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

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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- 19*9 MARY LYNN STEWART

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

i McGill-Queen's University Press 1989 ISBN 0-7735-0704-3 Legal deposit second quarter 1989 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec

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 0-7735-0704-3 1. Women — Employment — Law and legislation — France. 2. Labor laws and legislation - France - History. I. Title. HQi6i7.s84 1989

344-44'oi4'o9

089-090059-0

Contents

Tables vi Preface vii Introduction 3 1 The Logic of the Dual Labour Market 19 2 Protecting the Family: The Campaign for Hours Standards 3 Restricting Reform: The Politics of Protection 59

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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 Women?: The Health and Safety Clauses 149 8 Protecting Infants: The Long Campaign for Maternity Leave i69 Conclusion 191 Appendix 203 Notes 205 Bibliography 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 3 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 7 Authorizations for Overtime 104 8 National Infractions of Hours Standards, 1900—1908 105 9 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 rethinking 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 Coveil 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 introducing 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

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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). That 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 is 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

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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 188os French sociologists, social economists, union leaders, enlightened industrialists, and politicians of virtually every ideological 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 i88os and early 18gos 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 postponed 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 in 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

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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. 1 This book addresses five anomalies suggested by this brief introduction to sex-specific labour laws in France. The first anomaly is 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.2 Recently Weissbach, Reid, and Cross have assessed protective laws relating to child labour, mine safety, and the eight-hour day respectively.3 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 Andree 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.4 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 in political discourse and show how gender constructs legitimate differential treatment in policymaking.5 Critics of the welfare state, especially in Britain, reveal how social policies apparently beneficial to women reinforce their dependence in the patriarchal family.6 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 variable 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.8 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.9 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.10 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. 11 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.12 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.13 Marxist-feminists have speculated that sex-specific labour laws were designed to control this reserve army. Nothing in 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 workers 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.14 Even Reddy pays little 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.15. 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.16 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 occupational 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.17 This study will show how the two-dimensional fracture in the labour market \nfin-de-siecle France accounted for the ambivalent character of sex-specific labour legislation. Although segmentation theory is 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 micrceconomic 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 ideological 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 context. 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.18 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.19 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 assimilation of adolescents and women and finally the inclusion of men.20 Yet the sequence of children, adolescents and women, and men rarely applied outside England.21 France started with universal Sunday holiday legislation in 1814 and followed the child labour law with universal hours standards. Democratic socialists demanded the tenhour 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 administration 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.22. Discovering why sex-specific labour legislation was passed requires more than the identification of sponsors and their purposes. Historians inspired by Foucault dissect reform rhetoric to draw a less complimentary picture of bourgeois republicans interested in social control.23 Scepticism about rhetoric is always advisable, but the notion of a unifed group of reformers dedicated to social control is 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.24 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.25 In France, Robert Kcepke discovered "progressive conservative" peers promoting such measures in 1847-26 In the i88os 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 majority 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,27 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 contradictions at the core of the republican consensus in the late 18705. 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.28 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 etatist 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.29 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 republican consensus in the Boulangist interlude of the late i88os, 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.30 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 i88os.3 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.

ig Introduction Second, Elwitt and Stone ignore the fact that the Third Republic was profoundly patriarchal. Patrick Bidelman has described the pervas,ive"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 i88os 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.32 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 conceded 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."33 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-time 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 - negotiating - 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 committees 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 F22 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 committees 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 in 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 expectations 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 is 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 F22 series at the Archives Nationales and the loM 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

i6 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 enforcement 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 declaimed 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 infant 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 likelihood of workers achieving their objectives. Some class struggle 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.1 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 I N D U S T R I A L I Z A T I O N

French reformers explained the timing 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 employers, that they had no real freedom to contract their labour.2 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 labour 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.3 The waves of labour reform in France coincided with the uneven process of industrialization. Thus the first protective labour laws were passed in the 18408, when industrialization was accelerating.4 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.5 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.6 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.7 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 industrialization. A further 28.1 per cent of the deputies represented departments with a large industrial labour force and a longer history of industrial employment.8 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-time, or home-based jobs that were not counted. As table i 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 39 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 1 Women in the Labour Force: Working Women in the Female Population Women in the Labour Force

1876 1881 1886 1891 1896 1901 1906 1911

Working Women in the Female Population

Number in 'OOOs

Percentage of Labour Force

Percentage

5,111 5,362 5,643 5,139 6,375 6,830 7,701 7,719

31.2 32.9 33.6 31.4 33.6 34.6 37.2 36.9

27.7 28.7 29.3 26.6 33.0 34.8 39.0 38.7

Source: T. Deldycke et al, La 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 17908.9 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.10 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. 11 Departments like the Loire with 58 per cent or the Vosges with 57 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.12 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 in 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 1900 law mandating seats for female retail clerks was ineffectual.) Conversely, the law of 2 November 1892 covered construction and extractive industries, which employed 8,000 women, one quarter as many as they had employed in i866.13 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 accelerated 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 discussion 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.14 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.15 Questioned about the omission, given the custom of twelve- to fifteenhour 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.16 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.17 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.18 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.19 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.20 Economic pressures due to rising male unemployment and declining real wages may have driven wives into the labour market.21 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

1896 1901 1906 1911

single women

Number Working

Percentage of Total

Number Working

Percentage of Total

OOO's 2,919 3,177 4,048 4,085

37.9 40 49.4 48.8

OOO's 2,343 2,439 2,435 2,403

52.1 58.3 59.6 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 i88os and 18905, unions and socialists agitated for universal and sex-specific hour standards. But chronological coincidence does 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 feminine 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-

a6 Women, Work, and the French State

ulations. Since many of these unions did not admit women before igoo, their position can hardly be considered representative of work. . 92 ing 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 creches 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 1900. 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 igoo.23 A minority within a minority, union women had few outlets for their opinions. Although the syndicalist 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.24 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, in 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.25 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.26 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.27 Finally, union men noticed that women accounted for only 5 to 21 per cent of all strikers between 1893 and iQM* and that female strikes tended to the spontaneous.28 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.29 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.30 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.)31 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 congresses, 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. Congresses 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 1892.32 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 i88os and early 18gos 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 1890 and 1891. After 1892 labour congresses distanced themselves from political parties. When the Federation Syndicaliste adopted the general strike tactic that year, the Guesdist Parti Ouvrier lost interest in the labour federation. The Federation des Bourses du Travail, established in 1892, articulated an anarchosyndicalist philosophy over the next decade.33 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.34 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.35 If syndi-

2g 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

Law Medicine Other Professions Industrialists Business Workers Others

Number Percentage

186 48

40 10

109 25 24 12

23 5 5 2.5

Political Affiliation Extreme Left Radical Socialist Radical Moderate Republicans Right

Number Percentage

45 91 96

8.9 18.1 18.7 54.4

178 92

35.7 18.5

14.5

Source: See tables 5 and 6 and JO, Debats, 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.36 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 1 ^99» 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.37 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 9 per cent socialists (see table 3).38

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 Bill or Debate

Date Law of 2 November 1892

1879

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

1880June November

First Waddington Report for Labour Committee 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

1889Jan./Feb. June

Second reading in the Chamber Charles Ferry Report to Senate First reading in Senate Second reading in Senate

J«iy

November

1890June July

Fourth Waddington Report First reading in the Chamber

1891Jan./Feb. June

Second reading in the Chamber Tolain Report to Senate First reading in Senate Second reading in Senate Jamais Report to Chamber Declared urgent, debated in Chamber

July OCI./NOV.

November December

1892 March March June October

Second Tolain Report to Senate Declared urgent, debated in Senate Sibille Report to Chamber 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 November

Lecomte bill (eleven hours) to Senate Ricard bill (ten hours) to Chamber

1894 June July

First reading of Lecomte bill in Senate 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 December

Dubief Report on bill First reading and adoption with modifications in Chamber

1900 March March

Lecompte Report in Senate 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 i88os. 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.39 After reverting to universal standards on the understanding that tariffs would protect French industry in the late i88os, he made another politically expedient compromise on the assumption that sex-specific limits would be the first step toward universal coverage.40 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.41 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.42. Waddington's efforts to persuade the elite reached beyond the Chamber. In the General Council of the Seine-Maritime, he argued that limited liability companies destroyed "affectionate paternal relations between workers and bosses" and rendered "some supervision necessary to stop abuses."43 His newspaper, Le Petit Rouennais, criticized 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."44 Waddington also wrote conciliatory letters to hostile newspapers, denying earlier statements that regulating women's hours implied regulating men's hours. In the late i88os few industrialists were "duped" by his focus on "beings worthy of solicitude: women and children." They viewed him as a traitor, "a Machiavelli without knowing it."45 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.46 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.47 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.48 Understanding human motivation is always difficult. In Waddington'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 i ,069 hands.49 Like most cotton magnates in Normandy, he refused to turn the company into a limited liability corporation.50 Unlike other Norman millowners, he was an enlightened employer. In the iSyos he built a creche, 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 i88os 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.51 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.52 But Waddington was not unique. Before the Revolution of 1848, a textile manufacturer in Alsace-Lorraine had proposed a legal limit on the workday.53 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.54 In 1879-80 another industrialist, Villain, joined Waddington in drafting an hours bill.55 Their advocacy of labour standards can be interpreted 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.56 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 Vetat 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."57 Waddington was a cultivated man with wide-ranging interests. Educated at the Lycee 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.58 A member of a staunchly republican family,59 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.60 In the General Council, he rejected the old moralizing attitude toward abandoned babies and fought for public assistance to save their lives.61 His newspaper criticized the sisters of charity for interfering in family life and fought for lay control of medical care.62 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 charities, Protestants set up competitive charities.63 In 1869 Richard replaced his father on the prestigious Societe des Amis des Pauvres, where he read detailed reports about impoverished Protestant families.64 He sat on the Bureau de Bienfaisance of his "suburban fief from 1869 to 1879 an(^ again at the end of his life.65 Even during the hiatus, he inquired about the pettiest details of relief.66 Richard was also the principal benefactor of the suburban Societe des Dames de la Maternite. From 1874 to 1886 his wife distributed layettes and food vouchers to impoverished new mothers. Under her presidency, from 1886 to 1899,tne society received state subsidies. Like Richard, she emphasized ensuring healthy births and encouraging breastfeeding rather than preaching to the poor.67 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 entree 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 193O.68 Like Waddington, he presented himself to electors as an alternative to clerical reaction and socialism; he supported protectionism and other cross-class policies. Unlike Waddington, he appealed directly to workers, who provided most of his support.69 Having made house calls to working-class homes, he could legitimately claim to know workers' "hard existence." His election posters promised the ten-hour day and workers' compensation.70 When other northern cities elected socialists in 1893 and 1900, Tourcoing returned Dron with socialist support.71 Dron was driven by concern about public hygiene. Medical studies imbued him with a lifelong concern for physical well-being.72 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.73 Generally, he preferred outdoor relief, which encouraged family life, and surveillance in the home.74 Unable to establish his own system of social services, as Waddington had, Dron became an architect of municipal socialism. In the iSgos 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."75 Like Waddington, he took a special interest in assistance to the newborn. He changed rules refusing unwed mothers relief on moral grounds.76 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.77 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.78 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.79 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."80 Clearly he was less interested in productive 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, however, 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.81 THE DUAL LABOUR MARKET

The best economic explanation of the timing of sex-specific labour regulations is provided by the serious recessions which hit Europe in the early 18705, mid-i88os, and late iSgos, known collectively as the Great Depression.82 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 i .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.83 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 i88os, 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 18805 and early iSgos. 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, piece-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.84 The Spuller inquiry influenced the drafting of labour bills in the late i88os and early iSgos. Testimony from artisanal trades convinced Waddington, who in turn convinced the Labour Committee of the need to cover small workships.85 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.86 Waddington overstated the prevalence of eleven-hour days in masculine 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.87 Neither Waddington nor the Spuller Commission recognized evidence 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 corroboration 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.88 Not coincidentally, wages in these industries fell in the lower wage brackets.89 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.90 While tailors earned four francs daily in the provinces and 7.5 francs daily in Paris, dressmakers earned two and four francs respectively.91 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 syndicate 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.92 A worker who punched holes in wooden patterns for Jacquard looms informed the Spuller Commission that one-third of his coworkers 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.93 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 if75c to afasc 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.94 A marble cutter in the Nord described a familial variation on the sexual division of labour: ten men cut marble, fifteen women, mostly wives, carried pieces home to polish, "so they

39 The Logic of the Dual Labour Market

can watch the children," three children assisted. Men earned 4f5oc, women, zt^oc and children, i to if5oc a day.95 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.96 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 in seasonal industries, since ending overtime in the Parisian luxury trades would "fatally endanger" the prosperity of an important export trade.97 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 policies. We may conclude, therefore, that bourgeois leadership of the legislative campaign and general acceptance of the dual labour market 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 iSgos.1 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.2 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.3 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.4 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 O P I N I O N 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 i88os, 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 18305, 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 18308, their free love experiments alienated many supporters, including feminists.5 Pioneer sociologists brought the issue of industrial labour, especially that of women, to the attention of the broader public. In the 18308 Dr M. Villerme published selective studies of working conditions which implicitly connected women in textile factories to sexual immorality, family breakdown, and inadequate childcare.6 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.7 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.8 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 18508 comprehensive surveys of industrial labour made similar correlations between women's work and demoralization.9 By the i86os 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.10 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'Ouvriere he advised barring women from manufacturing and raising wages in home industries. Consonant with his reproductive concerns, the book suggested encouraging marriage and household economy.11 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.12 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.13

