Women, Work, and the French State: Labour Protection and Social Patriarchy, 1879-1919 9780773562059, 0773562052

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Women, Work, and the French State

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Women, Work, and the French State Labour Protection and Social Patriarchy,

1879 — 1919 MARY LYNN STEWART

McGill-Queen’s University Press Kingston, Montreal, London

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 1989 ISBN O-7735-0704-3

Legal deposit second quarter 1989 Bibliothéque nationale du Québec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Stewart, Mary Lynn, 1945Women, Work, and the French State

Includes index. Bibliography: p. ISBN 0-7'735-0704-3

1. Women — Employment — Law and legislation —

, France. 2. Labor laws and legislation — France ~ History. 1. Title.

HQ1617.884 1989 344.44'014'09 C8g-090059-0

Contents

Tables vi Preface vil Introduction 3 1 The Logic of the Dual Labour Market 19 2 Protecting the Family: The Campaign for Hours Standards 41 3 Restricting Reform: The Politics of Protection 59 4 Implementing Reform: Revolutionaries in the Workplace? 77 5 The Economics of Compliance:

Hours Standards in the Workplace 97 6 Banning Women: The Night Work Clauses 121 7 Saving WomenpP:

The Health and Safety Clauses 149 8 Protecting Infants: The Long Campaign for Maternity

Leave 169 Conclusion 191 Appendix 203 Notes 205 Bibhography 245 Index 273 Illustrations 58, 120, 148, 168

Tables

1 Women in the Labour Force: Working Women in the Female Population 22

2 Working Women by Marital Status 25 g Occupations and Political Affiliations of the 502 Deputies who Voted for Protective

Labour Laws, 1881-1899 29 4 Key Bills and Debates on Protective Labour

Legislation, 1879-1900 30 5 Social and Political Composition of the

Vote of 29 March 1881 61 6 Political Affiliations of Deputies Voting for the Labour Bills of 1889 and 1891 62

4” Authorizations for Overtime 104 8 National Infractions of Hours Standards, 1g00—1908 105 g Divisional Tolerances by Gender in Selected Industries, 1931 108 10 Most Summonses for Night Work Violations by Industry and Type of

Violation 142 11 Infractions of the Hours and Night Work

Articles 143

Preface

This is a historical account firmly grounded in archival research that documents how legislation presented as protective of working women was in fact designed to defend the patriarchal family and social order and functioned to preserve women’s secondary status in the labour market without materially improving their working conditions outside or inside the home.

The initial impetus to study sex-specific legislation came from participation with other members of a group of feminist scholars trained in economics, political science, sociology, and history in an interdisciplinary research project on “Women and Social Change.” In the course of nearly two years of stimulating cross-disciplinary discussions (1975-7), two members of the group provoked me into rethink-

ing my received historical precepts about policy-making and the labour market. An offhand comment by Susan Bourque of the Political Science Department at Smith College started me prying beneath the surface of social policy formulation. A decade later, colleagues in the Political Science Department at Simon Fraser University, Maureen Covell and Linda Erikson, helped me articulate a more sophisticated theory of agenda-building and a feminist critique of the welfare state. In between, sceptical clients of the Canadian welfare state who took my seminar on “Women and Public Policy” prompted me to ask more probing questions. I am grateful to the late Jeanne McFarland, then in the Department of Economics at Smith College, for introduc-

ing me to dual labour market theory. Over the following decade, students in Women’s Studies seminars on “Women in the Workforce” and “The Economics of Discrimination” challenged me to explain all

the permutations of labour segmentation theory. I particularly appreciate Jule Morrow’s criticisms of theoretical material from her

vil Preface perspective as a bureaucrat in a Women’s Program of a Department of Labour. The interdisciplinary group organized an international conference on “Protective Legislation and Women’s Employment: Reevaluating

the Past and Planning for the Future,” held at Smith College in November 1977. Several papers from that conference were subsequently published in Feminist Studies (1979). hat conference shattered my naive assumptions that international conventions dated as early as 1919 had rescinded the discriminatory articles of prewar legislation “protecting” working women; it revealed that even the equal opportunity legislation of the 1970s had not invalidated firmspecific regulations barring all women of childbearing age from using materials hazardous to foetuses. Studies by historians shook my faith in the intention of American reformers to protect women at the turn of the century. Illustrations of the differences between sex-specific

labour laws and later universal laws challenged my complacency about the piecemeal approach to reform. A presentation by Dorothy Hainer of the Auto Workers gave concrete illustrations of how clauses forbidding overtime disadvantaged women by denying them overtime pay or supervisory positions.

Intrigued both by the curious contradition of “protection” that restricted opportunities and by my previous blindness to that contradiction, I returned to the existing scholarly literature on European laws. A reason for the blindness was immediately apparent: labour reformers wrote the literature. In reaction to their special pleading, the present study identifies the paternalistic and paradoxical qualities of sex-specific labour standards. While the approach 1s critical of

partial protection for conservative, familistic motives, and of any reform made without consulting the beneficiaries, the intention is not

to reject all regulation of the labour force. Throughout the six years of writing papers, articles, and this book, Anita Clair Fellman and Nikki Strong-Boag, colleagues in History and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser, have been perspicacious critics. Elinor Accampo, Rachel Fuchs, Theresa McBride, and Judith Stone made constructive suggestions for revision of the entire manuscript. Linda Clark and Karen Offen offered helpful insights into portions of the manuscript. This manuscript also benefited from two anonymous readers’ reports for McGill-Queen’s University Press and the Social Science Federation of Canada. Wendie Nelson compiled, coded, and inputted the data on more than 500 legislators voting for labour bills. Lynn Beuckert did the tedious job of proofing the first complete draft. Sharon Vanderhook and Anita Mahoney in the office

of the Dean of Arts at Simon Fraser University processed several

ix Preface versions of the manuscript. I am grateful for the editorial suggestions of E.C. Beer and T. Bose. Finally, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the National Research Council, and Simon Fraser University generously supported four research trips. To all of them, I

owe my heartfelt thanks. None of these individuals or institutions, however, is responsible for any errors or omissions in the text.

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Women, Work, and the French State

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Introduction

In the the 1880s French sociologists, social economists, union leaders, enlightened industrialists, and politicians of virtually every ideologi-

cal hue advocated protection of women and girls in the workplace. The occasion was the controversy over bills to limit the length of the workday introduced into the National Assembly. In the late 1880s and early 1890s legislation to ban female night employment also cut across factional lines, arousing passionate support and opposition.

The attempt to impose minimal health and safety standards on female workplaces evoked less polemic. After a decade of lobbying and legislative negotiation, the National Assembly passed an act setting a maximum of eleven hours a day for women and ten hours for

adolescents in most manufacturing jobs; the 1892 act also barred much female night labour. Within a year, critics tabled bills to strengthen or weaken the law. A compromise measure passed in 1900 reduced the legal workday to ten hours by 1904 and extended hours standards to men in the same workplaces as the protected employees (see Appendix). To justify state intervention in the labour market against orthodox

laissez-faire principles and practice, reformers abandoned or post-

poned comprehensive coverage in favour of partial coverage of

women and adolescents. The concession avoided such contentious issues as infringing upon free men’s right to work and allowed special

pleading for the defence of the weak and dependent. Reformers made poignant pleas about “the special fragility of the feminine organism” and the “monstrosity” of women not being able to care for their children or cook for their husbands. When paternalistic rhetoric failed to persuade, they employed emotive appeals about the need to

preserve the patriarchal family and social order. Another rationale promised that regulation of female labour would ensure the birth of

4 Women, Work, and the French State

viable babies, the rearing of healthy children, and, implicitly, the discipline of the next generation of workers and soldiers. Throughout these protracted debates, reformers heard representations from and made concessions to many industrial interests. However, they only once spared time to canvass the opinion of working women. After opponents of a ban on female night employment organized protests by mill operatives, reformers interviewed mill hands on night shifts and seamstresses doing evening overtime. Despite testimony

that mill women liked night shifts because they could leave their children with their husbands, legislators neither removed the prohibition of night shifts nor introduced provisions for child care. Despite seamstresses’ explanations that they accepted occasional overtime if they received extra pay, the 1892 labour law allowed overtime in an unspecified number of “feminine” industries with no mention of remuneration. Once the 1892 act came into force, working women expressed their

opinion of protective legislation drafted without their advice and

enforced by an essentially bourgeois, male inspection service. Thousands of mill hands struck when the workday was reduced to eleven hours without compensatory adjustments in piece and wage rates. Thousands more struck for pay parity, and even for raises, when textile pay fell upon application of the ten-and-a-half- and the ten-hour day. While some poor seamstresses wrote complaining about lower income due to less overtime, most women in sweated trades silently registered their disapproval by continuing their custom of 60 to 120 days overtime a year. When labour inspectors visited

worksites after hours, seamstresses, flowermakers, and the like avoided detection by sneaking out the back door, hiding in closets, or retreating to their mistresses’ private quarters, offbounds to inspectors. More defiantly, seamstresses made lewd comments and harassed

lady inspectors sent to check health and safety conditions. Food workers threatened with dismissal because of weight limits petitioned

to be “protected against the law,” which they called “a real ban on their employment.” Indifferent to working women’s discontent, legislators extended health and safety standards to female employees in shops and offices. Not until 1915 did legislation covering female home workers 1n the garment industry include minimum wage clauses. Neither the comprehensive eight-hour law of 1919 nor subsequent “universal” labour laws discontinued bans on women’s and girls’ employment at night, in

underground mines, and in dangerous trades, or health and safety regulations for female workplaces. Several of these measures remained in the French Labour Code after the Equal Rights Act of

5 Introduction 1975. The 1986 Code still forbade women and young workers “unhealthy or hazardous employment ... except under conditions specially determined for each category of worker by administrative ruling.” Similarly, female workers cannot legally “carry, pull, or push weights of 25 kilograms” or find employment in plants handling ten toxic substances, cleaning and polishing with sand jets, and so forth.’ This book addresses five anomalies suggested by this brief introduction to sex-specific labour laws 1n France. The first anomaly ts the presence of a paternalistic or tutelary complex that targeted working women without consulting them. The second is the perverse policy of

protecting women in the workplace in order to prop up their housewifely role and the patriarchal family in the home. The third inconsistency derives from exempting most working women from regulation, thus rendering partial coverage even more selective. A fourth consists of working women, ignored in policy-making, influencing

implementation through inertia and passive resistance. The final anomaly is that the piecemeal approach of moving from partial to universal legislation did not preclude retaining sex-specific laws. The aim of this study is to examine and explain the fundamental paradox that labour legislation proclaimed to protect working women proved to be inimical to their interests.

The focus here is on sex-specific labour protection, not other labour legislation. In the nineteenth century, most industrializing nations passed empowering measures authorizing unions and strikes, social insurance acts offering compensation for work accidents, and

protective laws regulating working hours and conditions. In the category of protective laws, there were three types. One type regulated the working conditions of segments of the labour force defined by age or sex. Another set hours and safety standards for particularly dangerous trades, like mining. A third type, exemplified by industrial hygiene laws, covered all workplaces, irrespective of the characteristics of the labour force or the work process. Of the labour legislation enacted in France, empowering measures

and social insurance acts have received the bulk of scholarly attention.” Recently Weissbach, Reid, and Cross have assessed protective laws relating to child labour, mine safety, and the eight-hour day

respectively.” Glancing back at the sex-specific hours standards of 1892, historians of universal hours standards have dismissed them as

mere precursors of comprehensive coverage. Other articles of the 1892 act and other laws regulating women’s work have altogether escaped scholarly consideration. Legal treatises published at the turn of the century offer little beyond arcane details about regulations and partisan pleading for or against extending “partial” measures to men.

6 Women, Work, and the French State

A notable exception among early scholars was Andrée Lehmann, whose 1924 thesis recognized that partial measures were not rescinded when more comprehensive measures were enacted. Lehmann explained that women had been defined as less capable than men and equated with adolescents as workers deserving “special” protection.* Recent feminist scholarship has developed Lehmann’s insight into the distinctive character of sex-specific labour legislation in the policymaking and implementation stages. Political scientists draw attention to the centrality of gender constructs 1n political discourse and show

how gender constructs legitimate differential treatment in policymaking.” Critics of the welfare state, especially in Britain, reveal how social policies apparently beneficial to women reinforce their depen-

dence in the patriarchal family.° Feminist sociologists indicate how sex-specific labour legislation in the United States restricted women’s opportunities in the labour market.’. The present study applies and adapts these analytical frameworks to France. Neither the first nor the largest industrial nation, France cannot be considered either atypical or so competitive that it could afford labour regulation. To a greater degree than British or American policy-makers, French legislators were preoccupied with the

birth rate and family life. It is impossible to interpret the French campaign for sex-specific labour protection as a logical outcome of the stage of industrialization without paying attention to social and political developments. At the level of practical research, France offers the opportunity to study national laws, as opposed to a myriad of state statutes, and a centralized administration as opposed to vari-

able local jurisdictions. The rich inspection records permit a rare investigation into the impact of labour regulations. Spared problems comparing different statutes and jurisdictions, the historian can isolate the impact of the legislation and enforcement system from the effects of local conditions. In analyzing sex-specific labour legislation, the Marxist and socialist-feminist dialogue on the importance of domestic labour served as one point of departure. Wally Seccombe’s premise that “housework” reproduces labour power through daily maintenance of wage workers and through the birth and rearing of future wage workers suggested a useful avenue of interpretation.® Detailed historical research has unearthed little evidence of capitalists consciously manipulating housewifery or the family. As some Marxist-feminists acknowledge, housework involves more than the physical reproduction and disciplining of present and future workers; it has ideological implications through the socialization of future citizens and soldiers.” One can

7 Introduction posit that democratic states have political and social incentives apart from purely materialistic motives to be interested in housework. Feminists among the radical political economists pointed out that

Marxist scholarship had been sex-blind. Heidi Hartman directed attention to the patriarchal structure of the sexual division of labour and to how working-class men benefited from and perpetuated women’s domestic labour in the patriarchal family." Studies of French unions confirm Hartman’s thesis that male unions supported sex-specific labour laws to restrict female competition in the labour market, but suggest that they simply justified their position by reference to women’s domestic responsibilities. In reaction to the picture of exploitation within a hierarchical working-class family, Jane Humphries sketched a more cooperative model, in which women as well as men recognized the advantages of women’s domestic services in the home.!! For all the rhetoric about the family, neither the voluminous literature generated by the campaign for protective labour legislation nor the work inspection archives offer direct evidence about internal family decisions about women’s work. Indirect evidence suggests that working women’s priority was a paying job. Seccombe’s critics noted, and Seccombe conceded, that workingclass women have dual roles as unpaid labourers in reproduction and

wage labourers in production.’ Since domestic work was and is located in the home, while wage work was moving outside the home in

the nineteenth century, the problem was and is the combining of these two functions. According to most Marxists, women moved into

and out of paid labour in response to market conditions or were integrated into lower paying jobs; in either case, they served as a reserve army of labour, depressing wages.'” Marxist-feminists have speculated that sex-specific labour laws were designed to control this reserve army. Nothing m the French propaganda or legislative record substantiates the notion of a preconceived policy. However, the

process of legislative negotiations and administrative exemptions evolved a pattern of restricting women’s work in masculine (largely male) trades while facilitating it in feminine occupations. While this clearly confined women to low-paying jobs, it had little impact on men’s wages. To understand the dichotomy, it is necessary to review

the dual labour market theory. Institutional and radical political economists have long criticized the concept integral to classical and neoclassical economics, of work-

ers freely contracting to sell their labour in a single, competitive labour market. Instead they posit constraints on labour and distinguish (at least) two separate labour markets. Until the publication of

8 Women, Work, and the French State

William Reddy‘s recent books, French historians did not scrutinize the constructs of classical economics embedded in their documents and consequently in their interpretations.’ Even Reddy pays hittle attention to labour market segmentation. Although segmentation theories are very complex, the simplest version postulates a primary and a secondary labor market. The primary market has relatively high-paying jobs with good working conditions, employment stability, opportunities for pomotion, and due process in the administration of work rules, whereas the secondary market has low-wage jobs with poor working conditions, high labour turnover, little chance of advancement, and arbitrary supervision. Dualists argue that workers

exhibit behaviour appropriate to their respective labour market; workers who drop in and out of secondary jobs are responding to working conditions in that sector. ‘These workers, referred to as disadvantaged, include youths and women.’”. Dual theory dees not identify precisely which occupations are in each of the distinct markets, leaving some economists to generalize, inappropriately, from specific occupations to entire industries. One

response has been to introduce the concept of an internal labour market or an administrative mechanism to allocate and price labour within individual firms. In the primary sector, highly structured internal labour markets hire new workers at port of entry jobs, train them, and fill higher positions within the firm. In the secondary market, unstructured internal labour markets ensure outside competition for most jobs, partly because of the prevalence of casual work

and partly because of a large supply of unskilled or semiskilled labour.'®

The fragmentation of the labour market can perhaps be visualized as a wall dividing the primary market of skilled jobs with relatively good pay, benefits, and union protection, usually in large or monopolistic industries, from the secondary market of unskilled or semiskilled jobs with low pay, few benefits, and little protection, usually in marginal firms with high labour costs and low capital outlay. Simultaneously, fragmentation can be visualized as a ceiling intersecting with the wall. Inside firms, the internal labour market distinguishes primary production jobs with long-term potential from the secondary or auxiliary jobs with no opportunities for advancement. Feminist sociologists noted the coincidence of labour segmentation

theories and the evidence of occupational segregation by gender. Females and males are differentially distributed over the occupation-

al structure. Almost invariably, men predominate in the primary sector, while women are concentrated in the secondary sector. While

g Introduction many men are confined in dead-end jobs, almost all women are thus trapped throughout their working lives. Females and males concentrate in separate occupations, which become sex-typed as feminine or masculine, and at different levels within occupations. A British researcher, Hakim, draws a vertical line to illustrate the employment of women and men in different types of occupations, and a horizontal line to illustrate the employment of men in higher-grade positions and women in lower-grade positions.'’ This study will show how the two-dimensional fracture in the labour market 1n fzn-de-szécle France accounted for the ambivalent character of sex-specific labour legislation. Although segmentation theory 1s mainly descriptive, it does offer explanations. At the macro-economic level, dualists refer to capitalist policies of dividing and controlling labour in accordance with a formula that seems overly conspiratorial to historians. In the legislative process outlined below few employers emerge as sufficiently farsighted to devise such policies. At a microeconomic level, dualists are more persuasive. They note that both forms of segmentation can be enforced informally through employer preferences and work traditions and formally through explicit labor policies, union restrictions, and partial labour standards. The following chapters examine both informal and formal buttresses to the gender barriers in the labour market. Notions about women’s reproductive role provided ideo-

logical support for this distribution of occupations as well as for sex-specific labour legislation. In turn, such legislation raised expectations about women’s domestic responsabilities and reinforced the assignment of occupations by gender. To appreciate the need for a reinterpretation of sex-specific labour laws, it is helpful to review the historical and historiographical con-

text. European countries have a long history of protective labour legislation for children, beginning with an Austrian law of 1787 forbidding children under nine years of age to work in factories. By 1900 most European countries had raised the age of admission to twelve or thirteen, extended coverage to adolescents and women, and widened the field of application to most workshops, mines, and quarries. For protected categories of workers, these states imposed maximums of ten to twelve hours a day, restricted night and dangerous labour, and required maternity leave.!® It was at this time that commentaries on protective labour legislation began to appear. Social democrats who envisaged regulation of men’s workday — but not restrictions on their access to night shifts or dangerous trades — wrote

most of the literature.'” Their emphasis on hours standards alone

10 Women, Work, and the French State

and their vision of justice for all workers distorted historical interpretation. Social democrats skimmed the surface of the prolonged debates preceding the enactment of labour legislation and accepted the publicly stated goals of socialist sponsors of reform. Many early scholars perpetuated reformers’ claims that states began benevolently with the

protection of the weakest, children, progressed to the next most exploited segments of the labour force, adolescents and women, and culminated with working men. When English feminists complained about “unjust encroachment upon women’s liberty and rights,” Fabian socialists responded that earlier reformers took the avenue of least resistance to state intervention as a way of attaining the regulation of all labour. French socialists presented the child labour law of 1841 as “the pretext of all labour legislation,” followed by the assimila-

tion of adolescents and women and finally the inclusion of men.?° Yet the sequence of children, adolescents and women, and men rarely applied outside England.*' France started with universal Sunday holiday legislation in 1814 and followed the child labour law with

universal hours standards. Democratic socialists demanded the ten-

hour day during the the 1848 Revolution, moderate republicans compromised on eleven hours and the reactionary Cavaignac government raised the maximum to twelve hours. To be sure, no administra-

tion seriously enforced the twelve-hour limit. The closest French labour legislation came to confirming to a democratic socialist schedule was during the Third Republic, for a new child labour law was passed in 1874, was succeeded by the sex-specific act of 1892, and

then by the application of hours standards to men working with women in 1900. If the social democratic thesis of incremental regulation has some validity, the assumption that all reformers were motivated by compassion for women or an ultimate goal of comparable intervention for men remains questionable. Social democrats who compromised on sex-specific hours standards to prepare for the eventual passage of universal hours standards presented these measures as impediments to women’s competition in masculine occupations. In addition, they supported limitations on women’s night and dangerous work which

they had no intention of extending to men. Moreover, as a tiny minority in the Assembly, social democrats were not the effective sponsors of labour legislation. Of more significance than the timing of reform are the reasons for the success of partial and the failure of comprehensive proposals. Analysis of the lobbying and legislative manoeuvring for both types of

11 Introduction labour bill, from 1879 through 1915, explains why sex-specific regulations were enacted and universal regulations were defeated. ‘The political nation was more concerned about infant mortality and family disintegration, and hence about working women’s reproductive role, than about working men’s demands for hours standards. Astute reformers associated sex-specific protection with items higher on the political agenda, like depopulation and “degeneration,” and dissociated it from controversial issues like state intervention in free men’s right to work, in order to build voting blocks.**. Discovering why sex-specific labour legislation was passed requires more than the identification of sponsors and their purposes. Histo-

rians inspired by Foucault dissect reform rhetoric to draw a less complimentary picture of bourgeois republicans interested in social control.*” Scepticism about rhetoric is always advisable, but the notion

of a unifed group of reformers dedicated to social control 1s particularly suspect. Lee Shai Weissbach has shown that supporters of the child labour laws of 1841 and 1874 came from the entire political and social spectrum.** The present book also introduces proponents of sex-specific labour protection among aristocrats, industrialists, professionals, and workers ranging from the revolutionary socialists on the left to Social Catholics on the right. As historians of British reform have long realized, spokesmen for sex-specific reform were not necessarily working-class radicals.”° In France, Robert Koepke discovered “progressive conservative” peers promoting such measures in 1847.7° In the 1880s and 1890s we find Count Albert de Mun and other Social Catholic notables proposing and voting for sex-specific standards. Worried about social upheaval, they felt that more time for housework would improve working-class home life and keep working men away from bars and socialist meetings.

Spokesmen on the extreme left and right were a small minority in the Chamber of Deputies. They had to convince the moderate major-

ity in the Chamber and convert a hostile Senate, while contesting powerful economic interests and laissez-faire ideology. The pivotal figure in this exercise was a moderate republican deputy, Richard Waddington. Like large industrialists in England and America,’ Waddington made pragmatic appeals to fellow industrialists about ending unfair labour practices and improving productivity. While he expressed humanitarian concern about women’s health, like early English conservatives, he also emphasized sex-specific standards as solutions to the problems of “depopulation” and degeneration, like

French reformers. Other moderates reiterated his economic and

12 Women, Work, and the French State

social rationales. Far from investigating women’s working — or health — conditions, lobbyists and legislators acted out of allegedly broader concerns about male unemployment, the family, or the race.

But historians cannot understand the logic of labour reform by concentrating solely on prominent reformers’ social origins and political tactics. To discern the motives behind the rationales for reform, the socio-ideological complexion of the Republic must be considered. Sanford Elwitt has elucidated the social and ideological contradic-

tions at the core of the republican consensus in the late 1870s. He discerns a potential rift in the alliance between the petty bourgeoisie,

who pursued a democratic and egalitarian tradition, and the industrial bourgeoisie, who wished to perpetuate their power and property. Viewing the republican alliance as an attempt to reduce class conflict and secure the allegiance of the working class to the Republic, he regards policies of economic stimulation, protectionism, and educational reform as the means to resolve social tension.”® On a parallel

track, Judith Stone stresses the instability of the balance between bourgeois and petty bourgeois supporters of the Republic in the two decades after 1895. After describing the interventionists’ challenge to the prevailing economic orthodoxy, she analyses solidarisme, the radical theory of interdependence between individuals and society, as a synthesis of individualistic liberalism and étatist collectivism and as an alternative to class conflict. Her survey of solidarist-radical policies encompasses Millerand’s administrative decrees regulating time and wages in industries contracting with the state in 1899 and 1900, and unsuccessful efforts to enact universal labour standards from 1906 to 1912. Like Elwitt, Stone sees the common denominator behind these policies as the quest for social peace.*” However, Elwitt and Stone neglect three facets of the period. First, they ignore the intervening decade of 1885 through 1895, including the French reaction to the Great Depression, the threat to the repubhcan consensus in the Boulangist interlude of the late 1880s, and new forms of state intervention in social life. As Philip B. Nord has demonstrated, Parisian shopkeepers and small tradesmen reacted to shrinking demand by organizing protests, criticizing republican economic policy, and joining the disaffected Boulangist movement.°’ Rachel

Fuchs has shown that the state took initiatives in the treatment of abandoned children and unwed mothers, and implictly in the formulation of family policy, in the late 1880s. I argue here that the idea of sex-specific labour standards as an indirect means of reinforcing the working-class family surfaced in response to the economic and social dislocations of the depression.

13 Introduction

Second, Elwitt and Stone ignore the fact that the Third Republic was profoundly patriarchal. Patrick Bidelman has described the pervasive masculinisme’ of the early Third Republic. Constitutionally, women were denied the franchise and the right to hold public office. An act forbidding the attendance of women at political rallies deterred participation in political action, and custom kept women journalists from sitting in the press gallery of the Chamber of Deputies. The Napoleonic Code stipulated that husbands had control over family property and income, including their wives’ wages. Economically, reforms of the 1880s had little effect on the employment opportunities or wage levels of working women. Only the worst of the patriarchal abuses, like primogeniture, had been eliminated in the domestic family, leaving a “paternalism” shot through with traditional legal and institutional prerogatives over wives and children.** As the present book demonstrates, sex-specific labour legislation was formulated and administered as an element of a broader policy of “social patriarchy.” However “social,” the policy was resolutely paternalistic and patriarchal. Paternalistic assumptions about the superior knowledge of politicians and administrators account for the existence of labour regulations formulated without regard to basic information on women’s working life and an inspection service that did not recruit or confer with working women. When a revolutionary socialist con-

ceded that the resulting laws had not received “unanimous acclaim ... from the protected,” he nevertheless maintained that progress

required “defeating the resistance of ignorance as well as of reaction.””° He did not consider the possibility that working-class women might knowingly resist a system based upon bourgeois patriarchal ideals, like that of the full-trme housewife, beyond their means, a system that reduced their income as well as their working hours, a system that imposed inflexible schedules incompatible with their dual role. Third, Elwitt and Stone fail to notice how laws dividing the working

class along gender lines complemented other social reconciliation policies by attaching segments of the working class to the Republic and by alleviating bourgeois anxieties about social disorder. This study contends that sex-specific labour legislation exploited skilled working men’s fears about female competition while appeasing social conservative concern about socialism in a period of high unemployment and deskilling. Reformers’ pledges to extend hours standards to men and their promises about improved family life masked a divisive

bid for support from enfranchised segments of the working class against the interests of their wives, sisters, and daughters. Rhetoric

14 Women, Work, and the French State

also disguised employer interest in a large pool of cheap labour and conservative desires for social peace. Although reformers were influential in framing the laws, they had

to satisfy ideological opposition and interest groups. Drafting the legislation and designing the complex regulatory system entailed hearing the representations of interested parties, surveying public opinion, bartering privileges, and making compromises — negotiat-

ing —in legislative committees. This often-overlooked process is therefore analysed, using the testimony of industrialists, employer groups, and unions as well as the clause-by-clause deliberations of the politicians in the surprisingly candid minutes of legislative commit-

tees located in the C series at the Archives Nationales. Legislative committees delegated tedious and technically difficult decisions about exemptions to consultative agencies of administrators and industrialists. Accordingly, attention is paid to the rulings, supporting documents, and minutes of these agencies in the C and F*? series at the Archives Nationales. Examining the political and administrative process proves that the characteristic feature of sex-specific labour legislation was wholesale exemptions. Even the initial, social democratic bill did not include the largest sector of female employment, agriculture. Legislative commit-

tees eliminated the growing retail sector because of administrative and financial calculations about the difficulty and expense involved in

inspecting thousands of shops. The final draft exempted family workshops, even in manufacturing, to deflect ideological objections about interference in the family. Special pleading by industrialists elicited vague language about “derogations” for seasonal industries and “toleration” of some night and dangerous work. Administrative decrees authorizing women to put 1n overtime and engage in otherwise

prohibited dangerous or night work accumulated. While the system of exemptions evolved for reasons not exclusively

economic, it had unfortunate economic results. By catering to lowwage, sweated feminine industries, it expressed and exaggerated sexual segmentation of the labour market. Exemptions accommodated industries accustomed to cheap female labour, accelerated women’s movement into unregulated sectors, and thereby accentuated female crowding in backward industries. The administration of the law reinforced these effects. Inspectors implemented the letter of the law in masculine trades yet overlooked infractions in feminine occupations. In short, sex-specific labour legislation sanctioned and enforced the assignment of women to lower paying secondary labour markets.

