An Age to Work: Working-Class Childhood in Third Republic Paris 0197638457, 9780197638453

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An Age to Work

An Age to Work Working-​Class Childhood in Third Republic Paris M I R A N DA S AC H S

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2023 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Sachs, Miranda, author. Title: An age to work : working-class childhood in third republic Paris / Miranda Sachs. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022028807 (print) | LCCN 2022028808 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197638453 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197638460 | ISBN 9780197638484 | ISBN 9780197638477 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Child labor—France—Paris—History—19th century. | Child labor—France—Paris—History—20th century. | Child labor—Law and legislation—France—Paris—History—19th century. | Child labor—Law and legislation—France—Paris—History—20th century. | Children—France—Paris—Social conditions—19th century. | Children—France—Paris—Social conditions—20th century. | Paris (France)—History—1870–1940. Classification: LCC HD6250 .F82 S33 2022 (print) | LCC HD6250 .F82 (ebook) | DDC 331.3/1094409034—dc23/eng/20220629 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022028807 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022028808 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197638453.001.0001 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

In memory of my grandparents, Marilyn and Morris Sachs

Contents Acknowledgments 

Introduction: Defining Childhood in Third Republic Paris 

ix

1

1. Child Labor Legislation and the Regulation of Age 

16

2. “An Apprenticeship for Life”: Training the Republican Worker 

40

3. Creating the Juvenile Delinquent 

65

4. “An Insurmountable Distaste for Work”: Juvenile Delinquents in the Archives 

83

5. Blurred Spaces: Working-​Class Girlhood 

100

6. “The Collaboration of the Crowd”: Age and Identity in Working-​Class Neighborhoods 

123

7. Interwar Reform 

148

Conclusion  Notes  Bibliography  Index 

172 177 217 233

Acknowledgments My favorite part of most academic books is the acknowledgments section. My own acknowledgments section is bittersweet. In the decade since I began graduate school, the humanities have been in free fall. My generation of humanists has absorbed the cost. Although I am beginning a tenure-​track position, I wrote this book while working as a contingent faculty member at three different institutions. Many of my peers, including many of the people I thank below, have had to leave academia. Generations of future students are poorer for it. I have had the pleasure of studying and working alongside many thoughtful, generous scholars. John Merriman boisterously welcomed me to Yale and remained an enthusiastic supporter of my work for over a decade. It is strange to write about John in the past tense, as he was such a vibrant person. I so regret that I cannot share this final version of the book with him, as he taught me much about combing through the archives to find les parisiens des quartiers populaires. Jay Winter has posed many key questions that have helped me clarify my work and has provided numerous dinners at his home in Paris. Laura Lee Downs helped me appreciate the complexities of the history of childhood. She has been a generous mentor since my first semester of graduate school. To Phil Nord, I remain indebted for helping me begin this journey. At Oxford University Press, I would like to thank Nancy Toff. She saw the potential in my book manuscript and has guided me through the publishing process. Zara Cannon-​Mohammed has worked hard to prepare my manuscript for publication. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments. I am grateful to Adrienne Petty for connecting me to Nancy. At each of the three departments where I have taught, my colleagues have provided invaluable insights into my work and to navigating the publishing process. My colleagues at William and Mary helped me to shape my initial argument and provided the funding that enabled me to add a chapter on the interwar period. My colleagues at Denison read multiple chapters and helped me conceive of the project as a book. As I complete this manuscript, my

x Acknowledgments colleagues at Texas State have continued to pose important questions and to guide me through the publishing process. I would like to thank the Swinney Faculty Writing Group for reading and commenting on one of my chapters. Many historians have taken time to read sections of this book. I would like to thank Bruno Cabanes, Sara Damiano, Colin Heywood, Sarah Horwitz, Charlotte Kiechel, Ken Margerison, Susan Whitney, and Shao-​yun Yang for agreeing to read portions of the manuscript. I would also like to acknowledge Nimisha Barton, Sarah Curtis, Quentin Deluermoz, Paula Fass, Sarah Fishman, Jérôme Krop, Lisa Morrison, Briony Neilson, Jessica Pliley, Caroline Ritter, Eleanor Rivera, Rebecca Rogers, Sophia Rosenfeld, Andrew Israel Ross, Birgitte Søland, and Holly White for sharing their knowledge and expertise. Alice Conklin welcomed me into The Ohio State University French history community and has been unbelievably generous with her time and advice. I would like to thank her and her students at OSU for reading and commenting on one of my chapters. Generous funding from the Fulbright Foundation, the George Lurcy Foundation, the Macmillan Center at Yale University, the Society for French Historical Studies, and the European Studies Program at William & Mary allowed me to conduct research in France. I am grateful for the work of Caroline Piketty and the staff at the Archives Nationales; to Vincent Tuchais and the staff of the Archives de Paris; and the staffs of the Archives de la Préfecture de Police, the Musée Sociale, the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, the Archives de Catholicité, the Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, and the Bibliothèque Nationale Française, especially the librarian who suggested a number of the memoirs in Chapter 6. Thanks, too, to Florence Rodriguez at the École Estienne and the late Soeur Fromaget at the Archives of the Filles de la Charité. The highlight of the last decade has been the friends I’ve met along the way. Many of my fellow graduate students in New Haven deserve thanks for celebrating the joyful moments and providing support in the difficult ones. Among my fellow historians, I want to recognize Catherine Arnold, Kate Brackney, John Burden, Sarah Ifft Decker, Rachel Johnston-​White, Mireille Pardon, Eric Smith, and Amy Watson. Katherine Hindley, Angus Ledingham, and Shari Yosinski have helped me laugh since the first week of graduate school. In Williamsburg, VA, I shared many happy evenings with Miles Canady, Matthew Franco, Amy Lemoncelli, and Monica Streifer. I was fortunate to find friends in Columbus, OH including Dan Blim, Jessica Burch, Mary Anne and John Cusato, Can Dalyan, Leslie Hempson, Lance

Acknowledgments  xi and Lauren Ingwersen, Julie Mujic, Mariana Saavedra Espinosa, and Adrian Young. A growing circle of friends in San Marcos, TX has provided welcome distractions as I completed the final revisions on this book. In France, I have wandered and debated with Baptiste Bonnefoy and Delia Guijarro Arribas, Meg Cychosz, and Mia Schatz. Thea Goldring has been an inciteful interlocutor on many occasions. Megan Brown has not only read a significant portion of the manuscript but has also been a tireless mentor and friend. My French adopted family, the Moatis, have always welcomed me to Paris. Hila Calev and Aaron Hosios have provided years of generosity and friendship. My Lowell crew—​Theresa Chan, Jenny C., Angela Huang, Merry Tu, Cynthia Yee, Diana Yeung, and Eliza Yu-​Dietz—​has remained an important fixture in my life for the better part of two decades. To my students, you have challenged me and made me a better historian. To those of you who took classes on childhood or on youth culture, I am still reflecting on many of the questions you have posed. Claire Nevin, Nina Whidden, and Vaidehi Kudhyadi have contributed to this book through their work as research assistants. Finally, my family deserves credit for stubbornly believing this book could exist. My mom, Anne, encouraged me to be a reader and first sparked my love of history by introducing me to Eleanor of Aquitaine. My dad, Zack, has provided decades of editorial assistance in both French and English. His passion for France inspired mine. My younger sister Lena is my oldest friend and ally. Colette, Rae, and Gabriel have offered hospitality and advice. Ann, Paul, Sarah, Samuel, and Nathan have given me a second home in Tacoma. Justin Randolph has nurtured me with his humor, his cooking, and his steadfast support. Through our discussions and through his scholarship, he exemplifies how to interrogate systems of inequality. This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandparents, Marilyn and Morris Sachs. My grandpa attended a technical high school in the 1930s and was able to explain the machinery in the photos of the Parisian vocational schools to me. Through her books and her stories, my grandmother piqued my interest in the past. Above all, they devoted their lives to creating and to giving. Sections of Chapter 3 first appeared in “ ‘A Sad and . . . Odious Industry’: The Problem of Child Begging in Late Nineteenth-​Century Paris,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 10, 2 (Spring 2017): 188–​205. Copyright The Johns Hopkins University Press. Some of the material in Chapters 1 and 4 appears in “ ‘But the Child is Flighty, Playful, Curious’: Working-​Class Boyhood and the Policing of Play,”

xii Acknowledgments Historical Reflections/​Réflexions Historiques 45, 2 (Summer 2019): 7–​27. Copyright Berghahn Book. A portion of Chapter 5 is published in “When the Republic Came for the Nuns: Laicization, Labor Laws, and Religious Orders,” French Historical Studies 42, 3 (August 2019): 423–​451. Copyright Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Republished by permission of the publisher. www.duk​eupr​ess.edu.

Introduction Defining Childhood in Third Republic Paris

“Take him from school . . . of an age to work . . . to earn his living,” so concludes Auguste Brepson’s semi-​autobiographical novel, Un gosse (A Kid).1 Published in 1928, the book documents the childhood of an impoverished, young Parisian. In the novel’s final scene, the protagonist’s grandmother, who is his caretaker, dies. Through the fog of his grief, he overhears the adults around him planning his future. In his novel, Brepson’s family decides when he is “of an age to work.” But for most working-​class children in Third Republic France, the government’s child labor laws dictated how and when they entered the workforce. The state, not the family, decided when the first stage of childhood came to an end. In the twenty-​first century, childhood unfolds and ends according to proscribed, fairly universal milestones based on numeric age. Until the late nineteenth century, this was not the case for working-​class Parisians. The barriers separating stages within childhood were not precise, numeric markers. Instead, childhood was more fluid.2 The one constant was that parents and guardians expected children to contribute their labor and, eventually, their wages to support the family. A change in family circumstances, such as the death of a relative, determined when young people entered the formal workforce and earned compensation.3 From its inception in 1870, the French Third Republic attempted to carve out childhood as a distinct, standardized stage of life. Through laws on labor, education, and delinquency, its legislators imposed numeric barriers around and within childhood. These regulations instituted universal standards for when young people began school and when they were permitted to work.4 In 1912, the Republic established a juvenile court for young offenders, ensuring that the legal system dealt with juvenile delinquents separately from adults.5 Legislators and reformers designed these policies to protect children. Influenced by new ideas about children and their development, reformers

An Age to Work. Miranda Sachs, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197638453.003.0001

2  An Age to Work created classrooms and juvenile detention facilities to cater to young people’s unique needs as developing beings. But gender-​and class-​based variations persisted within childhood. Even by the 1950s, almost a century after the Republic’s founding (and a decade after its ignominious collapse during World War II), only thirty-​two thousand French youths graduated academic secondary school each year. By this period, the population of metropolitan France was around forty-​two million.6 Why did disparities remain in this seemingly universal life stage? The answer lies both with the legislators and reformers who created social welfare policies as well as with the functionaries and parents who had more control over young people’s day-​to-​day activities. In the first place, when republican legislators and reformers placed age-​based regulations on working-​class childhood, they hoped that these young people would grow up to become productive workers. They tried to introduce a more uniform version of working-​class childhood, not to eliminate all the variations within childhood. Creating labor laws, primary schools, and vocational training programs were all attempts to standardize how working-​ class childhood unfolded. In establishing vocational training programs, the Republic sought to ensure that once a young person left primary school, he or she received the technical and moral education necessary to become a skilled worker-​citizen. Likewise, the expansion of welfare programs and the creation of the juvenile justice system removed young people from any influences that might limit their desire to work and steered them toward a productive adulthood. For elites, the regulation of age was a tool of social control. By placing more regulations on childhood, the state gained more ability to supervise children’s development. The archives of the functionaries responsible for implementing these policies capture how this worked in practice. Labor inspectors, police officers, and vocational school directors all disseminated new ideas about childhood, while simultaneously ensuring that working-​class children could and would mature into contributing members of the workforce. When a labor inspector visited a factory, he relied on quantifiable measurements, such as young workers’ ages and physical development, to determine if young workers belonged in the factory. Examining magistrates in the criminal justice system (juges d’instruction) considered children’s intellectual maturity when recommending a sentence. These individuals all worked to protect young people and promote their normal development. Through their actions, they defined childhood as a specific life stage. But these individuals were also concerned with young people’s mental and physical capacity to

Introduction  3 labor. For instance, police officers investigated an arrested youth’s employment history. Education reformers designed vocational school curriculums to direct youths toward more regular employment. Working-​class parents clashed with functionaries about how to structure childhood, but they agreed that their offspring needed to labor. Within working-​ class communities, age remained more fluid. Parents resisted or subverted laws that limited their ability to put their offspring to work. However, the disagreements between parents and functionaries were over when young people would enter the workforce, not whether they would. In many instances, parents were even more eager than state actors to place their children into productive roles. Many turned to state agencies for assistance with children who could not or would not work. Parents helped to ensure that their offspring entered the labor force as soon as they were legally able (and sometimes before they were). Through its regulation of childhood, the Republic also reinforced the separation between girls’ and boys’ experiences of childhood. While child labor laws and vocational schools created a more uniform path through childhood for boys, the life course for girls remained less fixed. Motherhood loomed over girls’ lives, shaping their experiences as young workers. The stages within girlhood were less precise, because girls, no matter their age, were always preparing for motherhood. They could only enter into professions that resembled domestic work, such as trades in the garment industry. These professions tended to escape the notice of labor inspectors. Girls were more likely to enter the workforce prematurely or work in conditions that violated the child labor laws. This lack of state supervision characterized girls’ time in the workforce. The creation of gender-​segregated vocational schools also encoded specific trades as masculine or feminine. By introducing age-​ based regulations on childhood, the Republic encoded and enforced the norm that working-​class children had to grow into contributing members of the economy. As a result, the laws and institutions it designed to protect and nurture working-​class children also formalized class-​and gender-​based divisions within childhood.

Childhood before the Republic As industrialization and urbanization accelerated in the early nineteenth century, French elites started to regard young people as a distinct legal

4  An Age to Work category.7 In the late 1820s, reformers began calling for legislation to protect the youngest members of the industrial workforce. This idea gained support over the course of the 1830s.8 In 1841, the Chamber of Deputies under the July Monarchy passed France’s first child labor legislation. This law barred children younger than eight from working and limited the workday for youths under sixteen.9 Although the Napoleonic Code had included separate rules for sentencing minors, it was only in the 1830s that legal scholars advocated for separate correctional facilities for young offenders.10 In 1831, Paris opened the first prison for juvenile offenders.11 In the discussions that led to these changes, reformers and legislators began to identify young people as a distinct category of the laboring and criminal populations. The 1830s also marked a key moment in the development of education for the popular classes. In 1833, the July Monarchy passed the Guizot Law, which required every commune in France to have a public primary school.12 In the same decade, Catholic reformers opened the first patronages—​local centers that provided supplemental vocational training for apprentices and young workers.13 Both schools and patronages were age-​segregated spaces that catered to young people. July Monarchy legislators and Catholic reformers also envisioned such spaces as providing lessons on obedience and morality—​the sorts of lessons that might keep a working-​class population in check. The danger that industrial workspaces posed to young people’s minds and bodies inspired many of these reforms. In the agricultural economy, children labored alongside their parents. The home and the workspace overlapped.14 Industrialization removed children from the home and their families. Girls and boys participated in almost every sector of industrial production. In the textile industry, they represented almost twenty percent of the workforce.15 Most young people in industry were teen-​aged, but some employers hired children as young as seven.16 In factories, children interacted with machines that could damage their fragile bodies. It is no coincidence that reformers’ first calls to regulate the work of young people coincided with the acceleration of the Industrial Revolution in France in the 1830s. Industrialization also upended how young people trained for work. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, elites began agonizing over the “apprenticeship crisis,” as traditional modes of training young workers for skilled trades fell into disuse.17 The breakdown of the apprenticeship system hastened children’s entry into crowded, industrial workspaces. It also threatened the craft industries that had traditionally been crucial to the French economy.18

Introduction  5 Urbanization, too, drew elite attention to working-​class children. As industrialization accelerated, people migrated to cities. Diseases flourished in the crowded neighborhoods of working-​class Paris. While it is unclear if these areas also bred crime, elites certainly worried about the “dangerous classes.”19 Social economists, hygienists, and Catholic reformers theorized that poverty spawned immorality and disorder.20 Middle-​class reformers believed the solution was to impose the bourgeois family model onto the laboring classes.21 To that end, they expanded aide to abandoned babies and unwed mothers.22 They also tried to create better housing for the laboring classes.23 Many of these reformers targeted children. In placing limits on children’s ability to participate in the workforce, reformers sought to introduce a more middle-​class version of childhood to the laboring classes.24 By encouraging the working classes to care for their children, they attempted to promote domesticity. Through regulating childhood, reformers and legislators tried to ensure that working-​class children followed a prescribed path to adulthood. While many of these early reforms had mixed results—​the law of 1841 was unevenly enforced, the first Parisian juvenile prisons closed, and it took decades before some localities opened a primary school—​they laid a framework for the Third Republic.25 These reforms established young people as a distinct component of the laboring classes. They also introduced the idea that regulating childhood, and that creating a particular path to adulthood for the laboring classes, was a potential avenue for attacking the perceived immorality and unruliness of the laboring classes.

The Third Republic In 1938, just two years before the Third Republic’s collapse, Gustave Monod wrote, “Though we might very well be a democracy, it’s all too clear that not all our institutions are democratic.”26 Monod, the director of the Academy of Paris, was critiquing the education system. But his statement highlights a tension within the Third Republic. The regime proclaimed its commitment to the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution while excluding all but white men from citizenship. Founded in 1870, the Republic was an outlier in nineteenth-​century Europe. It did not have a monarch. Instead, the Chamber of Deputies, elected by universal manhood suffrage, governed the country. After 1877, the political leaders of the Republic were primarily committed to representative

6  An Age to Work democracy and a secular state. While traditional elites, namely the landed nobility, held power in most of the rest of Europe, the bourgeoisie controlled the Republic’s institutions.27 But only men enjoyed these privileges. Male legislators cemented women’s exclusion from full citizenship by passing laws that defined them as a separate, vulnerable category of the population. For many male politicians, women could only contribute to the Republic as mothers. French women did not gain the right to vote until after World War II.28 Whether through the regulation of prostitution, of women’s work, or of maternal care, the Republic placed women’s bodies under public scrutiny.29 These policies reinforced the patriarchal order and the division between male and female citizenship.30 Men wielded political power; women’s bodies were subject to state oversight. In addition, the greater regulation of women’s work resulted in their spatial segregation within the workforce.31 Similarly, in codifying the colonial subject as a distinct legal category, the Republic excluded the majority of non-​European people in its empire from citizenship. Under the Republic, the French Empire expanded to include much of North Africa, Southeast Asia, and Sub-​Saharan Africa. While France promised citizenship to its imperial subjects, few ever gained it.32 In 1881, the same year that the Republic made primary education free, it passed the Code de indigénat in Algeria. Building on half a century of colonial rule, this code defined non-​European subjects in Algeria as a legal category and subjected them to harsher legal punishments.33 By World War I, this notion of the indigénat existed throughout the French Empire and “provided legal cover . . . for colonial coercion.”34 The enforcement of these laws bolstered the separation between French citizens and imperial subjects. The growing state bureaucracy within metropolitan France and its colonies “worked to particularize segments of the population.”35 The experience of white women in metropolitan France was vastly different from that of colonial subjects in Africa and Southeast Asia. But for both women and colonial subjects, republican legislators singled out these groups as distinct legal categories and subjected them to greater state oversight. As such, the legal codification of these categories formalized a social and political hierarchy dominated by French men. The Republic’s approach to women and colonial subjects has striking parallels to its treatment of working-​class children. By the final decades of the nineteenth century, many French elites regarded children as vulnerable beings who required special care and

Introduction  7 attention. In this period, “a concern to save children for the enjoyment of childhood” increasingly motivated reformers across Europe and North America. These reformers pushed for laws to protect working children and opened institutions to protect the vulnerable.36 In France, a growing number of doctors published texts on the health and hygiene of young people. They were principally concerned with preventing infant mortality, but such discussions helped to create a distinct field of pediatric medicine.37 For the French, the health of their youngest citizens held particular importance. Since the mid-​nineteenth century, the birthrate in France had been declining. After the defeat in the Franco–​Prussian War, anxiety over the birthrate increased.38 From the Republic’s earliest years, legislators encoded working-​class children as a distinct category of the population. Many of the Republic’s first social welfare reforms focused on young people. In 1874, it barred children younger than twelve from the workforce and established limits on the employment of those under sixteen.39 The education laws of 1881 and 1882 made primary education free, secular, and mandatory for children between the ages of six and thirteen. In 1889, the Republic passed a law permitting the state to remove children from parents it deemed immoral.40 Alongside these national reforms, the city of Paris established vocational schools for young workers.41 It created separate institutions to treat vulnerable children and young delinquents.42 Although these reforms built on the projects of previous regimes, the Republic’s reforms were more effective in codifying childhood as a legal category. The Republic’s laws created a legal definition of childhood and established numeric barriers on when it began and ended. The expansion of the state bureaucracy and the professionalization of the Parisian police ensured that a corps of state employees would enforce these laws.43 Labor inspectors surveilled workspaces and police investigated juvenile criminals. As labor inspectors cited errant factory owners or police determined whether to remove young people from their parents, they disseminated a more bureaucratic, modern way of measuring childhood. During the interwar period, functionaries drew on the emerging fields of pediatric medicine and psychology to assist young people. Vocational guidance centers measured a young person’s physical strength and intelligence. Social workers assessed young delinquents’ physical and psychological health.44 Their work further defined childhood as a distinct life stage.

8  An Age to Work These regulations also led to the spatial separation of young people from the adult world. Even by the end of the nineteenth century, most working-​ class youngsters spent their time in mixed-​age spaces. They lived in crowded apartments, mingled in the streets with people of all ages, and trained alongside older workers.45 Young workers were smaller and less skilled than their adult companions in the workforce, but they were an integral part of production in many workshops. They were responsible for removing sheets of paper from printing presses or transporting molten glass from ovens in glassworks. In setting limits on young people’s work, labor laws forced employers to regard young workers as a distinct category. In some cases, this involved eliminating them from production. In other instances, employers created separate spaces within their workspaces where young workers trained. The expansion of vocational schools and courses to train young workers further removed them from production. Although I do not focus on leisure, the summer camps, after-​school programs, or scouting organizations that developed during this period also removed young people from the adult world.46 By carving out childhood as a life stage and by removing young people to these spaces, republican legislators and reformers were not just protecting youngsters. They also gave the state more power to supervise the development of working-​class children. But this more uniform version of childhood did not align with the way working-​class families conceived of childhood. As Brepson’s story demonstrates, a young person’s family usually determined when she or he entered the workforce. Just as they had in the agricultural economy, children labored from a young age. They ran errands for their parents or tended younger siblings. Girls in particular were expected to help out in the home. To a certain extent, the working classes did have to accept the Republic’s new version of childhood. Children under thirteen disappeared from the industrial labor force. But the archival record suggests that parents found ways to challenge the Republic’s version of childhood. Many parents wrote letters asking for exemptions to child labor laws. They removed their children prematurely from apprenticeships. A significant portion of the students at the city of Paris’ vocational schools did not complete their training, suggesting that parents did not agree with the way the schools altered the life course. Working-​class parents expected their children to contribute to the family economy as soon as they were physically capable. The child labor laws merely changed when that labor could be remunerated.

Introduction  9

The Education System One of the Third Republic’s most lasting legacies is its public primary school system. This system epitomizes the contradictions of the Republic. Republican legislators made primary school free and mandatory for all. However, as Gustave Monod stressed, the education system had its faults. Both the structure of the education system and the content it dispensed reinforced existing class-​and gender-​based divisions.47 On the surface, the Republic’s primary schools were instrumental in creating a more uniform experience of childhood. According to the Jules Ferry Laws of 1881 and 1882, all children between the ages of six and thirteen were supposed to pass through the Republic’s primary schools. In these schools, primary school teachers were responsible for instilling children with (secular) republican values.48 Eugen Weber has argued that the schools were instrumental in creating a more cohesive national identity, although other historians have contested this claim.49 Certainly, illiteracy declined. At the start of the Republic, around fifteen percent of military recruits could neither read nor write. By World War I, fewer than three percent fell into this category.50 By the 1930s, one-​half of Parisian children were able to pass the exam for the certificate of primary studies.51 To pass this exam, a student needed to demonstrate a measure of proficiency in math, reading, and history.52 The expansion of primary education ensured that an overwhelming majority of French girls and boys spent their days studying alongside their peers rather than laboring in mixed-​age spaces. And yet, primary schools did not facilitate much social mobility. Schools for the popular classes reminded students of their role in society by drilling them in the importance of “hard work.”53 In the working-​class neighborhoods of Paris, classes were crowded. Even by the early twentieth century, classes in these neighborhoods had between forty and fifty students.54 Given that most working-​class children left school after turning thirteen, they gained basic literacy and numeracy, but access to elite culture remained beyond their grasp. In addition, up to ten percent of Parisian children managed to elude truancy officers.55 Working-​class youths had little access to secondary education. Most began working at thirteen, an experience that was quite different from their bourgeois peers who continued to attend school. Only a small fraction of the population received a classical secondary education. To prepare for these schools, elite boys attended elementary schools rather than the primary

10  An Age to Work schools that the majority of children attended. As a result, even from age six, the path of these boys diverged from the rest of the population.56 The Third Republic expanded the number of écoles primaires supérieures, schools that provided a modern post-​primary education to the middle classes and the highest tiers of the laboring classes.57 Because they required youths to remain in school when they were legally able to labor, the écoles primaires supérieures were not an option for many working-​class youths. Technical education, such as the vocational schools, remained a separate system.58 Only a fraction of the laboring classes even attended formal vocational schools. Working-​class parents also contributed to the lack of mobility by removing their children from the school system. The majority of truant primary school students were older students who left school early to enter the workforce.59 Many parents were loath to send their offspring to secondary school. Parents wanted their children to begin working as soon as they could. When the city of Paris queried a group of primary school girls in 1877 about their future plans, a handful indicated that they wanted to continue their education, but that their parents needed them to begin earning a wage.60 Many working-​ class parents could not afford for their children to attend school long enough to obtain the education necessary for a white-​collar position. In addition, the education system reinforced the separation between the genders. Until the 1960s, most French children attended gender-​segregated primary schools.61 Textbooks reminded girls and boys of their separate duties in society. Girls received a curriculum designed to prepare them for motherhood.62 Public secondary schools for girls only existed in France after the passage of the Victor Drury Law in 1867.63 As part of his program of expanding public education, Jules Ferry attempted to increase the number of secondary schools for girls with the Camille Sée Law of 1880.64 In these schools, young women still studied a distinct curriculum from their male peers. However, some of the graduates of these schools did become teachers or took on other professional jobs.65 In the 1920s, some secondary schools for boys began admitting girls, but many remained gender-​segregated.66 For the laboring classes, the divisions in post-​primary education were even firmer. Vocational training programs remained gender-​segregated. If working-​class girls pursued post-​primary education, they received it in institutions that prepared them for professions considered to be female-​appropriate. Even as the school system perpetuated class-​and gender-​based divisions within childhood, it was part of a larger network of programs republican legislators developed for working-​class children. To understand why

Introduction  11 republican legislators built the school system the way they did, we need to consider how they envisioned childhood. To do so requires studying the school system within the larger context of the republican welfare state. Examining the creation and operation of that welfare state shows how republican elites, everyday functionaries, and working-​class families conceived of childhood. By analyzing the development of welfare policies for young people, we can interrogate the history of working-​class childhood as a category.

Defining Childhood The young people in this book are work-​aged, but the borders around this category were fluid. In 1870, a ten-​year-​old could work. In 1937, a thirteen-​ year-​old could not. Throughout this period, the lower limit of this stage, the barrier between work and school, remained a site of contestation. Many children participated in informal labor long before they entered the workforce. Likewise, the barrier between childhood and adulthood evolved. The 1874 child labor law only applied to young people up to the age of sixteen, whereas the 1892 law raised this age to eighteen. The division between girlhood and womanhood was even more fluid. Many of the provisions of the 1874 law applied to young women up to the age of twenty-​one and the 1892 law included all women. Women always remained in a state of minority, as they never gained full political citizenship. The beginning of formal adulthood was more fixed for men because they began their military service at eighteen and could vote at twenty-​one.67 Based on the juvenile delinquency laws and the 1892 child labor law, I have primarily focused on young people between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, but I do note instances where I found younger children laboring. Why not use “adolescence” to describe this intermediate stage? The use of the terms “adolescence” and “adolescent” increased in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.68 Some labor inspectors did use the term “adolescence” to describe the population they surveyed. By the 1890s, a number of educational reformers and psychologists were focused on dealing with youngsters between school and adulthood. In their discussions, they set out a clear definition for this intermediate stage.69 When Parisian educational reformers created vocational training programs, they catered to teen-​aged workers. Through these schools or classes, reformers tried to standardize

12  An Age to Work young workers’ first years out of primary school. To a certain extent, these reformers were attempting to carve out adolescence within the working-​class life course.70 However, elite conceptions of adolescence did not align with the way the laboring classes envisioned or experienced the years after primary school. Scholars of the Global South have emphasized that “adolescence” is a Eurocentric concept and that European efforts to impose a standardized life course on non-​white populations were a form of cultural imperialism.71 Even within Europe, the initial model of adolescence as an intermediate stage derived from the elite male life course. Between childhood in primary schools and autonomous adulthood, aristocratic and bourgeois boys spent their adolescence in secondary schools.72 The Republic’s efforts to impose this life stage on the working-​class life course had mixed results. Educational reformers never intended to create a universal version of adolescence. They wanted to encode working-​class adolescence as a time to prepare for the workforce. Even so, their vocational schools were only accessible to an elite tier of the working classes. Of the students who attended, many left the schools prematurely, suggesting that their parents did not envision a fixed intermediate stage as a necessary part of working-​class childhood. For girls, the life course was even more fluid. As I have emphasized, ordinary French men and women did not always embrace the way doctors or legislators envisioned childhood. The term adolescence connotes a strict separation between life stages that did not exist for most working-​class children and youths. While I have tried to be precise when assigning terminology to young people, I also must account for the fluidity that remained a feature of the working-​class life course throughout this period. I limit my use of the term “adolescence” to instances where a historical actor specifically employs the term and to my analysis of vocational schools. When I am discussing an individual or a group of young people who have completed primary school, but who are below the age of majority, I use the term “youth.” For primary school students or young people below the legal age to work, I use “child.” But the border between school and work was porous. Many parents tried to place their children into the workforce prematurely. Young people who were in the process of leaving school and entering the workforce do not fit neatly into one category. When I am dealing with a young person on this border, I use “child,” as it is a more inclusive term. When referring to young people under eighteen as a whole, I use “young people,” “youngsters,” or “children.” Similarly, I refer to this stage as “childhood.” From labor inspectors

Introduction  13 compiling reports in the 1870s to social workers reporting on their activities in the 1930s, French officials used the term “child” to refer to this age group. When discussing a young person in relation to his or her parents, I use “child” interchangeably with “son,” “daughter,” or “offspring.” In this instance, I use child to denote a relationship rather than an age group.73 As with many historians of childhood, I have faced the problem of finding sources from the perspective of young people.74 State actors loom large in this book, as they compiled the majority of the sources on which I draw. The few scattered examples I have of young people’s voices from the period, such as a disobedient apprentice’s testimony in a court hearing or girls’ responses to a survey asking them about their future professions, exist in sources produced by state actors. More often, I must rely on sources that describe young people’s actions—​the accident report of an injured worker, the arrest of a thief—​to reconstruct their experiences. The details of the thief ’s arrest suggest that he collaborated with other boys in his neighborhood, that he used a playful pseudonym, that he chose to steal wine for amusement rather than to survive. That the female worker burned her hand while making a hat tells us that she participated in production. But these types of sources rarely include a young person’s point of view. As such, the accident report cannot tell us whether the young worker was worried about her family, and the police record does not reveal whether the young thief stole the wine on a dare. In Chapter 6, I integrate memoirs from individuals who grew up in working-​class neighborhoods in Paris during this period. These memoirs provide a glimpse of young workers’ hopes and dreams, as well as the inner world of working-​class neighborhoods where official actors did not always penetrate. Nevertheless, these sources, too, have their limits. The writers compiled them many years after the events occurred. Most of the writers were artists and/​or activists and so their experiences were exceptional. The mass of young workers who learned a trade, worked twelve-​hour shifts, and sought out amusement at the end of the workday have slipped into obscurity.

Paris The young people who appear in the following pages lived and worked in Paris, a city whose population boomed during the nineteenth century. In the Republic’s first decades, the population of Paris reached its height. In the early 1870s, the city had 1.9 million inhabitants. By the start of World War I,

14  An Age to Work almost three million people lived in the city.75 Most adults living in Paris had been born outside the capital and tens of thousands of migrants continued to flock to the city each year.76 A small but growing minority of Parisians were immigrants, primarily from other European countries.77 At the heart of this city, bourgeois leisure culture flourished.78 In 1853, Napoleon III tasked the Baron George Eugène Haussmann with rebuilding the city. Haussmann ploughed through the working-​class neighborhoods at the heart of the city and created wide-​open boulevards.79 Opened between 1867 and 1905, Paris’ most famous department stores lined these boulevards, their giant glass windows tempting passersby.80 Bourgeois ladies and gentlemen promenaded in the manicured parks of the Tuileries or in smaller local squares.81 Theirs is the world preserved in the sun-​dappled paintings of the Impressionists.82 It was not simply Parisians who took in the delights of the city. In 1889, thirty-​two million people visited the Universal Exposition in the French capital and witnessed the brand-​new spectacle of the Eiffel Tower.83 Pushed to the neighborhoods at the city’s edge, Paris’ laboring classes were a diverse group. Their ranks included women doing piecework in their homes, semi-​skilled metalworkers, and highly trained furniture makers. Even by the first decade of the twentieth century, almost one-​third of workers labored in small ateliers or workshops with fewer than ten people.84 In the Republic’s first decades, the absolute number of workers in certain traditional crafts, such as shoemaking or furniture making, remained constant, but declined as a proportion of the overall population.85 It was in the towns just outside Paris that entrepreneurs opened larger factories.86 Within Paris, the laboring classes lived primarily in the arrondissements at the northeast edge of the capital (the 19th and 20th), but there were also working-​class neighborhoods in the south of the city (at the edge of the 13th and 14th arrondissements). Many skilled workers also lived in the 10th and 11th arrondissements. Crammed into small apartments, families in these communities had limited access to clean water and air. While Haussmann had expanded the city’s sewers to remove urban waste, few buildings in the outer neighborhoods connected to this network.87 In spite of these conditions, the working classes formed communities. To a certain extent, the interaction between the state and children was unique in Paris.88 The city government in Paris pioneered many of the reforms related to working-​class childhood. The Council General of Paris employed a labor inspector starting in 1864, a decade before the child labor

Introduction  15 law of 1874 established a national corps of labor inspectors.89 Its municipal vocational schools were among the first in the country.90 The city introduced the policy of removing children who were in “moral danger” from their parents in 1881, eight years before the Republic instituted this policy at the national level.91 Compared with rural childhood, for instance, state actors had many more opportunities to interact with Parisian children and to shape childhood. However, rural children did attend primary school where they received lessons on becoming productive citizens from their teachers.92 These primary schools imposed structure on rural childhood and ensured that these youngsters matured into worker-​citizens. Over the course of its seventy years, the Third Republic built a welfare state to serve working-​class children. But the institutions it created formalized the social hierarchies of the nineteenth century, ensuring that they would last well into the twentieth.

1 Child Labor Legislation and the Regulation of Age In 1907, M. Chardonal, a Parisian labor inspector, cited the printing firm of Wellhoff & Roche for employing twenty-​five young workers in hazardous work conditions. The danger? The firm was printing Pierre Louÿs’ 1896 novel Aphrodite. According to an 1893 decree, employers could not hire workers under sixteen and young women under twenty-​one to work in spaces that produced texts or images that might “injure their morality.” Chardonal determined that Aphrodite fit this description. The book opens with a graphic account of a nude woman bathing. It goes on to recount the story of a Roman sculptor whose muse presents herself naked on the lighthouse of Alexandria, commits suicide, and whose corpse ultimately serves as the model for his masterpiece.1 The local police court agreed that the work was “of a nature to shock the morality of children and young women” and levied a 125 franc fine on the printers.2 The printers appealed the fine and hired a lawyer Henri Robert to argue the case before the Criminal Court of the Department of the Seine. Robert’s defense is a masterwork of legal wizardry, so much so that the printing firm published it after the hearing.3 Robert attacked the charge on multiple fronts. He maintained that the book had artistic merits, but also claimed that the speed of the printing process did not give workers sufficient time to engage with the text. Through this latter line of attack, he took his audience inside the workshop, giving us a sense of the place of young workers in this space. Robert claimed that the workers would not have had time to read the book, as the printing presses spat out eight hundred sheets an hour. Robert then explained that each printed page emerged covered in blotting paper, meaning that the text was not visible to anyone near the machines.4 Although Robert did not describe young workers’ role in production, his defense suggests that they were removing pages from the presses and working alongside these machines.

An Age to Work. Miranda Sachs, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197638453.003.0002

Child Labor Legislation and Regulation of Age  17 At the heart of the case was the nebulous issue of morality. Each side tried to define what might be dangerous to young workers. The labor inspector insisted that Aphrodite was a “filthy book that glorifies abortion . . . [and] lesbianism.”5 Robert responded that Aphrodite was no more risqué than the statues at the Luxembourg Gardens or postcards on display at news kiosks, both of which young workers freely encountered.6 Ultimately, the judges ruled with the inspector. Most of the young workers were younger than fourteen. The judges stated that at this age “the soul is essentially malleable.” Moreover, “young workers . . . did not have the moral force” to resist any sensations the work might provoke.7 From the judges’ perspective, young workers were developing beings. As state actors, they had an obligation to impose standards on the workspace to protect the young workers. This case captures the competing versions of working-​class childhood present during the early Third Republic. Both the labor inspector and the judges portrayed the young workers in the printshop as physically and morally vulnerable, and thus distinct from any adult workers with whom they labored. According to this logic, the print shop was unsafe for young workers as long as it printed Aphrodite. These functionaries used the precise measurement of age to distinguish “the children” in the print shop from adult workers.8 However, Henri Robert, on behalf of the printing firm, argued that the young workers belonged in the print shop. When he described the production of books, he did not distinguish the young workers’ responsibilities. As such, he implied that they were integral to production. The labor inspector and judges in this case worked on behalf of the Third Republic, which was endeavoring to define working-​class childhood as a discreet legal and social category. During the Third Republic’s first decades, legislators and reformers devoted significant attention to regulating and protecting the offspring of the laboring classes. They expanded access to education and created a juvenile justice system for young offenders. All these policies delineated young people as a separate category of the population. Through the creation of schools and juvenile prisons, the Third Republic carved out separate spaces for young people. But legislators’ first object was child labor. The Republic’s first piece of social welfare legislation was a child labor law, which it passed in 1874. As a result of this law, alongside additional laws passed in 1892 and 1900, the state gained new abilities to intervene in the formerly private spaces of the home and the family. The power to measure age shifted away from working-​class families to state actors, particularly labor inspectors. As labor inspectors

18  An Age to Work enforced the child labor laws, they disseminated new ideas about childhood and age. With the passage and enforcement of child labor laws, the working-​ class child became a specific legal category. Through these laws, legislators and inspectors introduced numeric age as a way to police and protect this category.9 However, young workers’ parents and employers did not always embrace this new way of measuring age.10 Many did not see children as vulnerable beings, but instead as potential workers. They continued to see age as more fluid. They viewed childhood through the lens of their own economic concerns and thus did not always accept the Republic’s attempts to redefine childhood. Although the child labor laws referred to children with the gender neutral, “enfant” or child, they did not apply in the same way to girls and boys. The child labor laws addressed industrial work, which meant they affected boy workers more than girl workers. Labor inspectors were more likely to encounter and regulate boy workers. Girls tended to labor in domestic spaces and so their work was more likely to escape the inspector’s gaze.

Child Labor at the Start of the Republic On July 25, 1871, Gustave Maurice, labor inspector for the Paris region, visited a match factory in the industrial neighborhood of La Villette. On his way to this northeast corner of the city, Maurice likely passed many charred buildings, visible reminders of the Paris Commune that had ended only two months before. While the Republic was less than a year old, the most recent child labor law on the books dated back to the 1840s. Maurice, too, had begun his career under a previous regime, as a labor inspector under the Second Empire in the 1860s. Under the newly formed Republic, he would be central to setting up an inspection corps for the city of Paris until his death in 1881.11 As divisional labor inspector—​essentially the chief labor inspector—​he penned many of the documents housed today in the National Archives that document the enforcement of child labor laws in the Seine. Written in his elegant but tight handwriting, these letters and reports bristle with his ongoing frustration as he tried to force employers and parents to observe labor law. On this particular day, he directed his ire against Isaac Bernhard, the owner of the match factory. Among his employees, Bernhard had seventeen

Child Labor Legislation and Regulation of Age  19 illiterate youths working for him, none of whom was attending school. Another eight youths over twelve did not have the appropriate documentation to be working. But for all his irritation with the owner, Maurice could do little to change the situation. He had been trying to “push” the factory owner to observe the law for years, but with only the threat of a fine, he was unable to move the factory owner to yield.12 Maurice’s struggles with Bernhard provide a window on the situation of child labor and those trying to regulate it at the start of the Republic. Maurice’s concern about the education of the young workers demonstrates that he was thinking about these young workers’ development and their vulnerability as young people. He was among a growing number of legislators and bureaucrats who took this approach to childhood.13 While this small number of elites increasingly regarded childhood as having sentimental value, the majority of factory owners and working-​class parents placed more emphasis on young people’s productive value. For them, children were workers. This conception of childhood tended to govern young people’s experiences in the workplace. Without the benefit of effective child labor laws, bureaucrats like Maurice had little ability to change the conditions under which young people worked. Despite, or perhaps due to these restrictions, the Third Republic, from its earliest days, took an interest in the condition of young workers. Not only did legislators take up the defunct Empire’s efforts to pass a more effective child labor law, but the archival record shows that the Republic investigated the experiences of these young workers.14 An 1872 survey on the conditions of work in France offers insight on the basic realities of child labor in this period. The completed survey includes responses from the police superintendents for each of Paris’ eighty districts, providing a neighborhood-​by-​neighborhood record of Parisian industry at the start of the Republic. Although the stated aim of the survey was to provide the Republic with information on the relationship between employers and employees, a number of the questions dealt with issues related to working-​class children, such as the number of children in the workforce or workers’ level of education.15 The survey suggests that while the government was already treating young workers as a distinct category, the government and employers both perceived young people as normal participants in the workforce. The survey asked for the total number of workers employed in a given neighborhood, specifying that answers should indicate the number of men, women, and “children” (without giving an age range for children). The total number of children in

20  An Age to Work most industries was generally quite low. For instance, in the Say sugar refinery in the 13th arrondissement, twenty-​two children worked alongside nine hundred men and eight women.16 Only fifty children worked in engineering in Folie Méricourt, a neighborhood of artisans and workmen in the 11th, alongside four hundred men and fifty women.17 Given that the survey did not define childhood, we do not know if respondents shared a common conception of child workers when counting their presence in the workforce. These numbers only included young workers in industrial work and not commercial trades. Likewise, it is not clear if the police counted youngsters running errands, a roll many children filled when they first entered the workforce. The survey highlights the limits of schooling in the lives of young workers. One question explicitly asked about the level of instruction among current workers and whether children attended school. The reported literacy rate ranged widely across working-​class neighborhoods. In Salpêtrière, a neighborhood with a number of Belgian immigrants, the reported literacy rate was around sixty percent.18 In contrast, in La Villette, the neighborhood where Bernhard’s match factory was located, the survey reported only a ten percent illiteracy rate.19 According to the 1872 census, the overall illiteracy rate for Paris was 11.3 percent for children ages six to twenty, and ten percent for those over twenty.20 In the working-​class neighborhoods of the 13th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements, the rate of illiteracy among children six to twenty years old was 18.7 percent, 23.6 percent, and 24.4 percent respectively. The 11th fared slightly better with 13.2 percent.21 These numbers indicate that many working-​class children were not attending school regularly. Finally, the survey demonstrates that parents determined the course of working-​class childhood. Parents, not the state, decided whether children went to school or entered the workforce. As many of the reports indicated, young people tended to stay in school until they were twelve or thirteen and then entered into an apprenticeship. But this transition was by no means standardized and generally depended on family circumstances. The report from Belleville in the 20th noted that most children remained in the classroom until their first communion. It cited the case of a single mother with five children who lived off her own earnings and kept her children in school.22 When a child remained in school, it was because his parent had determined that it was worth the investment. The course of childhood depended on decisions made at the level of individual families. By passing child labor laws,

Child Labor Legislation and Regulation of Age  21 legislators sought to change the arbitrary nature of children’s entry into the workforce and to standardize the course of working-​class childhood.

The Laws The child labor laws of 1874, 1892, and 1900 were key turning points in French social policy. The 1841 child labor law was the first piece of legislation to give the state the ability to intervene in the private realms of the family and of the workspace, but this law was unevenly enforced at best. The subsequent labor laws, which were more effective, paved the way for the Republic to enact more comprehensive social policies.23 The labor laws were also significant in how they treated childhood. They set age-​based parameters around childhood and presented it as a distinct life stage, introducing a conception of childhood that had been the preserve of elites to the general public. In their quantified descriptions of children’s capabilities, the laws read as seemingly objective pieces of legislation. In reality, they represented one of many competing conceptions of childhood present in this period and elicited strong reactions from parents and employers. Each of these three laws was a product of a distinct political moment within the Republic. The first, in 1874, was the result of a growing reform movement from the 1860s. Many of the men drafting the law were Social Catholics, Catholic elites who believed they had a responsibility to mitigate the effects of industrialization on the poor. This law did not include educational reforms to avoid interfering with the church’s role in providing schooling.24 Passed by the Radical Republicans, the 1892 law followed the Jules Ferry education laws of the 1880s and removed many of the provisions that had protected Catholic schools and charities.25 The 1892 law was more sweeping in its scope, as it also applied to women workers.26 Just as the 1874 law was critical in setting young workers apart from adults, the 1892 law contributed to the gendered segregation of work.27 The 1900 law, often called the Millerand Law after the Socialist labor minister, was even more radical. It introduced restrictions around adult male labor, although only for men working alongside women and children.28 It specified that any adult male working alongside women and children was restricted to first an eleven-​ hour day, then a ten-​and-​a-​half-​hour day in 1902, and after 1904, a ten-​hour day.29 While it aimed to protect adult male workers as republican citizens, it provoked much opposition from workers and their employers.30 As with the

22  An Age to Work other laws, it contributed to the separation of young workers as a unique category within the workforce. Even if the political context in the Republic did not follow a neat progression, the three laws built on each other, increasingly defining the young worker and circumscribing his or her role in the workforce. In particular, the laws introduced age-​based limits on childhood. The very first section of both the 1874 and 1892 laws specified the minimum age of entry into the workforce. While such restrictions were necessary for regulating child labor, they did represent a shift in measuring childhood, one that privileged the authority of a bureaucratic, record-​keeping state. The 1874 law stated that children under twelve could not participate in industrial work. Young people over twelve could only labor twelve hours a day. The following section stated that young workers between the ages of twelve and sixteen could not work nights. The law did permit children in a limited handful of industries to work between the ages of ten and twelve for six hours a day.31 The 1892 law raised the age that young people could enter the workforce to thirteen; however, children with a certificate of primary studies and who had passed a medical exam could enter the workforce at twelve. This dispensation helped to resolve the inconsistencies between the 1874 law and the 1882 education law, which had mandated that all students remain in school until the age of thirteen. On the surface, the laws established a firm division between school children and workers. The laws implied that children needed to reach a certain age of physical and intellectual maturity to enter the workforce. Yet for all their clear specifications, the two laws still left loopholes, giving the sense that the age qualifications to enter the workforce were not so fixed after all. It is worth noting too that in the case of the 1874 law, legislators had a great deal of trouble deciding on the exact age children should start work.32 After all, even if the legislators wanted it, there was no objective age at which children were universally qualified to enter the workforce. The two laws also erected a barrier between childhood and adulthood by specifying at which age their protections ended. The 1874 law set the upper limit at sixteen, while the 1892 law raised this barrier to eighteen. Previously, the boundary between childhood and adulthood had been less firm. Young workers had eased from auxiliary roles or apprenticeships into more adult positions. The 1892 labor law, in particular, forced older teenagers, many of whom had the skills to perform mature labor, into the category of the child worker. One inspector wrote in his 1899 report that the “law applies wrongly to these children.”33 After all, “in my view, these young workers, in effect,

Child Labor Legislation and Regulation of Age  23 should neither be considered as children nor even as apprentices.”34 For unmarried women, the 1892 law’s extension of childhood was not as dramatic, as many of the conditions of the 1874 law already applied to unmarried females up to the age of twenty-​one. Through this separate treatment of the male and female life course, the laws reinforced the differences in the gendered experience of work. Stipulations on how and when young people could work accompanied these age restrictions. Such restrictions further contributed to the separation between childhood and adulthood. The 1874 law limited children’s workday to twelve hours, which seems remarkably insufficient when we consider that these regulations applied to children as young as twelve. The 1892 law lowered the maximum workday to ten hours, with the exception of youths over sixteen, who could labor twelve hours. These laws thus drew attention to the physical limitations of young workers as compared to older workers. The labor laws also mandated that young workers be given a day of rest a week and certain publicly recognized holidays. The 1874 law specified that this day of rest be Sunday. Its drafters were trying to encourage working-​class children’s religiosity. The choice of five holidays—​Ascension, Assumption, All Saints’ Day, Christmas, and New Year’s—​ likely also had religious motivations.35 The more secularly inclined politicians of the 1890s allowed the day off to be moveable in the 1892 law. This change was also due to the fact that certain industries, particularly those that made deliveries, had trouble giving Sunday as a day off to their young workers.36 On its surface, the 1900 Millerand Law reintegrated young workers into the rhythms of adult work. Building on the 1892 law, it mandated that children, unmarried women, and married women be limited to eleven-​hour workdays, but that this number should decline to ten-​and-​a-​half hours in two years and then down to ten after two more years. Notably, it stated that any adult males working in the same spaces as these protected categories were also limited to eleven hours and then ultimately ten hours. While this should have removed the divisions between adult males and other workers, it only served to reinforce them. Often, employers opted to remove young workers from the center of production entirely rather than submit their adult workers to these restrictions. As a result, the regulations distinguishing children’s work based on age and time contributed to their spatial separation from production. The labor laws also defined the physical and moral capacities of children. As with the regulations around the length of the workday, these provisions

24  An Age to Work seemed to recognize that children were developing beings. Both the 1874 and the 1892 laws stipulated that children could not engage in work that was either “dangerous or exceed their forces.” Legislators left it to the Ministry of Commerce, and later the Ministry of Labor, to determine what this vague phrase entailed. In a decree from May 1893, for instance, the Ministry of Commerce enumerated a list of workspaces it deemed too hazardous for young workers. Women and children could not work with nitric acid because it emitted “toxic fumes” or use white lead to bleach lace because it produced “noxious powders.”37 The table extends for pages and pages and details all sorts of workplace hazards from fires to poison. Additionally, the decree set limits on the amount that young workers could carry. For instance, boys under fourteen were limited to ten kilograms, while girls could only carry five kilograms.38 This kind of numeric catalog replete with medicalized justifications for banning young workers from certain workspaces exemplifies the Republic’s efforts to establish its version of childhood as the paradigm and itself as the ultimate source in enforcing this version of childhood. And yet, even if these various industries were dangerous to young workers, the decree did not forbid older workers from working with the same chemicals, demonstrating the limits of the Republic’s efforts to protect its laboring populations. In the same clause in which it affirmed that work could not tax children’s “forces,” the 1892 law also added that work could not “be dangerous for the morality” of these workers. As we saw with the case of the printing firm, the enforcement of this provision was far from straightforward. Its inclusion suggests that the state did not trust working-​class parents to place their offspring in spaces appropriate for young workers, but also that working-​ class morality was important to protect. The May 1893 decree specified that women and children could not be employed in making images or objects that penal laws deemed immoral, but even these stipulations were subjective. It fell to labor inspectors to decide whether workplaces, such as factories making “preservatives,” a nineteenth-​century birth control, were immoral.39 The inclusion of morality in the 1892 law is also significant given the rising tide of secularization. The Republic’s efforts to promote civic morality, often over religious morality, extended beyond the school room and into workspaces. To ensure that industrial employers observed the conditions of the child labor legislation, legislators mandated the creation of a corps of inspectors to enforce the laws. The 1874 law divided the country into fifteen

Child Labor Legislation and Regulation of Age  25 inspection districts, each of which had a divisional inspector tasked with enforcing the laws in his jurisdiction.40 These district sizes continued to morph and change. A decree in 1885 increased the number of districts to twenty-​one.41 A set of decrees after the passage of the 1892 law shrank the number of inspection districts to eleven.42 While the divisional inspectors initially had to rely on voluntary local commissions to help carry out inspections, the 1892 law created a more professionalized corps of departmental inspectors who answered to the divisional inspector. A small number of women served as departmental inspectors, of whom the majority were in Paris.43 In addition to carrying out inspections, the divisional inspectors were responsible for compiling yearly reports to send to the Minister of Commerce and after 1906, the Minister of Labor. (The Republic did not create a Ministry of Labor until 1906.)44 The 1892 law mandated that these reports be published. By the turn of the twentieth century, the divisional inspector in Paris was responsible for so many reports, visits, and correspondence that the task of carrying out the actual inspections fell to the departmental inspectors.45 The inspectors were the Republic’s agents for ensuring the dissemination and observance of the laws. Their reports document the story of a growing bureaucracy tasked with introducing the Republic’s version of childhood beyond the official realm. In the period prior to World War I, the first district, which encompassed the entire Department of the Seine, had three divisional inspectors. Gustave Maurice served as divisional inspector until his death in 1881. He was replaced by Edmond Laporte. Laporte, who was a former manufacturer, served two decades before giving way to Boulisset, a former worker, in 1905.46 As the individuals responsible for coordinating the surveillance of Parisian workspaces and for producing a yearly report on this surveillance, these three men’s voices are disproportionately present in the archival record on child labor. Thanks to the inspectors, the child labor laws did affect children’s experience in the workforce. In the most evident way, younger children disappeared from the industrial workforce. By 1878, Maurice reported that children under twelve were only working in the twelve industries that had received exemptions.47 His yearly report for 1879 estimated that this number was around 1,281.48 By 1881, only 275 children under twelve were at work in the entire department of the Seine—​130 boys and 145 girls.49 The 1882 education law hastened the departure of younger children from the workforce.

26  An Age to Work By 1888, there were a mere thirteen.50 It was not simply the labor laws, but other factors, such as the expansion of primary education or technological developments that removed the need for tiny hands.51 Moreover, parents were having fewer children. Individual children had more value to the family economy, meaning that parents were more willing to wait a little longer to ensure that their offspring could draw a higher wage and endure the conditions of the workforce.52 The laws themselves were less successful in spreading the Republic’s standardized, quantified conception of childhood. Parents, employers, and even labor inspectors retained their own conceptions of childhood. As these actors negotiated with inspectors over the application of the laws, they articulated their own versions of childhood, leaving these alternate versions in the official record alongside the version outlined in the laws.