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 18505 through the early 18705, Frederic 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 individualism 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.14 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 time. 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 regulating factory work. In the early 18705 two presidents of his Social Economy Society, formed to sponsor and publicize social research, supported factory acts.15 When socialists reemerged after the amnesty for Communards in the i88os, 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.16 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.17 In the early 18705 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 discussed 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.18 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.19 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. 9O In the i88os, 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.21 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 1890 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.22 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.23 Although the Labour Committee considering the 1890 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 • • 24 suchi 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 l 8 g 2

As the issue of universal standards moved onto the political agenda in the 18905, 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 i88os 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 I'economie politique in the late i88os paved the way for other interventionist economists. Maurice Bourguin, Charles Gide, and Paul Pic found posts in important provincial faculties;25 proponents of state intervention in the labour market - including the adult male labour market — published in the Revue de I'economie politique.,26 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 susceptible 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.27 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 Veconomie politique published Brentano's article on the relationship between the length of the workday, wages, and productivity. Using the English 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."28 In the same year Paul Pic and another Lyonnais lawyer and economist, Justin Godart, founded Questions pratiques de legislation ouvriere et d economic 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.29 Less technical journals followed suit.30 Of course, laissez-faire economists still controlled important journal like the Journal des economistes and L'Economistefran^ais. While they criticized the application of sex-specific standards, most justified the principle as "humane" action for dependents.31 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.32 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.33 Their advocacy influenced the government's decision to support unification in the mid-iSgos.34 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.35 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."36 These comments reflected positivist conceptions of the wife's domestic role which had become cliches 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,37 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 salariee 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."38 Very few professors or practising lawyers advocated universal standards 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.39 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.40 They offered people's law courses and published popular guides to the laws.41 Law theses tended to follow the professors' line of argument. One did add a novel incentive: a proposal to regulate men to avoid strikes.42 Official inquiries became more professional after 1891, when, following the British model,43 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 18905 the permanent staff of the Labour Office did little beyond providing information from other sources. After 1900 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.44 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."45 In the 18905, 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 proposals 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.46 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 is 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."47 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'hygiene publique et de medecine legale that a woman's "troubles prevent her from being at all times ready to fulfill the duties of public life."48 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.49 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.50 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 18908 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.51 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 18905, 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 • • i • jj'SS 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.53 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 conferences 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.54

52 Women, Work, and the French State

The ministry did not constitute a Committee 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 Physiology 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 i, they had little impact before the war.55 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.56 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."57 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 creches 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.58 In fact, Simon was maintaining a distance from the recent enemy and victor.

53 Protecting the Family

Germany.59 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.60 When Paris hosted the Congress in 1900, the minister of commerce, Millerand, promoted the idea of an international association.61 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.62 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 Abbe Lemire and Albert de Mun.63 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?"64 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.65 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.66 Not until 1905 did the association publish a pamphlet implicitly supporting universal standards 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.67 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.68 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.69 Representatives of industrial societies testified before every legislative committee considering hours standards or any other kind of protection.70 Pamphlets and letters deluged committees and individual members of committees.71 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. In a 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.72 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.73 Legislative speeches by industrial spokesmen included long expositions 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.74 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 problems 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 manufacturer 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 debate 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.76 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.77 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.78 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 Pognon 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 creches in the workplace, so that working mothers could breast-feed infants. Clearly she distinguished between disabling and enabling intervention in the female labour market.79 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 reserv-ing 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."80 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.81 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."82 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."83 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 discriminated 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,84 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.85 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.

Ironers (Phot. Bibl. Nat. Paris)

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.1 Since most reformers shared the conservatives' commitment to the sanctity of the family and the liberals' apprehension about the size of government, 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.

6o 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 i88os and 18905 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.2 Although Nadaud spoke for the ten-hour day in labour committees throughout the i88os,3 he recognized that the moderate bourgeois majority on these committees would only accept sex-specific standards.4 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.5 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 Political Support

Occupation Lawyers Journalists Doctors Engineers Industrialists Merchants Bankers Other businessmen Workers Others

42 16 13 8 7 5 2 2 3 41

Extreme left (including Radicals)

43

Centre Left (including Opportunists)

81

Right (including Monarchists)

10

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

In the late 18Bos 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."6 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. Prudent-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," PrudentDervilliers appealed to the "social interest" in ending capitalist policies of replacing men with women to reduce wages. Once he introduced 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 Vote 1889

Political Affiliation

Number

Extreme Left (including Radical Socialists) Centre (Radicals and Republicans)

59

Vote 1891

Percentage

18

Number

Percentage

58

20.5

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

7

2 . 4

Unknown

2

6

Source: JO, Debate, 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."7 Once Marxists decided to defend the republic during the Dreyfus affair in the late iSgos, they looked to the state for amelioration of workers' conditions.8 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.9 Dr Vaillant tried amending Labour Committee bills to get eight hours, but his amendment attracted only seventy-four votes.10 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 1912.11 A decree listing exceptions to the hours standards promptly followed.12

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 in Catholic Workers Circles. In the mid-i88os 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 1890$, de Mun helped form a faction of the constitutional right (rallies) and persuaded his faction to endorse the ten-hour day for women, a ban on women's night labour, and compulsory maternity leave.13 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."14 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 fifteen-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,15 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. They also brandished 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.16 Although some republicans challenged the tenet of political economy 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 cafe, inculcate the habits of order and economy in their children, and thereby ensure social peace.17 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.18 When May Day petitions for eight hours came before another Labour Committee in 1890, moderate reformers distinguished between intervention for "incapables" and £or"adultes." Waddington 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.19 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.20 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.21 Dron's 1893 bill for universal standards relied heavily on the results of the 1891 survey of 422 unions, 235 employer syndicates, 95 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. 99 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. Since 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.23 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.24 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,25 standards were applied to men working "in the same places as the protected population." The legal workday was reduced in 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.26 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.27 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).28

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 igoo.29 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."30 Neither this nor a new hours bill sponsored by the second reform socialist to become minister in a bourgeois cabinet, Rene Viviani, passed.31 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 in the international market, laws were too rigid for the variety of French industry.32 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.33 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.34 Unlike the speakers in the debates on sex-specific regulation, very few emphasized time for family life. 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.35 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.36 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 wageearners seemed to deal with the problem of apprenticeship. After considerable negotiation with the Senate,37 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."38 The exemption left an estimated 1,199,296 female home workers without hours standards.39 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.40 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.41 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 18905 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.42 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 iSgos, defeated Dron's motion on the expedient ground that amendment would mean delay. The Chamber voted the measure down, 326 to lyo.43 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,"44 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 Dijon, 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' applications for overtime doubled the number of home workers in that industry. In Rouen, summonses in garment workshops started a movement to family workshops.45 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 inspection, 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 i ,400 family embroidery workshops in igo8.46 Other sources suggest that the percentage of garment workers at home rose from 51.8 to 58.6 between 1896 and igoi. 47 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.48 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."49 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 Australian legislation the device of mandatory registration of all outworkers.50 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.51 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 competition from convent-workshops, and a casual labour market. Their solution was a recently introduced bill for a minimum wage.52 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.53 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 workers outside Paris earned ten to twenty centimes an hours.54 These figures are lower than the twenty-one centimes reported in the general study on wages published the same year, because the latter disregarded 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.55 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 Rhone, 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.56 The most unusual feature of the lingerie study is 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 department 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 conventworkshops concurred on a minimum wage as a means of raising piece-rates.57 In 1908 press reports of a lead-poisoning incident in an artificial flower factory forced an investigation of flowermakers' health. Inspectors 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.58 These studies evoked a good deal of sympathetic reportage and proselytizing for a minimum wage.59 By 1909 legislators were beginning to deal with wages: clauses of an 1890 bill outlawing payment in kind that had been held up in committee, were passed into law.60 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.61 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.62 When the articles on lace and ribbon workers were transferred to another bill, the dispute revolved around the way to set minimum wages.63 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.64 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.65 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."66 At the insistence of home workers, who did not want state officials monitoring their hours, the law did not allow inspectors to enter homes.67 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 workers of average ability to earn the minimum in eight rather than ten hours a day.68 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.69 Criticism continued to 1928, when the homework law was extended to men and the minimum was based on an eight-hour day.70 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 syndicate des employes de commerce, had 3,500 members.71 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.")72 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 working-class consumers who had to shop after work hours.73 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 i6g.74 Within two years of the implementation of the 1892 act, the Supreme 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.75 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 clientele. Union reminders about provisions in the act for up to ninety days overtime did not sway merchants.76 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 9 P.M. - the latest protected workers could stay - because they employed only female cashiers.77 He evidently could not imagine this sex-typed job held by men on evening shifts. After disappointments in the mid-i8gos, most food and retail unions lobbied to be included in the health and safety act of iSgg.78 An inquiry documented the prevalence of twelve- to fifteen-hour days and deputies acknowledged that standing for long hours constituted work,79 but all commercial workers achieved was the 1900 law mandating seats for women employees in commercial establishments.80 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 rallie, 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."81 In fact, the inspection service only imperfectly inspected shops, because there was no budgetary provision to augment the size of the service.82 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.83 Male and female staff protested to the ministry.84 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 clientele 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.85 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.86 Employer resistance and competing bills kept the issue before the public until World War i.87 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.88 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 considerations about continuously fired workplaces assured that the act required only an unspecified weekly rest.89 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.90 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.91 Despite powerful support, a bill introduced in 1900 took six years to enact.92 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.93 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.94 Between 1906 and 1913, 26,105 shops were legally exempted from the law.95 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 19n.96 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,97 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 adolescents. Resistance to regulating men's labour did not diminish. Rationales about reproduction that had been persuasive in 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 i 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 P O L I T I C S 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 conditions. 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 186os 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.1 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.2 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 espionage. 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 enactment in 1848.3 Even then, most departments refused to fund inspectors.4

79 Implementing Reform By the i88os, prominent bureaucrats were publicly criticizing favouritism and arbitrary procedures in the civil service.5 In this context, a retired inspector lobbied for changes in the service. Leon 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 authority" 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.6 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.7 The enforcement clauses evoked revealing exchanges. Although no one questioned 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.8 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.9 The other significant change in the committee's recommendations concerned penalties. At the end of an exhausting debate, the committee 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

8o 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.10 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 administrators, 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 ninetytwo 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.11 Inaccurate industrial statistics and unwieldy administrative boundaries resulted in an inequitable distribution of the workload. The egregious example is the allocation of C6te-du-Nord, Ile-et-Vilaine, Morbihan, and Finistere to one inspector, who travelled constantly just to see 13 per cent of the 15,240 establishments in his section.12 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.13 After 1900, 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-igo2. The fifteen new posts 14 -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 igi3.15 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.16 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.17 After several meetings with the Department of the Seine, which employed the largest number of inspectors, the ministry agreed to accept incumbent 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.18 Their bad reputation lingered and sullied the image of the service.19 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 ecoles 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.20 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.21 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.22 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.23 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.24 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 personnel 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 igoG.23 The number of applicants fell as conditions declined. The first announcement of forty-two positions attracted almost i ,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.26 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.27 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 ecoles entered the service, which helped raise the status of the service. After the mid-18905 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.28 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."29 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."30 The administration disagreed. The Assembly reinforced the bourgeois character of the service. Despite accepting miner-delegates to the mine inspection service in 1890, it rejected socialist amendments on worker-adjuncts to the work inspection service.31 After the workers' compensation law forced inspectors to rely upon workers' testimony as witnesses to accidents, socialists renewed the campaign to get worker-delegates.32 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.33 The National Association for the Legal Protection of Workers took up the cause. Because of disagreements about separate admission criteria and limited representation,34 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 establishments," 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 ecoles 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.35 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 does 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 Rhone 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.36 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 ascertained 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.37 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.38 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.39 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.40 After the departure of Millerand, there were fifteen to thirty conferences and 1,500 to 2,000 union complaints annually.41 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.42

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.43 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.44 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 bosses "arranged everything with a twenty franc note."45 After six months of the new policy, very few unions protested to the ministry, because they realized that inspectors could not mediate wage disputes.46 From 1904 on the Supreme Work Committee reported "satisfactory" relations with workers. Up to one quarter of the complaints 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.47 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.48 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."49 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.50 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 915 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 all 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 1900 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.51 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."52 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.53 Incidents like this convinced inspectors to avoid public controversies.