15 Introduction Economic interests dependent upon female labour pools overrode popular anxieties about the birth rate, the family, and social order. The collision between economic realities and social fears modified aspirations and shaped legislation. Despite impressive rhetoric about women’s role as homemakers, no one seriously proposed prohibiting all women’s wage labour outside the home or introducing either a

family wage or compensation for housework to support full-time housewives. Instead, legislators limited women’s working hours outside the home to facilitate a dual role as nearly full-time wage-earners and part-time housewives. They did so without ensuring that women’s

pay was adequate and the schedule prescribed by law was flexible enough for their two jobs. Rather than easing women’s workload, sex-specific standards very likely burdened women with higher ex-

pectations of housework. Unreasonable standards forced many women into illegal activities like starting early, staying late, and taking piece-work home for a second workday after the legal workday. Since

no one bothered to monitor the law’s impact on housework, it 1s impossible to prove that the symbolic message of the laws had an effect on housework. It is possible, however, to speculate that working women’s lives were more complicated under the laws. Although absent from the formal decision-making process, working women did influence the application of laws. To understand this,

the historian must delve beneath the surface evidence regarding the enforcement of labour laws. Inspectors’ reports to the legislature must be handled cautiously as political documents influenced by items on the political agenda as well as by the personnel and procedures of the inspection system. These reports must be supplemented with administrative documents on the inspection system and unpublished inspection records in the F** series at the Archives Nationales and the 10M series in the departmental archives. Careful reading of these sources uncovers working women’s resistance to regulations made without any assurance of the same pay after the mandatory cut in working time and without any consideration of the need for flexible schedules. For all the pressure brought to bear on these apparently defenceless women, they were capable of discerning their interests and defending their work culture. ‘The opening chapter of this study deals with the economic preconditions for the enactment of sex-specific labour legislation, including a description of women’s position in the labour market before and during the application of these laws. The next two chapters introduce the social and political forces behind the campaign to enact hours standards and describe the political process of building a coalition

16 Women, Work, and the French State

through concessions, notably the elimination of men and most women from coverage. Historians, following the lead of the labour federations in the Belle Epoque, have focused too exclusively on the campaign for universal hours standards. Moving into the little-studied subject of the enforce-

ment system, the fourth chapter examines the inspection service, highlighting its exclusion of working women and emphasis on appeasing employers. The fifth chapter offers the first assessment of the application of sex-specific hours standards since labour lawyers wrote polemical theses at the turn of the century. After outlining how economic circumstances, as opposed to administrative decrees, determined employers’ adoption of the ten-hour day, this chapter shows

how the alleged beneficiaries of the system bore the brunt of the transition to a shorter workday. As employers reduced women’s working hours, they introduced split shifts, which temporarily increased time spent at the workplace. Subsequently, employers compensated for shorter workdays with intensified labour and supervision, and workers lost control over their workpace and workplace. Scrutinizing the drafting and enforcing of less familiar clauses of the sex-specific labour laws reveals other incongruities between intentions and realizations. The sixth chapter addresses the anomaly of legislators who declarmed about women’s night labour destroying

family life nevertheless permitting evening overtime in seasonal trades. Forbidding night shifts inconvenienced few employers and pleased their competitors, while ending evening overtime threatened entire industries. The seventh chapter solves the puzzle of bans on women’s employment in certain hazardous industries coexisting with

exemptions for equally lethal industries. These two chapters also describe how powerful lobbies mobilized public opinion to reduce the

number of exemptions to the bans on night and dangerous trades. The final chapters disclose the fundamental cleavage between the promises of protection and the experience of discrimination. Despite reams of rhetoric and statistics about the “natality crisis” and mfant mortality, the legislature did not enact maternity leave and benefits until 1913 and did not enforce them until 1919. The eighth chapter examines the paradox that French legislators who restricted women’s access to male occupations, ostensibly to safeguard their reproductive function, at the same time deferred the implementation of maternity

leave, the form of labour “protection” that obviously facilitates women’s dual role as producers and reproducers. The concluding chapter considers the abandonment of sex-specific regulations during World War I, when war industries needed female labour, treating it as an acknowledgment that laws limiting employment of an identi-

17 Introduction

fiable component of the labour force disadvantaged the “protected population” in the labour market.

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CHAPTER ONE

The Logic of the Dual Labour Market

Political and social theorists offer three types of arguments to account

for labour and social welfare legislation. One argument postulates that a certain level of development poses problems that cannot be resolved in laissez-faire states. Industrialization fosters new demands

for public intervention to protect the weak and dependent, while simultaneously creating new wealth and organizational means to deliver social benefits. Marxists put more emphasis on the emergence of social democracy and trade unions. A third approach stresses the response of political elites. More detailed explanations identify social actors and schools of thought. Social demand theories emphasize the

role of workers in trade unions and socialist parties in compelling recognition of workers’ rights. Elite response models trace the revision of liberal ideals among the upper and middle classes. The social sciences and new state bureaucracies are catalysts in the formulation of progressive policies.

Economic interpretations focus on labour market strength as a determinant of workers’ success in obtaining reform. One theory posits that a taut labour market, or high demand for labour, increases the hkelihood of workers achieving their objectives. Some class strug-

gle theorists argue that a slack labour market undermines labour organizations and hinders the drive for reform. In contrast, political economists contend that politicians perceive potential threats to social

order in periods of high unemployment and offer concessions to co-opt workers. Historical sociologists have tested these theories with empirical studies of conditions conducive to labour and social insurance laws in

fifty-nine nations. The largest study found little support for the argument that the level of industrialization, measured by the proportion of the labour force in industry, was a necessary threshold for the

20 Women, Work, and the French State

initiation of social security. A smaller study reported that workingclass strength, measured by union membership and strike participation as proportions of the nonagricultural labour force, had a negative effect on labour reform. Similarly, other studies have found that high employment did not trigger labour legislation. Rather, as unemployment rose, so did the number of labour laws. One scholar who traced the progress of social reform in Sweden and Great Britain as ideal types of social democracy, concluded that unions and left-wing parties played no consistent role in social policy innovations. Instead, reform-minded middlemen and civil servants familiar with administrative possibilities took leading roles. After reviewing these studies, Ann Shola Orloff posits that the welfare state cannot be explained by the degree of development or the strength of social demand. She

proposes paying more attention to political supply by upper and middle-class reformers in alliance with some unions and leftwing leaders.’

Comparative studies assess theories about the timing of a broad array of social legislation. Accounting for sex-specific protective laws requires precise analysis. ‘The present chapter assesses the merits of

industrialization, social demand, and elite response as explanations for the timing of sex-specific labour legislation in France. A final section on the dual labour market elucidates the nature of sex-specific labour laws.

THE LOGIC OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

French reformers explained the ming of protective labour laws as humanitarian responses to the dislocations of industrialization. Many

of the early legal theses on labour legislation linked the advent of steam power, “immense factories and vast workshops,” or, alternatively, the decline of the small family workshops, to the emergence of serious health and social problems requiring the intervention of the state. Legal theses favoring universal regulations argued that workers were in such a powerless and vulnerable position vis-a-vis large em-

ployers, that they had no real freedom to contract their labour.* Data on French industrialization offer some support for the “logic of industrialism” thesis. Just as French industrialization lagged behind English development, so French reformers tended to follow the

example of British pioneers in tabour legislation. The National Assembly passed the first child labour law nearly thirty years after the

first British factory act; it barred adult women and adolescent girls

from underground mines thirty years after the British banned women in the pits; and it instituted a centralized inspection service

21 The Logic of the Dual Labour Market

forty years after the British created a central factory inspection system.”

The waves of labour reform in France coincided with the uneven process of industrialization. Thus the first protective labour laws were passed in the 1840s, when industrialization was accelerating.* In the three decades of intense debate over hours standards — 1884-1914 — growth was greatest in large, mechanized industries; by 1907, 42 per cent of all industrial workers were employed in enterprises with fifty or more employees.” Contemporaries were more aware of new largescale plants than they were of the coterminous expansion of domestic industries. The spokesmen for labour legislation in the French Assembly came

from industrializing or industrialized departments. Richard Waddington, who shepherded four labour bills through the Chamber of Deputies, represented the Department of the Seine-Maritime with a mixed industrial economy. Dr Gustave Dron, who championed the ban on women’s night labour, represented the more fully industrialized Nord.° Analysing all recorded votes for sex-specific labour standards, 1881-99, suggests a more positive relationship for the process

than the level of industrial development.’ About two-fifths of the deputies represented departments which, with less than 30 per cent of the labour force in industry, were essentially agricultural economies undergoing industrial development. Almost a fifth more came

from departments with 30 to 40 per cent of the labour force in industry, that is to say, mixed industrial economies. In short, nearly three-fifths of the support came from departments experiencing indus-

trialization. A further 28.1 per cent of the deputies represented departments with a large industrial labour force and a longer history of industrial employment.®

Contemporaries also offered more nuanced explanations. One connected sex-specific labour laws to the large number of women drawn into wage labour outside the home. What follows are official

figures which underrepresent female participation in the formal labour market, because many women were in seasonal, part-tume, or

home-based jobs that were not counted. As table 1 indicates, the percentage of women in the total labour force rose from 31 to 37, while the percentage of working women in the total female population leapt from 28 to 3g between 1876 and 1911. Most of these statistics were published after the debates on sex-specific labour bills.

However, reformers did not require statistical proof, because few challenged their assertions about women’s employment trends. Reformers were certainly aware of women’s industrial employment. One of the ironies of the 1892 labour law was its sponsorship by

22 Women, Work, and the French State Table | Women in the Labour Force: Working Women in the Female Population

Women in the Labour Force Working Women in the Female Population

Number in 000s Percentage of Percentage Labour Force

1876 5,111 31.2 27.7 1881 5,362 32.9 28.7 1886 5,643 33.6 29.3 189] 5,139 31.4 26.6 1896 6,375 33.6 33.0 1901 6,830 34.6 34.8 1906 7,701 37.2 39.0 191} 7,719 36.9 38.7 Source: T. Deldycke et al, Le population active et sa structure, 29-30.

an employer in a preponderantly female industry. Richard Waddington was the director of a large cotton firm founded by his English grandfather in the 1790s.” As a member of the General Council in the

Seine-Maritime, he was well informed about a department with 150,347 women in the labour force. Forty-two per cent of these women were employed in manufacturing, the sector subject to regulation. Dr Dron also had personal and political knowledge of working women. He established his medical practice and built his political

base among the workers of Tourcoing, where women worked in woollen mills.!? As a member of the General Council in the Nord, Dron was knowledgeable about a department with 243,096 women in the labour force. Fifty-two per cent of these women worked in manufacturing. Deputies from the Seine, where 761,469 women were in

the labour market, 46 per cent of them in manufacturing, also supported sex-specific standards. Nearly half the deputies voting for sex-specific standards represented departments with more than a third of the female population in the labour force; another 42.3 per cent came from departments with a quarter to a third of all women in the labour force. However, three-quarters of these deputies represented deparments where less

than a third of the female labour force was in manufacturing."! Departments like the Loire with 58 per cent or the Vosges with 5,7 per cent of the female labour force in manufacturing were conspicuously underrepresented in rollcall votes for sex-specific labour legislation. Leading opponents of sex-specific standards came from departments

23 The Logic of the Dual Labour Market

with high proportions of women in manufacturing. Several of these deputies spoke on behalf of manufacturers with female labour pools in their constituencies. In departments where women were concentrated in marginal firms in competitive industries, as in the Loire, or where they were difficult to replace due to labour shortages, as in the Vosges, opposition was more likely. Analysing aggregate statistics on women’s labour force participation misrepresents women’s position in the labour market and reformers’ response to their situation. Women were not distributed evenly throughout the economy and reformers did not target all feminine sectors. Agriculture still employed the largest number of women,

2,760,000 in the occupational census of 1896; the service sector (including commerce, banking and insurance) followed with 1,729,000 female employees. Manufacturing only came third, with 1,716,000 women in the labour force.'* No reformer seriously proposed regulating women’s work in agriculture or the service sector. Nor did reformers react to women flooding into one sector of the economy. From 1866 to 1896, the number of women in industry rose by 43 per cent but the number 1n commerce, banking, and insurance nearly doubled. The legislature did not impose labour regulations on commerce, banking, and insurance until 1903, when safety standards were applied. (A 1g00 law mandating seats for female retail clerks was ineffectual.) Conversely, the law of 2 November 1892 covered construction and extractive industries, which employed 8,ooo0 women, one quarter as many as they had employed in 1866.'° The question arises whether the nature of the work itself explains the pattern of protection. The initial bills did not mention agricultural labourers, retail employees, or domestic servants and postponed coverage of small workshops and home workers. Critics in the Chamber of Deputies asked why factory operatives needed protection when

machines had relieved them of the physical strain of their jobs, leaving them mere “supervisors” of machines. Spokesmen replied that protection was needed precisely because factory hands were “slaves” of machines. Waddington described how machinery acceler-

ated the pace of work and demanded more attention: “it requires intellectual effort to supervise a spinning mule with 2,000 bobbins.” His descriptions introduced the concepts of speed, regularity, and concentration needed for mechanized labour. Unfortunately for dis-

cussion of work processes, another reform-minded industrialist, Jean-Louis Villain, interjected that machinery requiring less strength opened the door to women in factories. The Chamber digressed into the social consequences of women’s work outside the home. '* Com-

24 Women, Work, and the French State

plaints about machines displacing men from jobs and keeping women from homemaking proved a more congenial topic than the nature of work.

During debates on sex-specific bills, the Chamber only once returned to the nature of work. After incorporating retail shops in 1886, the Labour Committee dropped them to propitiate the government, which was concerned about the prohibitive cost of inspecting the vast number of shops and the threat to several artisanal trades.'” Questioned about the omission, given the custom of twelve- to fifteen-

hour shopping days, one supporter distinguished between incessant manual labour in industry and intermittent light tasks in stores. The Labour Committee chairman, Emile Jamais, ended exploration of the tempo and type of labour by championing the interests of workingclass consumers who had to shop after working hours."® As in later debates on service workers, legislators showed more solicitude for women as consumers than as workers. Concern about women’s domestic responsibilities often overrode interest in their productive role. Proponents of sex-specific restrictions were so worried about the participation of wives in the labour market that opponents had to remind them that they were legislating for a majority of single women.'’ Their anxiety did reflect changes in the composition of the female labour force. Part of the increase in the force can be attributed to the entry of married women into the labour market. The number of married women in the labour force shot up by 40 per cent from 1896, when information on marital status is first available, to 1911, when nearly half the married women in France were engaged in wage labour (see table 2). The increase in married women’s employment outside the home is

not a sufficient explanation for sex-specific regulations. Britain enacted more sex-specific regulations with a much lower percentage of married women (9) in the labour market.'® The reasons for high participation rates provide a better explanation. One reason was the nature of French development, which included the growth of luxury

and other sweated trades employing large numbers of women.'” Another reason was slow population growth, so that more women had to be drawn into the labour force. A drop in the age at marriage facilitated the influx of wives because it meant a larger proportion of married women in the active population. Falling marital fertility also released mothers from full-time childrearing sooner.?°? Economic pressures due to rising male unemployment and declining real wages may have driven wives into the labour market.*! Whatever the cause, contemporaries worried that married women were displacing men in the labour market.

25 The Logic of the Dual Labour Market Table 2 Working Women by Marital Status

Married Women Single Women Number Percentage Number Percentage

Working af Total Working of Total

000’s 000s 1896 2,919 37.9 2,343 58.3 52.1 1901 3,177 40 2,439 1906 4,048 49.4 2,435 59.6 191] 4,085 48.8 2,403 59.7 Source: T. Deldyke et al., La population active et sa structure, 169.

Clearly the process and nature of industrialization prompted concern about women’s wage work. Leading reformers and most of their supporters represented industrializing departments. Although most reformers came from departments with a high proportion of women in manufacturing, their opponents spoke for departments with the highest ratios of women in manufacturing. Women’s employment trends alone do not account for the level of concern about women’s industrial labour. Figures on married women’s movements into the labour force only appear to confirm anxiety about wives and mothers working away from home. ‘Those figures do not prove that wives and

mothers were employed outside the home, nor do they account for laws restricting single as well as married women’s work. Something other than labour market calculations motivated reformers. SOCIAL DEMAND

During the debates of the 1880s and 18g0s, unions and socialists agitated for universal and sex-specific hour standards. But chronological coincidence dees not mean that social demand was responsible for sex-specific legislation. ‘To sustain a social demand thesis, it would

be necessary to demonstrate that unions and socialists represented the interested party and had a direct effect on the legislature. After the legalization of unions in 1884, federations formed and met in congresses. Madelaine Guilbert discovered that thirty of the 119 syndical congresses before 1914 (for which information survives) had the issue of women’s work on the agenda. Most of these federations were in masculine or mixed-sex occupations experiencing femi-

nine competition, often in combination with technical changes and deskilling. Five federations condemned women’s work or demanded its suppression during legislative debates on sex-specific labour reg-

26 Women, Work, and the French State

ulations. Since many of these unions did not admit women before 1900, their position can hardly be considered representative of working women’s opinions.”* Conversely, unions in occupations with a large female component

did not raise the question of women’s work or favour limitation of women’s hours. Instead, the tobacco workers’ and matchmakers’ unions passed resolutions in favour of créches in the workplace. Although these unions were not overtly feminist, their silence on sex-specific hours standards and support for nursing mothers parallels the feminist distinction between restrictive measures like sexspecific standards and protective measures like maternity leave. But there were only 31 all-women unions and 236 mixed-sex unions in 1goo. The 30,975 women who belonged to unions constituted only 5.26 per cent of organized workers — and only 2.9 per cent of French

workers were organized in 1go0.*° A minority within a minority, union women had few outlets for their opinions. Although the syndtcalist .press printed articles on women’s condition, only two of the sixteen women who signed articles before 1914 were union members.

Generally, the press expressed reservations about women’s work outside the home but did not push for sex-specific labour legislation.**

Unions did not have a unanimous position on women’s place. Ideologically, opinions ranged from Proudhon’s concept of women as complementary to men to Marx’s theoretical commitment to women’s equality and right to do wage work. Complicating the intellectual spectrum was Marxist inconsistency, for instance, 1n remarks

about women’s natural disposition to act as men’s servants. One reason was anxiety about the alleged dissolution of the working-class

family. Marxists who did not share Proudhonian notions about the family as the ethical core of society and the mother as the moral force

in the family condemned capitalist exploitation of women for high infant mortality, juvenile delinquency, and other signs of “moral” decay in the proletarian family.*? Other incongruous statements had deeper cultural roots. Fears about sex-role reversal —- women going out to work and men staying home, “contrary to their character” —

were embedded in assumptions about gender-appropriate behaviour. Assumptions about feminine docility fed fears about women undermining union solidarity. Practical objections also nourished distrust of women. Union men worried about female competition because women’s wages averaged

48 to 52 per cent of men’s rates. In 1891-3 average wages in Paris were 6.15 francs for men and three francs for women; the provincial averages were 3.90 and 2.10. Compounding fear of female undercut-

27 ‘The Logic of the Dual Labour Market

ting was the fact that the wage gap was greatest in masculine trades like mining and metalworking, where women earned less than 40 per cent of men’s wages.*° Craft unions in masculine trades resisted organizing women to protect the status of their occupations. Perhaps they were unfamiliar with organized women, who were concentrated in mixed-sex industries like textiles, and female militants, since they flourished in feminine branches like silk spinning. Craft unions may have considered female unions unreliable, since their participation in

labour federations fluctuated.?’ Finally, union men noticed that women accounted for only 5 to 21 per cent of all strikers between 1893 and 1914, and that female strikes tended to the spontaneous.*° Organizing working women would have reduced the problems of undercutting and evading strike discipline. Barbara Mitchell argues that syndicalists gradually recognized women’s value to syndicalism. Between 1900 and 1914 a three-fold increase in female members, usually in the wake of strikes, and feminist pressure made the organization of women seem pragmatic as well as ideologically sound.*” But during the debates over sex-specific labour laws unions expressed self-interested ideological hostility toward working women. Union arguments against women’s work included homilies about women’s place being in the home and women’s wage work being contrary to public morality and health. Speakers at union congresses claimed that women working outside the home meant promiscuity

and degeneration. The same speakers acknowledged that female competition was detrimental to male monopolies, union wage rates and the workers’ movement. Unions called fifty-six strikes over the

introduction of women into traditionally masculine jobs between 1890 and 1914. In some cases, unions were protesting against strike breaking, but in a few cases they objected to women earning the union rate.°” Other ways of dealing with female competition were rules forbidding members to work with women in masculine jobs or obliging members to stop their wives and daughters from taking men’s jobs. Some unions endorsed the principle of equal pay for equal work

on the grounds that women would not be hired if they lost their competitive edge, cheap wages. Similarly, on the same track, union congresses passed resolutions in favour of enacting and respecting sex-specific labour standards. (A minority of speakers insisted upon equal pay to improve women’s wages. They cited women’s need to

support their children and affirmed women’s right to independence.)*!

To understand union discrimination, it must be recognized that fragmentation of the labour market along gender lines divided workers among themselves. Traditional work arrangements and employer

28 Women, Work, and the French State

preferences assigned the sexes to different occupations, with the result that the sexes could be pitted against one another. The distribution of women inhibited the organization of women. Concentrated in

a few competitive industries with many marginal establishments, women worked in shops too dispersed to organize, earned wages too low to pay union dues and laboured too long to attend union meetings. Even within the same job category, women did different tasks and hence had limited contact with organized male workers. Individual unions had less impact on politicians than national con-

gresses, which were less representative of working women. No women attended seven of the national congresses before 1900, partly

because unions reserved the limited number of places for men and partly because few women could get away or pay for lengthy meetings. Most women who did attend were local residents. When invited to sit on the executive, they were usually adjunct members. Congres-

ses passed resolutions for the suppression of women’s work in the middle of the debates over the 1889 labour bill and for “strict application of protective laws” after 1892.°* During the debates on sex-specific bills, relations between labour congresses and political parties were complicated. These were pivotal years in the formation of revolutionary syndicalism. In the 1880s and early 1890s socialist factions struggled for control of the labour congresses. Usually Guesdistes (Marxists) or Possibilists (reform socialists) dominated. Despite their differences, both advocated the eighthour day for all workers, plus special measures for women workers. Guesdists sponsored the massive May Day demonstrations for eight

hours just prior to debates on labour bills in i18g0 and 1891. After 1892 labour congresses distanced themselves from politica] parties. When the Fédération Syndicaliste adopted the general strike tactic that year, the Guesdist Parti Ouvrier lost interest in the labour federa-

tion. The Fédération des Bourses du Travail, established in 1892, articulated an anarchosyndicalist philosophy over the next decade.”?

Those socialists who were involved in labour congresses were peripheral in the Chamber of Deputies. In the debates on the 1892 labour law, only one socialist and one other left-wing deputy cited congress resolutions in favour of short time. The only reference to May Day demonstrations was Waddington’s oblique remark about postponing any response to demands for universal hours standards

until an investigation of men’s working conditions had been conducted.** After the break with syndicalists, fifty-three socialists were elected. Between 1893 and 1900 socialist deputies drew attention to congress resolutions for the “protection of working women and children” and the eight-hour workday for all workers.°” If syndi-

29 The Logic of the Dual Labour Market Table 3 Occupations and Political Affiliations of the 502 Deputies who voted for Protective Labour Laws, 1881-1899

Occupation Number Percentage | Polttcal Affiliation Number Percentage

Law 186 40 Extreme Left 45 8.9

Medicine 48 10 Radical Socialist 9] 18.1 Other Radical Professions 10996 23 18.7 54.4

Industrialists 25 5 Moderate Business 5 Republicans 17818.5 35.7 Workers2412 2.5 Right 92

Others 14.5

Source: See tables 5 and 6 and JO, Débats, 20 and 21 December 1899.

calist support for labour protection influenced deputies from other parties, few acknowledged it. Only twenty-one deputies joined the fifty-three socialists voting for an eight-hour bill.°° In short, unions and socialists did not represent working women or influence the majority of deputies voting for sex-specific labour laws. Social demand theory dees not apply. ELITE RESPONSE

The bourgeois republican character of the Chamber of Deputies determined the composition of labour committees and of the voting block for sex-specific labor bills. Appropriately, bourgeois republican deputies were decisive in delivering votes. While they were motivated

by compassion, it was directed less toward working women than toward their children and families. Humanitarian impulses mingled with a desire to preserve the patriarchal family and social order. Workers were absent from three of the six committees considering labour bills, from 1879 to 1899, and never constituted more than 12 per cent of the membership. Lawyers were the largest occupational group; manufacturers came a distant second. Opportunists (moderate republicans) dominated the six labour committees, on which the extreme left never held more than a quarter of the seats.’ Similarly, 40 per cent of the deputies voting for sex-specific measures were in the legal profession; another 23 per cent were in other liberal professions. More industrialists than workers — 5 per cent versus 2.5 of the roll-call vote — supported these measures. Finally, 36 per cent of the

voters were moderate republicans, 19 per cent radical republicans, 18 per cent radical socialists, and less than g per cent socialists (see table 3).°°

30 Women, Work, and the French State

Although a democratic-socialist introduced the ten-hour bill in 1879, the effective spokesman for sex-specific standards was a republican deputy who sat on all labour committees and was chairman for four labour bills between 1880 and 1890 (see table 4 for chronology).

Richard Waddington was well positioned to persuade a bourgeois

republican Chamber. He spoke with authority as director of the

Table 4 Key Bills and Debates on Protective Labour Legislation, 1879-1900

Date Bill or Debate Law of 2 November 1892

1879 Nadaud bill for universal ten-hour day Villain bill to ban women’s night work

1880 June First Waddington Report for Labour Committee November Chamber votes for bill in first reading 1881 March Chamber votes for bill in second reading 1882 November Senate rejects bill 1884 March Second Waddington Report for Committee Not debated before end of legislature Spuller Inquiry

1886 Nadaud, Camilinat, and Lockroy bills 1887 December Third Waddington Report

1888 First reading in the Chamber 1889 Jan./Feb. Second reading in the Chamber

June Charles Ferry Report to Senate

July First reading in Senate

November Second reading in Senate

1890 June Fourth Waddington Report

July First reading in the Chamber

1891 Jan./Feb. Second reading in the Chamber

June Tolain Report to Senate July First reading in Senate

Oct./Nov. Second reading in Senate November Jamais Report to Chamber

December Declared urgent, debated in Chamber

1892 March Second Tolain Report to Senate March Declared urgent, debated in Senate

June Sibille Report to Chamber

October Voted into law (of 2 November 1892)

31 The Logic of the Dual Labour Market Table 4 (continued) Law of 30-31 March 1900

1893 November Lecomte bill (eleven hours) to Senate

November Ricard bill (ten hours) to Chamber

1894 June First reading of Lecomte bill in Senate

July Second reading and adoption by Senate

1895 December Dron Report (transitional eleven hours)

1896 June First reading of Dron’s bill in Chamber 1899 December Dubief Report on bill December First reading and adoption with modifications in Chamber

1900 March Lecompte Report in Senate March Declared urgent, debated and adopted Source: JO, 1879-1900.

family cotton firm and perennial member of the Chamber of Commerce in Rouen. His brother, William, had been prime minister in 1879. While Richard sat on the centre left, he had family connections with the Opportunists who controlled cabinets in the 1880s. Waddington was a determined but pliant politician. In the 1880 committee, he supported a ten-hour day for all workers on humanitarian and practical grounds. He argued that technological advances made long days morally unacceptable and economically unnecessary. He preferred universal hours standards because a single work schedule simplified management. When the Opportunist government opted for eleven hours for women, he adopted partial standards out of concern about international competition and enforcement.°? After

reverting to universal standards on the understanding that tariffs would protect French industry in the late 1880s, he made another politically expedient compromise on the assumption that sex-specific limits would be the first step toward universal coverage.*”

Waddington’s reports to the Chamber expressed compassion toward working women but stressed pronatalist, patriotic, and familistic rationales. Brief references to women’s health introduced extensive remarks about improving women’s working conditions to ensure healthier babies, which would ultimately resolve recruiting problems

in industrial departments. Relieving women of one hour’s paid labour a day would mean better housekeeping, which would keep working men at home, out of bars or socialist meetings.** This socially

conservative rhetoric proved attractive to a wide range of deputies.

32 Women, Work, and the French State

Waddington’s reports also developed the economic argument. Shorter days would not hurt production, because workers would be less tired and owners would install more efficient technology. He cited examples to this effect from his own plants.**.