Labor Inspectors As agents of the Republic, labor inspectors were responsible for enforcing its laws and reporting back to the Ministers of Commerce and Labor on their successes and failures. As the inspectorate became more professionalized, inspectors gained more knowledge about childhood and development. Through their activities, the inspectors disseminated these new ideas about childhood. But as we will see in the following sections, inspectors recognized the value parents and employers placed on young workers’ labor and were sometimes willing to accommodate requests to ease the restrictions in the laws. The inspector’s primary role was surveillance. He was responsible for visiting industrial workspaces to see if they conformed with the prescriptions of the law, but he had a limited arsenal of tools to force compliance. If the inspector determined that an employer had violated a law, the 1874 law required him to send a charge to the local tribunal and to the local prefect. Outside Paris, inspectors were hesitant to charge employers, as local courts tended to be lenient to offenders.53 From 1875–​1884, Parisian inspectors issued 872 citations, more than double any other district. Some of the districts with fewer citations had fewer industrial workspaces. But even in the districts containing the industrial centers of Lyon and Lille, the number of citations in certain years was in the single digits.54 The 1892 law allowed inspectors to issue a formal notice before filing a citation. This lesser penalty

Child Labor Legislation and Regulation of Age  27 gave inspectors more ability to negotiate, a tactic that proved more effective than issuing citations.55 As educated men and women, many of whom were engineers, inspectors had more access to specialized knowledge about childhood than other individuals within industrial workspaces.56 By the turn of the twentieth century, some inspectors started to draw on theories about adolescence to highlight their concerns about the health and development of young workers. In his 1899 yearly report, Laporte reflected on whether the age of entry into the workforce should be raised from thirteen to fourteen, a reform that would not occur until the 1930s. In addition to weighing the needs of working-​ class families, Laporte alluded to “the physical development that marks that start of adolescence.”57 Only two years before, Laporte had tentatively used the term “adolescents” to describe young workers between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, noting that this term was in vogue in “other countries.”58 As they enforced child labor laws, inspectors began to transmit this new knowledge, ensuring that it did influence the experience of young workers. However, these references to adolescence are more the exception. Inspectors overwhelming referred to young workers as “children.” Moreover, employers and working-​class parents did not seem to be thinking of childhood in these terms. Through their work, inspectors gained expertise in evaluating the ages and capabilities of young people. For instance, in 1901, Inspector Flamery asserted that despite medical certificates stating they were legally allowed to work, many children working in a glassworks at the edge of Paris were manifestly underage.59 The labor laws imposed a paper trail on young workers, forcing them to present documentation to work. Nonetheless, this documentation could still be manipulated and falsified. It fell to the inspectors to enforce these numeric measures and, in some cases, their expert knowledge superseded paper records. Inspectors drew on their knowledge about childhood development to articulate the importance of their own work. In 1909, Inspector Auribault, who had discovered two underaged workers employed in the glassworks wrote, “One feels real pity in the presence of these overworked children, who are so young, always without instruction, denied play and fresh air, often sickly due to the privations and exhaustion they endure. Their future will certainly be miserable. Their parents, the source of these infractions, are unpardonable.”60 Here, too, the inspector employed medical language, articulating that children needed certain conditions for their physical and moral development.

28  An Age to Work The inspector implied that he, rather than the children’s parents or an unscrupulous employer, was the one person truly looking out for the children’s wellbeing. Inspectors also worried about young workers’ moral development, particularly in mixed-​age spaces where young workers labored alongside adults. In these spaces, young workers encountered the temptations of the adult world. The local inspection commission for the 18th arrondissement noted the disturbing habits working boys acquired from such contact: “the reading of insalubrious things, an easiness with which these children serve themselves something to drink in bars, the dangerous habit of smoking even before leaving school, to make themselves men.”61 While the commission hinted that adults should try to avoid these behaviors, sometimes it was unavoidable. However, young workers who picked up the practices of smoking and drinking would become prematurely, and perhaps dangerously, grownup. Although the concerns over youth morality originated with jurist and doctors, in this instance, it had made its way down to the local committees who entered directly into workspaces.62 In their observations, the committee implied that working-​class children had a sort of innocence, if not fragility, that they had to safeguard. For all their efforts to protect young workers from unscrupulous employers or dangerous machinery, inspectors also viewed these youths as inherently dangerous to themselves. In each of his yearly reports, Divisional Inspector Laporte included a section on accidents. For the year 1881, he noted that despite the inspectors’ best efforts, accidents were unavoidable. In the past year, his inspection corps had investigated fifty-​eight accidents. Only a fraction of these, sixteen, led to a procès-​verbal, a legal procedure that usually resulted in a fine for factory owners. Employers were not to blame for accidents. It was the children themselves. Laporte maintained: Except in rare cases, young workers are never called on to operate the kind of dangerous machinery that requires a great deal of attention. But the child is flighty, playful, curious. He would like to see up close how machines that he is forbidden to go near functions. Taking advantage of a moment when he’s not being watched, he often hurts himself with the tool he himself has set in moment. Or sometimes, ignoring the counsels he has received, he childishly amuses himself by placing his hand, his arm, his foot in front of a part of a machine that is in motion and then is hurt when he is distracted.63

Child Labor Legislation and Regulation of Age  29 A similar observation appears in all his subsequent yearly reports—​the child is playful, someone who needs discipline and yet still disobeys. Laporte’s characterization of working children as jejune and careless is striking. It contrasts with the emphasis many parents and employers placed on children’s competency and readiness to work. But for all his concerns about children’s fallibility, Laporte never suggested that young workers were out of place in industrial workspaces. Instead, it fell to the work inspector to save these children from their parents, their employers, and themselves. The young worker might be a distinct category within the workforce but he or she was nonetheless a part of production.

Employers In many ways, employers had the most to lose from observing labor laws. They griped to labor inspectors that the labor laws complicated their ability to turn a profit. They frequently petitioned for exemptions or complained that the laws prevented them from carrying out normal production. Although their desire to make money remained constant, the labor laws ultimately transformed the way that employers viewed young workers. Initially, they viewed young workers as crucial to production. The increasingly cumbersome limits around children’s work forced them to reconsider this perspective. By the early twentieth century, many employers still hired young workers, but treated them as a distinct category of worker who had to be kept separate from production. At the start of the Republic, employers insisted that young workers’ labor was not onerous and was essential to production. As the 1874 law was going into effect, the Minister of Commerce sent out surveys to employers’ syndicates to ascertain the potential impact of the child labor laws. The syndicate for the bookbinders and gilders, the trades that provided the finishing touches on books, emphasized that any labor their young workers and apprentices contributed required “absolutely no muscular force, no automatic movement, no tension of the spirit nor of the body.”64 In a similar vein, the papermaking industries made sure to point out that children’s work was “hardly tiring.” Instead, it was “simple.” In these factories, children were responsible for ensuring that rolls of paper did not jam or run out.65 Such contributions ensured that machines could keep functioning and that adults could continue performing the key aspects of production. In the minds of

30  An Age to Work employers, this work was ideal for children. It required little formal training and demanded minimal compensation. In effect, child labor was necessary because it allowed employers to keep costs down. Once the child labor laws went into effect, young workers became more expendable. Some employers sent away young workers rather than conform to the rules. In 1879, printer Charles De Mourgues wrote to the prefect of police. Fed up with Inspector Maurice’s excessive vigilance, he had decided to send away his young employees rather than submit to the inspectors and the laws they enforced. He warned though, “this is a disaster for these poor little ones.”66 Given De Mourgues’ own social status—​his attached business card indicates that he was a former judge for the Commercial Tribunal and that he was also the former president of the printers’ syndicate—​his empathy for the fate of these young workers was perhaps more of a rhetorical ploy to lob against Maurice. Nonetheless, it suggests that he recognized that families depended on young workers’ wages. Although De Mourgues’ letter provides direct access to his frustration, employers’ actions and grievances more frequently survive through inspectors’ reports of these interactions. Inspectors recognized that checking employers’ chicanery was an important part of their job. At the same time, inspectors were likely to come from a similar socio-​economic class to employers. This was not universally the case—​employers ranged from owners of large factories to women operating workshops out of their kitchens.67 Nonetheless, this proximity meant that inspectors were able to communicate and even empathize with employers. (Conversely, workers’ syndicates tended to feel ambivalent about whether the inspectors acted in their interests.)68 Not only do employers’ perspectives on labor laws tend to show up in yearly inspection reports, but inspectors often made sure to articulate how various conditions of laws adversely affected employers. These observations were filtered through the inspectors’ own biases, but they do offer us a sense of how employers engaged with specific strictures of the laws and how the laws affected employers’ perceptions of childhood. Although De Mourgues sent away his young workers, some employers pushed back, petitioning inspectors to bend the laws to accommodate the rhythms of production in their trades. In certain trades where production took place on Sunday, inspectors sometimes permitted youths to labor this additional day. A handful of employers, such as laundry women, used Sundays to make deliveries because clients were more likely to be at home. Similarly, pastry chefs, cooks, and other culinary trades often got away with

Child Labor Legislation and Regulation of Age  31 employing young workers on Sunday. They needed to produce food irrespective of the day of the week. When Laporte assumed the role of divisional labor inspector, he discovered that Maurice had been granting exemptions to the food trades.69 In these trades, the pattern of employment clashed with the schedule for work laid out in the child labor laws. Faced with these challenges, the labor inspectors gave way to employers, allowing production to override the need for these children to rest. By making the day off moveable in the 1892 law, legislators tried to reconcile the demands of production to the needs of young workers. Similarly, employers in trades that produced Christmas gifts or decorations tried to avoid giving their young employees the holiday off. These discussions around Christmas expose the gap between working-​class and bourgeois childhood, as well as in society’s perception of the two categories. For trades where the highest sales and production occurred in December, such as those producing candy, toys, jewelry, and envelopes, inspectors tended to be sympathetic to employers’ requests to keep young workers employed on Christmas. As late as 1897, Laporte acknowledged that he gave them leeway, recognizing “it is precisely at this moment that the law intervenes and stops work for 24 hours, under the pretext of a holiday!”70 Though this exclamation was from the perspective of an inspector, albeit one with a prior career as a factory owner, it is not hard to image the argument the factory and shop owners presented to Laporte. They likely claimed that these youths were doing crucial work at a time of year when their work was even more valuable. With this argument, employers focused on young workers’ immediate value to production rather than recognizing the long-​term benefits child labor laws might provide to these young workers. These arguments are even more striking when we consider that the toys and candy these young workers were producing would ultimately become gifts for their bourgeois peers. It was during the Belle Époque that Christmas became a holiday when adults gave liberally to their offspring and celebrated childhood.71 Although employers benefited from the spread of bourgeois childhood and the resulting consumer culture, they treated their own young employees as laborers rather than as children to be treasured and protected. As the laws grew more restrictive, many employers opted to operate without young workers all together. The Millerand Law in particular, with its requirements that adult workers observe the same hours as young employees, drove a clear wedge between the work of children and that of adults. The inspection report for 1900 quoted an inspector who anticipated that “where

32  An Age to Work the work of the apprentice is not necessarily attached to adult work,” young workers were more likely to be laid off. “In mixed establishments where the child is nothing more than an unskilled laborer, to the detriment of his professional education, but where his work is inextricably linked to adult work,” employers would keep young workers on.72 Notably, the inspector distinguished children’s work from “adult work.” Whether or not employers saw these two categories of workers as distinct, the law forced them to recognize this distinction. For employers, young workers were increasingly becoming associated with onerous regulations. What the report warned about did indeed come to pass, as the following inspection reports noted a decline in older teen-​aged workers in industry. By 1904, inspector Lévesque, one of the local inspectors, observed that smaller ateliers were sending away their young employees, but then took them back when there was an urgent need for them. The number of dismissed youths would have been higher, but according to another inspector, employers had figured out that they could retain their younger workers by removing them to a separate part of the atelier.73 Employers were vocal about how this law challenged traditional patterns of employment. The syndicate for employers in public works wrote to the Minister of Commerce to complain. As they pointed out, this law particularly affected older boys, whose work seemed “logically necessary.”74 Until the 1892 law, boys between the ages of sixteen to eighteen were not even covered by these laws. As a result of the Millerand Law, these boys were sent away from full-​time jobs or removed from production. The aftermath of the 1900 law reveals how the conditions of the laws forced employers to reconsider the role of their young workers. Ironically, these laws sought to protect these workers, but instead, resulted in their work becoming more irregular. However, child labor laws were not the only forces acting on employers. As one local inspection commission pointed out in 1890, some employers used the laws as a “pretext” to get rid of young employees. For these employers, young employees were not “productive.” Instead, employers had to “sacrifice” valuable time for their training.75 This decline in training produced what contemporaries dubbed the “apprenticeship crisis.” Increased mechanization, late-​nineteenth-​century depressions, and rising wages all affected how employers regarded young workers. Over the course of the Republic’s first decades, employers came to view children’s work as less essential. For employers, young workers were no longer cheap and disposable components of the workforce, but burdensome and expendable.

Child Labor Legislation and Regulation of Age  33

Parents The decline in younger children employed in the industrial workforce suggests that most parents cooperated with child labor laws. However, the many interactions between parents and government officials demonstrate that many parents did not accept the ways these laws structured childhood. Working-​class parents relied on their sons’ and daughters’ contributions to the family economy. When faced with dire economic circumstances, parents prioritized finding employment for their children. Although the number of sources from working-​class parents are minimal compared to those composed by labor inspectors, the archives for the Ministry of Labor contain a series of letters from working-​class parents that provide a rare glimpse into the way that families sought to push back against the confines of the laws. Admittedly, these letters are a small sample of the families trying to sidestep the law. Many parents probably sent their children to work without bothering to ask for an exemption or placed them in jobs that might escape the inspector’s gaze. In many of these letters, which were primarily written in the first decade of the twentieth century, parents requested special exemptions so that a child could begin working before his or her thirteenth birthday. For instance, Marius Reynaud had hurt his arm in a workplace accident. Unable to support his family of four, he wrote to ask permission to place his son in a factory making cardboard boxes. His son was just three months shy of his thirteenth birthday. Reynaud senior asserted that he would have liked to continue sending the boy to school, but “poverty obliges me to make him work.”76 For Reynaud, as with so many of these claimants, his particular family situation determined when school ceased to have value for his son. Even if the law laid out a firm divide between school and work, working-​class families did not think in these terms. For the Minister of Labor, this barrier was not flexible. The Minister wrote back to Reynaud, telling him that it was impossible to grant his request.77 Even if parents relied on their own conceptions of childhood when deciding whether their offspring were ready to work, they were adept at employing the type of language that might resonate with republican officials. For instance, when Théophile Foulon wrote to the Minister of Labor in 1909, he drew on medical and legal concepts to argue for his stepson’s premature entry into the workforce. He had found a place for the boy as a receiver, the person tasked with removing printed pages from a press. Foulon worked as

34  An Age to Work a guard at the offices of the state railway, but he had five children to feed. His stepson, André, was eleven, but Foulon insisted that he was ready to work. Not only did the boy have both the medical and educational certificates that allowed twelve-​year-​old’s to start work early, Foulon insisted “he has a strong constitution, certainly superior to that of most children his age.” If these recommendations were not enough, Foulon also summoned up the specter of the dangers of unemployment. Work “will protect him from the bad companions he will surely encounter if he remains inactive.”78 In spite of Foulon’s comprehensive petition, the minister rejected his request. The conditions of the 1892 law were “absolutely strict and no dispensations can be granted on this point.”79 Foulon’s ability to draw on images of childhood from medicine and popular criminology shows that the working classes understood how more comfortable city dwellers perceived childhood. Unlike Reynaud, whose son was in the ambiguous middle ground between twelve and thirteen, Foulon was asking to place a child who was below the official age to enter the workforce. Based on the particular situation in which he found himself, he needed the boy’s income and that, for him, was sufficient grounds to seek out a position for the boy. He had found an employer willing to hire the boy, but only if Foulon could first obtain official approval. Foulon understood that his dire family situation was not going to sway the Minister. He pointed to the boy’s physical development, making clear that Andre’s numerical age did not correspond to his physical strength. In casting the boy this way, he invoked the kind of medical language that might resonate with an official. Finally, in conjuring up the threat of the boy’s potential “bad companions,” he was alluding to the threat of vagabondage. He understood that respectable labor inspectors and the minister were likely not immune to the fear of the apache, the marauding working-​class youth.80 By invoking this caricature, he tried to stress the value work would have for the boy, even if legally he was supposed to be in school. Even as Foulon and other working-​class parents understood elite concerns, they used these tropes to support and argue for their own version of childhood—​one in which parents determined when it was time for their children to work. Parents did not always find republican officials to be so unyielding. Madame Leblanc, a mother with seven children and a husband in the hospital with pleurisy, was able to elicit both sympathy and support from local labor inspectors. As she wrote in her 1909 letter, her oldest, a daughter, was already working.81 She had placed the second girl, who was two months shy

Child Labor Legislation and Regulation of Age  35 of her twelfth birthday, in a factory making visors. Mademoiselle Durand, a female labor inspector, was alerted to the violation, but the family’s desperation motivated her to look for a solution. In her letter to the divisional inspector, Mademoiselle Durand admitted that she had tried to convince the girl’s employer to pay her to run errands and assist with the cleaning of the atelier. As she put it, she could only apply the law in accordance with “the degree of humanity that I have been given.” As such, she wanted to help the girl. Departmental Inspector Henry, too, agreed with the arrangement, sending an additional letter in support of Leblanc. Divisional Inspector Boulisset ruled in favor of the family on account of its “unfortunate situation.” In this rare instance, three labor inspectors chose to align their voices with a mother who was asking for an exemption, but it took a unique set of circumstances. Unlike with many of the other petitions, it was not simply the mother or the employer who claimed that the family was destitute. The inspectors also acknowledged the family’s poverty. The type of work that they agreed the girl could carry out is also revealing. Thirteen was the cut off for industrial work, but younger children had some flexibility when it came to errands. In this instance, the inspectors exploited this loophole. In general, parents were not able to convince republican officials to accept their version of childhood, but this instance suggests that cooperation was not entirely impossible. Just as parents recognized more elite conceptions of childhood, inspectors were able to empathize and engage with parental needs. Parents had the most ability to circumvent the law when their children were working alongside or under them. This type of employment fell within a nebulous area between parental and state authority. In a meeting for the syndicate of packers, a father wondered if his son, who was under the age of sixteen, could work alongside him on a Sunday. As he put it, “Do I not have the right to work him as I would myself?”82 Officials recognized that they had little authority to regulate children in those circumstances. As the local commission in the 11th arrondissement wrote, “is it really possible to regulate school children working for their parents during holidays?”83 In determining how and when children began work, the state superseded parental authority. But within the more private realm of the family, inspectors had less authority to enforce the laws. In the 1892 law, legislators exempted children working exclusively for their parents from the law’s provisions. This exclusion implied that parental authority did have sway over certain conditions of employment, leaving space for ambiguity and manipulation of the law.

36  An Age to Work As with employers, parents did not necessarily accept the way that the child labor laws defined childhood. However, they learned to recognize, engage with, and in some instances, work around the child labor laws. The laws forced parents to recognize that thirteen was the starting point for remunerated, industrial work, but it did not alter the expectation of most working-​class parents that their children contribute labor and eventually wages to the family economy.

Young Workers In negotiating the terms of the child labor laws, parents, employers, and inspectors spent a great deal of time scrutinizing the physical or mental capacities of young workers. Inspectors provided detailed descriptions of young people at work. Parents offered assessments of their offspring’s capabilities. But rarely did they draw on these youngsters’ thoughts or opinions. Young workers were both legal minors and members of the laboring classes. As such, their voices had little value to people engaging with government officials or compiling sources about conditions in industrial workspaces. As a result, determining how young people perceived their work and their position within the workforce is a difficult task. In the scattered instances where state actors chose to engage with young workers, these young people responded in a way that suggests they understood the value of their wages to their families and that they knew how to work around the laws to ensure they could labor. It is hard to ascertain whether young people willingly collaborated with employers and parents when they worked in situations that violated the laws. Inspectors rarely interrogated minors. In July 1914, as Europe was inching toward war, Departmental Inspector Hémon visited the department store Samaritaine. There, he encountered a young man who was seventeen-​and-​ a-​half. The boy had claimed to be eighteen, thereby avoiding any limitations on the duration of his workday. In the inspector’s words, “He did so, because otherwise he would not have been hired.”84 The inspector made no reference to parents, suggesting that the boy was responsible for this situation. Although the inspector did not record whether the boy was aware of the finer points of the law, it does suggest that he understood the way his potential employers viewed age. He presumably wanted a lucrative position and thought that numeric age was fudgeable. This situation was unusual in

Child Labor Legislation and Regulation of Age  37 that this boy was almost at the age of majority—​according to the 1874 law he was not even a child—​so the inspector may have been more willing to deal with him directly. Nonetheless, it does raise the question of whether young workers were cognizant of the tenets of the law and whether they had any input when it came to determining the conditions of their work. The investigation of an accident in 1891 involving Florentin Gaurois, an apprentice in the cartridge belt factory, offers a rare case of a young person describing himself and his work. One day, the fourteen-​year-​old decided to leave the part of the factory dedicated to apprentices to talk to a friend, who had just been promoted from apprentice to worker. As they were conversing, Gaurois let his right hand drop into the gears of the lathe his friend was using. His hand was caught, and various fingers were cut and slashed. His employers, Abel Farcot and Léopold Joly, were not charged, even though according to the 1874 law and an 1875 decree, if young people were working with machines with mechanical motors, their bosses were required to place a protective covering around wheels, belts, or gears that could possibly present danger to workers.85 The machine that had caused the injuries did not have these protections. But because Gaurois was supposed to remain in a different part of the factory, he, and not his employers, was deemed at fault for the accident.86 Gaurois’ short testimony supported his employers’ case. In describing the accident, he pointed to his “inattention” and “inadvertence.” This characterization of his actions as careless makes the whole affair seem like a childlike mistake, allowing his employers to avoid any blame. The situation of Gaurois’ family provides a hint of why the boy was so willing to accept blame for the incident. Gaurois’ file contains his mother’s testimony, which is even more conciliatory. She could only thank the men who brought her injured son to her and stressed that she did not want to “attack” anyone. She probably could ill afford for her son to lose an apprenticeship that would direct him toward lucrative positions in industry. Whether from his mother or from his own intuition, Gaurois understood the importance of his employment. Although he cast himself as a careless child, he also was making a mature decision. He may have been a teen-​aged boy who wanted to chat with friends at work, but he had a responsibility to his mother and a role to play in their family. In this sense, he was already orienting himself toward adulthood, where, as an adult male, he would need to spend most of the rest of his life supporting his future family. Gaurois’ testimony is a rare instance of a young person’s voice appearing in an official archive, but it is

38  An Age to Work likely that many of his peers shared a similar perspective. They had crossed over into a stage of their lives in which their primary responsibility was to bring home a salary or at the very least, to spend time learning the skills that would prepare them to become full-​fledged wage earners. Young people had a keen sense of the importance of their contributions to the family economy, and it shaped how they regarded their work.

Regulating Age The child labor laws of 1874, 1892, and 1900 placed clear limits on children’s participation in the industrial workforce. In their restrictions on which, when, and how young people could work, the laws embodied new ideas about childhood and development. They presented young workers as a separate category from adults and demonstrated that such differences were identifiable and measurable. However, this seemingly quantifiable version of childhood clashed with the way that employers, parents, and even young workers envisioned working-​class childhood. The moments of negotiation and resistance to the laws show that many traditional conceptions of childhood persisted and continued to shape the experience of working-​class children. Moreover, even as the laws circumscribed and limited youths within the workforce, the legislators who drafted them never aimed to remove young people entirely. In the first place, lawmakers excluded many young workers. Errand boys or girls making deliveries were free to work as they wanted. Many children began work in these jobs. But even more crucially, labor laws only banned young people from work that legislators considered too dangerous for young people. The laws did not bar youths outright from industrial work and allowed them to labor in the kind of environments where a printing press could crush fourteen-​year-​old Emile Manbert’s foot or a machine rolling out cardboard could mangle twelve-​year-​old Ferdinand Nabot’s hand.87 As Michelle Perrot points out, workspaces such as workshops, factories, and construction sites remained spaces where young workers belonged.88 The labor laws distinguished working-​class childhood from working-​class adulthood, but they preserved the norm that working-​ class children would be productive members of the workforce at an age when it would no longer do them significant harm.

Child Labor Legislation and Regulation of Age  39 But child labor laws were only the first step. To promote young workers’ development, republican reformers created a range of vocational training programs. Their goal was to standardize the intermediate stage after youngsters left school, a stage many doctors and legal scholars were increasingly labeling “adolescence.”

2 “An Apprenticeship for Life” Training the Republican Worker

When Robert Laurent was old enough to work, his family apprenticed him to a sculptor of funerary crosses. They had wanted to send him to a vocational school, but they were unable to afford it. The boy impressed the sculptor with his work. Laurent confided to a friend, “The boss said that he had never seen a kid pour concrete so quickly. He gave me the tasks of a real worker—​ scratching names, sculpting patterns—​and I did it all on my own. I devoted myself to this work and enjoyed it.” Nevertheless, he received no compensation for his labor. After Laurent had performed this work for two months, his mother visited his boss and demanded that he pay her son a salary. The mother argued that the boy was doing “the labor of a worker.” No, the sculptor declared, the boy was in an apprenticeship and needed to “do his time as an apprentice.” Rather than let him complete his training, Madame Laurent removed her son from the apprenticeship and found him employment as a delivery boy in the garment industry. In this position, Laurent earned a living without wasting time on training, but also without much hope of advancement.1 Although Robert Laurent’s story is fictional—​he is a character in Henry Poulaille’s novel Les damnées de la terre—​many working-​class youths in the nineteenth century followed a similar path into the workforce. Rather than beginning their productive lives in apprenticeships, they spent their teen-​ aged years in irregular or unskilled positions. Traditionally, young workers had trained as apprentices alongside a master craftsman, or in some cases, woman. Apprentices received little to no compensation, but they gained expertise in a particular trade. Industrialization hastened the decline of the apprenticeship system, as it created a variety of jobs that required minimal training but offered immediate compensation. As with the fictional Madame Laurent, parents increasingly opted to place their offspring in these unskilled or semi-​skilled positions.

An Age to Work. Miranda Sachs, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197638453.003.0003

“An Apprenticeship for Life”  41 Republican elites bemoaned the decline of the apprenticeship system, which they referred to as the “apprenticeship crisis,” and the danger it posed to young workers. These jurists, educators, and doctors worried that young workers were more likely to become delinquent without the structure of a traditional apprenticeship. The breakdown of the apprenticeship system contributed to the growing anxiety among doctors and jurists about this stage of life, which they increasingly referred to as “adolescence.” Until the final decades of the nineteenth century, most experts had focused on elite boys when they studied adolescence. During the Belle Époque, criminologists and psychologists turned to the problem of working-​class youths. They theorized that these adolescents were more prone to criminality.2 For these experts, young workers were particularly at risk when they entered into unskilled jobs where they came into contact with the adult world. To combat the apprenticeship crisis, Parisian reformers established a number of public training programs, including a network of vocational schools. Between 1873 and 1889, the city opened thirteen vocational training schools, six of which were for girls.3 These schools offered a unique combination of manual and theoretical training. Their carefully constructed curriculums fused Paris’ corporate traditions with republican values in an attempt to produce skilled worker-​citizens. These schools were one of the first attempts to spread secondary education, which had been the preserve of elites and the bourgeoisie, to the people.4 As such, these schools introduced a form of adolescence to the laboring classes. But this version of adolescence was distinct from the experience of middle-​class youths. As they designed these schools, republican reformers borrowed from the model Catholic elites had developed to train young workers. Catholic reformers had created programs that standardized the experience of working-​ class adolescence, but as a time to prepare for life as a well-​behaved Catholic worker. Starting in the 1830s, Social Catholic reformers opened patronages, societies that either housed young workers or supervised their placements.5 These reformers first crystalized and popularized the idea of adolescence in crisis. They mobilized the patronages to “reconquer” the minds and morals of young workers.6 In drawing on Catholic models for administering to young workers, republican reformers recognized adolescence as a stage of life with distinct problems and needs. But they also saw the potential of vocational training programs for molding the working classes. As with Catholic reformers, republican educators envisioned working-​ class adolescence as a time to prepare for the workforce. In opening vocational

42  An Age to Work schools, they were not attempting to introduce a more universal experience of adolescence to the laboring classes but standardizing the particular experience of working-​class adolescence. By imposing order on the working-​class life course, they tried to ensure that the laboring classes matured into skilled worker-​citizens. As a result, the vocational schools reinforced the separation between the elite, male life course and the working-​class, male life course. Although republican elites conceived of working-​class adolescence as a specific stage, the working-​class life course remained more fluid. In reality, the vocational schools served a small population of students. By placing their offspring directly into the workforce, parents rejected the elite ideal for the working-​class life course. Parents and workers’ syndicates expressed ambivalence toward the instruction in these schools, indicating that they did not approve of how the schools remade the working-​class life course. Given that the elite, male life course became more standardized in this period, the continued fluidity and irregularity of the working-​class life course also reinforced the separation of working-​class youths from their elite counterparts.7 Many of these concerns about the decline of worker training applied to both girls and boys. But vocational schools for girls had different goals than those for boys. Vocational schools for boys trained their students for productive labor. Vocational schools for girls prepared their students both for work and for motherhood. As a result, even within the structured space of the vocational school, the stages of the female life cycle blurred together. Thus, the life course for working-​class girls remained even more fluid than for their male counterparts.

Training Catholic Workers Catholic charities and orders developed some of the first programs to supplement or replace traditional forms of vocational training. From the 1830s, patronages established an alternative model for vocational training, ultimately situating instruction outside the workspace. In such spaces, Social Catholic elites pioneered a form of vocational training that existed not only to train workers, but also to shape their morality. These programs catered to a specific age group—​young workers and apprentices—​with the specific goal of shaping them into dutiful, industrious workers. The Catholic elites who created the patronages were convinced that the lower classes needed additional guidance to take up productive labor. In the

“An Apprenticeship for Life”  43 midst of the 1848 revolution, Armand de Melun, one of the major figures in the patronage movement, wrote On the Role of Society in Preventing and Relieving Poverty.8 Melun recognized that France suffered from economic inequality. However, while people usually viewed destitution as a result of “inaction,” he argued that “too often it is the cause.”9 In other words, those born into poverty were unable to escape because they were incapable of work. As he put it, “Man becomes poor because he cannot, does not know how, does not want to work.”10 His refrain—​that the lower classes needed to be taught not only the skills to labor, but also to be industrious—​would appear throughout the texts of republican educational reformers and jurists. The political context of the 1830s and 1840s undoubtedly influenced Melun and the other leaders of the patronage movement. The patronage movement coalesced in the 1830s and 1840s, the same decades when the workers’ movement took shape.11 In his conclusion, Melun insisted that initiatives, such as patronages or stricter child labor laws, rather than “upheaval and revolution,” could mitigate poverty.12 Melun and many of his fellow Social Catholics reformers came from the ranks of the aristocracy or the upper bourgeoisie.13 These men wanted to solve the problems arising from industrialization, but they wanted to be the ones who directed the solution. To that end, Catholic elites created patronages to facilitate the entry of young workers into the workforce. According to an 1869 pamphlet about the Charity of Saint Anne, which was part of Melun’s network of patronages, the charity aimed “to work for the professional, moral, and religious education of apprentices of all skill-​levels, to make them into good workers and good Christians.” Much of the patronage’s activities involved helping working-​ class youths with their entry into the workforce. It assisted the four hundred young workers in its care with finding placements and with negotiating their contracts. It also organized activities on Sundays.14 A chaplain named Planchat carried out the bulk of this work. Along with preparing the young men for communion, he gave them the money to pay their apprenticeship fees.15 One of the novelties of the patronage movement was that it defined young workers as a specific category of the population based on their age. The 1869 pamphlet began with the phrase, “At fifteen, the majority of young [apprentices and workers] . . . are morally and religiously lost.”16 The pamphlet used a specific numeric age to describe its target population. This language also conjured up the image of adolescence as a time of crisis. Such language suggests that the people behind the patronage were starting to

44  An Age to Work define working-​class adolescence as a specific stage. The services the patronage offered, such as helping young men find apprenticeships, were age-​specific. By sponsoring leisure activities, the patronage created an age-​ segregated space for young workers who would have otherwise spent their Sundays in mixed-​age company. And yet, for the Social Catholics who ran the patronage, developing spaces for working-​class adolescents was a way to ensure that they matured into skilled workers. Even if the Social Catholics administering this patronage considered working-​class youths to be adolescents, their aim was still to facilitate these youths’ entry into the workforce. The stated goal of the patronage was to form the youths into “good workers and good Christians.” Although the pamphlet presented young workers as suffering from a moral and religious crisis, it offered vocational training as one of the potential solutions to this problem. For many young workers, this assistance would have been welcome. But this program implied that an apprenticeship, along with communion, was a necessary step in their life cycle. In effect, the patronages were a step towards standardizing the working-​class life course rather than universalizing the experience of adolescence. Under the Republic, Catholic patronages proliferated. They also shifted toward organized leisure as a way to support and entice young workers. According to a 1906 study, although there were around 155 official patronages in 1866, there were over three thousand by the turn of the century.17 After the Republic eliminated religious education from public schools, Catholics looked to the patronages as a way to ensure the presence of the church in the lives of the young and working class.18 The patronages integrated more innovative forms of pedagogy, mixing in the catechism with activities such as hikes, festivals or plays.19 In addition to organizing excursions and games, the Patronage de Sainte-​Mélanie, for instance, put on theatrical performances on religious holidays to encourage observation. The director of the patronage regarded such performances as “a necessary remedy against the evil that we are obliged to combat when we are not able to choose our weapons.”20 In truth, the church was not so defenseless, using the space of the patronage to expand into the time working-​class youths had for leisure. Indeed, according to certain Catholic educators, structuring play was crucial for ensuring that young workers did not give into their wilder instincts and instead matured into well-​behaved adults.21 In addition to the patronages, religious figures established reform schools where they used vocational training to shape working-​class behavior. At

“An Apprenticeship for Life”  45 the Orphanage at Auteuil, Abbé Roussel, its director, relied on vocational training to rehabilitate destitute boys. According to a volume on the school published by realist author Maxime Du Camp, Abbé Roussel founded the orphanage in 1865 to take in “vagabonding children;” to teach them reading, writing, and a bit of math; and to provide them with enough exposure to the catechism that they would be prepared for their first communion. Subsequently, the charity would place them in an apprenticeship where “they could acquire experience in a trade.”22 In the 1870s, Roussel decided the orphanage needed its own ateliers so that it could offer vocational training directly to the population it served. Over the course of the decade, he acquired the buildings adjoining the orphanage. He set up an atelier for shoemakers and tailors in 1871; one for printing in 1873–​1874; and, in 1876–​1877, one for the construction trades including painting, carpentry, locksmithing, and mold-​making.23 The orphanage harkened back to a more traditional system of training workers even as it created a new type of space for this training. The professions boys could study at the school, such as shoemaking and carpentry, were pre-​ industrial crafts. An image of the shoemaking workshop depicts a workspace that is a far cry from the heavy industry that was increasingly the norm during the Second Industrial Revolution. Here, the open window and the boys’ sturdy bodies give the impression that such work is healthy. A spirit of collaboration pervades, as the boys sit around the tables in groups. The picture also captures the novelty of these spaces. The boys sit in a classroom specifically designed to provide instruction. And yet, the structure of education was not so formalized. There is no indication that the orphanage divided boys based on age or skill-​level. Boys entered the orphanage before their first communion and could continue to remain attached as apprentices up until the age of eighteen and sometimes even up to twenty.24 The Prefect of the Seine wrote in 1882 that “282 children” were “spread out among the ateliers under the supervision of secular master craftsmen.”25 According to the prefect, these craftsmen taught technical knowledge through example rather than through the type of ordered curriculum in secular vocational schools. Although the craftsmen training the boys were secular, Catholicism was still present in the boys’ lives. In a striking example of how technical and religious instruction merged, boys in the printing atelier, the largest atelier at the orphanage, were responsible for printing two journals created by Roussel, La France illustrée and L’ami des enfants. As Du Camp put it, the two journals “speak of nothing but morality and virtue.”26 Whether they were receptive

46  An Age to Work

Boys at the Orphanage at Auteuil learn to make shoes. With its open windows and tables for students to work together, the space seems more a classroom than a workshop. Bibliothèque Nationale Française, NUMM-​6465690, Maxime Du Camp, Charité privée à Paris: L’orphelinat d’Auteuil et l’abbé Roussel (Auteuil-​ Paris, 1881), 61

to it or not, the boys at the orphanage would have been setting type for and receiving page after page of articles with Catholic lessons. Such instruction drew the scrutiny of republican officials. In 1882, the Prefect of the Seine encouraged cutting off any public funding for the orphanage. The orphanage might be offering “a few services to the working classes, but it is going in a direction that is too exclusively religious and until this point, the resources that

“An Apprenticeship for Life”  47 allow it to survive have come from the most militant members of the clerical party.”27 Although we would expect a republican official by the 1880s to be suspicious of any religious endeavor catering to young people, his observation is telling. Catholic elites were contributing to the orphanage, suggesting that they recognized vocational training’s capacity for molding the character of young workers. At the orphanage, boys trained in spaces designed specifically to prepare them for the workforce while also receiving lessons in Catholic morality. Catholics were not the only religious group to address worker training. Both Protestant and Jewish elites established vocational training programs for their poorer co-​religionists. Jewish philanthropists, for instance, operated both a patronage and a school for young workers. In 1853, Jewish elites established the Patronage Society for the Jewish Apprentices and Workers of Paris.28 As with Catholic patronages, it both supported boys in their apprenticeships as well as providing them additional instruction at night.29 Jewish elites also established an école de travail, which served a small group of Jewish boys over the age of thirteen.30 The school began on a small scale in 1865, but gradually expanded its clientele when it moved to larger quarters in 1876 at 4 bis Rue des Rosiers in the Marais. By 1892 it had a student body of 102 students: fifty-​eight boarders and forty day pupils.31 The students were placed in apprenticeships, but they received lessons from 8pm to 10pm suited to their level of instruction in spelling, math, history, writing, geography and if more advanced, literature and bookkeeping. Three other days a week, students received lessons in ornamental and linear drawing. For one hour on Friday night, students received religious instruction.32 The latter was the only mention of religious assistance the school provided. The rest of the time, students worked in outside ateliers. Like Catholic reformers, Jewish elites wanted to direct their co-​religionists toward becoming productive workers, but they were also concerned with ameliorating the reputation of Jews in France. In a report from the 1870s, the patronage society discussed its programs for placing destitute members of the community in apprenticeships.33 In this sense, the patronage resembled any of the various Catholic or secular initiatives meant to counteract the apprenticeship crisis. But even before mentioning apprenticeships, the report celebrated the decline of peddling. It claimed that members of the Jewish community had become better at taking on “manual and regular professions.”34 This emphasis on peddling is significant, as it was an anti-​Semitic trope. For Jewish elites, eliminating the prevalence of Jews in

48  An Age to Work wandering professions seemed necessary to demonstrate their community’s ability to assimilate to French norms. The Jewish elite who sponsored such endeavors were not simply instructing less privileged members of their community in Jewish values, but they had a “French bourgeois value system” in mind.35 By intervening during this crucial period in the working-​class life course, Jewish elites hoped to direct young workers toward more regular professions. As with Catholic reformers, Jewish elites looked to vocational training to form members of their community into a particular type of worker. Both sets of elites created special spaces for apprentice-​aged workers. Whether patronages or vocational schools, these institutions guided youths through their first years in the workforce. To a certain extent, these institutions delineated working-​class adolescence within the working-​class life course, but as a specific time to prepare for a life of labor. When republican educators turned to training young workers, these initiatives offered a model on which they could build.

Municipal Vocational Schools In the final decades of the nineteenth century, the number of young workers entering into apprenticeships continued to decline, fueling even greater levels of anxiety among social reformers and educators. The combination of the French defeat in the Franco–​Prussian War and the declining birthrate pushed educators in Paris to act.36 Between 1873 and 1890, the city of Paris opened thirteen vocational schools, including six aimed at training girls. As with Catholic patronages, these vocational schools were age-​segregated spaces. But republican educators went further, creating a clear, orderly curriculum that catered to youths’ developmental needs. And yet, as with Catholic elites, they designed the schools to facilitate young workers’ entry into the workforce. Although the vocational schools served a small population, they represented republican educators’ ideal for working-​class adolescence. The number of youths in formal apprenticeships declined in the Republic’s early years. In 1860, eighteen percent of youths under sixteen working in Parisian ateliers had a formal apprenticeship contract. By 1902, only five percent had a written contract.37 Even among the young workers who bore the title of “apprentice,” many were running errands or learning only one very specific skill to prepare for assembly-​line style production.38 Most young

“An Apprenticeship for Life”  49 workers followed a path similar to Laurent, the character in the opening vignette. They took up jobs that would pay them from the start, but these jobs offered limited long-​term prospects. For republican elites, the apprenticeship crisis threatened to increase the ranks of the delinquent at a moment when France needed skilled workers to remain dominant in the global economy. Many educators and jurists worried that working-​class youths were likely to turn to crime without the guidance of a traditional apprenticeship.39 Many of these same commentators also worried that the apprenticeship crisis jeopardized France’s ability to produce handcrafted and luxury goods. From the eighteenth century, France had enjoyed “a marked competitive advantage . . . in many highly skilled, high-​quality industries” and these luxury industries remained a source of prestige for most of the nineteenth century.40 By the end of the century, these industries had begun to decline due to the depression of the 1880s and decreased international interest.41 Given that France’s position in the global economy was in decline—​its economy fell from the second-​largest to fourth-​ largest during the nineteenth-​century—​the apprenticeship crisis threatened its one remaining source of economic prestige.42 One of the most prominent reformers to offer a solution to the apprenticeship crisis was the educator Octave Gréard. Gréard was a driving force in the creation of the École Diderot, the first of the Parisian vocational schools. He brought the idea to the municipal council in 1871.43 Over the course of his career, Gréard held a series of positions within the educational administration of the Department of the Seine including academic inspector, director of primary education (1870–​1873), and ultimately, served as the vice-​rector of the Academy of Paris from 1879 to 1902.44 In an 1872 pamphlet, De l’école des apprentis (On the School for Apprentices), Gréard examined the apprenticeship crisis and argued that it threatened young workers’ development. When young workers entered into unskilled professions, “They are worn out, like a mechanical appliance, like a tool—​their usefulness, their activity, their strength. Under the weight of this work, as unintelligent as it is irritating, their physical, intellectual, and moral faculties ultimately break down.”45 Laboring in mixed-​age workspaces also left young workers vulnerable to “precocious vice.”46 As with labor inspectors, Gréard thought about these problems in terms of youth development. For him, young workers needed the intellectual stimulation of a skilled profession to grow into productive members of the workforce. By contrast, entering into the adult world prematurely might lead to irregular development.

50  An Age to Work To promote young workers’ development, Gréard proposed creating a school designed specifically to train young workers. In his text, he sketched out a curriculum that would provide technical instruction alongside academic instruction, technological knowledge, and mechanical drawing.47 Students in the school would not just learn to operate tools or machinery, but they would also gain an understanding of how this equipment worked. In addition, the school day would include time for physical instruction.48 The school provided more structure than a traditional apprenticeship, but this was necessary for the “physical, intellectual, and moral education of the child” during the “three years of the first adolescence.”49 Gréard recognized working-​class adolescence as a life stage and wanted his school to curate young workers’ experience of this stage. Notably, the field of adolescent psychology was beginning to take note of the working classes around the time that Gréard published De l’école des apprentis.50 Gréard not only used the term “adolescence” in the text, but he associated it with a particular kind of development. His goal was to ensure that this stage progressed normally. To that end, he advocated removing youths from the workforce and into age-​segregated spaces. His proposed curriculum would not only equip young workers with the skills to earn a living, but would also promote their development. However, in guiding young workers through development, the school would also help to preserve the social order. Gréard wanted the vocational schools to help workers achieve their potential as workers, but his goal was never to empower them to do more than that. As he put it, “there is also an apprenticeship for life. One should train apprentices to practice civil and social virtues, just as one guides them to learn a trade.” Apprenticeship schools could build in lessons on “respect for the law, the sense of duty, the spirit of devotion, the knowledge of justice and equality.”51 In other words, the schools could teach young workers to be citizens. Just as Catholic reformers used vocational schools to instill young workers with devotion to Catholicism, so too did Gréard envision municipal vocational schools as crucial for teaching young workers the values of republicanism and to respect the Republic’s laws. Gréard still very much believed in the social order.52 His pamphlet demonstrates that even if new ideas about education and development influenced the founders of these schools, these same educators had a clear idea of the role of the working classes. In curating working-​class adolescence, their goal was to ensure that young workers followed a regular path to the workforce.

“An Apprenticeship for Life”  51 During the 1870s and 1880s, the city of Paris opened up seven vocational schools for boys, each of which specialized in a particular sector of Parisian industry. The three I will focus on here are the Écoles Diderot, Estienne, and Boulle. The École Diderot, which opened in 1873 as the École de la Villette, was one of the first public schools in France aimed exclusively at preparing young workers for manual trades.53 The school trained students for trades requiring wood-​and metal-​working expertise, such as joiners, locksmiths, or turners. It mixed practical and academic instruction, providing its teen-​ aged students with training courses in workshops along with more scholarly lessons in the classroom.54 After a December 11, 1880 law empowered departments or communes to establish professional schools, the city of Paris opened the other schools. The École Estienne, which opened in 1889, prepared students for “the arts and the industries of book making.”55 Established in 1886, the École Boulle trained students in trades associated with furniture making.56 Initially, the schools occupied an ambiguous position. Were they sites for vocational training or for education? This ambiguity meant that until 1892, the Ministers of Instruction and of Commerce jousted for control of the professional schools. It was only in 1892 that the Minister of Commerce gained undisputed control of these schools.57 From 1892 forward, they were classified as école pratiques de commerce et de l’industrie (EPCI). This institutional arrangement reinforced their separation from bourgeois secondary schools. The schools existed to prepare young workers for the workforce, rather than expanding secondary education to the laboring classes. The École Estienne provides an example of how these schools worked in practice. Its students and teachers printed a number of pamphlets and brochures for events happening at the school. These printed ephemera show off the young printers’ skills and have left us with a thorough archive of the school’s internal workings.58 The school set specific qualifications for entry. These conditions for admission ensured that boys at the school had a sufficient amount of primary instruction, but also that they were still young and malleable. Students needed to pass an entry exam, which in this case involved a dictation exercise (dictée), some arithmetic problems, and geometric drawings with a compass. To be eligible to take the exam, students needed to be between the ages of twelve and fifteen, French, and living in Paris, although the supervisory committee sometimes allowed in foreigners in exceptional circumstances.59 Those under thirteen had to be in possession of the certificate of primary

52  An Age to Work studies. Seventy to eighty young men would then be admitted.60 Although the students in each grade would not have been exactly the same age, the boys in the school were all teen-​aged. During his four years at the school, a boy would learn all the skills required for a particular trade, while acquiring the intellectual knowledge that would help him understand his trade. In terms of manual instruction, the boys started by rotating through the school’s various ateliers, which included shops for making type, typesetting, lithography, electrotyping, engraving, and book binding. When the school first opened, boys spent a year rotating through the workshops. Over time, its supervisory council decreased this time—​first to six months, then five months, and then four months in 1896.61 The supervisory council at the École Diderot instituted a similar reform in 1891 after its graduates reported difficulty finding employment.62 These reforms ensured that boys focused on their chosen trades earlier. As with the shift in control from the Minister of Instruction to the Minister of Commerce, this structure established that the schools were primarily for training rather than for educating young workers. Once a boy picked a trade, the training for that trade followed a very clear progression. This program contrasted with what the school’s directors saw as the more irregular training apprentices traditionally received.63 Instructors in each of the workshops had to follow a program that had been set at the start of the year and were told that they “should never diverge from the program.”64 For instance, boys who wanted to study lithography did simple prints in their first year and learned basic techniques to prepare stones, such as sanding. In their second year, these students practiced tracing images and drawing with different mediums, such as pens and pencils. In their third year, future lithographers not only studied how to create specific ink hues, but also how the machines they used operated and how to repair parts. Finally, in their fourth and final year, these boys drew on all the skills they had learned and made impressions.65 This sort of program ideally produced students with the complete knowledge of a particular trade. As such, the curriculum prevented “specialization,” a situation where a young worker only learned one very particular piece of production. (When workers and employers bemoaned the apprenticeship crisis, both groups pointed to the rise of specialization as one of the central issues.66) This program represented a shift in the transfer of technical knowledge. Instead of learning alongside master craftsmen producing objects for sale, the boys studied their trade in spaces designed for learning. The objects

“An Apprenticeship for Life”  53 they produced in their first few years were worthless except in their value for teaching students. The schools resembled the Orphanage at Auteuil in that they created separate spaces apart from the adult world in which young workers prepared for the workforce. However, the schools went a step further, replacing the traditional apprenticeship with a formal curriculum. In 1900, the city of Paris published a promotional book on the École Estienne to accompany a display at the 1900 Universal Exposition on the city’s vocational schools. The photographs in this book depict students and teachers in the midst of instruction. Although the students in these images were clearly posing for the camera, these images offer a rare glimpse inside the school. In a photo of the cavernous workshop for lithographic printing, most of the boys are facing the camera rather than engaging with the machinery. And yet, they are the ones standing next to the presses. A lone professor stands in the middle of the room, away from the machines. The photo implies that the boys were making prints without constant oversight and assistance. They were using the types of machines they would engage with in a

Students at the École Estienne pose next to printing machines in the school’s lithography workshop. Although the machines tower over the boys, they seem comfortable operating this machinery. Archives de Paris, 3784W 2, Fonds de l’École Estienne

54  An Age to Work real workshop, machines that in some cases were as large as they were. At the same time, the room resembles a classroom. Its layout enabled the boys to interact with their teacher and with each other. The sample images on the far wall likely served as inspiration for the boys. In showcasing the boys’ youth and small stature, the photos presented a strong argument in favor of the schools. In a photo of a modeling workshop, the boys cluster around finished works. The students in other photos wear coveralls or smocks, but the boys in this photo seem to be in their own clothes. Many have dressed for the occasion—​a few sport vests or coats. Most wear heavy boots, a ubiquitous feature of working-​class fashion. None of them have facial hair. Next to the reliefs, they appear small. Their narrow shoulders suggest that they are just beginning puberty. They seem too young to work alongside grown men. However, the school may have selected boys for this photo who were smaller and less developed to suggest that its students were too young to enter a formal workshop.

Boys examine casts in the modeling workshop at the École Estienne. The boys are dressed up for the occasion, but their heavy boots hint at their working-​class backgrounds. Archives de Paris, 3784W 2, Fonds de l’École Estienne

“An Apprenticeship for Life”  55 Alongside training in workshops, boys at the École Estienne took academic classes that complemented and enhanced their work in the ateliers. As it did for technical classes, the supervisory council set out a clear program of study for “theoretical education.” In the words of the council, this education should be “neither a repetition, nor a prolongation of primary instruction, but it should . . . be directed towards practical applications.”67 Students studied French language, geography, history, geometry, arithmetic, and technical drawing, all of which had a practical orientation. Even history classes provided students in lessons on the history of the book. As students studied Ancient Egypt, they also learned about papyrus. Alongside the lives of Mazarin and Richelieu, they learned about the Encyclopedia and printing across Europe in the eighteenth century.68 Students in their final two years followed a more specialized academic program based on the specialization they had chosen. Lithographers, engravers, and gilders spent more time learning drawing. Typesetters, who engaged more regularly with the written word, studied French, history, and science. Printers, who were the ones operating the large presses and mixing ink, needed to study chemistry and mechanics.69 In addition to this very structured course of study, the school supervised its students closely. This structure hints at the attitude the people who ran these schools had toward their young charges. The printed rules for the school’s personnel include a number of directives on regulating student behavior. The school had a head monitor responsible for supervising and discipling students. He had to stand at the door of the school and ensure the “good appearance” and “cleanliness” of students.70 Other monitors in the school were told not to “tolerate, in the hands of students, any book that isn’t a classic.” The same rules applied to journals and engravings. When students were in line, monitors had to insist on complete silence. During the hours of recreation, they had to oversee students and specifically, “prevent songs, all brutal or dangerous games, crack down on any waste of bread.”71 The school was not simply providing a precise structure to the boys’ vocational training, but regulating how they spent their leisure time. Unlike the mixed-​age space of the atelier, vocational schools were a specific space for young people. The directors of the school felt the need to curate this space to eliminate any of their pupils’ rough or immoral instincts. Unlike the Orphanage at Auteuil, these schools were not reformatories. And yet, they similarly tried to mold the morality of their young workers.

56  An Age to Work At the Universal Exposition in 1900, the city of Paris devoted a section of its pavilion to specimens from the vocational schools. These displays provide insight into how the Parisian municipal government viewed the schools. The photographs of this exhibit indicate that these displays took up a substantial part of the second floor of the pavilion.72 The section for the girls’ schools contained long rows of glass cases with samples of needlework and painted ceramics. Each boys’ school exhibited examples of its specialization. The corner for the École Estienne included samples of engraving and lithography. In the section devoted to the École Boulle, stately pieces of furniture clustered around tables laden with decorative pieces, such as chandeliers. The students from the École Diderot submitted examples of metalwork and woodwork, including decorative pieces and more functional engine parts. The objects on display mimicked older artistic styles, signaling the vitality of the Parisian tradition of craftsmanship. A pamphlet for visitors described a frame from the École Boulle as in the style of Louis XV and the case from the

Furniture and decorative objects produced by students and teachers from the École Boulle. At the 1900 Exposition, the city of Paris exhibited samples of student work from all its vocational schools. Archives de Paris, 3784W 3, Fonds de l’École Estienne

“An Apprenticeship for Life”  57 École Diderot contained unmistakably Neo-​Gothic arches and columns.73 The students at the École Estienne submitted prints that reproduced works by Da Vinci and Rembrandt.74 Although young craftsmen often learn by copying masterpieces, the choice to exhibit these works suggests an effort to present a narrative of continuity to a long tradition of Parisian decorative arts. These items telegraphed that a new generation of workers was ready to continue producing ornate books and elegant chairs. However, in celebrating these older artistic styles, the display hints at the reactionary thread in the vocational school project. In trying to preserve the apprenticeship, the men running the schools were resisting the changes industrialization posed not just to the structure of childhood, but to the composition and identity of the labor force. The schools’ names—​Boulle was a seventeenth-​century furniture maker and Estienne was a fifteenth-​century printer—​harkened back to an older artisanal tradition, creating a myth of a lineage to Parisian artisans of the past that separated the boys from the reality of industrial work in Belle Époque Paris. The students who emerged from the schools would not identify with unskilled workers, but with an older cooperate identity.75 These young workers would presumably not have the same class sensibilities as youths laboring in factories. By cordoning off working-​ class adolescents, middle-​class reformers were attempting to gain more influence over working-​class identity. In total, the vocational schools only trained a small proportion of the working-​class labor force. The seventy-​four such schools across France established before World War I had a collective student population of about fifteen thousand.76 But their structure helps us to understand what the ideal working-​class adolescence meant for republican elites. During adolescence, young workers were supposed to gain the skills to contribute to the workforce and the knowledge to be loyal, republican citizens. And yet, even this version of adolescence was only accessible to a privileged tier of the laboring classes.