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Most inspectors only criticized industrialists internally and indirectly. 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 like 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."54 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.55 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,56 argued forcefully that women learned more in "feminine workshops," because female workers felt more comfortable confiding in them. Two inspectrices who gave thorough testimony and showed remarkable forbearance in response to insidious questions about their abilities helped sway opinion.57 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.58 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 inspectrices, but pressure from the General Council of the Seine resulted in a second decree accepting all fifteen female incumbents.59 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 inspectrices in the Seine fluctuated between twelve and fourteen in the first decade of the twentieth century.60 Only four women entered the provincial service after the first competitive examination. The number of inspectrices 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,61 though women constituted over 20 per cent of the protected workforce.62 The ministry did not set up a separate service with its own hierarchy, as the English did.63 Nevertheless, it treated female staff differently 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 ecoles. While they were allowed lower grade point totals, they were a priori placed in an inferior category.64 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.65 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.66 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."67 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 some empathy with working women.68 Mme de la Ruelle, who entered the service in 1901, dedicated herself, as vice president of the National Association for Instruction on Labour Laws

QI

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.69 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 Mile 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.70 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 inspecteur. The substitute was more lenient about heating irons before the posted starting time and ironing through breaks.71 Later Mme Courtet was one of two inspectrices laid off for disciplinary reasons.72 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 iSgg.73 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 until their retirement, resignation, or death. Two received such pitiful pensions that the administration accorded them annual supplements. 4 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.75 Part of the explanation for different career ladders is the administrative "example" in denying women top positions as divisional inspectors.76 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.77 These apparently objective criteria disregarded the fact that inspectrices were confined to feminine 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; 90 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.78

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 sign79 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 feminine shops defied and harassed inspectrices.80 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.81 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 inspecteurs 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 inspectrices, 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.82 Still, five years later he "nearly imposed" retirement on another inspectrice.83 Although inspectrices reached 93 per cent of the male average number 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.84 Generally, inspectrices had more distant relationships with divisional inspectors than inspecteurs, especially upwardly mobile ones like Boulins.85 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 inspecteur was used. Finally an inspectrice interjected, to assure that the wording of the resolution comprised inspectrices as well. Despite commenting on two other occasions, this inspectrice remains unnamed in the minutes.86 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 economique international reveals some feminist consciousness and great professional pride. Juillerat confidently asserted that feminism would remove the obstacles to women's promotion 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.87 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 enforcement, Mme de la Ruelle defended the policy on recruiting personnel and procedures for implementing laws.88 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.89 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.90 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.91 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.92 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. Micrcenvironmental 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.93 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.94 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.95 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 cannot 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 F I V E

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 9 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.1 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.2 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.3 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.4 The inspection records can be verified against a legislative inquiry into textiles that was undertaken in the middle of the transition to ten hours.5 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

99 The Economics of Compliance

against short time to each parliamentary committee.6 Once the bill became law, textile producers organized to lobby for more overtime and against any extension.7 Textile workers dominated the strikes that accompanied each phase of implementation and their unions became vigilant about the application of the law.8 Textiles was too large and varied a sector to be described here. Accordingly, this chapter focuses on the silkfabrique of the Lyonnais region in the Rhone, 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 Rhone, 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.9 Between 30 and 90 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.10 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 Rhone came fourth and fifth due to the dispersal of plants over 8,000 hectares of mountainous terrain.11 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.12 By contrast, Lille and Lyon each had several dedicated inspectors plus an inspectrice to visit feminine workshops.13 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.14 Like other unionized workers, the dyers and mechanized weavers of Lyon were working eleven hours by 1890. More unusual were specialty silk weavers in two communes near Lyon, who won ten hours in an 1890 strike.15 Like most industries, textiles responded to seasonal fluctuations in demand by varying hours of operation. SPLIT S H I F T S

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

ioo 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,16 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,17 the mills continued to function twelve hours. Despite representations about the complementarity of men's, women's, and adolescents' labour,18 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.19 Two-thirds of the linen spinners were women and adolescent girls,20 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.21 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 irregular, 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 2f5oc. 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 eighthour 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

ioi

The Economics of Compliance

pay. In 1898 mills ran sixteen hours by means of double shifts until overproduction and lay-offs forced a return to twelve hours.22 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 experiencing overproduction associated with the Great Depression and mounting competition from cheaper, mass-produced fabrics from the United States, Germany, and other industrializing nations.23 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 until 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 19O4-24 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.25 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 complying. 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 recalcitrant mistresses. Seventy-six summonses and 1,740 francs in fines convinced 200 urban mistresses.26 Sensitivity to fluctuations in supply and demand — or chaotic organization — impeded the implementation of standards. For several

1O2 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 worsted 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 in 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.27 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,28 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 warnings29 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 ,, . ,,an 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/a6nque 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.31 The act of 30 March 1900, eased the transition by beginning with eleven hours for all working in 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 satisfied with these concessions. Northern textile producers challenged the law, appealed convictions, and publicized Appeal Court decisions32 that defined "the same place" very narrowly as literally the same room, not the same plant.33 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.34 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

Year

Number of Establishments

Number of Days Children Worked Overtime

Number of Days Women Worked Overtime

Number of Days Men Worked Overtime

1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908

1,912 1,917 3,611 4,451 6,209 6,824 7,053 6,826 6,852

505,656 482,190 841,695 966,600 1,399,388 1,785,222 1,585,052 1,522,502 1,429,747

1,450,311 1,410,484 2,111,943 2,376,340 3,491,651 4,234,293 3,955,377 3,473,393 3,392,165

490,699 985,110 2,050,357 2,647,874 3,891,053 4,368,893 4,448,737 4,435,592 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 igo4,35 but the same buoyant market inspired entrepreneurs to invest in more efficient technology in order to sustain production levels after they adopted ten hours.36 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.37 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.38 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 Year 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906

1907 1908

Women and Children

Men

2,129 4,572 3,198 6,121 5,357 5,417 4,417 3,319 2,844

892 2,914 2,087 2,273 2,670

4,121 2,741 2,250 1,270

In Textiles Area

Percentage

linen spinning

27.5

linen spinning

20.6

linen spinning

14.3

woollens and cottons

20

Source: CST, Rapports, 1901, LII and LVIII; 1903, XLIV; 1906, XLIII-IV; and 1908, xxxvm.

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.39 Outmanceuvred, the reformers retreated.40 Capital investment to increase productivity eventually curtailed illegal overtime.41 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 Rhone, organized workers had ten-hour days by 1892 and short time was customary in threequarters of the unregulated masculine workshops by iSgg.42 Strike settlements inaugurated short time in many trades,43 but the state had an influence on unorganized branches ofthefabrique.4* Only i .5 per cent of the Rhone'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 1912.45

io6 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.46 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.47 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.48 When cotton, woollen, and other manufacturers with mixed-sex workshops realized that the 1900 law did not mention and consequently did not accommodate overtime for men, they lobbied for an amendment.49 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.50 The Union des Syndicats Patronaux des Industries Textiles was still unsatisfied. It wanted one and a half hours added on to twelve rather than ten and a half hours.51 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

ioy 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.52 Table 9 indicates the effect, even on textiles, of large contracts for national defence. The exceptions to feminine standards expedited low-wage, seasonal 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 occupations 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.53 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.54 More than twelve hours' surveillance was required to prove that a plant had surpassed the legal limit.55 Thousands of workplaces, even mills, remained informal about time in the Nord, the Rhone, and especially the Vosges.56 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 inspector'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 Rhone and the Vosges fell in to this

io8 Women, Work, and the French State Table 9 Divisional Tolerances by Gender in Selected Industries, 1913 Division and Industry

Number of Establishments

Number of Days of Overtime for: Women

Men

41,947 3,573 32,400 14,099 42,549 238,910

80,685 4,309 2,510 45,000 38,375 49,584 1,334,617

48,985 52,109 69,069 9,880 82,481 414,787

472,300 3,063 19,235 17,464 25,145 50,431 1,064,297

41,697 34,163 1,400 44,627 556,784 863,154

103,880 540 9,821 41,500 91,086 123,019 510,889

EAST

Building Ladies' Garments Men's Clothing National Security Dying Weaving Total in all industries

12 142 10 2 15 452

NORD

Building Ladies' Garments Men's Clothing Spinning Dying Weaving Total in all industries

109 213 57 20 19 63 1,489

RHONE

Building Ladies' Garment Men's Clothing National Security Dying Weaving Total in all industries

26 146 33 3 62 187 948

Source: AN F22 564, Tolerances (duree du travail), 1913.

category. Not until 1912 did a court favour standard time, with which both parties could synchronize their timepieces.57 The clause in the 1900 act prescribing one or more breaks of at least one hour's duration did not universalize the day divided into two segments by a two-hour lunch. Where processing could not be interrupted, employers refused to hire replacements for mid-day breaks and justified the long work interval by insisting that the mostly male workers primarily tended the furnace and only intermittently exerted themselves.58 Exhaustion from intense heat or nausea from noxious fumes was not acknowledged. In certain cotton-producing areas, local custom dictated a day punctuated by rest at 9 A.M. and 2 P.M. There employers contended that two brief interludes of relaxation improved productivity.59 More generally, manufacturers took

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The Economics of Compliance

advantage of the absence of penalties for - and the self-interest of piece-rate workers in — returning to work before the end of breaks.60 Worker complicity in these illicit and deceptive practices was not motivated solely by a desire to maintain income levels. Clocked schedules ran counter to a pre-industrial conception of time, whereby male workers in particular began the week slowly and finished in long bursts of activity. Regular break times clashed with spontaneous socializing as work permitted. Legislators and administrators had never consulted women about their preferences in working schedules, nor, for all their talk about women's duties in the home, had they considered how to facilitate their dual role in practice. A rigid timetable served married women's needs less well than a flexible one that allowed them to work through breaks in order to finish and go home early. Single women employed away from home tolerated long hours five days a week if it meant they could take Saturday afternoon off to return home for Sunday. Despite a multitude of evasive measures, industry gradually rationalized the workday. Employers became strict about beginning at a fixed time: they locked factory doors five minutes after the posted starting time and fined anyone arriving later. Not surprisingly, workers began to arrive punctually.61 Manufacturers and economists measured productivity more precisely, indicating their preference for the productivism of the American system of scientific management over the emphasis on efficiency in the European "science of work."62 Managers encouraged constant attention by introducing continuousaction machines and by discouraging distractions. For instance, some managers forbade the brewing of coffee on boilers and increased the fines for tarrying at another person's work station. To enforce rules, they needed more supervision, since workers did not welcome or adapt easily to unrelieved labour. As the workday became more regimented, workers lost control over the pace of their labour and some of the pleasures of workplace sociability. Employers and unions redefined the day in terms of the time expended on productive activities, rather than time spent at the plant, by not counting intervals to eat and socialize.63 Each diminution of the workday saw the suppression of a rest period. When silk twisters dropped from twelve to eleven hours, they stopped the 7 P.M. supper which only served a purpose if workers stayed past 9 P.M. When northern factories adopted ten hours, four o'clock "tea" disappeared, and with it, many of the small bars that clustered around northern factories. Elsewhere ten hours ended the eight o'clock breakfast. In textiles and other large industries, the workday emerged as a 6 A.M. to 6 P.M. span of time interrupted by a two-hour lunch.64 By distin-

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guishing effective labour from presence at the workplace, hours laws as implemented by industrialists established a more routinized and intensive day. In the Nord, hours standards also helped regularize the work week by undermining the custom of staying home Monday morning to sleep off the effects of the main form of masculine entertainment on Sundays. By 1909 textile magnates were praising the law for reducing absenteeism as well as the incidence of accidents and poor performance on Monday afternoons.65 In these and other ways, standards made labour more predictable and productive. WAGES AND STRIKES

To compensate for shortened hours, textile producers tried to lower their wage bill. This was a complicated process, because there were two basic systems of remuneration. Although women doing repetitive tasks received hourly wages, time pay was less common than piecerates based on schedules of weights for each type of yarn and of yardage for each fabric. Many operatives, mainly men, also counted on bonuses for exceeding production quotas. Piece and incentive pay combined with low rates explain why many workers collaborated with management in extending the workday. Beginning early, ending late, and spelling one another in order to produce through breaks increased daily output and income. An expected part of the work experience before the introduction of standards,66 these practices continued as standards were implemented. More systematic differences between men's and women's pay reflected the hierarchical sex-typing of jobs. Even when women had the same basic job title as men, they earned a third to a half less because they were relegated to smaller machines or to ancillary positions. In the one instance out of a dozen payrolls preserved by the textile inquiry where men and women did identical tasks and were paid the same rates, women earned only 10 per cent less than their co-workers. The difference was due to women spending less time at the loom, no doubt the effect of women's dual work role at the factory and at home.67 Anomalies further complicated calculation of real pay. For instance, silk spinners had one wage for boarders and another for day labourers; some plants charged for power and supplies yet reported nominal pay, and some mills paid the main operative the amount owed the whole work-group, generally a family unit, and let him distribute it among the members.68 To make comparisons, contemporary investigators aggregated annual payroll figures for selected

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jobs and divided them by the number of individuals and the number of days employed to calculate average daily wages by occupation and region.69 William Reddy has described how these estimates distorted a complex reality.70 To his critique should be added the underrepresentation of feminine occupations, misrepresenting the situation of women. To avoid some of the pitfalls, I shall begin with specific examples of pay cuts and workers' reactions before drawing some cautious conclusions about the impact of sex-specific regulations on workers' income. In the 18905 linen, silk, and woollen producers used the simplest method of reducing labour costs: they paid the same piece-rates for eleven or ten as for twelve hours (though output and therefore pay rarely declined by a twelfth or a sixth, as women and girls worked faster). Worker response depended upon the level of organization and morale. Unorganized silk and linen spinners, who had already accepted lower pay, acquiesced in a second round of cuts. When woollen producers finally adopted eleven hours without adjusting rates, the more masculine, organized workers put up modestly successful resistance.71 Eastern cotton producers used a nuanced approach which pacified some workers, although it could not prevent some strikes. Since many spinning mills were retooling, they anticipated higher productivity and offered raises in hourly wages. However, they usually offered § per cent rather than the 8 per cent necessary to offset the loss of an hour's pay if productivity did not improve proportionally. Some of these mills rescinded the raises as soon as possible, either for women and children hired after the law came into effect or upon a change in the product line. Technologically conservative or financially strapped mill owners had to be forced into raising hourly wages by strikes. Piece-rates for yarns did not change, but few operatives protested because they expected to earn as much on streamlined mules and because the militants - men - still spun for twelve hours.72 Weaving firms raised piece-rates by 10 per cent in Epinal but not at all in the countryside. Weavers demanding eleven hours for all personnel and 6 to 10 per cent raises across the board struck at seven rural establishments. Only two firms conceded eleven hours and compensatory raises; the rest were adamant about twelve hours for men and smaller increments for women and adolescents. One firm offered a relatively favourable 4 and 8 per cent to women and girls, which the men rejected, claiming that short time for their assistants lowered their bonuses. Since the boss insisted that faster looms would counter any loss, the men were probably resisting a speed-up. Generally men, like women later, showed solidarity with co-workers, who