Waddington’s efforts to persuade the elite reached beyond the Chamber. In the General Council of the Seine-Maritime, he argued that limited lability companies destroyed “affectionate paternal relations between workers and bosses” and rendered “some supervision necessary to stop abuses.”*? His newspaper, Le Petit Rowennats, criti-

cized orthodox economists for “disdainful indifference” and contended that the state had “a supervisory role” to protect the weak and to enable workers to contract freely. The newspaper welcomed the

“imperfect” 1892 law as “one step toward the ten-hour day for all

workers of both sexes.”** Waddington also wrote conciliatory letters to hostile newspapers,

denying earlier statements that regulating women’s hours implied regulating men’s hours. In the late 1880s few industrialists were “duped” by his focus on “beings worthy of solicitude: women and children.” They viewed him as a traitor, “a Machiavelli without know-

ing it.”*° In the 1891 elections Waddington was not returned to the Chamber. An astute local politician, he entered and won the first of several elections to the Senate.*° Electoral defeat and experience as president of the Supreme Work Committee supervising implementation of the labour law from 1893 through 1913 caused him to abandon the unification of standards at ten hours and their extension to men. Former opponents then revised their opinions and treated him as a moderate.*’ After 1900 he spoke out for a sixty-hour weekly limit, long a demand of industrialists. He cited fears that France was ahead of its competitors in legislating standards and urged flexibility in application.*° Understanding human motivation is always difficult. In Wadding-

ton’s case, there was a strong strain of industrial paternalism. In forty-nine years as director of the family firm, he expanded business by 50 per cent, until the four factories in Saint-Remy-sur-Avre employed 1,069 hands.** Like most cotton magnates in Normandy, he

refused to turn the company into a limited liability corporation.°° Unlike other Norman millowners, he was an enlightened employer. In the 1870s he built a créche, kindergarten, school and hospital for his employees and offered pensions at the age of sixty to all employees

with thirty years’ service in his factory. In the 1880s he anticipated legal standards and mandatory insurance by cutting hours and setting up a mixed employer-employee insurance plan. Later philan-

33 The Logic of the Dual Labour Market

thropic foundations included a housing project, a savings bank, a fire brigade, and public baths.”! A program of patronage from the cradle to the grave encourages workers to remain with the firm and stabilizes the labour force. As a

third-generation industrialist in a well-financed firm, Waddington had developed a long-term policy in his calculations about labour. However, he went beyond enlightened employers who improved

working conditions through industrial corporatism or joint employer-employee ventures. Neither the Protestant Dollfus nor the Social Catholic Leon Harmel voluntarily lowered hours or promoted

state intervention.”* But Waddington was not unique. Before the Revolution of 1848, a textile manufacturer in Alsace-Lorraine had proposed a legal limit on the workday.” In the first year of the Third

Republic, a prominent industrialist, Ambroise Joubert, had introduced a bill to extend the legal protection of labouring children.”* In 1879-80 another industrialist, Villain, jommed Waddington in drafting an hours bill.?” Their advocacy of labour standards can be inter-

preted as an attempt to eliminate marginal firms or, in their terms, “unfair competitors” who ran long hours to make a profit. They are typical of third-generation industrialists who could afford benevolence and regarded the state as an agent to generalize private initiatives. Bettina Berch has identified similar figures in English and American campaigns for protective labour legislation.”° Waddington had broader social and moral concerns. Considering

it “just and natural” for workers to improve their condition, his newspaper chided employers who fired workers for attending labour congresses. Worried about the advance of socialism among workers in a democracy, the editors urged “the directors of society” to “settle accounts” with protective labour laws and joint employer-employees ventures. The newspaper promoted l'état providence, or the state that “offers all citizens the means to ameliorate their condition by their own means.” The editors applauded workers’ hygiene congresses, especially resolutions for pre- and post-natal care. They approved municipal socialism, especially programs for orphans, the infirm, and the aged: “it is the surest means of raising moral standards; it is the best use of taxpayers’ money.”°?’

Waddington was a cultivated man with wide-ranging interests. Educated at the Lycée Saint Louis and Woolwich Artillery School in

England, he wrote many volumes of history. Writing was a family trait, for his cousin Charles, a philosopher, and his brother William, an Orientalist as well as a politician, were prolific writers.°®> A member

of a staunchly republican family,?’ Richard entered the 1876 legisla-

34 Women, Work, and the French State

tive race as a defender of “threatened republican institutions” and later supported free, lay public education.®° In the General Council, he rejected the old moralizing attitude toward abandoned babies and fought for public assistance to save their lives.°' His newspaper criticized the sisters of charity for interfering 1n family life and fought for lay control of medical care.°?

One source of his interest in family life and infant care was his upbringing as a Protestant in a city where “every [grand bourgeois] had his own poor.” Since Catholics monopolized the established char-

ities, Protestants set up competitive charities.°° In 1869 Richard replaced his father on the prestigious Société des Amis des Pauvres,

where he read detailed reports about impoverished Protestant families.°* He sat on the Bureau de Bienfaisance of his “suburban fief” from 1869 to 1879 and again at the end of his life.°” Even during

the hiatus, he inquired about the pettiest details of relief.°° Richard was also the principal benefactor of the suburban Société des Dames de la Maternité. From 1874 to 1886 his wife distributed layettes and food vouchers to impoverished new mothers. Under her presidency, from 1886 to 1899, the society received state subsidies. Like Richard,

she emphasized ensuring healthy births and encouraging breastfeeding rather than preaching to the poor.®’ Although Gustave Dron had humbler social origins, he fits the model of bourgeois republican reformer. Born into a petty bourgeois family near Tourcoing, he took a medical degree in Lille. His practice among the workers of Tourcoing made him popular as “the doctor of ... the disinherited.” In 1883 Dron married into a local republican family which provided an entrée into republican circles. His political ascent was swift: city councillor in 1884, general councillor in 1887, deputy in 1889, and mayor of Tourcoing intermittently from 1889 to

1930.°° Like Waddington, he presented himself to electors as an alternative to clerical reaction and socialism; he supported protec-

tionism and other cross-class policies. Unlike Waddington, he appealed directly to workers, who provided most of his support.°” Having made house calls to working-class homes, he could legitimately claim to know workers’ “hard existence.” His election posters prom-

ised the ten-hour day and workers’ compensation.’° When other northern cities elected socialists in 1893 and 1900, Tourcoing returned Dron with socialist support.” Dron was driven by concern about public hygiene. Medical studies imbued him with a lifelong concern for physical well-being.’? He was a member of the Tourcoing Hospice Committee that supervised the operation of a hospital, orphanage, and old age home. An anticlerical, he tried to secularize the institution, criticizing nuns for pressuring

35 The Logic of the Dual Labour Market

patients to attend mass and orphans to attend parochial schools. He also had familistic concerns. He championed home meals, rather than institutional care, for the elderly. As vice-president of the Hospice Committee, he made many changes.’’ Generally, he preferred outdoor relief, which encouraged family life, and surveillance in the home.”* Unable to establish his own system of social services, as Waddington had, Dron became an architect of municipal socialism. In the 18gos he

doubled the size of the hospital by adding modern facilities. He justified expansion from a public health perspective: “it is wise to protect the entire population from the dangers that can issue from one morbid case.”’° Like Waddington, he took a special interest in assistance to the newborn. He changed rules refusing unwed mothers

relief on moral grounds.” As mayor, he launched the “Infant’s Protector” service, which distributed pasteurized milk to indigent mothers as well as to subsidize breast-feeding mothers. In order to qualify, new mothers had to receive investigators in their homes and answer questions about feeding practices and family situations. By 1910 the “Infant’s Protector” included a refuge-workshop for pregnant women and a convalescent home for parturient women. ”’ Although Dron was influenced by Pierre Budin, founder of the first free baby clinic, and Paul Strauss, advocate of assistance for infants, he was unique in establishing such a comprehensive system of child care. Investigators’ reports on family life led to school medical

inspections, school canteens, a social hygiene dispensary, and free vacation schemes. Dron financed the system by public subsidies and private donations; he ran it with the help of benevolent individuals.” While Dr Dron built a mixed public private system of child welfare, his mother-in-law, wife, and other republican ladies founded the “Dames Charitables” to provide clothing for poor children in the public schools. Over the years, they visited homes where, if one informant is correct, they meddled in family life.’*

At a 1906 Health and Welfare Congress, Dron presented his achievements as “responsibilities of solidarity.” His will said his life purpose had been “to foster the growth of working-class children

and to fight above all for the prevention and treatment of ... social ills.” He felt he had spent “the most continuous and productive part of my life in philanthropy.”* Clearly he was less interested in produc-

tive labour than in reproductive labour, or infant and child care. A third bourgeois reformer, Paul Strauss, will be introduced in the chapter on maternity leave. Brief mention may be made here, howev-

er, of the famous countercase of Alexandre Millerand. As the first socialist in a French government, Millerand achieved the unification

36 Women, Work, and the French State

of standards at ten hours for women and men working with them. Rather than disproving, Millerand’s case confirms elite response theory, for he had to enter a bourgeois, albeit radical-republican, government, to achieve this reform. Moreover, he had to make significant concessions to industrial lobbies.*! THE DUAL LABOUR MARKET

The best economic explanation of the timing of sex-specific labour regulations 1s provided by the serious recessions which hit Europe in the early 1870s, mid-1880s, and late 1890s, known collectively as the Great Depression.** The best explanation of the form of sex-specific

regulations is a more enduring economic reality: the dual labour market. Together with technological changes which occasionally opened formerly skilled masculine occupations to women, the depression created real concern about apparently higher male unemployment. The concern was misplaced, for government sources estimated or, more likely, underestimated unemployment rates of 1.6 for men and 1.2 for women. Given the incidence of hidden and seasonal unemployment among women, the difference between male and female rates seems dubious.®° Nevertheless, economic dislocation and fears

about male unemployment converted some political opponents of State intervention in the labour market. Proponents of sex-specific standards implied that short-time would make women less competitive and hence improve male employment opportunities. After years of procrastination, the legislature passed the sex-specific labour law of 1892. Between the 1879 bill for universal standards and renewed efforts

to enact sex-specific measures in the late 1880s, an international economic crisis crippled the Parisian luxury trades, which were dependent upon foreign demand. In the Chamber, deputies questioned the government about plans for social reform and voted for the creation of a commission to investigate the condition of workers and industry. Among the members of the Spuller Commission were

Richard Waddington and other deputies who would sit on labour committees in the late 1880s and early 1890s. They heard gloomy testimony from every representative of artisanal trades except those adapting by manufacturing and marketing cheaper products. Sixtyfive of the 153 depositions came from workers; forty-seven came from unions. Only one union had women members; one other occupational group also included women. Worker depositions expressed fears about mechanization, specialization, prece-work, sweating, and

37 The Logic of the Dual Labour Market

so forth. All but two suggested universal limitations of eight to eleven hours as solutions to these problems.**

The Spuller inquiry influenced the drafting of labour bills in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Testimony from artisanal trades convinced Waddington, who in turn convinced the Labour Committee of the need to cover small workships.®” However, demands for universal hours limits were not persuasive. Waddington explained the sacrifice of universal standards in the 1887 bill by noting that the investigation revealed that most men in masculine trades already had the elevenhour day. He implied that men in feminine industries would get the eleven-hour day when the majority of their co-workers got it under sex-specific regulations.°° Waddington overstated the prevalence of eleven-hour days in mas-

culine trades. The inquiry indicated, and a 1889—90 survey confirmed, that most workers put in twelve hours of actual or “effective”

labour a day. These workers spent fourteen or fifteen hours at the workplace due to the custom of eating two to four meals there. The distinction between effective labour and presence at the workplace was frequently ignored by reformers, who preferred to outrage audiences with tales of fifteen-hour days. The 1890 investigation established seasonal rhythms. In the high seasons dressmaking and luxury goods firms expected workers to stay an extra two or three hours on as

many as 120 days, while in the low seasons many workers were underemployed.®’ Neither Waddington nor the Spuller Commission recognized evi-

dence of a dual labour market. Yet testimony to the commission indicates the existence of distinctly masculine and feminine trades as well as less visible permutations of sexual segmentation within trades. In virtually every industry and occupation, men held primary prolduction jobs labelled skilled, while women held auxiliary or secondary

jobs labelled unskilled. Labour reformers did not question sexual hierarchies in the labour market; their sex-specific laws respected these hierarchies. Although the Spuller Commission lacked statistical proof of female concentration in certain industries, the 1896 census offered corro-

boration of a pattern apparent in 1884. Of the 1.9 million women employed in manufacturing in 1896, nearly three-fifths (56 per cent) were in the garment industry and nearly one-fifth (.19 per cent) were in textiles.°° Not coincidentally, wages in these industries fell in the lower wage brackets.*” The proportion of women also varied by branch, as the garment

industry illustrates. There were over 400 women for every man employed in women’s clothing; 151 women for every man making

38 Women, Work, and the French State

women’s hats and stockings; and 111 women for every man sewing lingerie (including tablecloths, towels, and sheets). ‘There were hardly any female tailors, but women outnumbered men sewing men’s trousers, twenty-five to one.”” While tailors earned four francs daily in the provinces and 7.5 francs daily in Paris, dressmakers earned two and

four francs respectively.” Broadly speaking, the higher the proportion of women, the lower the wages. Even within occupations, gender hierarchies existed. The 3,000member Silk Weavers’ Syndicate reported equal numbers of men and women in their occupation. However, women concentrated in simple silks, because, the syndicate claimed, weaving fancy silks was “too fatiguing for them ... with the inevitable result of degeneration for

the entire population.” Women were more common in the new mechanized factories, where they did eleven hours effective labour, while men were more common in less mechanized workshops, where they did eleven- to twelve-hours effective labour. Women earned two to three francs a day; men earned up to five francs daily. The syndi-

cate sent the commission a pamphlet it had published on bills to regulate working hours. The pamphlet recommended a universal ten-hour day with no more than four hours overtime, ten days a year, except where women alone were employed, in which case overtime was not to exceed two hours.”*

A worker who punched holes in wooden patterns for Jacquard looms informed the Spuller Commission that one-third of his cowork-

ers were women, who were slowly being substituted for men. Both sexes worked from 6 a.m. to 8 P.M. with two hours for breaks. He described two jobs: translating designs into patterns and punching holes in pattern boards. The first had a three-year and the second a

four-year apprenticeship. Punching required “strong and robust men,” who were hired and paid on a monthly basis, earning four to five francs a day. Women worked for piece-rates and earned, on average, two francs a day.””

A manufacturer of men’s clothing in Nantes outlined another internal division of labour. In tailor shops, male cutters earned five to ten francs a day, tailors earned four to five francs, and women doing alterations 1f75c to 2f25c a day. Tailors received twenty-five to forty centimes an hour, while seamstresses sewing trousers and waistcoats

received thirteen to seventeen centimes an hour. In the off-season, manufacturers paid as little as fifteen centimes to men and eight

centimes to women.”* A marble cutter in the Nord described a fami-

lial variation on the sexual division of labour: ten men cut marble, fifteen women, mostly wives, carried pieces home to polish, “so they

3g The Logic of the Dual Labour Market

can watch the children,” three children assisted. Men earned 4f50c¢,

women, 2f50c and children, 1 to 1ff0c a day.” Other instances of sexual segmentation in the workplace could be culled from Spuller Commission dossiers. All such instances point to

the prevalence of a gender hierarchy whereby men held primary, higher-paid jobs and women held secondary, lower-paid jobs. Reformers’ acceptance of gender hierarchy in the labour force meant that sex-specific labour legislation would ratify female subordination in

the labour market, making a mockery of protection. The egregious example of respecting and reinforcing the dual labour market was unintentional. Legislators did not protect agricultural labour because reformers represented industrial constituencies; they did not cover service sector employees because governments refused to institute an inspection service capable of enforcing the law on tens of thousands of shops and offices. Omitting two of the

three largest employers of women left 4,300,000 women and over three-quarters of all working women beyond the pale of the law. These sectors had high proportions of women in their workforces: women filled nearly two-fifths of the positions in the service sector; a

third of the agricultural labour force was female.?° Even without pressure from interested parties, legislators exempted sectors of the economy dependent upon women workers. Without acknowledging it, they accommodated the secondary labour market or the system of assigning women to backward, sweated sectors of the economy.

On other occasions, the Labour Committee was swayed by the representations of interested employers. Objections from industrialists persuaded Waddington to modify the ban on night shifts. Both his 1888 bill and the final text of the law exempted factories using continuous heat because, as Waddington explained to the Chamber, women were “irreplaceable” on the night shifts of sugar refineries and glass factories. The bill and law also allowed overtime sixty to ninety days a year 1n seasonal industries, since ending overtime in the Parisian luxury trades would “fatally endanger” the prosperity of an

important export trade.’ Quite consciously, Waddington and the Chamber of Deputies catered to industries relying on cheap female labour. They also implicitly sanctioned sex-typing of occupations and poor labour practices. Paradoxically, sex-specific standards did not.improve men’s employment opportunities because legislatures respected the compartmentalization of the labour market by gender and the concentration of women in a few feminine industries. Legislators exempted heavily feminine sectors and hence most working women. They also limited

40 Women, Work, and the French State

the impact on employment patterns by targeting sectors with highly evolved sex-typing of jobs. Men resisted doing work sex-typed as feminine and refused to accept the pay women received. Employers refused to raise wages. The predominance of women in certain stages of production and the disruption that replacing most workers in one stage of production would cause also discouraged replacement policles.

We may conclude, therefore, that bourgeois leadership of the legislative campaign and general acceptance of the dual labour mar-

ket explain the paradoxical nature of sex-specific labour laws in France.

CHAPTER TWO

Protecting the Family: The Campaign for Hours Standards

Legal limits on the length of the working day remained the main objective of the campaign for protective labour legislation. After reformers obtained an eleven-hour maximum for women and a tenhour maximum for adolescents in 1892, radical reformers continued to press for a single standard for both sexes. Even after the 1900 act mandated ten hours for women, adolescents, and the men working with “protected” populations, determined reformers promoted universal regulation, with radicals preferring ten hours and socialists eight hours (see table 4). Despite government bills to extend the ten-hour limit to all wage workers before 1914, the Assembly did

not approve an act until 1919, when it adopted the international standard of eight hours that had been a socialist demand since the May Day movement of the 1890s.’ For most of the forty years between the ten-hour bill of 1879 and

the eight-hour act of 1919, the controversy over hours standards overshadowed consideration of other components of protective labour legislation. One reason was that socialists wanted them applied

to men. Ideologically, opponents warned, this was an attack of the “liberty to work” and hence on laissez-faire, until then the prevailing orthodoxy. Only by confining hours standards to women and adolescents, who were defined as dependent and weak, could many proponents of laissez-faire condone such an assault on individual liberty. The epic quality of the debates about intervention in men’s work led historians to ignore sex-specific hours standards.* One consequence of historiographical amnesia is the assumption that sex-specific standards were instalments in a piecemeal process of reform culminating in universal regulations passed for essentially the same reasons. Some historians suggest that the argument for restricting women’s working

42 Women, Work, and the French State

time emphasized opportunities for leisure and education, just as the case for regulating men’s workday did.* These historians disregard the distinctions contemporaries drew between sex-specific and universal measures. This chapter focuses on the intellectual and social forces mobilized for sex-specific hours standards. Comparing expertise before and after 1892 casts doubt on complacent assumptions of incremental

reform for the same purposes. Analysing propaganda for hours standards reveals new attitudes toward that genderless abstraction, labour.* Polemics for universal limits put more emphasis on productive labour; polemics for sex-specific limits stressed reproduction.

Studying lobbies raises questions about the benevolence of sexspecific protection enacted by a state that excluded women from the political process.

EXPERT OPINION BEFORE 1892 If economic problems brought the long debate over hours standards to a head, perceptions of social and political problems surely prepared the way. By the 1880s, sociologists and social economists had linked women’s wage work outside the home with family disintegration, juvenile delinquency, social turbulence, individualistic liberalism, and even socialism. Given memories of the Commune of 1871, the recent establishment of the Third Republic, and the emergence of socialism, the results of this scholarship had considerable appeal for

conservatives. Consequently, reformers did not need to gather information on women’s wage labour. As early as the 1830s, the expansion of women’s wage work raised the issue of female labour. Saint Simonians and Fourierists combined a belief in women’s nurturing qualities and the complementarity of the sexes with remarkably progressive proposals about women’s right to work for pay and, in Fourier’s thought, about the socialization of motherhood and housework. While both groups acquired cult status in the 1830s, their free love experiments alienated many supporters, including feminists.” Pioneer sociologists brought the issue of industrial labour, especially that of women, to the attention of the broader public. In the 1830s

Dr M. Villermé published selective studies of working conditions which implicitly connected women in textile factories to sexual 1mmorality, family breakdown, and inadequate childcare.° He offered

no evidence that female operatives were promiscuous or poor mothers, no doubt because the idea of women working away from home, under the authority of men who were not relatives, affronted

43 Protecting the Family

bourgeois ideals of “the angel of the home.” His criticism reflected bourgeois concern about prostitution, illegitimacy, and disruptive young working men.’ A decade later, a bill to subject both sexes to the livret — the passport male labourers were obliged to carry — evoked

similar sentiments. Judith DeGroat shows that the debates assumed the existence of problems connected with female workers’ sexuality.” But the deliberations also reflected an interest in reproduction in the socialist-feminist sense, in particular, a desire to safeguard husbands and children from debauched women. In the 1850s comprehensive surveys of industrial labour made similar correlations between women’s work and demoralization.” By the 1860s specific surveys of working women appeared. Jules Simon, a professor of political economy influenced by Comte, the “father of modern sociology,” conducted a personal inquiry. Although committed to the inclusion of women in the workforce, Simon shared Comte’s concept of the civilizing role of full-time housewives/mothers. He

also approached his task informed by parliamentary reports documenting social ills in English manufacturing towns.'° Not surprisingly, he was appalled by married women’s work away from home. Like most reformers after him, he considered single female operatives — the majority —as prospective wives and mothers. In L’Ouvriére he advised barring women from manufacturing and raising wages in home industries. Consonant with his reproductive con-

cerns, the book suggested encouraging marriage and household economy.’' As a liberal senator and prime minister in the Third Republic, Simon legitimized the notion of intervention in female labour markets. He also publicized the ideal of the housewife/ mother. '*

Less prominent writers drew similar conclusions from positivist thinking. In 1880 Paul Foucart published an extended essay with the

standard repertoire of positivist reasoning about female labour. Foucart stated baldly that industrial organization was “against women’s nature.” Beginning with her organic inferiorities to man, including a smaller, softer brain, he proceeded to her functions as “servant and mistress of the home ... [and] guardian of the integrity of the race.” After describing the deplorable results of her abandoning the home — “deflowering”, infant mortality, the bastardization of the race — he prescribed the consolidation of the family by keeping women at home. He was not prepared to prohibit female employment in manufacturing, because many women would otherwise not be able to earn a living. Rather, he recommended firing women in state enterprises and ending female labour in prisons and houses of providence. '”

44 Women, Work, and the French State

Anxiety about married women’s work overlapped with fears for the patriarchal family and social order. From the 1850s through the early

1870s, Frédéric Le Play wrote numerous monographs and tracts asserting the existence of an erosion of paternal authority and a shift to unstable nuclear families. Le Play and his associates traced these developments to industrialization, urbanization, and the individual-

ism of the revolutionary heritage. Le Play’s studies presented the family as the fundamental unit of social life and advanced the notion

that reforming family life would alleviate many social ills.‘* His theories were attractive in the aftermath of the Commune because they appeared to explain social upheaval and were persuasive because they were based on scientific research as understood and revered at the tume. Educated as an engineer, Le Play observed his subjects and classified families, practices that were major contributions to sociological method. He approved of family workshops and documented women’s contribution to family budgets. His research helps account for the politicians’ reluctance to regulate female labour in the domestic workplace. Although Le Play preferred contractual or self-help solutions to labour problems, he did not rule out regulat-

ing factory work. In the early 1870s two presidents of his Social Economy Society, formed to sponsor and publicize social research, supported factory acts.’” When socialists reemerged after the amnesty for Communards in the 1880s, sociologists envisaged the working-class family as a bulwark against socialism. Jules Simon established a popular sociological organ, La Revue de Famille, to impress upon the French the double danger of communism, described as the false expectations of workers, and of scepticism among the bourgeoisie. The journal contended

that these threats could be countered by restoring the “spirit” of family life and emphasized the role of the housewife/mother in nurturing that spirit.’ Although a liberal, Senator Simon admitted that contractual solutions would not succeed for women, because they did not strike and had no time for union meetings. He supported a legal reduction in women’s workday because they would not use the extra hour for leisure but rather for “the governance of their families.” He became a partisan of maternity leave.'’ In the early 1870s some economists began to broaden their vision of state responsibilities to society; one result was support for protective labour legislation for women. While the Chamber of Deputies discus-

sed Ambroise Joubert’s bill on child labour, amended to include women’s night and underground employment, a leading classical economist, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, published articles on women’s work

45 Protecting the Family

in the influential Revue des deux mondes. One article on small workshops attributed low wages and long hours to overcrowding in female

trades and the lack of occupational training for women; it recommended more technical instruction for women. Another article on factory labour left classical economic analysis behind. Here LeroyBeaulieu complained about the estrangement of women from their “natural place in the family”; he advocated banning women’s night

work and arranging for new mothers to nurse at work. LeroyBeaulieu rather casually explained his abandonment of laissez-faire

principles by referring to concerns about sexual immorality and infant care and promising that shorter hours for women would result in an improved labour force.'® Although Leroy-Beaulieu reverted to classical economics, other economists continued to incorporate the defence of the family and social order in the functions of the state.'? While laissez-faire economists opposed any state intervention in the labour market, a growing group of social economists supported sex-specific regulation on the

grounds that women, like children, were dependents, not free agents.~”

In the 1880s, when sex-specific hours standards were debated, no

studies of women’s current working conditions were available. Although investigations were under way, they were published after sex-specific standards had been passed into law.*' Lacking information, opinion-makers and the public repeated the platitudes of the preceding generation. During the debates preceding the 1874 and 1892 acts, the government conducted public opinion surveys, which are available in the archives. Until 18g0 surveys meant questionnaires sent to mayors, public servants, industrial and commercial associations, and, after

their legalization in 1884, to unions. Both the questions and the selection of respondents seem problematic by present-day standards.

For instance, questions in the 1873 survey were open-ended and many respondents answered only those questions that interested them.?? In 1884 there was at least a form on which to fill in the answers. Several of the 193 questions treated female participation in the labour market and one asked about the substitution of women for men. Five hundred and twenty-five respondents, among them sixtyseven chambers of commerce and sixty-five workers’ organizations, returned the form. While an absolute majority favored restrictions on women’s hours, a simple majority wanted the existing twelve-hour standards or “absolute liberty” for men.?° Although the Labour Committee considering the 18go bill inter-

46 Women, Work, and the French State

viewed some women employed at night about banning night labour,

neither they nor any other committee surveyed working women about hours standards. The lack of interest in women’s attitudes stands in marked contrast to the committee’s decision, the same year, to send questionnaires about standards to members of largely male

unions. The committee sought men’s opinions because men were voting citizens and because regulating men’s labour was controversial. While an absolute majority of 6,730 of the 9,357 respondents endorsed restrictions on men’s workday, 2,267 were hostile to any such restrictions.**

Before 1892 sociologists’ and social economists’ consensus on women’s prescribed domestic role meant that highly idealized and abstract statements dominated intellectual discussion about women’s wage labour. In this climate of opinion, investigating women’s actual working conditions was simply not necessary.

EXPERT OPINION AFTER 1892 As the issue of universal standards moved onto the political agenda in the 1890s, experts devised more elaborate rationales. A new generation of economists returned to arguments about productivity; labour inspectors and lawyers offered advice, official investigations added to

the pool of information. Although investigators did propose a new solution to the fundamental problem of low wages, neigher the polemics nor the data uprooted prejudices about women’s work. In the 1880s young economists came under the influence of the German economists Gustave Schmoller, Lujo Brentano, and Max Weber of the Verein Fur Sozialpolitik, with their analyses of workingclass insecurity. In France, Paul Cauwes launched a frontal attack on

classical laissez-faire and campaigned for protection of the home market. His appointment to the Paris law faculty and his founding of the Revue de l’économie politique in the late 1880s paved the way for other interventionist economists. Maurice Bourguin, Charles Gide, and Paul Pic found posts in important provincial faculties;*? proponents of state intervention in the labour market — including the adult male labour market — published in the Revue de l’économie politique.*°

Interventionist economists did empirical research into working-class

conditions and proposed state-imposed solutions to the problems they identified. Once they proposed intervention in men’s labour, they had to enter into abstract theoretical debates. In an 1898 study, Charles Rist presented evidence that productivity had not declined since the reduction of women’s hours, along with a

47 Protecting the Family

critique of classical economics more comprehensive than anything offered in defence of sex-specific standards. Asserting that economics was not a matter of natural laws, he noted that so-called economic laws were “often synonymous with traditional routines.” Economies were suscepuble to human will. As the “guardian of the moral and material

integrity of the nation,” the state owed protection to working men, because working men were not really free. The vaunted freedom to contract one’s labour was illusory, for workers had to work and wanted shorter time — two arguments rarely made about women’s labour. Rist also advanced a political argument absent from debates about sex-specific regulations: the state should limit the workday “to realize democratic development” by offering workers enough time to educate themselves for citizenship.”’

After the 1900 act included men working with women and children, interventionists became more systematic in their defence of hours standards and began popularizing their ideas. In 1903 the Revue de Véconomie politique published Brentano’s article on the relationship between the length of the workday, wages, and productivity.

Usmg the Enghsh example favoured by proponents of universal hours standards, Brentano claimed that English workers were more productive than French or German workers because shorter days and higher wages encouraged more intensive work. Although the author

did not endorse standards, he recommended social reform as “the only way to make a nation achieve the plenitude of its economic and political power.”?° In the same year Paul Pic and another Lyonnais lawyer and economist, Justin Godart, founded Questions pratiques de législation ouvriére et d’économie sociale. Over the next decade, this journal commented upon government inquires and reports, chronicled the progress of bills, and published laws and decrees. The editors opened their columns to advocates of further regulation of women’s work as well as moderate regulation of men’s working hours.*” Less technical journals followed suit.*° Of course, laissez-faire economists still controlled important journal like the Journal des économistes and L’Economiste francais. While they

criticized the application of sex-specific standards, most justified the principle as “humane” action for dependents.”' Only Leroy-Beaulieu pointed out the contradiction in “these times of progress for feminism, when people wish to efface ... all distinctions on the basis of sex.” However, orthodox economists still objected to regulating men, who

were not considered dependent because they had unions and citizenship rights. They declaimed against the absolutism of the democratic state; they contended that technology could not be im-

48 Women, Work, and the French State

proved indefinitely, that some industries could not increase productivity, that eight hours of intensive labour might not be preferable to longer hours of relaxed labour, and so on.°* The inspection service charged with enforcing labour laws also offered advice. Divisional inspectors’ reports and summaries by the president of the Supreme Work Committee supervising the service were published annually. In the first decade of Waddington’s presidency, 1893-1902, reports and summaries advocated “unification” of the three hours standards.** Their advocacy influenced the government’s decision to support unification in the mid-1890s.** Proponents of universal standards mined the inspectors’ reports, with their figures on infractions of the laws, for evidence of the need

to extend coverage. They cited these publications as if they were impartial sources.°” Yet the reports combine concrete description of abuses in the workplace with abstract generalizations about women. A

quotation will illustrate the nature of these generalizations. In response to questions about women’s night work, one divisional inspector opined that “the wife must bring her virtue, ideals and morality to the home” and that “the wife’s presence assures order and economy in the home.”*° These comments reflected positivist conceptions of the wife’s domestic role which had become clichés in the legislative debates.