Reactions Although the city of Paris proudly showed off the vocational schools at the 1900 Universal Exposition, not all Parisians shared this enthusiasm. Workers, employers, and parents criticized the training in these schools as insufficient. They complained too that the schools weakened working-​class

58  An Age to Work identity. In critiquing this new method of instruction, all three groups were also objecting to the way the schools remade the working-​class life course. Workers’ unions claimed that the schools did not sufficiently train young workers. In 1901, the Minister of Commerce surveyed patronal and workers’ syndicates across France on the state of training in their industries. In their responses to this survey, many Parisian trades expressed their frustration with the vocational schools. Printers who reproduced images through the intaglio method (taille douce) were adamant that the school “does not leave enough time in the four years for the apprenticeship of a trade.”77 Not all workers were so opposed. The mechanics’ syndicate replied that the handful of lathe operators, fitters, and smiths who trained at the École Diderot were at a disadvantage in terms of “dexterity” but quickly made up for it. In addition, the theoretical instruction they received in the school gave them “a huge advantage” over boys who trained in ateliers.78 The workers’ syndicate for decorative wood carvers noted that carvers trained at the École Boulle were desirable employees, but “the engravers trained at this school . . . leave something to be desired.” The syndicate had petitioned the school to make changes, but if the training did not improve, they would “be inclined to demand the suppression” of this training.79 The common theme running through these examples is that the young workers coming from the vocational schools had spent years training and yet still did not have the manual skills to contribute to production. Removed from mixed-​age workspaces, boys were not doing real work. Precisely because they were in these curated educational spaces, students from the vocational schools had not achieved the level of expertise necessary to become productive workers by their late teens. That the schools’ method of training workers posed a threat to the formation of worker identity perhaps drove these criticisms. By delaying when youths entered workshops and industrial workspaces, the schools prevented young workers from gaining a corporate identity as they learned their trades. Certain professions that had a strong corporate identity, as with the book trades impacted by the École Estienne, particularly objected to the schools.80 A rhyme published in the typography magazine suggested that craftsmen who became professors were leaving behind their working-​class peers.81 Even as the workers’ movement wanted to increase access to education, it recognized that republican primary and secondary schools had a clear moralizing mission.82 In an era when syndicalism was gaining strength and workers were challenging the Republic to address their needs, militant workers recognized that the vocational schools were not simply teaching skills, but attempting

“An Apprenticeship for Life”  59 to shape working-​class identity.83 The way the schools remade the working-​ class life course also posed a threat to working-​class identity. The schools inserted a version of adolescence onto the male, working-​class life course. As a result, their students not only missed out on working alongside older members of their trade, but their experiences of childhood then diverged from their fellow workers. As for employers, many recognized that young workers were not receiving adequate training in workshops, but they were ambivalent as to whether the schools’ graduates would make good employees. Given that graduates from the École Diderot reported in 1891 that they struggled to find placements, employers were likely staying away from graduates of the professional schools, at least in their first decade of operation.84 Even after the schools cut back on theoretical instruction, some employers continued to find fault with their training. In response to the 1901 survey on training, the employers in the photography trade found that “insufficient instruction” distinguished students from the École Estienne.85 Employers in the furniture industry remarked that students from the École Boulle “were less skilled manually when they left school” and thus were less sought after. But they did admit that these students, once they gained experience, were superior workers due to their drawing skills.86 However, employers worried that the schools were disturbing the social order, in part because the schools expanded the adolescent experience to the laboring classes. An early twentieth century report from Office of Labor wrote that many employers found fault with the schools for “skimming off the most talented of the children of the people.” It claimed that after attending school, these children considered manual labor to be beneath them. Employers thus reproached “schools for removing children from the working-​class world in which they were destined to live and work.”87 In the eyes of employers, the Republic was providing a route toward social mobility by expanding academic instruction, or perhaps even by extending adolescence to workers. While Gréard viewed these schools as maintaining the social order, some employers saw their restructuring of worker training as undermining patronal authority. The schools tried to address some of this resistance by giving syndicates more of a role in the functioning of the schools. After a rough beginning, the École Estienne agreed to give syndicates more representation on the school’s board, albeit without allowing them too much influence.88 In May 1895, the supervisory council of the École Diderot noted that the mechanics’ union had

60  An Age to Work donated four books to serve as prizes for young workers.89 The note is short, but it suggests that the union was collaborating with the school and finding ways to integrate its corporate identity into instruction. In their responses to the 1901 survey, the wood carvers mentioned that they had expressed displeasure to the École Boulle, implying that they felt that the school would attend to their complaints.90 These scattered references demonstrate that some trades were making connections with the schools and condoning their training. The schools’ low retention rates suggest that students and their families also did not fully accept their model for training workers. Of the 116 students who entered the École Estienne in its first year of existence, a mere fifty-​seven completed their studies in July 1893. The rest had left.91 Many of the students who dropped out took up other occupations. But in 1893, five students in this class left to enter into apprenticeships and all five chose trades taught at the school—​photography, lithography, intaglio.92 These boys, or their families, had likely already decided they were going into these trades, but figured that their chances of employment would be better if they switched to an apprenticeship in an atelier. The school’s retention rate did not improve in the following years. For the class who entered in 1899, forty-​six out of eighty students left the school early. Many had departed to begin working, but a non-​negligible amount left due to poor health. A few boys left for fine arts or commercial schools, which would prepare them for trades further up the social ladder. The École Diderot reported a similar retention rate. Of the students meant to complete their instruction in 1887, only fifty-​seven percent stayed for all three years of schooling. By 1890, only 39.4 percent of their students made it through all three years.93 This low retention rate was perhaps due to economic factors, but it also suggests that the working classes did not embrace the elite model of working-​ class adolescence. Some parents likely removed their sons to place them in remunerated positions. Parents may have recognized that keeping their sons enrolled in the school did not increase their chances of employment and in some cases, hurt their chances. In 1891, the school’s supervisory council reported, “Many former students complained of the very great difficulty” they encountered when looking for jobs in the professions for which they had trained.94 But the fact that so many families were willing to remove their sons from the school demonstrates that they did not envision worker training as a defined period in a young worker’s life.

“An Apprenticeship for Life”  61 The profile of the students attending these schools demonstrates too that these schools were not even recruiting exclusively from the working-​class milieu. In 1900, the École Estienne estimated that on average, only sixty-​six out of its 250 students had a parent who was doing manual labor. The majority of students had a parent in a white-​collar profession or who was an employer.95 The schools’ yearly records support this estimate. The registers tracking enrollment at the École Estienne include information on the paternal profession, or if the student was without a father, the mother’s. The school classified occupations into three categories: boss, employee, and worker. Bosses included anyone who controlled his or her own workplace and included skilled craftsmen and women, such as hairdressers and printers, as well as more professional trades, such as teachers, piano instructors, and midwives. It also included a number of shop owners in the food industry. Employees encompassed low-​level white-​collar jobs, usually in commerce or for the railroad companies, but the category also included delivery boys. Workers were mostly in skilled professions. In the school’s first class, the students who graduated in 1893, thirty-​two students had a parent who was a boss, thirty-​ five had a parent who was an employee, and forty-​nine had a parent who was a worker. Only fourteen parents had any involvement with the world of books and printing. These ranged from a mother who was a receiver, to engravers and typesetters, to printshop owners and a single bookshop owner.96 By 1899, the numbers are fairly similar with fifteen parents counted as bosses, thirty-​three as employers, and thirty-​one as workers. Once again, the number involved in printing was fairly low, this time, a mere nine. The largest percentage of students in this class, forty-​one percent, had parents who worked as employees. These parents, who were not manual laborers, were likely sending their children to the vocational schools in the hope that they could obtain a secure post in a trade, but one that blended the manual and the professional. Very few of the students were from the ranks of the destitute.97 The profile of students at the École Diderot was similar. Of the fifty students who completed the three years of instruction in 1895 and entered into a skilled profession, almost sixty percent had parents who were skilled or unskilled manual laborers.98 This list only includes those students who made it through successfully. The list of 136 students leaving the school in 1891 includes both those who completed their apprenticeships, but also those who were forced to drop out or who left. Of those students, about forty percent

62  An Age to Work had a parent in a skilled profession, and another forty percent had a parent in some kind of commercial job, whether it be clerk for the city or merchant.99 The students at this school came from the comfortable tiers of the laboring classes and the petite bourgeoisie. While the school spread secondary education to a group of students that may not have had access to it before, this group of students was still small and not necessarily representative of the working-​class population of Paris as a whole. Most offspring of the laboring classes did not have access to the schools and this more distinct version of adolescence.

Training Outside the Vocational Schools In addition to the vocational schools, the Third Republic established forms of post-​primary education that did not map onto adolescence as neatly. Cours complémentaires, or complimentary courses, for instance, extended schooling by a year and were essentially an addition to primary school. In 1881, the Republic passed a law allowing for the creation of complimentary courses.100 By 1900, the city had seventeen courses for boys and twenty-​eight for girls. In these courses, students received a standard academic curriculum: math, literature, history. They also received basic manual instruction. Boys had classes in wood and iron and girls had home economics classes. In 1886, manual instruction only took up four hours out of the thirty-​seven-​ and-​a-​half-​hour week.101 These courses had an academic emphasis but were not offering a true secondary education. The schools had a very specific constituency. As the assistant director of primary instruction wrote in 1885, the students in these schools had to have the mental acuity to follow the courses. Otherwise, they slowed classes down. At the same time, he wrote that it would be a “grave error to keep students who by their aptitudes or the conditions of their family could enter” more advanced secondary schools. They were instead appropriate for youngsters who were going to take up manual labor, but whose families could afford to let them stay in school for an additional year.102 The complimentary courses delayed a youth’s entry into the workforce but did not carve out a distinct period for training. Young workers could also attend night courses, which allowed them to continue their instruction while working. In 1894, the Republic began offering night classes in technical skills for apprentices and adults.103 Parisian

“An Apprenticeship for Life”  63 public schools were already running night classes for apprentices and adults who wanted additional academic instruction. The academic night courses predated the Republic.104 This new incarnation focused more on offering practical skills—​such as industrial drawing, math, or manual training—​to apprentices.105 By 1909, the city had thirteen programs and was about to open two more. At this point, more than a thousand students were participating in the courses. In most schools, instruction took place between 8pm and 11pm, which the members of the Chamber of Commerce compiling the report remarked as “regrettable” given the toll it took on the “health and attendance” of the students.” The courses provided lessons in locksmithing, construction, modeling, wood working, and other similar fields.106 The participants in these classes were beyond primary school, but these courses brought them back inside the doors of republican institutions. The courses seemed to be focused on the working classes as a whole, rather than singling out and bringing together young workers in specific trades. With both complimentary courses and night schools, the Republic’s goal was to provide additional education and support for young workers. These programs did not carve out adolescence as a distinct stage, but rather focused on preparing youths to succeed in the workforce. For most working-​class youths, the life course remained more fluid. In workshops and even in night courses, they continued to mix with workers of all ages.

The Evolution of Worker Training For republican elites, the apprenticeship crisis was a problem on two fronts. As they expanded their understanding of adolescence to include the laboring classes, they worried that young workers would be unable to navigate this period of emotional turbulence without the structure of traditional apprenticeships. Their physical, mental, and moral development would be irregular or stunted. In mixed-​age spaces, young workers were likely to fall prey to the dangers of adult life. But the apprenticeship crisis also threatened the structure of the French workforce. Without apprenticeships, young workers entered into unskilled and semi-​skilled jobs. In such jobs, they burned out quickly and became disgruntled. Moreover, the lack of skilled workers jeopardized France’s standing in the global economy. To supplement or substitute for apprenticeships, first religious and then republican reformers developed alternative training programs. These

64  An Age to Work programs provided structure for young workers as they entered the workforce. Reformers designed specific spaces for young workers, such as patronages and vocational schools, to promote young workers’ intellectual and physical development. In that they served teen-​aged boys, such spaces resembled secondary schools. As such, they introduced the intermediate stage of adolescence to the working-​class life course. But there was a key difference between Paris’ vocational schools and secondary schools for bourgeois boys. The vocational schools existed to train workers and not to educate them. The Republic was not attempting to universalize adolescence, but to regularize working-​class adolescence to ensure that young workers had the skills and desire to enter the workforce. Even if republican elites wanted to standardize working-​class adolescence, such efforts encountered opposition from parents, employers, and workers. The apprenticeship crisis itself was a sign that these groups had reimagined the working-​class life course and had eliminated the intermediate period of training. When it came to the vocational schools, parents removed their children prematurely. Employers and unions critiqued their method of training. Their opposition suggests that they did not envision an intermediate stage of adolescence as essential to the working-​class life course. Moreover, they viewed the Republic’s efforts to impose it as an attempt to remake working-​ class identity. By taking control of vocational training, the Republic was not only preparing workers, but trying to instill them with a republican corporate identity. Ultimately, these schools only served an elite tier of the working classes. However, the history of the vocational schools helps us understand the ideal form of working-​class adolescence for republican elites and why this version of adolescence met with resistance from parents, employers, and workers.

3 Creating the Juvenile Delinquent In 1893, the journalist and social investigator Louis Paulian published a tome on the beggars of Paris. As part of his research, Paulian decided to go undercover. He dressed as a street musician and made friends “in the most questionable circles.”1 In this underworld, he investigated how beggars came to be beggars. Based on his findings, he made the following observation: Just as there are schools for apprenticeships and training courses for every area of human industry, there are also schools for apprenticeships and training courses for those who want to make a career of begging. As their vocation becomes daily more advanced, beggars, who already have in Paris their own restaurants, societies, and employment bureaus, may soon organize themselves into a union, the better to defend their collective interests.2

Paulian’s description of schools for beggars, although likely apocryphal, offers a striking contrast to the Republic’s efforts to establish schools to train young workers for manual trades.3 It suggests that Octave Gréard and his fellow educational reformers founded vocational schools not simply to train skilled craftsmen, but also to prevent working-​class youths from taking up itinerant trades. As with educational reformers, criminologists and journalists worried about youths who abandoned productive labor. In their minds, youths who gained a taste for the illicit economy were more likely to turn to a life of crime. These concerns shaped the Republic’s approach to juvenile delinquency. At the same time that the Third Republic was establishing vocational schools for young workers, it also developed institutions to cater to juvenile offenders and mistreated children. From the 1830s onward, reformers and criminologists had increasingly advocated for separate institutions for young people.4 According to this line of reasoning, most young offenders were vulnerable and pliable. As such, their rehabilitation needed to occur in spaces apart from more dangerous adult criminals. By midcentury, the city An Age to Work. Miranda Sachs, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197638453.003.0004

66  An Age to Work of Paris was sending young offenders to separate juvenile prisons and detention centers.5 Building on this legacy, the Third Republic created a specific tribunal for young offenders.6 It shifted to a more rehabilitative model for vulnerable and deviant youngsters, passing laws to protect children from abuse and expanding the purview of the Public Assistance, the service for abandoned children.7 By World War I, the Republic had developed a specific legal and institutional infrastructure for juvenile delinquents. Even if new ideas about childhood spurred the creation of these institutions, more entrenched suspicions of the poor also shaped the treatment of young delinquents. From the Middle Ages onward, European society had marginalized those it considered to be the lazy and undeserving poor.8 Lack of productivity remained a form of deviancy in industrialized Europe.9 Vagabondage, begging, and theft, the crimes for which youngsters were most often apprehended, all involved a rejection of the formal economy. In the minds of respectable folks, young people who carried out such crimes were apt to join the ranks of the unproductive. As historian Alain Faure puts it, nineteenth-​century specialists believed that “the crime of the adult starts with the peccadillo of the child, one leads to the other like the spring flows to the sea.”10 To halt this progression, institutions for young deviants, whether the Public Assistance or juvenile prisons, focused on directing youngsters away from socially dangerous behaviors and toward industriousness. The creation of the juvenile delinquent was another crucial piece in the recognition and standardization of childhood. Similar to how child labor legislation carved out child workers as a unique group within the workforce, republican criminal legislation defined the juvenile delinquent as a distinct category of deviant. But the juvenile delinquent was not just young, he was also unproductive. Examining the depiction of the juvenile delinquent during the Third Republic shows us how norms around industriousness influenced the way specialists and the broader public envisioned this category. Studying the development of the juvenile justice system demonstrates that this system not only helped to define childhood as a distinct stage, but also contributed to encoding and enforcing norms around productivity.

Vagabonds and Beggars In 1908, Émile Massard, a municipal councilor in the city of Paris, proposed a plan to develop a new kind of apprenticeship school. Within the first few lines

Creating the Juvenile Delinquent  67 of his proposal, he invoked the apaches, the trope of the vagabonding young man. (The term literally translates to the American Apache.) The apprenticeship crisis was decimating the ranks of the skilled workers, but, he claimed, “there is only one trade that is not in decline, it is the trade of the apaches. The apaches recruit among the ranks of the aimless young men.”11 Massard’s inclusion of the figure of the apache in a policy proposal illustrates the salience of this figure. His implicit juxtaposition of the apache to the skilled worker is also telling. For Massard, a life of skilled labor was the ideal path for young members of the laboring classes. In contrast, those that eschewed formal work, such as the vagabond or his younger cousin, the beggar, were apt to become permanently asocial or deviant. In texts on the vagabond and beggar, many Third Republic journalists and criminologists similarly equated delinquency with participation in the illicit economy. The apache was the delinquent par excellence in Third Republic France. In the 1890s, the Paris press began to report on his exploits. This figure, whose name evoked the Wild West, terrified Parisians first in the pages of the press and later in film.12 The rise of a mass press and of dime novels fueled the myth of the apache.13 According to this myth, apaches were youths from the working-​class, primarily outer neighborhoods of Paris who rejected societal norms and joined bands in which they wreaked havoc on more respectable folk. One of the apache’s fundamental characteristics was his refusal to work. Michelle Perrot’s oft-​cited article on the apache has provided the foundation for the subsequent historical study of this category. In the article, Perrot keeps coming back to theme of work. In her exposition to her article, she defines the apache as one who “escapes from school and from the declining apprenticeship system. He vagabonds, lives off of small jobs or minor marauding, mocks the police, who when in popular quarters, spend the majority of their times hunting down rascals.”14 The apaches were not simply disorderly. These youths opted for their own social codes and rejected the formal economy. As Massard’s statement suggests, the respectable classes felt that they had to cure working-​class youths of this impulse. The apache lore grew out of a longer tradition of anxiety around the vagabond. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, vagabondage preoccupied the French.15 The vagabond’s central crime was his refusal to work.16 As industrialization created a more uniform conception of time, the lines between those who spent their days working and those who did not

68  An Age to Work became more apparent.17 The spread of policing in Paris also meant that the government could survey Parisians and censure those who refused to work.18 In accordance with its prominence in the public imagination, vagabondage was also one of the most common crimes for which young people were apprehended. Historian Jean-​Claude Farcy has collected data on the minors tried before the Parquet, the lowest rung of the criminal system. From 1888–​1894, vagabondage was the second most common criminal charge both for children under sixteen and for youths between the ages of sixteen and twenty. (Theft was the first.) For both age groups, around fifteen percent were charged with vagabondage.19 Given that many minors were not charged, Farcy also looks at arrests. Using Judge Louis Albanel’s records, he calculates that almost one-​half of the children under sixteen arrested from 1887 to 1890 were arrested for vagabondage.20 His research demonstrates that minors were much more likely to be charged with economic crimes than violent crimes. Although newspapers painted vagabonds as willfully unruly, many were truly destitute. According to the police archives, many young people charged with vagabondage were sleeping outside or begging.21 Specialists writing about youth crime, such as legal scholars, social scientists, and republican officials, attributed the prevalence of vagabondage to the corrupting influence of the working-​ class milieu. For instance, Maxime Du Camp, the realist writer who wrote on the poor of Paris, claimed that working-​class neighborhoods transformed youths into vagabonds. As he put it, “Belleville, La Villette, Ménilmontant” were the “land of vagabonds, there, the child loses himself almost naturally.”22 These were the quintessential working-​class neighborhoods at the northeast edge of the city where working-​class society was strongest and government control was weakest. They were also the places that held out the longest during the Paris Commune.23 A decade after Du Camp published his text, they would also become the supposed haunts of the apaches.24 However, Du Camp did not suggest that these spaces breed political insubordination. Instead, they sucked youngsters into the illicit economy. This emphasis on indolence and petty crime as the urban malaise captures the shifting concerns of republican elites. The notion that a neighborhood could spawn delinquent behavior reflects the shift toward environmental theories of delinquency during the Third Republic.25 According to these theories, a young person did not become delinquent because of an innate disposition toward crime, but as a result of the conditions of their family life.26 Such ideas permeate legal or medical texts about young delinquents. For his study of juvenile delinquency, Judge

Creating the Juvenile Delinquent  69 Louis Albanel collected information on six hundred children who had been brought before him for judgment and determined that only one-​half had parents who were married. From this research he concluded, “the disorganization of the family is one of the surest factors that leads to childhood criminality.”27 He used words like “contagion” to describe how a single mother’s lifestyle depraved her children.28 For many like Albanel, children who did not grow up in an ideal bourgeois family were more likely to turn to crime.29 In a similar vein, certain commentators claimed that working-​ class parents’ inability to provide structure and discipline led their children to become vagabonds. In a letter for the local police commissioners in 1909, the Parisian police prefect warned about parental negligence. He recommended paying attention to the “children who from when they start school to the age of penal majority wander the streets or loiter at length, abandoned by the weakness or the criminal negligence of their parents.” From his perspective, the solution was to remove children from this type of parent.30 The concern here is not only that parents might be directing their offspring toward crime, but also that they were failing to provide the structure necessary for their children to grow into productive members of society. The police chief ’s condemnation of parents who were not criminal, just lax, also appears in economist Louis Rivière’s work on beggars and vagabonds. It was when the father and mother left for work, “leaving their children to abandon themselves to the overcrowded landings or the courtyards [in apartment blocks]” that problems emerged.31 The parents in Rivière’s account were hard-​working, but their work took them away from their children and their parental responsibilities. As with educational reformers, he believed that children needed structure to grow into productive citizens. That a police chief, a judge, and an economist all articulated similar concerns about the working-​ class milieu illustrates the pervasiveness of these ideas amongst the various specialists who studied and policed working-​class families. For many elites, parental negligence opened the doors to vagabondage, but it was peer society that turned aimless youths into criminals. Rivière’s account continues: “Sometimes it only takes the bad advice of an older comrade to win over the resistance of a weak will. Once the first theft passes unseen, a more serious one will be attempted, and the child can find himself thus engaged, barely realizing it, on the route that leads to crime and to prison.”32 Rivière’s treatment of theft is instructive. He cast theft not as a money-​making activity, but as a pastime within peer society. However, by committing theft, a youngster took the first steps toward a more illicit lifestyle.33 Such concerns

70  An Age to Work about peer society permeate less academic texts as well. When asked about the merits of raising the school leaving age, labor inspector Valant advocated allowing parents to decide whether to send twelve-​year-​olds to work, “rather than to see [the child] lose himself from a young age, on the street, with bad companions.”34 For this work inspector, a child was more at risk when spending time with peers than by starting work prematurely. As Massard’s account demonstrates, many experts saw the apprenticeship crisis as contributing to the rise of vagabondage. For criminologist Henry Joly, the lack of structured work pushed young people toward asocial behavior. As he put it, the decline of apprenticeships “multiply the number of adolescents destined to become by turn artisans in easy and intermittent trades, then street vendors, then vagabonds, then pimps, and finally regulars of the correctional police.”35 For Joly, the vagabond was the intermediate step between irregular work and a life of crime. It was the stage where a youth abandoned all pretext of honest work. To combat this decline into vagabondage, it was essential to resurrect the apprenticeship system and above all, create more structure in the lives of the young members of the working classes. Although many of these commentators offered work or worker training as a cure, some also suggested that schooling might be a way to prevent against vagabondage. In 1894, the Departmental Council of the Seine adopted a measure to encourage the mairies, education inspectors, and the local police to enforce the mandatory education law more assiduously, as it “is an effective means to limit vagabondage.”36 Likewise, Joly stressed that schools were the one place where children “run no risk of being recruited into a band.”37 But particularly after the implementation of mandatory primary schooling, the focus shifted more to work and apprenticeships. After all, the figure of the vagabond tended to be a youth rather than a schoolboy. Working-​ class parents recognized the anxiety that the figure of the vagabonding youth provoked for the respectable classes. When parents wrote to the Minister of Labor to petition for exemptions to the child labor laws, they often conjured up the specter of their unemployed children falling prey to the temptations of the street. In 1909, César Cottet wrote to the Minister of Labor to ask for an exemption so his son could continue working. His fifteen-​ year-​old son, Léon, had been let go from his apprenticeship as a wheelwright due to the restrictions of the 1900 Millerand Law. As the father put it, “It is unadvisable for my child to become once more completely dependent on me or that he vagabonds on the streets of Paris while I have to search for a

Creating the Juvenile Delinquent  71 new placement for him.”38 Cottet’s petition echoes specialist texts like Joly or Rivière’s. He seemed to understand the fear that an unemployed youth might pose for a republican bureaucrat. The Minister of Labor did not budge, choosing to reiterate the conditions of the Millerand Law. In this instance, the republican bureaucracy prioritized enforcing the protections around childhood over ensuring regular work for the boy. The female version of the vagabond was the prostitute. The prostitute’s sexuality made her deviant, even if certain forms of prostitution were legal in France.39 When respectable city dwellers filed complaints about prostitutes, they often highlighted their sexuality. Such was the case when the director of the École Diderot wrote to the police to complain that prostitutes were tempting his students.40 The female apache was also defined by her sexuality. The most famous female apache, Casque d’Or, came to prominence in 1902 when the leaders of two rival gangs engaged in a war for her affections. Casque d’Or earned her living by walking the boulevards of Paris’ outer neighborhoods.41 This career contributed to her notoriety. When she tried to join a theater troupe, she faced a smear campaign. According to this campaign, her presence was an affront to the “honest mothers” of the neighborhood and her “degrading promiscuity” threatened the other female actresses.42 As a prostitute, Casque d’Or could gain renown in the world of the apaches, but it marginalized her outside that world. The prostitute’s participation in the illicit economy also provoked concern. Just as commentators worried that working-​class boys might slip into vagabondage, they worried that girls might abandon productive work for prostitution. In 1873, Georges Lassez, the general secretary of a society that promoted secular schools in the 3rd arrondissement, wrote of the necessity of preventing working girls from turning to prostitution. He claimed that when girls entered the workforce, they came into contact with the vice and were tempted by the “abyss of prostitution.” He proposed attaching a workshop to the primary schools for older girls where they could learn “the professions reserved for women” and become “good workers.”43 For Lassez, vocational training not only helped girls stave off destitution. A young woman with a good work ethic had the character to withstand the allure of “the world’s oldest profession.” As such, he set up prostitution as the opposite of traditional productive labor. Although not as notorious as the vagabond, the child beggar was the other prominent figure in the public imagination of the juvenile delinquent. Similar to the vagabond, the child beggar’s deviancy derived from his failure to

72  An Age to Work participate in the formal economy. Beggars demanded money without doing work, leading many of the same commentators who condemned vagabonds to deem beggars parasitic. In classifying beggars, economist Louis Rivière sorted them into those who could not work, such as the older or infirm; those who wanted to work but were unable to find employment; and finally, those who “could, but refused to work.”44 While the first two groups required care and concern, the latter “merited all the severities of repressive laws.”45 From his perspective, there was a class of people who were deliberately choosing to take from others. Louis Paulian suggested that there were people who made a “career of begging.”46 He implied that beggars opted to stay beggars and eschew the formal economy. Begging as a child was particularly dangerous, as it exposed children to the vices of the street and made them susceptible to a life of crime.47 Even as accounts of the child beggar rued his participation in the illicit economy, such accounts also emphasized his youth and vulnerability. An 1886 article in the Estafette painted a wretched picture of child beggars: “It is a sad and often odious industry, this exploitation of the public by children. Children are trained to beg like one trains dogs to walk upright on their hind legs. The father and mother disperse their progeny in diverse zones and the children bring home in the evening the product of their day.” The article finished with a story in which the police found a young boy of nine and his sister spending the night on the street. The two had been sent out by their parents, but having failed to collect a certain sum, were too afraid of the beating that awaited them to return home.48 Other reports told of impoverished parents who were willing to use even the very young to improve their luck as beggars, as in the case of mothers who carried their babies with them to generate sympathy. In the worst cases, some families rented out their children to women who pretended they were their own.49 Such accounts feel a bit like melodrama.50 Indeed, little, woebegone beggars also featured in many poems and images from this period.51 These accounts integrated the growing discourse on children as small and fragile. Amidst the pathos, there is a critique of working-​class parents. Sending a child to beg was exploitative, but it also put him or her at risk of a more permanent entanglement with the illicit economy. When the Third Republic attempted to regulate child begging, it held parents rather than children responsible. This approach suggests that reports of the exploitation of child beggars were not entirely fanciful. Or perhaps the myth influenced the treatment of the problem. In the end, censuring parents was much easier than attacking the larger scourge of poverty.

Creating the Juvenile Delinquent  73 Those who studied beggars ascribed specific roles to children of different ages and genders. In a 1910 report to the Chamber of Deputies, Georges Berry presented a detailed schema of the child beggar’s lifecycle. From an early age, children, even unconsciously, participated in the beggars’ world. According to his report, unscrupulous professional beggars convinced unwed mothers to rent out their babies.52 Ragpickers rented out slightly older children to beggars to “cling to their arms and to their clothes.”53 At seven, these children transitioned from being objects of pity to street musicians.54 Berry then went on to describe in great detail the specific exploitation of teenaged prostitutes. Despite their different roles, children of every age were martyrs and victims. Given Berry’s aim—​he was trying to coax legislators into tightening the laws on child begging—​he was invested in portraying children as victims. However, his depiction is similar to the portrayal of child beggars in the press. Notably, he only includes girls when talking about teen-​aged beggars. Boys at this age were not so defenseless and their activities on the street were more objectionable. Girls, however, remained more childlike. Berry, along with other observers, recognized that girl beggars were vulnerable to sexual exploitation. This began at a young age. Berry recounted the story of an eight-​year-​old who was “soiled” by a friend of the musician for whom she was working.55 As girls got older, there was more fluidity between girl beggars and child prostitutes. Both beggars and prostitutes propositioned passersby. Both were simultaneously sellers and sold in the illegal economy. Accounts of little flower sellers, who were a type of beggar, demonstrate the connections between the two occupations. An article in La Presse hinted that selling flowers could lead to other dangers. “Pushed by her parents, she engages occasionally in a base commerce that brings larger returns than the sale of roses and violets.”56 In his report, Berry wrote that the selling of flowers was only a cover for the exploitation of girls. He claimed that these so-​called flower sellers either congregated around the Rue Mouffetard or in the Marais. These latter, he suggested were Eastern Europe Jews.57 The implication was that unscrupulous adults took advantage of these girls. This exploitation not only damaged these young girls’ morality, but also pushed them toward long-​term participation in the illicit economy. Very likely, boys were also sexually exploited, but the child prostitute in the mind of the public was a girl. The street musician, who was a specific type of child beggar, is emblematic of simultaneous anxiety and sympathy that child beggars provoked. Street musicians garnered money through unproductive labor, but they were often

74  An Age to Work young and exploited. According to an article in La Presse, padroni rented these children from their families. “These wretched youngsters are obliged to go sing or dance in courtyards or before the terraces of cafes. They have to bring to their boss a fixed sum each day. In return, he houses and feeds them.”58 To a certain extent, being a street musician was a profession. Adult street musicians had medallions licensing them to perform.59 For children, however, this occupation pulled them away from school and from more formal professions. As much as observers pitied street musicians, they also worried that these youngsters would learn they could survive by dishonest means and thus never acquire the work ethic for industrial employment. According to the article in La Presse, musicians would run away to work for themselves by the age of sixteen. The girls sometimes became artists’ models, which we can surmise led to an immoral lifestyle.60 Of Italian street musicians, Paulian wrote, “the small children, rarely see the sky of their home country again. Most of the time, the girls finish at [the women’s prison] Saint Lazarre, while the boys wind up at the dépôt.”61 For Paulian, children who started out as beggars turned into more hardened criminals. By participating in the illicit economy as youngsters, they gained a taste for laziness that led to other, more explicit forms of crime. Certainly, both these narratives of the street musician’s future career could be apocryphal. Nonetheless, they epitomize elite anxieties with regard to the fate of children who participated in the illicit economy. Given the sensational nature of these depictions, it is not surprising that the street musician showed up in fictional melodrama. He made an appearance in Hector Malot’s classic 1878 novel, Sans Famille. In the midst of his wanderings through France, the young protagonist, Remi, visits the home of a padrone in Paris. At the end of the day, twelve children return to the cramped dwellings, each with a harp, violin, or flute.62 Garofoli, the padrone, forces the children to hand over their earnings and orders beatings for the ones who fail to present the required amount, even doling out additional beatings for youngsters who squeal in pain.63 These children are pitiful because they are by their nature small and helpless. And yet, they are already learning ruses that will allow them to make money on the streets of Paris. The novel bears the unmistakable influence of Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Malot was definitely aware of Dickens’ work, as he wrote to him in the 1860s.64 As a result, this earlier novel must have colored Malot’s depiction of Parisian street musicians. However, Malot exchanged Dickens’ thieves for musicians, opting for figures who were more familiar to a French audience.

Creating the Juvenile Delinquent  75 For Paulian, Malot, and many other members of the French public, the street musician was Italian, which perhaps contributed to the suspicion around this category. The article in La Presse, for instance, labeled the Italian street musicians as a specific type. In Sans Famille, the padrone and his charges are all Italian. In popular lore, padroni smuggled Italian children across the border. Once in Paris, groups of these children lived together under the supervision of a padrone, who sent them out to make money. In this instance, the myth was, unfortunately, not far from the reality. Using the records of the Italian consul Luigi Cerruit, John Zucchi presents a number of examples of children who were brought across the border, oftentimes illegally, and were treated poorly by padroni in France in the 1850s and 1860s.65 In 1867, even as reformers sought to curb the problem, the number of children performing in Paris was in the thousands.66 The 1868 Report on the Situation of the Little Italians prepared by concerned Italians in France, including Cerruit, highlighted the abuse inflicted on Italian street musicians.67 The archival record suggests that the number of Italian street musicians declined after the Franco–​Prussian War when both the French and Italian governments passed legislation to ban child street musicians.68 Police records from the late nineteenth century contain almost no traces of Italian street musicians. However, the report and the simultaneous press campaign against the exploitation of these children left a mark in the popular imagination. The Italian street musician remained a figure of concern, a symbol of how children engaging in the illicit economy were at risk of turning to a life of crime. Such concerns about the delinquent potential of working-​class youths influenced the development of the juvenile justice system.

Juvenile Justice Many of the laws and practices that were central to the Third Republic’s juvenile justice system predated the Republic. From the early nineteenth century, legal codes contained specific sentencing criteria for minors. The Napoleonic Code gave judges the responsibility for deciding if a minor, defined as anyone under sixteen, had acted with discernment, meaning they had a mature capacity for judgment. If a judge decided a youngster acted with discernment, he or she received a sentence of less than one-​half the length of the punishment an adult would receive for the same crime. Even if a judge determined a minor had acted without discernment, he could still sentence the minor to “a

76  An Age to Work correctional house.” He might also release the minor to his parents.69 For the most part, children were still tried and incarcerated in the same institutions as adults.70 However, most children throughout the nineteenth century were not charged. Only about two percent of young people in correctional facilities had been found guilty of a crime. The vast majority were children that a judge had exonerated but had determined required correction.71 Although the law recognized differences between youthful and mature offenders, young people remained integrated into the general prison population. They were also at risk of being sent to prison as a preventative measure. In addition, parents could choose to incarcerate their misbehaving offspring. The Napoleonic Code reaffirmed the right of “parental correction.” This right, which dated to the Old Regime, allowed a father, or a widowed mother, to request the incarceration of an unruly child for up to a month.72 In this instance, too, adults determined that children might grow into criminals and thus merited preventative incarceration. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the state increasingly claimed the authority to incarcerate youths. However, parents had ways of using the state apparatus to send away their misbehaving offspring. Starting in the 1830s, the French state began establishing separate penal institutions for young offenders. These early institutions required young people to perform labor, ostensibly as a form of rehabilitation. The first juvenile prisons were in Paris.73 Founded in 1831, the juvenile prison Madelonnettes filled inmates’ days with manual labor. This work was intended to help prepare youngsters for life after prison, but it also helped the prison make money.74 The prison that replaced it, Petite Roquette, kept its inmates in isolation, but also required them to work.75 These prisons gave way to agricultural colonies. Opened in 1840, the now notorious agricultural colony at Mettray specifically catered to young, male delinquents. It pressed boys into “hard work as a means of socialization.”76 As with Mettray, many of the early institutions that dealt with wayward youth came from the private sector, especially after an 1850 law granted public funding to private correctional institutions for young delinquents.77 After an 1865 inquiry revealed many of the abuses at Petite Roquette, the state relied even more on agricultural colonies.78 By mid-​century, reformers had begun to differentiate between underaged and adult prisoners, but they still advocated treating young delinquents with severity. When reformers in the 1830s called for separate facilities for young inmates, they defined this population as “juvenile delinquents.”79 These

Creating the Juvenile Delinquent  77 discussions occurred around the same time that Alsatian manufacturers sparked the first calls for child labor legislation.80 Although reformers believed that young inmates needed to be kept separate from the corrupting influence of adult prisoners, they did not see these youngsters as innocent victims. The fact that young people could be sent to jail merely for displaying signs of a delinquent character speaks to the deeply rooted suspicion around working-​class children. Early reformers saw deviant children as inherently guilty. It was only in the second half of the century that elite reformers began to regard deviant children more as victims.81 Even as the Third Republic built on these precedents, it moved away from holding minors responsible for their misdeeds. In its first decades, the Republic passed a series of laws that shifted the legal burden for minors’ delinquent behavior to their parents. In December 1874, only seven months after the Republic enacted its first child labor law, legislators passed a law on children in ambulatory professions. This law stipulated that any adult who employed a child under sixteen, or any parent who employed a child under twelve as a street performer would be jailed or fined. Any adult who sent out a child under the age of sixteen to beg or vagabond would be jailed and fined.82 This law represented a shift in the legal landscape, allowing the state to regulate and question parental authority.83 Moreover, by punishing parents when children participated in the illicit economy, it shifted the legal responsibility for juvenile misbehavior. Notably, the Republic’s first efforts to regulate the parent–​childhood relationship focused on the realm of work, attesting to the importance its legislators placed on protecting its future workforce. These legislators did not trust parents to protect their offspring from the dangers of factory life or from the nefarious influences of the illicit economy.84 Through a series of laws in the 1880s and 1890s, the state gained the ability to remove young people from neglectful or abusive parents. Starting in 1881, the city of Paris began removing youths between the ages of twelve and sixteen from parents it deemed were practicing “moral abandonment.” In 1889, the Republic instituted this policy at the national level.85 According to this law, parents who were engaged in crime, debauching their children, or behaving in a way that might comprise the health or morality of their children could lose their parental rights.86 An 1898 law on child abuse extended these protections to children whose parents were inflicting bodily harm.87 Like child labor laws, these laws encoded the idea that children were vulnerable and that the state had the responsibility to ensure their normal

78  An Age to Work development. And like the law on begging, these laws also shifted the responsibility for children’s criminal behavior to their parents. However, many republican elites continued to regard young people who had engaged in criminal behavior with suspicion. As the Republic’s legal approach to delinquent and mistreated youngsters evolved, it increasingly placed these youngsters in welfare institutions rather than correctional institutions. By sending these youngsters to institutions that catered specifically to young people, the Republic further distinguished the juvenile delinquent from the adult criminal population. According to Judge Louis Albanel, of the 21,657 young Parisians arrested between 1887 and 1899, only 2,818 went to a correctional facility. Instead, the Republic placed many in this population with the Public Assistance or returned them to their parents.88 The Public Assistance of Paris, which had existed since the early nineteenth century, had originally taken in foundlings. With the creation of the Service for Morally Abandoned Children, its purview expanded to include older youths.89 The 1898 law on child abuse expanded the role of welfare institutions, as it allowed judges to place criminal children and youths in charitable institutions or with the Public Assistance.90 However, both Albanel’s observations and the records of the Public Assistance suggest that Parisian judges were already directing youths to the Public Assistance even before 1898. In contrast to previous regimes, the Republic did not just adapt adult institutions, such as prisons, for juvenile delinquents. Instead, it turned to the Public Assistance, an institution that had traditionally served younger children and whose administration had experience dealing with children’s unique needs. The goal of the Public Assistance was not to punish young people, but to rehabilitate them. Even as the Republic favored this more rehabilitative model for young deviants, it did not treat them as vulnerable innocents. Young people in the care of the Public Assistance were still under state surveillance. Moreover, the category of the morally abandoned child was ambiguous. The Republic created this category to help vulnerable children, but many elites also saw these youngsters as potential future criminals.91 Many morally abandoned children had vagabonded or begged. This ambivalence toward morally abandoned children epitomizes the Republic’s approach to young delinquents. Both expert and popular accounts of young delinquents oscillated between depicting criminal youths as dangerous or in danger.92 Even after the passage of these laws, the state retained the authority to remove deviant children

Creating the Juvenile Delinquent  79 from the streets. What the laws changed is where the state put these children and who it held responsible for their misdeeds. Although the state charged very few children for criminal acts, it still had ways to institutionalize those it found to be dangerous. In 1912, the Republic created a separate juvenile court for children and adolescents. As a result of this law, children under thirteen could no longer be sent to a corrective facility, but would either be returned to their families, placed with a charitable institution, or sent to the Public Assistance. For youths between the ages of thirteen and eighteen (a 1906 law had raised the age of penal majority from sixteen to eighteen), the presiding judge had to determine whether the youth acted with discernment. If a judge determined that a youth had, that youth was sent to a penal colony. Judges could also send youths acting without discernment to these colonies or to private institutions.93 Both before and after the creation of the Tribunal for Children and Adolescents, Third Republic continued the practice of placing young people into correction simply for displaying delinquent tendencies. Whether the state decided that a young person was delinquent or mistreated, it usually put him to work. In the 1880s, the Public Assistance in the city of Paris placed youths in its care in industrial apprenticeships.94 The city even created vocational schools outside of the city to train these youths for work, but these schools had limited success.95 By the 1890s, the department of the Seine sent more children to family placements, but crucially to perform agricultural labor.96 Private charities and patronages also encouraged young people to develop a work ethic. One such charity, the Society for the Patronage of Children and Adolescents, employed young boys in making labels for the railroads. Although the boys did not stay long enough to learn a trade, the society wanted them to gain a sense that they were earning their room and board.97 The anxieties about working-​class youths turning to the illicit economy undoubtedly influenced the treatment of young offenders. Even if many initiatives to deal with delinquent youths removed them from Paris, few young delinquents were sent outside metropolitan France. Although the Republic continued to transport prisoners to French Guinea and New Caledonia up through the 1930s, the minimum age for transportation was twenty-​one.98 When writing about the services for young delinquents, Maxime Du Camp bemoaned the absence of schools in Algeria, Senegal, or Southeast Asia to send “the young vagabonds who are polluting France.” Such schools could train boys for the colonial army.99 Instead, the

80  An Age to Work furthest the state sent most urban youths were to penal colonies or to the countryside. For the Patronage for Children and Adolescents, the colonial army was a last resort reserved for the most ungovernable. As Henri Rollet, the director of the patronage described it, the African battalions “carry out a difficult profession under an ironclad discipline.” The patronage hoped to save its charges from any such “miseries.”100 From his perspective, sending young delinquents overseas was too harsh. Putting them to work in France, however, was to their benefit. Although most criminal laws applied to girls as well as boys, girls were usually apprehended for infractions related to deviant sexuality. They were a smaller proportion of the criminal population. Even if prostitution was technically legal for adult women, these women had to follow the rules that governed it, such as submitting to a regular medical inspection, or face imprisonment.101 Most girls who engaged in prostitution were not convicted for it and thus not registered. But the state still institutionalized many in an effort to rehabilitate them. After 1893, the police were supposed to charge girls under sixteen with vagabondage rather than prostitution.102 A 1908 law allowed the police to notify parents of prostitutes under nineteen and allowed parents to request that these girls be placed in an institution.103 Likewise, the 1889 law on moral abandonment stated that parents could lose their children for prostituting them out.104 Correctional facilities were gender segregated. Prior to the Third Republic, female religious orders ran most of the institutions for girls. The 1850 law that granted public funds for private penal colonies also outlined the creation of special institutions for girls where they would learn domestic skills.105 For instance, the Charity for Poor, Young Girls took in “abandoned” girls between the ages of four and twelve and then raised them until they reached the age of eighteen or twenty-​one. The girls were under the supervision of Franciscan sisters. Once they approached the school leaving age, they learned to sew.106 As with institutions for boys, these charities put girls to work. But this was feminine work that would help a young girl prepare for her future life as a mother. Under the Third Republic, philanthropists created a number of private, secular charities for deviant young women. As with institutions that catered to young men, the institutions for young women sought to rehabilitate their charges through inculcating a work ethic. Created in 1890 by female philanthropists, the Patronage for Detainees and Formerly Incarcerated Women took in girls and young women from the women’s

Creating the Juvenile Delinquent  81 prisons of Saint-​Lazare and Nanterre. In 1912, its founder, Marguerite de Witt-​Schlumberger, established an École Ménagère, essentially a school to teach domestic skills, for girls sent from the newly created juvenile court. As described by charity’s director in 1925, “the return through work, the elevation through work, the beauty of work was one of Madame de Witt-​ Schlumberger’s principal ideas.”107 Starting in the 1880s, the Society for the Preservation and Salvation of Women similarly took in deviant young women and put them to work at its refuge in Boulogne. Female philanthropists were also responsible for the creation of this home.108 By providing training in domestic skills, the philanthropists running these institutions hoped to direct their charges toward motherhood and more appropriate female behaviors. The Third Republic’s creation of a new penal regime for young offenders contributed to the standardization of the category of the child. As with the child labor laws, laws on delinquency and children’s welfare set clear numerical barriers around childhood. But they also encoded certain norms about childhood. Children were young and vulnerable. As such, the environment in which they grew up shaped their character and actions. But in providing rehabilitation via work, these institutions also enforced the norm that young members of the working classes had to grow into productive members of society.

The Juvenile Delinquent By the outbreak of World War I, the juvenile delinquent was a distinct legal category. The Third Republic had created a juvenile justice system to administer to the needs of this population. Young delinquents stood trial in a separate criminal court. They served their sentences in spaces for young people. More often than not they were not even charged and instead were sent to patronages or to the Public Assistance. This specific penal regime reflected the new ideas about children as developing beings. In creating these spaces for rehabilitating delinquent youngsters, the Republic sought to limit the nefarious influences of urban life and of working-​class mores on young city dwellers. For many members of the respectable classes, however, these young delinquents were not defenseless victims. Criminologists, social scientists, and even labor inspectors viewed young delinquents with trepidation. In particular, young vagabonds and beggars, two of the most prominent

82  An Age to Work young criminals in the public imagination, were gaining a taste for the illicit economy. They learned that they could survive without entering into the formal workforce. Driven by this anxiety, the Republic prioritized work and worker training when disciplining young offenders. By institutionalizing children and youths for their perceived unproductivity, the juvenile justice system helped to preserve older norms about asocial or deviant behavior. As they did with vocational training programs, republican legislators built the juvenile justice system both to standardize the course of working-​class childhood and to guide these youngsters toward a life of work.

4 “An Insurmountable Distaste for Work” Juvenile Delinquents in the Archives

In May 1891, the Public Assistance admitted fifteen-​year-​old Eugène R. to the Service for Morally Abandoned Children. According to his file, the boy had already been arrested for vagabondage and spent his time with “the rascals of the neighborhood.” He had refused to take up fixed employment and had an “insurmountable distaste for work.” M. Boursy, the examining magistrate, noted that his widowed mother had no authority over the boy and recommended that the Public Assistance take over his care. Another sheet in Eugène’s file recommended that he be sent to the countryside to perform agricultural work.1 Eugène’s case allows us to see how the Third Republic’s juvenile justice system operated. Eugène had been arrested for vagabondage, the crime of laziness. This arrest got authorities’ attention, but it was his bad companions and, above all, his failure to hold down a job that M. Boursy pointed to as grounds for institutionalization. And yet, it was the Public Assistance, and not the correctional system, that took him into custody. In admitting him to the Service for Morally Abandoned Children, the Public Assistance was also trying to separate him from potentially dangerous influences within the working-​class world. Although his mother was not inciting him to crime, her failure to discipline the boy was reason enough to remove him to the countryside. The creation of the juvenile delinquent epitomizes the tension in the Republic’s treatment of working-​class children and youths. While republican legislators established a juvenile justice system to cater to young offenders’ unique needs, they also saw this system as a way to police and correct their unproductive instincts. Examining the case files of young delinquents in the Public Assistance and police archives permits us to see how this system worked in practice. These archives also offer insight into how the individuals responsible for determining whether to institutionalize young offenders defined delinquency. An Age to Work. Miranda Sachs, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197638453.003.0005

84  An Age to Work Once the police arrested a minor, a number of state and non-​state actors weighed in to determine his or her fate. In a text on juvenile delinquency, Judge Louis Albanel described the procedure in use around 1900. While this process evolved over the course of the Republic, his description provides a useful overview of the relevant actors and institutions. The police let off some minors with a warning and sent them home to their parents. If police decided a minor was more dangerous, they would send him to the dépôt, the police jails. There, an examining magistrate (juge d’instruction) would begin to compile information on the minor. In addition to a birth certificate, he would request a report called a commission rogatoire from the local police station in the arrested minor’s neighborhood. For the commission rogatoire, the police collected information about the delinquent and his family. Following the police investigation, the examining magistrate sent some of the more amenable delinquents to the Service for Morally Abandoned Children for a short observation period. He dispatched the more intractable to prison to await trial. Those that behaved while under the Service’s supervision were released to their parents. If the minor’s parents did not seem capable of raising their children or a youth seemed more troublesome, the Service might take in that youth, as was the case with Eugène R. In these instances, the case was dismissed before it went to trial. In these instances, too, a parent had to renounce his or her parental rights. If a youth acted out during the observation period, his case might also go to trial, but only one-​quarter of arrested youths went before the criminal court (5,916 out of 21,657 over a twelve-​year period). Most returned home to their parents. But the system also directed a significant number—​about 150 a year according to Albanel—​into government welfare agencies without a trial.2 This process created a significant paper trail, allowing us to access the perspectives of the experts involved in the juvenile justice system. These functionaries, such as police officers, Public Assistance investigators, and examining magistrates, were all state employees tasked with protecting young people. As such, they had many similarities to labor inspectors. Labor inspectors entered the formerly private space of the atelier to shield young workers from exploitation by their parents or employers. Police officers and Public Assistance investigators similarly placed working-​class families under a microscope. As members of this bureaucracy, all these functionaries employed more quantified, medicalized ideas about childhood. Labor inspectors used measures of age, intelligence, and physical capability to delineate the young worker. Police officers, examining magistrates, and Public

“An Insurmountable Distaste for Work”  85 Assistance investigators assessed a young delinquent’s development, as well as his comportment, his inclination to work, and the character of his parents and companions. All these groups intervened in the lives of working-​class children and youths to ensure their normal physical and moral development. But these interventions also helped to remove any hindrances to young people becoming productive members of the workforce. In their assessments of deviant juveniles, these functionaries often included input from parents. Working-​class parents did not use standardized measures to define childhood. Instead, they viewed their children as offspring, as contributing members to the family economy. With child labor laws or vocational schools, this conception of childhood often clashed with the Republic’s version. When it came to defining juvenile delinquency, however, these two conceptions overlapped. Parents, police investigators, and case managers at the Public Assistance all treated a refusal to work as one of the main signs of delinquency. Moreover, parents and functionaries alike used the juvenile justice and welfare systems to police productivity.

The Police When seventeen-​year-​old Henri Buhler was detained for vagabondage in July 1906, the police in the 13th arrondissement went to his mother’s home to gather more information. After questioning his mother and the concierge in their building, they recorded that “he has bad companions. He does not listen to his mother. He does not want to work. His mother requests that he be placed in the correctional system.” The concierge (the superintendent in a French apartment building) told the police that the boy’s mother lived with a man who was not the boy’s father but otherwise provided a positive assessment of Madame Buhler.3 The report suggests that Buhler’s mother was willing to send her son away, not simply because he failed to listen to her, but because of his refusal to work. Henri Buhler’s case captures how the police and working-​class communities defined delinquency. It also shows that the police not only apprehended young delinquents but also played an important role in determining whether they landed in state institutions. As compared to the other state actors who worked with juvenile delinquents, the police were more present in the working-​class communities where these young people lived. The police were the first state actors to encounter deviant children and youths. They patrolled working-​ class

86  An Age to Work neighborhoods and were the ones who decided when young people crossed a line. They then had to provide feedback to help examining magistrates determine whether these youngsters needed to be sent to institutions, such as the Public Assistance, for correction. In their reports, they solicited and recorded information from the members of these communities. Unlike politicians or journalists, police were familiar with the inhabitants of working-​class communities. But they were not usually residents of the communities they patrolled.4 To understand how law enforcement conceived of juvenile delinquency, I have collected a sample of incidents involving minors from the records of the Parisian police. Paris is divided into twenty administrative units called arrondissements. Each of these arrondissements is further divided into four separate police jurisdictions, for a total of eighty. Each police jurisdiction had its own commissariat or station house, which maintained a register of any incident or altercation involving the police in its jurisdiction. These incidents include accidents, murders, thefts, and lost children. In most instances, the police recorded the name of the parties involved in an incident, their addresses, birthplaces, ages, parents’ names, occupations, nature of the incident (i.e., theft, fight, vagabondage), and then some basic details about the incident. They also collected eye-​witness testimonies. This information both provides insight into the crimes that young people committed but also how people on the ground perceived juvenile crime.5 The most common infraction for which police apprehended young people—​ just over one-​ third of the incidents—​ was theft. The entries documenting these thefts capture the wide range of factors driving juvenile crime. Thieves ranged from groups of boys pilfering rum from a local shop to solitary youths pinching food to eat. They included pickpockets and young delivery boys who disappeared while carrying commissions. Some young thieves stole as a form of communal amusement and others stole to survive. The prevalence of thieves, as opposed to beggars, who rarely appear in these archives, is perhaps because thieves crossed a line. In a dense, working-​class neighborhood, the act of a theft stood out as a clear infraction of the law. However, the frequency of theft also indicates that poverty was an important driving force for crime, a factor that seems to have escaped the notice of many elite commentators writing about juvenile crime.6 After theft, commissions rogatoires were the most common entry involving minors. Because commissions rogatoires occurred at an early stage in the process, the minors in these reports ranged from casual offenders

“An Insurmountable Distaste for Work”  87 who were likely to be released to their parents to habitual criminals who were liable to stand trial.7 When compiling commissions rogatoires, police interviewed parents, neighbors, and more occasionally, employers or teachers. Given that the police were assessing if a youngster had a delinquent character, these archives show us how these various groups defined delinquency. In her research on eighteenth-​century Paris, Arlette Farge argues that scrutinizing accounts of conflict between men and women in police or judicial archives illuminates the expectations Parisians had for conjugal relationships.8 Similarly, the commissions rogatoires hint at the expectations Belle Époque Parisians had for working-​class children, particularly in regard to their role within their families. These records also show how the police conceived of and passed judgment on working-​class families. While these entries contain a wealth of information, we first need to acknowledge that the police shaped and filtered all the material in these entries. The police chose who to interview, asked the questions, and recorded the material that they found to be relevant. By the final decades of the nineteenth century, the police were a more professionalized corps. New recruits had to go through three to six months of training that included lessons in how to carry out and record investigations.9 The police followed a script when they compiled the commissions rogatoires, leading to patterns. Albanel claimed that they had a “very detailed questionnaire.”10 Many of the entries contain information about a young person’s companions, ability to work, and character. Many also recorded whether the parents had control over their children, worked regularly, or had any moral flaws. And yet, even if certain phrases show up in many of the registers—​many youths had “bad companions”—​ the format of the commissions rogatoires varied between neighborhoods. Variations occur even within a given year. The records for Gare d’Austerlitz in 1913 are the most detailed of any of the twelve samples I collected. In addition to the usual information, they include where the young person attended school, their degree of literacy, and whether or not they were legitimate. In contrast, the Charonne records for 1913 are very general and sometimes include only a couple of sentences.11 In commissions rogatoires, the police often determined whether a young person required detention based on their parents’ propensity to work. In 1906, Eugène Silberling, along with two female neighbors deemed that his daughter Anna belonged in correction. The police in the Combat sector of Paris observed that the sixteen-​year-​old girl “refuses to work, has worked

88  An Age to Work only a few days for various employers from whom she has been sent away.” However, one neighbor noted that the father was “perfectly honest.” The entry begins not with observations about the daughter, but with details about the father. It notes that he worked from 6am to 7pm each day.12 His industriousness meant that he was more trustworthy. The frequency with which the police noted whether or not a youth or parent worked suggests that this was one of the main ways they assessed the character of working-​class individuals. A young person who was unlikely to work was more likely to need state supervision. In contrast, a young person who worked regularly was less of a candidate for a penal colony. For instance, although the police did not think that André Amaduble’s parents could do much for him, they still felt that there were grounds “for some leniency” given that he had “maintained the practice of working” in his position as an apprentice glover.13 When a delinquent youth’s parents did not work, the police were less likely to recommend returning the delinquent to his or her parents’ care. Police interest in parental behavior demonstrates the influence of environmental theories of delinquency. The police were not simply investigating youngsters. They were also investigating whether their parents were able to take care of them. While a few parents had criminal histories, most were average working-​class folk. However, that was often enough to earn condemnation from the police. In addition to assessing whether parents were working regularly, the police investigated whether they could control their children and set a good moral example. Charles Michaud’s father had a steady job, but the police still recommended that the boy spend a couple of months in correctional or in a charitable institution until he reached the age of majority. The reason: his mother drank occasionally and thus did not have sufficient authority over him.14 Like Anna Silberling’s father, Charles’ father worked long hours and so was not around to exert his authority over his son. For the police to deem them capable of supervising their wayward children, parents needed to have regular employment while also managing to supervise their children. The police also looked into parents’ love lives. The record for Anna Silberling noted that her father had been separated from her mother for six years and was living with his “mistress.”15 Even if the police used a questionnaire to gather information, the commissions rogatoires are in free-​form paragraphs. As such, the police were choosing what details to record and amplify. They may not have been reading criminal or medical treatises, but they shaped their answers in a way that suggests their suspicion of working-​class parents’ habits.