112 Women, Work, and the French State

were often family members. At another plant they agreed to run their wives' and children' looms one hour a day in return for 5 per cent increments for women and children, to shore up family income.73 In one documented case in the nearby Meurthe-et-Moselle, which was not a textile region,74 the imposition of eleven hours engendered a short-lived union. At a large cotton factory outside Nancy, 400 of the 580 workers struck in January 1893, when pay fell by twenty-five centimes a day on the adoption of eleven hours. They collected over i ,500 francs and asked for a i o per cent raise, a new contract, and the closing of the company store. After a few days, over a third of the strikers returned to work, but none of the weavers except the foremen's wives buckled until they won eight per cent, a better contract and elimination of the company store. Within a month, a confrontation over a foreman stopping a weaver from minding an absent colleague's loom resulted in the formation of a union composed of 220 workers. When the union voted to absorb the remaining strike funds, nonmembers protested and the directors of the factory seized the opportunity to dismiss the union president. The president and his supporters tried to enter the factory by force, but the directors shut it down and threatened to fire anyone joining the protest. All but fifty stayed in the factory. A few days later the fifty accepted their pay peacefully;75 their union did not survive a year. No other textile union was formed in the Meurthe-et-Moselle until igoy.76 The Labour Office attributed much of the increase in the number of strikes in 1893 to the application of the law on women's and children's work but did not keep a record of strikes provoked by the law.77 Presumably the ten strikes in the Vosges/Meurthe-et-Moselle were typical of dozens of short, moderately successful strikes with little permanent advance in organization.78 By the time ten hours loomed for most textile workers, more employers were trying the divisive strategy pioneered by eastern cotton mills. They offered not quite compensatory raises to low-wage women and smaller raises to higher-paid production workers. They also linked pay maintenance to incentive schemes and handling more machinery in order to maintain output. Organized workers acted to resist de facto pay cuts and by 1903 to get real raises. Although the unions were masculine, women supported the strikes to improve their own incomes, to sustain male co-workers' pay, and to avoid isolation. Women who did not support the strikes were abandoned by the union in negotiations. The following survey of these strikes should clarify the connections between hours standards, wages, and segmentation of the working class.

113 The Economics of Compliance

Because ten hours had become customary for urban silk workers, there were few wage disputes in Lyon. Two rural strikes reveal a tendency for women with a double day to take fewer hours and lower pay. Seventy women walked out when their daily wages fell by oneeleventh instead of one twenty-second upon the adoption of ten-anda-half hours, but they settled for ten hours, which was commensurate with the one-eleventh cut. A mill that added a half hour onto the night shift to make up for the loss of a half-hour on the day shift provoked the all-male night shift into a strike for ten-and-a-half hours. The men, in direct opposition to the women, accepted longer hours in return for an appropriate raise.79 Evidently working men were less pressed for time. In 1903 a general strike in Lyonnais textiles focused on raises, overtime pay, and longer breaks. A favourable contract and flourishing demand forestalled urban confrontations in April igo4.80 Strikes only occurred in two rural mills that offered 2.5 per cent raises, half the amount needed for parity. One owner closed shop and moved his machinery further into the mountains, where he would not have to make any wage adjustments.81 The outcome conforms to a larger pattern whereby hours standards accentuated ruralization of the fabrique to take advantage of cheaper labour and infrequent inspection. In the Nord, industrial disputes marked each of the three steps toward ten hours. When the eleven-hour day was applied to men working with women in 1900, over 2,100 linen workers in eighteen mills struck for a compensatory raise of 8 per cent, instead of the 4 per cent proposed by employers. Some major employers accorded 8 per cent on hourly wages for female assistants but held firm on piecerates for the mixed-sex spinners. While hourly workers went back to work, 800 of the female spinners who had long laboured eleven hours without raises stayed out. After six weeks and many concessions, linen strikers returned to the mills. Meanwhile, a thousand woollen operatives walked out of sixteen factories and won 5 per cent raises, for which they conceded a heavier work load and a bonus system to sustain production.82 Two years later, job actions obtained the modest increments needed for parity. In woollens, however, union leaders sacrificed increases for low-wage women who had not joined the strike.83 The massive textile strikes associated with the application of ten hours in the Nord reflected larger issues. In the local elections of 1903, socialists emphasized "integral implementation" without pay consequences. Employers faced with socialist city councils resolved to

ii4

Women, Work, and the French State

resist socialist demands. Late that year, an anticipatory strike in the Lys valley near Roubaix asked for a regional contract and collective bargaining, as well as a return to the more favourable 1889 contract adjusted to assure parity in 1904. Employer intransigence about a single contract and collective bargaining provoked violence. "To avoid the serious, general crisis" predicted for April 1904, the prefect pressured employers into joining a "mixed commission" and granting a provisional raise of 8 per cent on the 1889 contract.84 In March employers' associations in Lille, Roubaix, and Tourcoing rejected union proposals of 8 per cent and the principle of collective bargaining. The ensuing strike involved over 14,000 of the 35,000 woollen workers in Roubaix, 12,000 linen workers in forty-eight factories in Lille, and over 10,000 cotton and woollen workers in fifty-six plants in Tourcoing. Thousands of troops converged on these cities. After two and a half months, linen workers abandoned collective bargaining, elected plant delegates, and authorized them to negotiate with individual owners. The union had already accepted the manufacturers' offer of 5 per cent.85 In Roubaix and Tourcoing, the intercession of sympathetic deputies, notably Dron, produced woollen settlements in the 5 to 7 per cent range.86 In 1904 unions tried to involve women and thereby reinforced family solidarity in support of the strikes. At Roubaix, the strike committee and socialist city councillors held a meeting for women to explain the issues. Five to six hundred women attended, voted to continue withholding their labour and "vowed to stop their husbands from returning to work." Following the meeting, intrepid women paraded through town until disperesed by armed cavalry, after unarmed infantry failed to dispel them. At Lille, women and children formed important components in a huge procession singing the Internationale, though they did not engage in the scuffle with gendarmes that ended the demonstration.87 However, some employers succeeded in dividing the labour force along gender lines, precluding class solidarity, even in wellintentioned unions. At Houplines in the Lys valley, a leading manufacturer informed worker-delegates to the mixed commission that he was going to dismiss 111 tisseuses two weeks before the provisional agreement negotiated by the commission was due to expire. He explained that the agreement allowed women to operate only one loom but authorized men to handle two. Worker-delegates, preoccupied with extending the provisional agreement, suggested alternatives that alienated their members. Their suggestion of a special arrangement with the manufacturer contradicted the concept of a collective contract. Their suggestion about sacrificing the women's

115 The Economics of Compliance

apprentices annoyed members with wives and children in the factory. The union only succeeded in postponing the women's departure until they finished the bolts on their looms. Meanwhile, the mixed commission resolved to continue the wage settlement, which satisfied the company unions and averted a general strike in the area.88 Clearly there were time-lags in compensation for lower hours and temporary setbacks in income during the slump of the 18gos which were usually corrected in the economic recovery and strike movements of the first decade in the twentieth century. According to official statistics, average textile wages did not decline over the whole period. While they slipped in relation to wages in certain sectors, some of the slippage can be attributed to less favourable commercial conditions and some to lower levels of unionization. More specifically, average textile wages in the Nord, the Rhone, and the Vosges crept upward in trajectories similar to regional wage curves. In these relatively high-wage departments, textiles fell in to the second- and third-lowest wage brackets before and after the application of standards. Considering the rising cost of living,89 the real income of textile workers probably stagnated during the implementation process. Moreover, average textile wages were calculated on the basis of wages for a selection of occupations that left out most female employments. Ironically if logically, given the law's silence on pay consequences, standards depressed the earnings of the low-waged women and adolescents they were supposed to protect. ^Thefabrique offers examples of standards levelling low incomes but not relatively high incomes. Silk twisters' rates fell before and after the 1892 law, due to overproduction and lack of a union. A decade passed before increased demand, improved technology, and general strikes brought some improvement in rates. By exempting family workshops from standards, the laws invited manufacturers to put out to these shops in busy seasons. This in turn accentuated the deterioration in handloom weavers' rates, as handloom weavers competed for commissions in off-seasons by lowering their piece-rates and lengthening their workday, another ironic consequence of partial standards. Conversely, the organized female spinners, who had eleven hours before 1892, mobilized to defend the law and to ensure enforcement. Similarly, male weavers on mechanical looms who had ten hours before the state intervened enjoyed a steady advance in their already higher rates.90 The 1902 woollen settlements illustrate how organized working men sabotaged employer schemes to raise women's wages more than men's rates if the schemes involved intensification of men's labour. Although men were less intent upon preserving their privileged

116 Women, Work, and the French State

position than controlling the pace of their labour, their opposition was detrimental to women. Where the adaptation to standards threatened greater equity — no one believed the difference would mean parity — unions halted the levelling process. In the cotton industry in eastern France, where larger raises to the lower-waged had already resulted in greater uniformity of pay, ten hours slowed the levelling process.91 Similarly, hours laws had ambiguous effects on the methods of calculating and disbursing pay. Whereas the trend had been toward hourly wages, short time put a premium on piece-rates and incentive pay which motivated workers to produce every minute of their workday. Woollen weavers who had experienced the pressure of bonus systems advocated hourly wages to the textile inquiry. They argued that mechanization enabled them to measure hourly output to establish how much they should be paid, proving that they had assimilated the market conception of pay as a function of time without abandoning the old notion of a price for a product. Alternatively, employers suffering from overproduction imposed hourly wages to limit output and costs. Standards did promote simplification of pay scales: silk twisters eliminated boarders and double-pay scales to avoid being inspected at night for the purpose of discovering whether boarders were working.92 TECHNOLOGICAL ADJUSTMENTS

Although eastern cotton magnates made major investments in more efficient equipment and new plants in anticipation of both laws, and northern manufacturers did some retooling in the boom of 1900— i ,93 their most consistent response was adding to the workload by augmenting the size, speed, and number of looms assigned to an operative. While consumption of raw and partially refined cotton tripled from 1870 to 1910, the number of operatives and looms did not double, proving that productivity had improved. Figures on the number and type of machines suggest that the significant investment in new technology occurred prior to the application of standards. The textile union noted that piece-rates were discounted when they handled more efficient looms, so that most of the "profit" accrued to the owners.94 In contrast, silk, linen, and woollen producers did not alter machinery until absolutely necessary. First they extracted more effort from workers through piece-pay and bonuses, then they escalated the pace of production by refining existing technology, and only then did they install new machines. In the iSgos simple silk plants confided

ii7

The Economics of Compliance

two looms to "good weavers"; fancy silk weavers simplified the Jacquard apparatus and streamlined shuttles. Silk spinners changed the movable parts on spinners but did not import self-acting machines from the United States until 1900. Only silk finishers replaced heavy, rigid machines with lighter, more easily manipulated ones. Because the substitution coincided with the 1902 decree on overtime pay for men, employers seized the excuse to hire women at a lower rate, explaining that men no longer offered any advantages.95 This is the only instance of hours standards promoting greater equality of opportunity between the sexes, without, of course, enhancing pay parity. Northern textile manufacturers and machine-makers greeted the 1900 law with pronouncements about machinery having attained maximum productivity. Within a year of the pressimistic predictions, an "obstinate" researcher (and director of a woollen mill) figured out how to accelerate mule and continuous spinners by self-acting mechanisms. The modified machines processed 20 to 40 per cent more thread in the same time. Slight alterations in the shuttle which hastened its passage through the warp raised productivity by 10 per cent. These improvements were adopted throughout the transition period.96 Not content with these gains, employers expected workers to supervise more than one of the new machines. By an eclectic mix of retarding the onset of the ten-hour day, rationalizing and intensifying labour and introducing more efficient technology, textile producers exceeded previous production levels by igog.97 The silk industry increased output, with a definite rise to 1901,98 followed by slower growth with brief interludes of stagnation. Despite the upward curve, France lost market position to the United States. But even critics of hours standards blamed the slow-down on fashion trends, notably toward a narrower skirt requiring less material. Labour legislation which fostered technological advances could hardly be indicted for a loss of market position to a technologically advanced nation. Conversely, silk twisters correctly predicted that standards would further undercut their position relative to China and Japan, whose longer hours and lower wages made them more • • competitive, even in T-i France. QQ Linen initially did not fare well. The implementation of eleven hours for women overlapped with a rise in the price of hemp and therefore with higher prices for linens and a consumer shift to cheaper cottons. Men moved to eleven hours in the midst of a crisis of overproduction dating back to the earlier loss of markets. Throughout this period, linens were losing a competitive battle for the mass market to cottons, which cost less due to lower costs and modern