Professors and students of labour law emerged as experts. As administrators, judges, and employers sought to comprehend the bewildering mass of statutes, decrees, and judicial rulings, law faculties opened courses and accepted theses in labour law. Professors and retired judges published practical guides to the tangle of regulations

and taught courses at polytechnical institutes and commercial colleges. While some managed to remain neutral,*’ most accepted regulation, identified defects in the existing laws, and advised refinements in them. Law students still considered the principle of intervention on behalf of women. One thesis reiterated the “positivist catechism” that “the role of salariée is purely artificial ... ‘The wife ...

must be free from all external work so that she can fulfill her sacred social destiny.” Moreover, woman could not ameliorate her own lot, because “her spirit of resignation and sacrifice” and “many centuries

of subjection, irresponsibility, effacement have made her inept at revolt.”°®

Very few professors or practising lawyers advocated universal stan-

dards before the law covering men working with “the protected categories of workers.” These early advocates of universal standards argued morally and socially. One author contended that “the labour contract is nearly always vitiated, obtained by moral constraint,” that

49 Protecting the Family

the work contract “was a very special sale, of energy,” which was part

of the strength of the nation, that the working class “really forms a class apart, a class burdened with incapacities irreconcilable with our social rights,” and that short time would free workers from a “bestial existence” for education and family life.’ After 1900 professors and lawyers devised legal and economic cases: legislators had intended the law to cover men; the dismissal of apprentices after application of

the law had disrupted production, and so forth.?° They offered people’s law courses and published popular guides to the laws.*" Law theses tended to follow the professors’ line of argument. One did add

a novel incentive: a proposal to regulate men to avoid strikes.** Official inquiries became more professional after 1891, when, following the British model,** the Assembly created two investigative agencies responsible to the Ministry of Commerce (later the Ministry of Labour). These two agencies were the Labour Office and the High Commission on Labour. Throughout the 1890s the permanent staff of the Labour Office did little beyond providing information from other sources. After 1goo researchers made thorough studies of particular industries. During their four-year study of the domestic lingerie industry, 1908—

11, they interviewed 2,300 people in all branches of the industry, analysed the results, and released their findings in five volumes. ‘The report concluded that a minimum wage would resolve this industry’s problems.**

The High Commission consisted of appointed employers, union representatives, politicians, and officials. Waddington was less influential than Auguste Keufer, general secretary of the Federation of Book Workers. At the first meeting, members adopted Keufer’s proposal that the commission act as a clearing house for information on the labour force. Keufer, who opposed the employment of women in the printing trades, suggested “a statistical table on the influence on women’s and children’s labour on wages and depopulation.”*” In the

18gos, however, the commission gathered little date and did no serious research on women’s work. After 1900 the commission investigated the feasibility of proposals to reduce women’s wage labour. For instance, they examined propos-

als for nursing rooms in the workplace and Saturday afternoon holidays for working women. They devised questionnaires and distributed them to chambers of commerce, chambers of arts and manufactures, industrial relations boards, and unions. The published reports usually urged more protection for women.*” The commission

also considered a minimum wage for female home workers as a means of limiting sweated labour. Although they prescribed a mini-

50 Women, Work, and the French State

mum wage as a remedy, they concluded that “The real cure 1s the reconstruction of family life, returning everyone to his role and

reconstituting this perfect mutual aid society which ... gathers around the strong and protective man.”*’ The conclusion is reminiscent of positivist, syndicalist, and patriarchal ideals of family life. After two decades of economic and legal analysis, arguments for

universal hours standards were well honed. Investigations into women’s working conditions had drawn attention to the problem of low wages and to a likely solution, minimum wage laws. But neither theory nor evidence diminished the desire to “return” women to the family in order to “reconstitute” patriarchal family life. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION

One of many ironies in the campaign for sex-specific hours standards is the modest role of the medical profession. Physicians’ contribution

to public acceptance of sex-specific coverage was limited to confirming prejudices about women’s physical strength and health. The new specialty of industrial hygiene did not test myths about feminine fragility and susceptibility to disease. Their concentration on industrial plant rather than on workers left room for stereotyping to the

detriment of occupational health needs. Without investigating women’s capacities, workload, or lifestyles, many hygienists attributed diseases endemic in feminine trades to physiological deficiencies rather than to exhaustion from overwork. Industrial hygienists simply asserted that women were especially vulnerable to fatigue — and therefore to infectious disease — because women had “less energy.” To the extent that they bothered to

explain low energy, they referred to the reproductive function. Almost all assumed the prevalence of physical suffering from menstrual disorders. It should be recalled that a contemporary scientific study of “morbid psychology” during menstruation proved to the satisfaction of the reviewer in the prestigious Annales d’hygiéne publique et de médecine légale that a woman’s “troubles prevent her from being at

all times ready to fulfill the duties of public life.”*° Virtually no one mentioned the drain on women’s energy resulting from housewifely and maternal duties. When industrial hygienists did observe workers, they were more likely to study the discrete symptoms of exposure to toxic gases than the systemic effects of exhaustion from overwork. On the rare occasions that they noticed working women, they mixed concrete descriptions of symptoms with abstract statements about women’s excitability and irregular rhythms.*” The “averted eye” was both a consequence

51 Protecting the Family

and a cause of ignorance about the impact of work on the menstrual

cycle. The ignorance was usually unacknowledged or blamed on women’s refusal to supply accurate information.”” Most industrial hygienists preferred to study the impact of long hours on pregnancy, childbirth, and infants, not on women’s health or even their reproductive organs. Many simply reasoned that long hours of standing and leaning over machines increased the incidence of fallen wombs, difficult deliveries, and sickly babies. By the 1890s some cited figures

showing high infant mortality in cities with large proportions of working women and drew the obvious causal connection without considering contributing factors such as malnutrition or the absence of affordable medical services.*' Despite the dearth of medical research on the effects of industrial labour on women’s health, medical opinion influenced legislative decisions about sex-specific hours standards. Industrial hygienists recommended an early sex-specific bill as a “prudent and wise measure.” When the question of limiting men’s hours was on the agenda in the 1890s, Dr Henri Napias, general inspector of Public Assistance, reviewed legal standards for the Academy of Medicine. Although he

approved provisions for children and women, he did not support provisions for men, “whatever interest it would serve from the standpoint of health.” He explained ideologically that doctors “have not insisted on obtaining regulations which have a character detrimental to the individual liberty of citizens ... who have the means to defend

themselves in common law and in the exercise of their rights of citizenship.”°?

French physiologists had accepted Helmholtzein ideas about fatigue before adoption of the 1892 standards. They had substituted a

new medical language about exhaustion for the earlier moralistic discourse about idleness, and debates on sex-specific standards reflected the medical conception of fatigue. However, in France, scientific study of exhaustion from overworking began after the 1892

law and the results were disseminated to the public after the 1900 act.”” In short, the Europedan “science of work” did not influence political discourse until the issue of universal standards moved onto the political agenda. In papers presented to annual hygiene conterences and in memoranda to the Ministry of Labour, scientists defined

fatigue as a reduced ability to work and described techniques to measure it. When the minister of labour asked advice, a leading physiologist, Dr A. Imbert, advocated laboratory and workplace studies by occupation. In a radical departure from prevailing practice, Imbert proposed interviewing workers to orient research and to learn their subjective experience.”*

52 Women, Work, and the French State

The ministry did not constitute a Gommittee on Work Physiology until 1913, when the minister of labour, Henry Cheron, addressed the committee about the need “to conserve the sources of national energy” from the ravages of alcoholism, tuberculosis, syphilis, and depopulation. After some debate about the lack of a physiological theory of labour, Imbert and other medical scientists on the Physiolo-

gy Subcommittee recommended laboratory studies of fatigue and how to divide the day between work and breaks. The Statistical Subcommittee set out to learn more about working hours, the Taylor system, and so on. Since they began one year before the outbreak of World War 1, they had little impact before the war.”? Even when scientists began to examine fatigue resulting from labour, they engaged in moralistic pronouncements about monotonous labour “favouring the moral collapse of society.” These pronouncements were often accompanied by unsubstantiated comments

about women’s lack of endurance or vulnerability to “overexcitement and irritation of the vaginal canal” from long hours on pedal-operated machines. ‘These comments introduced speculation about infant mortality.°° As late as 1913 Imbert proposed a special study of women on the ground that they had less resistance than men, and because there were no statistics “permitting us to establish in what proportion, even approximately, the intensity, the speed, the length of work should be reduced for women.” Citing dubious data on the influence of mothers’ work on the newborn, he urged studies of the

effect of individual occupations on “the essential functions of women.””’

LOBBIES

Organized lobbies and open propaganda played an increasingly important role in the campaign for hours standards. International conferences on labour legislation instituted international associations for the legal protection of workers. Industrialists applied pressure inside and outside the National Assembly. Feminists slowly found a voice to Oppose sex-specific hours standards — but not maternity leaves or créches in the workplace. International pressure began in 1890, when the German emperor called an international conference on mine work, Sunday holidays, and women’s and children’s labour. The French delegation led by Jules Simon voted against limiting women’s day except in mines. Simon explained that the French, with their “cult of individual liberty,” preferred voluntaristic approaches to labour problems.”® In fact, Simon was maintaining a distance from the recent enemy and victor.

53 Protecting the Family

Germany.”” Private initiatives followed, in the form of international congresses on labour legislation. In 1897 the French government sent to the Congress three official delegates sympathetic to government regulation. Among the forty-eight private French citizens in attendance were thirteen professors, six lawyers, five industrialists, and five engineers, plus twenty-one representatives of employers’ associations and five social economy groups.°°

When Paris hosted the Congress in 1900, the minister of com-

merce, Millerand, promoted the idea of an international association.°' The delegates voted to constitute an International Association for the Legal Protection of Workers. The following year the International Association began lobbying by encouraging national associations, sponsoring international conferences, investigating working conditions, and publicizing the results. The same year 113 politicians, professors, scientists, employers, and syndicalists formed the French National Association.® Interventionists like Cauwes and Pic sat on the national executive beside politicians ranging from the Marxist Vaillant, through the reform socialist Millerand, the republican Waddington, and Social Catholics Abbé Lemire and Albert de Mun.” The association prided itself on being nonpartisan; one member wrote, “What party, in effect, could treat as an enemy a group ... in which ... the leader of Social Catholicism, M. de Mun, sits peacefully beside M. Vaillant, one of the leaders of revolutionary socialism?”**

The French Association grew to be the second largest national branch in 1906. The 450 members were influential: 20 per cent were professors, 15 per cent were lawyers, 18 per cent were in medicine, engineering, and other professions, and 10 per cent were politicians. The interested parties were less well represented: 19 per cent were industrialists, businessmen or representatives of industrial or commercial societies; 11 per cent were bureaucrats, mostly work inspectors, and 6 per cent were delegates from labour unions or exchanges. There were only nine women, none of them working-class.”

As an in-house publication explained, the association “avoided being a paper organization, without relation to external reality” by starting with reforms where consensus was possible. These proved to be bans on women’s night work and industrial toxins, maternity leave, weekly holidays, and the English weekend.®° Not until 1905, did the association publish a pamphlet implicitly supporting universal stan-

dards in a critique of Waddington’s bill to allow a weekly limit on hours. When the government introduced a ten-hour bill the following year, the association advocated universal standards.°’ Most industrialists opposed hours standards, even for women. Senator-industrialists and the larger number of senators associated

54 Women, Work, and the French State

with industrialists opposed key provisions at strategic times, as, for instance, when the Senate rejected sex-specific standards in the 1882 Chamber bill.°® The veto and more pressing items on the legislative agenda delayed progress on the measure until 1887. ‘Two years later the Senate Committee report written by Charles Ferry, a spokesman for Vosges textiles, criticized the inclusion of adult women. The Ferry report forecast hardship for single or widowed women with families to support as well as difficulties monitoring two work schedules. The Senate expunged women from the text and set the same twelve-hour

limit for adolescents as for all adults.°° Representatives of industrial societies testified before every legisla-

tive committee considering hours standards or any other kind of protection.’° Pamphlets and letters deluged committees and individual members of committees.’) The 1891 Senate report accepted the Chamber compromise on eleven hours for women. The reporter, an old working-class activist, Henri Tolain, referred to resolutions rolling in from employers’ associations resigned to eleven hours as

less disruptive than ten hours. But the Senate defeated the clause prescribing eleven hours for women. Ina conciliatory gesture, Tolain

praised experiments with two overlapping shifts, which had been promoted by the braid manufacturers of Saint-Chamond as an innovative response to the proposed law.’? Subsequently, the law allowed two nine-hour shifts so factories could operate from four A.M. to ten p.M. This system made calculation of the legal workday difficult and monitoring of working hours impossible. The following year the Senate extracted another concession: a maximum work week of sixty hours for adolescents, nominally to encourage Sunday rest, religious observance, and family life, but actually to allow eleven-hour days to

accommodate industrialists operating long hours Monday through Friday and half-days on Saturday.”* Legislative speeches by industrial spokesmen included long exposi-

tions of free contract and free trade, so much so that Georges Clemenceau exclaimed: “Free trade isn’t a religion!” In the speeches of liberals like Yves Guyot, the defence of economic principles coexisted with evocations of fundamental civil rights for women.’”* But most of the speeches, depositions, pamphlets, and letters made dire predictions of lower production, higher costs, and a less competitive

position in the world market. Some included threats about lower wages or dismissal of women, either of which would mean difficulties in maintaining family income. A few referred to administrative prob-

lems like the impossibility of devising regulations responsive to all economic circumstances.

55 Protecting the Family

When reformers tried to revise the law after 1892, a group of industrialists in the Assembly led the opposition to unified standards. Notable among the opponents was Charles Balsan, a woollen manu-

facturer in the Nord. Notable for their silence or, in the case of

Charles Ferry, their conversion to unification, were spokesmen for eastern cotton magnates, who were preparing for short time. Opponents tried to smear the amendment by labelling it socialist and to divide the electorale by arguing that peasants and consumers would pay for the “comfortable class” socialists wanted to establish. They tried to undermine worker support by insisting that male workers did

not need tutelage and that further regulation would drive small enterprises out of business, increasing unemployment and lowering wages. Using examples drawn from experience, they developed the argument about regulations being too inflexible to accomodate the diversity of industrial conditions. The Lyonnais banker and mine administrator Edouard Aynard railed against inspectors who “dispossess bosses of their prerogatives.” Important newspapers like the Journal des débats and Le Temps echoed their opinions.’ Feminists played a peripheral role in the campaign for hours standards. One reason was their exclusion from the formal political arena. A second reason was that no more than 2,000 women belonged to women’s rights groups in this era.”° Furthermore, feminists, like socialists, were divided on women’s work. On the one hand, relational feminists either believed in equality in difference and the primacy of

the maternal role or pragmatically adopted the language of republican motherhood as the language appropriate to public discourse. On

the other hand, integral feminists opposed the sexual division of labour and argued for equal opportunities. Integral feminism had fewer adherents.’’ The government-sponsored Women’s Congress of 1889, presided over by Jules Simon, was discreetly silent on the divisive issue of special labour legislation for women. The “alternative” Congress of the Rights of Women, sponsored by liberal feminists Maria Deraismes and Leon Richer, implicitly rejected exceptional

laws by resolving that women be permitted to participate in industry. ”°

At the 1896 Congress, regulation was debated with passion. Keufer of the Book Workers Union upheld the ideal of mothers remaining

home and men receiving the family wage (a rare reference to a concept which one might see as a necessary corollary to sex-specific restrictions without wage guarantees). A male doctor and a conservative feminist advocated “rigorous” protection for women. Maria Pog-

non and two other women of the Ligue des droits des femmes re-

56 Women, Work, and the French State

jected any protection for working women. The notion of sex-specific protection was so closely associated with restriction of opportunity that, without any sense of contradiction, Pognon called for créches in the workplace, so that working mothers could breast-feed infants. Clearly she distinguished between disabling and enabling intervention in the female labour market.”® By the time the Chamber began to consider extending coverage to

men, feminists had become more vocal in their objections to sexspecific as opposed to universal standards. In the new and influential nespaper, La Fronde, journalist Clotilde Dissard opposed sex-specific laws because they made women less competitive and “throw women

out of work.” She preferred to “compensate” by regulating men’s hours and restoring the balance between the sexes, although she accepted the old concept of segmented but assured labour markets (i.e., forbidding women work for which they were not fit and reserving jobs for which they were suited). In the same newspaper, Maria Pognon denounced “the pernicious law of 1892” as “protection in reverse” devised by anti-feminists who wanted to reserve “all highpay work for their constituents.” She suggested that deputies treat women as responsible human beings and help them unionize “so they themselves can arrange their terms of work.”°°

In 1900 all three women’s congresses at the Paris Exhibition — equal rights, charitable and Catholic — rejected sex-specific labour regulations. The equal rights congress demanded the abrogation of all “exceptional laws regulating women’s work,” to be replaced by a universal eight-hour law with wage guarantees. It is noteworthy that equal rights feminists distinguished betweeen sex-specific hours standards and maternity leaves with benefits and assurances of a job on

the return to wage work. Sex-specific limitations on working time were seen to be disabling, while provisions for maternity were considered enabling.®?

The most interesting feminist statement of 1900 came from the feisty Marie Maugeret, who tried to explain Christian feminists’ endorsement of “liberty to work” to other Social Catholics. Social Catholics wanted protection of women workers on the grounds of women’s

“evident weakness,” of “Christian justice and charity” and of the necessity to safeguard human life. As for intervention in men’s labour, they claimed that men had unions to defend them and that inequalities “come from the Providence to whom we must humbly submit.”°*

Maugeret pointed out that protection made woman “a perpetual minor, under the tutelage of father, husband and state.” She illuminated the ironies of sex-specific intervention in the labour market in

57 Protecting the Family

passages worthy of extensive quotation. She wrote that legislators

acted “under the pretext of protecting her, not against her other tutors — which is often so necessary — but against what seems to our

legislators the danger par excellence, work!” She illustrated their illogic: “in the name of hygiene, I forbid you to compromise your health in the workplace; in the name of liberty, I permit you to compromise it as much as you wish in the home. I only give you permission to go out at night to take care of certain public functions defined and supervised by the law, or else for certain jobs so poorly paid men will not take them.”°° Unlike most of the male sociologists, economists, doctors, lawyers, officials, and lobbyists promoting sex-specific labour bills, unlike the

economists and industrialists opposing state intervention in the labour market, feminists made women the measure of protection. Almost alone, they noted the basic contradiction in an apparently humanitarian process, namely, that protection for women discrimi-

nated against women. Laws coupling women with children and adolescents implied that they were lifelong minors. Some of these laws remain on the books today. In practice, lower limits on women’s workday disadvantaged women in hiring decisions and in pay. Ironically, the laws regulating women’s work do not substantiate

the social control thesis that experts imposed their values on the populace. Certainly working women were objects rather than actors

in the drive to reform their conditions. Like the experts Jacques Donzelot studied,®** the sociologists, social economists, doctors, professors, and bureaucrats who posed as objective analysts of women’s work were carriers of a host of unexamined cultural assumptions, in this case about women’s proper role.®” However, their deep-seated

belief that women belonged in the home was usually tempered by economic calculations that the secondary labour market needed cheap labour. Inquiries revealed that some women had to support themselves and that many working-class families could not survive without women’s wages. When their bourgeois vision of the housewife/mother as moral authority clashed with harsh economic realities, the experts — and the politicians — were capable of compromising on a dual role for working-class women as short-time wage workers in a secondary labour market and as part-time housewives.

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CHAPTER THREE

Restricting Reform: The Politics of Protection

Political impediments deprived men, home workers, and commercial employees of the “protection” of the 1892 law. The only men subject to the ten-hour limit were those in the same workplaces as women and

adolescents under the 1900 act (and miners, railwaymen, and state employees under occupation-specific laws). Despite lobbying about home workers and retail clerks, no other group benefited from legal limits on the workday until 1917. Instead, acts mandated seats for female clerks (December 1900), extended safety standards to shops and offices (1903), required a weekly rest for all employees (1906),

and imposed a minimum wage for female home workers in the clothing trades (1915). This chapter probes the legislative approaches to men, home workers, and commercial employees in order to reveal

the obstacles to progressing from partial to general protection. Even reform deputies had reasons to prefer the elimination of entire categories of workers from protective labour laws. As former or self-styled workers, socialists with urban and industrial constituencies Saw their political interests tied to the industrial labour force. As

professionals with petty bourgeois support, republicans were prepared to ignore employees and service workers. Selective protection was also attractive to pragmatic reformers who had to justify the expense and minimize state intrusion to their constituents.’ Since most reformers shared the conservatives’ commitment to the sanctity of the family and the liberals’ apprehension about the size of govern-

ment, few were interested in intervening in tens of thousands of family workshops. They did not try regulating hours by minimum wage law, until investigations disclosed shocking conditions in home workshops.

60 Women, Work, and the French State EXCLUDING MEN

Although universal labour standards were contentious, political support for sex-specific protection spanned the political spectrum. The

left began with the demand for universal standards, the right was amenable, but both had to compromise on partial coverage to attract

the support of the centre. Neither the Opportunist governments of the 1880s and 1890s nor the Radical government presiding at the turn of the century would endorse universal standards. Abandoning their original approach of criticizing working conditions, reformers complained about the disintegration of the family and depopulation due to women’s work. Pleading about the reproductive sphere was substituted for rationales about the productive sphere. Socialist deputies were the first and most consistent proponents of universal hours standards. The 1879 bill to lower the universal limit from twelve to ten hours was sponsored by Martin Nadaud, a former bricklayer and democratic-socialist of 1848; Louis Greppo, a former silk weaver and democratic-socialist of 1848; Louis Blanc, the theorist of the organization of work, and other forty-eighters. They spoke of completing the task begun in 1848, with vague references to workers’

health and welfare. When challenged about the economic consequences, Nadaud added the argument about short time improving productivity. Blanc rejected predictions that wages would fall commensurate with the loss in working time, claiming that wages were also a function of the supply and demand for labour. If workers produced less in a day, industry would need to hire more people and the demand for labour would raise wages. Blanc countered liberal objections about interfering in the freedom to work with a distinction

between abstract concepts of freedom and the concrete means to

exercise freedom.” Although Nadaud spoke for the ten-hour day in labour committees throughout the 1880s,” he recognized that the moderate bourgeois

majority on these committees would only accept sex-specific standards.* As early as 1881 he endorsed the Waddington bill on sex-specific limits. To his arguments about productivity, Nadaud appended emotive social commentary about the “monstrosity” of working women not being able to care for children or “have the soup ready for their husbands when they come home from work.” He drew

attention to the other facet of their reproductive role by noting that France had the second lowest rate of population growth in Europe.” The Chamber voted for this bill; as table 5 indicates, most of the support came from bourgeois republican deputies in the centre.

61 Restricting Reform Table 5 Social and Political Composition of the Vote of 29 March 1881

Occupation Political Support

Lawyers 4216Extreme leftRadicals) 43 Journalists (including

Doctors 13 Engineers 8 Centre Left

Industrialists 7 (including Opportunists) 81 Merchants 5 Bankers 2 Right Other businessmen 9 (including Monarchists) 10

Workers Others 4]3

Source: JO, Débais, 29 March 1881, and Robert.

In the late 1880s a new generation of reform socialists like the labour lawyer Millerand defended sex-specific bills. In addition to rhetorical points about confronting “economic Bastilles,” they called

the bill “a law of social preservation” and “an act of patriotic prudence” in the name of the French race “bastardized and degenerated by excessive labour.” But table 6 shows that socialist votes were an insignificant component in the voting block for labour bills in 1889 and 1891. The republican and radical centre was still the core. After 1892 Marxist socialists like Prudent-Dervilliers continued the convoluted argument for universal and sex-specific standards. Pru-

dent-Dervilliers insisted on a ten-hour day because work was now very intense. Yet he considered it anomalous to have women and children put in ten hours, because their bodies did not have “the same

resistance.” Instead, they should work eight hours to reduce male unemployment. After expressing paternalistic concern about woman “who is so exploited she needs someone to take care of her,” PrudentDervilhiers appealed to the “social interest” in ending capitalist policies of replacing men with women to reduce wages. Once he intro-

duced the subject of women, the argument veered away from the nature of work to a defence of the patriarchal family. He criticized capitalists for destroying his ideal of family life: “She can no longer clean her house; she can no longer care for her children; she can no longer give to the home what she ought, the comforting familial joy which is an inestimable prize for the workingman who returns harassed from his hard task.” Since it was impossible “to exonerate” women from work, he proposed lightening their exploitation in the labour force to facilitate their domestic role.

62 Women, Work, and the French State Table 6 Political Affiliations of Deputies Voting for the Labour Bills of 1889 and 1891

Political Affiliation A Vote 1889 Vote 1891

Number Percentage Number Percentage

Extreme Left

(including Radical Socialists) 59 18 58 20.5

Centre (Radicals and Republicans) 231 70.4 184 63.5

Social Catholic 22 6.7 16 5.5 Extreme Right

(excluding Social Catholics) 14 4.3 25 9.6

Unknown 2 6 7 2.4

Source: JO, Debats, 5 February 1889 and 19 December 1891, and Robert.