“An Insurmountable Distaste for Work”  89 The language the police used to describe young delinquents’ age and life stage is less scientific. Most often, the police attached “le jeune” (“the young”) to the delinquent’s last name. Potentially, they used this moniker to distinguish a parent from a child. The term “enfant” occasionally appears. For instance, police in the 19th arrondissement used it in 1906 to describe two sixteen-​year-​old boys who hurled a bottle through a glass door.16 In the register for Charonne in 1913, the phrase “the minor” appears before certain youngsters’ names. Since the Tribunal for Children and Adolescents was created in 1912, the police compiling this register were assisting the judges for this tribunal. The police were likely helping to determine whether certain older youths should be tried as adults.17 However, I have not encountered the term “adolescent” in the commissions rogatoires. It might not have been part of police templates or had not worked its way into the common parlance. Like the police, parents regarded a refusal to work as grounds for detention. Fifteen-​year-​old Jules Sellen was the subject of two commissions rogatoires in the fall of 1895. According to the first “the parents declare that the child is lazy and has bad companions. He refuses to work. Demand his placement until the age of 21.” The locksmith for whom he had worked for eight days confirmed that he was “very lazy.”18 The second commission rogatoire mentioned that the father “refused to take him due to his bad conduct. Shoplifting, refuses to work, and has bad companions.”19 Jules Sellen’s case is similar to Anna Silberling’s and Henri Buhler’s. In all three incidents, parents requested detention for youths who refused to work. We do not know whether the police exerted any pressure on these parents. The similarity in language in so many of these cases—​the child “refuses to work” and the parents “demand placement”—​obscures any of the nuance that must have occurred. It was also not unusual for working-​class youths to pass through multiple jobs when entering the workforce. However, these youths had already committed a crime and their parents were facing a decision of whether or not to place them in custody. From the parents’ perspective, their offspring had violated their obligations to the family economy by refusing to work. In requesting a placement, parents were both hoping for correction, but also that their children would gain the desire to work. That there was a second commission rogatoire for Jules Sellen suggests that perhaps his parents’ wishes went unheeded the first time and that the authorities did not initially place him in detention. In multiple instances, parents requested to keep their children, suggesting they had some ability to articulate a preference. The commission rogatoire for

90  An Age to Work Louis Dubois only includes a mother’s name, so presumably she was raising her family alone. The boy had a steady job working for a shop that made photographic equipment through which he earned 2 F 50 a day. Julie Dubois requested that her fifteen-​year-​old son be left to “her surveillance.”20 She also claimed that she could not explain his one lapse in judgment. This statement contrasts with the way the parents in the previous paragraph characterized their offspring, many of whom emphasized their child’s bad companions. Whether or not Louis was better behaved, it does seem as if his mother wanted him to remain with her. His wages likely contributed to her choice. Similarly, Claudine Jacquemont, who was a divorcée, “demanded that her son be returned to her care.” She claimed that sixteen-​year-​old Francis “had a docile character, was not energetic, and let himself be easily led astray and that his bad companions had turned him from the right path.”21 She promised to send him to work with Félix Deschamps, the polisher with whom she was living. Some of the language in this case is unique, particularly the phrase about the boy being turned from the right path. Perhaps the police stuck more closely to her words. As with Julie Dubois, Claudine Jacquemont attempted to keep her son out of jail. Maternal affection may have driven both women and they recognized that invoking their sons’ potential ability to work would sway the police. However, other parents did not make these same arguments. Perhaps then, the boys’ potential to contribute to the family is what inspired these mothers’ desire to keep their sons. In compiling the commissions rogatoires, the police interviewed concierges or neighbors. These individuals, too, used industriousness to evaluate the character of a delinquent youth or a caregiver. Often, neighbors’ testimonies reinforced parents’. One mother, Claudine Jer, was ready to send away her son Séviny. Her neighbors not only confirmed her opinion, but they attested to her trustworthiness. The retired schoolteacher in her building declared that the boy was “a young vagabond, and a lazy thief,” while another neighbor declared that the mother was “hard-​working.”22 But sometimes neighbors contradicted parents’ testimonies and exposed parental failings. According to the police in the 13th arrondissement, Marie Quéré “claimed that her son did not have bad instincts” and demanded his return. However, the concierge in her building suggested that the boy needed strict supervision.23 The commission rogatoire for Amand Gillette not only noted that the father and his lover did not take care of the thirteen-​year-​old, but also included that the father hit the boy. Although not directly attributed to their landlord, Antoine Lombardi, such intimate details of family life could only have come from

“An Insurmountable Distaste for Work”  91 someone familiar with the family.24 These reports privilege gossip as a form of testimony. The police assumed that neighbors knew each other’s business. Although it does not seem that the concierges alerted the police when a tenant engaged in criminal activities outside of their building, they were willing to share fairly personal information when questioned. Sometimes this information led to young people being in correctional facilities for years. A concierge or neighbor’s willingness to provide this information shows that the policing of young people’s industriousness extended beyond the family. People outside the family seemed willing for youths who would not work to be removed, and they also felt a responsibility to ensure that young people had decent parents. Overall, girls are much less present than boys in these archives. Of the 231 commissions rogatoires I have collected, only twenty-​ nine involve young women. Of the one thousand entries in the police registers involving young people I have collected, only forty-​eight were of young women under eighteen specifically arrested for illegal prostitution. Based on their records, it seems that the police tried to prevent minors from becoming prostitutes. They placed girls in patronages or negotiated with their families rather than letting them become card-​carrying prostitutes.25 As photos from the period demonstrate, girls were not absent from the street. But boys’ work and leisure were more likely to take place in public spaces, placing them in more frequent contact with the authorities. Moreover, because girls’ work and education took place in the domestic sphere, authorities were more willing to leave female discipline to parents. The girls in the commissions rogatoires had often broken familial bonds either by leaving home or by particularly unruly behavior. The girls in the commission rogatoire did not just flirt with prostitution, but crucially, had also broken with the formal economy. Parents were more willing to work with the authorities when their daughters had engaged in both sets of behaviors. Adolphine Briot was sixteen and living with a certain Jean Moncauncant, who “prevents her from working and has her meet his needs. The father asks that she is returned to him and that she marries her lover.” (It is unclear if Moncauncant was prostituting out his lover as a way of meeting “his needs.”) The concierge added that the father was hard-​working, but that the family was very poor.26 By moving in with her lover, Adolphine both compromised her morality and limited her ability to assist her family. Fifteen-​year-​old Henriette Duriau had taken a more decided step toward the illicit economy. According to her commission rogatoire, she spent most of her

92  An Age to Work time with pimps and prostitutes. But before including this information, the register described her as “a lazy one, has not learned a trade, undisciplined, a liar with a tendency to vagabond.”27 The police not only drew attention to her immorality, but also stressed her failure to participate in the formal economy. Her failure to work also had consequences for her familial connections. Her father did not want her, and “confesses his inability to guide her back to good behavior.” While he might have been unhappy about her bad company, her failure to learn a profession might have contributed to his willingness to see her placed in correction. These types of interactions in the police archives demonstrate the importance of work and industriousness both in terms of how the police assessed the character of potential delinquents but also in terms of how their parents and neighbors determined whether they needed to be removed to correctional facilities.

The Public Assistance At first glance, the Service for Morally Abandoned Children existed so that the state could take care of neglected or mistreated children. The 1889 law that established a national policy on morally abandoned children specified that the state could strip parents of their rights if they engaged in criminal activity, sexual abuse or exploitation of their children, or generally immoral or dangerous behavior. But, as Eugène R.’s case makes clear, the Service also played a role in disciplining delinquent youths. Both parents and state actors called on the Service to remove children from situations where they could not or would not engage in productive work.28 The intake files of the Service for Morally Abandoned Children capture the variety of ways through which youth came under its supervision. The Service admitted hundreds of youths each year, but only a fraction came from cases where the state had stripped parents of their rights.29 For the officials behind the 1889 law, the Service existed as an alternative for youths who were starting to show delinquent tendencies but were not yet criminal. As such, it replaced prisons or penal colonies.30 Young people in the Service were too old to be grouped with foundlings and younger abandoned children, but young enough to be rehabilitated.31 As Albanel’s description of the sentencing process demonstrates, the state could place youths into the care of the Service without a trial. It only required a recommendation from the state and a parent renouncing their rights. The 1898 law on child abuse allowed

“An Insurmountable Distaste for Work”  93 examining magistrates to place children with the Public Assistance for a limited period.32 The largest group of youths in the Service were not sent by the justice system, but by their parents. Parents petitioned the Public Assistance both to take in the incorrigible, but also the destitute.33 Nevertheless, although youth came to the Service through a variety of channels, those justifying their placement often invoked the Service’s ability to prepare youths for work. In many instances where parents petitioned the Public Assistance to take custody of their offspring, it was because their child was unwilling or unable to work. A number of parents turned to the Public Assistance for help with offspring who were disinclined to enter the formal economy. In the first months of 1881, Marguerite C. appealed to the Public Assistance for help with placing her son Victor in an apprenticeship. According to the notes in the fourteen-​year-​old’s file, he “has already studied many trades, but he is not proficient in a single one . . . he makes the rounds of the streets with the kids like him.”34 Similarly Marie G. wrote to the director of the Public Assistance in 1891 to request a temporary place for her daughter Marie. Her primary justification was that the girl did not have “the taste for work.”35 While most parents’ opinions exist only in the notes taken by employees at the Public Assistance, Madame G.’s letter provides more direct access to her perspective. Madame G.’s focus on her daughter’s refusal to work indicates its importance in her decision. It is also possible that she thought this type of plea might resonate with the Public Assistance. However, both mothers presented a failure to work, rather than a specific crime, as the sort of deviant act that necessitated correction. Since the Old Regime, French parents had possessed the ability to request incarceration for their unruly children.36 These mothers perceived the Public Assistance as filling a similar role. A number of parents, particularly single mothers, asked for assistance with finding positions for their offspring. These cases appear more frequently in the Service’s early years, suggesting that it initially filled a role similar to that of the patronages. In 1886, Madame R., who was a widow with six children, turned to the Public Assistance to help her thirteen-​year-​old son Constant. The boy had apprenticed for ten months with a carriage maker and “loves work.” However, the mother could no longer afford to keep him in this unremunerated position.37 The Service sent the boy to the École d’Alembert, a printing school to the east of Paris run by the Public Assistance. The family’s chief problem was poverty, as the other observations on the mother and son in his admissions file are positive. The Public Assistance’s

94  An Age to Work role as employer of last resort seems to have decreased as it began favoring agricultural placements, which were less helpful for urban families. Even so, in 1901 another widow named Madame G. asked the Public Assistance to place her eight-​year-​old daughter Suzanne in the professional school at Yzeures.38 Suzanne’s dossier includes a letter from her mother in which Madame G. explained that her wages as a servant were insufficient to provide for her three children. The investigator at the Assistance Public deemed Suzanne too young to enter the school and suggested a temporary placement in the countryside.39 For widows such as Madame R. and Madame G., the Public Assistance was a resource to ease the burden of a child who did not draw a wage. These women likely did not have the resources or connections to find positions for offspring. For these mothers, placing their children with the Public Assistance was an admission of their own inability to keep their families solvent. But they were also choosing to send away unproductive children. Although these young people were not refusing to work, they were not contributing to their families. These mothers looked to the Public Assistance as a way to fix this problem. For the Public Assistance, taking in these children was also a net gain, as it could train them to be productive workers and equip them with the skills to withstand the allure of crime. Parents also looked to the Service for solutions for their children who were physically unable to engage in remunerated work. Marie L. was a widow and petitioned the Service twice, in 1895 and 1896, to take her son Alfred L. The investigator at the Public Assistance noted that the boy was “scrawny (chetif)” and that his mother was having trouble finding a place for him. Another piece in his file noted that he was “intelligent and hardworking, but is of a below-​average height.” When Madame L. first attempted to place him in 1895, the investigator at the Public Assistance suggested that there were other children in more “dangerous moral and material situations.” (By the 1890s, the admissions files contained not simply a summary of the investigator’s observations, but also a space for his assessment of the situation.)40 Madame L. treated the Public Assistance as an outlet for solving the problems of output within her family. Some of the notes in Alfred’s file suggest that she wanted him to be sent to the École d’Alembert. She probably thought that this vocational training might make him more employable. The initial response from the Public Assistance illustrates its changing focus. Unlike in the 1880s, the Service did not simply take in youths who needed placements. In fact, it trusted her to care for her son.

“An Insurmountable Distaste for Work”  95 Similarly, some destitute parents with large families requested placements for children who were too young to enter the workforce. Seven-​year-​old Louis B. was one of four siblings. In 1896, his mother’s employer petitioned the Public Assistance to take Louis and his nine-​year-​old brother, François. However, both the employer and the Service agreed that she should keep her thirteen-​year-​old daughter, who had begun working alongside her mother.41 Madame B.’s employer might have pushed for this placement to remove any hindrances to her carrying out her work. However, based on other cases in the Public Assistance archives, it is likely that the widowed mother asked her employer to write in support of her petition. Charles J., who was a widower with five children, faced a similar situation in 1901. His three oldest children, who were boys between the ages of nineteen and thirteen, were all in apprenticeships. His oldest daughter was only twelve, but he needed her to keep house. Her domestic labor still had value even if she was too young to engage in remunerated work. That left seven-​year-​old Renée. In a letter to the mayor of Suresnes, which is rimmed with the black border of a mourner, he asked for help placing his daughter in an orphanage. He emphasized that he wanted her to be close enough that he and her older brothers could visit her. The mayor then petitioned the Public Assistance on his behalf.42 As with Madame B., Charles chose to place his least productive offspring with the Public Assistance. Charles’ letter demonstrates that affection was not contingent on productivity. He still cared for his daughter and wanted to maintain contact with her. Although these cases illustrate how destitute parents used the Public Assistance as a temporary stopgap when they could not support their families, they are also consistent with the pattern of parents relying on the Public Assistance to cure or remove their unproductive children. As per its mission, the Service removed children from their parents for their protection, but many of these youngsters had criminal records. It often took a young person getting arrested for the police to discover that a parent was an alcoholic or abusive. In 1886, the Service took in six-​year-​old Paul V., whose father was forcing him to beg. According to the boy’s file, the father hit his son if he failed to return with 1F 50 at the end of each day. Paul had been arrested multiple times for begging, but this alone did not land the boy with the Public Assistance. Only after the examining magistrate decided to intervene did the Service take on the boy’s care. While the father was committing physical abuse, it seems that the begging was what attracted the authorities’ attention. In 1892, when the boy was twelve, the father petitioned to regain custody over the boy. Only when his son was old enough to enter the formal

96  An Age to Work economy did the father again show interest. The Service refused this request on the grounds that the father was not capable of treating the boy better.43 For the authorities, negligent or abusive parents both posed an immediate danger to their children and also had the potential to drive their offspring toward long-​term engagement in the illicit economy. When investigators determined whether to remove children from their parents, it considered both these factors. In Paul’s case, there was a direct connection between the father’s behavior and the boy’s participation in the illicit economy. The father was forcing his son to beg and was living off this exploitation. This behavior was clearly abusive. But the father was also teaching his son that one could live by begging. The case of fourteen-​year-​old Louis W. follows a similar pattern. The boy had already been arrested twice for theft and vagabondage when the Service investigated his family in 1891. The information in his file describes his father, who was from Luxembourg, as an alcoholic. Even if the Service ultimately agreed to take in the boy because of the father’s “intemperance,” the fact that the boy had a history of vagabondage and theft played a role in this outcome.44 In the first place, these arrests brought the family to the attention of the police and the justice system. But the file also noted that the boy needed to be removed from his father’s “influence.” The father’s alcoholism was dangerous because it had driven the boy to participate in the illicit economy. In a similar vein, parents also lost custody if they were unable to press their offspring into productive labor. After fifteen-​year-​old François A., was arrested for begging in 1896, the Service refused to return him to his mother on the grounds that she had insufficient authority over the boy. The initial report from the examining magistrate claimed that she lived by begging. The investigator from the Public Assistance contradicted this first report and asserted that she sold flowers. However, it agreed that she “is not providing sufficient surveillance” of her fifteen-​year-​old son. According to the report, François was of an age to be in an apprenticeship, but “does not have a steady job.” As a result, there was a danger that he would become a vagabond. Even after a member of the Chamber of Deputies petitioned for the boy’s return to his mother, the director of the Service still suggested placing him in the countryside.45 Fourteen-​year-​old Jean P. had been arrested for vagabondage in 1896. While his mother was a “good mother, hardworking,” his father frequently left the family for three to four months at a time. The file suggested that the father’s absences contributed to the boy’s bad behavior.46 Jean’s mother was doing everything right, but the Service claimed that as a

“An Insurmountable Distaste for Work”  97 mother, she simply could not exercise adequate control. This case is similar to Eugène R.’s. In both instances, the Service decided that a working mother was too weak to control her son. The Service then stepped in to provide correction, ostensibly to prevent against future crime, but also to direct the boys toward work. Just as the Public Assistance treated a disinclination to work as a sign of delinquency, so too did it use work as a cure. When the Service admitted children, it provided a form of re-​education for its charges which centered on labor. According to this logic, these young people would lose their criminal instincts once they engaged in regular work. They would also have the skills to contribute to the economy once they left the Service. Over time, the nature of that work changed. In the 1880s, the Service placed most youths in industrial apprenticeships or in vocational schools.47 In 1881, the director recorded the following for a boy with a history of vagabondage: “if we can find a boss who will keep a firm grip on him and a close watch on him, he will be saved.”48 From his perspective, vocational training provided the type of discipline that the boy needed. This sentiment resembles that of the educational reformers who pushed for the creation of vocational schools. By the 1890s, the Service relied on agricultural placements, particularly with peasant families.49 For youths admitted in the 1890s, the director would fill out a form after a period of observation. Most of these conclude with a recommendation of “send to the provinces.” For one eleven-​year-​old, the recommendation elaborated that “it is advisable . . . to be far from Paris and taken from his mother.”50 Environmental theories of delinquency suggested that corrupted environments produced crime. Removing young people from Paris was thus part of the rehabilitation process.51 Even during the process of admission, youngsters received lessons about industriousness. When the Public Assistance admitted youngsters, they assessed their literacy and numeracy. Children had to perform a dictée, a common exercise in French schools that involves an instructor reading a passage and students writing it down verbatim. The exercise tests a listener’s ability to translate an oral text into a written one and requires a knowledge of spelling and grammar. But the exercise also involves a regurgitation of a text and so is a good way to hammer home a message. A number of the children had to perform dictées about French history or the nature of republicanism. But there are also messages about industriousness. In the most striking example, a dictée on “France” included the phrase, “we can show our gratitude toward her by work and by the desire to contribute as best we can to all that

98  An Age to Work makes her glorious and assures her tranquility.” Even though thirteen-​year-​ old Frederic M. made a number of spelling mistakes in writing this phrase, this kind of language would have reminded him that his duty as a citizen involved steady labor.52 Whether parents offloading their delinquent offspring or investigators deciding whether to remove young people from their families, the people who placed youngsters in the Service for Morally Abandoned Children saw it as playing a role in directing them toward the workforce. By the early twentieth century, the importance of the Service had decreased. The number of boys and girls it admitted declined. In 1904, the category was assimilated into the larger category of wards of the state.53 After 1912, many of these agencies became attached to the Tribunal for Children and Adolescents. However, concerns about the productive potential of working-​class youths remained present throughout the interwar period.

Welfare and Work In both the archives for the Public Assistance and for the Paris police, the phrases “lacks the taste for work” and “will not work” appear frequently to describe children and youths. The justice system did not charge most minors who committed crimes. But it placed youths in correction if they exhibited signs of having a delinquent character. From these archives, it seems as if Public Assistance investigators, the police, and parents used willingness to work as a way to determine whether a young person required institutionalization. Although we would expect the police and Public Assistance investigators to play different roles in the juvenile justice system, their approach to juvenile delinquents was strikingly similar. Law enforcement officials were thinking about children in ways that we would expect from welfare agencies—​as developing beings who required a particular milieu to foster their growth. At the same time, officials within the welfare system were thinking of their charges as potential delinquents in a way that we would expect from law enforcement. These parallels epitomize the Third Republic’s approach to juvenile delinquents. Young offenders were children in need of a particular correctional regime, but this correction was necessary to halt their progress toward the illicit economy.

“An Insurmountable Distaste for Work”  99 Both police and Public Assistance archives suggest that parents used the juvenile justice system to police their offspring. Working-​class parents expected their children to be contributing members of the family economy. Oftentimes it was the state that limited children’s ability to participate in the workforce. While the juvenile justice system, as with child labor laws, challenged parental authority, many parents used this system to their advantage. The police and very often Public Assistance investigators solicited parents’ preferences in their reports. Parents agreed to or even requested placement for their unproductive offspring. They even placed children who were incapable of working with the Public Assistance. Many parents perceived the juvenile justice apparatus as an outlet for correcting their offspring’s unproductive tendencies. As for these juvenile delinquents, we can only surmise what drove them to delinquency. The police or Public Assistance investigators occasionally suggested that parental encouragement or negligence produced juvenile misbehavior. At the same time, these youths may have refused to labor as a way of asserting their independence. Youths as young as thirteen were expected to work twelve-​hour days and, after 1892, ten-​hour days. The allure of escaping from the strict regime of an atelier or factory must have been tantalizing. This was precisely the type of behavior that the Republic and their parents wanted to stamp out. But we also cannot discount the precarity of working-​class life. The prevalence of single parents in these sources hints at the fragility of working-​class families. Death, injury, and sickness, which struck often, nudged families toward poverty. In such cases, theft, begging, or even prostitution may have been the sole alternative to starvation.

5 Blurred Spaces Working-​Class Girlhood

In 1877, the Department of the Seine conducted a survey in which it asked girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen a version of the classic question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” This particular survey asked a group of girls on the verge of completing primary school to specify what profession they intended to enter on leaving school and why. Overwhelmingly, these young women chose vocations in the garment industry. By far, the largest number indicated that they were planning to become seamstresses. As one girl put it, “for a woman, the most important thing is sewing.”1 To justify choosing this profession, many invoked reasons related to their families: it was a trade that would allow them to support their current families, or the training for this profession would prepare them to outfit their future families. Although these girls had not yet left school, they were aware of how their gender would determine their opportunities in the workforce. They also recognized the continuities between feminine labor in the home and in the workforce. In its first decades, the Third Republic sought to standardize the experience of working-​class childhood through the regulation of child labor and the expansion of vocational training. As labor inspectors or legislators reported on their activities, they used the term “l’enfant,” the child, one of the rare nouns in French that does not have a feminine conjugation. This seeming neutrality of childhood obscures the reality that these officials were more concerned with boys and their professions.2 Because girls often participated in non-​industrial trades, their work was more likely to escape the surveillance of labor inspectors. As a result, the government’s efforts to structure childhood did not have the same results for girlhood. The increased regulation of children’s work further uncoupled the experiences of girls and boys in the workforce. During the nineteenth century, industrialization and labor law formalized the divisions between men and women’s labor.3 Industrialization, by An Age to Work. Miranda Sachs, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197638453.003.0006

Blurred Spaces  101 removing most production from the home, created a division between the spaces of production and the domestic realm. The home, the space of non-​ work, became a feminine domain.4 But the realities of working-​class life forced many women to labor to support their families. This work did not escape the attention of republican legislators. Plagued with anxiety about the declining birthrate and the morality of working-​class families, republican legislators shattered the barriers dividing public and private life to regulate first children’s labor and then adult women’s labor.5 The 1892 labor law placed limitations on the conditions of women’s work; however, it left adult male labor untouched. As such, it emphasized women’s reproductive responsibilities and led to the further segregation of the male and female labor markets.6 Legislators made the surveillance of women’s work and bodies a matter of public concern without giving these same women much input into the regulation of their work.7 The separation between male and female work began in childhood. Girls had more domestic responsibilities than their male peers.8 Perhaps more so than other European girls, bourgeois French girls lived sheltered lives.9 Working-​class girls did not have the luxury of spending their days in convent schools or cloisters. To fulfill their obligations to their families, many of them had to leave home to train and to work. In fact, the number of girls in the workforce was not far behind the number of boys.10 And yet, even as girls participated in production and earned a salary, they shared with their bourgeois peers a close tie to the domestic realm and the omnipresent need to prepare for motherhood. The fluidity between the home and workspace, between a girl’s role as future worker and future mother, distinguished girls’ experience in the workforce. In the first place, this porosity between the home and workspace dictated girls’ options for employment. Girls predominantly worked in trades in the garment industry, in trades that involved similar skills to their work in the home. Although labor law placed women’s work more in the public eye than men’s, girls’ labor in these spaces was more likely to go unnoticed or unregulated than boys’ labor. Girls spent their lives preparing for motherhood. Their vocational training programs did not simply prepare them for the workforce, they also contributed to this lifelong instruction. Finally, many girls trained and worked under the supervision of female religious orders. In these spaces, their work fell less under state supervision. Rather than following the strict stages that the Republic attempted to carve out within childhood, girlhood unfolded more continuously toward

102  An Age to Work motherhood. By enacting child labor laws and expanding public vocational schools, the Republic formalized the separation between girls’ and boys’ work and reinforced the divisions between working-​class girlhood and boyhood.

Feminine Labor When they entered the workforce, girls congregated in trades that either involved the production of fabrics or of garments. In 1896 the textile and garment industries accounted for seventy-​three percent of the grown women in the workforce across France.11 In these trades, girls used skills they learned from their mothers or that would one day serve them when they had a family. In particular, these trades involved sewing, the quintessential feminine skill. As one respondent to the 1877 survey put it, “worker, maid, or great lady: all women need to know how to sew.”12 Even if she worked long hours for scant wages, a girl who entered the garment industry maintained a thin thread of connection to this universal aspect of womanhood. While working-​class girls’ jobs were a far cry from the pursuits of bourgeois ladies, the gender norms surrounding work limited young women to occupations that had some semblance to domestic labor. The responses to the 1877 survey offer a rare perspective on how working-​ class girls perceived their own work. In the first place, the female respondents understood that their gender determined their future profession. Many justified their choice of a future trade by emphasizing the inherent femininity of the trade. One girl who wanted to train as a flower maker wrote, “I’ve always loved flowers. As long as I can remember, no present has brought me as much joy as a bouquet. I take care of each flower, each leaf, as I’ve seen others do for a doll.”13 The girl emphasized her love for the delicate and dainty, casting a trade that involved long hours bent over scraps of dyed fabric as pastoral and feminine.14 This girl’s clear statement of her own preference for flowers also demonstrates that young women did not always have to follow their parents’ orders when it came to choosing a profession and that some did have the ability to choose based on their own preferences. However, many of the respondents who articulated a personal preference were from more financially secure families.15 Many of these girls recognized that, as members of the laboring classes, they would inevitably have to work and to contribute to their families. These

Blurred Spaces  103 girls were likely in a privileged tier of the laboring classes, as they had all taken the exam for the certificate of primary study. In the 1870s, only a fraction of primary school students completed their schooling and took this exam.16 Even so, many invoked familial obligations in their short responses. A number of girls had large families or parents who were ill. One girl wrote, “It is high time for me to bring back something,” a sentiment that appeared repeatedly throughout the survey.17 Some girls expressed regret about having to end their studies, but also recognized that their families needed them to begin earning wages. While their parents must have been putting pressure on them to begin contributing to the household income, these girls were not simply echoing their parents. They understood that their wages would help their families. Girls may have wanted to contribute to their families, but they faced the reality that female work tended to be transitory and less secure. Dead seasons, periods during the year when demand for certain clothing items declined, created irregular employment for women and girls in the garment industry.18 Employment in these professions was so uncertain that the École Professionelle des Ternes, a neighborhood vocational school for girls, required students to learn multiple trades. According to one of its yearly reports, “in Paris, it is necessary for a young woman to have at least two strings in her bow if she wants to earn a steady living.”19 Although boys could train for one single trade and then find stable employment, girls had to follow fashion’s seasons from atelier to atelier. Even if the girls fabricating flowers, hats, or lingerie were practicing different trades, these occupations all required similar skill sets, a characteristic that did not apply as readily to male trades. A young male worker could not simply shift from printing to cabinetmaking. The responses from the 1877 survey suggest that girls were aware of the vagaries of the garment trades. A girl who had decided to become a cashier, wrote that she would have liked to be a plumassière (someone who made feather panaches), but that the trade had a dead season.20 Although female workers had less time to participate in trade union action, girls had strategies, such as opting for more stable trades or learning multiple ones, to ensure that they could find regular employment in the trades available to them.21 While seventy-​three percent of working women participated in either the textile or garment industries, another one-​quarter of women were in other forms of employment. These professions did not always rely on the skills girls learned in the domestic realm. The case of the female typesetter demonstrates

104  An Age to Work how contemporaries found ways to cast trades outside the garment industry as feminine. Although male workers dominated most steps in the printing process, young women could work as typesetters. When work inspector Gustave Maurice drew up a report on the children in printing in 1876, he noted the presence of “a few young girls” among the ranks of apprentice typographers. Out of 715 children in printing, fifty-​ three were girls.22 These girls represented less than ten percent of the total, but they were numerous enough to suggest that girls were neither exceptional nor out of place in this trade. Perhaps many of them had parents in the trade, as was the case for one respondent to the 1877 survey who indicated that she was planning to work in a print shop.23 The combination of a family member in the trade and the manual nimbleness required to succeed in typesetting opened it up in a way that was not possible for other masculine trades. Over the course of the following decades, the number of young women in typesetting increased. According to Fénelon Gibon’s 1906 study on female apprenticeship and employment, a strike in 1878 alongside the demands of that year’s universal exposition created opportunities for female workers.24 As he put it, “The young apprentices and women, who were already experts in the easy work of the line [adjusting type to fit the margins], came in and filled the deserted ateliers. The latter, accustomed to the poor salaries that compensate women’s work everywhere, happily accept a pay that men would indignantly refuse. They set type at 0.40F, 0.45F, 0.50F per a thousand words.”25 By 1906, Gibon counted six thousand male typesetters and fifteen hundred women.26 Although Gibon allowed that women could enter into this predominantly masculine profession, he stressed the poor pay associated with women’s work. Only in the men’s world could they expect to receive more. And yet, even for an objective measure, such as output, they still received less per unit. Even if girls were capable of typesetting, contemporaries grappled with whether this activity was appropriate for female workers. Gibon devoted the majority of his report to traditional female trades, such as sewing, hat making, or commerce. In his depictions of typesetting, he tried to cast it as similar to these other trades. The typesetter was responsible for placing a block of type, but then, “she sits in front of her type case, takes from her pocket some crocheted lace, a bit of embroidery, and lets the hours flow by philosophically.”27 In Gibon’s description, the typesetter was not far from the bourgeois lady embroidering in her drawing room.

Blurred Spaces  105 He went on to explain that it was, “an easy vocation with a short apprenticeship, less exhausting than others, which only demands vigilance and a basic knowledge of spelling. A vocation with time for resting, where one can sit, where one has time for leisure, a vocation, O miracle, from which one can make a living.”28 That typesetting depended more on manual dexterity than sheer physical force might explain why it was one of the few mostly male professions that girls could take up. Gibon, however, suggested that women had little skill for the profession and were looking for trades that were not overly taxing. Gibon’s views tended to skew more conservative and Catholic, which might explain his perspective on female workers.29 Although Gibon tried to present it as otherwise, typesetting was demanding work. But was it too taxing for females? In a report on women in printing, Jacques Alary, the president of the Society of Parisian Typographers, made this argument. Even if women had the dexterity to execute typesetting, he insisted that to employ them in this trade “would be a serious error, because nature, which has assigned to each sex its functions, has left the woman unfit to exercise the vocation of typesetter due to the weakness of her loins, which prevent her from setting type assiduously for a long lapse of time either in a standing or sitting position.”30 For Alary, the weakness of the female body had to be considered when determining if a trade was appropriate for women. He was particularly worried about the female worker’s child-​bearing capabilities. Overwork wore down female workers and “each time one is broken down, a family is destroyed, along with many children, and the hopes of generations to come.”31 Such anxieties resemble those over the sewing machine, which a decree in 1893 barred girls under sixteen from using.32 Alary’s concerns, which were perhaps motivated by a fear of women driving down wages, highlight another limitation contemporaries placed on girls’ work. Feminine work had to prepare girls for motherhood, and it could not impede them from becoming mothers. These descriptions of the female typesetter capture why young girls clustered in the garment industry. These trades were available to them because they would prepare girls for motherhood and did not seem physically taxing. Never mind that sewing or ironing for twelve hours, the maximum workday under the 1874 labor law, was grueling work. Working-​class girls could and did work outside the home, but the jobs available to them were mostly in fields that required them to draw on or learn skills that their contemporaries considered appropriate for young women.

106  An Age to Work

Outside the Law Not only did girls opt for trades that resembled domestic labor but they also tended to work in spaces that blurred the divisions between work and home. Even if the female body featured prominently in legislative discussions about the regulation of female employment, girls’ work often remained hidden.33 Girls working for their parents remained beyond the control of labor inspectors. This exemption not only complicated inspectors’ ability to regulate girls’ work, but also meant that both parents and employers were less likely to treat girls’ work outside the home as subject to labor law. As a result, the labor laws had less impact on girls’ work. Girls were liable to enter the workforce prematurely and to work in illegal conditions. Although legislators established a clear age for youths to enter the workforce, girls tended to begin working whenever their parents deemed them ready. In a 1913 report, Mademoiselle Langlois, one of the handful of female labor inspectors in the Department of the Seine, described the laws’ limitations regarding girls’ work. She emphasized that both parents and employers knew that it was illegal to employ children under thirteen, but that violations still happened, particularly in commerce or in the fashion trades. The problems began even before girls entered the formal workforce. As she explained, “in large working-​class families, the oldest girl is given the responsibility over the smaller ones, either when her mother is at work or if she mostly is at home, during her illnesses, childbirths at the hospital, etc. The daughter thus only attends school irregularly . . . by twelve, she is so behind in her studies that it is impossible for her to keep up with the other children in her age group.”34 Mademoiselle Langlois began her report with eight examples. Her examples show how families and employers coordinated to avoid the law. For instance, she noted that the twelve-​year-​old who ran errands for a certain Mademoiselle Pernet, a woman who made the buttons for fake collars, was the eldest of a large family. The family presumably needed the money and Mademoiselle Pernet helped them circumvent the laws by giving the girl a position that was not strictly in an industrial space. In another example, twelve-​and-​a-​half-​year-​old Albertine Moulin’s employer tried to claim the girl as a relative. The woman, who was a laundress, then argued that the girl was the eldest in a large family and did not need additional education. The inspector dealing with the case refused to accept this excuse. Ultimately, the laundress closed her shop rather than submit to a fine. Mademoiselle

Blurred Spaces  107 Langlois’ examples show that parents did not always accept the restrictions the laws placed on childhood, especially when it came to girls. These violations were not isolated instances of families fudging the law to suit their particular needs, but a series of cases in which families and employers had already decided the laws were irrelevant to them and were cooperating to get around them. As Mademoiselle Langlois’ report demonstrates, parents and employers not only violated the child labor laws more frequently with girl workers, but they used girls’ role within the home to justify their actions. Working-​class families expected girls to contribute to the home irrespective of when the law mandated that they could begin work. Even if education laws required girls to attend school, many families valued their daughters’ wages over their schooling. By hiring underaged girl workers, employers allowed parents to continue skirting the law. In some cases, it seems that employers sympathized with financially strapped families, but their complicity suggests that they, too, did not consider education as valuable for girl workers. Given that Mademoiselle Langlois compiled this report four decades after the Republic passed its first child labor law, we cannot attribute these violations to the initial challenges of enforcement. Even more suggestive is the male Minister of Labor’s surprise when Mademoiselle Langlois first suggested that these kinds of violations might be widespread.35 It took a female inspector to broach the semi-​industrial world where many girls worked to reveal these abuses. To retain control over how and when their daughters worked, some parents placed their daughters in non-​industrial workspaces, which were beyond the purview of labor legislation. Because maids labored in domestic spaces, this work was acceptable for young women. However, this work also remained unregulated. According to the local female inspection committee in the 11th arrondissement, parents exploited this situation. The committee observed that “a large number of parents prefer to place their children as servants rather than see them submit to a law that they make no attempt to try to understand.”36 The inspectors complained of parents’ deliberate ignorance, but these parents clearly understood the law well enough to work around it. Their ability to do so captures the limits of legislators’ efforts to impose structure on girlhood. Many girls worked in small ateliers, which occupied a nebulous legal status. Small ateliers were workspaces set up in the midst of a working-​class woman’s living space. The inspectors theoretically had jurisdiction over these spaces because small-​scale industrial production took place within

108  An Age to Work these apartments. However, the 1892 law excluded family shops from its regulations, complicating inspectors’ ability to regulate small ateliers.37 If a girl was working for a family member, her daily routine might be the same as a girl working for a neighbor, but the inspector only had authority over the latter. As a result, the inspectors grappled with the legal status of the spaces. For instance, the child labor laws required employers to display a broadsheet with the labor laws, but inspectors did not punish women running small ateliers for failing to do so. Laporte, the divisional labor inspector responsible for Paris, let these industries off in the 1880s because he understood that workspaces often doubled as living spaces.38 In his 1892 report, he quoted a female inspector who wondered, “is it completely legal to consider a bedroom or a dining room an atelier and can we absolutely insist on the posting [of the law]?”39 In most spaces where girls worked, the line between domestic and productive labor was already fluid. In these spaces, the division was non-​existent. As a result, these workspaces were sites of many violations of the law, both large and small. Another female inspector found that “there are, particularly in the artificial flower industry, a large number of ateliers that get away with all sorts of abuses, including employing children who are underaged.”40 In these spaces, parents and employers followed their own rules. It did not help that these workspaces were often tucked away in apartment buildings, making it challenging for inspectors even to find them. Mademoiselle Thibault, one of the female labor inspectors, reported “it is almost always chance that leads to the discovery” of such ateliers. It was practically an odyssey to find them, as “it is necessary to deal with the bad humor of the concierges, to encounter multiple wrong doors, to climb up needlessly to the sixth or seventh floor, often by the service staircase, because in the central quartiers, the directors of small ateliers, not wanting to distance themselves from the enterprises that employ them, are obliged to settle in the attics of the neighboring houses.”41 Inspectors’ inability to find and regulate small ateliers meant that the girls working in these spaces were liable to labor in illegal or dangerous conditions. In the first decade of the twentieth century, inspectors made more frequent references to small ateliers in their yearly reports. Their interest in these workspaces not only attests to the proliferation of small ateliers during this time, but also suggests that inspectors were investing more energy in clamping down on these spaces. Two factors led to the expansion of this type of production. The increasing availability of the sewing machine made it easier for women to operate small-​scale production in their homes.42 At the

Blurred Spaces  109 same time, an increase in immigration to Paris contributed to the spread of this system. Divisional Inspector Boulisset’s 1907 yearly report contains numerous allusions to small ateliers. He observed that the Eastern European immigrants who ran these ateliers tried to exploit the exemption of the 1892 law that allowed children to work for their parents. They sent their children, most likely girls, to work in ateliers where bosses claimed that the children’s parents were also present. These employers then made a show of not knowing French.43 By claiming not to know French, these employers could also feign ignorance of French labor law. They could then set the rules in their workshops and thereby create a separate legal regime for the immigrant children in these workshops. However, their actions were not so different from the French employers and parents who chose to exempt girls from labor law. Even in the spaces where they had more authority, such as more formal workshops in the garment industry, inspectors could not ensure good conditions for girl workers. In these large ateliers, employers prioritized production targets over workers’ wellbeing. The two middle-​class ladies who diligently acted as the local inspection committee for Paris’ seventeenth inspection district were outraged to discover that a mistress at an atelier near Opéra had thrown a girl’s snack out of the window. They subsequently found that most of the large ateliers practiced a similar policy of refusing to let girls take any kind of break for refreshment from noon until the end of the day at 9pm or 10pm.44 During seasons of high demand, these workshops often required girls to work overtime, which was a violation of the child labor laws. The 1874 law banned young workers from working at night, but this regulation did not apply to women over twenty-​one. Factories were not inclined to let their younger workers go home when their older workers stayed late into the night.45 The 1892 law reaffirmed that anyone under eighteen could not work after 9pm. It did, however, permit women over eighteen to work until 11pm in industries that received official authorization during certain periods of the year. This provision existed to accommodate seasonal demand in the garment industry. In practice, employers did not observe this distinction between female workers above and below eighteen. In his yearly report for 1906, the Parisian divisional inspector explained that girls between the ages of fifteen and seventeen were often confused with older women and worked alongside them until 11pm.46 This disregard required the cooperation of not only employers and parents, but also the girls. After all, these young women were old enough to understand the provisions of the law. They may have stayed

110  An Age to Work later as a result of pressure from employers, but these girls probably thought they were capable of working alongside their older peers. That inspectors so consistently found instances of girls working overtime suggests that even in more formal female workspaces, labor legislation had less authority. Although inspectors’ frequent references to violations of the child labor laws involving girls might suggest that the laws held less weight for girls, it might also suggest that labor inspectors were more concerned about the impact of manual labor on female bodies. Republican legislators chose to regulate women’s work long before they even considered interfering with men’s work because they were worried about the impact of industrial labor on women’s bodies.47 Inspectors did express this sort of anxiety. For instance, Laporte devoted a special section in his 1888 report to explaining how the sewing machine damaged women’s reproductive organs.48 This concern might have led inspectors to be more attentive to potential work situations where girls’ reproductive capacities would be jeopardized. However, the Republic left many forms of female labor unregulated. The types of violations that do appear in the official record suggest that families and employers treated many types of female work as outside the law. For working-​class families, girls had a constant responsibility to assist their families and this obligation determined how these families conceived of girlhood. After all, what difference did it make if a girl was sewing to clothe her family or sewing to feed her family?

Training for Work, Training for Motherhood Whether apprentice furniture maker or young seamstress, almost all young workers passed through a period of preparation for work. For girls, however, the boundaries between training for a trade and for motherhood were more fluid. As a result, the period of training for girls was less of a discreet stage. When the Republic created programs to train girl workers, it too focused on these dual responsibilities. As such, its programs encoded girls’ unique path to adulthood. Traditionally, a substantial amount of girls’ training took place in the private sphere. Even with industrialization, many girls still acquired informal training under a mother or female family member’s supervision. Although some boys undoubtedly learned their trades from their fathers, female professions by their nature drew on skills mothers passed on to their

Blurred Spaces  111 daughters. Many feminine trades did not require large machinery and so mothers could teach their daughters with the instruments they had on hand. According to Gibon, mothers and grandmothers in the lace trade passed on their expertise to their daughters, which he considered “the best apprenticeship, in every respect.”49 One girl in the 1877 survey explained that she was going to learn to be a seamstress from her aunt.50 Another indicated that she had chosen to become a seamstress, “to be with my mother.”51 Even if these laboring young women were working hard in cramped quarters, these descriptions of young girls learning to sew or make lace alongside their older female family members carried a sense of intimacy. When girls then took up occupations outside the home, they brought these lessons from the domestic realm with them. Like boys, many girls increasingly skipped formal apprenticeships and entered directly into the workforce. As with their sons, parents wanted their daughters to begin earning a wage as soon as they could legally work. A society in the 18th arrondissement that offered young women training in “all the different areas of feminine industry” had a hard time recruiting students. It found that female apprentices wanted positions where they would receive food and pay.52 A report on the state of female apprenticeships written on the eve of World War I blamed mothers, who “prefer to give [their daughters] a profession where they can immediately be assured of earning something.” It claimed that they were directing their daughters away from industries that required an apprenticeship.53 Along with training their daughters, mothers had the authority to make decisions about the course of their careers. For middle-​class reformers, the breakdown of apprenticeships in feminine industries endangered girls’ morality and by extension, the working-​class home. In her 1906 book on the female worker, social investigator Caroline Milhaud bemoaned the state of apprenticeships. As she described it, “the majority of the time, [apprentices] are given work that has no relation to their profession. It is domestic toil. The ‘neighborhood’ seamstresses in Paris do chores as much as they sew. As for the apprentice milliner, she goes out at all times, wherever the wind blows, making deliveries. She is more familiar with funny papers than with ‘stitching’ and ‘shirring.’ ”54 Not only did all this coming and going cut into the time for instruction, but it also removed girls from the protected realm of the atelier. Similar to Milhaud’s study, a pamphlet on female apprenticeship found that girls’ morality did not fare well when they worked in the mixed-​age space of large ateliers.55 With the decline of the apprenticeship system, training for work outside the home posed a

112  An Age to Work double threat to girls. Not only did they spend their time at tasks that failed to prepare them for their lives as women, but they also encountered mixed spaces that put their morality at risk. Such concerns were not unique to girls, but they had greater urgency when applied to these future bulwarks of the working-​class home. As part of its efforts to combat the apprenticeship crisis, the city of Paris opened vocational schools to train girl workers.56 By 1889, the city had opened thirteen vocational schools. Six of these prepared girls for feminine trades.57 For instance, the École Fondary taught young women the skills to enter the garment and fashion industries. These included sewing, ironing, and embroidery, along with the fabrication of lingerie, corsets, waistcoats, hats, and flowers.58 Another school, the École at the Rue de Poitou, provided instruction in the garment trades such as sewing, embroidery, and millinery, as well as courses in commercial studies and industrial design.59 Commercial studies, which included lessons in writing, foreign language, and accounting, likely allowed girls to take up positions as bookkeepers. Industrial design, which included a range of drawing classes, would have enabled them to become porcelain painters or perhaps even drawing teachers. The academic instruction in these schools was fairly basic. For the 1900 Universal Exposition, the École Fondary produced a manual and a set of photos to document the school’s goals and how instruction at the school functioned. According to the manual, the school’s academic instruction consisted of “courses in primary instruction designed to prepare students for the certificate of primary studies or to enhance the education of those who do have it.”60 When girls studied the physical sciences, they received a general overview. For history, girls should go through “a general study of the History of France, focusing on the civilization, the great inventions, industry, etc.,” in other words, the glory of France painted in broad brush strokes, but making sure to highlight her technological achievements along the way.61 This schooling took up only nine hours a week in the girls’ first year, six in the second, and in the third, they spent all their time in the ateliers or in practical courses, such as accounting and drawing.62 The academic instruction at the École Fondary paled in comparison to the instruction at boys’ vocational schools. At the boys’ schools, academic instruction went beyond primary instruction and was supposed to complement the students’ technical training. The programs of study for the boys’ vocational schools laid out a detailed plan of all the different topics that each course, from history to geometry to ornamental drawing, had to cover in

Blurred Spaces  113 a year.63 This difference in curricula between male and female vocational schools captures the Republic’s attitude with regard to the education of working-​class women. Even for a girl whose family could afford to send her to school rather than directly into the workforce and who would ultimately be among the ranks of skilled workers, any education beyond the elementary level had little value. Although this school trained girls for the workforce, it also placed emphasis on preparing them for motherhood. The goals for the École Fondary stated, “we aim to provide young women with a profession that will allow them to make a living and at the same time, give them the necessary skills to maintain a household.” The school did not deny that these girls, or the women they would become, had a place in the workforce. However, it also treated their work in the home as a vocation for which one had to train. The program of instruction for the school specified that students had to practice during their “apprenticeship . . . sewing for everyday life, cooking and cleaning.”64 While primary instruction ended in the final year, these domestic courses did not. These classes would help girls in their trades, but also ensured that the girls were prepared to be wives and mothers. In contrast to boys’ vocational schools, which structured training to provide a clear intermediate stage between primary school and the workforce, the vocational schools for girls did not carve out adolescence as a clear, distinct stage of life. By integrating lessons in primary education and in the domestic skills girls would need for motherhood, the educators who designed their curriculums treated girlhood as unfolding much more continuously. Because the academic program at the school was an extension of primary school, the border between early childhood and adolescence remained more fluid. The border between childhood and adulthood for girls was already porous. Girls were always looking toward motherhood and this preparation was not unique to their teen-​age years. At the same time, working-​class women never gained full citizenship and remained in a state of childhood throughout their lives. The vocational schools for girls also reinforced the separation of girls and boys in the workforce.65 Republican primary schools segregated children based on their gender.66 The vocational schools prolonged these divisions into young adulthood. The creation of separate vocational schools for girls and boys encoded particular trades as masculine or feminine. Even if girls could be typesetters, only boys could attend the École Estienne, the school that offered training in the book trades. The disparity in academic

114  An Age to Work preparation between boys’ and girls’ schools also contributed to the hierarchy between male and female trades. However, the girls who trained in the vocational schools remained a small fraction of the workforce in the garment industry. As with the boys’ schools, critics pointed out that municipal vocational schools served an elite class of young workers. As Milhaud explained in her study of female workers, for girls to attend school “it is necessary [for their families] to make sacrifices and to wait a few years before the child [brings money to the household]. In reality, it is only the daughters of well-​off workers who are able to fulfill these conditions, alongside the children of the petit bourgeoisie. The latter, for the most part, are destined to become elite workers, as well as skilled employers or expert housewives.”67 The records for the schools support this observation. In the register of students at the girls’ school at the Rue Tombe-​Issoire, each entry includes the profession of the student’s father, and for those without fathers, her mother’s. A couple of girls had fathers who were delivery boys or peddlers, but most were skilled craftsmen or even amongst the lowest tiers of the bourgeoisie.68 Although only the more comfortable tiers of the working-​classes could afford to delay their daughters’ entry into the workforce, the schools are indicative of broader attitudes toward girlhood. Even as republican educational reformers sought to standardize the male life course, they saw girlhood as advancing more continuously. For the working-​class girls who could not attend the vocational schools, their path from childhood to the workforce and then to motherhood was even more fluid.

Catholic Workshops Ouvroirs, workshops run by Catholic religious orders where girls trained and labored, were another space where girls’ work initially fell outside of the jurisdiction of the child labor laws. Religious orders had a long tradition of offering vocational training to young women dating back to the end of the seventeenth century.69 In the early years of the Republic, female religious orders played a significant role in educating young women, but also in training and employing them.70 Girls’ tendency to train with nuns was another characteristic that set their work apart from their male peers.71 Until 1892, their work in the ouvroirs escaped state surveillance. When the Republic went on the offensive against the Catholic Church, it mobilized labor legislation as a tool against religious orders and ultimately relied on labor inspectors to

Blurred Spaces  115 justify removing girls from the ouvroirs.72 As they surveyed the ouvroirs, labor inspectors delineated a more standardized version of the girl worker. As with many other female workspaces, ouvroirs were semi-​industrial, legally ambiguous spaces. Inspectors used the term ouvroirs to refer to workshops operated by religious orders or charitable workshops supervised by religious orders.73 Some of these workshops were attached to a pension or orphanage where girls lived. In certain ouvroirs girls labored to produce clothing to outfit the residents of their orphanage, but in many, girls produced goods for sale. Sometimes too, ouvroirs were attached to convent schools. The ouvroirs ostensibly functioned to help these girls, but they blurred the line between industrial and domestic, between charitable and commercial, and between educational and productive. Crucially, the ouvroirs were predominately female spaces where girls trained and worked alongside nuns. Previous regimes had valued the ouvroirs because they were gender-​ segregated spaces where girls were protected from the dangers of factory life and received lessons in Catholic morality.74 With the decline of the apprenticeship system, the ouvroirs were one of the few places where girls could receive training. A thesis on work in the ouvroirs written in 1899, shortly before the Republic began to shut down religious orders, counted fifty-​one establishments for training young women in Paris: thirty run by nuns; fifteen that were ostensibly laic, but had a religious orientation; and the six Parisian vocational schools.75 A decade earlier, the female local inspection commission in the 5th arrondissement noted that ouvroirs would soon become the one place where girls could train. It qualified that “these establishments cannot form apprentices for all the professions women work in. They only teach sewing, ironing, and flower-​making. The other trades, even millinery, have to be learned in an atelier.”76 As charitable institutions, the ouvroirs were meant to equip working-​class girls with the skills that could help them in life. But the nuns’ capacity to train girls was limited or perhaps, as labor inspectors would intimate, it was the nuns’ desire for profit that hindered this training.77 A significant proportion of young women trained in the ouvroirs. In 1897, labor inspectors in the Department of the Seine reported on the number of children working in “charitable institutions,” a term which mostly applied to religious charities. Table 5.1 lists the number of young workers in each age group working in industrial workspaces and the number working in charitable institutions. For every single age group, only a handful of boys labored in charities. In contrast, a substantial number of young women labored in

116  An Age to Work Table 5.1  Young people employed in charitable institutions, Department of the Seine, 1897

Girls in charities Girls in industry Boys in charities Boys in industry

Under 13

Aged 13–​16

Aged 16–​18

Aged 18–​21

2,046 132 45 197

1,493 13,222 87 13,809

1,001 8,361 24 7,579

985 13,651 n/​a n/​a

Source: Ministère de commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes: Direction du travail et de l’industrie, Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1897 des lois réglementant le travail (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1898), 10, 59.

these spaces. For girls between 13 and 18, more than ten percent worked in charitable institutions. The proportion of filles mineurs (young women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-​one) employed in charities was only 6.73 percent. Girls over eighteen perhaps had more options for employment than their young counterparts or may have left to get married. Charities did not always encourage girls to leave at age eighteen. One ouvroir, the sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus, only provided their charges with a trousseau if they managed to stay until the age of twenty-​one.78 During the Republic’s first decades, officials had little ability to regulate the conditions in the ouvroirs. The child labor law of 1874 only applied to industrial spaces, leaving religious institutions beyond the supervision of labor inspectors. The Social Catholics who drafted the 1874 law trusted the church to act in the interests of young people, as evidenced by their deliberate omission of any language about compulsory state primary education.79 Their decision to exempt ouvroirs from labor law had important consequences for working-​class girlhood. It left female religious orders to raise the girls in their charge without any public oversight, assuming that the nuns’ Catholic morality would prevent any kind of abuse. Even as these legislators placed parameters around working-​class childhood, they let the church continue to decide when a large number of girls could enter the workforce and the degree of education they would receive. This exemption did not please the work inspectors, who had less confidence in the church and felt that the Republic was leaving the door open to the exploitation of working girls. In a report from the 1880s, a Parisian inspection commission noted, “in certain of these houses, they employ children who would not be admitted by any industrial concerned about following the law.