118 Women, Work, and the French State

plants. Although distinguished industrialists denounced the labour law,100 hours standards reduced inventories, a boon in crises of overproduction. Ultimately, standards stimulated technological innovation, which made linens more competitive. After a painful period of adjustment, the revival of the linen dress led to a new cycle of expansion.101 The woollen industry was caught in a squeeze between increasing costs for raw wool and consumer taste for lighter fabrics. Very uncertain supplies during the Spanish-American War, combined with a dramatic drop in demand due to a succession of warm winters, aggravated the pressure in the 18905. Partly because producers could not ignore the squeeze and partly because they applied eleven hours as a solution to overproduction, few blamed hours standards for low production levels.102 Although bankruptcies occurred as the tenhour day was implemented, the ongoing crisis in woollen production overshadowed any effects of the labour laws. Worsted, which had adapted to consumer preference, proved the exeption. Combing mills operating at full capacity protested declining output during the transition to ten hours.103 Reviewing the effects of hours standards on three branches of the textile industry reveals that neither the complacent vision of the reformers nor the gloomy view of opponents was accurate for one major sector. The textile producers who accepted standards promptly used them to limit production. Industrialists functioning in an expanding or highly competitive market delayed implementation by illegal, semi-legal, and legal means. Only belatedly and sequentially did they rationalize the workday and install new technology to raise previous production levels. In short, economic factors determined how, when, and to what degree industry responded to standards. Working women, who had no say in setting and enforcing hours limits, bore most of the negative consequences of the transition to ten hours. Clocked schedules upset the pre-industrial mores of working and socializing that prevailed in the mills. Neither the interim system of intricate shifts nor the eventual solution of regular timetables helped married women to reconcile job requirements with home responsibilities, allegedly one of the advantages of limited hours. Busy plants flouted the law by operating twelve hours a day and implicated workers by paying low piece-rates. Since legislation did not guarantee income, many factories passed on the costs of shorter workdays in the form of smaller pay packets. Although organized workers sustained their income by strikes, their unions did not include low-wage auxiliary workers. When employers tried to split workers along gender lines by offering higher settlements to female

i ig The Economics of Compliance

assistants, unions refused any levelling. Some women accepted these offers, without breaking the strikes or diminishing the wage gap. Most women waited for periods of prosperity to get their pay adjusted. If women neither lost nor gained employment, overtime provisions denying them access to most supervisory positions ensured that they stayed in dead-end jobs. Overall the most striking outcome of sex-specific hours standards was an entrenched and exaggerated sexual division of labour. An administrative decree allowed ample overtime in seasonal industries, perpetuating a female ghetto of casual labour. After standards were applied to men working with "the protected population," an edict authorized additional hours for supervisory and skilled personnel, traditionally men. In the decree, the sex-typing of occupations in explicit; in the edict, it is implicit. Whereas these measures respected and reinforced the occupational distribution by gender, the segregation of male and female work-spaces attendant on the 1900 law promoted the compartmentalization of work processes and the marginalization of women's work.

Workers in a Textile Factory, c. 1900 (Collection Viollet)

CHAPTER SIX

Banning Women: The Night Work Clauses

Compared to the debates about hours standards, the deliberations about women's night work were more concentrated. As we shall see, the legislative debates over the articles on female night labour reveal the reformers' singular focus on women, the primacy of socioeconomic motives, the supplementary nature of medical rationales, and the opportunism of moral arguments. Since industrial interests forced the committee examining prohibition to consult working women for the first time in the campaign for sex-specific laws, we can proceed to analyse this rare contact between the advocates and objects of labour reform. Here we find reformers resisting interviews with working women, revealing their distrust of working women's ability to assess their own needs. Yet witnesses did not need tutelage to discover their self-interest. In the concluding section of this chapter, study of the legislative process of reducing the initial proposal to a partial ban is extended to the administrative system of "tolerances" or exemptions. The Assembly, the government, consultative bodies, and officials cooperated to accommodate industries accustomed to employing women at night and unwilling to replace them with more expensive labour or more efficient technology. The pattern of inclusion and exclusion in the ban fortified a decaying barrier in the labour market by reserving higher paying night work for men as well as by facilitating lower paying night work for women. Despite the regime of exemptions, the initial goal of eliminating women's industrial employment at night was attained by 1914. This success can be attributed to the support of public opinion, mobilized by the vigilant printers' union, notably in their attack on female compositors in the Durand affair, and the campaign of the International Association for the Legal Protection of Workers for an international convention on women's night work.

122 Women, Work, and the French State N I G H T WORK

First, what was night work, how long had it been a feature of French industry, how widespread was this practice, and what were the attitudes toward it in the second half of the nineteenth century? Briefly, night work meant periodic evening overtime, or veillees, especially in the garment trades, and permanent night shifts in factories, especially cotton mills and braid manufacturers. Night work also denoted early morning work in seasonal industries with perishable raw materials, although this type of work was less well known. All forms of night employment had been practised since the 18308, when gas lighting made it feasible, but had become more prevalent since the iSyos, in response to increased competition and improvements in gas lighting. * In the first half of the century, industrialists who did not or could not resort to twenty-four hour operating schedules protested that night shifts meant unfair competition, while neighbors complained to courts or local governments about the noise. Only after the issue of women's night work had been placed on the national political agenda - around 1880 - did industrialists and local authorities add remonstrances about disrupting workers' sleeping patterns or about overwork.2 Veillees evoked the most sympathy. One reason was the visibility and "respectability" of the modistes, the more fortunate dressmakers who served bourgeois clients and behaved in an "acceptable" manner.3 Moreover, dressmakers and the more numerous seamstresses (couturieres) who sewed by the piece lived in the capital where legislators resided; they were not hidden away in distant industrial towns like mill workers. The image of "capricious" ladies keeping poor working girls late to complete ball gowns dramatized a contrast between the frivolous rich and the vulnerable poor. The fact that foreign buyers, mostly men, caused the steep rise in large orders at certain times of the year, and demanded delivery within a short time, was ignored.4 Early morning employment attracted less attention. Since all fish packers and vegetable canners processed food in the early morning, none complained about unfair competition, as mill owners did. Since the women lived in fishing villages and market towns, went to work in the early morning hours and did messy work, it was hard to visualize or romanticize them, although the spectacle of hundreds of young girls lined up from i to 4 A.M. to get a job touched some legislators.5 Employing women on regular night shifts, 12 A.M. to 12 P.M., was common only in braid manufacturing. In Saint-Chamond, where forty-one factories made braid, factories had functioned twenty-four

123 Banning Women

hours a day since the introduction of gas lighting in 1831. By the mid-i88os, the braid industry in this Loire valley town employed 1,866 adult women, 1,253 adolescent girls, and 658 youths. Nearly half the labour force was female and three-quarters to nine-tenths of the women were married. Because the 1874 labour law forbade female minors (women under twenty-one years of age) to work at night, factory owners in Saint-Chamond began to substitute adult women. By 1890, 60 per cent of their labour force and a higher proportion of the night shifts were adult women, most of whom were married. Day and night shifts differed little except for the artificial lighting; both shifts had a half-hour break, when they were supposed to leave their machines.6 The situation was ripe for reformers but also promised a sturdy defence by its beneficiaries. In other sectors of textiles, night shifts were recent innovations and women were a minor part of the labour force. The phenomenon was expanding within specific regions. While a few eastern cotton mills had begun operating twenty-four hours in the i86os, most of the twenty-two mills with night shifts in the mid-188os had adopted them after the annexation of plants following the Franco-Prussian War to compensate for the cost of relocation. These mills accounted for less than a third of the plants and one-quarter of the production capacity in this cotton-producing area. Since continuous operation was competitive, especially at periods of peak demand, four more mills changed over in the late i88os. Nevertheless, only 600 of the 1,500 night workers were women.7 The recent recourse to these night shifts, the evidence of their increase, and the relatively small number of women to be displaced became arguments for prohibiting women before removing them became too disruptive. The other major employers of women at night were northern wool-carders, who were divided on this issue. As Dr Dron would prove in the course of the legislative inquiry of 1890, only marginal carding establishments producing for the open market resorted to night shifts. Rejecting the implicated parties' contention that they had to operate their plants continuously eight months a year to prevent their low-grade wool from discolouring, Dron accused them of rushing to exploit lower priced materials and to undercut more responsible competitors. Dron drew on his medical experience to shock legislators with horrifying details about ninety to one hundred degree heat, lunches eaten at the machine, and higher accident rates in artificial light. Although Dron painted an overly lurid picture and offered dubious accident statistics, his general indictment was substantiated by subsequent experience with ill-organized, technologically "conservative," and exploitative wool carders. By the time that

124 Women, Work, and the French State

wool-carders made a second deposition to the legislative committee, many announced that they could accept a ban as long as they could replace women with men. In anticipation of the law, some Roubaix factories substituted men for the few women working on night shifts.8 Outside of the Loire, Vosges, and Nord, only 3 per cent of the women employed in textile areas worked at night.9 Most continuously fired or continuously processing plants hired men rather than women before and after the law of 1892. The exceptions were sugar beet refineries, paperworks, and glass factories.10 Veillees had always been part of the dressmakers' lot, for customers did not or could not preorder garments for special occasions or for mourning. But the made-to-order dressmaker (modiste) was being displaced and outnumbered by seamstresses (couturieres or confectionneuses) doing plain sewing of pieces in sweat shops, often for a subcontractor, in the ready-made trade. Several factors favoured the transition: the international reputation of Worth and with him, of Parisian haute couture, the advent of the department store and, more generally, of ready-made clothing for a prospering bourgeoisie, and the wide distribution of sewing machines.11 One consequence was the development of a ready-made sector catering to an export market that wanted the latest Parisian fashion. Here demand was strictly seasonal, the competition fierce, and investment highly speculative. Not surprisingly, abuses developed. Parisian firms contracted with hundreds of firms to create hundreds of styles, of which, as a rule, only one quarter would find favour with foreign buyers. During the six months of the two seasons, subcontractors employed as many as 60,000 women to fill their orders. To meet buyers' deadlines and to remain competitive, subcontractors kept seamstresses three or four hours after the twelve-hour day ended at 9 P.M., thirty to ninety times a year. Instead of paying more than the day rate of thirty-five centimes an hour, most subcontractors reserved part-time work in the off-season for women who "agreed" to say late. Subcontractors rarely gave advance notice of overtime, so workers who had not presumed there would be extra work went without their evening meal and were unable to warn their families. Women who had to walk home in the early mornings when trams did not run to outlying suburbs had to resume work the next day, though not necessarily at 9 A.M. Because the labour market was overcrowded with seamstresses, women were desperate for the overtime income and the promise of off-season employment. They sought out the 700 shops where veillees were customary.12

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LEGISLATIVE ACCOMMODATION

It is possible through a review of the legislative process of reform to account for the accumulation of exceptions to the "ban" on women's night work and to distinguish motives from rationales. Royalists and industrialists were the first to propose a ban, ostensibly on humanitarian grounds, though comments on the unethical priorities of the implicated employers resemble earlier objections about unfair competition for "responsible" employers. Socialists then added an odd combination of an apparently altruistic concern for the family and a selfish desire to remove female competitors from higher-paying night shifts. As Social Catholics took up the issue, they devised a social justification, namely, the need to reconstitute the working-class family. However, Opportunist governments adopted a selective ban, whereupon the apology became more utilitarian. For instance, republicans with ties to industrial interests contended that partial prohibition would not hurt production. It is noteworthy that the timetable for reform did not conform to the common conception of a progression from forbidding children, to forbidding women, to forbidding men. The proposal to prohibit women's night work did emerge in the committee examining Joubert's bill to extend coverage of labouring children, where it was considered in connection with an amendment to prohibit women's and children's employment underground. But none of the largely royalist committee members spoke of these measures as stages in a process of piecemeal reform that would culminate in the elimination of men's work at night or underground. Indeed, the committee abandoned the proposal about night labour when a government inquiry indicated formidable opposition. They retained the ban on women's and children's employment underground because it did not affect very many workers or arouse influential interest groups.13 In the i88os the crisis in the luxury trades and the spread of night shifts swayed public opinion against women and girls working at night. Very few reformers ever suggested suppressing men's night labour; industrialists who raised the possibility in 1899 were reacting to a crisis of overproduction.14 In 1879 an industrialist in the Chamber of Deputies, Jean-Louis Villain, moved an amendment to the 1874 act to forbid women's night work. Unfortunately for the progress of Villain's bill, proposals to revise the twelve-hour act attracted more attention. Over the ensuing decade, nine other bills combined hours standards with various restrictions on women's employment at night. The prospect of a shorter workday affronted industrialists accustomed to being boss in their