Prudent-Dervilliers also alluded to women’s biological function. In reference to the “natality crisis,” he cited labour congress resolutions for suppression of women’s employment in all branches of industry

which imperilled the “feminine organism.” In one of a series of oblique yet suggestive statements on “the special fragility” of the “physiological conditions unique to the feminine organism,” he spoke of the “repercussions” of “the regular cycle of her essential organic

functions” on all organs. He urged deputies to “Command her to avoid all physical overwork, on pain of destroying an already unstable

equilibrium.” Once Marxists decided to defend the republic during the Dreyfus affair in the late 1890s, they looked to the state for amelioration of workers’ conditions.» However, Marxists were critical of moderate proposals to revise the 1892 law. Although they insisted on universal standards, they made no reference to the party’s stand on women’s right to work, perhaps because individual members took ambiguous or negative stands on this issue.” Dr Vaillant tried amending Labour Committee bills to get eight hours, but his amendment attracted only seventy-four votes.'° After 1900, reform socialists urged codification of the labour laws, with universal hours standards as well as prohibitions on women’s and

adolescents’ work. They contended this would complete the embryonic labour laws, diminish unemployment, and improve the race. These bills moved slowly through committees, with no progress

on men’s standards. The sex- and age-specific provisions were incorporated into the Labour Code in 1912."' A decree listing exceptions to the hours standards promptly followed."*

63 Restricting Reform

On the opposite side of the political spectrum, Social Catholics continued the tradition of the Monarchists who had passed the 1874 child labour law. After the Republicans seized control of the government in 1878, some of the Catholic legitimists left in the Assembly remained interested in regulating women’s work. Social Catholics were led by Count Albert de Mun, who tried to recruit and “moralize” workers for the Right m Catholic Workers Circles. In the mid-1880s de Mun proposed an eleven-hour day, a minimum wage for home workers, and a maternity leave. After the pope authorized Catholics

to rally to the Republic in the early 1890s, de Mun helped form a faction of the constitutional right (raliés) and persuaded his faction to endorse the ten-hour day for women, a ban on women’s night labour, and compulsory maternity leave.'” De Mun accepted the principle of intervention in men’s hours on the paternalistic grounds that workers were “weak beings incapable of defending themselves.” In labour committees, he said that strikes and unions, “the only means they have to fight,” were hard to accept

in “our society.” In the Chamber, he made a more politic appeal, similar to Waddington’s appeal to the elite: the state had the right to prevent abuses and to reestablish the balance between workers and

bosses. After advocating “total regulation” in committee, he supported the majority position on sex-specific regulation in the Chamber. He explained that woman was “a feeble being par excellence”

and protecting women contributed to the “preservation of the family.”'* Although de Mun had the satisfaction of seeing many of his proposals enacted, he and his faction were never the decisive element in the voting block. With the initiative coming from the political extremes but the bulk of the support coming from the center, there was a pressing need for

mediating figures like Waddington, who could compromise and address moderates in their own language. His arguments about family life and population attracted many moderates. Conservatives and republicans developed Waddington’s idea that

hifteen-hour days threatened women’s reproductive role, because they would not have healthy pregnancies or time to prepare meals and keep house. While republicans cited some statistics on infant mortality in industrial departments,'” they did not offer any data correlating infant mortality to women’s work or to working women’s pregnancies. No one went beyond citing insufficient time for housework to provide any evidence linking work time to poor housekeeping. When liberals mounted an attack on the grounds that restrictions on women’s work infringed on their liberty, republicans parried with

a denial of women’s freedom, in so far as women had no political

64 Women, Work, and the French State

rights and ceased to have civil rights upon marriage. ‘Vhey also bran-

dished positivist ideals about restoring the moralizing agent to the home, with the qualification that they did not wish to end women’s wage work, but merely return it to its “natural sphere” in the home.'® Although some republicans challenged the tenet of political econ-

omy that workers were free to dispose of their labour, the heart of their case for sex-specific legislation remained the preservation of the

family. For instance, radical republicans made poignant appeals about women’s contribution to family comfort. Moderates seemed more concerned about regulating working-class men and children in the interests of social order. They denied they were drafting labour laws, as opposed to laws to reorganize the family and to safeguard society. The laws would give women more time at home to practise “the science of family life,” which would keep their husbands out of the café, inculcate the habits of order and economy in their children,

and thereby ensure social peace.’ When reformers failed to obtain universal standards, they held out

hope of implicit reform. In 1887 the moderate majority on the Labour Committee rejected universal standards on the ground of men’s liberty to work. Reformers on the committee consoled themselves with the idea of “indirect regulation” or the assumption that employers would have to coordinate the schedules of men with those of women.’® When May Day petitions for eight hours came before

another Labour Committee in 1890, moderate reformers distinguished between intervention for “zncapables” and for “adultes.” Wad-

dington reminded the committee about the definitive vote against universal regulation in the previous Chamber (330 nays, 163 yeas). Others proposed explaining to socialists that sex-specific standards “would lead naturally” to universal coverage. Waddington and the minister of commerce denied any connection between sex-specific and universal coverage in an effort to overcome opposition from industrialists and senators.” When reformers tried to move on to regulation of men’s labour, they encountered resistance to the process of piecemeal reform and difficulties transcending the rationales for sex-specific protection. After 1892 Dr Dron conducted the drive for universal standards. While he claimed authority as a medical observer of working conditions, he never had Waddington’s influence in government circles. He also had distractions. On joining the Labour Committee in 1889, he devoted his attention to banning women’s night work.*° Later his attention was diverted from the drive for universal standards by his interest in work accidents and maternity leaves in the Chamber, and

65 Restricting Reform

his dedication to public hygiene and infant welfare as mayor of Tourcoing.*! Dron’s 1893 bill for universal standards relied heavily on the results of the 1891 survey of 422 unions, 235 employer syndicates, g5 councils of prud’hommes, 64 chambers of commerce, and 32 consultative chambers. Dron noted that most petitioners (11,814 of the 16,284) wanted legal limits on the workday. Unfortunately, the solicited responses were mixed. Nearly half of the unions wanted an eight-hour

workday, but overwhelming majorities of the other groups were hostile to any limits. Even without the division of opinion, the bill had

little chance of passage, because it was tabled shortly before prorogation.”* Next Dron tried the piecemeal approach. He claimed that the 1892 act had not lived up to expectations because of legislative loopholes

like the two-shift system and employers’ strategems to avoid the ten-hour day. Drawing on inspection reports, Dron described instances of women spending more time at the workplace due to the new system of split shifts. Simce the Senate preferred “unification” at

eleven hours, he compromised by accepting a transitional elevenhour day. He also confined coverage to workshops employing women

and children. Although he mentioned industrialists who maintained production levels after reducing the workday, he did not have the personal experience and persuasiveness of Waddington.*” When this report came to the Chamber in 1896, it alienated supporters of the 1892 law, who claimed the law had lived up to expectations. The report also provoked potential supporters on the left and right into

unprecedented ideological exchanges. To distance himself from socialists who insisted that labour reform would lead to socialism, Dron warned that employers who did not show “solidarity” with workers pushed workers toward socialism. This pleased neither left nor right. The loose coalition had dispersed.** In 1900 the reform socialist minister of commerce, Millerand, wore

down opposition by threatening “integral implementation of the existing law.” After intensive lobbying by industrialists and compromises by both parties,*” standards were applied to men working “in the same places as the protected population.” The legal workday was reduced tn two stages to ten hours. Although radicals and socialists objected, moderate republicans accepted the bill to eliminate “the

intolerable abuse” of rotating shifts that left young people unsupervised.*° Two years later, Dron returned to the earlier tactic of criticizing the existing law. He faulted the 1900 act for causing mass dismissals of

66 Women, Work, and the French State

youthful helpers so men could continue to work twelve hours.”’ This and a subsequent bill to enforce the legal workday succumbed to the inertia of the Senate and the indifference of the radical government during the struggle over the separation of church and state (1901— 5).78

In 1906 Clemenceau formed a government of solidarist republicans formally committed to “finishing” the 1900 law. ‘The minister of commerce, the radical socialist Gaston Doumergue, introduced a bill to extend the ten-hour day to “adultes.” Once again, the rationale was

to correct problems evident since 1900.7” A sympathetic Labour Committee report, written by the interventionist economist Justin Godart, went beyond the negative case against the existing law. Godart advanced a version of Waddington’s argument that ten hours would not reduce production due to a more rational deployment of labour and “more competent, disciplined” workers, who would have fewer “irregular absences, sick leaves.” He offered a familiar inducement: the law would merely generalize the “custom of ten hour days”

and act as “a guarantee against competition” from a minority of irresponsible employers who “refuse to reform.”*” Neither this nor a new hours bill sponsored by the second reform socialist to become minister in a bourgeois cabinet, René Viviani, passed.°! A republican from a textile-producing department who had voted for the 1892 law led the assault. Jules Roche made practical objections: shorter time would cut production and disadvantage France 1n the international market, laws were too rigid for the variety of French industry.”* Rhetorical responses to laissez-faire concepts continued to the end of the prewar debates. However, speakers did go beyond ideological

posturing. Godart cited statistics showing that accidents increased after the ninth hour of work.>? Another solidarist, the minister of labour Leon Bourgeois, contended the bill would reduce tuberculosis

and alcoholism, both subjects of considerable concern in 1912. Dr Vaillant described Dr Imbart’s research into the physiological effects of work.** Unlike the speakers in the debates on sex-specific regulation, very few emphasized time for family hfe.

Despite more impressive evidence of the advantages of shorter hours, the bill was held up by the Senate. ‘To explain the failure of this reform, we need to look beyond the Senate, with its interested parties, to the Solidarists, with their ambivalence about universal labour laws. Solidarists who wished to deny the existence of class conflict feared that such laws could be construed as recognition of an exploited class.

Consequently, they did not pressure the Senate into submission. Another element in the explanation is the problematic tactic of piecemeal reform. Arguments for sex-specific protection had di-

67 Restricting Reform

verted attention away from the dangers of long work hours to the weakness of the working-class family. When reformers tried to resume the case against long hours, they had to provide more evidence about the hazards of overwork. Once there was no cross-class issue like the family, the coalition that passed sex-specific laws splintered. ACCOMMODATING THE SECONDARY LABOUR MARKET

Evidence about the economic crisis in the luxury trades convinced the

Labour Colmmittee of the need to include small workshops.” Waddington squelched de Mun’s suggestion about adopting a minimum

of five workers, because the number of workers varied over the course of a year. This was a decision of tremendous import: the Inspection service estimated that 250,597 or over 75 per cent of industrial establishments under their jurisdiction employed one to five workers.*° Yet Waddington concurred with de Mun’s idea of exempting family workshops. This dispensation required a definition of a family workshop. Neither Waddington’s formula about no workers outside the immediate family nor Dron’s formula about no wage-

earners seemed to deal with the problem of apprenticeship. After considerable negotiation with the Senate,®’ the Chamber exempted “work done in establishments employing only members of a family

under the authority of a father, a mother or a tutor,” unless the workshop contained “a steam engine or mechanized motor” or was classified “a dangerous or unhealthy establishment.””* The exemption left an estimated 1,199,296 female home workers without hours standards.*? Although legislators might have been deterred by the cost and size of the administrative apparatus necessary to inspect home workshops, they were in fact influenced by ideological and emotional attachment to the family and home. The Senate debates indicated that Social Catholics, moderate republicans, and even radicals would not countenance surveillance of “sacred” family workshops, “violation of private residences,” or any (further) restriction of parental authority as the “natural protectors of their children.” Senators only compromised on steam engines and dangerous trades after speeches insisting that fathers did not have the right to main or poison

their children or blow up their homes.*° All the debates about sex-specific labour laws reveal that legislators who disapproved of women’s work away from the home approved of

their paid labour in the home, where they could simultaneously do their duty — never referred to as work —of household and family maintenance. When Dron tried to revise the 1892 act, he did not

68 Women, Work, and the French State

eliminate the exemption for family workshops. Vaillant noted that unregulated family workshops meant that many women brought work home for “a new workday.” He hinted at the horrors of women toiling into the wee hours under dim light for minimal pay. The only response came from the woollen manufacturer, Balsan, who intoned that it was “incontestable” that the more women did in “the bosom of

the family,” the better it was.*’ Although a legislator had finally conveived of a double day, it was a double day composed of paid labour alone, which most legislators were prepared to tolerate. By the late 1890s legislators had more information on the effects of exempting a category of workshops. A divisional inspector reported that some large hosiery manufacturers had begun to subcontract to

family workshops using gasoline engines to escape the hours standards.** Still, no one raised the possibility of regulating family workshops in the debates the following year, even though Dron tried to end exceptions to the night-work clauses, which were closely related to the problem of overwork in home workshops. An unlikely

alliance of Millerand and Charles Ferry, the ardent opponent of standards in the early 1890s, defeated Dron’s motion on the expedient ground that amendment would mean delay. The Chamber voted the measure down, 326 to 170.* After the 1900 act extended coverage to boys up to the age of eighteen and men working in the same places as “the protected population,”** it was harder to avoid short time for men working with

women and youths. The law encouraged industries to extend their system of subcontracting to family workshops. This form of production spread in the vicinity of Dion, Limoges, Lille, Lyon, Rouen, Saint-Etienne, and Toulouse. A work inspector explained industrialists new interest in decentralization: it permitted longer workdays without fear of inspection or fines for contravening the hours clauses. The continuing attraction was low piece-pay: e.g., fifteen centimes for sewing a shirt in Lille. Seamstresses worked twelve to fourteen hours

at home to earn the same daily wage as a seamstress in a regular workshop. But regulatory decisions and rigorous enforcement also fuelled the trend. In Aurillac, rejection of umbrella-makers’ applica-

tions for overtime doubled the number of home workers in that industry. In Rouen, summonses in garment workshops started a movement to family workshops.*”

For the inspection service, the exemption of family workshops created serious surveillance problems. Legitimate family workshops hired non-kin in the busy season, thereby becoming subject to inspec-

tion, yet the practice was very difficult to detect. In the following

6g Restricting Reform

years, inspectors reported increasing numbers of these “clandestine” workshops doing embroidery and making artificial flowers, corset stays, cutlery, lace, lingerie, and umbrellas. Prohibited from investigating family workshops, they could provide few precise figures. However, the inspector in the Saint-Quentin region discovered 1,400 family embroidery workshops in 1908.*° Other sources suggest that the percentage of garment workers at home rose from 51.8 to 58.6 between 1896 and 1901.7’ As early as 1902 hosiery employers began agitating for the reform of abuses like excessive hours, apparently to cut “unfair competition” and overproduction. The same year the Supreme Work Committee passed on to parliament a departmental committee’s recommendations to end the exemption for family workshops and the practice of take-home work after the legal workday. The same committee also suggested that subcontractors send a list of their workers to inspectors. After five years of complaints from inspectors and departmental commissions, the Supreme Work Committee urged an inquiry into conditions in family workshops.*®

Home work became a hotly debated issue. Liberal economists claimed the reports about home work showed that “the more you regulate, the more you have to regulate.”*” The International Association for the Legal Protection of Workers invited national branches to study whether laws favouring home production promoted deindustrialization. In France, interventionists like Paul Pic argued that hygienic and eugenic considerations overrode the “inviolability of the home.” To keep track of individuals working successively for several subcontractors, they borrowed from English, American, and Austra-

lian legislation the device of mandatory registration of all outworkers.°” Public health doctors advocated using the 1902 public

health law (authorizing mayors to take precautions to assure the salubrity of private homes) to gain entry to home workshops.”' But the preferred solution was another English import, the minimum wage.

Between 1905 and 1908 the Labour Office conducted the broadest inquiry into women’s work undertaken before the war. Officials interviewed 129 lingerie manufacturers and 112 subcontractors and visited 2,013 lingerie workers in twenty-four departments. They found “extremely low” piece-rates, with half earning less than twenty centimes an hour. They also found “exaggerated” workdays. Up to 25

per cent of the urban workers averaged thirteen hours a day. Between one- and two-thirds of the home workshops in cities were judged to be unsanitary. Subjects and researchers blamed an over-

70 Women, Work, and the French State supply of labour — “nearly all women know how to sew” — fierce com-

petition from convent-workshops, and a casual labour market. ‘Their solution was a recently introduced bill for a minimum wage.”*

The inquiry indicated that putting out had spread in the previous thirty years. Although most manufacturers preferred workshop production because that assured quality control, where lingerie was a new

industry, most manufacturers chose home labour. Their stated reasons were lower capital outlay and wage bills, fewer discipline problems, no labour regulations, and the moral benefits of “leaving” women at home. Many manufacturers combined factory or workshop

production with direct and indirect contracting out of production. One manufacturer had seven carts distributing pre-cut pieces to 3,200 rural workers; others had local intermediaries, like bakers, who delivered pieces to women in their villages.°*> Most family workshops consisted of mother and/or daughters and occasionally other family

members. Women who averaged eight hours a day in the eastern departments spent one to three hours picking up materials and delivering the finished product. Determining wages was difficult, because manufacturers reported piece-rates, while workers subtracted rent for sewing machines, payments for thread, needles, and oil, and deductions for poor work. Heeding workers’ calculations, officials estimated most lingerie work-

ers outside Paris earned ten to twenty centimes an hours.°* These figures are lower than the twenty-one centimes reported in the general study on wages published the same year, because the latter disre-

garded deductions. After a modest rise of 15 to 20 per cent since 1896, wages remained at the bottom of the pay scale, slightly below that of ready-made garment workers. Tailors earned over twice as much.” The Labour Office calculated annual incomes varying from less than 100 francs, where women made lingerie part time, to 400 francs in high-wage departments like the Seine, the Rhéne, and the

Nord. In the central and eastern regions producing most of the lingerie (after Paris), most earned between 200 and 400 francs annually. Unlike previous surveys, the lingerie inquiry compiled family budgets. Most lingerie workers furnished between 20 and 40 per cent of the family resources.”° The most unusual feature of the lingerie study 1s consultation of the women workers. The women complained about low and falling piece-rates, which they blamed on competition among themselves, between city and countryside, from convent-workshops and depart-

ment stores. They also faulted intermediaries, the irregularity of work, long periods of unemployment, the delivery system, and payment in kind. With the exception of a few Rouennais, none of the

71 Restricting Reform

2,013 working women interviewed proposed remedies, perhaps because they were unaccustomed to testifying and certainly because they were unorganized. However, two female unions demanded a collective contract, unionization, labour laws, and a minimum wage. Some manufacturers who complained of competition from convent-

workshops concurred on a minimum wage as a means of raising piece-rates.°’ In 1908 press reports of a lead-poisoning incident in an artificial flower factory forced an investigation of flowermakers’ health. In-

spectors found up to 55 per cent lead in red dyes and evidence of “indisposition” from ingesting the dye. Inspectors speculated that home workers suffered more, because they ate and slept amid the fumes and because they did not have to wash after work and drink milk to counteract the lead, as workers in some larger worshops did.

The inspectors explained that they could do nothing because they had no jurisdiction over family workshops. A more systematic study discovered higher levels of occupational illness, but this report also focused on the prevalence of home workshops and low wages, on the

frequency of twelve-hour days in season and on the prolonged periods of unemployment. The prescribed remedies included applying hours standards and, if that was impossible, a minimum wage.”®

These studies evoked a good deal of sympathetic reportage and proselytizing for a minimum wage.”” By 19009 legislators were beginning to deal with wages: clauses of an 18go bill outlawing payment in kind that had been held up in committee, were passed into law.°’ De

Mun revived his idea of a minimum wage and prodded the government into introducing a bill for a minimum wage for female home workers.°' There was a good deal of opposition to minimum wages for men: even the High Commission on Labour composed in part of

union executives, unanimously recommended covering women alone. The Chamber committee accepted the government bill covering female clothing workers but appended articles adding all silk and ribbon weavers, who were experiencing a crisis. De Mun and Millerand protested confusing the protection of women lingerie workers, in whom “the public now has a special interest,” with a dispensation for a whole occupation.” When the articles on lace and ribbon workers were transferred to

another bill, the dispute revolved around the way to set minimum wages.°° There were partisans of the average workshop wage, advocates of the customary workshop wage. The Chambers of Commerce went beyond the usual lament about removing employers’ “right to negotiate with home workers” and the fiction that women only work-

72 Women, Work, and the French State

ed to supplement their husbands’ earnings. They summarized the difficulties establishing a minimum hourly or daily wage: homeworkers were paid by the piece, women combined housework with wage work, and inspectors could not check the number of hours worked in homes.” Beginning in 1910 consumers groups, women’s unions, the Association for the Legal Protection of Workers, and international congresses on home labour lobbied for a minimum wage.°” The Senate finally passed an act in 1915. The act required manufacturers and

subcontractors to register home workers and keep pay books, assigned occupational councils responsibility for fixing the regional

minimum, and made the minimum “the ordinary hourly or daily wage of a non-specialist worker in the region.””° At the insistence of

home workers, who did not want state officials monitoring their hours, the law did not allow inspectors to enter homes.®’ Although the state had confronted the overriding problem of inadequate pay, the law had inadequacies. The Home Labour Office objected that unlicensed subcontractors escaped inspection and contended that councils should revise the minimum every time a new

collective contract was signed, instead of every three years. The Home Labour Office also wanted piece-rates that would enable work-

ers of average ability to earn the minimum in eight rather than ten hours a day.°® Local officials criticized retaining minimums as low as one franc fifty centimes to two francs a day (in St Die) when the cost of living had doubled during the war. Manufacturers complained about

uneven enforcement that gave their competitors an advantage.” Criticism continued to 1928, when the homework law was extended to men and the minimum was based on an eight-hour day.’° EXCLUDING EMPLOYEES

Neither the 1892 nor the 1900 hours laws covered commercial employees. In justification, pragmatic reformers pitted the interests of working-class consumers against the demands of clerks and denied the harsh conditions of service work. All that employees extracted were a widely ignored seat law and an openly flouted weekly rest act. In 1890 a representative of an employees’ union provided information on working conditions. The first employees’ union, the Chambre

syndicale des employés de commerce, had 3,500 members.’! Only 160 were women. The union had won a reduction in the workday in Parisian department stores but had little success in small shops. Since

the 1887 labour bill first included employees, the union had held twenty meetings where women had “told them” of department store

73, Restricting Reform

sales ending at 8 P.M. but alteration workshops operating until 11 P.M.. In department stores, female clerks earned 400 francs a year in salary plus commissions for an average annual income of 800 francs. Some

department stores offered paternalistic “benefits” like subsidized meals and dormitories. This information was elicited by persistent questioning, for the union representative, Gely, began by advocating

a twelve-hour standard for male exmployees. When the president observed that the committee was only considering standards for women, Gely switched gears to argue that female employees had to stand all day. It was assumed that standing was detrimental to healthy pregnancies and full-term deliveries. (Gely also recommended coverage of offices on typical union grounds: offices were “gradually substituting female for male personnel.”)”* When Jean-Baptiste Dumay challenged the exclusion of 100,000 employees in Paris alone, Waddington responded with statistics on

the 615,000 commercial establishments that would have to be inspected. In this exchange, the only comment on the nature of retail work was the suggestion that clerks were “the true pariahs of the proletariat.” Waddington responded with the argument about work-

ing-class consumers who had to shop after work hours.’? The assumption was that the same employee had to be present the entire shopping day; no one suggested part-time shifts. In the second reading, Dumay tried to include employees. Waddington rejected inclusion on principle. He drew a dubious distinction between regulating industry, which affected only employers and workers, and regulating commerce, which touched the interests of consumers. The amendment was voted down, 339 to 169.’4 Within two years of the implementation of the 1892 act, the Su-

preme Work Committee exempted “food preparation” industries like bakeries on the ground that they were analogous to commercial establishments and domestic workshops. Anyone who has shopped in France can appreciate the enormity of the exemption, as well as the

ambiguity about food outlets’ resemblance to family workshops. Moreover, as critics pointed out, the dispensation also applied to large hotels employing fifteen cooks’ helpers.’° When butchers, bakers, and other food workers tried to have hours standards reinstated, merchants countered with arguments about the difficulties of fixing definite hours when serving a fluctuating clientéle. Union reminders about provisions in the act for up to ninety days

overtime did not sway merchants.’° Although Dron included food workers in his 1895 bill, the minister of commerce preferred handling food shops through health and safety legislation. One deputy illustrated the theme of service work being less tiring by citing res-

74 Women, Work, and the French State

taurant cashiers who sat through mealtime. He was oblivious to the

need to be alert and polite while handling cash and customers in mealtime rushes. Another deputy warned that cheap restaurants would have to close at g P.M. —the latest protected workers could stay — because they employed only female cashiers.’’ He evidently could not imagine this sex-typed job held by men on evening shifts. After disappointments in the mid-18go0s, most food and retail unions lobbied to be included in the health and safety act of 1893.”

An inquiry documented the prevalence of twelve- to fifteen-hour days and deputies acknowledged that standing for long hours constituted work,’® but all commercial workers achieved was the 1900 law

mandating seats for women employees in commercial establishments.” This law was inspired by the English seat law and medical opinion about the effect of standing for long periods on the female reproductive organs. It was sponsored by an independent republican, Jean Gautret, supported by a Catholic rallzé, Georges Berry, and

shepherded through the Senate by Waddington. After making his familiar pitch about “humanitarian and hygienic considerations,” Waddington predicted that the inspection of shops would reveal “real abuses and the need to end them.”®! In fact, the inspection service only imperfectly inspected shops, because there was no budgetary provision to augment the size of the service.°? When inspectrices implemented the law, they reported that chairs were rarely used, because merchants believed that sitting on the job reflected poorly on the store and “lady clerks” realized that it compromised their chances for promotion. Inspectrices publicized the clerks’ complaints about long days, especially staying late to clean the

shop.®* Male and female staff protested to the ministry.°* The department store union pleaded that stores could close at 7 P.M. since customers could arrange to shop in the daytime. While this was a realistic option for the bourgeois clientéle of department stores, it did not accommodate workers who could not leave work before seven. However, the union correctly contended that late closings reflected

bad management and suggested that stores cut the evening meal break to close earlier. Regulating the workday in retail shops proved impossible. In 1906 the minister of labour conceded that “indefinitely prolonged” retail work could be as taxing as industrial work and that “nervous tension” could be as debilitating as muscular effort. Nevertheless, he called for

a “minimum” uninterrupted break between workdays, instead of specific opening and closing times, to permit stores to stay open late.®°

Employer resistance and competing bills kept the issue before the public until World War 1.8’ Continuing investigation showed that

75 Restricting Reform

department stores already used shifts to allow both a ten-hour workday and a twelve- to fifteen-hour shopping day. Smaller stores did not hire part-time staff, saying they could not afford them and revealing that they did not pay overtime to full-time staff.°* The 1892 act had ordained a weekly holiday. The idea was not new, so few challenged it. Perfunctory justifications noted the need for

physical regeneration and, for women, the opportunity to refresh themselves by shopping, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and minding children! At least some of the gentlemen in the Senate also wanted women to go to church. Spokesmen for Sunday holidays urged that women, children, and men should have the same day off to spend together as a family. Anticlericalism combined with pragmatic consid-

erations about continuously fired workplaces assured that the act required only an unspecified weekly rest.®?

In 1900 food and retail unions, and later labour federations, decided to press for a universal weekly rest. Most clerks, food workers and labour exchanges favoured a more flexible system of rotating holidays but department store clerks preferred Sunday.’” They had help from an influential lobby known as the Popular League for

Sunday Rest, which had church backing, branches throughout France, and nearly 7,000 members.” Despite powerful support, a bill introduced in 1900 took six years to enact.°* One cause of delay was businessmen’s insistence that customers had to shop on Sunday. Even _the director of the Louvre department store, which shut on Sunday, contended that customers demanded Sunday deliveries. Other largescale retailers claimed they would lose a fifth to a third of their trade to the small shops allowed to stay open on Sunday.” Although 93 per cent of industrial establishments did not function on Sundays, the weekly holiday law brought a flood of requests for dispensations in commerce.** Between 1906 and 1913, 26,105 shops were legally exempted from the law.”” Even the popular department store, La Samaritaine, obtained permission for some of its departments. However, this permit provoked deputies into ensuring stricter application of the law; the number of derogations fell from 13,283 in

1906 to 936 in 1911." Less than a third of all shops closed on sundays, while over 60 per cent either closed another day or had staggered holidays. Food, clothing, and shce stores preferred the system of staying open part of Sunday. Although enforcement was erratic at best,?’ the practice of a full day’s break from paid work was becoming general by 1914.

In the process of political negociation, liberals and centrists extracted concessions that were hard to reconcile with reformers’ initial

intentions. Exempting men from hours standards acknowledged

76 Women, Work, and the French State

ideological objections to interference in men’s freedom and avoided the fundamental issue of exploitation of the working class. Reformers

who consoled themselves with hopes of implicit or incremental change were disappointed. Employers avoided the implication that they would have to institute short time for men working with women and adolescents by introducing special shifts for women and adoles-

cents. Resistance to regulating men’s labour did not diminish. Rationales about reproduction that had been persuasive 1n discussions about sex-specific standards carried no weight in debates over universal standards. Reformers had to refine old arguments about productivity. Although exempting family workshops satisfied ideological opposition to intervention in the family or home, the effect was

deindustrialization, or unregulated home workshops and increased sweating for female home workers. Omitting retail shops, which employed many women, also served the needs of the secondary labour market.

CHAPTER FOUR

Implementing Reform: Revolutionaries in the Workplace?

The loopholes in French labour legislation before World War 1 were matched by uneven enforcement. In addition to restricting the field

of application, legislators gave administrators mixed messages. Although the Assembly increased the size of the work inspection service, they did not make it large enough to inspect all the worksites

under its jurisdiction on a regular basis. Legislators instructed the service to proceed by persuasion and instituted meaningless fines. An

underfunded and understaffed inspection service, told to persuade the most intractable target, employers, and therefore inattentive to the more tractable target, working women, was partly responsible for

imperfect enforcement. Another factor retarding execution of the laws was the resistance of employers and working women to state officials and bureaucratic principles in the workplace. This chapter concentrates on the political and administrative problems encountered in implementing inconsistent labour regulations. THE POLITICS OF ENFORCEMENT

For legislators, the problem was how to implement regulations without alienating powerful industrialists and penurious taxpayers; their

solution was a modestly financed inspection service instructed to inform and influence rather than to impose new routines. A survey of the debates over the implementation of labour regulations will indicate the difficulties inherent in the delicate matter of enforcement. In the 1841 child labour law, a controversial article on inspection left organizational details to the administration. Sensitive to political opposition to central control, the minister of commerce instructed prefects to appoint local committees to consider local con-

ditions. Since members received no remuneration and many were

78 Women, Work, and the French State

entrepreneurs, they exhibited little zeal. The ministry also advised a persuasive rather than a punitive approach. Even when conscientious committees issued summons, judges were reluctant to convict, given the heavy fines stipulated in the act. Not surprisingly, many industrialists refused to show employment records or to permit committee members on their premises. In the 1860s the law applied only in a few industrialized departments. The Seine, with a paid inspection service, held competitive entrance examinations and attracted doctors and engineers to the service.’ When Joubert introduced a bill to lower hours limits for children in 1871, the royalist Assembly, shocked by defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, responded positively to appeals to preserve French children. A sympathetic committee added articles on women’s work and recommended a special corps of inspectors paid by the state. To justify a new category of bureaucrats, they evoked the need to restore France

to its former glory and cited England’s experience with a central service. They argued that salaried national officials would be more rigorous and impartial than local volunteers. A Supreme Work Comittee attached to the Ministry of Commerce would select the new civil servants, eliminate favouritism, supervise work, and ensure uniform performance. To assuage fear of centralization, the report provided

for local committees wherever there was a “recognized need” to supplement the inspector or to exert “moral influence.” Despite reservations about the need for a special corps, the act of 19 May 1874, mandated the appointment of fifteen divisional inspectors, who were to be engineers or graduates of mining and manufacturing schools.? The system was poorly conceived, in so far as the divisional and departmental inspectors reported to different levels of government. In 1888 inspectors visited only two-thirds of the plants subject to the law. Only a fifth of these plants fully observed the law and one-third ignored it. Deterred by indifferent prosecutors and indulgent courts, inspectors had issued only 3,335 summonses in a dozen years. Most

local committees disbanded and the surviving ones exploited their undefined relationship to the service to usurp the functions of inspector. Having committee members visiting plants aroused suspicions about industrial esptonage. Industrial departments once again hired inspectors until the Seine’s twenty-seven outnumbered the divisional

inspectors. Although the state increased the number of central inspectors to twenty-one, it gave them a virtually impossible assignment: to enforce a universal twelve-hour standard that had been a dead letter since its enactmentin 1 848.° Even then, most departments refused to fund inspectors.*

79 Implementing Reform

By the 1880s, prominent bureaucrats were publicly criticizing favouritism and arbitrary procedures in the civil service.” In this context, a retired inspector lobbied for changes in the service. Léon Durassier promoted a new, lower grade of inspectors to free the divisional inspectors for supervision and controversial cases. To complete the hierarchy, the author advocated subdividing each grade into

two classes. In good bureaucratic fashion, he wanted a qualifying examination and promotion from the ranks. Since he believed inspection was “a work of persuasion” which required “prudence and moderation”, he thought inspectors should have “uncontested moral au-

thority” and, more concretely, be engineers or entrepreneurs with some degree of financial independence. He made operational suggestions like free railways passes to facilitate travel outside divisional headquarters.° Although the Assembly adopted his hierarchical and

bureaucratic approach, they disregarded his strictures on recruits and his practical advice.