Blurred Spaces  117 In [the charities], the children are received at any age and most often, without the basics of instruction.”80 As with home industry, leaving girls to the protection of the private realm left them vulnerable to violations. Inspectors also recognized that these exemptions had repercussions for female industry as a whole, particularly because they received numerous complaints from industrial employers. Without the constraints of the labor laws, ouvroirs could produce goods much more cheaply than traditional industry, driving down prices. Employers claimed to be worried about the toll excessive work took on young women, but Divisional Inspector Laporte also mentioned that they groused about “the large damage to certain Parisian industries.”81 In all likelihood, industrialists were much more concerned with this “damage” to their prices than to young women’s bodies. Nonetheless, the fact that they cloaked their complaints in this language suggests that they were part of a broader discussion about standardizing the conditions of young women’s work. A growing apprehension with the conditions of work in the ouvroirs combined with the rising tide of anti-​clericalism forced open the doors of the ouvroirs to public surveillance. In 1888, a court in Angers ruled that labor inspectors could survey charitable establishments to assess the hygienic conditions in these workspaces. The Parisian Court of Cassation then upheld this ruling.82 The 1892 labor law placed the ouvroirs under the supervision of the labor inspectors. Its first article stated, “the work of children, young women, and women in factories, manufactories, mines, quarries, construction sites, ateliers and their satellites, whether these are public or private, laic or religious—​even if the establishment provides some form of professional education or charity—​is subject to the obligations set out in the present law.”83 This law made clear that even if girls were working in a charitable establishment, they were still performing industrial labor. As a result, this labor was subject to the same restrictions that governed all forms of industrial work. As legislators grew worried about nuns infecting the minds of future citizens, the Republic restricted nuns’ ability to educate young women. In June 16, 1881, the Republic mandated that all teachers, laic or otherwise, had to possess a brevet de capacité (a certificate that proved their aptitude to teach).84 The Goblet Law of 1886 banned religious figures outright from public schools, although it provided a flexible window for implementation.85 Finally, in 1904, the Republic forbade clerical orders from teaching, mandating the dissolution of any order whose primary goal was to provide instruction.86 These laws not only removed girls from the influence of nuns,

118  An Age to Work but forced them into public schools where they could receive a civic education. Even if male legislators failed to provide young women with the full trappings of citizenship, they increasingly felt that young women had a role to play in the Republic.87 As a result, they could not simply leave girls’ work or education to the protection of the private sphere. Just as republican officials worried that religious schools hindered girls’ development into citizens, they expressed concern that ouvroirs limited girls’ ability to become workers. In 1899, they banned female inspectors from supervising the ouvroirs, citing their lack of “authority” over the nuns.88 But the more pressing concern was whether ouvroirs were providing the basic services that they claimed to offer. Increasingly, reports on ouvroirs suggested that they were in fact exploiting girls, that, “professional instruction has given way to an organization exclusively centered on the mercantile principles and production” and that girls were not even receiving primary instruction.89 Anti-​clericalism surely influenced such reports. But it is also important to note the parallels between the efforts to increase oversight of the ouvroirs and of home industry. Both issues highlight the Republic’s growing interest in regulating and quantifying girls’ work at the turn of the twentieth century. Although the declining birthrate undoubtedly drove some of republican administrators’ concerns, it seems as if the Republic was trying to remove some of the ambiguity around working-​class girlhood. Working-​class girls contributed to society through their labor and male officials wanted to ensure that they could fulfill this role.90 As the Republic expanded its supervision of girls’ work, it used labor legislation not simply to force orders to submit to public authority, but to justify their dissolution. The 1901 law on associations, which enshrined a basic principle of French republicanism, also forced religious orders to apply for government authorization to exist.91 For an organization to receive authorization, it had to demonstrate that it provided “public utility.” For congregations that operated “charitable establishments,” the Minister of Worship called on the Minister of Commerce to evaluate their utility.92 It fell to the labor inspectors—​the male labor inspectors that the law permitted to survey the congregations—​to observe the conditions within these congregations and determine if the orders were aiding the populations they claimed to help. Some convents, such as the Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus, did pass the inspector’s scrutiny. This order trained female typesetters, among other occupations, a rarity among ouvroirs where girls usually engaged in trades involving sewing. In his inspection of this congregation in 1902, the

Blurred Spaces  119 Departmental Inspector Friedberg focused both on the training the order provided and the conditions of its workspaces. As he observed, “The mother superior voluntarily observes the various ordinances that could possibly be applied. The machines are in regulation, the dormitories are properly arranged, the workspaces are well-​ventilated and well-​lit.” Even if the congregation did not really contribute to the “public utility,” Friedberg concluded that it should stay open because it followed the labor laws and provided a home for poor girls and orphans.93 The strict, almost medicalized language in this report reflects the increasing role of the masculine, republican order in the female workspace. The inspector scrutinized hygiene and cleanliness in his report, leaving out any potential benefits the girls could receive from the nuns’ maternal charity. As government officials whose livelihood involved enforcing legislation, labor inspectors were definitely more likely to accept republicanism with all its trappings, including laicization. But Inspector Friedberg’s report suggests that anti-​clericalism was not the only factor influencing labor inspectors. Instead, his ultimate determination came from a strict adherence to labor law and order. In many cases, the inspectors determined that nuns were not contributing to the “public utility.” In 1903, Departmental Inspector Bourceret sent in a scathing report on the Servants of the Holy Heart of Mary to the divisional inspector.94 As with other labor inspectors throughout France, Bourceret shared a concern for the effect of ouvroirs on girls’ careers and on the market as a whole. However, Bourceret’s report is one of the most detailed and most hostile toward nuns of the reports submitted to the Minister of Commerce.95 In the first place, Bourceret’s report suggested that the nuns were causing long-​term physical harm to their charges. As with many ouvroirs, which were involved in the garment industry, this particular ouvroir produced lingerie. It was not simply that the ouvroir was violating the child labor laws, which was certainly the case—​when he arrived, he found a twelve-​year-​old girl at work—​it was more the conditions of life and work at the ouvroir that he found to be so objectionable. The ouvroir did not give girls enough to eat and forced them to work long hours, which led him to worry about the girls’ development. They were “adolescents,” and thus at an age where they “needed air, light, movement, gaiety, exercise, intermittent breaks.” He added, “this system is truly deplorable.”96 Many factory owners subjected their employees to grueling conditions. But the standards for nuns, who were supposed to be guided by charitable principles, were considerably higher. By presenting

120  An Age to Work these deplorable conditions, Bourceret shattered any illusion that the nuns were providing charity. Once again, too, a male labor inspector mobilized medical language to assess the value of an ouvroir. For Bourceret, the ouvroir’s focus on production negatively affected the girls’ future career prospects. He claimed that the nuns were failing to provide a true apprenticeship. “Locked into a specialty, the young girl worker mechanically accomplishes tasks effectively and quickly—​this is advantageous for the community, as she able to provide maximal yield—​but it is not through this practice, in shocking contradiction with the most rudimentary principles of industrial education, that one can train accomplished seamstresses.”97 In theory, ouvroirs stood apart from factories precisely because they did not operate for a profit and thus could train girls. Instead, these nuns resembled the worst kind of factory owner, forcing girls to specialize early. Bourceret’s observation here resembles Octave Gréard’s fears about factory life numbing the minds of future citizens. By failing to provide these girls with training, the nuns were not only hurting the girls’ future ability to support themselves, but also limiting the number of skilled female workers capable of contributing to the French economy. The nuns were thus failing in one of the principal ways they could provide public utility to French society. Bourceret not only criticized the nuns as harsh employers, but he also denounced the religious observance at the ouvroir as an additional physical burden. In particular, he objected to the girls being forced to pray. As he put it, “this is not work in the legal sense of the term, but this three quarters of an hour in forced silence, in a fixed pose on one’s knees, in deep attention, all this is added to nine and a half hours of work in the atelier and an hour for household tasks. It is evident that all this, in its ensemble constitutes a clear case of overwork—​both physically and mentally.”98 Aside from a couple of references to religious education, none of the other labor inspectors questioned the religious practices associated with life in the convents.99 Bourceret’s condemnation of prayer is telling. He implied that any kind of religious practice in the convents had no moral value for the working-​class girls lodged there, challenging the church’s claim that religion was crucial for female morality.100 Instead, he examined prayer in terms of the physical toll it took on girls’ bodies, placing girls’ physical wellbeing at the center of his report. The reports from Bourceret and the other labor inspectors demonstrate the extent to which girlhood had become a matter of public concern. That Bourceret was scrutinizing and writing about the female body so openly captures an important shift in the treatment of the girl worker.

Blurred Spaces  121 In many ways, Bourceret’s report was exceptional. It is also worth noting that the Servants of the Holy Heart of Mary continued to function. It appears in a 1924 survey of congregations in the city of Paris. It had changed its mission, allowing it to survive. It now focused on caring for orphans, the poor, and the sick. Although it housed orphans between the ages of seven and thirteen, these children attended a public school.101 That the congregation managed to survive Bourceret’s scathing report suggests that the Republic’s decision to use labor law and labor inspectors against the convents was not simply a ploy in the midst of laicization to shut down the orders. Instead, it seems as if the labor inspectors’ reports allowed the Republic to force girls from the ouvroirs and place them in more public workspaces where their work would fall under the more regular supervision of labor inspectors. Ironically, these workspaces were private enterprises where girls were more likely to encounter older workers, a situation that also threatened their morality. Other religious minorities ran institutions for training young women, such as the École Bischoffsheim for Jewish girls and the Pension for Young Orphans on the Rue de Billettes run by Protestants. In many ways, these were more similar to secular vocational schools, as their stated goals did not include religious observance. Moreover, they focused more on training rather than on employing young women.102 The Catholic ouvroirs were unique in the extent to which they offered an alternative workplace for young girls beyond the Republic’s gaze.

Republican Girlhood Girl workers in nineteenth-​century Paris earned wages by sewing dresses, piecing together vests, or embroidering collars, but they also set type, made cardboard cartons, and ran errands. Nevertheless, girls’ work almost inevitably had ties to the home space. Their future lives as mothers not only narrowed girls’ career opportunities, but also shaped the curriculum of public and private vocational training courses for girls. The blurring of the public and private workspaces also partially accounts for employer and parental disregard of child labor laws with regard to girls. Parents, and not the government, still had more authority in the domestic realm. If elements of the domestic sphere carried over to the female workspaces, then perhaps they also reasoned that the child labor laws did not have jurisdiction over these

122  An Age to Work workspaces. The prominence of the domestic realm in girls’ interactions with the world of work distinguished girls from boys. A boy’s identity as a worker was separate from his role in the home. Moreover, the gendering of specific professions and workspaces as female meant that the gender of the girl worker was always front and center. She was not simply a child worker, but an apprentie, couturière, ouvrière, the female apprentice, seamstress, or worker. As the Republic expanded its regulations around childhood, in many ways, it reinforced the separation between girl and boy workers. The initial child labor laws excluded many feminine workspaces, leaving girlhood more unstructured and unregulated. The Republic’s later efforts to remove girls from overlooked spaces were only partially successful. Parents and employers alike were more likely to ignore republican education and labor legislation when it came to female offspring. Even when the Republic did attempt to create institutions to train girls, these schools prioritized preparing girls for motherhood. This form of preparation not only affirmed the division between girlhood and boyhood, but it also paved a separate path to adulthood for girls. The stages of girlhood were much more fluid, as girls were always progressing gradually toward motherhood. Examining republican policies with regard to working-​class girls reveals that the Republic did not simply define separate roles for girls and boys through the curriculum of its gender-​ specific primary schools. Instead, child labor policy was crucial in defining a distinct role for girls within the burgeoning republican welfare state.

6 “The Collaboration of the Crowd” Age and Identity in Working-​Class Neighborhoods

In 1909, an article in the newspaper Le Journal bemoaned the limits of child labor legislation: The legislator has only made a single oversight. He has neglected the sorrowful and faded mass of children employed in shops. The small ones who run errands, who carry parcels, the milliner who goes out in the rain to make deliveries, the children charged with opening doors while caught in a deadly draft, those who tend outdoor stalls—​this whole troop is unknown to French law. The labor inspectors do not cross the threshold of boutiques or ghastly bazaars.1

Although this article perhaps exaggerates for emphasis, it helps to conjure up the streets of turn-​of-​the-​century Paris. It also introduces us to the young workers on these streets who would have been a familiar sight to most people in the capital. In contrast to young people cloistered away in factories or ateliers, the labor of youths who worked in shops or ran errands was very much on public display. And yet, these young people rarely appear in official sources. If we, however, turn our attention to young people laboring in the street or in the home, we gain a better understanding of how working-​class communities perceived childhood. Child labor legislation may have decreased the number of young people employed in industrial professions, but it did not eliminate child labor. Instead, many children moved into more informal professions or continued to assist their families through uncompensated work.2 Despite the increased regulation of children’s work, the norms and mores of the working-​class community continued to shape how people in this community conceived of childhood. Chief among these conventions was the expectation that children would labor in support of their families as soon as they were physically capable. As such, the legal constraints around child labor determined when An Age to Work. Miranda Sachs, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197638453.003.0007

124  An Age to Work this work could become remunerated, but it did not fundamentally transform the role of the child within the family.3 Sources produced outside of the government realm, such as postcards and memoirs, are useful for understanding how working-​class communities perceived childhood. As the mania for postcards exploded at the end of the nineteenth century, postcard companies capitalized by issuing cards with all variety of scenes ranging from exotic travel destinations to tableaux of peasants.4 Countless postcards featured images of Paris, but the photographers who collected images of the capital were not only interested in monuments and high culture. Instead, postcards depict a significant fraction of the city’s streets, large and small, across all twenty arrondissements.5 In contrast to Marville’s iconic mid-​century photographs of Paris, these images are not empty street landscapes, but peopled, and often crowded, with the inhabitants of these quartiers. For images of a city that was already a popular destination for travelers, these postcards are strikingly banal. The postcards capture the daily life of the quartier, interactions and individuals so normal that they would not merit notice in a guidebook or an account of the city. In these tableaux of the quotidian, we can find traces of young people at work.6 At the same time, the communities depicted in these postcards were neither the ones seizing the images, nor were they likely even the ones consuming the postcards. Even if the cards seem like naturalistic tableaux of working-​ class Paris, these postcards are ultimately images a more bourgeois photographer chose to capture and from which he assumed he could turn a profit. Of the legions of children of the popular classes who grew up in Paris during this period, few left behind traces of their lives. But a handful, particularly artists and union organizers, either wrote memoirs or semi-​autobiographical novels when they reached adulthood. These works bring to life the world of the street, but also provide a glimpse of working-​class domestic life. Nonetheless, they do have certain limitations. As with most memoirs, the sections on childhood are written from the perspective of an adult. Many of the memoirists had left behind the working-​class neighborhoods in which they grew up. Moreover, World War I and, in a few cases, World War II, separated the writers from their childhoods (see Table 6.1). The growing nostalgia for the “Belle Époque,” the period before the wars, undoubtedly influenced these authors as they recalled a time when they were younger and more innocent.7 Despite the distance of time, the memoirs can still provide us with the intimate details of life in working-​class communities that official sources lack. Thanks to postcards and memoirs, along with mentions of work

“The Collaboration of the Crowd”  125 Table 6.1  Working-​class memoirs Name

Born

Died

Date of publication

Title

Auguste Brepson Lucien Cancouët

1885 1894

1927 1967

Louis-​Ferdinand Céline Maurice Chevalier

1894

1961

1928 Written in 1950, published in 2011 1936

Un gosse Mémoires d’un authentique prolétaire Mort à crédit

1888

1972

1949

Eugène Dabit Yvette Guilbert

1898 1865

1936 1944

1933 1927

Gaston Guiraud René Michaud

1881 1900

1957 1979

1938 1967

Henry Poulaille

1896

1980

1931, 1935

Albert Simonin

1905

1980

1977

Ma route et mes chansons, v. 1, La Louque Faubourgs de Paris La Chanson de ma vie (mes mémoires) P’tite Gueule J’avais vingt ans: un jeune ouvrier au début du siècle Le pain quotidien, Les damnés de la terre Confessions d’un enfant de la Chapelle

Source: Catalog of the Bibliothèque Nationale Française; Le Maitron: Dictionnaire biographique mouvement ouvrier, mouvement social, https://​mait​ron.fr.

in the street or home in official sources, a broader portrait of the working-​ class child emerges, one not defined by the confines of the factory or republican legislation, but through the social mores of the working-​class world.

Hidden in Plain Sight On a cold day, a boy walks down the Avenue d’Allemagne, one of the main thoroughfares of the 19th arrondissement, with an older workman. The two likely work in the construction industry. While the older man transports his ladder with ease over one shoulder, the boy struggles with his smaller ladder. The men and women on the corner, many of whom are wrapped in jackets and shawls, observe the pair. Some of them likely work in the bathhouse or stationary store in the background. They would have instantly recognized basic visual cues about the boy’s age, occupation, and physical capabilities that the historian can only tease out through careful scrutiny. The boy and his

126  An Age to Work ladder appear in one of the hundreds of postcards of Paris from this period. These postcards preserve scenes of city life from more than a century ago, in this case capturing a row of buildings that no longer exists on a street whose name, too, is gone, renamed during the decades of conflict with the Germans for the socialist politician Jean Jaurès. But embedded in these street scenes are images of young people at work. For these youngsters, the boulevards and passages of Paris were their workspaces. For the crowds of people in these street scenes, young workers were an omnipresent feature city of life.8 Although reformers often worried about the dangers of street life, the photos make clear that young people mingled with adults as they worked and played. Even if school and labor legislation were beginning to create distinctions between spaces for young people and spaces for adults, working-​ class children in turn-​of-​the-​century Paris had few restrictions on their ability to participate in the mixed-​age sociability of the street. By capturing scenes of urban life, postcards inevitably recorded images of children in the midst of this fluid workspace. In one postcard, a boy carrying a basket pauses outside the metro at Père Lachaise. In another, a boy with a case strapped to his back, a container probably for delivering laundry, crosses the Rue des

On the Rue d’Allemagne, a boy (center left) tries to carry a ladder. For the adults lining the sidewalk, a young person laboring in the streets of working-​class Paris was a familiar sight. Ville de Paris/​Bibliothèque historique, CPA-​5608

“The Collaboration of the Crowd”  127 Trois Couronnes. The postcards capture young people in the midst of casual and informal labor, highlighting that this work was more pervasive than the written record indicates. Although girls make scant appearances in police archives, they are very present in these street scenes, suggesting that they, too, worked and played in the street. Many are unaccompanied by adults, a freedom that their middle-​class counterparts would not have enjoyed. Girls made deliveries, as in the case of a girl on the Rue des Gobelins carrying a heavy sack. Similarly, two girls on the Rue des Amandiers hold boxes. Their small stature and short skirts suggest that they were younger than twelve, so perhaps the two are running errands for a parent. The photos document girls’ omnipresent responsibility to mind their siblings, as in the case of two young girls on the Rue Nationale who are holding what are presumably younger siblings. These pictures show that girls’ domestic responsibilities did not simply take place in the home, but they also spilled into the street. Although boys of all ages are more present in these photos, girls too were very much a part of street life.

A boy (left) pauses outside the Père Lachaise metro station with a basket to make a delivery. When boys entered the formal workforce, they often started out in jobs that involved running errands or making deliveries. Ville de Paris/​ Bibliothèque historique, CPA-​4303

128  An Age to Work

A boy traverses the Rue des Trois Couronnes with a crate strapped to his back while a group of smaller girls runs up the street. Young people both worked and played in the streets of working-​class neighborhoods. Ville de Paris/​Bibliothèque historique, CPA-​4347

For young workers in the food industry, such as apprentice butchers or fruit sellers, the open streets of the city were their workspace. A postcard entitled “Outdoor market. Greengrocer,” includes three boys helping to sell vegetables in this open-​air market. The vendors, including a man with a rabbit carcass, stand behind piles of fruits and vegetables. The three boys flank the adult sellers. Two wear aprons, suggesting that they work alongside the adult sellers. The third has a basket and proffers what appear to be artichokes. He might have been a delivery boy employed by the greengrocers to distribute their wares. The workdays for these young people did not follow the precise structure of urban factory life. When Émile Zola researched the novel The Belly of Paris, he observed the rhythms of work in the food industry. Zola set this novel in Les Halles, which at the time was Paris’s central produce market. He visited Les Halles and took notes on the people he found. During a nighttime visit, he observed, “Men sleeping on unloaded merchandise. Woman lying on a sack. Children asleep.”9 The arrival of vegetable deliveries sparked people of all ages to work. “Above the rumbling of the crowd, in the light of

On the Rue des Gobelins, a girl carries a large bag (far left), probably to deliver laundry. Although young women often labored in domestic spaces, many girls also ran errands or made deliveries in their first remunerated positions. Ville de Paris/​Bibliothèque historique, CPA-​4557

Girls and boys congregate alongside a coach on the Rue des Amandiers. Given their size, the girls at the far right of this group are too young to be performing paid labor and are likely running errands for their parents. Ville de Paris/​ Bibliothèque historique, CPA-​5725

130  An Age to Work

In the residential Rue Nationale, a girl carries a small child (far left). From a young age, girls had to take care of their younger siblings. Ville de Paris/​ Bibliothèque historique, CPA-​4578

a gas lamppost that is practically her height, a sixteen-​year-​old peasant with a small, blue bonnet, a brown peasant blouse (“casaquin”), is lost among the vegetables, which are up to her shoulders. She unloads, planted among the cabbages and carrots.”10 Zola links the girl to the rural world, highlighting her quaint wardrobe and proximity to the vegetables. Similarly, the families sleeping outside almost seem like sleeping villagers. In his description, the people from the countryside follow the schedule of light and darkness or more likely, the hours of demand. Although Zola likely embellished his descriptions, this tableau captures the way child labor operated beyond the confines of spaces governed by labor legislation. For the most part, young people working in the food industries and other commercial professions remained beyond the authority of labor inspectors. Overloads were the one exception. The 1874 and 1892 laws tasked inspectors with ensuring that children did not engage in work that “exceeded their strength,” a condition inspectors referred to as surcharge or overload. Subsequent regulations stipulated the precise limits on loads that youths of certain ages could be allowed to carry. These regulations circumscribed the labor of young workers in industry beyond their place of work and particularly applied when they made deliveries. However, inspectors were initially

“The Collaboration of the Crowd”  131

A group of greengrocers stand behind their goods at an open-​air market. Two of the boys sport the apron worn by workers in the food industries, which means that they, as with the adults in the group, were responsible for selling vegetables. Ville de Paris/​Bibliothèque historique, 4C-​EPF-​002-​1184

powerless to apply these regulations to young workers in the food industries, as the Council of State ruled that these industries were domestic labor.11 Only in 1909 did the Republic pass a law that enabled inspectors to regulate overloads in commercial businesses.12 When labor inspectors reported on young workers collapsing under heavy loads, they also documented how ordinary citizens helped to police young people’s labor in the public space of the street. In his yearly report for 1885, divisional inspector Edmond Laporte noted that the article of the 1874 law related to overloads was one of the more popular articles of the law and that the general populace helped enforce it. As he put it, “each time that an instance of an overload passes under the eyes of the public, someone hurries to demand the intervention of a law enforcement agent who can record it.”13 The individual reports for these cases provide examples of what Laporte dubbed “collaboration of the crowd (foule).”14 It was a literal crowd that drew the attention of Officer Charles Wolff in September 1908. Twenty or so people on the curb encircled a sixteen-​year-​old boy who was crying. Pieces

132  An Age to Work of the broken bottles that the boy had been carrying in a pushcart littered the ground. Thanks to the crowd’s interest, Wolff was able to identify the violation and charge the boy’s employer, a wine merchant by the name of Beron.15 Late nineteenth-​century social scientists may have perceived the crowd as dangerous and prone to revolt, but these republican officials identified a more cooperative spirit among the working people on the capital’s streets.16 The reports of overloads show, too, that members of the public had a sense of young workers’ physical capabilities and felt a responsibility to protect them from overwork. The appropriately named Monsieur Paris went to the local police when he noticed a young man pushing a heavy load in September 1909. Paris was a shoemaker, but the sixteen-​year-​old Marcel Gilbert worked for a publisher. It was not a competitive spirit that drove Paris, but more likely the knowledge that the young boy could not push a two-​wheeled chariot carrying three heavy packages of paper without serious risk to himself. The report on the incident notes that the paper alone weighed 168 kilograms, which the police found out by weighing the load at a local coal agent’s, relying on a third party to gather this information.17 An overload report was not simply an incident of the state intervening in the relationship between the employer and his young employee; instead, it required the cooperation of a collection of ordinary Parisians. It documented an instance where working-​class norms and official norms with regard to child labor overlapped. As a result, the official reports leave us with tantalizing hints of how working-​class sociability shaped the experience of the young worker. But crucially, working-​class communities were not simply an extension of the inspection force. How they conceived of the working-​class child’s life course did not always conform to the official version.

Clothes Make the Child In his semi-​ autobiographical novel P’tite Gueule, the union organizer Gaston Guiraud wrote about the shame he experienced in his first job as a delivery boy. He felt a sense of his inferiority in comparison to his friends, who had jobs as manual laborers; one was a turner and another made the metal grills for windows. His uniform epitomized all that was wrong with his occupation. His friends “made fun of my collar and my bowler hat,” but he dreamt of “donning a worker’s tunic or blue blouse like my pals who were printers or mechanics.”18 Clothing marked an individual’s identity in

“The Collaboration of the Crowd”  133 turn-​of-​the-​century Paris. Age, class, profession, gender—​Parisians could read these distinctions in the garments of people they passed on the street. As girls and boys progressed from school to work and took on specific professions, they donned new outfits. Examining the way that clothing structured identity provides insight into the formal and informal ways that working-​class society constructed childhood.19 Individual stages within childhood had their own unofficial uniforms. Images of street scenes show how much the smock, the outfit of school children, distinguished them from youths in the workforce. In these images, younger children of both genders wear much shorter garments. The girls’ dresses go only to their knees. The boys’ tunics are similarly short, but the whole shape of their clothing is different from their older counterparts. The simple fact of wearing long pants rather than the smock signaled that a boy had entered the workforce. A photo of young children on the Rue d’Hautpol offers an example of school-​aged children of both genders. Even if they are not wearing tunics, their height alone signals that these children are young. With schoolbooks and lunch baskets under their arms, they cluster together. The distinction between genders is also less clear at this age, as both genders sport knee-​length tunics. Notably, the few adults in this photo do not pay much attention to the children. From a young age, children participated in the public space of the street without supervision. The student’s smock marked a certain level of immaturity. In his semi-​ autobiographical novel, Louis-​Ferdinand Céline recounted an episode in which his protagonist, Ferdinand, went to take the exam for the certificate of primary studies (the exam at the end of primary schooling). Once he managed to pass the exam, the protagonist returned to the space where his peers were waiting and saw them through new eyes: “The anxiety of having passed pinned everyone against the table. They wriggled as if they were in a trap. Is this what it meant to ‘begin life?’ They tried in that same moment to cease being kids . . . they attempted certain facial gestures in order to take on the appearance of men . . . we all pretty much looked the same, dressed like that, in smocks. They were like me, children of small shopkeepers from the center of the city, who sold manufactured goods in bazars . . . they were all fairly scrawny . . . they strained their eyes, panted like little dogs, in the effort to respond to our elders.”20 Céline’s description captured the moment of transition to the workforce. The government exam offered a firm, official conclusion to children’s time in the classroom. At the same time, this transition also involved a personal transformation. The students had to think

134  An Age to Work

Schoolchildren line up on the Rue d’Hautpol. Although the girls and boys cluster together in this photo, their classes at school were separated by gender. Ville de Paris/​Bibliothèque historique, CPA-​5606

of themselves as wage earners. Although Ferdinand suddenly appreciated during his exam what that meant, the other boys in his description still seem so young, so much more at home in the school room. Their student garb contributed to their behavior, its fluid shape reinforcing their puppy-​like instincts. In Céline’s novel, becoming a worker involved shedding this outer layer, exchanging the smock for a uniform that could help the boy begin to embody the characteristics of a wage earner. Whether the smock or the uniform of a particular trade, working-​class children’s clothing marked their adherence to the lower classes. In Eugène Dabit’s memoir, he described venturing out of his neighborhood into the boulevards frequented by the Parisian bourgeoisie. Dabit knew that he did not belong, and his clothes contributed to his sense of being an outsider. He recalled that “with my cap, my shiny smock, my boots, which clacked against the pavement, I felt ill at ease and it seemed to me like the agents were watching me.”21 From a young age, children of the working classes had a specific dress that separated them from children of the more comfortable classes. The sound of his boots on the sidewalk suggests that Dabit was already wearing heavier shoes. He also possibly gave off clues in terms of the

“The Collaboration of the Crowd”  135 quality of fabric of his clothes or his personal cleanliness that immediately distinguished him from the children in this neighborhood. But clothes did not simply signal a young person’s working-​class identity. Each profession had a clear uniform, and that uniform telegraphed its wearer’s place in working-​class society. In his novel about the La Chapelle neighborhood in the north of Paris where he grew up, the author Albert Simonin included a lengthy passage on the style of dress associated with different working-​class professions. The working classes shunned the full suit, viewing it as a mark of class betrayal. Instead, carpenters and other tradesmen whose work involved heavy labor wore wool costumes consisting of a short jacket and high-​waisted pants. Men in the food industry wore large white aprons and watchmakers wore a long white smock. Simonin claimed that the uniform of a trade was such a point of pride that a worker would wear “on Sunday and holidays, a version, in more pristine condition, of his work clothes.”22 A profession was not simply a way to earn a living, but it also determined how each worker conceived of his or her working-​class identity. A postcard of children and youths standing in the Passage Dumas illustrates how clothes marked a young person’s age, gender, and profession. The postcard is seemingly a naturalistic snapshot of the inhabitants of the working-​class 11th arrondissement. At the same time, the image is carefully arranged, highlighting the differences in age and gender. Shot at a moment when early social scientists were seeking to categorize and make sense of populations, the postcard captures the organization within working-​class neighborhoods.23 The photographer listed at the bottom of the postcard had a shop a short walk from Passage Dumas, raising further questions about his relationship to the subjects.24 Did he collect a group of people and take them to a nearby street to pose? Or did he happen on this group as he was wandering through his neighborhood? The variations in the subjects’ garments highlight the differences within the capacious working-​class identity. Of the ten boys at the center of this photo, the boys closest to the girls are clearly the youngest. One has only knee-​length pants, but already has heavy boots like Dabit. The next two, one just to the left and the other behind, are barely bigger, but wear the standard outfit for working-​class men—​long pants, vest, cap, collar, or tie. The five ranging from the center to the left are all workers and yet their appearance is quite varied. The central figure’s white smock suggests that he likely works in an artisanal trade, perhaps some kind of intricate metal work. The defiant boy with a cigarette sports a lighter-​collared coat that

136  An Age to Work

These boys and girls in the Passage Dumas wear outfits that not only mark their membership in the working classes, but also telegraph their occupations. For instance, the defiant boy at the center wears the dress of a laborer, the boys in the food industry sport aprons, and the telegram delivery boy boasts a more formal uniform. Ville de Paris/​Bibliothèque historique, CPA-​4260

buttons up to his neck, an outfit in which a number of teen-​aged boys appear in postcards. He is perhaps an apprentice laborer. Boys in the food industry—​either in shops or restaurants—​wore aprons and occasionally ties, as with the two toward the left of the grouping. Finally, the boy on the left, slightly apart from the others stands out for the sharpness of his uniform. Probably, he delivers telegrams. This boy’s bright buttons and flat cap sets him apart him from the manual workers. Their edges are smoother and the colors they wear are more muted. The grown men on the far left and the round-​faced schoolboys stand in contrast to the working boys in the center of the photo. For the working boys, their clothes tie them to the adult world of work, but their smooth cheeks and small stature betray their youth. They seem as if they do not quite know what it means to be adult workers. The two boys in the center display almost opposite comportments. The boy with the cigarette stands tall with his hands in his pockets, acting the role of mature worker. At the same time, the boy next to him hunches over, his hand perhaps holding a sweet, in a

“The Collaboration of the Crowd”  137 much more child-​like manner. As much as their clothes indicated that they had progressed beyond the classroom, these boys were still developing the stature and maturity required to participate fully in the workforce. For girls too, their clothing signaled their age and profession. The girls at the right of the central group have not yet entered the formal workforce. Their garments are less fitted and only go to their knees. Even though the older of the two is likely the same age as the boys next to her and she is likely still in school, she is already taking charge of the younger girl. This smaller girl clings to her neighbor with one hand and holds what might be a toy in the other. In her apron and with her hair piled on her head, the woman on the far right has the dress of most working young women. Working women’s dress also had its own variations—​clerks and shop girls were more likely to wear a white blouse that gave them a professional air—​but this woman’s dark dress and apron is representative of the general appearance of female manual workers. Simonin even recounts that people in his neighborhood viewed young women with suspicion if they donned more fashionable dresses. It suggested that they had moved beyond simply selling goods to selling their own bodies.25 Clothes not only marked the stages of maturity of working-​ class girls, but whether they were following the socially acceptable path to maturity. As images and memoirs demonstrate, clothes served as intangible markers in working-​class society of age, gender, and profession. Although a child’s transformation from smock-​clad scholar to worker was an important step in the life course, younger children had roles to play in the family economy before they entered the formal workforce.

The Family Economy The girl tending her young sister on the Passage Dumas suggests a basic reality of working-​class childhood: well before they started earning a wage, children provided labor to support their families. When adults who grew up in the plebian neighborhoods of Paris looked back over their memories of childhood, they recalled the tasks they had to carry out as small children. Through this work, working-​class children developed a sense of obligation to the family economy at an early age. This responsibility then carried over into their lives as workers.26

138  An Age to Work The basic errands of a household often fell to young children who were not occupied with wage-​earning work. In his memoir, Maurice Chevalier described how he helped his mother as a young boy: As soon as I could walk and talk, the first way I helped out at home was to run errands. To go buy muttonchops, or steaks at the butcher on the Rue de Ménilmontant. To pick up a loaf of bread at the baker’s at the corner of the rue des Maronites, almost at our door . . . To buy butter, a quart at a time (we had to be selective about going there), eggs, cheese at the creamery across from our place. I preferred the butcher and the baker, because the butcher always gave me a horse sausage as beer money or rather “sausage money” and the baker gave me a day-​old croissant without charge. As for the lady at the cheese shop, she was very exact with her measures, and I have to admit that she was never moved by the expressions of astonishment and reproach that I made when I recognized that my young charm had little effect on her. Herein lie the origins of my preferences for bread and meat.27

As with any memoirist, Chevalier recounted his childhood in retrospect, from the viewpoint of a much older adult. In his case, the famous performer from the populaire neighborhood of Ménilmontant probably wanted to shape his childhood to be charmingly working class. And yet, his account gives some sense of the geography and experiences of a small boy within this neighborhood. In his account, Chevalier mapped out the extent of the working-​class child’s world. Based on how small some of the unaccompanied children are in the postcards of street scenes, Chevalier’s claim that he began to carry out tasks for his mother as soon as he could walk and talk is probably not far from the truth. The various shops he mentioned are not far from where his family lived, suggesting that he was still too young to take on more ambitious errands. This close proximity and his recollections of the merchants giving him treats highlights how tightly knit the working-​class community was. The neighborhood was defined by a physical space, but also by a set of interactions. In Eliza Ferguson’s study of working-​class family life, she concludes from her research that parents knew the distance and time these sorts of errands should take. If their children took longer than expected, they knew something was wrong.28 The anecdote also demonstrates just how acceptable and normal it was for children to engage in commercial activities in these neighborhoods.

“The Collaboration of the Crowd”  139 Although he was acting on behalf of his mother, Chevalier was the one conducting business with the butcher or baker. He even remarked on which merchants he found to be more just, although he might not have been as aware of these variances in childhood. The fact that the reflection is a pleasant one and not in the least bit resentful reveals a great deal about the role of the child within the working-​class family. Chevalier treated these errands as almost a childhood pastime, but he also recognized that his labor helped his family. By running errands, Chevalier allowed his mother, who worked as a passementière, a person who fabricated trimmings, to spend more time on the work that brought money to their household. His account shows that even the youngest members of the working-​class family had a role in the family economy. Some children participated more directly in the family business by assisting with commercial or industrial work. When the parents in Céline’s novel fell on hard times, they switched first to running a boutique and then sold their wares at the flea market at Clignancourt. The protagonist, Ferdinand, accompanied his father while he made deliveries for the boutique. The boy also went with his mother to the flea market.29 As with children’s informal labor, their more direct contributions to home industry fell outside the jurisdiction of the child labor laws. As Labor Inspector Gustave Maurice recognized, “if you employ your child in your private home, there surveillance has no authority.”30 Girls also ran errands, as demonstrated by the presence of girls with all manner of baskets in the postcards, but they more often assisted their families through their work in the home. The oldest daughter in a family sometimes skipped school to take care of her siblings and to carry out domestic work so that her mother could perform compensated labor. In activist René Michaud’s autobiography, he described his sister’s role in the domestic sphere. His mother spent her days sewing at home and the only obstacle to Michaud’s sister assisting with the washing was the girl’s “delicate health.”31 Once his mother found an occupation outside the home, Michaud’s sister took charge of the two siblings’ preparations for school. One day, Michaud demanded a second towel and she refused, “giving as a reason her age, her feminine prerogatives over all things domestic, she claimed that in the absence of our mother, she had authority within the family for everything concerning the running of the household.”32 Although this anecdote does sound like two siblings bickering, it captures certain norms around girls’ role within the home. In asserting her authority, Michaud’s sister emphasized

140  An Age to Work her femininity. The expectations around girls’ work in the home subverted the usual hierarchy of gender roles. Girls had additional tasks within the domestic sphere and these responsibilities gave them authority within that realm. In contrast, boys’ contributions to the household took them into the space of the street and allowed them to continue their youthful pursuits. The responsibility of assisting with home industry fell particularly hard on girls. Some of the girls who participated in home industry were old enough to participate in wage-​earning work, but many were below the minimum age for employment. Often hidden away in the apartment blocks of the outer neighborhoods, children participating in home industries only became visible when concerned members of the bourgeoisie started investigating the conditions of the sweating and putting out systems at the end of the nineteenth century. When a certain G. Cahen produced an article on women in home industries, he included this portrait among his observations: “a young woman sews at the window. Her daughter, a blond eight-​year-​old, helps quietly—​passing her thread or scissors, folding the fabrics, threading the needle—​with an attentive eye and a serious face.”33 For working-​class families, young girls were an available, free source of labor. These families probably did not draw much distinction between a girl aiding her mother by tending her siblings or by assisting with her work. Were children who ran errands for their families working? The law only identified young people as workers when they left home to work. Similarly, children and their families only regarded young people as workers when they began earning a wage. And yet, a child doing chores for her mother and a youth working in an atelier were both laboring in support of their families. A basic feature of working-​class childhood was the constant obligation to contribute to the family unit, even before a child could receive remuneration for his or her labor. As a result, the entry into the official labor force merely represented a change in how the child helped his or her family, which also explains why families did not consider the moment of entry into the workforce as corresponding to a fixed age, but as more flexible and circumstantial.34

Work Begins Although children carried out tasks for their families from a young age, the moment of entry into the formal workforce was a significant turning point

“The Collaboration of the Crowd”  141 in the life of Parisian children. From this moment onward, work filled the majority of their time, and their particular employment became an important component of their identity. Through the child labor laws, legislators attempted to standardize the moment when young people began working, but the memoirs demonstrate that the demands of the family figured prominently in determining how and when young people entered the workforce. For boys, the process of taking the exam for the certificate of primary studies was a crucial part of the transition from work to school. Passing this exam, taken at the end of primary school, confirmed that a child had achieved a certain level of educational competency during his or her time in school. All nine male authors whose memoirs or semi-​autobiographical accounts I consulted included this moment in their accounts of childhood. In his autobiography, René Michaud recounts what happened after he took, and failed, this exam: I was thirteen, the legal age to work and so I needed to earn a living. It was time that I brought a contribution to the household and certificate or not, that did not change much. At home, our poverty was so dire that the salary of a child, even if fairly modest, made a difference. Moreover, what advantage would this “parchment” bring? My mother did not have it, the majority of people around her did not have it and they all worked. She could not conceive of the importance my master attached to it; her son should become a worker. That is what she expected of me. This salary would improve our family situation.35

Although the passage mostly focuses on Michaud’s mother’s indifference toward this exam, it also shows how some of the Republic’s regulations were shaping working-​class childhood. Michaud started the passage with the declaration, “I was thirteen,” suggesting that this milestone had become widely recognized as the standard moment when work began. Even though some parents tried to place their children in the workforce before the legally mandated age of thirteen, that provision of the law had become increasingly difficult to skirt. Even if Michaud failed the exam, he still completed this ritual that marked the end of his studies. His mother may have regarded the certificate as a useless document, but the boy recognized the value his teacher ascribed to this process. At the same time, Michaud’s recollection illustrates the limits of the Republic’s influence on the way the working classes conceived of childhood.

142  An Age to Work The passage highlights the omnipresence of work in the lives of the popular classes. Perhaps Michaud was caricaturing his mother’s thoughts, but this description does seem indicative of the general working-​class mentality with regard to children’s work. All the people Michaud’s mother knew carried out one action, “work.” Likewise, Michaud’s mother had one expectation for her son in life, that he become a “worker.” Although in some ways it seems self-​evident that members of the laboring classes grew into workers, it is important to recognize its centrality to their own identity and how it hovered over childhood as an inevitable outcome. Once the law no longer required Michaud to attend school, his mother had almost complete control over his work and drew on the mores of the working-​class community to determine his future. Presumably, fathers more often made these decisions for their sons, but Michaud’s case suggests that in the absence of a father figure, a mother could have this authority. The overall message of the passage is that for the working classes, the certificate was more of a formality. It marked that a child had received a certain level of education, but it did not have the same meaning for them as it did for the state. Above all, working-​class families saw young people in terms of their earning potential. Even if the certificate did not determine whether or not a child could work, a young person who succeeded in obtaining a certificate had greater employment opportunities.36 Gaston Guiraud became a delivery boy and donned the hateful uniform because he failed the exam for his certificate of primary studies. His grandmother, who was illiterate, was furious when she found out. His family had hoped to find a place for him in a rail company, but without the certificate, the only job open to the boy was running errands.37 Guiraud was initially unashamed about his lack of intellectual skills. He admitted he had never found school enjoyable. Only when it started to sink in that he had let his family down and had fewer employment options did he start to feel more sheepish about this failure. In most cases, a family’s financial situation determined when a child began work. In Michaud’s case, his family’s ongoing impoverished state meant that he had to work once he was legally able. In many of these autobiographical accounts, the protagonist enjoyed school, but familial need limited any possibility of further study. For instance, the future Communist Party politician Robert Francotte’s teacher wanted him to remain in school and become an instructor. But Francotte’s father was practically crippled from work-​related accidents at the age of thirty-​eight and his stepmother suffered from bad health. Thus, it fell to the boy to provide for his family. His first job was with

“The Collaboration of the Crowd”  143 an embroidery pattern maker. Very quickly, he discovered that he lacked the aptitude for the trade, but stuck with it for ten hours a day, seven days a week, for three years. Even though he felt as though he was wasting his time, he knew that his family needed the money.38 The situation of the family in Henry Poulaille’s semi-​autobiographical novel Les damnés de la terre is even more dire. After his father died and his mother contracted what was eventually diagnosed as tuberculosis, Loulou, the young protagonist, decided to leave school and start earning a living.39 Poulaille and Michaud’s accounts illustrate the precarious nature of the working-​class family. Although social commentators bemoaned the disintegration of the working-​class family structure, the occupational and living conditions for the poor were important factors in breaking up families.40 Even as the mortality rate in Paris declined at the end of the nineteenth century, the rate in working-​class neighborhoods remained higher due to disease and work-​related accidents.41 As a result, parents could not always play the role of the primary breadwinner. Young people could not remain dependent for long and became contributors at a young age. Although the law tried to standardize the conditions of young people’s entry into the workforce, it could not account for the variations in working-​class families and the way family situations often demanded that children grow into full-​blown workers early in life. In addition to capturing the conditions that pushed young people into the workforce, memoirs show how children experienced this transition. Even if they were writing later in life, most of the authors recalled the sentiments they felt as a young person. As a result, they offer hints as to how children understood their role as workers within the family economy. Both Francotte and Poulaille represented their boyhood selves as good students who regretted having to leave school. Given that both authors went on to publish accounts of their lives, the two boys were probably more bookish than the average working-​class child. And yet, both took up employment without protest, because they recognized how much their families need their earnings. This knowledge kept Francotte at a position he despised for three years. Loulou felt a similar responsibility, but Poulaille poked fun at his character’s illusions of maturity. When Loulou received his wages, “he changed the fifty francs in coin to paper so that ‘mother’ saw at once how large a sum it was.” Each time he turned this salary over to his mother, she called him “my little man.”42 Loulou’s choice to change his small wages into paper money is amusingly childish, but it reflects the character’s desire to appear like a grown man

144  An Age to Work who could support his family. Loulou, not his mother, was the one who decided it was time for the boy to leave school, a gesture no doubt motivated by the omnipresent sentiment within working-​class communities that children could best help their families by working. Although his widowed mother initially expressed some regret when he started work, she could not deny that she needed his wages, however meager they were. Even if many working-​ class children were more eager to escape the classroom, they probably shared the two boys’ sense of responsibility to their families. Working-​class children appreciated the importance of their contributions to the family economy. Although many youngsters felt pressure to work, they had some ability to select their profession. René Michaud received his first position after visiting a local placement office but he chose his second. Contrary to his mother’s desires, Michaud stood up to his unjust boss and was fired. The boy then took matters into his own hands and found himself a new job making shoes.43 Certain aspects of this story do sound like standard events in the origin story of a young radical, but his ability to take on a new profession suggests that even fairly young workers had some control over their placement. There were, of course, limits to this freedom. Families repudiated children who took complete control over their time and refused to work. Children only had the ability to determine how they earned their wages, but not whether they contributed to their families. Many of these memoirists’ first jobs were transitory—​both in the sense that they were service jobs at the periphery of formal employment and that they did not last long. Poulaille’s protagonist Loulou started out as an assistant in a pharmacy, a position Poulaille described as “an endless series of tasks than a real profession.”44 Over the course of a fourteen-​hour day, the boy constantly cleaned, carried bottles, and made deliveries. For his position working for the embroidery pattern reader, Francotte had “neither apprenticeship contract nor any kind of formal engagement.”45 Like Loulou, he worked as a general assistant, running errands, cleaning, and helping to reproduce the embroidery patterns his boss drew out. Cancouët, who was only twelve-​and-​a-​half when he started working for a butcher, also made deliveries and cleaned the butcher’s tools.46 He had managed to obtain his certificate, thus allowing him to work before thirteen. That so many of these authors began their careers in positions that mixed qualities of errand boy, servant, and assistant is telling. Families still wanted their children to begin work as soon as they were legally able to, but the opportunities open to young workers were increasingly at the margins of production.

“The Collaboration of the Crowd”  145 These transitory jobs were also the types of positions that the child labor laws did not fully cover, even by the early decades of the twentieth century when many of the memoirists were young. Indeed, the work conditions many of the authors described would not have been acceptable in the types of spaces regulated by labor law. Poulaille’s fourteen-​hour workday was much longer than the law permitted for industrial work. Cancouët recalled working fifteen-​or sixteen-​hour days.47 Loulou’s employer gave the boy Sundays off, but Francotte and Cancouët stressed that they worked full seven-​day weeks in their first jobs.48 From 1874 onward, industrial employers were required to give young workers a day off each week. However, the boys’ employers did follow the regulations around age. Even if child labor laws only applied to industrial labor, education laws covered all children. As a result, it was hard for parents to place boys in the workforce prematurely. But once boys were old enough to work and entered into jobs at the margins of production, official regulations had less force. As a result, working-​class families and employers still, or perhaps increasingly, dictated the conditions of children’s early work. Young workers did not usually last long in these nebulously defined positions. Simonin went through five jobs ranging from salesman at a shirt boutique to apprentice electrician in short succession, a feat that earned him the scorn of his neighborhood.49 His experience was not unusual. Cancouët was let go from his first apprenticeship when his father demanded a higher salary.50 Neither boy started in a skilled position, and they were easily replaceable. As a result, they were sent away at the smallest sign of friction; however, they could equally find similar employment without much effort. Chevalier’s initial employment was in a skilled trade, at the atelier of a metal engraver where his brother had already risen up through the ranks from apprentice to foreman. And yet, he too failed to remain at his first post and then took up a series of trades—​carpenter, electrician, doll maker, printer—​before settling down to work for a tack maker. Because most of the memoirists wound up eschewing the standard working-​class lifestyle to become union leaders or artists, they were perhaps less likely as young workers to settle into a trade. Nonetheless, given that so many of them represented their entry into the workforce as a series of short-​lived jobs, we can assume that many other young workers experienced a similar period of unstable, shifting employment. With the decline of the apprenticeship system, young workers no longer had contracts that bound them to one employer who could ensure that they developed into a skilled worker. Instead, both parents and employers expected young people to be productive. If they did not take to

146  An Age to Work one employment, then there were many posts and many young workers to cycle through them. Girls, too, experienced this pattern of unstable employment, but their work was even more likely to take place in unregulated workspaces. Although there are fewer memoirs from working-​class women who grew up in this period, the café singer Yvette Guilbert did include a section on her childhood in her autobiography. Before she became a performer, Guilbert’s early career resembled the trajectory of many other working-​class girls. She recounted how her mother removed her from school at age twelve so that she could help prepare “pearl ornaments.” As with many other young women, contributing to her family required her to withdraw to the domestic realm where female industry often took place. But as with her male peers, she had to assist with deliveries. In the off-​season, daughter and mother spent the day trudging through the streets of the outer neighborhoods to find boutiques that would sell their wares. They returned home cold and wet and then had to go out again the next day. As she remembered, “We would put on our humble clothes. They had not fully dried, which gave them that kind of special perfume particular to destitution, an acrid perfume that resembles the bad breath of people who must go often without eating.”51 In an attempt to save her daughter from this lifestyle, Guilbert’s mother sent her to work at an atelier as a model. As with her male peers, Guilbert’s family situation determined when she began work. As with the boys, she entered the workforce at the periphery of the formal economy. However, her first positions were in the garment industry, positions that were available to her as a girl. The memoirists’ recollections of childhood demonstrate that working-​ class families still very much depended on the labor of their male and female offspring, but that young people’s early employment was often irregular and short-​lived. More often than not, young workers ran errands rather than contributing directly to production. Even if the Republic’s laws were increasingly setting out a clear definition of the young worker, the demands of the working-​class family continued to shape many aspects of a child’s entry into the workforce. A boy running errands, a girl watching over her sister in the street—​these are young people who rarely appear in the official archives, but who labored to support their families. The child at work, whether for his or her family or for an employer, was a recognizable figure to people on the streets of Paris. They treated these children as customers and clients, but also intervened to make sure that young people did not perform tasks that taxed their strength.

“The Collaboration of the Crowd”  147 In addition to factories and ateliers, the street and home were also children’s workspaces, but they mostly remained outside the jurisdiction of the child labor laws. As a result, working-​class sociability and the pressures of the family economy more often determined not only when children began work in these spaces, but also the conditions of this work. The sources that provide access to these spaces—​such as postcards, photos, and memoirs—​permit us to see how the working-​class community viewed the laboring child. Moreover, these sources also show how young people entered the workforce gradually, often assisting their parents by running errands before earning a wage. Even as republican legislators and reformers tried to impose a more standardized life course on working-​class childhood, these sources demonstrate the continued fluidity between its stages.

7 Interwar Reform Like many small children, Jean-​Vincent Pioli was terrified of the dentist. Accompanied by other women and children from their corner of the Saint-​ Fargeau district, he and his mother would visit the local charity hospital for vaccines and dental care. But on one visit, young Jean-​Vincent fled. He almost made it to the Porte de Bagnolet—​a good ten-​minute scamper from the hospital at the Porte de Montreuil—​before his mother caught up with him and administered a spanking.1 Born in 1930, Pioli was the son of migrants from Corsica. He grew up in a neighborhood in the 20th arrondissement peopled with migrants from all over France, as well as immigrants from Italy and Poland. The political transformations of the interwar period touched the Pioli family. Pioli’s father worked as an elevator operator at the BHV department store. His wages for this job were so small that he could not afford a winter coat, but he claimed he did not need one due to his warm Corsican blood.2 After the election of the Popular Front in 1936, Pioli’s father joined the strikers. Pioli recalls that he and his mother would travel by bus to bring him provisions. Thanks to the Matignon Accords, his father’s salary grew threefold. His mother was able to spruce up their apartment with better quality dishes and curtains for their windows.3 The Popular Front’s efforts to democratize leisure also benefited young Jean-​Vincent. When World War II broke out, he was in a colonie de vacances at the Île d’Oléron off the coast of La Rochelle.4 Pioli’s memoir, Pain sans chocolat (Bread without Chocolate), highlights three important developments that affected working-​class childhood during the interwar period: the expansion of public health services, the rise of organized leisure, and the politicization of childhood. France’s staggering casualties in World War I—​1.4 million dead and another 2.8 million wounded—​ exacerbated concerns about the country’s low birthrate.5 As a result, both public and private organizations collaborated to provide medical services to the poor and educate them about hygiene.6 To promote children’s moral and physical development, the Republic and religious groups organized activities for young people’s free time. Prior to the war, Catholic organizations, often An Age to Work. Miranda Sachs, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197638453.003.0008

Interwar Reform  149 building on Protestant models, had sponsored colonies de vacances, sporting events, and scouting brigades to attract future adherents.7 During the interwar period, the church’s leisure activities gained in popularity.8 Local municipalities too sponsored colonies or organized sporting events.9 At the national level, the Popular Front’s efforts to expand access to leisure included numerous initiatives catering specifically to children and youths.10 Political movements also used leisure activities as a way to attract supporters.11 Children had never been apolitical objects, as demonstrated by the ferocity with which the Republic and the church had fought over educating future citizens. But the interwar period witnessed the proliferation of youth groups created by political parties. The Young Communists, Young Socialists, and Young Fascists all sought to recruit and mobilize youths.12 These same political parties also organized camps for younger children.13 These developments eliminated certain differences between bourgeois and working-​class childhood. During the interwar period, the working-​class life course became more similar to the bourgeois one. The creation of distinct spaces for childhood and youth leisure reinforced the separation between the two life stages. Working-​class children and youths had more access to medical services that could ensure their normal development. They participated in a more domesticated form of leisure. They were more likely to spend their summer months playing capture the flag under adult supervision than roaming the Paris fortifications.14 However, despite these transformations, the experience of working-​class children and youths remained distinct from their bourgeois peers.15 As with the previous generations, working-​class youths overwhelmingly entered the workforce or vocational courses after completing primary school. Although there were more opportunities for social mobility, a significant proportion of the youth population continued to labor.16 The Republic’s continuation of its prewar approach toward working-​class children, as well as its increasing reliance on scientific knowledge, preserved and reinforced these divisions. In the first place, republican elites and working-​class parents continued to see working-​class children as future workers. The programs that the Republic had set in place prior to the war—​such as labor laws, vocational training programs, and the juvenile justice system—​continued to direct working-​class youths toward productive labor. When republican legislators and reformers expanded and developed these policies, their goals remained similar to their prewar predecessors. Only during the brief period of the Popular Front in the late 1930s did the

150  An Age to Work government take concrete steps to universalize secondary education and leisure. The Popular Front’s efforts contrast with the official approach to working-​class childhood throughout most of the interwar period. At the same time, the interwar period witnessed a growth in the number of agencies and individuals working on behalf of working-​class children and youths. The (mainly bourgeois) individuals working for these organizations relied more heavily on medical or scientific knowledge than the prewar functionaries who had dealt with working-​class children. In many ways, they used this knowledge to help promote working-​class children’s development and to ensure that these youngsters experienced a certain version of childhood. But they also used this knowledge to ensure that working-​ class children and youths became good workers. Local vocational guidance centers helped children to find their future professions while social workers treated young delinquents by finding vocational placements. These agencies complemented and supported the Republic’s programs for working-​class children and youths. As a result, republican policy with regard to young people’s work, training, and welfare during the interwar period maintained the divisions separating working-​class children from that of their bourgeois peers.