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own establishments and aroused anxieties about lower production and profits; the compromise on short-time for women and adolescents offered only modest relief, since many feared that that would reduce the hours of men employed in the same plants. For eight years, debate on female night labour was overshadowed first by opposition to the principle of regulating labour, and then by differences over the number of hours in the legal workday. By the time that the Labour Committee seriously considered women's night work, public opinion had come to favour restrictions. The 1884 survey of the work inspectors, general councils, industrial societies, commercial associations, and unions found 321 of the 453 respondents accepted restrictions on female night labour. Four-fifths of the 321 preferred outright suppression. Considering the need for limits on women's night labour self-evident, respondents either offered no explanation or referred vaguely to safeguarding women's health, "family interests," or "good morals." Only the Chambers of Commerce in seaports where women canned fish at night and in industrial towns where women carded wool at night were adamantly opposed.15 Three years later, when the Labour Committee discussed restricting women's and adolescents' night work, it was influenced by the representations of industry. Objections from industrialists, suggestions from inspectors, and perusal of English law persuaded Waddington to make exceptions for continuously fired plants and for occupations like newspaper-folding "that can only be confided to the delicate hands of womens." He also recommended authorizations for fourteen-hour days where otherwise raw materials would be compromised and where demand was unpredictable. Despite opposition to a regime of exceptions,16 the Opportunist government obliged industry. The 1888 bill exempted factories depending upon continuous heat and allowed overtime sixty to ninety days a year in seasonal industries. As Waddington explained in his report to the Chamber, women were "irreplaceable" on the night shifts of sugar refineries and glass factories, while a sudden end to overtime in the Parisian luxury trades would "fatally endanger" the prosperity of an important export sector.17 Later the braid manufacturers of Saint-Chamond, representing go per cent of French braid firms, testified that machinery would not offset the loss of skilled workers at night, because their product was prized for its quality. Other witnesses said installing new machinery was prohibitively expensive. When six braid manufacturers dissociated themselves from the protest, the rest discounted them as Social

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Banning Women

Catholics or long-established firms with highly regarded trademarks. They proposed a two-shift system. Each shift would last nine hours; together they would run from 4 A.M. to 10 P.M. The Senate added a proviso permitting this system. A manufacturer tried the system and reassured the suspicious Chamber committee that most of the single women took the morning shift of 4 A.M. to i P.M. Since they stayed in company lodgings near the factory, they were not wandering in public in the early morning hours. Most of the married women (57 per cent) preferred the "evening" shift so that they could prepare meals and see children off to work or school. The committee adopted the two-shift system.18 While Waddington accommodated the dual labour market and flexible scheduling, he made other overtures toward economic interests. Citing his own plants, he tried to convince industrialists that more efficient technology compensated for any loss in production. In debate, another member of the Labour Committee, Albert de Mun, incongruously added that humane employers like Waddington, who renounced night work, would be driven out by ruthless competitors like impersonal joint stock companies, a familiar appeal for state intervention as opposed to voluntary action.19 As in earlier debates on hours standards, de Mun defended intervention for women against an ephemeral proposal by Antoine Achard, a radical member of the committee, to include men. Once again, he stressed the preservation of the family by allowing women more time at home to keep "everything in order." Republican supporters developed the idea that women's night work disorganized the family, reduced the number of births and increased the number of infant deaths. They expressed concern about children left alone at night, assuming fathers did not mind children, and quoted statistics on natality and infant mortality without correlation to regions where women worked at night. A republican member of the committee, Andre Lyonnais, hinted at immorality due to supervision by men who were not family members. He concluded: "We want the woman in her natural sphere, at home."20 Scorning economic overtures and social appeals, spokesmen for regions employing large numbers of women in major industries attacked the rationale for the article on night work. One spokesman pointed out that unlike Waddington, who owned an old, fully financed firm, few industrialists could afford new technology. On the contrary, new firms had to operate plants twenty-four hours a day to amortize their debts. A republican deputy from the Tarn responded pragmatically to hygienic, familistic, and moralistic arguments. Ber-

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nard Lavigne contended that southern wool-carders were healthy peasant women who had no problems about childcare because they were single, widowed, or had grown-up children. Their families depended upon their wages as their only cash income. Since the women did not work with men at night, he denied any possibility of immorality. To validate the employment of women, he claimed this hard and often masculine occupation required "the attention, care and dexterity appropriate to women's natural capacities."21 In the Senate, where industrial interests were better represented, Charles Ferry of the Vosges warned that French cotton mills could not supply national demand without night shifts, so French manufacturers would have to buy English thread. He envisaged the loss of 1,500 jobs.22 Although Yves Guyot lamented the loss of women's freedom and expounded economic theory, liberals did not emphasize abstract principles as much as they had in the struggle against hours standards. Instead, they resorted to dire predictions about loss of employment, wages, and profits and to ad hominem attacks on Waddington as a protectionist. Some liberals noted that eliminating all women on grounds of wifely or maternal duties was unfair to single women, who formed the majority of working women. Lyonnais mentioned the economic consequences of excluding women, whose access to jobs was already limited to a few occupations, from more jobs. No one responded to this rare reminder of the fierce competition and low wages in female job ghettces. Yet the same speaker was willing to ban women's employment in bars on the grounds that bars were prejudicial "to the blossoming of virtue and morality." Only Guyot observed that the kind of immorality Lyonnais alluded to involved both sexes.23 On the defensive after the Chamber accepted Guyot's amendment to remove women from this provision,24 the Opportunist majority on the Labour Committee and the Opportunist government elaborated a broader justification. Without dropping a humane concern about women's fatigue due to the poor quality of day sleep and "their second burden, housework," they pleaded the "superior interest" of children, country, and social order. Tired mothers meant "physical degeneration" in succeeding generations; poor maternal guidance meant "moral decay" among their progeny. Proper childcare would produce fitter, better disciplined army recruits. Asserting that the wife was the "balance beam" of family life, they argued that the absence of the housewife at night, when husband and children could assemble, meant family dissolution. "Abandoned" husbands went to the bar; "deserted" children fled into the streets. But at home, the housewife could "inculcate the habits of order and economy which

12Q Banning Women

are the strength and security of the French worker." The housewife who created harmony in the home contributed to social peace.25 Because reformers only proposed to prohibit women from night work, conservative sociological arguments about familial responsibilities and social stability were more central than in the case for hours standards. Because reformers did not intend to ban men, patriotic appeals about military preparedness were less prominent chan in the rationales for universal hours standards. Demographic data and biological theories were more pronounced in the propaganda for maternity leave. The campaigns for universal hours standards and maternity leaves continued into the prewar years, when demographic evidence was more plentiful and arguments about degeneration and military preparedness were more persuasive.26 Nevertheless, all these elements can be seen in the debates about night work in the late i88os. Like most social reformers, spokesmen for the ban on women's night labour sought medical support for their position. Although some research on exhaustion and eye strain from night work predated the political controversy,27 the significant medical report responded directly to the controversy. In 1890 the eminent physician and hygienist, Professor Adrien Proust (father of the future novelist) reviewed the medical implications of women's night work for the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and published his findings in the influential Revue d'hygiene. Starting with the assumption that night work constituted overwork and the myth about women's "physiological weakness" due to menstruation, he declared overwork destroyed women's "already ... unstable equilibrium." He associated anaemia with night work and asserted it had "more disastrous consequences" for female victims. His only solid evidence showed more sick days for women than men, with no reference to night work, and a high incidence of tuberculosis among women in the luxury trades, who did work overtime, though many were also malnourished, also a cause of consumption. Since Proust prescribed a legal "prophylaxis," reform politicians cited him as authoritative.28 At the request of one of the five left-wing doctors sitting on the committee considering the mutilated factory bill returned by the Senate in 1890, the Chamber solicited the opinion of the Academy of Medicine.29 The Academy appointed a commission composed of Proust, another specialist, and two obstetricians, which promptly reported that night work was "prejudicial" to women and their children's health. The commission seems to have accepted folk wisdom about day sleep being less restorative than night sleep, for they diagnosed "deprivation of sleep" as one of the worst health problems

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without offering any clinical observations or statistical evidence. Because working women were anaemic, susceptible to "nervous disorders," and lost their eyesight doing close work in flickering gaslight, they pronounced night work "especially fatal" for females. Exploiting the emerging evidence on the correlations between bottle milk and infant mortality, they blamed mothers working at night for their babies' ill-health. Feeling competent to comment on moral and social implications, the commission condemned women's night work for causing vagrancy in children and alcoholism in husbands. After very little discussion, the Academy resolved that night work had "the most disastrous consequences" for women.30 Politicians then quoted this hasty and undocumented resolution as definitive proof of the health hazards of women's night work. Medical opinion was useful but never essential in the campaigns for bans on women's night work. Studies in the fifteen years following the Academy of Medicine's report found more health problems among female night workers than day workers in the same industries, which directed attention to lack of sleep as opposed to alleged physiological inadequacies. To explain exhaustion, some scholars finaly speculated about the social demands upon married women, notably their domestic responsibilities. These studies sustained public opposition to women's night labour through the igaos.31 In the critical years of the early 18905, medical opinion about women's night work had not sufficient weight to fragment the opposition, even to the extent of permitting a partial prohibition. More decisive was the testimony of women themselves, which was unique in the legislative proceedings for sex-specific labour reforms. CONSULTING WOMEN

Formidable opponents of banning women's night labour initiated the practice of consulting and citing the women in question. In 1888 deputies on the Labour Committee representing the Nord and the Vosges, Paul Le Gavrion and Albert Ferry, sought interviews with workers from their districts. Ferry also presented a petition protesting the proposed ban signed by 8,000 workers in the Vosges. Several factors suggest that employers' groups organized workers: deputies close to cotton and woollen industrialists speaking for workers, the number of signatures gathered from unorganized workers dispersed in industrial villages throughout the Vosges, the style of the petition, and the number of workers free to address the committee in Paris.32 The Eastern Cotton Syndicate, which was relatively silent on hours standards, mobilized around the special threat to night work.

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Not surprisingly, the three staunchest supporters of the ban, Achard, Nadaud, and Waddington, argued against receiving the workers' delegation, saying it would open a floodgate and slow the process of reform. The six other members of the committee voted to hear the cotton delegates but no others. The delegates represented typical women's and men's occupations in cotton mills: five bobineuses, two male mechanics, and a male spinner. When the spinner explained that women had to prepare raw materials for men, Waddington asked why they had to do preparatory work at night. The spinner could not provide a compelling reason. When women explained that they preferred different shifts from their husbands so that both partners shared child care, Achard asked whether they breast-fed their infants. Their response - "very little" - definitely did not satisfy reformers.33 After Charles Ferry utilized the petition by Vosges workers to sustain a Senate veto of the night work clauses, reformers were more open to consultation. In the Senate, they cited petitions against night work from Saint-Chamond braid makers.34 In the reconstituted Labour Committee, Waddington suggested sending questionnaires to large urban workshops and interviewing inspectors. New members of the committee went further: Dron advised interviews with representatives of unions as well as inspectors; other radicals suggested hearing working women. A Protestant minister, Frederic Desmons, made his suggestion in response to an opponent who said that banning women would create jobs for men but leave "female outcasts." But first Desmons defended working-class men against the imputation that they treated women like animals (femelles)?5 Even when they advocated listening to women, they gave priority to men. When the Labour Committee accepted the novel concept of consulting women, Waddington and other supporters hesitated. For the period, they showed excessive concern with method, which belies a desire to avoid more "organized" testimony. Their arrangements to avoid meeting in the workplace and to limit the influence of employers reflected a real concern about coercion of vulnerable witnesses but also an assumption that working women would not recognize their own best interests. While they did not stack or lead witnesses in the obvious manner of early English inquiries into factory conditions, the tutelary complex was evident.36 First they heard moving testimony from Chief Inspector Laporte, who was known to oppose women's night work, and two of his subordinates. Typically Laporte concentrated on the "deplorable consequences" for family life, while the two inspectrices emphasized the impact on women. When Mme Gilbert reported instances of anaemia

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and exhaustion, she was challenged by a republican member of the committee who cited local committees to the effect that the women involved had no complaints. Tired of the exchange of expert opinions, de Mun reasserted the need for a survey of workers' opinion. Laporte was not encouraging: the committee could invite working women to a meeting which would "intimidate" them or could interview them in the workplace, where the bosses "muzzled" them. He mentioned the "American system" of questionnaires, but the committee did not consider this method for its special investigation of women's night employment as opposed to its general survey of working conditions, probably because it was not as necessary to build support for the ban on women's night employment as it was for universal hours standards. Although Laporte recommended getting "as close to workers as possible," he meant consultations with socialist unions which demanded suppression of women's night labour. It took a conservative, Baron Pierard, to rescue the idea of interviewing working women.37 A subcommittee interviewed working women in six Parisian quartiers; another travelled to Epinal to hear cotton employers and workers, and a third visited carding establishments in Lille, Roubaix, and Douai in the Nord. They focused on quartiers where seasmstresses worked evenings and Epinal where two cotton mills ran twenty-four hours.38 The subcommittee made a conscientious effort to attract and accommodate workers. Criticized for advertising in newspapers women did not read, they sent announcements to labour exchanges and had inspectors deliver notices to workplaces. They held sessions in mairies after regular working hours.39 Parisian inspectrices personally invited many seamstresses. Le Temps reported an inspectrice who "roused" 400 seamstresses from central firms which had not posted notices; after work "a procession of young girls" marched from the second and ninth arrondissements to a hearing at the mairie of the twelfth arrondissement. Some of the girls remained until the last question was posed at midnight.40 Unfortunately if understandably, no minutes of the dozen or so sessions survive. Although the chairman of the committee, Louis Ricard, reported that many Parisian couturiers deliberately kept seamstresses late so they could not attend the sessions, he was satisfied that the 600 seamstresses who "literally assaulted" the subcommittee with depositions represented the majority. According to Ricard, a radical supporter of the ban, these witnesses unanimously objected to overtime. In Epinal, he indicated, cotton magnates differed on the issue of night work. Similarly, some cotton workers claimed women's night