Political initiatives to extend protective labour legislation also account for renewed interest in inspection. In 1887 the Labour Committee recommended retaining the divisional inspectors, the departmental inspectors, and the departmental commissions.’ The enforcement clauses evoked revealing exchanges. Although no one ques-

tioned the principle of inspection, politicians on both sides of the podium challenged using a special corps as opposed to the local police, either to halt growth of the central bureaucracy or to emphasize the penal nature of the law. Waddington insisted that inspectors had “the prestige and authority not always found in the police” which was necessary for “a task of persuasion and prevention.” His stress on the “moralizing, protective and paternal character of the bill” carried the day.” When another Labour Committee considered the matter, they tried to strengthen central control by adding a general inspector and having the Ministry of Commerce appoint all inspectors, including those paid by the departments. However, the Chamber rejected

the general inspector as “superfluous” and charged the salaries of departmental inspectors to the state.° _ The other significant change in the committee’s recommendations concerned penalties. At the end of an exhausting debate, the commit-

tee revised a key article on the floor of the Chambers. Instead of sending most offenders to the Correctional Court, the new text substituted the Simple Police Court; it set fines of five to fifteen francs instead of the proposed sixteen to fifty francs for each contravention.

Recidivists’ fines dropped from a range of fifty to one hundred, to sixteen to one hundred francs. The Senate also defined recidivism in

80 Women, Work, and the French State

the narrowest sense, as committing the same offence within a year of a

conviction. In the dash to get something enacted, these weakened provisions passed.’° They did not resolve the problems of lazy prosecutors and lenient judges, or act as much of a deterrent. ADMINISTRATIVE INADEQUACIES

Although legislators insisted on inspectors of impeccable moral and social standing in order to win the respect of employers, they refused to vote credits to maintain decent salaries and promotion ladders or to increase the number of posts after adding responsibilities. For admi-

nistrators, the dilemma was how to recruit and retain good candidates, deploy scarce resources, and manceuver in a minefield of political ambivalence and interest-group pressures. On the advice of the Consultative Committee on Arts and Manufactures and the Supreme Work Committee, the Ministry of Commerce created eleven divisions, each with a divisional inspector, and ninety-

two districts, each with a “departmental” inspector. The eleven divisional inspectors were to supervise the departmental inspectors, to handle relations with the courts, and to undertake inquiries for the central administration. The departmental inspectors were to visit industrial establishments and to issue warnings and summonses. The ministry subdivided France on the basis of the distribution of industry

subject to the 1874 act and of existing administrative boundaries.’ Inaccurate industrial statistics and unwieldy administrative bound-

aries resulted in an inequitable distribution of the workload. The egregious example is the allocation of Céte-du-Nord, Ile-et-Vilaine, Morbihan, and Finistére to one inspector, who travelled constantly just to see 13 per cent of the 15,240 establishments in his section.” Moreover, the statistical base was obsolete. After the industrial health

and safety act of 1893 increased the number of worksites to be inspected, only 40 per cent of the sites—a lower proportion that under the old law — were visited in 1894. Further obligations under the workers’ compensation act of 1898 brought the number of sites to 309,675. Changes in economic geography like the displacement of industry due to urban renewal in the capital caused new imbalances. Even with adjustments in boundaries and the addition of fourteen posts, inspectors could not visit 40 per cent of these workplaces in a

year.” After 1goo, as before, the Assembly was more prepared to pass protective labour laws than to expand the service. Although legislators authorized new posts when the “seat law” added retail shops to

81 Implementing Reform

the inspectors’ responsibilities, they did not provide the necessary credits until mid-1902. The fifteen new posts'*—a 14 per cent increase — fell far shot of accommodating the 40 per cent leap in the number of establishments under the jurisdiction of the service after

amendments to the Industrial Health and Safety Act added restaurants, offices, laboratories, and other workplaces to their lists. Only 28 per cent of the 528,703 establishments subject to labour laws were visited in 1903. After 1906 a modest rise in the number of sites elicited nineteen more positions. Together with changes in territorial boundaries, the expansion ensured that just over a third of the sites

were visited in 1913.'” The expansion came partly in response to extraparliamentary pressure from the High Commission on Labour and the National Association for the Legal Protection of Workers.'°

Organizationally, the service reflected contradictory impulses. Although the Ministry of Commerce recognized that legislators did not want the service to remain “a refuge for failed industrialists and unemployed engineers” — a harsh but accurate description of many provincial inspectors — officials dismissed only physically disabled, “tactless”, and “virtually uneducated” incumbents.’’ After several

meetings with the Department of the Seine, which employed the largest number of inspectors, the ministry agreed to accept incum-

bent departmental inspectors without subjecting them to the demanding new admission test. Some of the provincial inspectors were retired army officers who had treated their positions as sinecures. Some refused to reside in their districts.'* Their bad reputation lingered and sullied the image of the service.'” The new admission procedures were designed to raise the standards and standing of the service. Candidates were to be twenty-five to thirty years of age, to be in good health, and to furnish testimonials

and judicial declarations of their moral rectitude. To attract highly educated candidates, the graduates of grandes écoles of medicine and

engineering were accorded points worth one-tenth the possible grade. All candidates took a written examination; members of the examining board composed of officials and advisers in the Ministry of

Commerce interviewed those who passed. The tests and interviews covered labour laws, industrial hygiene, and mechanics.”°

As the number of laws enforced by the service increased from three — those of 1848, 1874, and 1892 — to eleven, as administrative

rulings and court decisions multiplied, and as industrial hygiene became more scientific, questions on the admission test became much more precise. In the section on industrial hygiene, questions might involve ventilation, heating, lighting, toilet installation, drinking wa-

82 Women, Work, and the French State

ter, toxic gases, caustic and infectious materials, and disposal of noxious by-products. After 1907 an understanding of electrical circuits was essential.*' Yet the administration supplied no specialized instruction until 1907. Instead, lawyers, engineers, doctors, and former inspectors published manuals and a private “administrative institute” offered preparatory courses taught by officials.** The administration paid the three grades of divisional inspectors

six to eight thousand francs in salaries, plus office and travel expenses, and the five grades of departmental inspectors three to five thousand francs in salaries, plus set sums for travel. Departmental inspectors depended on mairies for their offices and any secretarial assistance. While they received less than English factory inspectors, | their remuneration compared favourably with that of other French civil servants and other continental inspectors.”? But the Assembly was SO parsimonious in the following years that the budgets only permitted raises in travel expenses, and these increases never kept pace with railway fares. Inspectors continually, and justly, complained about inadequate travel budgets.** Added to the problems with pay was a breakdown in the system of promotion. To keep inspectors, the administration promised regular triennial promotions based on seniority and service. Yet the administration intended to ration the number of top positions, to make them the pinnacles of a few inspectors’ careers. Three factors undermined

this rather contradictory strategy. Since the government did not provide an adequate pension scheme until 1905, few senior person-

nel retired and top positions did not open up before that date. Second, the large number of candidates admitted in 1893 could not proceed up the ranks without swelling the size of the higher ranks. Third, budgetary restraints limited the number of personnel in higher grades. In 1901 many candidates admitted after the first competitive examination had been stuck in the same grade for five or six years. Despite some relief after older inspectors retired, many inspectors advanced only two grades in the next ten years. A few had been demoted for disciplinary reasons; more were held back by stringent new career reviews after 1906.7°

The number of applicants fell as conditions declined. The first announcement of forty-two positions attracted almost 1,000 candidates; 540, of whom 240 were women, took the first written examination in July 1893. All thirty-six men but only four of the six women

accepted into the service were placed as probationers within the year.*° By 1900 only seventy-four men took the written examination. Partly because women were tested less frequently, their numbers fell

83. Implementing Reform

less: 170 women took the test in 1907. Up to a third of the men were admitted to the list of potential inspectors; under 15 per cent of the women appeared on the list. One reason for the difference was that far fewer positions were open to women. Also, their regular schooling did not prepare them as well for the legalistic and scientific test.?’ A BOURGEOIS SERVICE

The legislators’ insistence on persuading the patronat, the demanding

admission prodecure, and the social aspirations of the inspectors ensured a bourgeois service with empathy toward employers. Originally, some graduates of the grandes écoles entered the service, which helped raise the status of the service. After the mid-18g0s the service rarely attracted highly educated bourgeois candidates; rather it drew educated petty bourgeois, often with teaching diplomas, presumably due to lower pay and overcrowding in the primary education

system. Their modest social origins did not preclude identification with employers — or recurring efforts to engage in commercial activities.“° Even the few working-class individuals who entered the service adopted their colleagues’ point of view. When consulted by Millerand about admitting workers to the service, a former worker dismissed the idea because workers were “incompetent in matters of health and safety” and lacked the judiciousness of civil servants with

“superior education.” He claimed that workers’ zeal to prosecute

would “lower conviction rates and hurt morale.”*” One of a very few inspectors attuned to workers’ needs advised the administration to create employment for workers. He insisted that work inspectors “cannot be subjected to the rule” that civil servants cannot take the initiative. “Instituted to apply new principles, still considered revolutionary by some, they cannot be contained by old formulas.”°° The administration disagreed. The Assembly reinforced the bourgeois character of the service. Despite accepting miner-delegates to the mine inspection service in

18g0, it rejected socialist amendments on worker-adjuncts to the work inspection service.”' After the workers’ compensation law forced inspectors to rely upon workers’ testimony as witnesses to accidents, socialists renewed the campaign to get worker-delegates.”* When Millerand ordered an inquiry into the possibility of allowing such delegates, Waddington and the radical majority of the Labour Committee would accept only a “subordinate” category of workerinspectors, while the radical-socialist minority preferred “practical” skill tests for worker-candidates. Millerand confined himself to dele-

84 Women, Work, and the French State

gates chosen by their workmates in large plants. Even this concession did not succeed. Neither his bill nor a similar draft by a later reform socialist minister, Viviani, reached second reading.*” The National Association for the Legal Protection of Workers took

up the cause. Because of disagreements about separate admission criteria and limited representation,”* the association did not match the flood of pamphlets from industrial and commercial societies deriding the concept as “destructive” of the patronat and of “the very principles of authority and discipline indispensable to all establish-

ments,” as “an attack on the very principle of property, an initially timid and subtly dissimulated attempt at socialism.” All Millerand accomplished was the elimination of extra points for graduates of grandes écoles and the addition of a practical test to the already demanding selection process. Knowledge about hygiene and mechanics was obligatory; the demonstration of trade skills designed to open the way for tradesmen was optional. In 1907 Viviani reduced the score an

experienced worker or foreman had to receive on the written test. Seven workers entered the service that year.°” Taking a cue from their superiors, most inspectors treated workers in a condescending manner. Inspector Louis Mongel in the Vosges, reporting that the 1892 law was unpopular among workers, drew the insulting conclusion that “The workers’ spirit dees not like complications: in general they like simple things.” Others regarded workers’ assistance as interference and responded to would-be informants in a patronizing way. Inspector Boulins in the Rhéne complained when the Labour Congress in Lyon spread the rumour that “the service is at the unions’ disposal” and militants took advantage of inspections to

criticize bosses. Asked by Millerand about more efficient ways of discerning infractions, Boulins answered that one should “joke” with workers to gain their confidence.*® Not surprisingly, Millerand’s investigation of inspectors’ relations with workers found that workers

responded to interrogations evasively. Despite his attitude toward workers, Boulins rose to the rank of divisional inspector. Millerand’s investigations of inspectors’ relations with unions ascer-

tained that they had no routine channels of communication. Inspectors’ status insecurity as functionaries who were not securely professionals may explain their reluctance to consult workers except in the

course of an inspection. One consequence of their distance from workers was the failure to explain the purpose of regulations, except by distributing posters with the legalistic regulations printed on them. Since the posters were hard to read, even when they were hung on workshop walls, many unions and workers misunderstood the function of the inspection service. ‘The few unions dealing with the service

85 Implementing Reform

before 1900 treated it as a tool to get rid of female or youthful competitors. Many workers’ complaints concerned personal grievances rather than legal infractions.*’

Given its orientation, the service did not welcome the idea of working-class colleagues. When questioned about the concept, most replied that workers lacked the necessary “tact, courtesy and impartiality” or that employers would not respect people “of different social

origins than us.” Those who accepted the concept insisted on differentiating workers by having them take a less technical exam and withholding the power to serve subpoenas. Even Divisional Inspector Laporte, who had some regard for the workers in the service, proposed an extra qualification of fifteen years’ work experience.”® Inspectors’ ambivalence and even antipathy toward working-class colleagues should be seen in the light of the legislators’ preference for a persuasive rather than a punitive approach and the inspectors’ mastery of an intricate body of legislation, decrees, and judgments as well as of complex medical and scientific material.

Inspectors’ reservations about worker-colleagues and workerinformants deprived the overworked service of time-saving reports on illegal practices which would have meant less reliance on random

visits to worksites. Millerand ordered inspectors to educate labour organizations about the laws, to explain what they could and could not do, to investigate legitimate grievances, and to inform complainants of the results within two weeks.”” Most inspectors organized conferences to publicize the laws. In 1900 Laporte had daily contacts with unions and his subordinates received several union complaints a month. Provincial inspectors were less active, due to lower levels of

unionization, greater distances to travel between localities, and Divisional Inspector Jarecjewski’s disillusionment in the highly militant Nord.*° After the departure of Millerand, there were fifteen to thirty conferences and 1,500 to 2,000 union complaints annually.*’ Not all inspectors accepted the new regime gracefully. When Inspector Chambard of Nancy refused to divulge details of a citation

with the curt remark that he “did what was necessary,” the labour federation informed the ministry of the “insult.” Chambard appears to have been annoyed with unions whose “threats” gave industrialists

advance warning of his visits. The ministry urged him to be more responsive to unions. Once the policy of constant contact was relaxed, some inspectors decided one visit to a labour exchange was sufficient.

Sometimes this caused discord, which the divisional inspectors resolved by bringing the two parties together. One inspector who repeatedly snubbed union executives was reprimanded and ordered to attend meetings.**

86 Women, Work, and the French State

Maintaining friendly relations with unions and employers required tact. One union reported an inspector who called some of its members

liars, apparently because he was fed up with false leads. Another union accused a different inspector of acting like a member of the boss’s family for respecting the custom of issuing a warning, rather than a summons, for a first offence. A third inspector, lauded by local

unions for his “remarkable devotion,” ran into trouble with employers for telling unions about infractions. The ministry moved this indiscreet individual to another district.*° Organized workers did not necessarily welcome government initiatives. When Millerand submitted his draft bill on worker-delegates to the labour federations, half of them objected that the delegates would either be “bought” or fired by their bosses. Instead they proposed delegates named and paid by the unions to ensure “independence.” A few suggested an all-worker corps. Other federations approved of delegates only as adjuncts to unions or as transitional officials who would prepare the way for union inspectors “to represent the working class.” Later, local unions and socialist newspapers lobbied for a “secondary corps” of worker-observers, but only a tiny minority in the

artisanal trades ever preferred professionals.** Initially, workers discussed wages, which were beyond the inspectors’ purview, and demanded the names of indicted industrialists. If inspectors did not respond, disgruntled workers insinuated that bos-

ses “arranged everything with a twenty franc note.”*° After six months of the new policy, very few unions protested to the ministry,

because they realized that inspectors could not mediate wage disputes.*° From 1904 on the Supreme Work Committee reported “satisfactory” relations with workers. Up to one quarter of the com-

plaints about contraventions came from labour organizations; another 20 per cent came from individual workers and employees. Nearly two-thirds of these complaints proved well founded, compared to less than half of the more numerous anonymous reports.*’ EMPLOYER REACTIONS

Despite legislative and administrative solicitude, industrialists resented and often prevented interference in their domain. Politically effective spokesmen for industry negotiated concessions from administrators; powerful individuals threatened to fire women workers or offered bribes in the form of promises of lucrative positions as managers; most employers resorted to evasive, semi-legal dodges. In spite of the “tact and delicacy” of the inspectors, relations with industrialists were tepid at best, tempestuous at worst. In the intro-

87 Implementing Reform

ductory period, when inspectors informed and “reminded” employers of the law, they encountered passive resistance. Many employers contended that they had to wait for the administrative ruling to complete the law and then that they could not make changes as long as amending bills foretold rollbacks. A common tactic was to allege

good intentions and apologize for noncompliance due to the constraints of competition. The educational approach was not a complete failure: some large industrialists showed good faith and some industrial associations tried “gentlemen’s agreements” to introduce modifications everywhere at once, so recalcitrants would not gain a competitive edge over law-abiding employers. Unfortunately, many who originally complied reneged when competitors failed to follow suit suit or gentlemen’s agreements collapsed.*®

In 1895 the service shifted to stricter enforcement and no longer allowed employers to plead ignorance of the law. The number of summons nearly doubled from 704 in 1894 to 1,314 in 1895. Now industrialists tried to subvert the law by having employees work though their lunch hour. Several courts ruled this practice inadmissible, but a widely publicized decision awarded fines too low to be a deterrent. Although the overall conviction rate remained an impressive 86 per cent, some divisions began cutting back summons out of concern about the indulgence of the judicial system. In the midnineties some prosecutors had to be prodded the indict under a law

they considered a nuisance and then did not prepare a thorough indictment or call the inspector to testify at the trial! For their part, defendants hired good lawyers and “outside experts” to testify on their behalf. Judges undermined respect for the law by not imposing sanctions for every worker found in violation, as required by the law, and by awarding fines lower than the smallest sum prescribed by the law. Pressured by the Supreme Work Committee, the Ministry of Justice sent out reminders about the law and threatened disciplinary action. In 1899 the Ministry of Commerce instructed inspectors to crack down on all employers who refused to conform. Still the service did not resort to coercive means until after one citation and corrected

simple infractions, like failure to post regulations, by “friendly means.”*” However, summons increased by 50 per cent the following year, to 2,776, and rose to 6,596 in 1913. After falling to 80 per cent in

1900, the conviction rate recovered.” To appreciate the inspectors’ predicament, consider the candid accounts of Inspector Louis Chery, a former notary who remained in approximately the same district of the Meurthe/Meurthe-et-Moselle from 1893 through 1913. His district comprised 595, and later 570, communes. In his first year, he visited 1,485 establishments in 125

88 Women, Work, and the French State

communes and left a copy of the law at each plant. In his fifth year he visited 1,781 establishments, wrote g15 warnings but only issued one

summons. Although he travelled seventeen or eighteen days a month, he had never reached 132 communes in his district, Once he

had toured aljl the communes, he reduced his travel outside his residence in Nancy. When the 1903 Health and Safety Act added commercial establishments to his list of sites (he had ignored the 1g00

seat law) he concentrated for a year on commercial establishments,

only to have another increment in his workload imposed by the weekly holiday act of 1906. Not until 1912 had he inspected all 2,114 sites, ninety-nine of them for the first time that year.”?

Chery’s attitude toward industrialists moved from optimism through frustration to resignation. Initially, he predicted that the French people would greet the change with protest, “then relax and get accustomed to it.” When industrialists to whom he had given oral warnings “relapsed”, he had a notice printed, since “industrialists easily forget conversations they have with inspectors, whereas letters remain before their eyes.” A few months later he commented that “each boss finds the law excellent for his neighbors but detestable for himself.” By 1898 he was complaining that warnings were “formalities invented to thwart the execution of the law.” He was incensed by the activities of the Association of Industrialists against Work Accidents, which he damned as “resolute adversaries of the labour laws and the Work Inspectors.” He wrote of their “stupid” propaganda drawing many “suckers” into the association. Chery was even bold enough to criticize the administration for issuing “orders from on high to use tolerance and excessive goodwill” when pressured by “rich and influential voters.”°*

Chery became more circumspect after a controversy with the bishop of Nancy resulted in a ministerial inquiry. Chery recommended a religious workshop for a prize from the Society for the Protection of Apprentices. The bishop, who had been trying to extend his authority over the nuns in question, publicly accused the sisters of running a profit-making enterprise, of manufacturing luxurious lingerie suitable only for courtesans, of making the young girls

work longer than the legal limit and of camouflaging workrooms when the inspector visited. Chery countered by asking, in print, why

the bishop had not reported the alleged abuses? Newspapers and politicians took up the cause; Millerand ordered an inquiry. Investigators discovered infractions in the pensionnat, including refusing the inspector entry after 9 P.M. on the pretext that the rules of the order did not permit men in the establishment at night.”° Incidents like this convinced inspectors to avoid public controversies.

89g Implementing Reform

Most inspectors only criticized industrialists internally and indirect-

ly. When the Labour Bureau asked Divisional Inspector Boulins about attitudes toward labour laws in 1913, he replied that there had been “enormous progress” in so far as he rarely encountered industrialists who denounced the principle of intervention. However, industrialists still criticized details and methods of implementing the laws, enlightened employers resisted inspection because it deprived them of “the moral benefit” of voluntary actions, marginal producers in competitive industries often blamed their economic problems on the inspectors, and “sanguine or choleric” individuals did not like to be bothered. He adopted the same approach — a positive generalization followed by qualifications — toward workers. After stating that all

workers were interventionists, he added that foremen and supervisors, “strong men who hike to exert authority,” objected to the laws and workers did not like inspection when it resulted in lower wages or

harsher discipline. In a rather offhand manner, he concluded his remarks on the clients’ reception of the laws with the revealing comment: “Sometimes bosses adopt the tactic of firing a worker or two each time the establishments is inspected.”°* THE “LADY” INSPECTORS

Although labour committees had considered the need to rely on the

protected party to report violations of the law, only one bill had included a provision for working-women delegates. That provision was never discussed.”” Instead, the committee debated the advisability of “lady” inspectors, with several members of various political persuasions contending that women lacked the intellect and stamina to do the job. Chief Inspector Laporte, who had doubled the number of departmental inspectrices,?® argued forcefully that women learned

more in “feminine workshops,” because female workers felt more comfortable confiding in them. Two mspectrices who gave thorough testimony and showed remarkable forbearance in response to insidious questions about their abilities helped sway opinion.®’ Despite the legislators’ acceptance of inspectrices, the administration

remained suspicious, apparently because some of the incumbents came from the discredited local committees and others had been appointed as “worthy” widows of state employees.”* Given the administrative drive to upgrade the status of the service, inspectrices probably also suffered from the prejudices against their gender. Originally, the state retained only ten of the fifteen zspectrices, but pressure from the General Council of the Seine resulted in a second decree accepting all fifteen female incumbents.*” Within a few years,

go Women, Work, and the French State

one of these women died and two retired for health reasons. Their sections were redistributed among the remaining inspectrices. The number of ¢spectrices in the Seine fluctuated between twelve and fourteen in the first decade of the twentieth century.°° Only four women entered the provincial service after the first competitive examination. The number of wmspectrices did not rise as the corps enlarged in response to dramatic increases in the workload. After 1900 women never filled as much as 14 per cent of the positions,°’ though women constituted over 20 per cent of the protected workforce.°* The ministry did not set up a separate service with its own hierarchy, as the English did.©* Nevertheless, it treated female staff dif-

ferently than their male counterparts, notably by denying them supervisory positions. Women took examinations without questions on mechanics or the regulation of men’s labour. Women had no opportunity to earn the thirty points awarded to graduates of the grandes écoles. While they were allowed lower grade point totals, they were a priori placed in an inferior category.°* Inspectrices were restricted to feminine workplaces and expressly forbidden to enforce the health and safety act. Although inspectrices took the same hygiene test until

1901, they could only inform their male colleagues of health and safety violations, so the men could issue warnings.°? Perhaps the Labour Bureau was trapped in the logic of the legislation itself, which

assumed that women were inferior. Certainly inspecteurs expressed reservations about the inconvenience of ladies’ long flowing skirts.°° The Labour Bureau also balked at women investigating men’s working conditions. After the 1903 amendment to the Health and Safety Act added restaurants, offices, and other establishments to the list of sites to inspect, the bureau allowed women to investigate working conditions in feminine workshops. Taking advantage of this breach, the inspectrices interpreted their new duties broadly. After issuing new health and safety decrees in 1908, the bureau relented to the extent of allowing women to investigate conditions in all establishments under the 1892 law “as long as the masculine personnel is insignificant.”°’ The delay in letting women investigate health and safety conditions

meant that the first generation of inspectrices could not conduct inquiries into occupational diseases or protective devices. This handicapped them in the race to gain honours and promotions. ‘The delay may also have deprived the service of valuable information, for instance about sanitary conditions in women’s workrooms, that might have been passed on to women more readily than to men. Inspectrices felt same empathy with working women. Mme de la Ruelle, who entered the service in 1901, dedicated herself, as vice president of the National Association for Instruction on Labour Laws

g1 Implementing Reform

and Social Hygiene, to educating working women about the laws. After an unpaid leave to study the medical consequences of women

standing at industrial jobs, she lobbied for seating in industry.” However, there is also evidence of inspectrices sympathizing with small

patronnes. Thus Mile Marie Meffre in Lyon was impressed with the small patronnes who insisted that adult women should labour as they liked. Yet MHe Meffre, who received the second highest mark among the female candidates in 1893, was conscientious. She issued more summons that M. Boulins, her colleague in Lyon.” Other inspectrices were overly rigid. When Mme Rose Courtet visited laundries in Lille

to enforce the hours standards, laundresses complained so much about her “rigour” that the divisional inspector substituted an enspecteur. The substitute was more lenient about heating trons before the posted starting time and ironing through breaks.’! Later Mme Courtet was one of two inspectrices laid off for disciplinary reasons.’ Whatever their work record, women did not equal men’s advance

in the service. None of the fifteen women but seven of the twentyseven men admitted before the first competitive exam rose to first or second grade by 1899.’ Only four of the women held over from the departmental service ever reached first grade, and three of them retired so soon afterward that their promotions seem honorific. Most “grandmothers” remained in the third or fourth grade unul their retirement, resignation, or death. Two received such pitiful pensions

that the administration accorded them annual supplements.’* Women admitted after the first exam fared better but not as well as men appointed at the same time. One quarter of these inspectrices reached second class by 1914, at which point all the men had reached this class and half of them had advanced to the first class.” Part of the explanation for different career ladders is the adminis-

trative “example” in denying women top positions as divisional inspectors.’° The Classification Committee which recommended candidates for promotion consisted of Labour Bureau officials, divisional inspectors, representatives of the departmental inspecteurs, and representatives of the High Commission on Labour. The resolute opponent of women’s work, Auguste Keufer, sat on it; no inspectrice did. Their criteria for promotion depended upon the number of establishments and personnel visited.’” These apparently objective criteria disregarded the fact that znspectrices were confined to femi-

nine establishments and hence to fewer establishments with fewer

workers. Thus Mile Meffre visited 80 per cent of the average number of establishments visited by her male colleagues; go per cent of the plants she visited employed fewer than ten workers, while only 60 per

cent of the plants Boulins entered had fewer than ten workers.’®

92 Women, Work, and the French State

Furthermore, the criteria did not take into account the problems posed by small workshops. They took more time to locate because three-quarters of them displayed no external sign’? and many were unlicensed and/or seasonal operations. Moreover, many adjoined or were part of private residences, which were off-limits for inspectors. Employer resistance also took a special form. Perhaps because small proprietors could not afford legal appeals, they vented their frustrations on inspectors of both sexes. Probably because they were not accustomed to obeying women — quite the contrary — owners of fem1nine shops defied and harassed inspectrices.®°

Another reason for women’s slow progress through the ranks was their supervisors’ attitudes. Although Laporte wanted women on his staff, his belief in feminine frailty and refined sensibilities precluded

equal treatment.” When Laporte retired in 1905, his successor, Boulisset, launched a public attack on his female subordinates. He accused them of visiting one-third of the establishments inspecteurs visited and of encountering one-sixth of the employees znspecteurs encountered. Because they preferred day visits or made night visits in pairs, he called them inefficient. He proposed reducing the number

of women, replacing them with men and reassigning two or three inspectrices to accompany inspectors on night visits to feminine shops. His startling statistics ignored the sick-leaves of two imspectrices, which lowered the women’s average, but did identify one who was derelict in her duties. When the supervisory committee did nothing but dismiss the incompetent inspectrice, Boulisset relaxed his attack.®* Still, five years later he “nearly imposed” retirement on another inspectrice.®° Although inspectrices reached 93 per cent of the male average num-

ber of visits by 1913, Boulisset remained suspicious. He hardly defended his female subordinates ~ except those who acted as secretaries — when they were ordered to apply health standards. Because he had reservations, he stalled by calling the task of measuring rooms “unfeminine, ridiculous and tiring.” When the ministry insisted on action, he excused his hesitations as empathy with women who had neglected their duties. After the inspectrices completed an investigation

in record time, he could not forbear patronizing remarks about minor miscalculations.** Generally, inspectrices had more distant rela-

tionships with divisional inspectors than inspecteurs, especially upwardly mobile ones like Boulins.®° Boulisset’s public criticism of inspectrices brought lady inspectors — and, implicitly, gender discrimination — into the open. Usually, lady _ inspectors were invisible and silent. Their situation is summed up in

the discussions about reforming the inspection service held by the National Association for the Legal Protection of Workers in 1909.

