnel, 140; production levels, 40-41, 43, 45, 50, 53-54, 58; public life, 26-27; railway rates, 45; resources 42-43; skilled trades, 88, 136; stagnation, 28,40; state aid, 17, 21, 195; state intervention; 4, 3940; 47-48, 65, 195; technology, 40, 196; tonnage, 1860,42; unemployment, 40, 60, 62-73, 87. See also Ship production; Subsidies,

Index Unemployment; Workplace Shipbuilding industry, Great Britain; compared to French, 41-42, 92, 111 n.85; as consultant, 186-87; demand, 4, 86; facilities, 42; government report, 90, 131; manual labor, 109 n.55; production costs, 13, 42, 57, 68 n.5; production levels, 42, 86; riveting, 101-102, 113 nn.120, 122; shipyards, 16; skilled workers, 87, 109 n.55; specialization, 42, 86-87; state aid, 42, 66; subsidies, 41-42, 50, 68 n.6; wooden yards, 83; workers, 42, 78 n. 171. See also Shipbuilding industry; France Shipbuilding trades; 79, 93, 146 n.89; aides-ouvriers, 180; angleironsmiths, 84; assemblers, 88, assistants, 178, 180, 190 n.8, 193 n.70; bevellers, 89, 93, 101, 150, 180; boilermakers, 89-90, 96, 99, 159, 169 n.l 1; caulkers, 146 n.87; cutters, 89, 91; chauffeur, 88; drillers, 89, 180; drillers-aides, 178; electricians, 188; forgeworkers, 8990, 150, 178, 184-85, 190 n.9, 193 n.73; fitters, 85, 88-90, 93, 96, 101, 150-51, 169 n.l 1, 188, 193 nn.70, 73; ironsmiths, 88, 180; joiners, 96, 99, 107 n.l9, 150, 186; Machine tool workers, 89, 150; metal trades, 79,84,86,88,93,96,100,109 n.61; modelers, 150; outfitters, 8586, 94, 96; painters, 96, 178, 186, 190 n.8; piercers, 89, 193 n.73; platers, 84, 88, 91, 101, 188; plumbers, 96, 180, 193 n.73; punchers, 89, 93; shearers, 93, 101; strikers, 89, 93, 103, 180, 183, 188, 193 nn.70, 73; tinsmiths, 180; tracers, 84, 88-89,146 n.86; turners, 89, 150, 169 n.l 1. See also Mousses; Riveters; Ship production; Shipwrights Shipping companies; Compagnie des Paquebot Transatlantique, 43, 69 n.l8; development, 15, 28, 32 n.32, 43; Messageries Maritimes, 53, 69 n.21, 74 n.96; and subsidies, 43, 4 5 48, 50-51, 54, 56, 58, 67, 69 n.7.

231 See also Transat Ships; accessories, 81, 85, 106 n.7; accommodations, 81; boilers, 57, 72 n.55; canoes, 62; cargo 40, 76 n.141, 96; custom-made, 86; Diderot, 64, 96; foreign, 15, 45, 49, 51; France, 63-64, 67, 78 n.l60, 81,85,94-96, 106 n.6; Imperatrice-Eugenie, 26; Lafayette, 100; launching, 27, 83, 180; La Lorraine, 62, 77 n.l49, 92, 100, 113 n. 105, 191 n.26; luxury liners, 81-82, 85, 96; Mauretania, 85, 126, 128, 144 n.65; market for, 41, 80; military, 60, 96; Normandie, 64; paddle steamers, 15; passenger, 40, 81, 111 n.79, 136; Rochambeau, 94-95; sail, 50, 53-54, 56, 74, nn.90- 91,77 n.l51,85, 96; La Savoie, 62; skiffs, 62; speed, 81; steamships, 15, 54, 56-57, 74 n.90, 75 n.l 13, 128; steel and iron, 56; transoceanic liners, 49, 53; warships 76 n. 141; weight, 111 n.79; wooden 49,81 Shipwright, 83-84, 86-88, 90, 93-94, 96, 100-101, 107n.l9, 107n.24, l l l n . 9 3 , 128-133, 145 n.72, 146 n.87, 182-83, 185-86, 188, 193 n.70 Shipyards; Bordeaux, 45, 60, 62-63, 76 n.141, 84, 100; France, 13, 59, 72 n. 58,76nn.l32, 141,78n.l74; Greenock, Scotland, 14; Le Havre, 63, 84, 139; infrastructure, 82-83, 91-93; Jollet et Babin, 20; military, 81; Marseilles, 45, 59-60, 63, 76, n.141, 90, 103, 139; 45; Mean and Rose 14, 20, 35 n.63, 128-29; Paimboeuf, 128; Nantes, 20, 45, 139; Petit-Quevilly, 21; Port-deBouc, 103; Philadelphia, 84,91, 101; LaRochelle, 139; SaintNazaire, 111 n.86, 129; La Seyne, 78 n.174; wooden, 82-84, 88, 100. See also Loire; Great Britain; Penhouet Shorter, Edward, 80 Sider, Gerald, 3, 116 Social history, 3,6, 195 Socialism; deputies, 152, 154-55;