133 Banning Women work was "indispensable" to the family because men's wages were insufficient; others called it "unnatural, debilitating and deathly."41 Telling details from Ricard's report appeared in the report that finally won acceptance in the Assembly.42 A closer look at the method of gathering information and the letters and petitions from interested workers raises questions concerning Ricards's conclusions about working women's reaction. Highly motivated and relatively secure dressmakers came after work to oppose overtime. Seamstresses felt that only skilled dressmakers who could afford to do without the extra income from overtime had attended the hearings. Nearly a third of the 944 seamstresses who petitioned against veillees mentioned that they were willing to stay late occasionally if they were paid double time. Cotton spinners were influenced by employers but not in favour of any one position, so that the pros and cons were aired. Cotton spinners explained that they preferred nights shifts because they could leave their children with their husbands — and because night shifts were shorter and less supervised than day shifts. One hundred and eighty-six wool carders petitioned against the suppression of night shifts because they feared a loss of jobs.43 The mixture of anxiety about jobs and wages, concern about their dual role, and desire to avoid supervision evident in working women's statements captures reaction to the proposed ban on their night labour. Ricard may have underestimated the primary fears about losing jobs and income because he envisaged reform in the long term, but neither he nor any other reformer guaranteed that vulnerable working women — and their families — would not have to sacrifice in the short run. His lack of interest in how night shifts solved childcare problems reflected a general disregard for the real problems of the dual role. The interviews with industrialists also provided ammunition in the battle for a ban. Of course most industrialists employing women at night protested that they could not afford male replacements or more advanced technology. A few threatened to fire all women who worked at night or to evade the law by putting out work to unregulated domestic shops. Conversely, industrialists who had resisted night shifts warned that they would soon have to adopt them to remain competitive. In his final report to the Chamber, Waddington effectively exploited the idea that night work would become general. As a result of the investigation, he was also able to provide documentation that machinery already in existence would make up for 8 per cent of the lost output in textiles.44

134 Women, Work, and the French State I M P L E M E N T I N G THE BAN

Article four of the law of 2 November 1892 prohibited women's work between g P.M. and 5 A.M. but authorized the two-shift system from 4 A.M. to 10 P.M.; permanent exemptions for seven-hour shifts and temporary permits to prolong work until 11 P.M. in industries were to be determined by the administration. With these exceptions, the clauses hardly met the standard of a total ban set by the Berlin Conference on Labour Legislation but resembled regulations on women's night work in other industrial nations.45 A comparative study of these regulations in 1898, conducted by the Belgian labour researcher and reformer. Maurice Ansiaux, concluded that partial bans on night shifts had been implemented without ill effects. In Austria, Britain, Germany, and Switzerland, the substitution of men or machinery had been accomplished without significant losses in production or market position. In France the only dip in output occurred in Mulhouse, which had been overproducing. As for late evening overtime, the British had fully applied their restrictions, while the French had an uneven enforcement record. Although some Parisian and Lyonnais entrepreneurs had tried to compensate by hiring more women on regular shifts, as reformers hoped would happen, many employers in trades requiring little skill or supervision had resorted to unregulated domestic workshops.46 Partly because Ansiaux was interested in extending restrictions and partly because his official sources presented a favourable overview, his study overestimates the enforcement of the measures against night work in France. Analysis of inspection reports confirms a trouble-free implementation of the partial ban on night shifts but also reveals confrontations over permanent exemptions for seven hours' labour and systematic evasion of the overtime policy. Implementing the partial ban on night shifts was straightforward. Even in the first two years, when inspectors informed and "reminded" industrialists of the law, they encountered little resistance. Within the introductory period, all eastern mills observed the ban, although eight mills still operated throughout the night and six used double shifts from 4 A.M. to 10 P.M.47 A few industrialists in the Nord and Marne had to be issued summonses, but by 1897 all had either stopped or modified their night shifts in conformity with the law. The only significant complaints came from silk mill owners in the Isere, who found male replacements less "careful," and the wool mill owners of the Tarn, who could not find enough men in their semirural setting.48 Whereas 2,300 spinners struck over the transition to eleven hours, none of the spinners who lost night jobs protested collectively.

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Many acquiesced because they were transferred to day shifts, often in the place of men moved to night shifts. The high ratio of female to male spinners in 1896 suggests that relatively few women lost their jobs permanently.49 In any event, laid-off women had few outlets to express discontent. Even mixed-sex unions were dedicated to "integral application" of the night clauses.50 The partial prohibition of night shifts was successful because it affected 4,000 women in a few dozen large plants, because inspectors were seconded by public opinion which condemmed women's night labour in large factories, and because substitution did not disrupt the work processes of organized working men. Some plants in the four continuously fired industries permitted to employ women ten hours at night prompty renounced the practice and transferred women to day shifts. Many others relied on natural attrition and replacement by men.51 A few industrialists even reported that more efficient arrangement of machinery and regular scheduling of break times made a single shift more "economical" than using the legal authorizations for continuous operations. By contrast, youths were integrated into skilled work as apprentices. When they came under the new hours regulation of 1900, their removal meant men had either to work harder to compensate for the loss or to accept lower output and hence less pay. Their removal aroused the anger of organized men.53 CO

THE C O N T R O V E R S Y O V E R COMPOSITRICES

Conflict arose over the privilege of employing women seven hours a night in establishments without continuous furnaces. To grant this privilege, the Consultative Committee on Arts and Manufactures had to decide which jobs required "a woman's touch" and which were dangerous to her health. Since this undertaking provided plenty of scope for the perception that women were more susceptible to anaemia, nervous disorders, and other ailments, the committee included only three jobs with relatively few women workers in the list of acceptable night work. The jobs were lighting lamps in mines, which mainly involved girls, binding books and folding newspapers.54 Controversy swirled over the exclusion of typesetting in light of the inclusion of newspaper folding. Although the Consultative Committee's rationale for omitting typesetters was exposure to lead type, the real reason was pressure by the printers' union. From November 1892 through February 1893, the Central Committee of the Federation of Book Workers and locals

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of the typographers' union petitioned against exemptions in their trade. Drawing on medical opinion, they cited the dangerous nature of the work and claimed it was especially "deadly" for women, though they only mentioned sterility and miscarriages, which are rarely deadly for women. They noted the usual biological, social, and moral consequences of employing women: high infant mortality, "diminished physical strength in future generations," "dissolution of the family"; and even "the growing immorality of our generation." For good measure, they lauded women's "mission" as "the real center of the worker's family" and bemoaned "nocturnal promiscuity of the sexes" resulting in "mistakes that mark the unfortunate young women for life." However, they admitted a self-serving motive: "that of protecting our corporate interests by braking the ruinous and frightening competition of women ... or, more specifically, to combat unemployment and low wages in the trade."45 Ten to fifteen years earlier, morning newspapers had begun hiring women as night compositors at half to two-thirds the union wage, without the "perks" some men received. Often their arrival coincided with technological innovation and alleged deskilling.56 After unsuccessful strikes in the late 18708, printers had coalesced in the Federation of Book Workers. From the beginning, a stated goal was "To remove by all legal means, woman from the composition rooms, where she does not enter as an auxiliary but as a competitor." The federation soon supported a law on "equal pay for equal work," which they thought would eliminate feminine competitors, and urged "rigorous application" of laws on women's and children's labour.57 When a newspaper justified hiring women on the grounds of female emancipation, a printer elaborated a familiar rationale about women's physical incapacity and ethical vulnerability. For instance, woman was "by nature" less competent in composing because her weak "loins" prevented her from standing for long periods; she should not correct sheets or set pages because standing continuously was "a serious danger for her at certain times." Lead type caused "great disturbances" in her body, exposing her to chlorosis, miscarriages, and still births. In mixed shops, "the contact of the two sexes results in the most revolting corruption," deprivation of "the ornament of her sex" - virginity - through "the monstrous droit de seigneur" of the page-setters.58 By 1891 the Federation of Book Workers had a more subtle and influential spokesman in their president, Auguste Keufer, who sat on the High Commission on Labour for over two decades. He began his tenure defending a petition from Lyonnais printers to stop a printing course for girls by linking it to a trend to employ cheap labour and to

137 Banning Women

evict men from print shops. He persuaded the commission to withhold approval of occupational training for girls until inquiries determined whether the occupations were dangerous or "contrary to their skills" and whether training would prejudice the employment of tradesmen.59 For years, on various advisory committees, Keufer advocated eliminating women in practice while espousing "equal pay for equal work" in principle. He exaggerated research on lead poisoning and rejected contradictory evidence that there was no greater incidence of saturnism among women than among men working with lead. He undermined opponents such as the feminist journalist, Marguerite Durand, with derogatory remarks about "excessive feminism." But when the Association for the Legal Protection of Workers considered a proposal to remove all women from print shops for health reasons, a feminist researcher for Durand's Labour Office, Mme Marguery, won a stay in the form of a referral to the Hygiene Committee.60 If the 1884 inquiry into the possibility of limiting working time is any indication, most printers were not obsessed with ending women's night work: only one petition among the hundreds from printers demanded its suppression.61 However, specific groups faced with feminine competition were vigilant. Printers who persisted in employing compositrices were warned, cited, and convicted. Henri Theolier, the editor of the morning newspaper Le Memorial de la Loire, applied for a permanent exemption and, when that was denied, appealed his conviction for employing women at night. Theolier's lawyer based his case on the technicality that the women were single adults, while the law referred to minors and wives (femmes) who were being protected "in the social interest." How, the lawyer asked, "is the social interest engaged when it is a question of healthy working women who have no responsibilities at home?" The women themselves petitioned to be "protected against the law." Theolier lost on the reasonable grounds that the legislators intended femmes to include all adult women and assimilated single women to femmes in subsequent articles of the law. After nearly two years of resistance, Theolier gave his night compositrices notice. The compositrices appealed for a delay until the end of the winter, given the crisis in the ribbon industry (the major employer of women in SaintEtienne). Despite support from the prefect, the delay was not granted.62 Typographers continued to report shops disobeying the law. One anonymous letter from a group of unemployed typographers denounced the Alcan Levy firm in Paris which published Le National, La Gazette des Tribunawx, and other major newspapers. The printer and

138 Women, Work, and the French State

the fifty-one compositrices he employed requested an exemption. The compositrices described themselves as "mothers of families" and advised the minister to ignore "the strike-makers who want to return to the time when, women not being trained for the trade, they boycotted masters who employed women." This stung Keufer into countering the "moving" evocation of motherhood with a touching evocation of fatherhood by referring to "men brutally expelled and chased from their trade, going from firm to firm to earn a mouthful of bread, men who have to support wives and children." He also compiled a list of print shops in violation of the law63 and persuaded the Labour Committee to reconsider the policy of exemptions. No compositrices attended the Labour Committee meetings examining the policy of exemptions.64 When the ministry launched an investigation into the twenty-nine shops on the list, inspectors found less than half in contravention of the law. While the Labour Committee reconsidered the whole matter, the administration ordered inspectors not to issue summons and asked their advice about exempting composition. Inspectors rejected the idea on the grounds that the heat generated by gaslight bothered women and that "work in such a milieu soon renders women anaemic and absolutely unfit for childbirth."65 When the administration revised the regulations in 1895, it did not allow female night compositors and even ended unofficial toleration of female paper-cutters. All the offending firms complied with the ban on female compositors, but many were complaisant about paper cutters. Inspectors often "overlooked" paper-cutters found at shops after hours because they considered paper-cutting no more demanding than paper-folding. One inspector noted the real difference: cutters were better paid than folders. So, of course, were typesetters. When male compositors struck at Alcan Levy in 1897, the director replaced them with women and solicited authorization to employ women at night under the terms of a ruling allowing temporary night work by reason of "overpowering circumstances." Inspector Laporte accepted the odd premise that a strike constituted overpowering circumstances: "Otherwise it only takes a few malcontents to throw an entire shop out of work."66 This strike-breaking incident happened just before the first inspection of the feminist journal, La Fronde, which led to a long court case. The sequence is important, for the female compositors at La Fronde did not significantly undercut men's wages. Although they did accept one franc less than the union rate of nine francs a night, the 495 compositrices (over half of the compositrices in France) who supported La Fronde pointed out that many unionized typesetters accepted eight francs.67 The Printers' Union did not press

139 Banning Women for prosecution of the owner of La Fronde, Mme Durand, to stop undercutting but to control the labour supply by excluding women. Durand's lawyers based her appeals on the similarity of typesetting to paper-folding. Two courts found the analogy to paper-folding persuasive, but the final judgment declared night composition by women illegal until exempted by administrative decree. Unhappily, the administration was swayed by a survey that showed that the only night compositrices in France worked for La Fronde. Moreover, the minister of commerce, Millerand, consulted the High Commission on Labour, the advisory body that included Keufer and other representatives of organized labour. The High Commission advised that the eighteen compositrices could easily find other jobs and their work could "reasonably" be confided to men. No exception was made for typesetting.68 Resolution of the legal status of night compositrices did not end skirmishes between the Printers' Union and La Fronde. After the first court decision, Mme Durand formed a Union of Women Printers. While the constitution resembled the statutes of the Federation of Book Workers, it did not mention removing women from composition rooms or equal pay for equal work, which had become a code for eliminating women from printing. The Federation blackballed members of the Union of Women Printers, but the Paris labour exchange, which operated under an organic decree, had to accept the union. When the union sent seven members to work during the 1902 strike at Berger-Levrault, the major publisher in Nancy, the Paris labour exchange ousted the union. After appeals and counter-appeals, the Council of State ruled that the union had to be reintegrated. The representative to the labour exchange was ill received. The union's justification for their behavior — that their members, having been blacklisted by the federation, were not bound to observe the strike and that seven women could not be considered replacements for nine strikers69 - did not ingratiate it with printers who knew of the struggle to establish a union - and to keep out women - in Nancy's print shops.70 OVERTIME