93 Implementing Reform

Although the reporter alluded to Boulisset’s attack, he buried the gender issue by speaking of “grandfathered” or “lazy” inspectors. Throughout the discussions, the term znspecteur was used. Finally an

inspectrice interjected, to assure that the wording of the resolution comprised inspectrices as well. Despite commenting on two other occa-

sions, this inspectrice remains unnamed in the minutes.*° Boulisset’s attack provoked one inspectrice, Aldona Juillerat (wife of

an important public health official) into a rare public defence. Her article in the Revue économique internationale reveals some feminist

consciousness and great professional pride. Juillerat confidently asserted that feminism would remove the obstacles to women’s prom-

otion to the rank of divisional inspector. She explained “the battle between the interests of the divisional [sic], who wants to display impressive statistics, and the conscience of the inspectrice,” who made

return visits to family workshops even though these visits did not count in her records, because she wanted to verify that no outside workers had been added in the busy season. Far from concentrating on her female colleagues, however, Juillerat argued for general expansion of the service, simplification of regulations, and “the social education of workers,” not just union members, about labour laws.®? Mme de la Ruelle called for the education of working women about labour laws. She explained the laws to the women’s unions gathered by Mme Durand at the Congress on Women’s Work in 1907. She too displayed esprit de corps. When the union women demanded the election of inspectrices by female unions and complained about lax en-

forcement, Mme de la Ruelle defended the policy on recruiting personnel and procedures for implementing laws.°® Sexual stereotyping and prejudices clearly restricted the role and rank of inspectrices. This may also have deprived the service of a “safety valve” during the breakdown of the promotion system, for women advanced slowly yet expressed little dissatisfaction.®? But limiting “the ladies” to feminine shops and lower levels of the service embodied the symbolic message of sex-specific “protective” laws, to wit, supervisory positions were for men, subordinate jobs for women. WORKING WOMEN’S TENACITY

As intruders in the workplace and as carriers of bureaucratic and rationalistic conceptions of labour and time, inspectors encountered distrust and disobedience from working women, who had their own work practices and time constraints. Working women’s suspicious and evasive response to enforcement is the best gauge of their opinion of “protection” imposed without consulting them, of apparently

94 Women, Work, and the French State

beneficial measures that actually signified loss of income, employment, and working and living routines. When encouraged — or incited — by employers, women workers openly defied inspectors. The most dramatic clashes were the textile strikes over the reduction of wages upon application of the eleven- and ten-hour days and a few public meetings and petitions protesting other features of the labour laws. Active resistance is examined later in this study. Here we may consider the habitual form of female resistance, namely inertia, which

frustrated inspectors yet forced them to adjust to the logic of the female work-world. Coupled with employer intransigence, working women’s intractability “educated” many inspectors about the harsh realities of sweatshop conditions and the demands on working women’s time. Accordingly, many inspectors applied the laws selectively.

Inspectors who began with stereotyped attitudes toward working women developed some understanding as they came to know their working conditions. On the one hand, Chief Inspector Laporte, who acted as an administrator, continued to see labouring women as frail

and to speak paternalistically for them. He campaigned to have weight limits extended to women without considering the effect on their employment.”? In fact, the weight limits introduced in 1909 threatened thousands of women’s jobs. On the other hand, two inspectors who were otherwise “forceful” and “perspicacious” overlooked nearly 200 women pulling illegally heavy wagons in the glass and brick works of Carmaux and Albi. When reprimanded in 1914, they explained that the women engaged in this strenuous activity intermittently, that the limits were “too rigorous,” and that enforcement would mean dismissals and difficulties in replacing women. Rejecting the theory that men were hard to recruit as “a cover for economizing on the labour force,” the divisional inspector issued

summonses. Interestingly, the nineteen brickmakers conformed within a month, but the two glass works experienced problems finding male substitutes and were granted further extensions.”’ Time pressure combined with fears about losing wages or jobs drove many working women to reject the minimum air-volume standard of seven cubic meters a worker. When inspectrices measured floors and walls in small workrooms, seamstresses and other sweated workers “mocked” and “ridiculed” them with ribald comments. They really objected to the disruption of production during the inspection, which meant less pay for that day. They also feared summonses for insufficient space, which might mean unemployment during shutdowns to enlarge the premises or lay-offs to raise the air-volume for each worker. Inspectrices criticized the standards for failing to take into

95 Implementing Reform

account the number and size of windows or the fact that workshops in seasonal industries were full only a few months a year. Seven years

after the air-volume standard was introduced, inspectrices were ordered to investigate Parisian dressmaking shops. Although they found 1,557 shops in violation of the law, they issued only 239 warnings to serious offenders. Divisional Inspector Boulisset agreed with the Fashion Syndicate, which argued that employers who could not expand rented premises should be excused until leases expired. Both the divisional inspector and the syndicate “cautioned” that employers would fire shop workers in favour of cheaper, unregulated home workers. Their representations resulted in a compromise on

well-ventilated rooms and delays in implementing the minimum standard.” Other health and safety provisions encountered opposition simply

because no one bothered to explain their necessity. Rules about ventilation and air circulation were based on scientific evidence from the emerging medical specialty of industrial hygiene, which had just

begun to document the symptoms of exposure to invisible hazards like toxic chemicals, lethal gases, and minute particles of fibre and metals in the atmosphere. Microenvironmental pollution endangered flowermakers who contracted arsenic and aniline poisoning, textile workers who developed brown lung from inhaling fibrous matter in the mills, lead workers who suffered from saturnism, and matchmakers who had necrosis. Yet, with the exception of the visibly afflicted

lead workers and matchmakers, working women were more concerned about drafts.** Given the prevalence of bronchial and pulmonary disorders and popular ideas about their causes, given lack of information about pollution, the women’s emphasis seems understandable. Other tastes and habits of working women foiled safety regulations. On the rare occasion that inspection reports mention the option of

protective clothing, they indicate that working women preferred their own clothing to uniforms; employers merely advised workers against “free-floating” sleeves or skirts rather than issuing protective smocks.”* The report are also reticent about the ban on eating in the workroom designed to prevent — or, more appropriately, reduce — the digestion of poisonous material in the workroom. One report did comment that flowermakers and other sweated workeres who were accustomed to eating in the workroom did not relish being forced into

the streets because their mistresses could not afford to add lunchrooms and they could not afford the cheap restaurants patronized by dressmakers.”” The implicit sympathy in this comment and the ensuing silence on the subject suggest that the service looked the other

96 Women, Work, and the French State

way while these workers resumed their practice of lunching — and socializing — in the workroom. Working women’s passive resistance to salubrious regulations can-

not be dismissed as traditionalist, ignorant, or manipulated. Legislators and administrators had not solicited working women’s opinions about their needs, nor did they study working women’s lives until the lingerie and garment worker studies of 1905-13. With a few exceptions, inspectors did not instruct working women in the new hygiene.

Not surprisingly, women disregarded safety regulations that threatened their livelihood without offering compensation. Not knowing why ventilation was healthy, women flouted rules on the basis of popular medical beliefs. Not accepting the idea that they required protective garb, they preferred comfort and individuality in their attire. Their choices reflected an ethos of survival in a harsh economic climate and a belief in their own capacities. Inspectors who overlooked certain customs and practices proscribed by the law testified to the success of their strategy for survival.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Economics of Compliance:

Hours Standards in the Workplace By 1892 French legislators had whittled the democratic-socialist ideal

of a ten-hour day for all workers down to eleven hours “effective labour” for women and ten hours — or a sixty-hour week — for adolescent girls. The act only delimited the day by prohibiting women’s and girls’ work between g P.M. and 5, A.M. and then permitted double shifts from 4 A.M. to 10 P.M. and overtime to 11 p.M.! Radical sponsors of sex

and age-specific reform explained that limiting women’s and girl’s hours would perforce restrict their co-workers’ day. They implied but did not guarantee that shorter time would not lower pay. The moderate republican governments who took up the measure insisted that short time would not threaten production levels, because workers would be more alert, while industrialists would rationalize the organization of labour and install more efficient technology. Opponents of government intervention argued that French industrialists could not afford or adopt faster means of production and that three separate schedules for the three categories of labour would disrupt production. Either operating ten hours or twelve hours by means of three shifts would lower output, raise costs, and make France less competitive in the world market. Working-class families would have less income to buy higher-priced consumer goods. Neither advocates nor antagonists cited concrete evidence, though spokesmen for each side quoted industrialists and workers. Although annual reviews of the regulatory system included information on its impact, historians have not studied the inspection records to see how standards changed the workday or the workplace. Accepting the criticisms of contemporary proponents of universal regulation, many dismiss the law as ineffectual. Since the three-tier hour standards — twelve for men, eleven for women, and ten for

girls — dissatisfied everyone, liberals in the Senate proposed an

98 Women, Work, and the French State

eleven-hour standard for women and adolescent girls and radicals in the Chamber reverted to a ten-hour day for all. ‘The Senate measure sabotaged the ten-hour rule for girls, because industrialists refused to conform to a rule under legislative review. By 1895 the Ministry of Commerce was ordering inspectors not to enforce the ten-hour rule. When Millerand threatened to apply the law in its entirely in 1900, the two chambers finally agreed on a four-year timetable to attain ten hours for adolescents, women, and men who worked in “the same place” with them.’

Rather than judging the unenforced ten-hour regulation by the unrealistic expectations of contemporary reformers, this chapter assesses the impact of first the eleven- and then the ten-hour standards that were applied, using inspection records, industrial reports, and economic statistics. The first section accounts for the variety of initial reactions by industry- and branch-specific factors like size of

firms, level of competition, composition of the labour force, and integration of work processes. The second section explores the indirect consequences and enduring responses to shorter time: lower pay, faster machines, intensified labour, increased supervision, and streamlined days. Although organized workers resisted pay cuts, they

did not halt the extension of employers’ “frontier of control” over work. A recurring theme in the adaptation to sex-specific hours laws is the deepening of fault lines in the labour market. Imposing lower limits on women and allowing them fewer opportunities for overtime perpetuated the sexual segregation of work, the hierarchical sex-typing

of occupations, the wage gap, and the “internal labour market” in which men got positions with possibilities for promotion while women were confined to dead-end jobs.* Sex-specific hours standards diminished worker control and working women’s options. Paradoxically if predictably, “protection” resulted in more routinized and disciplined

labour and a more segmented labour force. TEXTILES

Textiles provide the best illustrations. Legislators and administrators

targeted this sector as the second largest industrial employer of women and the major feminine industry concentrated into factories.*

The inspection records can be verified against a legislative inquiry into textiles that was undertaken in the middle of the transition to ten

hours.” Another source is ample testimony from the regulated. As soon as legislative deliberations reached a serious stage, textile producers mobilized against state intervention; they presented their case

gg The Economics of Compliance

against short time to each parliamentary committee.° Once the bill became law, textile producers organized to lobby for more overtime and against any extension.’ Textile workers dominated the strikes that accompanied each phase of implementation and their unions became vigilant about the application of the law.® Textiles was too large and varied a sector to be described here. Accordingly, this chapter focuses on the silk fabrique of the Lyonnais

region in the Rhéne, the linen and woollen manufactures of the Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing conurbation in the Nord, and the cotton mills around Epinal in the Vosges. Textiles employed a fifth of the labour force (75,844 people) in the Rhéne, three-tenths of the labour force (54,199 people) in the Vosges, and one-third of the labour force (198,245 people) in the Nord.” Between 30 and go per cent of these people fell under the protection of the law, with the lowest percentage in the mixed workshops of the woollen manufacture and the highest

percentage in the silk fabrique.’° The divisions of the Nord and the Rhone, with the second- and third-largest inspection staffs, earned good reputations for surveillance. The Nord had the highest proportion of inspected worksites; the East and the Rhéne came fourth and fifth due to the dispersal of plants over 8,ooo0 hectares of moun-

tainous terrain.!! In the East, one inspector was assigned all the industrial valleys of the Vosges. That inspector had an undistinguished career capped by a transfer for disciplinary reasons.'* By contrast, Lille and Lyon each had several dedicated inspectors plus an inspectrice to visit feminine workshops.’” Local sources confirm a typical pattern of twelve hours’ effective labour and up to fourteen hours’ presence in textile plants in Epinal,

Lille, and Lyon.'* Like other unionized workers, the dyers and mechanized weavers of Lyon were working eleven hours by 18go0.

More unusual were specialty silk weavers in two communes near Lyon, who won ten hours in an 1890 strike.'? Like most industries, textiles responded to seasonal] fluctuations in demand by varying hours of operation. SPLIT SHIFTS Economic circumstances overruled government initiative to preclude uniform application of hours standards. Characteristics of the labour

force like the proportion of protected workers and the articulation

between the jobs of protected and unprotected workers set the patterns of adaptation. Industries in different phases of their business cycles reacted differently. As an inexpensive fabric in an expand-

ing market, cotton avoided short time, while silk, an overproduced

100 Women, Work, and the French State

luxury item, adopted it. Technical conditions like the convertibility of

plants, and commercial circumstances like the flexibility of firms, mediated these responses. With large modern plants, cotton could and ultimately did improve productivity and lower hours. Although silk had smaller plants and older machinery, prominent firms had always adjusted their products and output to fashion’s whims. When these established firms used standards to reduce inventories and expenses, less secure firms followed their example. Alternatively, weak market position and fierce competition outweighed the presence of big factories in woollens and linens,'° which resisted short time until 1905-6. The age and sex structure of the labour force and the degree of intergration between protected and unprotected jobs dictated initial reactions to the 1892 law. Because men filled 52 per cent of the positions in cotton mills,'’ the mills continued to function twelve hours. Despite representations about the complementarity of men’s, women’s, and adolescents’ labour,'® eastern cotton manufacturers managed to replace the protected workers either by having men oversee their wives’ and daughters’ machines for an hour a day or by having women and girls work staggered shifts, substituting for one another.'!? Two-thirds of the linen spinners were women and adolescent girls,*’ so employers instituted eleven hours for all personnel. However, they rejected ten hours and replacement shifts for girls on the grounds that they could not alternate assistants whose labour was inextricably linked to the labour of adults. They claimed that women could not operate their jennies without girls to replace the bobbins.?" Calculations about demand for their product and the local supply of labour could alter the initial response to standards. As demand for cotton rose in 1894, the cotton industry of the Vosges adopted irregu-

lar, interlocking shifts to keep producing twelve hours a day. Employers explained that they would lose male operatives to higherwage regions if they lowered hours and consequently the meagre daily wage of 2f50c. When demand fell in 1896, the Eastern Cotton

Syndicate tried to negotiate an entente on eleven hours, but the cotton producers of the Vosges were too numerous and individual firms too small to sacrifice any output in the general interest. Some feared the industry would never return to a twelve-hour schedule; some saw the gesture as “a step toward the ‘three eights’ — the eight-

hour workday with equal time for sleep and leisure daily. When business improved the following year, a few owners added an hour “to fill urgent orders” and the rest claimed that they had to conform to prevent a loss of workers to plants offering longer days and better

101 The Economics of Compliance

pay. In 1898 mulls ran sixteen hours by means of double shifts until overproduction and lay-offs forced a return to twelve hours.?? Declining demand and the presence of dominant firms permitted a

more positive use of standards. Industries with shrinking markets might welcome short time as an opportunity to lower inventories and

expenses. Silk, linen, and woollen manufacturers were all expertencing overproduction associated with the Great Depression and mounting competition from cheaper, mass-produced fabrics from the United States, Germany, and other industrializing nations.*° Only the fabrique had enough influential and enlightened firms to embrace short time. Although fancy silk weaving had a relatively mixed workforce, major manufacturers immediately dropped from eleven to ten “effective” hours for all personnel. Smaller producers soon acquiesced. In the countryside, where plain silks were woven, eleven hours prevailed unti] 1900, when five rural magnates implemented ten hours for their 4,400 workers scattered throughout the countryside. Encouraged by reports that profits did not suffer and a liberal policy of authorized overtime during peak seasons, small producers also accepted ten hours before the legal deadline of April 1904.** Acceptance of ten hours did not preclude a variety of ruses like starting machines ten to fifteen minutes early and running them late. When inspectors defined the day from opening to closing times, employers’ groups petitioned for administrative instructions to allow

early openings and authorizations for evening overtime.*” Erratic demand and extreme competition between small operators precluded universal adoption of short time. Accustomed to violent swings in demand and competitive pricing at home and abroad, silk spinners tried to impose ten hours everywhere at once to ensure that no one gained a competitive edge by producing twelve hours at the same wage. As soon as seasonal demand soared, small producers

broke the agreement and everyone returned to eleven hours. In twisting, the simplest stage of production, mistresses who employed Lyonnais women on a daily basis waited for warnings before com-

plying. Shops lodging young peasant women on yearly contracts functioned fourteen hours a day for years, because they escaped detection due to their quasi-domestic nature in the city and their dispersal and disguise as orphanages in the country. When the service took a punitive approach in 1897, the inspectrice sought out recalci-

trant mistresses. Seventy-six summonses and 1,740 francs in fines convinced 200 urban mistresses.”° Sensitivity to fluctuations in supply and demand — or chaotic orga-

nization — impeded the implementation of standards. For several

102 Women, Work, and the French State

years, woollen manufacturers of Roubaix/Tourcoing resisted eleven hours because they would not risk lower output or higher prices in their desperate struggle to retain their share of the Atlantic market after the McKinley tariffs were introduced in the United States. Many

plants operated around the clock when they acquired the choice wools that came on the market periodically. After two huge mills went bankrupt, after several worsted plants laid off half their workers, and after others cut wages by 20 per cent, the woollen syndicate agreed on eleven hours. As soon as new shipments of wool arrived, small wor-

sted plants formed “rolling” shifts of women and children to assist men working twelve hours a day. Others exploited working women’s habit of coming in early to change clothes by turning on the power

and “letting” them start their machines before their day officially began. When convicted, worsted manufacturers declared that they would remain 1n violation and pay the illegally low fines awarded by friendly local courts. At the end of the decade, a slump revived the employers’ entente on eleven hours and this time the syndicate monitored its members.”’

Powerful producers’ associations moderated enforcement of the law. By the time the law came into effect, the Linen Committee, encompassing most linen spinners of Lille,** had persuaded the prefect to apply the law “rigorously only to those not adopting any part of the law.” Since the service was understaffed, the divisional inspector was initially lenient about the ten-hour rule. When he informed industrialists of his intention to enforce the entire law as of November 1893, the Linen Committee petitioned the Ministry of Commerce to postpone implementing ten hours until the fate of the Senate bill to unify standards at eleven hours had been decided. As a disincentive, linen manufacturers threatened to reduce wages if compelled to introduce ten hours. They explained that ten hours would put them in an untenable position vis-a-vis their prime competitor,

cotton producers, who could produce for twelve hours a day by organizing relay shifts of adolescents. Linen spinners received warnings~” until the ministry put the ten-hour rule on hold. Millerand’s notice enforcing all clauses of the law provoked the Linen Committee into an open letter protesting that the State had reneged on a “tacit contract.”°° Since Millerand was determined to force the Assembly into revising the 1892 act, the Linen Committee and the Eastern Spinners’ Syndicate had local deputies present their cases to the committee considering amendments to the act. After Millerand addressed the committee on the prospect of a unified ten-hour standard, a deputy from Lille, Barrois, passed on the Linen Committee’s request to postpone “inte-

103. The Economics of Compliance

gral implementation” until after the vote on the amendments. Millerand was amenable, if he could obtain assurances that unification at ten

hours would be accepted. Industrialists acquiesced but negotiated about the date of the changeover. At the next committee meeting, Barrois indicated that the Linen Committee opposed a fixed date because it was impossible to predict economic conditions, to increase the pace of machinery at the present level of mechanical knowledge,

“and also, to demand endless speed-ups of workers.” The Linen Committee’s opposition helped convince committee members an adjustment period was necessary. Spokesmen for the Lyonnais fabr:gue and for the eastern cotton industry, including the former opponent of hours standards, Charles Ferry, compromised on a two-stage process, with each stage lasting two years.”' The act of 30 March 1900, eased the transition by beginning with eleven hours for all working m

the “same place” as “protected workers,” moving to ten and a half hours two years later, and ending with ten hours in April 1904. The inspection service smoothed the way by tripling the number of authorizations for overtime in the busy season or to fill pressing orders anytime (see table 7). Textile industries with mixed labour forces were not satished with

these concessions. Northern textile producers challenged the law, appealed convictions, and publicized Appeal Court decisions”* that defined “the same place” very narrowly as literally the same room, not

the same plant.*’ Branches that employed women to prepare and finish materials for men subverted the uniform day by redesigning plants and adding outbuildings to isolate the sexes. Linen and woollen establishments — and cotton mills with mule-spinners — physically separated the sexes. While the trades were responsible for most of the mass dismissals of men’s apprentices, woollen and linen factories laid off thousands of youths. Very few employers fired women, since they

would have had to replace most of the operatives in the feminine workshops where most women toiled. Employers wanted to avoid down-time and disruption of production while hiring and training new operatives; they also realized that the low pay and sexual stereotyping of women’s jobs would hinder recruitment among men. One exception was the mixed-sex branch of worsted wool, where a few

large plants released hundreds of women from their hard but highpaying jobs. The inspector who had lamented the diminution of job-training opportunities for young men applauded this alleged easing of women’s burden.** Although manufacturers ultimately adjusted to ten hours, they did not reintegrate men’s and women’s shops. One of the abiding results of 1900 standards was a spatial expression of the sexual division of labour.

104. Women, Work, and the French State Table 7 Authorizations for Overtime

Number of Days Number of Days Number of Days

, Number of Children Worked Women Worked Men Worked

Year Establishments Overtime Overtime Overtime

1900 1,912 505,656 1,450,311 490,699 1901 1,917 482,190 1,410,484 985,110 1902 3,611 $41,695 2,111,943 2,050,357 1903 4,45] 966,600 2,376,340 2,647,874 1904 6,209 1,399,388 3,491,651 3,891,053 1905 6,824 1,785,222 4,234,293 4,368,893 1906 7,053 1,585,052 3,955,377 4,448,737 1907 6,826 1,522,502 3,473,393 4,435,592 1908 6,852 1,429,747 3,392,165 3,964,693 Source: CST, Rapports, 1908, Liv.

Cotton and silk implemented ten hours with less procrastination. Steadily rising demand ensured that eastern cotton mills ran twelve hours a day until April 1904,°° but the same buoyant market inspired

entrepreneurs to invest in more efficient technology in order to sustain production levels after they adopted ten hours.”® Silk, trying to limit production, anticipated the law. Even in boom times, the small

proportion of men discouraged mass dismissals and subdivision of workshops. Mistresses of small twisting shops had to be coerced. Unlike the manufacturers of the Nord, these humble women did not encounter sympathetic judges nor could they afford multiple fines.°’ Once the markets for linens and woollens improved in 1906, linen and woollen producers recalled laid-off youths and resumed hiring them. They also overworked all personnel. When tried on overtime charges, they challenged the inspectors’ right to cite them merely because their plants operated before or after the scheduled workday. Acquittals on the grounds that the law did not prescribe any penalty for differences between the actual and the scheduled workday meant that inspectors had to spend the whole day hidden in the vicinity to verify that effective labour exceeded the legal limit.°® After the Appeal Court confirmed that discrepancy between the time spent working and the timetable posted in the workshop was not punishable

unless the hours limit was surpassed, the government introduced a bill specifying that employers would be held in violation for work done outside the posted workday. The Parisian Chamber of Commerce mounted a campaign against the power accorded inspectors, which they claimed breached the separation of powers by restricting the courts to registering the inspectors’ observations. Chambers of

105 The Economics of Compliance Table 8 National Infractions of Hours Standards, 1900-1908

Number of Infractions In Textiles

Women and Men Area Percentage

Year Children

1900 2,129 892

1901 4,572 2,914 linen spinning 27.5 1902 3,198 2,087 1903 6,121 1904 5,357 2,273 2,670 linen spinning 20.6 1905 1906 5,417 4,417 4,121 2,741 linen spinning 14.3 1907 3,319 2,250 1908 2,844 1,270 woollens and cottons 20 Source: CST, Rapports, 1901, tu and tvin; 1903, xLiv; 1906, xiim-1v; and 1908, xxxviul.

Commerce in textile regions added complaints that the law posited bad faith on the part of the employer and disregarded the problem of unstable personnel.*? Outmanceuvred, the reformers retreated.*° Capital investment to increase productivity eventually curtailed illegal overtime.*’ Table 8 documents the downward trend in hours infractions after 1905. REDESIGNING THE WORKDAY

Hours standards normalized the ten-hour day in textiles and other large industries, although union activity predated and reinforced state intervention. For instance, in the Rhéne, organized workers had

ten-hour days by 1892 and short time was customary in threequarters of the unregulated masculine workshops by 1899.** Strike settlements inaugurated short time in many trades,** but the state had an influence on unorganized branches of the fabrique.** Only 1.5 per cent of the Rhéne’s textile plants, in contrast to 17 per cent of all

its factories, operated more than ten hours in 1912. Where unions were weaker, standards had greater impact. In the east, 4 per cent of the mills compared to 42 per cent of all establishments exceeded the legal maximum. Variations between regions should not obscure the central fact that 93 per cent of all plants subject to the law, and 73 per

cent of all workshops, respected the standard. Only sectors untouched by collective bargaining and state regulation, like retailing, had most of their outlets open more than ten hours in 1912.*”

106 Women, Work, and the French State

Limiting individuals’ labour did not automatically limit the workshop day, because shift work subverted short time until 1901. Relays -teams of adolescents employed sequentially — assisted men through their twelve-hour day; women and girls “rolled” from one

work station to another, replacing other protected workers who started later, finished earlier, or took longer breaks than their male co-workers; four-hour lunches allowed women to prepare and finish men’s materials.*° To calculate the effective hours of individuals on staggered shifts, inspectors had to linger at a site to confirm several arrival, departure, and break times. Legislators extended hours standards to men “in the same places” as “the protected categories” to the end shifts to prolong the men’s day. When textile plants segregated men and revived relays, swing and split shifts for women and youths, the administration expressly prohibited them.*’ By exploiting generous overtime provisions, employers avoided permanent short time and advance planning for seasonal fluctuations in the workload. Since the hours law did not specify which industries could have overtime, or under what conditions, the administration

approved twenty-seven feminine industries and designated an appropriate season for each. Overwhelmed by complaints about the rigidity of predetermined seasons, the Ministry of Commerce let industrialists apply for authorizations whenever they needed overtime. Not until 1900 did the ministry, under Millerand, impose a sixty-day maximum. Even then, inspectors could not investigate every application to decide how many exemptions an industrialist deserved, nor could they ascertain if everyone abided by the terms of the

exemption. After a 1902 court ruling restricted the inspectors’ right to enter establishments after regular hours, proving overtime became difficult. **

When cotton, woollen, and other manufacturers with mixed-sex workshops realized that the 1go00 law did not mention and consequently did not accommodate overtime for men, they lobbied for an amendment.*” Before the ten-and-a-half hour limit applied in 1902, an act authorized additional hours for foremen, engineers, mechanics, and other “indispensable” personnel, for millers, printers, metal and other workers on continuous processes, and for urgent repairs or national defence.”°° The Union des Syndicats Patronaux des Indus-

tries Textiles was still unsatisfied. It wanted one and a half hours added on to twelve rather than ten and a half hours.”! As table 7 shows, the number of allowances for men doubled in the first year of the new law and more than doubled again in the following three years. Allowances for women and children rose slightly less.

Thereafter the number of authorizatons oscillated in conjunction

107 The Economics of Compliance

with the business cycle. Still industrialists pressed for permits to be

used at their discretion and in 1910 got open permits.** Table g indicates the effect, even on textiles, of large contracts for national defence. The exceptions to feminine standards expedited low-wage, season-

al labour, while the provisions for masculine overtime facilitated specialized and supervisory work. The difference in access to overtime reflected the division of the labour market along gender lines, but also buttressed the barriers between the two labour markets by making it difficult to hire women or men for nontraditional occupa-

tions Women were doubly disadvantaged, because they were crowded into fewer and less remunerative occupations. Indirectly, the laws prevented women from becoming overseers, engineers, or mechanics, because they could not stay late to supervise or perform essential services. This exclusion reinforced internal labour markets, | in which men had opportunities for advancement while women remained trapped in dead-end jobs. The manipulating of entry, exit, and break times also delayed the streamlined day. One of the long-ignored provisions of the 1892 law obliged employers to post a timetable and send a duplicate to the service. Even employers who fulfilled this requirements started early

and expected workers to clean their machines late. Once standards were applied to men, courts ruled that work after the scheduled day was acceptable if effective labour did not exceed the legal limit.?° When prosecuted for overtime violations, employers pleaded innocence on the ground that they had been making up for time lost due to mechanical failures, and usually convinced judges, since machines did malfunction. Although the Chamber passed bills to make “real” work coterminous with “posted” hours, the Senate rejected them.”*

More than twelve hours’ surveillance was required to prove that a plant had surpassed the legal limit.”° Thousands of workplaces, even mills, remained informal about time in the Nord, the Rhéne, and especially the Vosges.°° To avoid delimited days, employers did not install clocks or else they tinkered with them and, in either case, dickered with the inspector over the correct time. Managers or foremen advanced factory clocks before opening and set them back before closing to stretch the day; some made the adjustments in front of workers, since workers paid by output accepted illegally prolonged days. Management and labour both contested the accuracy of the imspector’s watch. Early court decisions to abide by “average” time determined by communal clocks

did not resolve the problem in remote villages without communal clocks. Many textile villages in the Rhéne and the Vosges fell in to this

108 Women, Work, and the French State Table 9 Divisional Tolerances by Gender in Selected Industries, 1913 Number of Days of Overtime for:

Division and Industry of Men ae 4 ~ Ys Lm

-.>— OTx 7__see —_“= |a; ane : , , —~w 2 | 4 _—

) &}' ~

~A™ With these brakes on rigorous implementation, the industrial health and safety bill introduced in 1890°° proceeded without serious opposition.*° LOBBYING

Acceptance of industrial health and safety standards was aided by organizations of employers. The National Association of French Industrialists against Work Accidents and regional associations of steam engine owners were interested in work injuries. National Association members employed 140,000 by 1892 and 350,000 by 1902.*’ Because

these associations advocated voluntary improvement of the workplace to avoid accidents, disruptions of production, and costly repairs, they developed their own safety codes, appointed private inspectors, and offered advice to employers. They relied on their own experience and the expertise of engineers in what they called “the new science” of accident prevention. Although they blamed careless workers for many accidents, they also identified open moving parts of motors and narrow aisles between machinery as hazards. More positively, they publicized shields for motors and distributed blueprints of

uncongested layouts. In the early 1890s two leaders of local employers’ associations claimed that half to two-thirds of all work accidents could be averted by following the association’s advice.** They

were quoted in parliamentary speeches for the protective labour bill.?°

However, these voluntary organizations campaigned against stateimposed measures. In the 1880s their spokesmen argued that “state inspection dees not have the necessary elasticity to accommodate the many and varied exigencies of industrial labour.” ‘Throughout the

1880s and 1890s, they fought any scheme for accident insurance based on employer contributions as being disastrous for small employers and unreliable for workers.** After the Industrial Safety Act of June 1893, industrial societies dismissed the consultative committees that drafted the administrative decree as inexperienced bureau-

crats. Since abrogation was impossible, given public opinion, the

154 Women, Work, and the French State

Association of French Industrialists against Work Accidents set up technical subcommittees to propose modifications to the administra-

tive decree to make it responsive to the special requirements of

certain industries. Similar societies submitted recommendations for relaxation of many articles to the Labour Bureau.”? Employer groups resisted strict application of expensive measures. According to one state inspector, the private inspector of the Industrial Association of the Nord, the engineer Arquembourg, “never missed an opportunity to create problems for the Service.” In 1904 Arquembourg approached an industrialist who had begun renovations after a warning to widen the passageways between machines.