232 leaders, 155-57; politics, 151, 15960, 162-63,164-65, 167-68, 172 nn.91, 99,110; reception, 152,166; regional tour, 152-53, schism, 16165, 172 n.l05; Trignac, 153. See also L'Emancipation Social; L'Egaux Societe des Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire, see Loire yard Societe Francaise d'Electro-Metellurgie, 54 Souvestre, Dr Emil, 11 Steerage, 106 n.7 Stendhal, Maurice, 11 Strikes; coal haulers, 158-59; coalition, 184-86; and deadlines; 65; dock, 158-59; 1861, 182; 1882, 152, 184-85; 1885, 152; 1889; 156, 177-78, 183, 192 n.48; 1892, 152, 156, 184, 192 nn.56, 60; 1893, 152, 158, 182-84, 192 n.52; 1894, 65; 1898, 1,178-79, 184; 1899, 64, 178, 182, 185, 190 nn. 15-16; and employment, 65; and industrial production, 80; 1900, 179-80, 183, 191 n.26; 1901, 1-2, 183; 1906, 65, 180, 186, 191 n.27; 1907, 65, 181, 191 n.36; 1910, 186; 1911, 188; 1912, 188; origins, 175-76; pattern, 80, 150, 177, 179; rolling, 188-89; 103; sailors, 160; trade, 186-89; Trignac, 153-56, 175; and wages, 99, 152. See also Loire; Penhouet; Trignac Subcontracting, 99, 103, 112 n.98, 15253 Subsidies; call for, 44, 46-47; impact 39^11, 59-67; 1881, 20, 49-52, 54, 59-60, 76 n.l29, 184-85, 195; 1893, 52-54, 56-57, 60-62, 83, 74 n.91, 96, 128; 1902, 54-56; 1906, 57; costs, 51; inconsistency, 54, 94; inefficiency, 59; corruption, 53; and labor relations, 40, 64-67; and production, 65-66; and unemployment, 5, 67 Subsidies, construction; 45-47, 49-51, 53, 56-59, expenditures 73 n.83; for sail vessels, 60, 72 n.55, 74 n.87, 75 n.l22,77n.l51 Subsidies, navigation or shipping; 47-

Index 51, 53-60, 60, 73 nn.68, 83; Fileurs de mille, 53 Subsidies, postal, 12-13, 15, 43, 57-58, 60,62,75n.l22,77n.l49 Subsidies, rapid transport, 58, 60, 62 Syndicat Intercommunal de la Grande Briere, 121, 125, 128, 142 n.25, 144 n.59,60, 145n.85 Tariffs; vessels, 14-15, materials, 43, 45; Meline, 52 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 86 Third Republic; economic policies, 39, 46, 67; industrial policies, 4, 115; state intervention, 49, 51, 66. See also Subsidies Thomas, Albert, 88, 109 n.60 Tilly, Charles, 80 Tonnage; British share, 42; duties, 45; French share, 42; produced 41, 45; sail, 74 nn.90-91, 111 n.79 Tools, 1,83,88 Tournadour, M., 158 Toussaint, Edmond, 154-56, 169 n.26 Treaty of 1860, 14,45,47 Transat; Board of Directors, 48, 60, 113 n.l03; bonus, 99; contracts, 66; 1858 losses, 48; 1861 study, 42; 1881 law, 51; 1893 law, 53; emigration traffic 34 n.57,44, 106 n.7; founding, 12-13, 15-16, 71 n. 44; 71 n. 45; labor recruitment, 24, 36 n.85; leaders 35 n.62; luxury liners, 81; merchandise tonnage, 19; newspaper, 82; passenger traffic, 19; penalty, 112 n.l03; profitability, 19, 22; reorganization 34 n.54; as shipper, 48; as shipbuilder, 48, 106 n.10; state bailout, 48, 71 n.46; stockholders, 17; 19; 20, 37 n.72; subsidies 31 nn.19, 21, 32, nn.28, 31, 48, 57-58; 75 n. 122. See also Penhouet; Ships; Subsidies Le Travailleur de VOuest, 160, 165 Trignac, 24, 84, 134, 139, 149, 153-56, 158-59, 162, 164, 166-67, 197 Tuleve,M., 163 Unemployment, 17, 40, 60, 66, 161; Bordeaux, 60, 62; for Brierons, 131, 136, 139; Committee of the