Young Workers during War Although the Republic’s approach to working-​class childhood was similar before and after World War I, the war itself was a moment of rupture. The story of Paul Saladin hints at the complexities of regulating childhood during a total war. During World War I, Paul fled his home in the Orne with his four siblings and his mother to settle in the Paris suburbs. Madame Saladin was eager to find employment for her son and placed him in a glass factory in St. Denis. She claimed that he was thirteen and thus old enough to work, but he had no documentation to prove it. In fact, the glass factory she chose had a history of hiring underaged workers. In 1915, the Ministry of Labor asked the local labor inspectors to investigate.17 Divisional inspector Lavoisier spoke with both mother and son. Paul told the inspector that he was not yet thirteen, while his mother claimed he was almost fourteen.18 As Paul Saladin’s story demonstrates, the French public treated age and age-​based regulations as more flexible during World War I. In the four decades after the passage of the Republic’s first child labor law, the age barrier dividing work and school

Interwar Reform  151 had become fixed. The disorders of total war, particularly occupation and mass mobilization, challenged the state’s ability to enforce this barrier. Total war required mass contributions from civilian populations. Among those called to labor were school children, whose age had previously protected them from the demands of the workforce. Wartime pedagogy reminded children that they too had an obligation to serve their country.19 Work bled into school hours, particularly during the first fall of the war. Teachers turned their classrooms into workshops, as their students knitted and sewed to clothe soldiers.20 Prior to the war, schools had offered manual instruction or classes in the domestic arts, but these courses had focused on education rather than production. During the war, the state took advantage of the concentration of children in classrooms to mobilize their labor for wartime production. Wartime production also drew many children from the classroom. The rules mandating attendance relaxed, especially in rural areas. Schoolteachers reported a decline in attendance as children as young as nine or ten neglected their schoolwork to help their families in the fields.21 By 1921, seventy percent of French men were employed, the highest proportion during the entire twentieth century.22 The imperative to work fell particularly hard on girls.23 French officials prior to the war had overlooked girls’ truancy to allow them to attend to domestic responsibilities. In the context of the war, these little mothers’ responsibilities grew to include soldiers at the front. In 1916, the musicologist Jules Combarieu wrote a volume on the role of girls during the ongoing conflict. He dedicated the first chapter to the education of girls, but made clear from the onset, “The education of young girls . . . has little value when the Homeland is in danger.” He then devoted the remainder of the volume to laying out the various ways girls could support the war effort during their school or leisure time. They could tend to refugees or to the wounded. In quiet moments, they could knit for soldiers.24 The skills girls learned as they trained for motherhood were also skills they could use to contribute to wartime production. In her correspondence with various family members, Françoise Marette, the future psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto, often mentioned her craft projects, including a seemingly endless amount of cache-​nez she was knitting both for charities and for male relatives at the front.25 Elisabeth Lacoin, the future friend of Simone de Beauvoir, took seriously her responsibility to send packets to her adopted soldier at the front.26 Both these two bourgeois schoolgirls had absorbed the message that their role in the war was to support and outfit soldiers.

152  An Age to Work While the prewar laws on education and child labor remained in effect, even the Ministry of Labor was willing to let work seep into children’s lives. In December 1919, after the war had concluded, the Minister of Public Instruction wrote to the Minister of Labor to encourage him to enforce the 1892 labor law. He noted that the “protective laws had not been strictly applied during the war” in ateliers and factories, increasing the ranks of the illiterate.27 The Ministry of Labor had contributed to this situation by letting young people begin working prematurely during the war. In December 1917, the Minister of Labor wrote to the labor inspectors to encourage them to “tolerate” the employment of twelve-​year-​olds who had not yet completed their studies. The Minister of Education’s letter from 1919 suggests that inspectors applied this toleration widely. But the Ministry of Labor did not entirely disregard the existing statutes. When the firm of Grouvelle & Arquembourg, which made ventilation and heating equipment, petitioned in 1917 to be allowed to train apprentices who were younger than thirteen, the ministry sent a firm denial.28 Likewise, while some local Chambers of Commerce had petitioned to “oblige children to work” at twelve, the Minister of Public Instruction insisted that the 1882 education law remain in effect.29 Unlike the British, who allowed teachers to grant student exemptions from school during the war, the French did not issue formal rulings that countered their own laws.30 The two ministries were willing to let individuals at the local level bend the rules regulating childhood. However, they continued to support the existing laws, perhaps to broadcast that the version of childhood outlined in these laws was not debatable. Even if officials had wanted to enforce age-​ based statutes, the circumstances of war removed many of the ways of verifying age. The power to measure age shifted away from the state bureaucracy to individuals. In many belligerent countries, including France, older adolescents lied about their ages to enter the army.31 The German occupation of northern and eastern France left many young people without the birth certificate necessary to prove that they were old enough to enter the workforce. In 1918, the Minister of Labor stipulated that in the absence of documentation, the parents of “refugee or repatriated” children should sign a written declaration of their offspring’s date of birth. To prevent parents, such as Madame Saladin, from manipulating this system, the minister required young workers to undergo a medical examination.32 The state was not ready to give parents total control over when their offspring began working. In their correspondence, the ministers asserted that their departments and the laws that they enforced

Interwar Reform  153 should remain the ultimate authority on defining childhood. Nonetheless, the fluidity around childhood during the war shows that the category was not as fixed as the laws made it seem. But the war had long-​term implications for the Republic’s treatment of children. At the same time that the events of the war forced children into more mature roles, wartime propaganda put children’s bodies on display in a way that emphasized their youth or vulnerability.33 Postcards juxtaposed innocent-​looking children next to zeppelins or posed round-​cheeked boys in military uniforms.34 Such propaganda set up the next generation as “the ultimate justification of the war.”35 Wartime propaganda designated young children as a specific category within the French population. It is perhaps not surprising then that the divide between childhood and adolescence became more fixed during the interwar period. Additionally, France’s high wartime causalities, combined with the declining birthrate, brought renewed interest in the health and hygiene of France’s youngest citizens.36 The war also transformed Parisian industry, which would affect even the youngest members of the workforce.

Regulating Work In 1923, a Madame Beaumont wrote to the president of the Republic to ask for assistance. After falling from a chair, she was bedridden. She asked that her twelve-​year-​old son be allowed to work.37 In that Madame Beaumont wrote directly to the president, her letter is exceptional. However, her request to place her son prematurely in the workforce resembles many of the petitions from parents in the prewar period. As with the prewar period, parents and republican officials expected working-​class children to grow into productive workers. Despite the changing composition of Parisian industry, and in spite of the changes to child labor law, most working-​class youths continued to enter into manual trades once they legally could. During and after World War I, the Parisian workforce shifted away from small-​scale craft workshops to heavy industry.38 During the war, the metal and chemical industries in France ballooned. The workforce in metallurgy alone grew by one hundred percent.39 The majority of young workers in prewar Paris had labored in small ateliers. In 1906, only forty-​one percent of workers (both children and adults) labored in factories with one hundred or more workers. By 1921, fifty-​seven percent did. In contrast, thirty-​two

154  An Age to Work percent were in workshops with fewer than ten workers in 1906, whereas only twenty-​two percent were in those workshops after the war.40 Within the Paris region, many of the largest factories were in the suburbs, such as the Renault factory in Boulogne-​Billancourt.41 Interwar immigration also transformed the workforce. By 1930, fifteen percent of the workforce was born outside of France.42 Along with these new industries came new forms of production. Carmakers introduced Fordism, assembly line production, in their factories during the war.43 Factory owners began to practice scientific management or Taylorism.44 Despite the transformation of the labor force, the majority of young people still entered the workforce upon completion of primary school. Even by 1936, 1.82 million people under the age of twenty were participating in the workforce. In 1939, only 204,000 attended secondary school.45 Secondary school students remained a privileged minority. Table 7.1 shows the number of young workers in the workplaces visited by labor inspectors in 1923 and 1934. These numbers demonstrate that young people remained a small, but significant component of the workforce. These numbers also show that the proportion of youths in the workforce was lower in the 1930s than in the 1920s. The Great Depression undoubtedly contributed to this decline, as the unemployment rates for young people who had just completed school or apprenticeships were high.46 Increased mechanization would have also eliminated jobs for young people. Some young workers had likely transitioned to the informal economy and thus were not Table 7.1  Workers under 18 as a proportion of the industrial and commercial workforces Year

Total workers

Workers under 18

% workers under 18

1923 Nationally Paris region

2,843,322 724,314

353,184 62,157

12.4 8.6

1934 Nationally Paris region

2,781,796 597,127

202,462 25,852

7.3 4.3

Source: Ministère du travail, de l’hygiène, de l’assistance et de la prévoyance sociales, Statistique Générale de la France: Annuaire statistique, v. 41, 1925 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1926), 120; Direction de la statistique générale de la documentation, Annuaire statistique, v. 52-​1936 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1937), 94.

Interwar Reform  155 included in the inspectors’ numbers. The decrease in the birthrate during and after the war also contributed to this decline. Compared to the early 1920s, young people represented a smaller proportion of the population in the early 1930s. In 1923, any youths in the workforce had been born prior to the war, but they were too young to have fought. The youths in the workforce in 1934 had been born during or immediately after the war. In 1931, there were one million more people living in France who had been born in 1906–​1910 than in 1916–​1920.47 In Paris, young workers labored in new industries as well as in more traditional ones. In his memoir, Albert Simonin notes that his two older brothers broke with tradition and did not make artificial flowers alongside their father. Instead, they chose “mechanics, which was booming, and electricity, which was rich in promise.”48 When Albert was old enough to work, he tried a number of trades, one of which was electrical work.49 Accident reports attest to the presence of young people in heavy industry. For instance, fourteen-​ year-​old François Scesa was working at the Renault car factory in 1935 when a machine caught him up and mortally wounded him.50 But many young workers continued to labor in Paris’ craft industries. Such was the case with fourteen-​year-​old Armand Dacier, who bruised his leg breaking down planks in a furniture workshop. He was working in the Faubourg Saint Antoine, the longtime center of the furniture trade.51 Youngsters also labored in less visible spaces, such as apartments. In 1924, the union of confectionary workers wrote to the Minister of Labor to report on the unsanitary conditions in which the packaging of candies took place. Many workers packaged the candies at home. The letter conjured up a tableau of a child “5, 7, 10 years, one doesn’t know.” Wasted by fever, he wrapped bonbons while stealing occasional licks to quench his hunger.52 The statistics do not capture this informal or illegal labor of younger children, but it undoubtedly continued. In its first decades, the Republic had only regulated the labor of women and children, but in the interwar period, it placed more restrictions on the labor of adult males. In 1919, the Republic limited the workweek to forty-​ eight hours for all workers in both industrial and commercial trades.53 This law removed most of the legal particularities separating women and children’s work from men’s work. Even so, some employers attempted to skirt these restrictions.54 Moreover, women and children’s work remained more heavily regulated. For instance, the Ministry of Labor continued to bar them from spaces that might expose them to physical or moral harm.55

156  An Age to Work The question of whether to raise the age of admission to the workforce from thirteen to fourteen was one of the central issues in this period related to child labor. Postwar international organizations championed this reform, but in the 1920s, French national concerns trumped international law. Many of the international organizations that came into being during or in the wake of World War I were concerned with the wellbeing of children.56 In 1919, the International Bureau of Labor held its first meeting in Washington, DC. The resulting labor covenant established the minimum age of entry into the workforce at fourteen.57 Although the French ratified this convention in 1921, they did not raise the age of entry until 1936. As the Minister of Labor explained in 1922, the end of mandatory schooling in France remained thirteen. Unless the Chamber of Deputies could simultaneously change this law, “one risks . . . exposing [children under fourteen] to idleness, if not vagabondage.” The legislature debated raising both the school-​leaving age and the minimum age to enter the workforce, but these projects failed.58 Older concerns about the lawless potential of working-​class youths won out over newer ideas about when the first stage of childhood ended. A lingering sense of international competition also stalled this reform. In a letter from 1920, the syndicate for employers in the textile industry argued that raising the age of admission would put France at a disadvantage. While England had her empire, Italy a large population, and Japan an ample supply of workers, France had suffered “cruel losses” during the war. Changing the age of admission would deprive France of additional workers. Here, the syndicate argued that France’s particular situation should determine the laws regulating childhood. It did not invoke the declining birthrate, but the concerns about the comparative health of France’s workforce certainly determined how the Republic approached childhood.59 The syndicate’s omission of France’s own colonial empire is striking. It suggests that these employers did not see France’s colonial subjects as part of its industrial workforce. It was only in 1936 that Jean Zay, the education minister during the Popular Front, succeeded in raising both the age of compulsory education and of work entry to fourteen. As a result of the Depression, the International Bureau of Labor renewed its calls for raising the age of admission and for pairing this change with educational reform.60 In France, the law of August 9, 1936 finally implemented these changes.61 This law was an attempt to mitigate youth unemployment.62 But the law also represented a shift in the borders around adolescence. It eliminated any inconsistencies between the labor and school systems that had existed since the 1882 education law, creating

Interwar Reform  157 a more uniform barrier between school and work. These reforms meant that working-​class children spent more time in the school system and did not enter the workforce until they were well into puberty. Given the shrinking population, these laws would have also been important for promoting the health and development of the remaining juvenile population. These reforms were part of Zay’s larger project to expand education to the working classes. Not everyone embraced this extension of childhood. Madame Thyerry, a divorced mother who lived in the shadow of Sacré Coeur, wrote to the minister in 1937 to ask that her sons who would soon be twelve and thirteen be allowed to work. As she put it, “I thought that at 13 they could work.” She had found that employers would not hire her children before they turned fourteen.63 Her letter echoes many of the themes from parents’ prewar petitions. As a working-​class parent, she needed her children’s wages. This new law, in changing the age barrier for entry into the workforce, clashed with her sense of when childhood should begin and end. She did not have access to the lengthy discussions about why staying out of the workforce was better for children. Instead, the new law must have seemed arbitrary and likely deviated from her own experience of entering the workforce. It limited her authority over her children and their ability to contribute to the family economy. But it was not simply parents who tried to make sense of the new legislation. Even André Cointreau, a deputy and alcohol magnate, wrote to the Ministry of Labor for clarification about the law.64 While legislators selected fourteen as an appropriate age for young people to begin work, this did not necessarily correspond to how the general population envisioned childhood. As in the prewar period, girls’ work was more likely to fall outside these restrictions or escape the inspectors’ notice. Following an international conference on trafficking in 1938, the Minister of Public Health wrote to the Minister of Labor for assistance in dealing with the problem of “the prostitution of underaged servants.” According to the minister, around one-​half of the five hundred young prostitutes in a women’s prison in the Paris region were young servants who had arrived in Paris from the countryside and were then “contaminated.”65 The Minister of Labor responded that his department did not regulate private homes and that the Minister of Public Health should rely on the police and welfare services.66 Similarly, when Madame Thibault, a widow with a bar in the suburb of Saint-​Denis wrote to inquire if she could hire a sixteen-​year-​old girl as a server, the Minister’s representative responded that it was beyond the ministry’s jurisdiction. While the police banned girls under eighteen from working in bars, the official made clear

158  An Age to Work that his department did not enforce this law.67 In both instances, the Ministry of Labor emphasized that there were limits on its ability to regulate work. Even in spaces where labor law did apply, the conditions for young women were not always ideal. A 1936 survey published by the Jeunesse ouvrière catholique feminine (JOCF), the Catholic organization for young, working women, found that many young women were subject to overwork and unhygienic work conditions. The author of the survey claimed that labor laws were unable to stop employers from exploiting their young female workers.68 Up through the Republic’s last decade, blind spots remained in the labor laws when it came to girls’ work. Nonetheless, they and their male peers continued to participate in the labor force throughout the interwar period.

Worker Training On July 25, 1919, the Chamber of Deputies passed a law intended to institute nationwide technical instruction. The law, known as the Astier Law after its sponsor Placide Astier, mandated that all young workers in commerce and industry had to attend supplemental training courses sometime between the end of primary school and their eighteenth birthday.69 Although the Astier Law had mixed results, it is characteristic of the Republic’s approach to vocational training during the interwar period. As with the Astier Law, interwar legislators and local officials designed vocational programs to reach a wide population. Rather than prioritizing programs that substituted for traditional apprenticeships, they designed shorter programs to streamline young workers’ entry into the workforce. These programs maintained the separation between the bourgeois pathway into secondary school and the working-​ class pathway into the labor force. With the passage of the Astier Law, the Chamber of Deputies aimed to set uniform standards on worker training, a goal that had gained greater significance after the devastation of World War I. In the first place, the law decreed that all young workers had to pass through some form of vocational instruction. The law also introduced the certificate of professional aptitude (CPA), which a young worker received after taking an exam at the end of his or her period of training.70 Both projects had been in the works for some time. Astier first proposed a version of the law in 1905.71 The CPA, too, was an updated version of the professional certificate that dated from 1911.72

Interwar Reform  159 However, the fact that the Astier Law passed in the wake of World War I is telling. In the aftermath of the war, the country needed skilled workers to rebuild.73 As the debates about raising the age of entry into the workforce illustrate, the combination of wartime casualties and the declining birthrate left politicians concerned about the vitality of the French workforce. The classes proposed in the Astier Law would ensure that the next generation of workers possessed the skills to be productive workers. The Astier Law was also a key step in codifying and standardizing working-​class adolescence. Even though the child labor laws and education laws set an age for when this intermediate stage of life began and ended, a great deal of variation remained in how young workers experienced these years. The Astier Law outlined a set of universal experiences and milestones for working-​class youths.74 In 1917, when an earlier version of the law came before the Chamber of Deputies, its title was “project of a law on the education of adolescents.” The proposal reminded deputies that “the education of adolescents should . . . achieve a three-​pronged goal: it should form good workers, good soldiers, and good citizens.”75 This statement implies that the ideal adult not only participated in politics, but also worked and fought for the Republic. However, only boys could grow up to be voters and soldiers. As with the seemingly gender-​neutral “child,” “adolescents” were assumed to be masculine unless otherwise specified. In practice, the Astier Law was not that effective. Only a portion of the youth population ever attended courses or took the CPA. The number of students who received the CPA grew from five thousand in 1927 to twenty-​ seven thousand in 1939, but only sixty percent of students who took the exam in 1939 passed.76 Because the CPAs also had to serve students coming out of formal vocational schools, the exam was too difficult for students who had only attended training classes.77 Moreover, the various CPAs were very specialized. The departmental inspector of technical instruction noted in 1936 that there were around 150 different CPAs within Paris. He complained that this specialization boxed young workers into a particular trade prematurely.78 As for the classes, the 1919 law did not allocate funding for them and left this responsibility to localities. The Republic introduced an apprenticeship tax in 1925, which applied to any employer who was not training young workers. However, this revenue stream funded new vocational schools rather than training classes.79 Moreover, some employers continued to train their own workers. The Renault car factory created an apprenticeship school in 1919 and Citroën established training workshops at its Javel factory in 1927.80

160  An Age to Work Most adolescents received some kind of training, but variations remained in how and when this training occurred. The number of public vocational schools grew, but they catered to an elite group of workers. In 1931, six thousand students attended the national professional schools (ENP) nationally and thirty-​seven thousand attended commercial and industrial schools (EPCI). But they trained supervisors and foremen rather than workers.81 In more working-​class neighborhoods, only a small portion of youths attended these schools. In 1937, the office in the 11th arrondissement that provided vocational guidance to youths noted that it was trying to “direct as many children as possible towards professional schools,” but there were not enough places for all the students who wanted to attend. Moreover, potential students had to take an exam to enter. This exam was “difficult” and “irredeemably bars the path to less intellectually-​ gifted students.”82 In 1935 when the Departmental Office for Job Placements surveyed 3,865 youths between the ages of thirteen and twenty living in the outer arrondissements, it found that forty-​five percent were still in school, while another twenty-​four percent were in apprenticeships. Of the forty-​five percent in school, only fifty-​four were attending professional schools. The remaining 1,685 were receiving “general education.”83 Although vocational schools offered a very structured form of adolescence, their education was not accessible to most working-​class youths. At a local level, vocational guidance centers, which educated young workers about potential careers and provided individual recommendations, served more youths. These offices sprang up across France in the 1920s. The government viewed them as a way to organize the labor market more efficiently.84 Both the local patronage committees in the 4th and 11th arrondissements opened offices for vocational guidance in 1933. Table 7.2 shows the work of these centers in a given year. According to the centers’ own records, a significant number of youths in each of these neighborhoods made use of their services. Beyond the consultations, the centers’ influence was limited. The table shows that the services did not place many of their clients into jobs. Moreover, many of the youngsters disagreed with the recommendation they received. Notably, of the young people continuing their education, all the youths in the 4th arrondissement and almost one-​half of the youths in the 11th arrondissement opted for technical education. To provide a recommendation, the center conducted a thorough examination of a young person’s desires and aptitudes. The office in the 4th arrondissement solicited input from the young person, his family, his instructor,

Interwar Reform  161 Table 7.2  Vocational guidance centers Arrondissement Children Consultations Children who Disagreed Placed Continuing completing agreed with by their their studies placement office education 4th (38–​39)

317

171

159

22

72

99

11th (36–​37)

~975

547

386

161

57

115

Source: AN, F 17 17936, Application du Décret du 26 Septembre 1922. Offices d’orientation professionnelle sollicitant une subvention de l’état. Département de la Seine. Ville de Paris, 4e arrondissement. March 2, 1939; AN, F 17 17936, Application du Décret du 26 Septembre 1922. Office d’Orientation Professionnelle sollicitant une subvention de l’état. Comité de Patronage des Apprentis et Office d’Orientation professionnelle du XIe Arr. February 16, 1938.

and from a medical examiner. For each client, the office filled out a comprehensive form when providing a consultation. The form included questions about the young person’s preferred vocation and whether his parents agreed with this preference. That the center recorded a child’s preference suggests that these youngsters did have some input. But the office also relied on more scientific measurements. The form included a space for the young person’s instructor to evaluate his intellectual aptitude and character. In addition to rating the child’s capabilities at reading, writing, and math on a scale of zero to ten, the instructor had to evaluate whether “the child works quickly” and whether the child had any “salient failings.” The medical examiner not only measured the child’s height and weight, but also had the option to check off whether the child should avoid professions that required “physical force, an intellectual effort, good sight, good hearing,” standing for long periods, or “dry hands.”85 In the 4th arrondissement, the local health center provided the medical evaluation.86 (The office in the 11th arrondissement relied on the medical inspector at the school.87) This cooperation between the two offices illustrates the growth of social services at the local level during the interwar period. The vocational guidance consultations highlight local officials’ new reliance on statistics and medicine as a way of managing populations. They also show how officials used these measures to ensure that working-​class youths entered the workforce. World War I and the interwar period gave rise to the cataloging of populations not simply based on gender, age, or race, but also on measurements of intelligence or aptitude.88 In a report, the Assistant Director of Technical Instruction described professional orientation as a way to submit the economy to “rational methods.”89 The vocational guidance

162  An Age to Work centers used these methods in an attempt to quantify a child’s intelligence and health. They relied on the medical examiners to ascertain if children were capable of entering specific trades. They used numeric measures to evaluate characteristics such as intelligence. They relied on psychology to organize the workforce.90 And yet, for all this reliance on new techniques, the desired outcome was the same. As with the Catholic patronages in the 1840s, the vocational guidance centers were trying to ensure that working-​class youths entered into productive labor. In addition to these public options, the Parisian Chamber of Commerce developed atelier-​ schools, which offered a one-​ year pre-​ apprenticeship program. The atelier-​schools resembled the vocational guidance centers in that the Chamber of Commerce designed them to serve a broad population and to facilitate young workers’ entry into skilled professions. Between 1922 and 1928, the Chamber of Commerce opened twelve atelier-​schools.91 They collectively served around two thousand students a year, totaling almost forty thousand youths during their two decades of operation.92 The atelier-​schools acted as a “bridge” between school and work, in the words of their historians.93 They helped future workers choose a profession and then provided the basic training in that profession. Upon arrival, students underwent a physical and psychological exam. Then young men and women tried out a series of trades before choosing “a profession that best suits their tastes and their aptitudes.”94 The bulk of instruction in atelier-​schools was manual rather than academic. This instruction occupied six to seven hours out of the eight-​hour day.95 While most of the atelier-​schools trained workers for traditional manual trades, the Chamber of Commerce also operated a boys’ school for the food industry, a girls’ school for the paper and leather trades, and separate schools for salesmen and saleswomen.96 Although the schools operated in the name of assisting young workers with the transition from school to work, the Chamber of Commerce also saw the schools as a bulwark against radical politics. Without this training, the founder of the first atelier-​school warned, young workers would go work in factories and “almost all factory workers are communists.”97 In the prewar period, reformers designed vocational training programs to keep workers away from revolution and crime. In the interwar period, elites looked to projects like the atelier-​schools or vocational guidance centers as a way of ensuring that workers did not become too militant. As with so many of these projects, the atelier-​schools operated to improve young

Interwar Reform  163 workers’ prospects within the workforce, but they did not open up a path beyond manual work. Although girls and women could participate in more professions in the interwar period, worker training remained gender specific.98 In 1936, the vocational guidance office in the 4th arrondissement published a pamphlet specifically for “young girls.” The pamphlet recognized that sewing, fashion, lingerie, and ironing remained “the classic female trades,” but that many others were now permissible. However, the new trades it cited were still in skilled and ornamental trades, such as leather crafts, hairdressing, or the production of wallpaper. It cautioned, too, against young women entering into unskilled or low-​skilled trades, as they were not lucrative in the long term.99 The vocational guidance office seemed determined to keep girls in trades it considered appropriate for women. The Chamber of Commerce also tried to keep girls physically separate from boys. When it proposed creating a school for the packaging and leather trades where girls and boys might train in the same ateliers, it suggested that they be kept apart at all other times via separate entrances and eating spaces. Although integrated workspaces might prepare them for “the collaboration that they will encounter later in ateliers,” the Chamber of Commerce still felt the need to take the necessary precautions to “calm” parents.100 Many of the divisions separating male and female work eased during and after World War I, but the vocational guidance offices and the Chamber of Commerce attempted to preserve a certain version of working-​class femininity. In the final years of the interwar period, Jean Zay and the Popular Front tried to create a more uniform system for vocational training and integrate it into the education system. Since the early 1920s, politicians on the left had advocated for one, comprehensive education system known as the école unique. Most of the proposals failed. The educators in the academic and technical tracks took pride in their particular expertise and administrators preferred the separation.101 The growth of the Astier courses and the vocational guidance offices only solidified technical education as its own, separate system.102 In 1937, Zay laid out his plan for the école unique. While this system included three separate secondary tracks for classical, modern, and technical education, it would have allowed youths to enter any of the three tracks after completing primary school. It also proposed eliminating specialized primary schools for future lycéens (students in classical high schools).103 This project had limited success. Although the Popular Front succeeded in

164  An Age to Work standardizing primary education, technical education remained separate from the other secondary education tracks.104 The Popular Front did institute clear, uniform rules around worker training. A set of laws and decrees from 1937 and 1938 mandated that youths working as artisans, as well as those in commerce or industry, had to undergo a vocational guidance consultation complete with a medical or psychological exam. These decrees also mandated professional education for all young workers. Even apprentices training under an artisan had to attend the courses created by the Astier Law.105 As a result, by the outbreak of World War II, adolescent workers had a range of classes, vocational guidance centers, and training programs at their disposal to help them transition from school into the workforce.106 While these programs were certainly helpful to young workers, their organizers also hoped that such programs would lead young workers toward productive, non-​disruptive futures.

Medicine and Delinquency In a report to the Minister of Health, Dr. Georges Heuyer, one of the pioneers in pediatric neuropsychiatry, claimed that around eighty percent of “difficult or vagabonding youths display mental anomalies . . . the role of the milieu combined with the force of heredity produces these mental anomalies and particularly, the character flaws that lead to vagabondage and delinquency.”107 Like Dr. Heuyer, many interwar experts and functionaries characterized juvenile delinquency as a medical problem. According to this line of logic, delinquency was a pathology, a product of the working-​ class milieu. As a result, the Republic increasingly relied on social workers and doctors to treat young delinquents. And yet, just as prewar experts had viewed young delinquents with suspicion, interwar experts and social workers still treated young delinquents as potentially dangerous. Even if the justice system did not charge many youths, it continued to institutionalize a significant number. Although experts and functionaries relied on these new theories to explain juvenile delinquency, they continued to rely on work and worker training as a form of treatment. In the interwar period, all cases involving delinquent and vulnerable children passed before the judges of the Tribunal for Children and Adolescents (TCA). In 1912, legislators had mandated the creation of this separate court

Interwar Reform  165 to try juvenile delinquents.108 This court also gained the responsibility for deciding the fate of morally abandoned children.109 For each case, the presiding judge had to order an investigation into “the material and moral state” of the accused and their family.110 Prior to the war, the police were often responsible for investigating these young people. During the interwar period, a number of auxiliary agencies, including the Social Service for Children in Moral Danger (SSCMD), developed to carry out comprehensive social and medical examinations of both delinquent and vulnerable children. Founded in 1923, the Social Service for Children in Moral Danger played a crucial role in the identification and treatment of vulnerable children. By the 1931, its seventeen female social workers carried out 1,893 investigations a year. They worked primarily with families, carrying out surveys of children whose parents had requested their incarceration or whose parents were at risk of losing their parental rights. They also provided surveillance and guidance to youths that the tribunal’s judges had returned to their families under court-​ordered probation.111 The social workers not only visited children’s homes, but also collected medical and psychological reports on the children and their families.112 As with the vocational guidance centers, the Service relied on medicine and social science to provide recommendations on children’s fates. Indeed, one of their social workers specialized in providing vocational guidance.113 As the city of Paris shifted toward treating juvenile delinquency as a medical condition, the Service played a key role in identifying and treating at-​risk youth.114 During this period, the Republic increasingly decriminalized conduct associated with juvenile delinquency. In 1931, the yearly report for the TCA stated that its goal, “was not to ‘suppress’ . . . but rather to . . . aid in the recovery, to raise up the delinquent, to encourage by pardon and assistance towards the path of duty.”115 In 1935, the Republic passed a law that decriminalized the vagabondage of minors. Prior to World War I, vagabondage was one of the most frequent crimes for which police apprehended minors. Even though these minors no longer had criminal records, the judges of the TCA could still institutionalize them.116 Parents still had the right of “parental correction,” the right to request institutionalization for a delinquent child. But the number of young people the tribunal incarcerated under this right declined.117 A law in 1935 stripped this right of any teeth, as judges could henceforth only place these children in reformatories or charitable institutions.118

166  An Age to Work Even if the legal system moved away from charging young people for criminal behavior, the judges of the TCA still placed the majority of them under public or private surveillance. The treatment of young people who came before the TCA in 1933 is emblematic of this pattern. In this year, only sixty-​ one children younger than thirteen came before the tribunal. The judges did not charge any of them. They sent the majority back to their parents’ care or to private charities. Table 7.3 shows the outcomes for youths between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. Overwhelmingly, the judges deemed that these youths were not acting with discernment, that they did not have the mature mental capacity to understand their actions. But the judges then placed the majority of those acting without discernment in public or private institutions. In some of these institutions, the conditions could be quite severe. In the 1930s, the penal colonies came under attack as reformers published vivid reports of their miserable conditions. In 1937, a nineteen-​year-​old boy died from the harsh regime at the colony of Eysses in southwestern France, provoking another wave of public outrage.119 Even for youths who the judges allowed to return to their families, the overwhelming majority—​385 out of 464—​remained under probation.120 Once a youth came before the tribunal, the state maintained a fair amount of oversight over his or her life. While new ideas about childhood influenced the legal treatment of juvenile delinquents, elite suspicions of the laboring classes continued to shape the justice system’s approach to young offenders. Table 7.3  Outcomes for adolescents (ages 13–​18) before the TCA in 1933 Sentencing Allowed to return home Sent to the Public Assistance Sent to charitable institutions Sent to reform schools Sent to penal colonies Sent to prison Total Total 13–​18

Acting without discernment

Acting with discernment

Acquitted

464 10

48 n/​a

37 n/​a

333

n/​a

n/​a

10 127 n/​a 944 1,072

n/​a 43 43 91

n/​a n/​a n/​a 37

Source: APP, DA 636, Le substitut du tribunal pour enfants et adolescents à Monsieur le Procureur Général à Paris, March 22, 1934, 3.

Interwar Reform  167 For legal and medical professionals, delinquency was a pathology, a result of the dissolute habits of working-​class families. By the interwar period, the fields of pediatric medicine and psychology had become more established. The experts in these fields wielded influence in discussions about delinquency and began to play a larger role in the treatment of vulnerable children.121 The publications of the SSCMD frequently attributed juvenile delinquency to the existence of syphilis, tuberculosis, and alcoholism within a child’s family.122 Its social workers condemned mass culture, such as films and romance novels.123 Dr. Heuyer implied that there was a connection between mental development and delinquency. Heuyer, as with many interwar medical experts, attributed this type of deficiency to both hereditary and environmental factors.124 Early Third Republic criminologists had expressed anxiety about the working-​class milieu, but they were less likely to characterize delinquency as a developmental abnormality. In contrast, interwar experts saw the working-​class milieu as producing physical and psychological abnormalities. These, in turn, drove youngsters to engage in delinquent behavior. Not only did doctors play a more prominent role in defining juvenile delinquency, but they also played an increasingly large role in the treatment of these youngsters.125 Starting in 1927, the TCA required all boys held at the children’s prison of Petite Roquette to undergo a medical and psychological exam. In 1929, it extended this obligation to young people of both sexes and to children at an observation center in Fresnes, just to the south of Paris.126 The SSCMD included a medical inspection as part of its reports.127 In 1929, it opened an observation center outside of Paris to provide temporary housing and more comprehensive reporting on the most troubled youths.128 Medicine not only helped to classify delinquents, it also helped the justice system identify solutions. Despite these new ideas about delinquency, medical and legal experts continued to view work and worker training as one of the main ways to rehabilitate vulnerable children. When the Association for Reporters and Delegates to the TCA met in 1928, its president emphasized “he who works well behaves well.” He then extolled vocational guidance for its ability to help youngsters find a profession about which they were passionate.129 Likewise, Olga Spitzer, the director of the SSCMD, emphasized the importance of apprenticeships in the Service’s approach. When the Service encountered “a child of average intelligence and normal character,” it tried to direct them toward vocational training. This training was the only remedy for “removing the child from

168  An Age to Work the mediocrity where his parents usually stagnated.”130 Her statement cast apprenticeships both as a route out of poverty and as a cure for the immorality it engendered. Placing these youngsters in jobs was not only a cure for their bad behavior. It also set them on the path to regular employment. Fears of population decline also drove this approach. Incarcerating youths came at a cost, as it removed them from the formal workforce. Rehabilitating them helped to ensure they found good positions. The records of the SSCDM show that it directed the majority of work-​ aged children in its care toward employment. In 1938, 631 “children” over the age of fourteen were under its supervision. Of those children, 158 were in technical schools and twenty-​three were “continuing their studies.” The remaining 450 were in the workforce, although 121 of this group were in apprenticeships.131 Many delinquent or vulnerable children came from the ranks of the working classes or the destitute, which may explain why it chose this approach. SSCDM records show that the majority of the families in which parents were at risk of losing their children lived at or below the poverty line.132 For many of these families, youths’ salaries remained a crucial part of the family economy.133 In placing young people with employers or in vocational schools, social workers were likely responding to the desires and needs of the families with which they were working. But the low number of youths in secondary schools suggests that the social workers also did not envision a future for these young people beyond skilled labor. Even if judges and social workers championed the value of work, they did refer children to the scouts, summer camps, and other leisure activities for young people.134 In a speech in 1927, Spitzer suggested that youth organizations, such as the scouts, could mitigate the dangers of puberty.135 In the society’s 1936 report, Mademoiselle Gain told the story of a boy named Paul, whose father had cast him out. During the summer, the Service sent the boy to a scout camp. He was able to join a troop once he returned to Paris, which helped to fill his leisure time.136 The Service created a branch of the Éclaireurs, the secular scouting organization, at its observation center at Soulins.137 The Service recognized the growing influence of youth culture on its charges. Scouting provided an alternative to less savory pursuits, such as watching films or dancing. It prioritized play, which kept youngsters from becoming prematurely sexual. In these troops, youths instead received lessons in teamwork and other moral behaviors.138 Even if the Republic moved toward a less punitive approach in dealing with young delinquents, young people placed in detention facilities faced

Interwar Reform  169 harsh conditions. The realities of the juvenile justice system are evident in the experiences of two groups of girls who sought to resist the conditions of their incarceration. In September 1936, eight girls broke out of a reformatory run by the Society for the Preservation and Salvation of Women in the suburb of Boulogne. After gagging their guards and cutting the phone cords, they managed to escape. Three days later, the young women at the Charity for the Protection of Young Women in Paris’ 12th arrondissement launched their own revolt. Eight gained their freedom after scaling the wall that separated their reformatory from the neighboring Bercy Cemetery. Following the two incidents, the Minister of Justice sent Inspector Breton and Inspectrice Pardon to visit the reformatories and investigate. The two inspectors compiled a report, which documented the conditions within these two reformatories. At these institutions, which were run by private charities, girls spent their days working. The girls were in these reformatories because the judges of the TCA had cleared them of their crimes but decided that they still needed guidance. This rehabilitation involved working in a controlled environment. At the reformatory in Boulogne, many carried out domestic tasks, such as cooking and cleaning, while others produced items for the garment industry. The majority, however, made artificial flowers.139 The inspectors’ report highlights the strict discipline within the reformatory. Madame Piquemolles, the chief warden at the Boulogne reformatory, barred the girls from listening to the radio and singing “obscene” songs from their windows. Instead, she encouraged them to read Perrault’s fairy tales or the Bible.140 While the inspectors found this discipline appealing, the girls involved in the revolt, who were between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, chafed at these restrictions. Prior to their revolt, they had petitioned to have Madam Piquemolles replaced.141 In an era where young people increasingly had access to their own culture, her recommended reading must have seemed retrograde and infantile. The inspectors dismissed many of the girls’ complaints, but they admitted that the sanitary conditions were problematic. The inspectors found that a current inhabitant, fifteen-​year-​old Simone Norture, was coughing up blood. The women in charge were oblivious to the girl’s illness. The inspectors observed that Norture went around with “bare feet in rubber sandals in freezing weather and this was while the fire in the establishment had not yet been lit.”142 They also reported that the cook was a seventy-​year-​old woman who was serving up dishes of dry, unwashed vegetables cooked in rancid

170  An Age to Work grease.143 The people in charge of the reformatories did not seem to possess the same level of expertise as the social workers. As this incident and the stories of the penal colonies demonstrate, the care and consideration that went into diagnosing delinquents did not extend to their treatment in penitentiary centers or reformatories. The descriptions of the girls also capture the contemporary ambivalence toward young delinquents. Were these girls dangerous or victims of the depravity of the working-​class milieu? The day after the girls’ escape, one of the guards at Picpus told Paris-​Soir that the reformatories could do little for the rebels. They were “girls with inherited pathologies, they know too well the mire and have walked the streets too much to change and repent.”144 The guard conflated delinquency with the diseases, such as syphilis, that contemporaries were convinced ran rampant in working-​class communities. While the inspectors also expressed concern about the girls’ sexuality, they recognized that these were ultimately vulnerable young women. They concluded their report by observing, “The little, delinquent girls are not necessarily monsters or mentally disturbed . . . They are human beings who have often given free rein to their instincts in poor or defective family situations where parental influence is without kindness and is sometimes harmful.”145 Here, the inspectors recognized the girls’ immaturity. They implied that irregular family life or negligent parents drove young people to delinquency. These varied depictions of the young rioters epitomize the attitude of reformers, social workers, and jurists toward young delinquents. Although these individuals recognized that juvenile delinquents were young and malleable, they also worried about the influence of the working-​class milieu. Surrounded by depravity and disease, working-​class children could become “abnormal” and dangerous. Medical expertise could identify troubled children, but at-​risk children required surveillance and supervision both to protect them and society.

More Continuity Than Change In the Third Republic’s final two decades, the number of services available to working-​class children expanded. Upon leaving school, working-​class youths could visit a vocational guidance office for help selecting a job. They had a range of public and private training classes at their disposal to help prepare for the workforce. If their parents were unable to take care of them, they

Interwar Reform  171 were subjected to an investigation by a social worker from the Social Service for Children in Moral Danger. The expansion of these services attests to the growing role of government and parastate organizations in children’s lives.146 As the state relied more on these services, it increasingly defined childhood and adolescence as discrete stages of life. These organizations did not simply rely on age to sort and evaluate children but also measured children’s intelligence and health. Such measures not only encoded childhood as a distinct stage, but also established norms of expected behavior for children. These numeric, more medicalized versions of childhood did not, however, eliminate hierarchies within childhood. Faced with the ever-​declining birthrate, the Republic placed even greater value on working-​class children growing into productive workers. For certain republican elites too, the specter of radical politics increased the need to form skilled, satisfied worker-​citizens. The social services of the interwar period provided care and assistance that benefited the youngest members of the working classes. But these same services ensured that these youngsters stayed on the path that led to the workforce.

Conclusion In 1865, when Gustave Maurice assumed the post of labor inspector for the city of Paris, he was one of the few officials responsible for ensuring the wellbeing of working-​class Parisian children and youths. In the Republic’s first decade, he struggled to encourage Parisian factory owners and parents to observe child labor legislation. By the end of the Republic in 1940, the army of people tasked with ensuring the wellbeing of work-​aged youths included social workers, vocational school instructors, and doctors. These experts drew on a wealth of knowledge about pediatric medicine to find the appropriate placements for troubled youths and the right jobs for “normal” ones. They removed children from abusive parents and made sure younger ones attended school. And yet, for all the Republic’s efforts to protect these young people, a working-​class youth in the 1930s likely faced a similar future to his parents and grandparents. Even by the Republic’s end, a significant number of working-​ class youths entered the workforce after completing primary school. As he entered his teen-​aged years, the experience of a working-​class youth diverged from his bourgeois peers, who continued to attend school. The very institutions that provided care to young people contributed to this division. From the corps of labor inspectors to the Tribunal for Children and Adolescents, the Republic built a bureaucracy that protected working-​ class children and youths but also ensured that they matured into productive workers. Through the enactment and enforcement of age-​based regulations, the Republic encoded class-​based variations in the experience of childhood. The archives of the functionaries tasked with enforcing these regulations demonstrate that they—​policemen, labor inspectors, and educators—​policed young people’s productivity. By enforcing child labor laws or placing delinquent youths in age-​appropriate institutions, these functionaries introduced age-​based regulations. They treated childhood as a distinct, universal stage of life and children as developing beings in need of protection. Even as they attempted to protect young people, they also ensured that these youngsters had the skills and desire to join the workforce. When an investigator at the An Age to Work. Miranda Sachs, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197638453.003.0009

Conclusion  173 Public Assistance removed a vagabonding youth from his parents, this investigator was trying to ensure the youth’s healthy development, but also keep him from joining the illicit economy. Although working-​class parents did not see childhood as a uniform, standardized life stage, they directed young people into the workforce. They viewed their children as members of the family economy. In many instances, they wanted their children to enter the workforce before the Republic’s laws permitted. They found ways, such as placing their children in jobs at the margins of production or removing them from vocational schools, to subvert the Republic’s regulations around age. As a result, working-​class childhood remained less standardized and more fluid than bourgeois childhood. And yet, parents also called on the welfare state to provide correction for their unproductive offspring. Even if they limited state actors’ abilities to standardize childhood, working-​class parents supported these actors’ efforts to direct working-​class youths toward productive labor. Just as the expansion of universal manhood suffrage in the nineteenth century reinforced the divisions between men and women, so too did the expansion of the rights of the child reinforce the divisions between working-​ class girlhood and boyhood. Gendered ideas of work restricted girls to trades that seemed domestic or failing that, feminine. While boys were more likely to labor in industrial spaces, girls were more likely to labor in spaces that escaped the notice of labor inspectors. When the city of Paris created vocational training programs, they segregated girls and boys. Girls’ schools or classes provided instruction only in professions that were considered gender-​ appropriate and reminded girls of their future domestic responsibilities. The Republic’s treatment of working-​class children provides a unique perspective for interrogating the limits of its commitment to equality and universalism. The Republic formalized class-​and gender-​based divisions within the seemingly universal category of the child. By codifying working-​ class childhood, republican legislators preserved the existing social order. Moreover, the regulation of childhood in metropolitan France reinforced the racial hierarchies within the French Empire. In comparison to its treatment of children in the metropole, the Republic enacted few legal or institutional protections for children and youths in its colonies. This absence helped construct racial hierarchies within childhood. Neither the 1874 nor 1892 child labor laws included provisions for their enforcement outside of metropolitan France. Only in 1909 did the Republic make these laws applicable to Algeria, which had departmental

174  An Age to Work status.1 Although the authorities in Indochina decreed that the 1889 law on moral abandonment was applicable within the colony, they exempted indigenous populations.2 White colonizers in Indochina did call for the regulation of trafficking.3 In this case, their focus was not on curbing child labor, but on halting the smuggling and sexual exploitation of children. For colonizers, trafficking was easier to condemn. They could claim that by banning trafficking, they were bringing European civilization to their colonies. (French authorities in West Africa made a similar claim when they banned slavery.)4 Mixed-​race children were the one exception to this institutional neglect, as French authorities took great pains to identify and educate these youngsters.5 Such attentions to children who could claim French ancestry stand in stark contrast to the treatment of indigenous children. Similarly, schooling for children throughout the empire remained limited. Although the French did open primary schools in their colonies, only a small fraction of non-​white children ever attended French schools. The number of schools was insufficient for the number of children in their colonies.6 Access to secondary education remained limited and varied across the empire. Students in Indochina could attend academic secondary schools, whereas students in West Africa only had access to vocational classes.7 One French governor general in Senegal opposed the creation of academic secondary schools, as they would not produce “skilled workmen.”8 The absence of schools suggests that the French did not want to end child labor in their colonies. Arguably, the lack of laws regulating childhood left colonial subjects with more authority over their children. In Senegal, for instance, parents maintained control over where their children attended school and when they began work. For the most part, they opted for Qur’anic schools where instruction was more compatible with the values of Senegalese society.9 In contrast, the French schools were instruments of colonization. They taught children how to be good subjects.10 If the French had passed more regulations or instituted mandatory education in their colonies, they would have imposed their version of childhood on their colonial subjects. After all, legislators in metropolitan France used the regulation of age as a tool of social control. Forcing colonial subjects to adopt European ideas about age and childhood would have constituted another form of cultural imperialism within the empire. However, the neglect of colonial children both enabled colonial administrators to see this population as separate from metropolitan children

Conclusion  175 and allowed for their continued employment. For instance, officials in the British colony of Tanganyika permitted the employment of young children to continue until after World War II. They argued that children in “primitive” societies matured quicker than children in Europe. Thus, the statutes of international law that banned younger children from working were inapplicable to Tanganyika.11 To rationalize employing children, colonizers had to claim that childhood was not in fact universal. The treatment of children in the empire parallels colonial authorities’ approach to women in Algeria. The French left the regulation of female sexuality to Muslim Algerians, as they viewed Algerian sexual practices as different from their own. This “rule of difference” allowed them to justify excluding Algerians from citizenship.12 As the Republic expanded its protections for children in the metropole, its exclusion of children in their colonies formalized the racial hierarchies legislators perceived within childhood. It is tempting to think of the history of childhood in terms of progress, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Europe and America, younger children left the workforce and entered the classroom. They gained more time to play and to enjoy childhood. The experience of young people in Third Republic Paris highlights the limitations of this narrative. Just because a government enacts policies to protect young people does not mean it wants to eliminate disparities within childhood. Such was the case with the Third Republic’s treatment of working-​class children. Oftentimes the protections for one group of children come at the expense of another group. Although the Third Republic’s laws on child labor or delinquency were written in seemingly neutral language, they benefited white boys and reinforced the exclusion of girls and colonial children. The inequalities in Third Republic France originated in childhood.

Notes Abbreviations ACC Archives of Casip-​Cojasor, Paris ACDP Archives de Catholicité—​Diocèse de Paris ADP Archives de Paris AI Archives de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris AN Archives Nationales de France, Pierrefitte-​sur-​Seine APP Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Paris BHVP Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris CAP Certificate of Professional Aptitude CEDIAS Musée Social—​Centre d’Études, de Documentation, d’Information et d’Action Sociales CPA Certificate of Professional Aptitude EE Library of the École Estienne, Paris SSCMD Social Service for Children in Moral Danger, Paris TCA Tribunal for Children and Adolescents, Paris

Introduction 1. Auguste Brepson, Un gosse (Paris: Les Éditions Rieder, 1928), 247 2. For more on age, see Corinne T. Field and Nicholas L. Syrett, eds., “AHR Roundtable: Chronological Age: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 125, no. 2 (April 2020): 371–​459; Susan Pearson, “ ‘Age Out to Be a Fact’: The Campaign against Child Labor and the Rise of the Birth Certificate,” The Journal of American History 101, no. 4 (March 2015): 1144–​1165; Steven Mintz, “Reflections on Age as a Category of Historical Analysis,” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 1, no. 1 (2008): 91–​94 3. Colin Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-​ Century France: Work, Health, and Education Among the “Classes Populaires” (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 107–​112. For more on the working-​class family economy in the UK, see Jane Humphries, Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Clark Nardinelli, Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990) 4. Lee Shai Weissbach, Child Labor Reform in Nineteenth-​Century France: Assuring the Future Harvest (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1989)

178  Notes to pages 1–5 5. Sarah Fishman, The Battle for Children: World War II, Youth Crime, and Juvenile Justice in Twentieth-​Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 26 6. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 391; République Française, Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques, Annuaire Statistique de la France, 1953 60, no. 2 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1954), 58, xv 7. Since the publication of Philippe Ariès’ Centuries of Childhood, historians have debated when Europeans and Americans first adopted our modern conception of childhood. See Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Vintage Books, 1962) 8. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, ch. 2 and 3 9. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, 81 10. Jean-​Jacques Yvorel, “Esquisse d’une histoire de la prise en charge de l’enfance délinquante aux XIX et XX siècles,” in Éduquer et punir: La colonie agricole et pénitentiaire de Mettray (1839–​1937), ed. Luc Forlivesi, Georges-​François Pottier, and Sophie Chassat (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2005), 10 11. Kathleen Nilan, “Incarcerating Children: Prison Reformers, Children’s Prisons, and Child Prisoners in July Monarchy France” (PhD diss. Yale University, 1992), 265 12. Antoine Prost, Histoire de l’enseignement en France, 1800–​1967. Collection U: Series “Histoire contemporaine,” ed. René Rémond (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1968), 92 13. Lee Shai Weissbach, “Oeuvre Industrielle, Oeuvre Morale: The Sociétés de Patronage of Nineteenth-​Century France,” French Historical Studies 15, no. 1 (1987): 101 14. Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-​Century France, 48 15. Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-​Century France, 104–​105; Catherine Rollet, Les enfants au XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette Littératures, 2001), ch. 4 16. Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-​Century France, 129 17. Bernard Charlot and Madeleine Figeat, Histoire de la formation des ouvriers, 1789–​ 1914 (Paris: Minerve, 1985), 37 18. William H. Sewell, Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 153 19. Louis Chevalier, Classes laborieuses et classes dangereuses à Paris pendant la première moitié du XIXe siècle (Paris: Plon, 1958); Andrew Aisenberg, Contagion, Disease, Government, and the “Social Question” in Nineteenth-​Century France (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); Barrie Ratcliffe and Christine Piette, Vivre la ville: Les classes populaires à Paris (1ere moitié du XIXe siècle) (Paris: La boutique de l’Histoire, 2007); Maurizio Gribaudi, Paris, ville ouvrière: Une histoire occultée (1789–​ 1848) (Paris: La Découverte, 2014) 20. Ann-​Louise Shapiro, Housing the Poor of Paris, 1850–​1902 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), xiv 21. Katherine Lynch, Family, Class, and Ideology in Early Industrial France: Social Policy and the Working-​ Class Family, 1825–​ 1848 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979)

Notes to pages 5–7  179 22. Rachel Fuchs, Abandoned Children: Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-​ Century France (Albany: SUNY Press, 1984), 41 23. Shapiro, Housing the Poor, ch. 1 24. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, xii 25. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, ch. 7; Nilan, “Incarcerating Children,” ch. 4; Prost, Histoire de l’enseignement, 97 26. AN, F 17 17501, Gustave Monod “Communication Faite à ‘L’Union pour la vérité’ le 19 février 1938 sur la reforme de l’enseignement” 27. Philip Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-​Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998) 28. See for instance Geoff Read, The Republic of Men: Gender and the Political Parties in Interwar France (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2014) 29. Elinor Accampo, “Gender, Social Policy, and the Formation of the Third Republic: An Introduction,” in Gender and The Politics of Social Reform in France, 1870–​1914, ed. Elinor Accampo, Rachel Ginnis Fuchs, and Mary Lynn Stewart (Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 1–​27; Alain Corbin, Les Filles de noce: Misère sexuelle et prostitution (19e et 20e siècles) (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1978); Jill Harsin, Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-​Century Paris (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); Andrew Ross, Public City/​Public Sex: Homosexuality, Prostitution, and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-​Century Paris (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2019) 30. Michelle Zancarini-​Fournel, “Archéologie de la loi de 1892 en France,” in Différence des sexes et protection sociale: (XIXe–​XXe siècles), ed. Leora Auslander and Michelle Zancarini-​Fournel (Saint-​Denis: Presses universitaires de Vincennes, 1995), 89. See also Karen Offen, Debating the Woman Question in the French Third Republic, 1870–​ 1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018) 31. Mary Lynn Stewart, Women, Work, and the French State: Labour Protection and Social Patriarchy, 1879–​1919 (Montreal, QC: McGill-​Queen’s University Press, 1989), 103 32. Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–​1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997) 33. Patrick Weil, “Le statut des musulmans en Algérie coloniale. Une nationalité française dénaturée,” Histoire de la justice 16, no. 1 (2005): 93–​109 34. Gregory Mann, “What Was the ‘Indigénat’? The ‘Empire of Law’ in French West Africa,” The Journal of African History 50, no. 3 (2009): 333–​334 35. Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-​State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 18. For connections between the bourgeois order in the metropole and colonies, see Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) 36. Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500, 2nd ed. (Harlow, UK: Pearson Education, 2005), ch. 6. For the United States, see Anthony M. Platt, The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency, 40th anniversary edition (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009); Alisa Klaus, Every Child a Lion: The Origins of Maternal and Infant Health Policy in

180  Notes to pages 7–8 the United States and France, 1890–​1920 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). For the United Kingdom, see Harry Hendrick, Child Welfare: England, 1872–​1989 (London: Routledge, 1994); Lydia Murdoch, Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London, The Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006); Anna Davin, Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London 1870–​1914 (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1996). For Germany, see Derek S. Linton, “Who Has the Youth, Has the Future”: The Campaign to Save Young Workers in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Edward Dickinson, The Politics of German Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic, vol. 121 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) 37. Rollet, L’enfant, 189; Catherine Rollet, La politique à l’égard de la petite enfance sous la IIIe République (Paris: Institut National d’Études Démographique Presses Universitaires de France, 1990) 38. Joshua Cole, The Power of Large Numbers: Population, Politics, and Gender in Nineteenth-​Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000) 39. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform; Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-​Century France 40. Sylvia Schafer, Children in Moral Danger and the Problem of Government in Third Republic France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) 41. Marie-​Célie Bouju, “L’École Estienne, 1848–​1949: La question de l’apprentissage dans les industries du livre” (PhD diss., École Nationale des Chartres, 1998) ; Yves Legoux, Du compagnon au technicien: L’École Diderot et l’évolution des qualifications, 1873–​ 1972 (Paris: Technique & Vulgarisation, 1972) 42. Ivan Jablonka, Ni père ni mère: Histoire des enfants de l’assistance publique, (1874–​ 1939) (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2006); Fuchs, Abandoned Children 43. Vincent Viet, Les voltigeurs de la république: L’inspection du travail en France jusqu’en 1914 (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1994); Sylvie Schweitzer, Les inspectrices du travail, 1878–​1974: Le genre de la fonction publique (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016); Quentin Deluermoz, Policiers dans la ville: La construction d’un ordre public à Paris, 1854–​1914 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012), https://​books.open​edit​ ion.org/​psorbo​nne/​1558 44. Lola Zappi, “Le service social en action: Assistantes sociales et familles assistés dans le cadre de la protection de la jeunesse à Paris dans l’entre-​deux-​guerres” (PhD diss., Sciences Po Paris, 2019) 45. Eliza Ferguson, “The Cosmos of the Paris Apartment: Working-​Class Family Life in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Urban History 37, no. 1 (2011): 59–​76; Delphine Piétu, “ ‘Goss’s de la ru’, goss’s du pavé’: Enfants et adolescents des milieux populaires dans l’espace public parisien (1882–​début des années 1960)” (PhD diss., University of Paris VII, Diderot, 2016) 46. Gérard Cholvy, Histoire des organisations et mouvements chrétiens de jeunesse en France: XIXe–​XXe (Paris: Cerf, 1999); Laura-​Lee Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land: Working Class Movements and the Colonies de Vacances in France, 1880–​1960 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002)