Halting construction, Arquembourg dictated a protest that compliance would mean dismantling one-third of the machines.”° About the same time, the French Committee on Cotton Spinning mounted a

campaign against warnings about sweeping mills during working hours. Despite mounting concern about the risk of tuberculosis from inhaling cotton dust, the committee won “tolerance” of the practice. When inspectors renewed their efforts to apply this regulation, employers’ groups once again stopped them.”’ Employers’ groups only

cooperated with the Labour Bureau to the extent that they shared their experience with protective devices and sanitary measures. In the

campaign against tuberculosis,*° they acted to deflect pressure to have the state impose “social remedies” like short time.*° The Consultative Committee on Public Health participated in the

preparation of government bills in the 1880s and administrative decrees in the 1890s. Although headed by Dr Henri Napias, who had an interest in industrial hygiene, the committee included no specialist among its public health doctors and officials. Nevertheless, it proposed special prescriptions for women and children. The committee

consulted but did not capitulate to industrial societies during the drafting of the 1892 and 1893 laws. While the members were prepared to make revisions on account of technical problems, they were unwilling to abandon key provisions because these would entail considerable expense.*° The prestigous Annales d’hygiéne publique et de médecine légale pub-

lished reports of medical investigations into industrial illnesses. As early as 1893 Dr Napias used this influential journal to promote the legislating of industrial health and safety standards implemented by state-appointed physicians empowered to inspect industry.*' A corps of medical inspectors would have relieved the overextended work

inspectors but would not have overcome the obstacles to on-site reporting of unhealthy or unsafe conditions in the presence of overseers or owners. Neither the Annales nor any other agency advocated

155 Saving Women?

occupational health clinics, like the one in Milan, which encouraged

off-site reporting and worker-rather than employer-oriented medicine.** After several men lost their lives in an underwater project, the new Ministry of Labour instituted medical surveillance of personnel in pressurized compartments.” But this was all that was achieved. Even the National Association for the Legal Protection of Workers postponed a vote on medically trained inspectors, to avoid the murky issue of occupational disease. The association did accept the concept of worker-delegates responsible for monitoring health and safety.°*

Though they attended union and public health conferences on workshop hygiene held regularly after 1904, industrial hygienists did not instruct workers about the scientific rationales behind health and safety regulations. The exception was Dr René Martial, who in 1907 advocated public conferences, trade school courses, and union publicity. A lobbyist, Edmond Briat, was more conventional in arguing

that industrial regulations “indirectly educate” workers about per-

sonal hygiene, for workers took habits learned in the workshop home.”” The idea that legalistic, prescriptive regulations themselves were educational seems dubious. Working women did not demand safety delegates, as miners did.

Spared the cave-ins, explosions, landslides, and other egregious perils of underground labour, they did not develop consciousness about or solidarity around safety issues.°° They were less likely than working men to agitate for safety measures. Their reticence stemmed from suspicion of regulations that eliminated them from high-paying jobs, a suspicion heightened by union resolutions and official positions. The first union congress on “workers’ hygiene,” in 1894, endorsed an “absolute ban” on women and minors “in all unhealthy and dangerous establishments” and urged additons to the list of forbidden industries.°*’ Specific unions suggested “interpretations” of safety

articles prohibiting heavy or tiring work which would get rid of female competitors. Even when working men requested coverage, their request could turn against women. When dye workers who sulffered hernias from lifting heavy bolts petitioned for weight limits,

inspectors rejected the idea on the ground of physical differences between men, which would make it difficult to set a limit, and on the ground of men’s ability to assess what they could do without danger. However, two inspectors took the opportunity to urge weight limits for women, with no mention of differences in strength or of women’s judgment about safe work situations.”® Given the way safety regulations were used to eliminate female competitors in high-paying jobs, given attitudes toward women in hard or dangerous occupations, and

156 Women, Work, and the French State

given their tenuous position in the labour market, their lack of interest in safety regulations seems understandable. In lieu of medical specialists or safety delegates, officials and inspectors became practical experts on, and advocates of, safety measures. In the early 1890s the newly created Labour Office devoted over half of its publications to statistical and financial studies of the Austrian and German experience with workers’ compensation, which

were helpful in the campaign for a French equivalent.*” The longserving director of the Labour Office, Arthur Fontaine, sat on several advisory and advocacy committees. He became very adept at seizing

the moment when proposals for broad coverage faltered to insist upon the “indispensability” of eliminating women and children.*° Consulted by the administration on the advisability of modifying regulations, inspectors generally suggested tightening enforcement or stiffening penalties, especially for sex-specific rules. Inquiries con-

ducted by inspectors on instructions from the ministry sometimes shifted the focus of proposed reforms. An investigation of allegations about female operators of hand-wringers in laundries dismissed the

complaints on the ground that men did the heavy labour. But the reports provided details about “deplorable hygienic conditions” which were useful in obtaining the 1905 decrees regulating the trans-

port and treatment of dirty laundry.*' The International Association for the Protection of Workers also lobbied for health and safety standards. Although dominated by lawyers and engineers, the association sponsored medical research

and published reports on insalubrious industries. Their reports emphasized the threat of toxic materials for all workers.** As early as

1903, the International Association promoted an international convention forbidding the use of white phosphorus in matchmaking. Since the state-owned match industry had already replaced white phosphorus with a safer alternative, the convention had little relevance in France.*” However, their dissemination of scientific research on lead poisoning was influential in obtaining the 1909 prohibition on white lead in public works and its strict supervision in private industry. Pressure from the painters’ union also contribute to this result.*# An extraparliamentary advisory committee was finally constituted

in 1901. The Workers’ Compensation Act of 1898 did not include earlier clauses on occupational diseases, because legislators were less comfortable with indemnities for chronic illness than they were with insurance against traumatic injuries. Another obstacle was ignorance

of the extent and etiology of work-related ailments. Nevertheless, Jules Breton, a radical socialist, introduced bills to compensate workers for poisoning from handling toxic metals, corrosive chemicals, or

157 Saving Women?

viruses and from inhaling or ingesting noxious gases or dust. Millerand, as minister of commerce, responded by appointing a Consultative Committee on Industrial Hygiene to study illnesses “exclusively or clearly caused by work” and to compile a list of industries inducing diseases.*” Experts filled most of the seats on the Consultative Committee on Industrial Hygiene. They consisted of five physicians specializing in public medicine or physiology, two professors, of industrial chemistry and political economy, two officials from the Labour

Bureau and the chief work inspector. There were only two representatives of the interested parties, one a glassworks owner and the other a metal union activist.*° No women were invited to join this or

any other advisory board on labour. Originally the committee delegated reports on specific diseases to physicians who were asked to describe “accidents in the medical sense

of the word,” the probability of linking symptoms to intoxication from industrial materials, diagnostic procedures, preventive medicine, and therapies.*’ When the committee settled down to consider banning lead in paint, they became more systematic. Subcommittees were formed, enlisting experts like building inspectors. A scientific report cited statistics on occupations at risk and occupational mortality, as well as the results of experiments on alternative substances. Although it obtained a decree forbidding white lead in state enterprises in 1909, the committee delayed the prohibition of red lead.*° Inspectors’ doubts about the mortality figures 1n three case studies of saturnism among artificial flower-makers and about the cost of replacing red lead dyes in flower-making postponed the suppression of red dye.*”. Some of the Consultative Committee’s initial recommendations became policy. Most were exclusionary policies, like disregarding tuberculosis as “not particular to industry.” Once officials and politiclans pressed for attention to the industrial conditions conducive to the spread of tuberculosis, the committee proposed and the government decreed the installation of “hermetically sealed” spittoons and nightly cleaning of workshops.”” Recommendations such as assimilating acute attacks or deaths from industrial ailments to accidents for

purposes of insurance remained dead letters because they would have inconvenienced industry. Some of their proposals, such as medical histories of all workers, raised the spectre of infringing on individual rights. However, the committee performed a valuable service by compiling information on chronic symptoms caused by ten potentially lethal substances. Later it sponsored original research on specific unhealthy occupations.”! As the advisory committee developed an in-house research capac-

158 Women, Work, and the French State

ity, private pressure groups dedicated to occupational health and safety appeared. Annual conferences held at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers advocated fortifying the acts of 1893 through 1903.°*

By 1909 the conference demanded the extension of accident compensation to occupational diseases.°° The following year an international congress on industrial hygiene met. Although delegates still debated whether diseases could be attributed to working conditions without considering congenital predispositions, they agreed on the need for legislative intervention, preferably in the form of medical insurance.°* Despite the growing number of lobbies and specialists, the health and safety acts were changed, in significant ways, only for women.°° INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE

Industrial hygiene was less influential in the arguments for sexspecific health and safety laws than for comprehensive ones. The only

direct references to industrial hygiene in the parliamentary process up to 1893 came in bills and reports on universal coverage.”° Industrial hygienists had been more interested in the dangers of technologies, plant designs, and a few lethal materials than in the susceptibilities of categories of workers. In so far as they concentrated on glaring problems, they focused on men who held obviously dangerous jobs. When they noticed working women, they made unsubstantiated remarks about lower resistance, they fixated on reproductive disorders, and they prescribed special protection.*’ Although doctors had long observed, diagnosed, and prescribed for occupational disabilities and diseases, systematic study dates from Charles de Freycinet’s experiments on mdustrial sanitation in the 1860s. Earlier generations had described visible deformities resulting from physically demanding labour, cited clinical evidence of high

morbidity and mortality from direct contact with hazardous raw materials, and denounced “moral depravity” in mixed-sex workshops.” In much the same way the Helmholz and his French counterpart Marey reoriented the study of work behaviour from a moral to a medical paradigm,”” Pasteur reoriented the medical profession in the 1870 and 1880s. Germ theory directed attention to nonspecific symptoms of exposure to invisible microbes and by-products like fibrous and particulate dust. Microclimatic factors like temperature, humidity, and ventilation and microenvironmental pollution from chemicals and toxins became central concerns.

159 Saving Women?

A seminal textbook by Dr Alexandre Layet located the subject matter of industrial hygiene between the general practitioner’s concern with individual health and the study of social problems like poverty. Although Layet and most of his successors contended that “misery, immorality, carelessness and brutalization predispose workers to sickness,” hygienists did not investigate the troublesome issues of susceptibility or poverty. This delimitation of the field meant that

many diseases endemic in feminine trades could be attributed to women’s allegedly weaker constitutions or to poor nutrition without

thorough inquiry into their working conditions. For example, hygienists assigned responsibility for the etiology and treatment of tuberculosis to public health, despite the correlation of similar pulmonary afflictions with industrial pollutants.°° Of course reformers like Vaillant continued to blame overwork, an amorphous concept but one that certainly described the situation of most working women. ‘They prescribed “ social remedies” like lower hours standards and a minimum wage.°! Industrial hygiene classified diseases in two major categories: those

due to the work design and those due to the industrial milieu. Research on interaction with machines involved watching and describing the posture of workers and the arrangement of machinery, not the precise measurements and tests of present-day ergonomics.” Studies of the industrial atmosphere encompassed the dust, fumes, and heat emitted by raw materials or generated by processing, as well as the safety and sanitation of the surroundings. Usually hygienists

presented data on morbidity and reviewed all the recognized variables in trades dealing with a single dangerous substance.” Women were underrepresented in these early studies, because feminine occupations were not subject to dramatic fatalities which could easily be traced to working conditions. In addition, bourgeois men who became hygienists did not conceive of women as lifetime workers needing their help. Some may have thought that women’s biological rhythms made them more difficult, as opposed to simply different, than men as subjects of research, an attitude prevalent among industrial hygienists today.°* Other obstacles to research may heve been the diffuse and rarely recognized symptoms of the stress women suffered in service jobs and the invisibility of much of their paid and unpaid work. Insecure 1n overcrowded occupations, without unions to voice their grievances, most women did not complain about working conditions.

When studies mentioned women, they usually referred to the effects of work procedures or environment upon the menstrual cycle,

160 Women, Work, and the French State

reproductive organs, and pregnancies. Other interests were the circulatory and respiratory systems. For instance, Layet held that toxic particles inhaled or absorbed into the skin caused miscarriages, premature births, and puny, sickly infants.°° Long after obstetricians and pediatricians became the experts on the impact of women’s work on pregnancy, birth, and babies, industrial hygienists remained as interested in the viability of working women’s offspring as they were in the health of the women who were ostensibly their subjects.°° Even today, studies of menstruation and pregnancy are the two largest areas of medical research on women’s work.®’ Industrial hygiene either neglects women because they are “different” or focuses on their difference. Some doctors personally observed and gathered empirical evidence on specific feminine jobs. Although they generally began with prejudices about female fragility, they usually revised their opinion and commented on working women’s stamina. Compared to other industrial hygienists, they were less likely to indulge in gynecological speculation. After noting the temperature, humidity level, and chemical composition of the air in cotton-drying sheds, an early jobspecific study described the nausea, headaches, conjunctivitis, sore throats, and shortness of breath endured by women. Although the author, Dr Jules Arnould, wished to know about “uterine functions,” he acknowledged that women could not or would not answer detailed questions on menstruation, that firms did not keep records of days lost through tndisposition, and that these women left work before having children.®®

Despite the underrepresentation of women, industrial hygiene incidentally identified many situations endangering women. Most accidents resulted in abrasions, contusions, and fractures of the fingers, hands, and arms. They occurred when spinners or weavers reached into their machines to reattach broken threads or dislodge tufts of fiber or when operatives dusted inside running motors. Bronchial and pulmonary problems, including brown lung, afflicted beaters and carders who inhaled fibrous matter in the mills. Other

chronic disorders included ulcers and rashes, eye infections and conjunctivitis, head colds and sore throats, gastrointestinal discomfort and varicose veins. Because these symptoms rarely impaired workers to the point of quitting work, they were not considered serious. Yet the drain on working women’s energy must have left them vulnerable to infectious diseases. Moreover, the accumulation of aches and pains may partly explain the turnover in many feminine occupations.

161 Saving Women?

The most hazardous jobs involved handling toxic metals and corrosive acids in the preparation or finishing of other products, breathing fumes from volatile solutions used to clean or coat other products, or

ingesting viruses from unsanitary materials or particles from polishing metals. A few of the occupations with specific symptoms were those of dry cleaners with respiratory problems and headaches from breathing benzine fumes, flowermakers with arsenic and aniline poisoning from dyes, lacemakers with lead poisoning from white lead bleach, laundresses with sores and withered skin from handwashing in harsh detergents, porcelain moulders and polisheers with saturn-

ism from their pastes and paints, and silk workers with swollen, ulcerated skin from immersing silk cocoons in hot, fetid water.®° From a practical point of view, the remedies prescribed by industrial hygienists posed problems. To extent that they isolated groups prone to casualties or contamination, they could recommend their removal from the workshops, but studies of susceptibility were rare and elimination of populations-at-risk untenable in industries dependent on that population for their labour force. The alternatives were remedial measures like wider aisles between machines, grills over transmissions, evacuation of dust and gases, protective masks, regular bathing, and dietary regimes like drinking milk if one handled lead. If these measures were less disruptive, they nevertheless required changes, some of which were structural and all of which implied a more responsible attitude toward labour. To convince conservative employers who preferred engineering solutions, hygienists needed legal sanctions; to get legislation, they needed political clout. Hence the conferences cited above. Pressure also came from public outrage about horrifying incidents or symptoms, mobilized by lobbies like the Association for the Legal Protection of Workers or by unions. Of course, women had few unions secure enough to focus on safety or solvent enough to lobby. The exception to this rule was the matchmakers’ union. The 1,400 women and 600 men who made matches were concentrated in seven factories under government monopoly,

and the government had to manage the concession better than the previous owners to justify its purchase and to satisfy reformers’

emphasis on improving conditions as examples to private employers.’° In an era of anxiety about depopulation, matchworkers

appeared to have a low birth rate due to phosphorism. They also displayed the symptoms of necrosis, a disturbing deterioration of teeth and jaws. The matchworkers’ union aligned itself with a doctor, Emiie Magitot, who publicized — and sensationalized — their suffer-

162 Women, Work, and the French State

ing. A strike forced the government to appoint a committee of scientists to discover a practical alternative to white phosphorus. In 1898 a new formula was substituted.’’ This happy ending was unique. APPLYING SAFETY MEASURES

The Consultative Committee on Arts and Manufactures developed detailed health and safety regulations in an 1893 decree. Their schedules of occupations closed to women blocked women’s entry into high-paying jobs. These tables preserved or created male monopolies but did nothing for the health of the men holding the jobs. Conversely, explicit exemptions, deliberate omissions, and oversights in these schedules allowed low-wage, feminine industries to continue unhealthy practices. The restrictive and permissive regulations, in combination, confirmed the existing as well as the emerging cleavage in the labour market, without materially enhancing health conditions. Starting with lists of occupations that were closed to children by the

1874 law, the Consultative Committee questioned work inspectors, hygienists, and interested parties about how to integrate women. They made few additions to the list of workshops so “inherently harmful” that there were no mitigating circumstances under which the protected parties could be employed. Table A “purely and simply

banned” women and children from access to fifty-nine, and later, after modifications in 1899 and 1900, sixty-two trades. Nearly threequarters of these trades produced volatile substances, used mercury,

lead, or organic materials, or polished ceramics, crystal, glass, or metals. The reasons for their interdiction were “deleterious vapors,” “noxious emanations,” or “possible poisoning.” ”” Since fewer than one 1n ten of the employees in most of these trades were female’*® — and since many of the women did auxiliary work

near but not in the targeted workshops — implementation of this schedule caused little disruption. But implementation impeded women’s access to high-wage jobs in growing sectors like chemicals”?

and reduced pressure to improve truly hazardous workplaces. Unions credited the designation of jobs like hand-stamping soap as “work beyond the strength of women” with the elimination of the few women in masculine specialties.” However, the Consultative Com-

mittee did not become the agent of unions trying to reduce female competition in mixed-sex occupations. In 1907 the dyers’ union lobbied for an eight-hour day for female pressers, claiming that this was “one of the hardest feminine trades.” The union was aggrieved about

the trend toward hiring women to iron large pieces and felt eight hours would cut male unemployment. Asked their opinion, the work

163 Saving Women?

inspectors noted the smell of benzine and carbon monoxide in press-

ing rooms but also the lack of complaints from female pressers. Instead of changing the regulation, the committee accepted the inspectors’ solution of better ventilation.’®

Similarly, the Consultative Committee did not prohibit women from dangerous feminine occupations. An 1895 inquiry into ceramic lithography — a new, less skilled technique — found that brushing on a lead-silicate powder posed a threat of lead poisoning. As this task engaged only two or three women in each china factory, mainly in Limoges, Dr Napias recommended including this specialty in Table A. The Consultative Committee preferred to apply general prescriptions about evacuating insalubrious dust,’” even though these prescriptions were hard to enforce.”®

Explicit exceptions to the restrictions on women in dangerous trades reflected a demand for female labour. ‘Table B named ten “dangerous industries in which we have always employed women because of their patience, attentiveness, manual dexterity, and supple movements.” Making cartridges, dynamite, fireworks, and other ex-

plosives, tending silk worms and sick dogs, and later assembling batteries and ceramic lithography, were acceptable for women but not for adolescents because these jobs required “prudent and attentive” workers.’ Not coincidentally, these industries employed fortyfive or more women for every 100 men.*° Table B accommodated industries accustomed to hiring women and reinforced sex-typing of occupations.

Restrictions on other activities did not mention women, which facilitated recruitment of part-time, low-wage workers. Despite

assumptions about women’s lack of muscular strength, women were not subjected to the weight limits imposed on adolescents in 1892. It took years of lobbying, primarily by Chief Inspector Laporte, then

years of testing by the Consultative Committee on Industrial Hygiene,®' before legislators set maximum weights women could carry, push, or pull.°* Within two months of the application of the 1909 decree, a major distributor of dairy products, Maggi, abandoned home deliveries, done by part-time workers. A dairy owner explained that “the sale of milk is not lucrative enough to substitute men for women.” He could not reduce the size and weight of the container because commissions were already minimal.®° Sex-specific weight limits inconvenienced the system of milk and bread delivery, which was dependent upon a part-time, low-wage labour pool. These limits were soon lifted. Table C named sections of 119 workplaces where adolescents and

women could not be employed. While excluding adolescents and

164 Women, Work, and the French State

women from shops in direct contact with dangerous substances,°* this

schedule permitted them in safer preparatory and finishing sheds m

the same industries. This compromise helped prolong apprenticeship and family employment; it also perpetuated an internal labour market that placed women in secondary jobs.*° Forbidding women from cleaning, greasing, or repairing moving parts of motors might have had the same effect, had these articles of the administrative decree.been observed.®° In 1895 Divisional Inspector Jarecjewski, who was zealous about safety violations, reported that dusting and greasing active transmissions caused over a quarter of the accidents in northern textiles. Even where employers formally

ended the practice, workers continued to service running engines to avoid staying late. Jarecjewski's statistics, human interest stories of serious accidents,°®’ and divergent interpretations of the term “moving parts” led to an investigation. A survey of the divisional inspectors

revealed considerable disagreement over Jarecjewski’s proposal to

breaden the ban by including “immobile parts of functioning motors.” The Consultative Committee decided against “overregulation” and for continued reliance on the discretion of inspectors and courts.”®

A 1905 circular actually sanctioned the custom of women dislodg-

ing lint or other waste from active machines.*” Three years later Jarecyewski’s successor in the Nord, Boulisset, began a campaign to make the attachment of irremovable barriers on machinery a mandatory requirement. Boulisset wanted solid shields literally locked on, so that workers paid by output could not get past or remove them to avoid downtime.” In 1 g12 the third divisional inspector in the Nord, Boulins, proved that one-third of the mill accidents injuring women and three-quarters of those hurting adolescents (but less than one-

twentieth of those harming men) happened while cleaning inside operating machinery.”' When Boulins released these findings to local textile unions, the textile congress and Socialist deputies challenged the 1905 circular. The unions alleged that foremen harassed workers

who shut down to clean machines. Boulins added that women “instinctively” wiped inside machines while working. Despite Boulins’s

evidence that barriers installed in 101 factories had reduced acci-

dents, the circular was not rescinded before or during the war, perhaps because protective devices increased the price of technology by 5 to 10 per cent.%”

The problems of cleaning inside machinery and of leaving gears exposed persisted, even though violations of these regulations resulted in the largest number of convictions for health and sefery infractions.?? Paying fines cost less than compliance.%*

165 Saving Women?

Contraventions of the health and safety regulations never constituted more than 6 per cent of the contraventions of the 1892 law, a

minor proportion compared to violations of the hours standards, which ranged between 11 and 28 per cent. Even when contraventions of the comprehensive health and safety law of 1893/1903 are added,

such violations never exceeded 15 per cent of the infractions of protective labour laws — or matched the number of hours and night

work violations.?? One reason was the large number of warnings issued. After a high point of nearly twenty warnings for each summons in 1900, the ratio oscillated around ten warnings for each summons until the war.”° The ratio remained high because the inspection service tried persuasion when implementing new decrees. For instance, inspectors issued nearly thirty warnings for each citation under the 1905 decree regulating the transport and treatment of infected laundry.®’ Eight years later an investigation of measures like the separation and disinfecting of hospital and sickbed linens “astonished” laundresses working in their homes, who had never heard of the decree.”® Resistance by the regulated industries and vacillation by the admi-

nistration reduced the number of warnings. After manufacturers complained to the ministry about zealous inspectors, the Consultative

Committee on Arts and Manufactures often withdrew warnings. When inspectors declared certain machines unsafe, the manufacturers of those machines accused them of favouring other firms. Even when investigations exonerated inspectors, they had an inhibiting effect.?9

Early in 1910 bakers complained that delivery carts did not fall within the new weight limit and cart makers claimed that they could

not build a lighter cart sturdy enough for the streets. In a rare instance of open protest, 200 porteuses de pain met in Bordeaux and sent a petition pointing out that the decree was “a true ban on their

employment” and that experience proved that they could pull the carts. They acted because the local bread carriers’ union had lobbied

for “diligent” enforcement, on the irrelevant grounds that women accepting “derisory wages of 1f25c per day” were displacing “fathers of families.” Women sought jobs as part-time porteuses because then they could take second jobs. There were 4,000 porteuses de pain in Paris

alone. The Labour Bureau reported that manufacturing and marketing lighter carts would take four years. The ministry granted a threeyear delay while new tests to determine more realistic limits were carried out. When the tests did not provide definitive guidelines, the exemption was extended. Scientific experiments assessing the energy expended in lifting, pulling, and pushing various loads found that

166 Women, Work, and the French State

different body types and discontinuous effort precluded simple determination of limits — a conclusion inspectors had drawn for men in 1900. In 1915 the Consultative Committee on Arts and Manufactures was still deliberating about how to revise the weight limits.'°° Both the Labour Bureau and local inspectors ignored infractions of safety standards if the illegal activity occurred intermittently or if the alternative was dismissal of the protected workers. Not until 1914 did

inspectors warn southern grain merchants about women hauling heavy wagons. Although the grain merchants argued that women did this task only two hours a day, they threatened to fire the women if forced to comply. ‘The Labour Bureau accepted the status quo for the

remainder of the season and, no doubt, throughout the war.’ Inspectors neglected health and safety provisions that were prohibitively expensive or culturally unacceptable. On the rare occasion

when inspection reports mention crowded conditions, the tone 1s resigned, presumably because enlarging plants was expensive. In the Nord, Divisional Inspector Jarecjewski admitted he could not apply

one regulation, because industrialists refused to provide on-site toilets when most working-class homes did not have them.'®* This regulation, the subject of more criticism than any other regulation, was promptly “postponed”.'°° Some of the more dubious health and safety provisions were never taken very seriously. The ban on girls’ employment on pedal-operated sewing machines never resulted in more than twenty-three convictions in any one year.'°* Annual convictions for infractions of the “morals” clause never exceeded twentyfive, and all derived from one case of adolescents printing a sexually explicit book deemed to be pornographic. An appeal court confirmed the police court judgment, arguing that youngsters did not have “the moral sense or will ... to resist the impressions received.”'°° The health and safety clauses of the 1892 labour law were more

partial and imperfect than other articles because they were supplemental and subordinate to hours standards. For the same reasons, labour committees devoted little attention to the admittedly scarce scientific research on industrial hygiene. If the vague language and preventive nature of these provisions facilitated passage, these fea-

tures also ensured minimal resources for implementation. Subsequent, more comprehensive measures required more medical and economic justification. Yet “universal” standards neither replaced sex-specific ones nor were they more rigorous. The practice of having the Consultative Committee on Arts and Manufactures formulate precise guidelines led to interminable debates on the intricacies of hundreds of manufacturing processes. But the Consultative Committee had httle evidence about feminine — or

167 Saving Women?

masculine — susceptibilities to industrial pollutants; it had little access to specialists on industrial hygiene until the creation of the Consulta-

tive Committee on Industrial Hygiene in 1901. Moreover, it had no female members and did not consult or hear from working women. Taking a cue from the 1874 act, it did not so much protect as prohibit women in certain occupations. The committee banned women from obviously dangerous workplaces, which proved to be masculine work-

places, but also permitted them in extremely hazardous feminine industries. Expecting the understaffed and unspecialized inspection service to monitor complex health and safety regulations without special in-

struction in industrial hygiene impaired enforcement. Inspectors ignored infractions that were difficult to document or costly to correct, especially in small enterprises. The Labour Bureau compounded the problems by bending under pressure, especially from services

dependent upon female labour pools. Although working women certainly used passive resistance against unpopular measures, only two representations by working women influenced ministerial decisions. In these cases, the women had support, either from medical publicists or employers. Indefinite terminology in the health and safety clauses, drafting of

precise regulations without the advice of experts or the most interested party, and discretionary implementation by an indecisive and ambivalent administration resulted in little real improvement in working people’s health. The sex-specific provisions did, however, establish boundaries between men’s and women’s occupations. As such, they too contributed to sexual stratification of the labour market and the relegation of women to lower-paying, secondary jobs.

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