Index Unemployed, 66; delegation, 66; as disciplinary tool, 4, 64; Le Havre, 62,76n.l32,94;andlabor organization, 149, 153, 156, 166, 187, 196; layoffs, 59; Marseilles, 60; Ouvriers sans travail, 139; procedural, 94-95, 102; and riveters, 103; Saint-Nazaire; 4-5, 62, 76 n.129; La Seyne, 62; in strikes, 66, 77 n.142; and subsidies, 4,195-96; Trignac, 153; for urban workers, 138-39; and worker affiliations, 6467, 93-94 Union Syndical Metallurgique, 151 United States; Civil War, 15; postal subsidies, 68 n.6 Urban workers, 104; associations, 135, 197; and Brierons, 119, 138; community, 3-5, 119, 134-40, 198; employment, 137-38; housing, 138; identity, 119,140, 196; language, 135; migration, 134-35, 137-38; origins, 134; Ouvriers sans travail, 139; resources, 136, 139-40; settlement, 136-37; strike activity, 152, 175-84, 188-89, 193 n.72; strike agenda, 5, 176-77, 183-85, 198; unemployment, 139, 142 n.21. See also Brierons; Workers Van Young, Eric, 117, 119 Vendee, 23 Wages, 17, 21, 34 n.76, 35 n.65, 60, 62-63, 80, 96, 103, 112 n.97, 147 n.l 11, 152, 196; minimum 178, 180, 186-89; remuneration systems, 93, 96, 99; uniform, 178-81, 183, 188-89, 198 Women; 130-32, 136; flower-making; 131-132, 137; linen maid, 136; occupation; seamstress, 131, 136; servant, 136; tailor, 131, 136, 147, n. 117. See also Brierons; Family; Marriage; Saint-Nazaire; Urban Workers Worker, semi-skilled, 80, 101, 130, 137, 178-79, 182 Worker, shipbuilding; advancement, 176, 185, 198; affiliations, 102-3;

233 aristocracy, 83; Belgian, 155; comparison, 78 n. 171; composition, 81, 87-90, 93; and contracts, 6667; criticism of, 166, 173 n.l20; dock, 18; experience, 42, 103; grievances, 93, 175-98; homogenous 1-2, 4; irreplaceable, 103; labor unions, 151; and layoffs, 100; rural, 104; strength, 102, skill, 109 n.57; labor supply, 87; layoffs, 40, 60; 104; management, 103, 183; market, 17,41, 70 n. 24, 86,94; skill, 84-90; specialization, 42; strength, 102-3; technology, 91, 196; transformation, 17, 100; visibility, 103. See also Brieron; Shipbuilding trades; Unemployment; Urban Worker Worker, skilled, 4-5, 80, 86-90, 91, 93, 104, 129-30, 137, 178-80, 182; labor agenda, 101, 114n.l27; strikes, 100, 175-76, 199 Worker, unskilled, 80, 87, 103-4, 129, 135-136, 145 n.81, 150, 178-80, 182, 193 n.73 Worker-peasant, 5, 129-30, 143 n.36, 148n.l34 Working-class politics, 149-74. See also Trignac Workplace; autonomy, 102-3, 184, 188; chestnut tree, 185, 192 n.58; conditions, 3, 100, 103-4; discipline, 40, 99; fragmentation, 119; hours, 182; midday break, 1, 183, 186; 184; model of production, 2-4, 7980, 86, 196; surveillance 80, 92-93, 96, 99, 102, 184, 186; process, 9293, 115; rules, 75 n.l 17; semaine anglaise, 188; site, 93-94, 104; standardized tasks, 80; training, 91; work crew, 103, 176-77; workday, 183; work week, 62-63. See also Strikes; Shipbuilding production

About the Author LESLIE A. SCHUSTER is Associate Professor of History at Rhode Island College. Her research focuses on modern labor history and cultural studies. She teaches courses in European history, comparative history, and historical methodology.