Notes to pages 9–10  181 47. Much of the literature on the Republic’s schools discusses their role in reproducing inequalities. See for instance Maurice Crubellier, L’école républicaine, 1870–​ 1914: Esquisse d’une histoire culturelle (Paris: Éditions Christian, 1993); Robert Gildea, Education in Provincial France, 1800–​1914: A Study of Three Departments (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); Prost, Histoire de l’enseignement. Similarly, Pierre Bourdieu challenged the meritocracy of French higher education in the 1960s. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-​Claude Passeron, Les héritiers: Les étudiants et la culture (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1964) 48. Jacques Ozouf and Mona Ozouf, La République des instituteurs (Paris: Seuil, 1992); Jean-​Noël Luc, Jean-​François Condette, and Yves Verneuil, Histoire de l’enseignement en France, XIXe-​XXIe siècle (Paris: Armand Colin, 2020), 138 49. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–​ 1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976), ch. 18; Jean-​François Chanet, L’école républicaine et les petites patries (Paris: Aubier, 1996) 50. Ministère de l’agriculture et du commerce, Annuaire Statistique de la France, vol. 3, 1880 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1880), 430–​431; Ministère du travail et de la prévoyance sociale, Statistique générale de la France, Annuaire Statistique, vol. 32, 1912 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1913), 16 51. Jérôme Krop, La méritocratie républicaine: Élitisme et scolarisation de masse sous le IIIe République (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014), 149 52. Krop, La méritocratie républicaine, 62 53. Gildea, Education in Provincial France, 265 54. Krop, La méritocratie républicaine, 43 55. Krop, La méritocratie républicaine, 144 56. Prost, Histoire de l’enseignement, 326–​327 57. Jean-​Pierre Briand and Jean-​Michel Chapoulie, Les collèges du peuple: L’enseignement primaire supérieur et le développement de la scolarisation prolongée sous la Troisième République (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012). Briand and Chapoulie present a more sympathetic argument toward the école primaire supérieure 58. Charlot and Figeat, Histoire de la formation; Stéphane Lembré, Histoire de l’enseignement technique (Paris: La Découverte, 2016) 59. Krop, La méritocratie républicaine, 144 60. Octave Gréard, L’enseignement primaire à Paris et dans le département de la Seine de 1867 à 1877, Annexe I–​ V. Statistiques 1878, Exposition Universelle de 1878 (Paris: Imprimerie Centrale des Chemins de Fer, A. Chaix et C., 1878) 61. Linda Clark, Schooling the Daughters of Marianne: Textbooks and the Socialization of Girls in Modern French Primary School (Albany: SUNY Press, 1984), 154 62. Clark, Schooling the Daughters of Marianne; Laura Strumingher, What Were Little Girls and Boys Made of? Primary Education in Rural France, 1830–​1880 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1983) 63. Jean-​Michel Chapoulie, L’école d’état conquiert la France: Deux siècles de politique scolaire (Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 138 64. Sylvie Schweitzer, Les femmes ont toujours travaillé: Une histoire de leurs métiers, XIXe et XXe siècle (Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob, 2002), 25

182  Notes to pages 10–14 65. Rebecca Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom: Educating Bourgeois Girls in Nineteenth-​Century France (University Park: The University of Pennsylvania State Press, 2005) 66. Luc, Condette, and Verneuil, Histoire de l’enseignement, 157 67. Antoine Prost, Republican Identities in War and Peace: Representations of France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, trans. Jay Winter and Helen McPhail (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2002), 223 68. Agnès Thiercé, Histoire de l’Adolescence (Paris: Belin, 1999), 15 69. Thiercé, Histoire de l’Adolescence, 136–​137 70. Kathleen Alaimo, “Adolescence in the Popular Milieu in France during the Early Third Republic: Efforts to Define and Shape a Stage of Life” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-​Madison, 1988); Michelle Perrot, “La jeunesse ouvrière: De l’atelier à l’usine,” in Histoire des jeunes en occident, ed. Giovanni Levi and Jean-​Claude Schmitt, vol. 2 L’époque contemporaine (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1996), 85–​142 71. B. Bradford Brown and Reed W. Larson, “The Kaleidoscope of Adolescence: Experiences of the World’s Youth at the Beginning of the 21st Century,” in The World’s Youth: Adolescence in Eight Regions of the Globe, ed. B. Bradford Brown, Reed W. Larson, and T. S. Saraswathi (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1–​2 72. John Gillis, Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations, 1770–​Present (New York: Academic Press, 1974), ch. 3 73. For the construction of other stages within childhood, see Rollet, La politique and Jean-​Noël Luc, L’invention du jeune enfant au XIXe siècle: De la salle d’asile à l’école maternelle (Paris: Belin, 1997) 74. Many historians of childhood have reflected on the challenge of finding and reading sources produced by young people. For examples of this problematic see Mary Jo Maynes, “Age as a Category of Historical Analysis: History, Agency, and Narratives of Childhood,” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 1, no. 1 (2008): 114–​124; Christina Benninghaus, “In Their Own Words: Girls’ Representations of Growing Up in Germany in the 1920s,” in Secret Gardens, Satanic Mills: Placing Girls in European History, 1750–​1960, ed. Mary Jo Maynes, Birgitte Søland, and Christina Benninghaus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 178–​191; Philippe Lejeune, Le moi des demoiselles: Enquête sur le journal de jeune fille (Paris: Seuil, 1993) 75. Colin Jones, Paris: The Biography of a City (New York: Penguin, 2006), 299 76. Shapiro, Housing the Poor, 55 77. Marie-​Claude Blanc-​Chaléard, Les Italiens dans l’est Parisien: Une histoire d’intégration (1880–​1960) (Paris: École Française de Rome, 2000); Nancy L. Green, The Pletzl of Paris: Jewish Immigrant Workers in the Belle Époque (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986); Nimisha Barton, Reproductive Citizens: Gender, Immigration, and the State in Modern France, 1880–​1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020) 78. Vanessa Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-​de-​Siècle Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), ch. 1 79. David P. Jordan, Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann (New York: Free Press, 1995), ch. 8

Notes to pages 14–17  183 80. Philip Nord, Paris Shopkeepers and the Politics of Resentment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); Lisa Tierstein, Marianne in the Market: Envisioning Consumer Society in Fin-​de-​Siècle France (Berkley: University of California Press, 2001) 81. Richard S. Hopkins, Planning the Green Spaces of Nineteenth-​Century Paris (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015) 82. Robert Herbert, Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers, revised edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984) 83. Jones, Paris, 334 84. John N. Horne, Labour at War: France and Britain, 1914–​1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 5 85. Lenard Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871–​1914 (Baltimore, MA: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 8 86. Berlanstein, The Working People, 4 87. Shapiro, Housing the Poor, 71–​78 88. For comparative examples of urban childhood in this period see David Nasaw, Children of the City: At Work and at Play (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); J. Robert Wegs, Growing Up Working Class: Continuity and Change Among Viennese Youth, 1890–​1938 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989); Davin, Growing Up Poor; Simon Sleight, Young People and the Shaping of Public Space in Melbourne, 1870–​1914 (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2013) 89. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, 150 90. Charlot and Figeat, Histoire de la formation, 143 91. Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 12 92. Gildea, Education in Provincial France, 235

Chapter 1 1. Pierre Louÿs, Aphrodite: Mœurs antiques (Paris: Fayard, 1906). This reprint may be the version in question given that Wellhoff & Roche produced books for Fayard. If so, the illustrations in this edition are explicit 2. AN, F 22 441, Un imprimeur traduit devant les tribunaux: Contraventions à l’Article 13 s 1 et 2 du Décret du 13 Mai 1893. À propos d’Aphrodite. Jugement du 18 Février 1908 (Paris: Société anonyme des Imprimeries Wellhoff & Roche, 1908), NP 3. Robert Nye describes Robert as “the greatest criminal lawyer—​and manipulator of juries—​of his generation.” Robert Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France: The Medical Concept of National Decline (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 214 4. AN, F 22 441, Un imprimeur traduit, 7 5. AN, F 22 441, Un imprimeur traduit, 6 6. AN, F 22 441, Un imprimeur traduit, 12 7. AN, F 22 441, Un imprimeur traduit, 15

184  Notes to pages 17–21 8. Both Robert and the judges in the case referred to the young workers as “children.” AN, F 22 441, Un imprimeur traduit. 9. Susan Pearson explores this shift in the American context. Susan Pearson, “Age Out to Be a Fact,” esp. 1145 10. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, 213. A number of authors have examined the passage of the child labor laws, but primarily from the perspective of elites. See Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-​ Century France; Alaimo, “Adolescence in the Popular Milieu” 11. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, 151; Viet, Les voltigeurs, 78 12. ADP, D2U6 13, Procès-​Verbal, G. Maurice, July 25, 1871 13. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, xii–​xiii; Kathleen Alaimo, “Adolescence, Gender, and Class in Education Reform in France: The Development of Enseignement Primaire Superieur, 1880–​1918,” French Historical Studies 18, no. 4 (Autumn, 1994): 1025 14. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, 181 15. APP, BA 400, Clips, “Débats,” June 14, 1872 16. APP, BA 400, Enquête sur les conditions du travail dans Paris, XIII Arrondissement, Quartier no. 50: La Gare, November 24, 1872 17. APP, BA 400, Enquête sur les conditions du travail dans Paris, XI Arrondissement, Quartier no. 41: Folie Méricourt, November 24, 1872 18. APP, BA 400, Enquête sur les conditions du travail dans Paris, 13e Arrondissement, Quartier no. 49: Salpêtrière, November 24, 1872 19. APP, BA 400, Enquête sur les conditions du travail dans Paris, 19e Arrondissement, Quartier no. 73: La Villette, November 24, 1872 20. These numbers are based on the analysis in Toussaint Loua, Atlas statistique de la population de Paris (Paris: J. Dejey & Cie, 1873), 51 21. Loua, Atlas statistique, 51 22. APP, BA 400, Commissariat de Police de Quartier de Belleville, [October 1872] 23. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, 203; Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 48–​49 24. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, 186 25. Judith Stone explains the Radical program and their vision of the 1892 law. See Stone, The Search for Social Peace: Reform Legislation in France, 1890–​1914 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1985), 56, 62. I have written elsewhere about the Republic’s relationship to the Catholic Church. See Miranda Sachs, “When the Republic Came for the Nuns: Laicization, Labor Laws, and Religious Orders,” French Historical Studies 42, no. 3 (July 2019): 434–​435 26. The 1892 law also barred children under thirteen from working in theatrical performances, although theater owners could petition for exceptions. In practice, the Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts granted most of these requests. Jennifer Sovde, “From the Theater of Education to the Théâtre du Petit Monde: Child Performers, Education, and Commercial Theater for Children in Modern France” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2014), 222 27. Stewart, Women, Work, and the French State, vii; Zancarini-​Fournel, “Archéologie de la loi de 1892,” 77 28. Stone, The Search for Social Peace, 129

Notes to pages 21–26  185 29. Annuaire de législation française publié par la Société de législation comparée contenant le texte des principales lois votées en France en 1900 20 (1901): 63 30. Stone, The Search for Social Peace, 131 31. These twelve industries were mostly involved with the preparation of silk, cotton, and linen, but also included glassworks. AN, F 12 4731, Rapport présenté par. M. de Heredia, au nom de la 8e Commission sur l’art. 34 du sous-​chap. XIV du budget de l’exercice 1878 (Frais d’inspection du travail des enfants dans les manufactures) 32. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, 199 33. Ministère du commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes. Direction du travail et de l’industrie, Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1899 des lois réglementant le travail (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1900), 17 34. Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1899, 18 35. CEDIAS, 4 044 V16, Gustave Maurice, Guide pour l’application de la Loi sur le travail des enfants dans l’industrie (Paris: A. Chaix et Cie, 1875), 20 36. AN, F 12 4730, Rapport de l’Inspecteur divisionnaire du travail des enfants et des filles mineurs employées dans l’industrie du département de la Seine sur la situation du Service au 31 Décembre 1881, E Laporte 37. “Décret du 13 mai 1893 relatif à l’emploi des enfants, des filles mineures et des femmes aux travaux dangereux, insalubres, excédant les forces ou contraires à la moralité,” Bulletin de l’inspection du travail 1 (1893): 20 38. “Décret du 13 mai 1893,” 18 39. AN, F 22 441, Letter, E. Laporte to Ministre du Commerce et de l’Industrie, March 8, 1898 40. Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-​Century, 268 41. Viet, Les voltigeurs, 75 42. Viet, Les voltigeurs, 214 43. Schweitzer, Les inspectrices du travail, 22 44. As organized labor gained more influence, radicals like Clemenceau and socialists like Millerand wanted to have a more formalized system to engage with labor, untainted by the failures of the past. Viet, Les voltigeurs, 232–​234 45. Viet, Les voltigeurs, 414 46. Viet, Les voltigeurs, 222 47. AN, F 12 4731, Exercice 1878, Rapport de l’Inspecteur divisionnaire de la 1ere Circonscription 48. AN, F 12 4731, Extrait du Relève Général des Usines et Ateliers inspectés du 15 Mars 1879 au 15 Mars 1880, G. Maurice, June 4, 1880 49. AN, F 12 4730, Rapport de l’Inspecteur divisionnaire du travail, December 31, 1881 50. F 12 4730 Exercice de 1888. Rapport de M Laporte, Inspecteur divisionnaire de la 1er Circonscription 51. Hugh Cunningham’s article on the decline of child labor outlines the four main potential factors that drove children from the workforce: decisions within the household economy, state action, technological and capital developments that rendered children’s work less essential, and cultural changes regarding childhood. Hugh Cunningham, “The Decline of Child Labour: Labour Markets and Family Economies

186  Notes to pages 26–30 in Europe and North America since 1830,” The Economic History Review 53, no. 3 (August 2000): 413–​414. Examining the reactions to these laws demonstrates how all four of these factors interacted to influence the experience of child workers 52. Rising wages were perhaps not a factor that led parents to rethink the employment of their offspring. Jacques Rougerie shows that while nominal wages rose irregularly in Paris, the cost of living rose and fell across the nineteenth century. Jacques Rougerie, “Remarques sur l’histoire des salaires à Paris au XIXe siècle,” Le mouvement social 63 (1968): 97. Roger Magraw suggests that workers were better off under the Third Republic. While we cannot draw a decisive conclusion about wages, what is clear is that the health and quality of life of the Parisian workforce had improved over the course of the nineteenth century. Roger Magraw, Workers and the Bourgeois Republic, vol. 2, A History of the French Working Class (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992), 15 53. Viet, Les voltigeurs, 107–​109 54. Viet, Les voltigeurs, 105 55. Viet, Les voltigeurs, 436, 450 56. Viet, Les voltigeurs, 67 57. Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1899, 14 58. Ministère du commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes. Direction du travail et de l’industrie, Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1896 des lois réglementant le travail (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1897), 10 59. Ministère du commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes. Direction du travail et de l’industrie, Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1901 des lois réglementant le travail (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1902), 7 60. Ministère du travail et de la prévoyance sociale, Rapports sur l’application des lois réglementant le travail en 1909 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1911), 5 61. APP, DA 97, Rapports annuels des commissions locales, 1890, Commission Locale no. 28 bis (Hommes), Quartiers des Grandes-​Carrières et de la Chapelle, 219 62. Cat Nilan, “Hapless Innocent and Precocious Perversity in the Courtroom Melodrama: Representations of the Child Criminal in a Paris Legal Journal,” Family History 22 (1997): 253. 63. AN, F 12 4730, Rapport de l’Inspecteur divisionnaire du travail, December 31, 1881 64. AN, F 12 4771, Letter, Engel, relieurs-​doreurs to Ministre de l’Agriculture et du Commerce, November 5, 1874. Notably, the letter includes the male and female form of worker (nos jeunes ouvriers et ouvrières) to stress that they were employing young workers of both sexes 65. AN, F 12 4771, Response to questionnaire from the Chamber of Commerce, Papeteries, [1875] 66. AN, F 12 4731, Letter, Charles de Mourgues to the Préfet de Police, February 20, 1879 67. For the range of places of employment, see AN, F 12 4728, Statistique des Industries dans lesquelles sont employés, ou peuvent être employés, des Garçons âgés de moins de 16 ans ou des Filles mineurs: 20e Arrondissement: Quartier de Belleville (Paris: Charles de Mourgues Frères, Imprimeurs de la Préfecture de la Seine, 1878); F 12 4732, Statistique des Industries dans lesquelles sont employés, ou peuvent être employés, des

Notes to pages 30–37  187 Garçons âgés de moins de 16 ans ou des Filles mineurs: 19e Arrondissement: Quartier de la Villette (Paris: Charles de Mourgues Frères, Imprimeurs de la Préfecture de la Seine, 1878) 68. Paul Aries, “Inspection du travail et inspection ouvrière dans le discours syndical, de la genèse de l’institution à l’entre-​deux-​guerres,” in Inspecteurs et inspection du travail sous la IIIe et la IVe République, ed. Jean-​Louis Robert (Paris: Ministère de l’emploi et de la solidarité, 1998), 54 69. AN, F 12 4730, Rapport de l’Inspecteur divisionnaire du travail, December 31, 1881 70. Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1896, 16 71. Sarah Curtis, “The (Play)things of Childhood: Mass Consumption and Its Critics in Belle Epoque France,” in Childhood by Design: Toys and the Material Culture of Childhood, ed. Megan Brandow-​Faller (New York: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2018), 69–​70; David D. Hamlin, Work and Play: The Production and Consumption of Toys in Germany, 1870–​1914 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 28–​29 72. Ministère du commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes. Direction du travail, Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1900 des lois réglementant le travail (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1901), 18 73. Ministère du commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes, Direction du travail et de l’industrie. Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1904 des lois réglementant le travail (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1905), 8 74. ADP, 2ETP/​3/​5/​22 1, Letter, Syndicat Professionnel des Entrepreneurs de Travaux Publics de France to Monsieur le Président de la Chambre de Commerce de Paris, July 17, 1902 75. APP, DA 97, Rapports annuels des commissions locales, 1891, XI: Folie-​Méricourt, Commission Locale no. 19, 95 76. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Marius Reynaud to Ministre du Travail, September 2, 1907 77. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Ministre du Travail to Marius Reynaud, September 11, 1907 78. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Théophile Foulon to Ministre du Travail. September 8, 1909 79. AN F 22 453, Letter, Ministre du Travail to Foulon, September 22, 1909 80. The apache was one of the figures who populated the underworld of the Belle Époque. The often cited and concise article by Michelle Perrot perhaps explains this category best. Michelle Perrot, “Dans la France de la Belle-​Epoque: Les apaches, premières bandes de jeunes,” La lettre de l’enfance et de l’adolescence 67, no. 1 (2007): 71–​78 81. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Madame LeBlanc to the Ministre du Travail, October 18, 1909 82. AN, F 12 4731, Chambre Syndicale des Emballeurs, Meeting, February 20, 1877 83. APP, DA 97, Rapports annuels des commissions locales, 1890, XI: Saint-​Ambroise, Commission Locale no. 20, 122 84. N, F 22 439, Letter, M. Hémon, inspecteur départemental du travail to the Inspecteur Divisionnaire, July 4, 1914 85. APP, DB 92, République française, no. 4160: Décret portant Règlement d’administration publique pour l’exécution de l’article 12 de la loi du 19 mai 1874, relative au travail des Enfants dans les Manufactures (Travaux fatigants ou dangereux). Du 13 Mai 1875. (Promulgué au Journal officiel 15 mai 1875)

188  Notes to pages 37–44 86. ADP, D3U6 39, Réquisitoire définitif. Le Procureur de la République près le Tribunal de première instance de la Seine, séant à Paris: Vu la procédure instruite contre Abel Farcot, Léopold Joly, January 9, 1891 87. F 12 4730, Seine, État des accidents survenus dans les établissements industriels et agricoles pendant le 2e trimestre 1885; Département de la Seine: État complémentaire des accidents survenus pendant le 3e trimestre 1884, en dont la Préfecture m’a été informée que dans le Commun du 4e trimestre 88. Perrot, “La jeunesse ouvrière,” 105

Chapter 2 1. Henry Poulaille, Les damnés de la terre (Pantin: Les bons caractères, 2007), 400. First published 1935 by B. Grasset 2. Thiercé, Histoire de l’adolescence, 148–​149 3. ADP, 3352 W 25, P. Laverge, Les écoles et les œuvres municipales d’enseignement, 1871–​ 1900 (Paris: Société anonyme de publications périodiques, 1900) 4. Other historians have pointed to écoles primaires supérieures as filling this role. In Paris, these schools primarily trained a white-​collar workforce. See Alaimo, “Adolescence in the Popular Milieu,” ch. 3; Alaimo, “Adolescence, Gender, and Class;” Briand and Chapoulie, Les collèges du peuple; Chapoulie, L’école d’état, ch. 6 5. Weissbach, “Oeuvre industrielle,” 101–​103 6. Thiercé, Histoire de l’adolescence, 154 7. Gillis, Youth and History, ch. 3 8. Weissbach, “Oeuvre industrielle,” 102 9. Armand de Melun, De l’intervention de la société pour prévenir et soulager la misère (Paris: Plon Frères, 1849), 9 10. Melun, De l’intervention de la société, 32 11. For more on this growing class consciousness, see Sewell, Work and Revolution; Roger Gould, Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) 12. Melun, De l’intervention de la société, 64 13. Weissbach, “Oeuvre industrielle,” 104 14. AN, F 17 12537, Œuvre de Saint-​Anne, Patronage des Apprentis et Jeunes Ouvriers du Faubourg Saint-​Antoine, [c. 1869], 2; AN, 17 12537, Letter, Le Sénateur Préfet de la Seine Pour le Préfet et par délégation. Le Directeur de l’Administration Préfectorale to Ministre de l’Instruction Publique, Letter, June 21, 1869 15. AN, 17 12537, Letter, Le Sénateur Préfet de la Seine Pour le Préfet et par délégation 16. AN, F 17 12537, Œuvre de Saint-​Anne, 1 17. Max Turman, Au sortir de l’école: Les patronages, 4th ed. (Paris: Librarie Victor Lecoffre, 1906), 38 18. Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land, 74 19. Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land, 77

Notes to pages 44–49  189 20. CEDIAS, 11 182 V8, Paul Pisani, Souvenirs de famille: Patronage de Sainte-​Mélanie, 1850–​1900 (Paris: Impr. J. Mersch, 1900), 189 21. Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land, 111 22. Maxime Du Camp, Charité privée à Paris: L’orphelinat d’Auteuil et l’abbé Roussel (Auteuil-​Paris, 1881), 15. See also ACDP, 8 K1 5, La Situation de l’Œuvre d’Auteuil en fait et en droit avant et après la loi du 1er Juillet 1901 dite relative au contrat d’association et poursuivant les congrégations religieuses non alors autorisées 23. Mathias Gardet and Alain Vilbrod, Les orphelins-​apprentis d’Auteuil: Histoire d’une œuvre (Paris: Belin, 2000), 21 24. Du Camp, Charité privée, 21 25. AN, F 17 12537, Letter, Floquet, Préfet de la Seine to Ministre de l’Instruction Publique, January 28, 1882 26. Du Camp, Charité privée, 51 27. AN, F 17 12537, Letter, Floquet, Préfet de la Seine to Ministre de l’Instruction Publique, January 28, 1882 28. The individuals involved with the patronage and the school included some of the most influential Jewish figures of the period. In 1877, the members of the patronage’s governing committee included Zadoc Kahn, the Chief Rabbi of Paris; members of the Rothchild family; and Narcisse Leven. AI, P1293, Compte-​rendu de la société de patronage des apprentis et ouvriers israélites de Paris pour les année 1877 (Paris: Alcan-​ Lévy, Imprimeur Breveté, 1878), 9 29. Leo Kahn, Les professions manuelles et les institutions de patronage (Paris: Librairie A. Durlacher, 1885), 36–​37 30. AI, P1293, Règlement de l’école de travail professionnel, 5 31. Kahn, Les professions manuelles, 41; CEDIAS, 9087, École de Travail, 4bis, Rue des Rosiers, Société de patronage des apprentis et ouvriers israélites de Paris, Comptes rendu 1892–​1893 (Paris: Imprimerie J. Montorier, 1894), 4 32. CEDIAS, 9087, Comptes rendu, 1892–​1893, 6 33. AI, P1293, Compte-​rendu de la société de patronage des apprentis et ouvriers israélites de Paris pour les années 1872 à 1876, 2 34. AI, P1293, Compte-​rendu, 2 35. Lee Shai Weissbach, “The Jewish Elite and the Children of the Poor: Jewish Apprenticeship Programs in Nineteenth-​Century France,” AJS Review 12, no. 1 (1987): 141 36. C. R. Day, “Education for the Industrial World: Technical and Modern Instruction in France under the Third Republic, 1870–​1914,” in The Organization of Science and Technology in France 1808–​1914, ed. Robert Fox and George Weisz (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 129 37. Charlot and Figeat, Histoire de la formation, 110–​112 38. Charlot and Figeat, Histoire de la formation, 111 39. C. Bettina Schmidt, Jugendkriminalität und Gesellschaftskrisen: Umbrüche, Denkmodelle und Lösungsstrategien im Frankreich der Dritten Republik, 1900–​1914 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005), 156–​157. See for instance Henri Joly, La France criminelle (Paris: L. Cerf, 1889), 218

190  Notes to pages 49–52 40. Sewell, Work and Revolution, 153 41. Gérard Noiriel, Les ouvriers dans la société́ française XIXe–​XXe siècle (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1986), 43, 86 42. Debora Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-​de-​Siècle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 52 43. Legoux, Du compagnon, 19 44. Stéphanie Dauphin’s biography on Gréard provides a more comprehensive overview of his career. Stéphanie Dauphin, Octave Gréard: 1828–​1904 (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2018) 45. Octave Gréard, Des écoles d’apprentis: Mémoire adressé à M. le Préfet de la Seine (Paris: C. de Mourgues frères, 1872), 9 46. Gréard, Des écoles d’apprentis, 6 47. Gréard, Des écoles d’apprentis, 82–​83 48. Gréard, Des écoles d’apprentis, 83 49. Gréard, Des écoles d’apprentis, 52 50. Thiercé, Histoire de l’adolescence, 136–​137. See also Katharine Norris, “Reinventing Childhood in Fin-​de-​Siècle France: Child Psychology, Universal Education, and the Cultural Anxieties of Modernity” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2000) 51. Gréard, Des écoles d’apprentis, 59 52. Legoux, Du compagnon, 54 53. Charlot and Figeat, Histoire de la formation, 143 54. AN, F 17 14364, Prefecture de la Seine, Ville de Paris, “École Municipale Diderot: Apprentissage,” 5948 55. EE, Souvenir de l’inauguration (Imprimerie de l’École Estienne, July 1, 1896), 53 56. Leora Auslander, Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 360. See also Stéphane Laurent, “Art et industrie: La question de l’enseignement des arts appliqués (1851–​1940): le cas de l’École Boulle” (PhD diss., Paris I, 1996) 57. Charlot and Figeat, Histoire de la formation, 145 58. The École Estienne still operates today and trains students in fine printing, as well as in graphic design. The school maintains a library where I had the chance sit in on a snippet of the fiftieth anniversary for the class of 1964 59. According to the minutes for the supervisory council, the school ultimately did allow some foreign students to attend, including a student from Mexico and two Russian nationals who based on their last names, could possibly have been Jewish. ADP, 3751 W 1, Procès-​verbaux de la commission de surveillance, 1900–​1907, École Estienne, April 6, 1906 and October 12, 1906 60. EE, École municipale Estienne, Souvenir de l’inauguration, 54 61. Bouju “L’École Estienne,” 129 62. AN, F 17 14364, École Municipale Diderot, “Exposé des motifs concernant le règlement général & le règlement d’intérieur adoptés par le Conseil de surveillance et de perfectionnement de l’École Diderot le 13 juin 1891,” 7 63. AN, F 17 14364, Programme de l’enseignement de l’École Estienne adopté par le conseil de surveillance (Paris: Imprimerie de l’École Estienne, 1891), 24–​25

Notes to pages 52–59  191 64. EE, École Municipale Estienne, Règlement intérieur relative au personnel de l’école (Paris: Imprimerie de l’École Estienne, 1896), 9 65. AN, F 17 14364, Programme de l’enseignement, 34–​35 66. This is a common refrain, but for an example see: ADP, 2ETP/​2/​5/​41 1, “Livret de Contrat d’apprentissage: Code des usages établis par la chambre syndicale du Papier est des industries que le transforment. Séance du 6 Octobre 1899,” 3; AN, F 12 6360, Enquête sur les conditions de l’apprentissage industriel, Syndicat des ouvriers graveurs ciseleurs, October 1901, 9 67. AN, F 17 14364, Programme de l’enseignement, 1 68. AN, F 17 14364, Programme de l’enseignement, 4–​5 69. EE, Souvenir de l’inauguration, 57 70. EE, Règlement intérieur, 3 71. EE, Règlement intérieur, 14 72. ADP, 3784 W 3, Exposition Universelle de 1900, Ville de Paris, Direction de l’enseignement, Photographies des diverses expositions scolaires 73. ADP, 3352 W 25, Ville de Paris, Exposition Universelle de 1900, Salon central des écoles professionelles: Pavillon de la Ville de Paris. 1er Étage (Paris: Imprimerie de l’École Estienne, 1900) 74. EE, Ville de Paris, École Municipale Estienne, “Spécimens des travaux exécutés par les élèves dans les divers ateliers de l’école,” 1900 75. Leora Auslander points out that the goal of the École Boulle was to train an elite class of workers who could maintain older artistic traditions. Auslander, Taste and Power, 360 76. Day, “Education for the Industrial World,” 134 77. AN, F 12 6359, Ministère du commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes, Enquête sur l’apprentissage. Syndicat des Imprimeurs en taille douce, October 18, 1901 78. AN, F 12 6360, Ministère du commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes, Enquête sur l’apprentissage. Syndicat des mécaniciens et parties similaires, October 1901 79. AN, F 12 6360, Ministère du commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes, Enquête sur l’apprentissage. Syndicat des ouvriers graveurs et ciseleurs, October 1901 80. Bouju, “L’École Estienne,” 76 81. Un vieux typo, “Je suis professeur à l’école Estienne,” Le Réveil typographique, 143, 25 (Jan 1890), 2, quoted from Bouju, “L’École Estienne,” 108 82. Charlot and Figeat, Histoire de la formation, 196–​197 83. Magraw, A History of the French Working Class, 99 84. AN, F 17 14364, Exposé des motifs, 6 85. AN, F 12 7621, Ministère du commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes, Enquête sur l’apprentissage. Chambre syndicale de la photographie et de ses applications, October 22, 1901 86. AN, F 12 7621, Ministère du commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes, Enquête sur l’apprentissage. Syndicat de l’ameublement, November 5, 1901

192  Notes to pages 59–65 87. Ministère du Commerce, de l’Industrie, des Postes et des Télégraphes. Direction du Travail: Office du Travail: L’apprentissage industriel, Rapport sur l’apprentissage dans l’imprimerie, 1899–​1901 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1902), xcv 88. Bouju, “L’École Estienne,” 128 89. ADP, 3366 W 4, École Municipale Diderot: Conseil de surveillance et de perfectionnement, May 16, 1895, 190 90. AN, F 12 6360, Ministère du commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes, Enquête sur l’apprentissage. Syndicat des ouvriers graveurs et ciseleurs, October 1901 91. ADP, 3751 W 28, Promotions, 1889–​1893 to 1897–​1911 92. AN, F 17 14364, Liste Nominative des Élèves sortis pendant l’année 1893, École Municipale Estienne 93. AN, F 17 14364, Exposé des motifs, 5 94. AN, F 17 14364, Exposé des motifs, 6 95. Ville de Paris, Monographie de l’École Estienne, 214 96. ADP, 3751 W 28, Promotions, 1889–​1893 À 1897–​1911 97. ADP, 3751 W 28, Promotions, 1889–​1893 À 1897–​1911 98. AN, F 17 14364, État nominatif des 50 élèves sorties de l’École Diderot en 1895 après les 3 années d’apprentissage et placés par la Direction de l’École fin Juillet 1895 99. AN, F 17 14364, École Diderot, Listes nominative de tous les elèves qui ont quitté l’Ecole pendant le cours de l’année 1891 100. Alaimo, “Adolescence in the Popular Milieu,” 53 101. ADP, D2T1 16, École Primaires Publiques, Cours complémentaires: Programme et emploi du temps (Paris: Imprimerie Réunies, Établissement A, 1886), 19 102. ADP, D2T1 16, E. Duplan, Le sous-​ directeur de l’enseignement primaire to inspecteur primaire, cours complémentaires: Réorganisation, September 24, 1885 103. Jean-​Pierre Briand, “L’apparition du ‘préapprentissage’ dans les grandes villes au début du XXe siècle,” Formation emploi 27, no. 1 (1989): 49. The practice of night classes dated back to the 1840s when municipalities in the Nord or in Mulhouse opened night schools for young workers. François Jacquet-​Francillon, Naissances de l’école du people, 1815–​1870 (Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières, 1995), 190 104. Briand, “L’apparition,” 43 105. Briand, “L’apparition,” 49 106. ADP, 2ETP/​2/​5/​26 3, Rapport sur la Visite faite par la Délégation de la Chambre de Commerce de Paris, le Vendredi 9 Juillet 1909, aux Cours Professionnels de la Ville de Paris présenté par M. De Ribes-​Christofle

Chapter 3 1. Louis Paulian, Paris qui mendie: Mal et remède (Paris: P. Ollendorff, 1899), 8 2. Paulian, Paris qui mendie, 21–​22 3. For more on the Belle Époque fascination with criminal underworlds, see Dominique Kalifa, Les bas-​fonds: Histoire d’un imaginaire (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2013)

Notes to pages 65–69  193 4. Yvorel, “Esquisse d’une histoire,” 10 5. See Nilan, “Incarcerating Children”; Jean-​Marie Renouard, De l’enfant coupable à l’enfant inadapté: Le traitement social de la déviance juvénile (Paris: Éditions du Centurion, 1990); Stephan A. Toth, Mettray: A History of France’s Most Venerated Carceral Institution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019) 6. Fishman, The Battle for Children, 26–​27 7. Jablonka, Ni père ni mère, 16 8. J. F. Wagniart, Le vagabond à la fin du XIXe siècle (Paris: Belin, 1999), 14 9. Beate Althammer, “Introduction: Poverty and Deviance in the Era of the Emerging Welfare State,” in The Welfare State and the Deviant Poor in Europe, 1870–​1933, ed. Beate Althammer, Andreas Gestrich, and Jens Gründler (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 5 10. Alain Faure, “Enfance ouvrière enfance coupable,” Les Révoltes logiques 13 (Winter 1980–​1981): 14 11. APP, DB 60, Conseil Municipal de Paris, 1908, Proposition Relative aux écoles-​ ateliers d’apprentissage à créer dans Paris, Présentée par M. Émile Massard, Conseiller Municipal 12. Dominique Kalifa, L’encre et le sang: Récits de crimes et société à la Belle Époque (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 153–​154 13. Kalifa, L’encre et le sang, ch. 1; Schwartz, Spectacular Realities, 27 14. Perrot, “Dans le Paris de la Belle-​Epoque,” 72 15. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics, 173 16. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics, 73. See also Wagniart, Le vagabond 17. Corbin, Les cloches de la terre, 208 18. Quentin Deluermoz, Policiers dans la ville: La construction d’un ordre public à Paris, 1854–​1914 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012), https://​books.open​edit​ion. org/​psorbo​nne/​1558 19. Jean-​Claude Farcy, “Quelques problèmes d’analyse de la délinquance juvénile à la fin du XIXe siècle. L’exemple parisien,” Trames 3–​4 (April 1998), http://​journ​als.open​edit​ ion.org/​crimin​ocor​pus/​1920, paragraph 13 20. Farcy, “Quelques problèmes d’analyse,” paragraph 14 21. APP, CB 41.20, Folie Méricourt, no. 1440, Louis Barbier; no. 1441, Louis Loisel; CB 50.17, Gare d’Austerlitz, no. 929, Lucien Clément 22. Maxime Du Camp, Paris bienfaisant (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1888), 163 23. John M. Merriman, Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 215–​220 24. Perrot, “Dans le Paris de la Belle Époque,” 73 25. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics, 98 26. Renouard, De l’enfant coupable, 15 27. Louis Albanel, Le Crime dans la famille (Paris: J. Rueff, Éditeur, 1900), 35 28. Albanel, Le Crime dans la famille, 34 29. Lenard Berlanstein, “Vagrants, Beggars, and Thieves: Delinquent Boys in Mid-​ Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Social History 12, no. 4 (Summer 1979): 542

194  Notes to pages 69–72 30. APP, DB 281 Préfecture de Police, Circulaire n. 18, November 23, 1909. Au sujet des enfants exploités ou abandonnés aux tentations dans la rue. Signed Lépine 31. Louis Rivière, Mendiants and vagabonds: Économie sociale (Paris: V. Lecoffre, 1902), 105 32. Rivière, Mendiants and vagabonds, 105 33. As Lenard Berlanstein points out, the French public was much less concerned with youthful theft as a crime than the British. For the French, the more lifestyle crimes, such as vagabondage and begging, were more worrisome. Berlanstein, “Vagrants, Beggars, and Thieves,” 543 34. Ministère de commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes. Direction du travail et de l’industrie. Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1899 des lois réglementant le travail (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1900), 15 35. Joly, La France criminelle, 218 36. Conseil Général du Département de la Seine, Troisième et Quatrième Sessions de 1894, Mémoires de M. Le Préfet de la Seine & de M. Le Préfet de Police et Procès-​ Verbaux des Délibérations (Paris: Imprimerie Municipale, 1895), 949 37. Joly, La France criminelle, 209 38. AN, F 22 439, Letter, César Cottet to the Ministre du Travail, November 20, 1909 39. For more on prostitutes, see Corbin, Les Filles de noce; Harsin, Policing Prostitution; Ross, Public City/​Public Sex 40. See for instance, APP, BM2 37, Note pour M. le Chef de la Police Municipale, January 4, 1877 41. Quentin Deluermoz, ed., Chroniques du Paris apache (1902–​1905) (Paris: Mercure de France, 2008), 84–​85 42. Deluermoz, Chroniques du Paris apache, 73–​74 43. AN, F 17 12529, Letter from Georges Lassez to a friend, November 16, 1873, quoted in documents pertaining to the creation of Société anonyme à capital variable pour l’Enseignement laïque, 3e arrondissement 44. Rivière, Mendiants and vagabonds, 104. Rivière’s impulse to create a taxonomy of beggars is emblematic of the trend in late nineteenth-​century social science to survey and catalog populations. Kalifa, Les bas-​fonds, ch. 4 45. Rivière, Mendiants and vagabonds, 105 46. Paulian, Paris qui mendie, 21–​22 47. Piétu, “ ‘Goss’s de la ru’,” 290 48. APP, DA 417, Henri Séna, “Les petits mendiants,” Estafette, June 9, 1886 49. Paulian, Paris qui mendie, 117 50. Notably, “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” was first published in London in 1885 and relied on this narrative style. Many of the pieces in this chapter appeared within a decade of its publication. See Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-​Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), ch. 3 51. Pietu, “ ‘Goss’s de la ru’,” 301

Notes to pages 73–77  195 52. APP, DB 200, Chambre des Députés, Session extraordinaire de 1910, no. 547, “Proposition de la loi tendant à la repression de l’enfance,” December 5, 1910, 3 53. APP, DB 200, Chambre des Députés, “Proposition de la loi,” 4 54. APP, DB 200, Chambre des Députés, “Proposition de la loi,” 7 55. APP, DB 200, Chambre des Députés, “Proposition de la loi,” 8 56. “La Mendicité à Paris,” La Presse, November 22, 1890, 1 57. APP, DB 200, Chambre des Députés, “Proposition de la loi,” 12 58. “La Mendicité à Paris,” La Presse, November 22, 1890 59. John E. Zucchi, Little Slaves of the Harp: Italian Street Musicians in Nineteenth-​ Century Paris, London, and New York (Montreal: McGill-​Queen’s University Press, 1992), 48 60. “La Mendicité à Paris,” La Presse, November 22, 1890 61. Paulian, Paris qui mendie, 121 62. Hector Malot, Sans famille, vol. 1., 35th ed. (Paris: E. Dentu, Éditeur, 1882), 197 63. Malot, Sans famille, 199 64. Gilles Soubigou, “Dickens’s Illustrations: France and Other Countries,” in The Reception of Charles Dickens in Europe, ed. Michael Hollington (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 162 65. Zucchi, Little Slaves, 55 66. Zucchi, Little Slaves, 66 67. Zucchi, Little Slaves, 69 68. Zucchi, Little Slaves, 75. However, the traffic of young Italians did not disappear entirely. At the turn of the twentieth century, Italian padroni began smuggling their compatriots to work illegally in glass factories. Carl Ipsen, Italy in the Age of Pinocchio: Children and Danger in the Liberal Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 61 69. Fishman, The Battle for Children, 14 70. Nilan, “Incarcerating Children,” 65 71. Patricia O’Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-​Century France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 120 72. Pascale Quincy-​Lefebvre, Familles, institutions et déviances: Une histoire de l’enfance difficile, 1880–​fin des années trente (Paris: Economica, 1997), 103 73. Nilan, “Incarcerating Children,” 265 74. Nilan, “Incarcerating Children,” 290 75. Nilan, “Incarcerating Children,” 326, 334 76. Toth, Mettray, 32 77. Toth, Mettray, 34 78. Nilan, “Incarcerating Children,” 343 79. Yvorel, “Esquisse d’une histoire,” 10 80. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, 23 81. Renouard, De l’enfant coupable, 15. See also Nilan, “Hapless Innocence” 82. Loi du 7 décembre 1874 relative à la protection des enfants employés dans les professions ambulantes

196  Notes to pages 77–81 83. Sylvia Schafer, “Law, Labor and the Spectacle of the Body: Protecting Child Street Performers in Nineteenth-​Century France,” International Journal of Children’s Rights 4 (1996): 2 84. Schafer, “Law, Labor and the Spectacle,” 3 85. See Schafer, Children in Moral Danger 86. “Loi sur la protection des enfants maltraités ou moralement abandonnés,” Journal Officiel de la République française 21, no. 198 (July 25, 1889): 1 87. See Éric Pierre, “La loi du 19 avril 1898 et les institutions,” Revue d’histoire de l’enfance “irrégulière” 2 (1999): 114 88. Albanel, Le crime dans la famille, x–​xi 89. Jablonka, Ni père ni mère, 16 90. Pierre, “La loi du 19 avril 1898,” 115 91. Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 5 92. Kalifa, L’encre et le sang, 158 93. Fishman, Battle for Children, 24–​26 94. Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 169 95. Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 176 96. Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 190 97. ADP, D1X6 31, Henri Rollet, “Patronage de l’enfance et de l’adolescence,” L’Enfant: Revue Mensuelle Illustrée consacrée à la protection de l’enfance, no. 171 (April 20, 1909): 68 98. Briony Neilson, “The Paradox of Penal Colonization: Debates on Convict Transportation at the International Prison Congresses 1872–​1895,” French History and Civilization 6 (2015): 205; “Loi sur les récidivistes, May 27, 1885,” Journal Officiel de la République Française 17, no. 144 (May 28, 1885): 2722 99. Du Camp, Paris bienfaisant, 164–​165 100. ADP, D1X6 31, Henri Rollet, “Patronage de l’Enfance et de l’Adolescence,” L’Enfant: Revue Mensuelle Illustrée consacrée à la protection de l’enfance, no. 175 (August 20, 1909): 150 101. Harsin, Policing Prostitution, xvi–​xvi 102. Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 152 103. Harsin, Policing Prostitution, 348 104. “Loi sur la protection des enfants maltraités ou moralement abandonnés,” Journal Officiel de la République française 21, no. 198 (July 25, 1889): 1 105. O’Brien, The Promise of Punishment, 138–​139 106. ADP, D1X6 12, Oeuvre des Petites Filles Pauvres, “Deux asiles gratuits,” René Cassagnade, President 107. ADP, D1X6 12, Patronage des détenues, des libérées, et des pupilles de l’administration pénitentiaire, Trente-​cinquième Assemblée Générale (Lisieux: Imprimerie Emile Morière, 1925), 11. For more on Schlumberger and her involvement in women’s suffrage, see Mona Siegel, Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women’s Rights After the First World War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), ch. 1 108. AN, 19760145/​33, Oeuvre de Préservation et de Sauvetage de la Femme (dite Œuvre des Libérées de Saint-​Lazare), Bulletin Année 1937, 6

Notes to pages 83–91  197

Chapter 4 1. ADP, D5X4 1461, no. 7423 Eugène R. Out of respect for the privacy of these individuals and their descendants, I have deliberately omitted the surnames for morally abandoned children 2. Albanel, Le crime dans la famille, 192–​194 3. APP, CB 50.17, Gare d’Austerlitz, no. 635, Henri Buhler 4. Deluermoz, Policiers dans la ville, chap. 6, para. 17 5. In total, I collected around one thousand examples of crimes involving minors younger than eighteen. To collect these, I selected four commissariats from a range of working-​class neighborhoods across Paris. The neighborhoods I looked at were Folie Méricourt in the 11th, which was a center of skilled workers; Gare in the 13th, which was one of the most impoverished areas in the city; the quartiers of La Villette, Combat, and Amérique in the more industrialized 19th, depending on where the registers for the 19th survive; and Charonne in the 20th. I looked at three years for each of these four commissariats. The existing records begin in 1895 and so I collected incidents for twelve months from where each set of records began. I also looked at the calendar years of 1906 and 1913. The one exception is that I looked at June 1906–​June 1907 for Gare d’Austerlitz. In total, I had twelve sets of incidents, each covering a twelve-​month period 6. Lenard Berlanstein similarly concludes that poverty rather than family life or rural migration drove many boys to delinquency in the middle part of the century. Berlanstein, “Vagrants, Beggars, and Thieves,” 541 7. Benjamin Martin, Crime and Criminal Justice under the Third Republic: The Shame of Marianne (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 149 8. Arlette Farge, La vie fragile: Violence, pouvoirs et solidarités à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1986), 29–​30 9. Deluermoz, Policiers dans la ville, chap. 6, para. 8 10. Albanel, Le crime dans la famille, 192 11. APP, CB 50.24, Gare d’Austerlitz; CB 80.29, Charonne 12. APP, CB 76.42, Combat, no. 1086, Anna Silberling 13. APP, CB 80.30, Charonne, no. 1828, André Amaduble 14. APP, CB 50.24, Gare d’Austerlitz, no. 646, Charles Michaud 15. APP, CB 76.42, Combat, no. 1086, Anna Silberling 16. APP, CB 76.42, Combat, no. 1360, Maurice Bellanger; Léon Kinon 17. APP, CB 80.29, Charonne, no. 111, Léon Schreurs 18. APP, CB 80.16, Charonne, no. 335, Jules Sellen 19. APP, CB 80.16, Charonne, no. 724, Jules Sellen 20. APP, CB 41.28, Folie Méricourt, no. 249, Louis Dubois 21. APP, CB 50.17, Gare d’Austerlitz, no. 2, Francis Favre 22. APP, CB 75.13, Amérique, no. 381, Séviny Jer 23. APP, CB 50.17, Gare d’Austerlitz, no. 643, Amédé Quéré 24. APP, CB 49-​52.10, 13e, no. 496, Armand Gillette 25. APP, BA 1689, Note, April 30, 1880

198  Notes to pages 91–100 26. APP, CB 50.17, Gare d’Austerlitz, no. 560 Adolphine Briot 27. APP, CB 80.30, Charonne, no. 1659, Henriette Duriau 28. To examine the types of cases in the Public Assistance files, I selected two boxes for each of the following years: 1881, 1886, 1891, 1896, and 1901 29. For instance, while more than fifty cases made it to the tribunal in 1890, there are over six hundred files of children admitted that year. Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 94; ADP, D5X4, 1442–​1457 30. Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 152 31. Jablonka, Ni père ni mère, 18 32. “Loi sur la répression des violences, voies de fait, actes de cruauté et attenants commis envers les enfants,” Journal Officiel de la république française 30, no. 108 (April 21, 1898): 2618 33. Quincy-​Lefebvre, Familles, institutions et déviances, 186–​187 34. ADP, D5X4 1319, no. 63, Victor C 35. ADP, D5X4 1461, no. 7425, Marie G 36. See Quincy-​Lefebvre, Familles, institutions et déviances for the longer history of this practice 37. ADP, D5X4 1401, no. 4381, Constant R 38. For more on this school, see Sylvia Schafer, “When the Child Is the Father of the Man: Work, Sexual Difference and the Guardian-​State in Third Republic France,” History and Theory 31, no. 4 (1992): 98–​115 39. ADP, D5X4 3104, no. 10955, Suzanne G 40. ADP, D5X4 1766, no. 9964, Alfred L 41. ADP, D5X4 1766, no. 9981, Louis B 42. ADP, D5X4 3104, no. 10956, Renée J 43. ADP, D5X4 1401, no. 4386, Paul V 44. ADP, D5X4 1468, no. 7754, Louis W 45. ADP, D5X4 1762, no. 9823, François A 46. ADP, D5X4 1766, 9957, Jean P 47. Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 171 48. ADP, D5X4 1326, no. 444, Edouard H 49. Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 190 50. ADP, D5X4 1762, 9802, François B 51. The colonies de vacances similarly removed children from the city to more structured spaces in the countryside. They, too, came about in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land, 21 52. ADP, D5X4 1326, no. 430, Frederic M 53. Jablonka, Ni père ni mère, 19

Chapter 5 1. Gréard, L’enseignement primaire à Paris, 267

Notes to pages 100–101  199 2. Historians of child labor in France tend to treat children as a cohesive whole without interrogating the role of gender in distinguishing children’s experiences of the workforce. In Agnès Thiercé’s study of adolescence, she briefly explores how working-​class girls were the last group integrated into adolescence. Thiercé, Histoire de l’adolescence, 161–​163. While Kathleen Alaimo acknowledges the differences between schools for boys and girls, her argument focuses on adolescence as a whole. Alaimo, “Adolescence in the Popular Milieu.” Heywood alludes to the difference in education for girls and boys, but not so much their actual experience in the workforce, Colin Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-​Century France, 111–​112, 211. In a later article, he focuses on gender and work, but prior to the Third Republic. Colin Heywood, “On Learning Gender Roles during Childhood in Nineteenth-​Century France,” French History 5, no. 4 (1991): 451–​466 3. In addition to the sources cited in the following three notes, see also Helen Harden Chenut, The Fabric of Gender: Working-​Class Culture in Third Republic France (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005); Nancy L. Green, Ready to Wear, Ready to Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997); Schweitzer, Les femmes ont toujours travaillé; Laura Lee Downs, Manufacturing Inequality: Gender Division in the French and British Metalworking Industries (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); Offen, Debating the Woman Question; Patricia Tilburg, Working Girls: Sex, Taste, and Reform in the Parisian Garment Trades, 1880–​1919 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) 4. Judith G. Coffin, The Politics of Women’s Work: The Paris Garment Trades, 1750–​1915 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 8; Scott, “La Travailleuse,” 421 5. Accampo, “Gender, Social Policy, and the Third Republic,” 6–​9 6. Stewart, Women, Work, and the French State, 9 7. Stewart, Women, Work, and the French State, 5 8. Michelle Perrot, Les femmes ou les silences de l’histoire (Paris: Flammarion, 1998), 194; Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott, Women, Work, and Family, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1987), 106–​123 9. See Rogers, From the Salon; Isabelle Bricard, Saintes ou pouliches: L’éducation des jeunes filles au XIXe siècle (Paris: France Loisirs, 1985) 10. According to the inspection reports, for most of the 1880s, boys outnumbered girls in the workforce, although the difference decreased. After the 1892 law, the number of children counted overall increased significantly, perhaps because the inspection corps was more organized. The 1887 report lists 6,898 boys and 5,313 girls between the ages of twelve to fifteen and 3,077 boys and 2,393 girls aged fifteen to sixteen, alongside 11,170 young women under the age of twenty-​one. The 1896 report recorded 172 boys and 116 girls between twelve to thirteen, 12,570 boys and 12,841 girls in the thirteen to sixteen range, and 6,907 boys and 7,522 girls between the ages of sixteen to eighteen. AN, F 12 4730, Rapport de l’Inspecteur divisionnaire de la 1ère Con sur l’application des lois du 9 Septembre 1848 et 19 Mai 1874 dans le département de la Seine, Exercice de 1887; Ministère de commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des

200  Notes to pages 101–106 télégraphes: Direction du travail et de l’industrie; Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1896 des lois réglementant le travail (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1897), 5 11. Perrot, Les femmes, 121 12. Gréard, L’enseignement primaire à Paris, 277 13. Gréard, L’enseignement primaire à Paris, 317 14. In a similar survey from Weimar Germany, young German seamstresses also remarked on the feminine nature of their work. Benninghaus, “In Their Own Words,” 168 15. John W. Shaffer, “Family, Class, and Young Women: Occupational Expectations in Nineteenth-​Century Paris,” Journal of Family History 3, no. 1 (Spring 1978): 72 16. Shaffer, “Family, Class, and Young Women,” 64 17. Gréard, L’enseignement primaire à Paris, 293 18. Shaffer, “Family, Class, and Young Women,” 65 19. Léon Durassier, L’École Professionnelle des Ternes pour jeunes filles: 22 bis, rue Bayen (XVIIe arrondissement). Extrait du bulletin de la société de protection des apprentis et enfants employés dans les manufactures (Paris: Imprimerie et Librairie Centrales des Chemins de Fer, Imprimerie Chaix, 1889), 6 20. Gréard, L’enseignement primaire à Paris, 317 21. Tilly and Scott, Women, Work, and Family, 5 22. AN, F 12 4731, Letter, Gustave Maurice to the Ministre de l’Agriculture et du Commerce, May 8, 1876 23. Gréard, L’enseignement primaire à Paris, 277 24. For more on women’s entry into traditionally masculine industries, see Downs, Manufacturing Inequality, 79–​81 25. Fénelon Gibon, Employées et ouvrières: Conditions d’admission et d’apprentissage. Emplois, traitements, salaires, etc. (Lyon: Librairie Emmanuel Vitte, 1906), 207 26. Gibon, Employées et ouvrières, 209 27. Gibon, Employées et ouvrières, 208 28. Gibon, Employées et ouvrières, 209 29. Gibon references Edmond Drumont and sprinkles in references to Jews and Masons. Karen Offen has similarly noticed these tendencies in other aspects of Gibon’s writing. Offen, Debating the Woman Question, 69–​70 30. Jacques Alary, Le travail de la femme dans l’imprimerie typographique, ses conséquences physiques et morales (Paris: C. Marpon & E. Flammarion, Éditeurs, 1883), 9–​10 31. Alary, Le Travail de la femme, 17 32. “Décret du 13 mai 1893 relatif à l’emploi des enfants, des filles mineures et des femmes aux travaux dangereux, insalubres, excédant les forces ou contraires à la moralité,” Bulletin de l’inspection du travail 1 (1893): 19 33. Accampo, “Gender, Social Policy, and the Third Republic,” 2–​3. Stewart argues that by regulating formal industry, the labor laws also pushed women into more informal forms of industry and into “lower paying secondary labour markets,” Stewart, Women, Work, and the French State, 14 34. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Mlle Langlois, inspectrice départementale to the inspecter divisionnaire, December 18, 1913

Notes to pages 107–112  201 35. AN, F 22 453, Letter, A. Métin, Ministre du Travail de la Prévoyance Sociale to Boulisset, Inspecteur divisionnaire du travail, December 16, 1913 36. APP, DA 97, Préfecture de Police, 2e Division, 4e Bureau, Rapports annuels des commissions locales du département de la Seine pour l’exercice 1882, XI: Folie-​ Méricourt, Commission Locale n. 19 (Paris: Imprimerie Chaix, 1883), 100 37. Coffin, Politics of Women’s Work, 126; Green, Ready to Wear, 83 38. AN, F 12 4730, Rapport de l’inspection divisionnaire du travail des enfants et des filles mineurs employés dans l’industrie du dépt de la Seine, sur la situation du service au 31 Décembre 1885 39. République Française, Département de la Seine, prefecture de la police, Rapport sur l’application des lois relatives au travail dans l’industrie en 1891 & 1892 (Paris: Imprimerie Chaix, 1893), 37. Mary Lynn Stewart suggests too that the overly legalistic language of these posters was off-​putting for workers. Stewart, Women, Work, and the French State, 84 40. Ministère de commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes: Direction du travail et de l’industrie, Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1901 des lois réglementant le travail (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1902), 2 41. Ministère de commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes: Direction du travail et de l’industrie, Rapports sur l’application pendant l’année 1902 des lois réglementant le travail (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1903), 5 42. Coffin, Politics of Women’s Work, 116 43. Ministère du travail et de la prévoyance sociale. Rapports sur l’application des lois réglementant le travail en 1907 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1908), 2. See Green, The Pletzl of Paris for more on Jewish workers in the garment industry 44. ADP, Vbis10I5 7, Records of 17e Commission Locale, May 2, 1881 45. AN, F 12 4730, Exercice de 1888. Rapport de M Laporte, Inspecteur divisionnaire de la 1er Circonscription 46. Ministère de commerce, de l’industrie, des postes et des télégraphes. Direction du travail et de l’industrie, Rapports sur l’application des lois réglementant le travail en 1906 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1907), 9 47. Accampo, “Gender and the Politics of Social Reform,” 9 48. AN, F 12 4730, Exercice de 1888 49. Gibon, Employées et ouvrières, 293 50. Gréard, L’enseignement primaire à Paris, 287 51. Gréard, L’enseignement primaire à Paris, 297 52. AN, F 17 12537, Société Rue de la Chapelle, C de Montmahon to Directeur de l’Instruction Primaire, February 7, 1884 53. L’apprentissage dans les professions féminines ([Paris]: L’ordre dans la maison, June 1914), [1] 54. CEDIAS, 14 888 V12, Caroline Milhaud, L’ouvrière en France: Sa condition présente—​ Les réformes nécessaires (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1907), 50–​51 55. L’Apprentissage dans les professions féminines, [4]‌ 56. A Protestant organization run by a woman named Élisa Lemonnier opened the first professional school for girls in France in Paris in 1862. Rapport de la Commission sur

202  Notes to pages 112–115 les Écoles professionnelles des femmes. École Élisa Lemonnier. Adopté dans la tenue du 14 avril, 1869 57. ADP, 3352 W 25, P. Laverge, Les écoles et les œuvres municipales d’enseignement, 1871–​ 1900 (Paris: Société anonyme de publications périodiques, 1900) 58. ADP, 3352 W 25, Monographie de l’École Municipale Professionnelle, Rue Fondary, 13 59. AN, F 17 14364, École Municipale Professionnelle de Jeunes Filles, 7, Rue de Poitou, “But de l’École” 60. ADP, 3352 W 25, Monographie, Rue Fondary, 13 61. ADP, 3352 W 25, Monographie, Rue Fondary, 15 62. ADP, 3352 W 25, Monographie, Rue Fondary, 21 63. AN, F 17 14364, Programme de l’enseignement de l’École Estienne adopté par le conseil de surveillance (Paris: Imprimerie de l’École Estienne, 1891), 1–​8 64. AN, F 17 14364, “But de l’École,” 13 65. Tracy Steffes argues that by setting unique programs for boys and girls, vocational schools in the United States were “active agents” in creating gender divisions in the labor market. Tracy Steffes, School, State & Society: A New Education to Govern Modern America, 1890–​1940 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 187 66. Clark, Schooling the Daughters, 154 67. CEDIAS, 14 888 V12, Milhaud, L’ouvrière en France, 54 68. AN, 14364, École Municipale Professionnelle & Ménagère de Jeunes Filles, Rue de la Tombe-​Issoire, Élèves sorties dans le courant de l’année 1894–​95 et élèves sorties à la fin de leur apprentissage en juillet 1895 69. Clare Crowston, “An Industrious Revolution in Late Seventeenth-​Century Paris: New Vocational Training for Adolescent Girls and the Creation of Female Labor Markets,” in Secret Gardens, Satanic Mills: Placing Girls in European History, 1750–​1960, ed. Mary Jo Maynes, Birgitte Søland, and Christina Benninghaus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 72 70. On schooling see, for example, Sarah Curtis, Educating the Faithful: Religion, Schooling, and Society in Nineteenth-​Century France (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000) 71. As Caroline Ford has argued, women’s participation in religious life and religiosity continued to be a key component of femininity in modern Europe. Caroline Ford, “Religion and Popular Culture in Modern Europe,” The Journal of Modern History 65, no. 1 (March 1993): 154 72. Gérard Cholvy and Yves-​Marie Hilaire argue that the laws limiting the role of clerics in schools were the basis of the “laic” ideology. Gérard Cholvy and Yves-​ Marie Hilaire, Histoire religieuse de la France, 1880–​1914: Églises-​État: le discordât (Toulouse: Éditions Privat, 2000), 66. The regulation of the ouvroirs suggests however that the Republic also devoted considerable efforts to clamping down on orders beyond those focused on teaching. I have argued elsewhere that laicization drove the creation of the welfare state. Sachs, “When the Republic” 73. Rebecca Rogers, “Quelles écoles professionnelles pour les jeunes filles pauvres? Débats et réalisations en Algérie et en France métropolitaine (années 1860),” Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle 55, no. 2 (2017): 109–​123

Notes to pages 115–119  203 74. Sachs, “When the Republic,” 429–​430 75. Alexandre Fleurquin, Le travail dans les ouvroirs de Paris, thèse pour le doctorat (Paris: Jouvet et Boyer, 1899), 24 76. Département de la Seine, Rapports Annuels des Commissions, 55 77. Although most of these women were technically “sisters,” I use “nun” and “sister” interchangeably 78. ADP, D3U6 93, Rapport à M. André, Juge d’Instruction. Signed Paris March 25, 1904, 8 79. Weissbach, Child Labor Reform, 186 80. Rapport présenté à M. le Préfet de Police par M. M. les Membres de la Commission Départementale Supérieure sur l’application des lois du 19 Mai 1874 relative au travail des enfants employés dans l’industrie et du 9 Septembre 1848 sur les heures du travail des adultes. 1887 (Paris: Imprimerie Chaix, 1888), 27 81. AN, F 12 4730, Rapport de l’Inspection divisionnaire du travail des enfants et des filles mineurs employés dans l’industrie du dépt de la Seine, sur la situation du service au 31 Décembre 1885 82. Léon Boizet, Le travail et l’application des lois ouvrières dans les établissements de bienfaisance privés (Bordeaux: Y. Cadoret, Imprimeur de l’Universités 1908), 12 83. “Paris, 2 Novembre 1892: Loi sur le travail des enfants, des filles mineures, et des femmes dans les établissements industriels,” Journal officiel de la République française 24, no. 298 (November 2 & 3, 1892): 1 84. Christian Sorrel, La Républican contre les congrégations: Histoire d’une passion française (1899–​1914) (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2003), 50 85. Sorrel, La République contre les congrégations, 53 86. Cholvy and Hilaire, Histoire religieuse, 107 87. Accampo, “Gender, Social Policy, and the Third Republic,” 10; Zancarini-​Fournel, “Archéologie de la loi,” 88–​89 88. Linda Clark, “Bringing Feminine Qualities into the Public Sphere: The Third Republic’s Appointment of Women Inspectors,” in Gender and The Politics of Social Reform in France, 1870–​1914, ed. Elinor Accampo, Rachel Ginnis Fuchs, and Mary Lynn Stewart (Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 142 89. Boizet, Le travail, 151 90. Sachs, “When the Republic,” 428 91. Alain Boyer, “Avant-​Propos,” 7 92. In their reports, the inspectors had to respond to a series of questions, asking them to provide information about the nature of industry in these orders, whether this production competed with private industry, the number of individuals involved, whether the order was observing the work laws, and how the members of the order behaved toward the inspector. Although the responses include a range of orders, including Trappist monks brewing beer, the majority concern female orders. The labor inspector then sent a recommendation to the Minister of Worship. AN 22 336 93. AN, F 22 336, E de Freidberg, Inspecteur départemental to Inspecteur Divisionnaire, August 26, 1902

204  Notes to pages 119–124 94. AN, F 22 336, Rapport sur la Congrégation des Sœurs dite: Servantes du St Cœur de Mairie, Bourceret, L’inspecteur départemental du travail, June 14, 1903 95. Sachs, “When the Republic,” 440–​444 96. AN, F 22 336, Rapport sur la Congrégation des Sœurs dite: Servantes du St Cœur de Mairie, Bourceret, L’inspecteur départemental du travail, June 14, 1903, 16 97. AN, F 22 336, Rapport sur la Congrégation des Sœurs dite: Servantes du St Cœur de Mairie, Bourceret, 7 98. AN, F 22 336, Rapport sur la Congrégation des Sœurs dite: Servantes du St Cœur de Mairie, Bourceret, 15 99. See for instance, AN, F 22 336, E. Meurdra, Inspecteur départemental to Inspecteur divisionnaire August 22, 1902 100. Curtis, Educating the Faithful, 92–​93 101. ADP, DV 67, États des Établissements Congréganistes, Mairie de Panthéon, 1924 102. ACC, École de Travail (Fondation Bischoffsheim), Compte rendu général, 1872–​ 1897 (Paris: Imprimerie Maréchal et Montorier, 1897); AN, F 17 12530, Pension de Jeunes Orphelines, Rue de Billettes, 16, Rapport de 1872 (Paris: Typographie de Ch. Meyrueis, 1873)

Chapter 6 1. APP, DB 92, Jean de Bonnefon, “Le Travail des Enfants,” Le Journal (April 2, 1901) 2. Hugh Cunningham describes this process as the creation of a “child labour market,” Cunningham, “The Decline of Child Labour,” 412–​413 3. A number of historians of Paris have written about the sociability within Parisian neighborhoods. Historians also debate whether migration from the provinces to Paris along with Haussmannization led to a decline of this sociability. For the eighteenth century, see David Garrioch, Neighbourhood and Community in Paris, 1740–​1790 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Farge, La vie fragile. For Paris prior to the Third Republic, see Chevalier, Classes laborieuses; Ratcliffe and Piette, Vivre la Ville; John Merriman, At the Margins of City Life: Explorations on the French Urban Frontier, 1815–​1851 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Gould, Insurgent Identities. This chapter takes these arguments forward into the Third Republic. Influenced by the work of historians of eighteenth-​century Paris, it explores the basic, daily interactions that shaped working-​class society 4. Leonard Pitt, Paris Postcards: The Golden Age (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2009) 5. The BHVP has collected thousands of postcards of Parisian neighborhoods and landmarks. They have recently made this collection available online 6. See also Naomi Schor, “ ‘Cartes Postales’: Representing Paris 1900,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 2 (1992): 188–​244 for more on the role of these postcards in representing Belle Époque Paris. I agree with Schor that these postcards provide a taxonomy of modern Paris, but she is adamant that the postcards are of leisure, “a city where

Notes to pages 124–135  205 no one is ever caught working” (222). A close reading of the postcards of the outer neighborhoods shows work woven into the street scenes she describes 7. Dominique Kalifa, “‘Belle Époque’: Invention et usages d’un chrononyme,” Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle 52, no. 1 (2016): 121–​124 8. These postcards capture an alternative boulevard culture to Vanessa Schwartz’s scenes of urban spectacle. Like the newspapers she describes, they disseminated scenes of the capital, but at its most banal. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities, 5 9. Émile Zola, Carnets d’enquêtes: Une ethnographie inédite de la France (Paris: Plon, 1986), 364 10. Zola, Carnets d’enquêtes, 365 11. Divisional inspector Laporte claimed in 1900 that the inspectorate had attempted to regulate these children after 1892, but the Council of State had ruled that this work was domestic. AN, F 22 471, Compte rendu des séances de la commission départementale du travail dans l’industrie: Procès-​Verbaux des séances de l’année 1900 (Paris; Imprimerie Chaix, 1900), 3 12. “Loi du 30 avril 1909 relative aux travaux interdits aux femmes et aux enfants employés dans les établissements commerciaux,” Bulletin de l’inspection du travail et de l’hygiène industrielle 17 (1909): 37 13. AN, F 12 4730, Rapport de l’Inspection divisionnaire du travail des enfants et des filles mineurs employés dans l’industrie du dépt de la Seine, sur la situation du service au 31 Décembre 1885 14. AN, F 12 4730, Rapport de l’Inspecteur divisionnaire du travail des enfants et des filles mineurs employés dans l’industrie du département de la Seine sur la situation du Service au 31 Décembre 1881, E Laporte 15. AN, F 22 440, Procès-​Verbal, Surcharge d’enfant, Commissariat de Police du Quartier de l’Arsenal, September 28, 1908 16. See Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-​ Century France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981) 17. AN, F 22 440, Report, Gardien de la paix Bachmann to Yendt, Salpêtrière, September 25, 1909 18. Gaston Guiraud, P’tite Gueule (Paris: Bibliothèque Charpentier, 1938), 3, 33 19. For eighteenth-​ century working-​ class fashion see Daniel Roche, The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the 18th Century, trans. Marie Evans (Lemington Spa: Berg, 1987), 160–​194 20. Louis-​Ferdinand Céline, Mort à crédit (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), 110. The ellipses are Céline’s. Of these authors, Céline had the most significant literary career, but has also achieved notoriety for his collaborationist and anti-​Semitic writings during World War II 21. Eugène Dabit, Faubourgs de Paris (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), 27. Dabit, although less famous now, achieved success as an author as part of a proletarian literature movement 22. Albert Simonin, Confessions d’un enfant de La Chapelle: Le Faubourg (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), 37 23. See Barrows, Distorting Mirrors

206  Notes to pages 135–145 24. “500 cartes postales,” Le photographe: Organe des syndicats et des photographes professionnels 4, no. 4 (January 26, 1913): 15 25. Simonin, Confessions, 37 26. When looking at the family economy as a force pushing children into the workforce, most historians focus on the first half of the nineteenth century when children participated directly in industrial production. But working-​ class families continued to rely on children’s labor even if the nature of this labor evolved. Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-​Century France, 107–​112; Nardinelli, Child Labor, 36–​64. Jane Humphries uses working-​class autobiographies to examine the period between 1790 and 1878 in Britain to show that the family economy continued to remain important in determining when and how children began work, Humphries, Childhood and Child Labour 27. Maurice Chevalier, Ma route et mes chansons, vol. 1, La louque (Paris: René Julliard, 1972), 9 28. Eliza Ferguson, “The Cosmos of the Paris Apartment,” 63 29. Céline, Mort à crédit, 85 30. AN, F 12 4731, Chambre Syndicale des Emballeurs, February, 1877 31. René Michaud, J’avais vingt ans: Un jeune ouvrier au début du siècle (Paris: Éditions syndicalistes, 1967), 20 32. Michaud, J’avais vingt ans, 40 33. G. Cahen, “L’ouvrière en chambre à Paris,” Revue Bleue (May 19, 1906): 638 34. In the countryside, children pretty much uniformly entered the workforce gradually, or in Colin Heywood’s words, were “broken in gently to their working lives.” Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-​Century France, 60 35. René Michaud, J’avais vingt ans, 53 36. According to nineteenth-​century jurist, Charles Velter, children who managed to obtain their certificate at twelve had access to more skilled jobs. Charles Velter, De l’âge d’admission et de la durée du travail des enfants dans l’industrie: Thèse pour doctorat (Paris: Imprimerie Jouve, 1903), 106 37. Guiraud, P’tite Gueule, 30 38. Robert Francotte, Une vie de militant communiste (Paris: Le Pavillon, 1973), 57–​58 39. Poulaille, Les damnés, 384 40. See Chevalier, Classes laborieuses; Lynch, Family, Class, and Ideology; Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-​Century France, 183–​190 41. Gérard Jacquement, Belleville au XIXe siècle: Du Faubourg à la ville (Paris: Éditions de EHESS, 1984), 232, 248–​249, 270–​271 42. Poulaille, Les damnés, 391 43. Michaud, J’avais vingt ans, 59–​64 44. Poulaille, Les damnés, 393 45. Francotte, Une vie, 58 46. Lucien Cancouët, Mémoires d’un authentique prolétaire (Paris: Vendémiaire, 2011), 59 47. Cancouët, Mémoires, 65 48. Poulaille, Les damnés, 385; Francotte, Une vie, 58; Cancouët, Mémoires, 65 49. Simonin, Confessions, 173

Notes to pages 145–149  207 50. Cancouët, Mémoires, 57 51. Yvette Guilbert, La chanson de ma vie (mes mémoires) (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1927), 4

Chapter 7 1. Jean-​Vincent Pioli, Pain sans chocolat: Un enfant corse à Paris, 1930–​ 1945 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992), 17 2. Pioli, Pain sans chocolat, 16 3. Pioli, Pain sans chocolat, 29 4. Pioli, Pain sans chocolat, 58 5. Leonard V. Smith, Stéphane Audoin-​Rouzeau, and Annette Becker, France and the Great War, trans. Helen McPhail (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 96; Marie-​Monique Huss, “Pronatalism in the Inter-​War Period in France,” Journal of Contemporary History 25, no. 1 (1990): 39 6. Axelle Brodiez-​Dolino, “Entre social et sanitaire: Les politiques de lutte contre la pauvreté-​précarité en France au XXe siècle,” Le Mouvement Social 242, no. 1 (2013): 20–​22; Stéphane Henry, “La médecine libérale et le dispensaire d’hygiène sociale ou l’histoire d’une délicate cohabitation pour vaincre la tuberculose (1916–​1939),” Revue d’histoire de la protection sociale 3, no. 1 (2010): 55–​70. The Republic also instituted policies to promote reproduction, such as banning abortion and creating family allowances. See among others: Paul Dutton, Origins of the French Welfare State: The Struggle for Social Reform in France, 1914–​1947 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Susan Pedersen, Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914–​1945 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Nimisha Barton, Reproductive Citizens: Gender, Immigration, and the State in Modern France, 1880–​1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020); Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917–​1927 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Karen Offen, “Body Politics: Women, Work and the Politics of Motherhood in France, 1920–​1950,” in Maternity and Gender Policies Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s–​1950s, ed. Gisela Bock and Pat Thane (London: Routledge, 1994), 138–​159 7. Cholvy, Histoire des organisations, ch. 3; Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land, ch. 2; Richard Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France (London: The Macmillan Press, 1981), 196–​198 8. Cholvy, Histoire des organisations, ch. 5; Christian Guérin, L’Utopie scouts de France: Histoire d’une identité collective, catholique et sociale, 1920–​ 1995 (Paris: Fayard, 1997) 9. Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land, ch. 3, ch. 6 10. Pascal Ory, La belle illusion (Paris: Plon, 1994), 762–​787

208  Notes to pages 149–152 11. Susan B. Whitney, Mobilizing Youth: Communists and Catholics in Interwar France (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 13 12. See Whitney, Mobilizing Youth; Cholvy, Histoire des organisations; Samuel Kalman, “Faisceau Visions of Physical and Moral Transformation and the Cult of Youth in Inter-​War France,” European History Quarterly 33, no. 3 (2003): 343–​366 13. Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land; Laura Lee Downs, “ ‘Each and every one of you must become a chef’: Toward a Social Politics of Working-​Class Childhood on the Extreme Right in 1930s France,” Journal of Modern History 81, no. 1 (2009): 1–​44 14. Miranda Sachs, “ ‘But the Child is Flighty, Playful, Curious’: Working-​Class Boyhood and the Policing of Play,” Historical Reflections/​Réflexions Historiques 45, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 7–​27 15. Prost, Republican Identities, 221 16. Whitney, Mobilizing Youth, 11 17. AN, F 22 453, Le Ministre du Travail et de la Prévoyance Sociale à l’honneur de communiquer la note ci-​dessous à M. Boulisset, Inspecteur divisionnaire pour examen et avis, June 10, 1915 18. AN, F 22 453, Letter, M. Lavoisier, inspecteur départemental du travail to Monsieur l’Inspecteur divisionnaire. Clichy, July 5, 1915 19. Stéphane Audoin-​Rouzeau, “Children and the Primary School of France, 1914–​ 1918,” in State, Society, and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War, ed. John Horne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 39 20. Manon Pignot, Allons enfants de la patrie: Génération grande guerre (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2012), 75 21. Audoin-​Rouzeau, “Children and the Primary School,” 51 22. Patrick Fridenson, “The Impact of the First World War on French Workers,” in The Upheaval of War: Family, Work and Welfare in Europe, 1914–​1918, ed. Richard Wall and Jay Winter (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 238 23. Manon Pignot, “French Boys and Girls in the Great War: Gender and the History of Children’s Experiences, 1914–​1918,” in Gender and the First World War, ed. Christa Hämmerle, Oswald Überegger, and Birgitta Bader Zaar (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 168 24. Jules Combarieu, Les jeunes filles françaises et la guerre (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1916), 2 25. Françoise Dolto, Correspondance, vol. 1, 1913–​1938, ed. Colette Percheminier (Paris: Hatier, 1991) 26. Elisabeth Lacoin, Zaza, 1907–​1929: Amie de Simone de Beauvoir. Correspondance et Carnets de Elisabeth Lacoin (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004), 20 27. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Ministre de l’Instruction publique et des Beaux-​Arts to Monsieur le Ministre du Travail et de la Prévoyance Sociale, December 11, 1919 28. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Directeur des Anciens Établissements Grouvelle et Arquembourg to Ministre du Travail, April 17, 1917; G. Debesson, Le chauffage des habitations: Étude théorique et pratique des procédés et appareils employés pour le chauffage des édifices, des maisons, des appartements, 2nd ed. (Paris: Dunod, 1920), 653

Notes to pages 152–154  209 29. AN, F 22 453, Circulaire, Le Ministre du Travail et de la Prévoyance Sociale à Messieurs les Inspecteurs divisionnaires du travail, December 7, 1917 30. Pamela Horn, “The Employment of Elementary Schoolchildren in Agriculture, 1914–​ 1918,” History of Education 12, no. 3 (1983): 203 31. Manon Pignot, L’appel de la guerre. Des adolescents au combat, 1914–​ 1918 (Paris: Anamosa, 2019) 32. AN, F 22 453, Le Ministre de l’Intérieur et Le Ministre du Travail & de la Prévoyance Sociale à Messieurs les Préfets (en communication aux Inspecteurs divisionnaires du Travail), September 20, 1918 33. Stéphane Audoin-​Rouzeau, La guerre des enfants, 1914–​ 1918: Essai d’histoire culturelle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1993), 16–​17. These postcards also had a pronatalist message. See Marie-​Monique Huss, “Pronatalism and the Popular Ideology of the Child in Wartime France: The Evidence of the Picture Postcard,” in The Upheaval of War: Family, Work and Welfare in Europe, 1914–​1918, ed. Richard Wall and Jay Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 329–​368 34. See Guillaume de Syon, “The Child in the Flying Machine: Childhood and Aviation in the First World War,” in Children and War: A Historical Anthology, ed. James Marten and Robert Coles (New York: NYU Press, 2002), 116–​134 35. Smith, France and the Great War, 109 36. Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land, 112. See also Anne-​Marie Châtelet, “A Breath of Fresh Air: Open Air Schools in Europe,” in Designing Modern Childhoods: History, Space, and the Material Culture of Children, ed. Marta Gutman and Ning de Coninck-​ Smith (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 118–​122 37. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Mme Beaumont, 75 Rue Compans, Paris 19e, to Monsieur le Président de la République, February 21, 1923 38. Much of the literature on the working classes during this period focuses on organized labor. Here, I provide a brief overview of the conditions of work. For more on organized labor, see Xavier Vigna, Histoire des ouvriers en France au XXe siècle (Paris: Éditions Perrin, 2012) 39. Thierry Bonzon, “The Labor Market and the Industrial Mobilization of 1915–​1917,” in Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin, 1914–​1919, vol. 1, ed. Jay Winter and Jean-​Louis Robert (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 167 40. Horne, Labour at War, 5 41. Noiriel, Les ouvriers, 124 42. Noiriel, Les ouvriers, 133 43. Patrick Fridenson, “Automobile Workers in France and Their Work, 1914–​83,” in Work in France: Representations, Meaning, Organization, and Practice, ed. Steven Laurence Kaplan and Cynthia J. Koepp (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 516. As some historians have shown, some people within the labor movement supported the more rationalized organization of work. Downs, Manufacturing Inequality, 248 44. Noiriel, Les ouvriers, 129 45. Whitney, Mobilizing Youth, 11

210  Notes to pages 154–157 46. When the Departmental Office for Job Placements surveyed young people between the ages of thirteen and twenty in certain Parisian neighborhoods, it found that almost all the unemployed youths had either never worked or had only completed an apprenticeship. AN, F 22 453, Préfecture de la Seine, Bulletin Officiel de la Commission administrative des Comités de patronage d’apprentis du Département de la Seine no. 7 (October–​December 1935): 5 47. Direction de la statistique générale et de la documentation, Annuaire statistique—​ 1936 52 (1937): 8 48. Simonin, Confessions d’un enfant, 46 49. Simonin, Confessions d’un enfant, 150 50. AN, F 22 491, Report on accident from Chaillé to Monsieur l’inspecteur divisionnaire, January 4, 1935 51. ADP, 3053W 353, “Procès-​Verbal de déclaration d’accident du travail,” Armand Dacier, November 28, 1934 52. AN, F 22 551, Autourville, Chambre Syndicale des Ouvriers et Ouvrières Confiseurs et Auxiliaires des deux Sexes to Ministre du Travail, de l’Hygiène, September 27, 1924 53. Isabelle Leray, “La reduction du temps de travail pour tous: La loi du 23 avril 1919 sur les huit heures,” in Deux siècles de droit du travail: l’histoire par les lois, ed. Jean Pierre Le Crom (Paris: Les Éditions de l’Atelier, 1998), 117 54. Vigna, Histoire des ouvriers, 40 55. F 22 451, Ministre du travail, de l’hygiène, de l’assistance et de la prévoyance sociales, Circulaire du 27 Janvier, 1927, to Messieurs les Inspecteurs divisionnaires du travail, Messieurs les Ingénieurs en chef des Mines 56. There is a copious literature on interwar internationalism. For its intersection with childhood, see Emily Baughan, Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism and the British Empire, 1915–​1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021); Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–​1924 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), ch. 5; Tara Zahra, The Lost Children (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), ch. 1 57. Joëlle Droux and Matasci Damiano, “La jeunesse en crise: Acteurs et projets transnationaux face au problème du chômage des jeunes durant l’Entre-​ deux-​ guerres,” Revue d’histoire de la protection sociale 5, no. 1 (2012): 49–​50 58. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Le Ministre du Travail to Monsieur le Sous-​Secrétaire d’État des Postes et Télégraphes. (Direction du Personnel et de la Comptabilité), December 18, 1922 59. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Carmichael, Président des Syndicats Patronaux des Industries Textiles en France to Monsieur le Ministre du Travail, October 20, 1920 60. Droux, “La jeunesse en crise,” 55 61. “Loi modifiant la loi du 28 mars 1882 relative à l’obligation de l’enseignement primaire,” Journal official de la république française: Lois et décrets 78, no. 189 (August 13, 1936): 8706 62. Charlot and Figeat, Histoire de la formation, 269 63. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Madame Thyerry, 21 Rue Mueller, Paris XVIII to Monsier le Ministre [du Travail], September 1, 1937

Notes to pages 157–161  211 64. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Deputy André Cointreau to Ministre du Travail, September 25, 1937 65. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Le Ministre da la Santé Publique to Monsieur le Ministre du Travail, November 29, 1937 66. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Le Ministre du Travail to Monsieur le Ministre de la Santé Publique, February 11, 1938 67. AN, F 22 453, Letter, Madame V. Thibault to Monsieur le Ministre du Travail, October 6, 1937; AN, F 22 453, Letter, Marcel Bernard, Conseiller d’État, Directeur Général du Travail to Madame Vve Thibault, November 25, 1937 68. CEDIAS, 31 533 V12, Celine Lhotte, Elisabeth Dupeyrat, Les enquêtes de la JOCF: Révélations sur la santé des jeunes travailleuses (Paris: Éditions Spes, 1936), 55 69. “Loi relative à l’organisation de l’enseignement technique industriel et commercial,” Journal officiel de la République Française 51, no. 201 (July 27, 1919), 7746 70. “Loi relative à l’organisation de l’enseignement technique,” 7747 71. Alaimo, “Adolescence in the Popular Milieu,” 361 72. Lembré, Histoire de l’enseignement, 59 73. Lembré, Histoire de l’enseignement, 57 74. As Charlot and Figeat emphasize, the introduction of mass technical education was “historically significant.” Charlot and Figeat, Histoire de la formation, 249 75. ADP, 2ETP/​2/​5/​10 1, Chambre des Députés, Session de 1917, Annexe au procès-​ verbal de la séance du 13 mars 1917: Projet de loi sur l’éducation des adolescents, 5 76. Lembré, Histoire de la formation, 59 77. Luc, Condette, and Verneuil, Histoire de l’enseignement, 165 78. CEDIAS, 31 770 V8, Apprentissage et Chômage. Compte rendu des travaux de la Troisième Conférence Patronage de l’Apprentissage. (Paris 6 et 7 Mai 1936) (Paris, Library du Recueil Sirey, 1936), 31 79. Lembré, Histoire de l’enseignement, 60–​62 80. Fridenson, “Automobile Workers,” 519 81. Charlot and Figeat, Histoire de la formation, 253 82. AN, F 17 17936, Office d’orientation professionnelle du XIe arrondissement, Siège social: Mairie du XIme Arrondt, Exercise 1937: Rapport moral, 3 83. AN, F 22 453, Préfecture de la Seine, Bulletin Officiel, 5 84. Lembré, Histoire de l’enseignement, 68–​69 85. AN, F 17, 17936, Comité de Patronage des Apprentis, Office d’Orientation Professionnelle, Sample “Fiche scolaire d’orientation” 86. AN, F 17 17936, Application du Décret du 26 Septembre 1922. Offices d’orientation professionnelle sollicitant une subvention de l’état. Département de la Seine. Ville de Paris, 4e arrondissement. March 2, 1939 87. AN, F 17 17936, Application du Décret du 26 Septembre 1922. Office d’Orientation Professionnelle sollicitant une subvention de l’état. Comité de Patronage des Apprentis et Office d’Orientation professionnelle du XIe Arr. February 16, 1938 88. Richard Gillespie, Manufacturing Knowledge: A History of the Hawthorne Experiments (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993)

212  Notes to pages 161–165 89. ADP 2ETP/​2/​5/​30/​1, Conseil Supérieur, L’orientation professionnelle, signed H. Luc, Directeur-​adjoint de l’Ens. Technique 90. Lembré, Histoire de l’enseignement, 69 91. Sandrine Leroy and Catherine Omnès, “La chambre de commerce de Paris et les ateliers-​écoles (1883–​1939),” in Études thématiques, vol. 2, La chambre de commerce et de l’industrie de Paris (1803–​2003), ed. Paul Lenormand (Geneva: Libraire Droz, 2008), 159 92. Leroy and Omnès, “La chambre de commerce,” 153 93. Leroy and Omnès, “La chambre de commerce,”160 94. ADP, 2ETP/​2/​5/​30/​1, [Untitled statement on orientation professionnelle by Parisian Chambre de Commerce], December 7, 1928 95. Leroy and Omnès, “La chambre de commerce,” 160 96. ADP, 2ETP/​2/​4/​45/​9, Ateliers-​Écoles d’orientation professionnelle et d’apprentissage de la Chambre de Commerce de Paris. Rapport de M. Schmit, Membre de la Chambre de Commerce de Paris sur la situation matérielle des Ateliers-​Écoles [1934] 97. ADP, 2ETP/​2/​4/​45/​9, Kula, Fondateur de l’Atelier-​École de la Rue des Épinettes, “Deux fléaux aux conséquences incalculables” 98. See Downs, Manufacturing Inequality 99. AN, F 17, 17936, Office d’Orientation professionnelle du 4e Arrondissement, “Généralités sur l’orientation professionnelle des jeunes filles,” Conférence prononcée le 23 Mai 1936 à la Mairie du 4e Arrondissement par Mademoiselle Hélène Bureau, directrice de l’École Sophie Germain, 4–​5 100. ADP, 2ETP/​2/​4/​45/​9, Rapport de M. Schmit, Membre de la Chambre de Commerce de Paris sur la situation matérielle des Ateliers-​Écoles [1934] 101. Prost, Histoire de l’enseignement, 412–​414 102. Ory, La belle illusion, 681 103. Ory, La belle illusion, 679 104. Prost, Histoire de l’enseignement, 418 105. Charlot and Figeat, Histoire de la formation, 288–​290; Henri Aubrun, “L’apprentissage d’un métier,” Le Musée Social 46, no. 6 (June 1939), 148 106. Many of these initiatives continued under Vichy. The documents in AN, F 17, 17936, particularly those related to vocational guidance centers, continue into the 1940s 107. AN, 19760145/​63, Letter, Doctor Heuyer to Ministre de la Santé Publique [1938], 7. The Minister solicited Dr. Heuyer’s letter in response to a report that proposed sterilization as a remedy against delinquency. In his letter, Dr. Heuyer suggested the value of certain forms of positive eugenics, such as genetic counseling, or even sterilization for individuals who violated minors; Fishman, The Battle for Children, 28 108. Fishman, Battle for Children, 26 109. Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 137 110. Loi du 22 juillet 1912, http://​www.tex​tes.just​ice.gouv.fr/​art_​pix/​loi1​912.pdf 111. APP, DA 636, Robert Baffos, Rapport sur le fonctionnement du tribunal pour enfants et adolescents de la Seine pendant l’année 1931 (Melun: Imprimerie Administrative, 1932), 14

Notes to pages 165–167  213 112. AN, 19760145/​63, Service Social de l’Enfance en Danger Moral. Attaché au Tribunal pour Enfants et Adolescents du Département de la Seine, placé sous le haut patronage de M. Le Garde des Sceaux. Reconnu d’utilité publique par décret du 31 Mars 1928. May 31, 1930, 9; APP, DA 636, Baffos, Rapport sur le fonctionnement . . . 1931 (Melun: Imprimerie Administrative, 1932), 13 113. AN, 19760145/​63, Service Social de l’Enfance en Danger Moral. Attaché au Tribunal pour Enfants et Adolescents du Département de la Seine, placé sous le haut patronage de M. Le Garde des Sceaux. Reconnu d’utilité publique par décret du 31 Mars 1928, May 31, 1930, 11 114. For a more complete history of the Service Sociale de l’Enfance en Danger Morale, please refer to the work of Lola Zappi, particularly her dissertation: Zappi, “Le service social en action.” See also Barton, Reproductive Citizens, 114–​122 115. APP, DA 636, Baffos, Rapport sur le fonctionnement . . . 1931 (Melun: Imprimerie Administrative, 1932), 12 116. Fishman, The Battle for Children, 38 117. Pascale Quincy-​Lefebvre, “Une autorité sous tutelle. La justice et le droit de correction des pères sous la Troisième République,” Lien social et Politiques 37 (1997): 104 118. Quincy-​Lefebvre, “Une autorité sous tutelle,” 107 119. Fishman, The Battle for Children, 35–​36 120. APP, DA 636, Le Substitut du Tribunal pour Enfants et Adolescents à Monsieur le Procureur Général à Paris, March 22, 1934, 2–​3 121. Quincy-​Lefebvre, Familles, institutions et déviances, ch. 6. See also Norris, “Reinventing Childhood” for a longer history of child psychology 122. AN, 19760145/​63, Le Service Social de l’Enfance en Danger Moral par Mme Spitzer et Mlle Viellot. (Reproduction of a speech on “La Prophylaxie Mentale” from March 5, 1927), 368 123. Lola Zappi, “Jeunes travailleurs, jeunes consommateurs. Les enquêtes sociales et la place des jeunes au sein des familles de milieux populaires,” Mil neuf cent. Revue d’histoire intellectuelle 35, no. 1 (2017): 90 124. Fishman, Battle for Children, 30 125. See Quincy-​Lefebvre, Familles, institutions et déviances, ch. 6 126. APP, DA 636, Note. De quelques pratiques suivies au TEA dans sa mission de protection, de rééducation et d’orientation de l’Enfance malheureuse ou coupable, 3–​4 127. AN, 19760145/​63, Service Social de l’Enfance en Danger Moral. Reconnu d’utilité publique par décret du 31 Mars 1928. Attaché au Tribunal pour Enfants et Adolescents du Département de la Seine, placé sous le haut patronage de M. Le Garde des Sceaux, April 1, 1928, 31 128. Barton, Reproductive Citizens, 118 129. APP, DA 637, Assemblée Générale de l’Association Amicale des Rapporteurs et Délégués près les Tribunaux pour enfants et adolescents tenue le 9 Décembre 1928 dans la Ière Chambre de la Cour d’Appel sous la présidence de M. Dont-​Guigue, Procureur Général près la Cour d’Appel assisté de M. Le Conseiller Richard,

214  Notes to pages 167–174 Président de l’Association. Rapport sur l’exercice 1927-​ 1928. Présenté par M. Pollissard, Secrétaire général 130. AN, 19760145/​63, Service Social de l’Enfance en Danger Moral. Attaché au Tribunal pour Enfants et Adolescents du Département de la Seine, placé sous le haut patronage de M. Le Garde des Sceaux. Reconnu d’utilité publique par décret du 31 Mars 1928, May 28, 1932, 17 131. AN, F 17 17936, J. Loebnitz [Departmental inspector for technical education], Service Social de l’Enfance en Danger Moral, 19, rue du Pot de Fer, March 18, 1938 132. Lola Zappi, “Une approche morale de la précarité. Les enquêtes des services sociaux dans l’entre-​deux-​guerres,” Les Études Sociales 169, no. 1 (2019): 41 133. Zappi, “Jeunes travailleurs,” 91 134. Barton, Reproductive Citizens, 118 135. AN, 19760145/​63, Le Service Social de l’Enfance en Danger Moral par Mme Spitzer et Mlle Viellot. (Reproduction of a speech on “La Prophylaxie Mentale” from March 5, 1927), 370 136. AN, 19760145/​63, Service Social de l’Enfance en Danger Moral. Attaché au Tribunal pour Enfants et Adolescents du Département de la Seine, placé sous le haut patronage de M. Le Garde des Sceaux. Reconnu d’utilité publique par décret du 31 Mars 1928, May 14, 1936, 27 137. Quincy-​Lefebvre, Familles, institutions et déviances, 348 138. Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land, 210 139. APP, DA 636, Rapport à Monsieur le Ministre de la Justice. Seine: Oeuvre de Préservation et de sauvetage de la femme, Patronage et Protection de la Jeunesse féminine. Mission spéciale, October 18, 1936. Signed M. Breton inspecteur and A. Pardon, inspectrice, 18 140. APP, DA 636, Rapport à Monsieur le Ministre de la Justice, 37 141. APP, DA 636, Rapport à Monsieur le Ministre de la Justice, 6 142. APP, DA 636, Rapport à Monsieur le Ministre de la Justice, 34 143. APP, DA 636, Rapport à Monsieur le Ministre de la Justice, 32 144. Yann Loranz, “La révolte gronde dans les maisons de redressement,” Paris-​Soir (October 1, 1936), 7 145. APP, DA 636, Rapport à Monsieur le Ministre de la Justice, 39 146. For more on the concept of parastate actors, see Laura Lee Downs, “‘And so we Transform a People’: Women’s Social Action and the Reconfiguration of Politics on the Right in France, 1934–​1947,” Past & Present 225, no. 1 (2014): 187–​225; Barton, Reproductive Citizens

Conclusion 1. “Décret du 5 janvier 1909 relatif à l’application à l’Algérie de la législation ouvrière,” Bulletin de l’inspection du travail et de l’hygiène industrielle 17 (1909): 2–​6

Notes to pages 174–175  215 2. David M. Pomfret, Youth and Empire: Trans-​Colonial Childhoods in British and French Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), 187 3. Pomfret, Youth and Empire, ch. 7 4. Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–​1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 94–​102 5. Emmanuelle Saada, Empire’s Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Christina Elizabeth Firpo, The Uprooted: Race, Children, and Imperialism in French Indochina, 1890–​1980 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2016) 6. Pascale Barthélemy, “L’enseignement dans l’Empire colonial français: Une vieille histoire?” Histoire de l’éducation 128 (2010): 14; Kelly Duke Bryant, Education as Politics: Colonial Schooling and Political Debate in Senegal, 1850s–​ 1914 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015), 16 7. Gail P. Kelly, “The Presentation of Indigenous Society in the Schools of French West Africa and Indochina, 1918 to 1938,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 26, no. 3 (1984): 525–​527 8. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize, 78 9. Duke Bryant, Education as Politics, 39 10. Fanny Colonna, “Educating Conformity in French Colonial Algeria,” trans. Barbara Harshav, in Tensions of Empire, ed. Frederick Cooper and Anne Stoler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 350 11. Sarah Walters, “ ‘Child! Now You Are’: Identity Registration, Labor, and the Definition of Childhood in Colonial Tanganyika, 1910–​1950,” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 9, no. 1 (2016): 77 12. Judith Surkis, Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830–​1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019)

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. accidents, work-​related, 28 adolescence, 12–​13, 38, 40–​42, 47, 49, 56, 57–​58, 60–​63, 112, 152, 155–​56, 158–​59, 169–​70 agricultural economy, 4–​5, 8–​9 Alary, Jacques, 104 Albanel, Judge Louis, 67–​68, 77, 86, 91–​92 Amaduble, André, 83 ami, L,’ des enfants, 46 apache, 34, 66–​67, 70 Aphrodite (Louÿs), 16–​17 “apprenticeship crisis,” 32, 40, 46–​48, 51, 62–​63, 66, 69, 110–​11 apprenticeships, 4–​5, 17, 20–​21, 39–​40, 43–​44, 48, 55–​56, 62, 64, 66, 69, 78, 96, 103, 109–​11, 112, 144–​45, 157, 158–​59. See also vocational education artificial flower industry, 107, 154, 168 Astier Law (Placide Astier), 157–​ 59, 162–​63 atelier, 14–​15, 32, 43–​46, 47, 53–​54, 56–​57, 59, 106–​8, 110–​11, 114, 119, 122, 151, 152–​53, 157, 161–​62. See also factories begging, 64–​65, 66–​74, 76–​77, 94–​96, 98 Belle Époque, 31, 40, 86, 123–​24 Belly of Paris, The (Zola), 127–​29 Bernhard, Isaac, 19 Berry, Georges, 72 birthrate, 7, 47, 100, 117, 147–​48, 152, 153–​54, 155, 157–​58, 170 Boulisset, Divisional Inspector, 25, 34–​ 35, 107–​8 Boursy, Examining Magistrate, 82 Brepson, Auguste, 1, 8–​9

brevet de capacité (certificate proving an aptitude to teach), 116–​17 Cahen, G., 139 Camille Sée Law (1880), 10–​11 Cancouët, Lucien, 143–​45 Casque d’Or, 70 Céline, Louis-​Ferdinand, 132–​33, 138–​39 Cerruit, Luigi, 74 certificate of professional aptitude (CAP), 157–​59 Chamber of Commerce, Paris, 161–​62 charitable institutions, 115t, 77–​79, 116, 117, 118–​19, 164. See also ouvroirs Charity for Poor, Young Girls, 79 Charity for the Protection of Young Women (reformatory), 167–​70. See also reform schools Charity of Saint Anne, 42 Chevalier, Maurice, 137–​38, 144–​45 “child” (“le jeune,” “the minor”), 12–​13, 88 child labor laws, 1, 3, 17–​18, 19, 20–​27, 31, 35–​36, 107, 109, 113, 120–​21, 138–​39, 144, 152. See also Maurice, Inspector Gustave 1841, 21–​22 1874, 7, 11, 15, 21–​25, 26, 37, 76, 104, 108–​9, 115, 129–​30, 144, 172–​73 1875 (decree), 37 1885 (decree), 24–​25 1892, 1–​2, 16, 17–​19, 21–​25, 26, 30–​31, 32, 33–​34, 35, 38, 98, 100, 107–​9, 116, 129–​30, 151, 172–​73 1893 (decree), 16, 23–​24, 104 1900 (Millerand law), 17–​18, 21–​22, 23, 31–​32, 38, 70 1936, 155–​56

234 Index child labor laws (cont.) age-​based restrictions in, 3–​4, 7, 21–​24, 149–​50, 151–​52, 171–​72 circumventing, 34–​35 consequences of, 18–​19 employers and, 29–​30 exceptions/​exemptions to, 8–​9, 25–​26, 29, 30–​31, 33, 34–​35, 69–​70, 71–​72, 105–​9, 129–​30, 151–​52, 172–​73 first legislation, 4 limitations of, 122–​23 childhood age of penal majority, 78 colonial, 173–​74 defining, Co.S4 development, 23–​24, 26–​27, 149 fluidity of, 2, 18, 112, 151–​52 gendered, 100–​1 legal definition of, 7–​8 redefining, 17 regulating, 5 before the Third Republic, Co.S1 Third Republic protection of, 1–​2 working-​class, 148–​50, 152, 155, 157, 158–​59, 166, 169–​70, 171–​72 clothing, 102, 114, 131–​34, 136 Code de indigénat (Algeria), 6–​7 collaboration of the crowd (foule), 130–​31 colonialism, 6–​7, 78–​79, 155, 173–​74 colonies de vacances, 147–​48 Combarieu, Jules, 150–​51 commissions rogatoires, 86–​91 complimentary courses, 61 confectionary trades, 154 cours complémentaires. See complimentary courses crime, 5, 47–​48, 64, 65, 66–​69, 71, 73, 74–​ 75, 76–​77, 82, 85, 88, 92–​93. See also delinquency, juvenile Dabit, Eugène, 133–​34 damnés de la terre, Les (Poulaille), 39–​ 40, 141–​42 De l’école des apprentis (On the School for Apprentices, Gréard), 48, 49 De Mourgues, Charles, 29–​31 delinquency, juvenile, 11, 64–​66, 163–​69. See also crime; institutionalization

apprenticeship crisis and, 68–​69 childhood and, 80 defining, 84, 86 disinclination to work and, 96 environment and, 67–​68, 87–​88, 96 gendered, 174 law enforcement and, 85 medicine and delinquency, 164–70 parental negligence and, 67–​68, 97 process and actors dealing with, 83–​97 Departmental Council of the Seine, 69, 99 Departmental Office for Job Placements, 159 deviant, 64–​66, 76, 77–​78, 79–​80, 84–​85 sexual, 70, 79, 169, 172–​73, 174 Dickens, Charles, 73–​74 discernment, acting with/​without, 74–​75, 78, 165 Dolto, Françoise, 150–​51 Du Camp, Maxime, 44–​46, 67, 78–​79 Éclaireurs, 168 École at the Rue de Poitou, 111 École Bischoffsheim, 120 École Boulle, 55f, 49–​50, 54–​58 École d’Alembert, 92–​94 école de travail, 46 École Diderot, 48, 49–​51, 54–​55, 60, 70 École Estienne, 52f, 53f, 49–​50, 51–​59, 112. See also typesetting École Fondary, 112 École Ménagère, 79–​80 école pratiques de commerce et de l’industrie (EPCI), 50, 159 École Professionelle des Ternes, 102 école unique, 162–​63 écoles primaires supérieures, 10 education, 9–11 colonial, 173 comprehensive, 162–​63 compulsory, 155–​56 gendered, 10–​11 republicanism and, 49 working-​class identity and, 58 electrical trades, 154 elementary schools, 10 employers, 29–​32 inspectors and, 30–​31

Index  235 employment/​labor 1872 survey of working conditions, 19–​20 age-​based restrictions on, 2, 7, 11 beginning formal, 140–​46 child, at the start of the Third Republic, 18–​21 female, 101–​4, 150–​51, 156–​57 gendered, 11, 21–​23, 99–​101, 120–​21, 162, 172 reforms, 15, 21–​26, 155–​56 regulating, 152–​57 role of the family in child, 20–​21 youth, during World War I, 149–​52 Estafette, 71–​72

indigénat, 6–​7 industrialization, 4–​5, 21–​22, 39–​40, 55–​ 56, 66–​67, 99–​100, 152–​53 inspectors (work), 24–​11, 26–​29, 69 institutionalization, 77, 82, 97, 163, 164 International Bureau of Labor, 155–​56

factories, 4–​5, 14–​15, 24, 29, 55–​56, 108–​9, 116, 119, 151, 152–​53, 161–​62 family economy, 8–​9, 10, 32–​33, 37–​38, 84, 98, 136–​39, 142–​43, 145–​46, 203 Farcy, Jean-​Claude, 67 Farge, Arlette, 86 Faure, Alain, 65 Ferguson, Eliza, 137 Fordism, 152–​53. See also factories Foulon, Théophile, 33–​34 France illustrée, La, 46 Francotte, Robert, 141–​44

Lacoin, Elisabeth, 150–​51 Laporte, Divisional Inspector Edmund, 25, 26–​27, 28–​29, 30–​31, 37, 106–​ 7, 109, 115–​16, 130–​31 Lassez, Georges, 70 Laurent, Robert, 39–​40, 47 literacy, 9, 20, 86, 96–​97 Louÿs, Pierre, 16

garment/​textile industry, 3, 4–​5, 39, 99, 100–​1, 102–​3, 104, 108–​9, 111, 113 Gaurois, Florentin, 37–​38 Gibon, Fénelon, 103–​4, 109–​10 Girls’ School at the Rue Tombe-​Issoire, 113 Goblet Law (1886), 116–​17 Gréard, Octave, 48–​49, 58, 64, 119 Guilbert, Yvette, 145 Guiraud, Gaston, 131–​32, 134, 141 Guizot Law, 4 Haussmann, Baron George Eugène Haussmann, 14 Heuyer, Dr. Georges, 163, 166 home industry, 115–​16, 117, 138–​39 hygiene, 7, 118, 147–​48, 152, 209 immigration, 107–​8, 152–​53

Jaurès, Jean, 124–​25 Joly, Henry, 69 Journal, Le, 122 Jules Ferry education laws (1881, 1882), 9, 21–​22, 25, 122 justice system, juvenile, 2–​3, 17, 74–​ 80, 82–​84, 91–​92, 97–​98, 163, 166, 167–​69

Madelonnettes prison, 75 Malot, Hector, 73–​74 Marette, Françoise (Françoise Dolto), 150–​51 Massard, Émile, 66, 69 Matignon Accords, 147 Maurice, Divisional Inspector Gustave, 17–​31, 103, 138–​39, 171 mechanization, 32, 153–​54 Melun, Armand de, 42 memoirs and autobiographies, 123–​24, 140, 142–​46 Mettray penal colony, 75 Michaud, René, 138, 140–​43 Milhaud, Caroline, 110–​11, 113 Minister of Commerce, 25, 26, 29, 32, 50, 56–​57, 117 Minister of Labor, 25, 26, 33–​34, 69–​70, 151–​52, 154–​55, 156 Minister of Public Instruction, 151 mixed-​age spaces, 8, 9, 11, 27–​28, 42, 54, 62, 124–​29, 151 Monod, Gustave, 5, 9

236 Index morality, 24, 27–​28 civic versus religious, 24 female, 75, 119 infant, 7 orphanages and, 44–​46 working-​class, 24, 100 workplace, 16–​17, 41, 54 motherhood, 3, 10–​11, 41, 79–​80, 100–​1, 104, 109–​13, 121, 150–​51 musicians (street), 73–​75 Napoleonic Code, 4, 74–​75 night courses, 61–​62 numeracy, 9, 96–​97 Oliver Twist (Dickens), 73–​74 On the Role of Society in Preventing and Relieving Poverty (Melun), 42 orphanages, 43–​46 Orphanage at Auteuil, 43–​44, 45, 51, 54 ouvroirs, 113–​20 Pain sans chocolat (Bread without Chocolate, Pioli), 147–​48 parents, 32–​36, 84. See also family economy children working with, 35 colonial, 173 correction by, 75, 164 neglectful or abusive, 76 parental rights, 76–​77, 83, 151–​52, 164 responsibilities of, 76–​77 Paris, Co.S5 laboring classes in, 14–​15 patriarchy, 6 patronages, 92–​93 Catholic, 4, 40–​47, 160–​61 Jewish, 46–​47 Patronage de Sainte-​Mélanie, 43 Patronage for Detainees and Formerly Incarcerated Women, 78–​80 Patronage Society for the Jewish Apprentices and Workers of Paris, 46 Paulian, Louis, 64, 71, 73, 74 pediatrics, 7–​8, 166

Pension for Young Orphans on the Rue de Billettes, 120 Perrot, Michelle, 38, 66 Petite Roquette prison, 75 Pioli, Jean-​Vincent, 147–​48 police, 2–​3, 4, 7–​8, 16, 17–​18, 67, 68–​69, 74, 79, 83–​91, 94–​95, 97–​98, 126–​27, 130–​31, 156–​57, 163–​ 64, 171–​72 Popular Front, 147–​49, 154–​55, 162–​63 postcards, 123, 125–​26, 134–​35, 137, 145–​46 Poulaille, Henry, 39–​40, 141–​45 poverty, 42 Prefect of the Seine, 44–​46 Presse, La, 72–​73, 74 primary schools, public, 4, 7, 9 prisons and detention centers, juvenile, 64–​65, 75–​76 production, and child labor, 29–​31 prostitution, 6, 70, 72–​73, 79, 90–​91, 98, 156–​57 psychology, 7–​8, 49, 160–​61, 166 P’tite Gueule (Guiraud), 131–​32 Public Assistance, 51–​78, 91–​98, 171–​72 reform schools, 43–​44. See also Charity for the Protection of Young Women (reformatory) Report on the Situation of the Little Italians (1868), 74 Reynaud, Marius, 33–​34 Rivière, Louis, 68–​69, 71 Robert, Henri, 16–​17 Rollet, Henri, 78–​79 Roussel, Abbé Louis, 43–​46 Sans Famille (Malot), 73–​75 scouting, 147–​48, 167 secondary schools, 2, 10–​11, 12, 50, 57, 61, 62, 153, 157, 167, 173 servants, 106, 156–​57 Servants of the Holy Heart of Mary, 118–​20 Service for Morally Abandoned Children, 53, 82, 91, 94–​96, 97, Simonin, Albert, 134, 136, 144–​45, 154

Index  237 Social Service for Children in Moral Danger, 163–​164, 166–​167, 169, Society for the Patronage of Children and Adolescents, 78 Society for the Preservation and Salvation of Women, 79, 167–​69 specialization, 51, 54–​55 Spitzer, Olga, 166–​67 surcharge, 129–​31 syndicates, and education, 57, 58 theft, 65, 67, 68–​69, 78, 85, 86 transportation, 78–​79 Tribunal for Children and Adolescents (TCA), 78–​79, 88, 97, 163–​64, 171 typesetting, 50–​51, 103–​4. See also École Estienne Un gosse (A Kid), 1 universal education, 11 urbanization, 3, 4, 5 vagabondage, 34, 43–​44, 65, 66–​74, 79, 85, 155, 163, 164 Victor Drury Law (1867), 10–​11 vocational education, 7, 10–​11, 40, 41, 43–​44, 111, 112. See also apprenticeships commercial and industrial schools (EPCI). See école pratiques de commerce et de l’industrie (EPCI), 49–​50, 111, 159 École d’travail, 46

guidance, 159–​61 municipal, 47–​56 national professional schools (ENP), 159 objections to, 56–​60 retention rates of, 59 student profiles in, 59–​60 training, interwar worker, 157–​63 wages, 89, 92–​93, 101, 102, 104, 106, 120–​ 21, 142–​43, 147, 156 Weber, Eugen, 9 welfare programs, 2, 7, 15, 17–​18, 77, 83, 96–​97, 149, 156–​57, 172 Wellhoff & Roche (printers), 16–​17 Witt-​Schlumberger, Marguerite de, 79–​80 work, 97–​98 creating a child-​labor market, 201 factors driving children from, 183 outcomes before 1933, 165 workers under 18 years old, 153 workforce demographics, 152–​54 World War I, 6–​7, 9, 14, 25, 56, 65, 80, 110, 123–​24, 147–​48, 149–​53, 155, 157–​ 58, 160–​61, 162, 164 World War II, 2, 6, 163 young workers, 36–​38 “youth,” 12–​13 Zay, Jean, 155–​56, 162–​63 Zucchi, John, 74