The temporary exceptions to the 9 P.M. and 5 A.M. deadlines exceeded reformers' expectations. Whereas they had contemplated favouring a few industries with perishable materials or seasonal demand, the administrative ruling of July 1893 listed twenty-seven trades. One category permitted to work through the night from 30 to 120 days

140 Women, Work, and the French State

annually included fruit, vegetable, and fish packing, which had been discussed in the Senate, but also preparing pate and extracting essences from flowers for perfumes, which had not been mentioned in either Chamber. The same privilege covered luxury trades and "essential" services that experienced sudden, pressing demand: artificial flowers, decorative feathers, furriers, hatmaking, ladies and children's wear, print shops, and urgent naval or mechanical repairs. Six of these trades could also keep women and girls until 11 P.M. sixty times a year as long as their effective hours did not exceed twelve. Manufacturers of men's wear, silk, jewellery, upholstery material, gilded wood and metal for furniture, and so forth also benefited from allowances for evening overtime. l Reformers had made concessions on clothing and essential services but had not expected them to cover lingerie or quite so many luxury items. Clearly the Consultative Committee on Arts and Manufacturers catered to industries dependent upon female labour, with erratic demand and poor planning. Both the type of exemption - night or evening - and the duration - 30 to 120 days - corresponded to the industry's representations of its needs. The Consultative Committee exempted clothing, the second largest employer of women outside agriculture. In short, the administration had once again tailored reform to fit women's work in female job ghettces or to suit the dual labour market. The system of exemptions posed insuperable problems for the work inspectors. Double and possibly overlapping exemptions were confusing; the number of plants and individuals to be monitored was overwhelming and the small size and seasonal nature of these plants made evasion easy. Consider the clothing trades. Most seamstresses worked in small shops difficult to detect in the daytime, as they displayed no advertising and were attached to living quarters in apartments located on upper floors and inner courtyards. In the dark, the inspector had to linger in the street watching for a sign of activity such as the return of seamstresses after the evening meal (and few seamstresses could afford restaurants or go home to eat). Another difficulty was entering buildings locked for the night. In many provincial centers there were no concierges to admit inspectors, so they had to rouse residents, sometimes by shouting. As one inspector reported: "public opinion ... is extremely hostile to this part of our mission. People don't want to admit inspectors into the home of a citizen - much less a citoyenne — at night."72 In Paris, the concierge often tarried long enough to let the mistress of the sweatshop move everyone into her private quarters so she could claim that the workers were just visiting.73 In 1902 the inspectors' powers of surveillance were

141 Banning Women

seriously hampered by a court decision limiting their right to enter establishments after regular hours without strong evidence of activity, like the noise of machinery, an unlikely prospect in dressmaking. The same ruling reaffirmed the "inviolability" of private residences attached to workshops.74 Parisian dressmakers who had testified against veillees in 1890, complained that the exceptions dashed their hopes that eliminating overtime would spread orders over the whole year, while limiting overtime to no more than twelve hours a day no more than sixty days a year forced them to survive the off-season with less extra income from overtime in the busy season.75 Not surprisingly, seamstresses cooperated with mistresses to elude and mislead inspectors. Seamstresses hid in adjoining rooms, closets, and cabinets and escaped from back doors, windows, and specially constructed escape hatches. Only when outrages like twenty-hour days occurred or vindictive motives predominated did seamstresses inform the inspectors of violations.76 Table 10 shows that more summonses were issued for infractions of the overtime provisions in garment-making than for any other violation of the night work clauses. But obstacles to enforcing the overtime rules ensured that convictions under the night work clauses never approximated convictions under the hours clauses, as table 11 shows. Inspectors and their supervisory committee presided over by Waddington protested the designation of so many industries and of a season when each industry could use its exemption. Although the Consultative Committee had tried to designate each industry's busy season, no regulation could accommodate variations within industries.77 In 1895 the ministry reduced the number of trades benefiting from the toleration of overtime to thirteen. On the recommendation of the Consultative Committee, industrialists could apply for authorizations whenever they needed them.78 While employers appreciated the flexibility of the "decentralization decree," inspectors regretted their new discretionary powers because they now had to determine how many days an applicant deserved overtime and, theoretically, had to investigate every application. Only the senior inspector, Laporte, interpreted the decree to imply the old guideline of sixty days annually; the others were deluged by applications. In 1897 new regulations trimmed the list of trades eligible for overtime to five and after Millerand entered the cabinet, the Ministry of Commerce reasserted the sixty-day limit. These changes curbed flagrant abuses, but the authorized trades (women's and children's clothing, furs and lace-, ribbon-, and hat-making) employed many women.79 The number of authorizations for legal overtime increased nearly

142 Women, Work, and the French State Table 10 Most Summonses for Night Work Violations by Industry and Type of Violation Year

Industry

Violation

1896

Clothing Starch makers Cotton spinning Clothing Chemicals Printing Clothing Glassworks Furs Clothing Printing Food products Clothing Bricks and Ceramics Food products

Overtime Night shifts Night shifts Overtime Night shifts Night shifts Overtime Night shifts Overtime Overtime Night shifts Night shifts Overtime Night shifts Night shifts

1899 1901 1904 1908

Number of Percentage summonses of Total 446 165 109 450 86 50 606 329 66 353 87 50 387 185 108

39 14 9.5 54 10 6 45 24 15 43 11 6 40 19 11

Source: CST, Rapports, 1896, 466-74; 1899, XLV; 1901, LXII; 1904, XLIV; and 1908, XL.

threefold between 1900 and 1904, involving nearly 3.5 million women and 200 million woman-days.80 Inspectors also criticized the retention of the 11 P.M. deadline which invited evasion of the twelve-hour maximum. Frequently applications for permits omitted the vital information on the hours a woman would work the day she stayed late, betraying an intent to ignore the hours restrictions. The luxury trades used the largest number of legal veillees, which is why Paris issued nearly half the permits. In 1901 thirty-one furriers received 43,322 exemptions, though this extremely high number reflected a strike-breaking tactic, for the sixty days of overtime "lasted almost as long as the strike."81 A few Parisian couturiers set a good example by voluntarily renouncing veillees, but most well-organized firms adopted a routine of three specific days a week, usually Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, which at least enabled dressmakers to bring evening meals, forewarn their families, and get more sleep on intervening nights.82 Although the inspectors and their supervisory committee proclaimed overtime the worst feature of night work, the committee preparing the 1900 act did not touch overtime, because disagreement about this issue threatened to postpone action on hours standards.83 The years 1901 to 1909, when the newly formed Radical party controlled the government, was a barren time for labour legislation,84 except for health and safety standards. After Aristide Briand formed

143 Banning Women Table 11 Infractions of the Hours and Night Work Articles in the Law of 2 November 1892 as Revised by the Law of 30 March 1900 Year

Night Work

Hours

1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913

503 1,137 1,142 No information 687 834 1,534 1,349 1,160 823 813 1,009 1,260 509 969 1,591 800 1,439 915 1,337

2,531 3,877 5,725 3,000 1,002 2,119 1,613 4,572 3,539 6,284 5,454 5,744 4,565 3,541 3,123 3,514 2,915 3,032 2,822 2,714

Source: CST, Rapports, passim, and 1913, xcin.

a government, a ministerial decree limited permits to producers of mourning clothes, which drastically reduced authorized veillees. A 1911 law completed the reform by setting the curfew at 10 P.M. In 1912, 249 shops were authorized to work until 10 P.M. and twenty summonses were issued to shops preparing clothing not intended for mourning.85 Unfortunately, reform of overtime rules made little difference, given the fundamental problems in the garment trades: the large pool of women able to sew and consequently the low wages they were able to command, the seasonal nature of demand and the system of subcontracting to marginal producers. Secondary labour market conditions forced impoverished seamstresses to take overtime whenever they could, even if it involved collusion with subcontractors to break the law. Regulation of veillees accelerated the trend to sewing in the home, either full-time or after hours, which put more and more seamstresses beyond the bounds of the law.86 As early as 1899, Inspector Laporte resigned himself to waiting for a change in consumer habits to correct the situation in the clothing

144 Women, Work, and the French State

and luxury trades. In 1902 Mme Jean Brunhes of the National Council of French Women, inspired by American consumers' associations, founded the Social League of Consumers to "awaken" French consumers to the social consequences of their buying habits. The league attracted the support of prominent women like the Baronne Brincard and influential men, many of them, like Professors Cauwes and Jay, solidarist reformers. The omnipresent Keufer of the Book Workers' Federation joined to promote the idea of a label, although he distanced himself from some league positions. Members agreed not to patronize shops that abused the system ofveillees or engaged in other unfair labour practices; they compared notes, conducted research, compiled and publicized a "white list" of responsible couturiers, shopkeepers, and services. By 1909 the 650 members included inspectrices like Aldona Juillerat and researchers from the Labour Office like Mme de Maguery.87 While a few employers sought the league's stamp of approval and the idea of a label spread, their effort to educate French women had little effect,88 especially on the foreign buyers who swelled demand and insisted on prompt delivery. Increasingly, the league realized that the only solution to poor labour practices in the garment industry was a minimum wage law, notably for home workers. With an adequate wage for a ten-hour day, seamstresses would not be compelled to work evenings; the law would make it possible to monitor overtime by pay records, which were easier to check that watching thousands of buildings (although also easier to falsify).89 THE BERNE CONVENTION

Reformers decided that the ban on female night labour should be international. In 1904 the International Association for the Legal Protection of Workers sent memoranda to forty-six countries asking them to take part in an international conference to prohibit women's night work. To make sure that the inertia following the Berlin Conference was not repeated, they wanted an international convention. The association's economic rationale drew upon studies showing that existing bans had not lowered production due to plant expansion and intensified day shifts. Clearly intensification of labour was not considered a problem. Their social rationale reiterated earlier aspirations: forbidding night work was the "best point of departure" to release women for housework. They outlined how women would spend one hour of their twelve-hour "break" travelling to and from work, three hours purchasing and preparing food, housecleaning and caring for children and eight hours sleeping. While not ideal, this

145 Banning Women

double day was acceptable. Finally, they addressed the objection that the ban should not include single women, who did not have the same household duties, by saying this would mean the dismissal of married women.90 As always, it was acceptable to disregard single women to protect the maternal, housewifely role. There is no indication that they saw any inconsistency between rejecting a distinction between women on the ground that wives would be disadvantaged and accepting a distinction between men and women that disadvantaged all women, whatever their marital statuus. Perhaps the kindest interpretation is that they believed that the labour market was so sexually segmented that eliminating women from night work would not mean their elimination from feminine industries. When the Swiss government convoked an international conference in 1906, the French government sent Arthur Fontaine, director of the Labour Office, Picquenard, editor of the Bulletin du Travail, and two other delegates. Fontaine, who played a pivotal role in revising and limiting the convention, and the French ambassador to Switzerland signed for France. All the European nations except Russia, Norway, and the Balkan states signed the accord, which allowed for delays in ratification and in application to certain industries.91 Within six months, the minister of labour, the reform socialist Rene Viviani, introduced a bill to ratify the entente and another to replace the night work clauses with legislation in conformity with the accord. In the preamble to the first, Viviani reminded industrialists of their insistence on international conventions to equalize competition and appealed to workers by linking the measure to the "physical and moral well-being" and "intellectual development" of the working class. If we grant that the final appeal was not mere rhetoric, it was evidently intended for children, since no one suggested that women would engage in anything intellectual. In the preamble to the second bill, Viviani claimed that changes to the 1892 law recognized present practice in the case of eleven consecutive hours' rest, or met longstanding demands by the work inspectors for a 10 P.M. curfew.92 Although the Chamber swiftly approved both bills,93 the Senate held up the bill modifying French legislation until 1911, just within the deadline to bring the laws of signatory countries into line with the convention — a deadline extended for France and eleven other countries.94 Instead of new legislation, the Senate, led by Waddington, revised the 1892 act, a sensible decision given the welter of laws and the ongoing process of codification. An attempt to simplify the application for temporary permits caused some of the delay.95 Opponents had to accept this simplification, which was vulnerable to abuse, after the administration arbitrarily adopted the system in 1910. The

146 Women, Work, and the French State

1911 law retained temporary permits for industries to be determined by administrative ruling, as written into the convention. The only omission was permanent exceptions for night work.96 The new law did not have a major impact. Even before it was applied, the number of authorized veillees had fallen drastically to 532,436. Only nine of the twelve eligible industries sought permissions in 1911, and in seven of these industries fewer than six establishments took advantage of them. The same year, 118 plants applied for permanent night shifts of seven hours for 1,558 women and girls. The service correctly predicted that the end of this privilege would inconvenience only ten book binderies employing about 500 women. Morning newspapers were installing machines to fold newspaper. The first year the new legislation was in effect, the number of women on permanent night shifts fell from 490 in paper works, glassworks, and sugar refineries to fourteen in two notorious glassworks. By comparison, 11,472 youths were still on night shifts, mainly in glassworks and metallurgy. The number of men working nights had increased by a few thousand to 55,596.97 Despite all the dodges described in this chapter, the night work clauses, as seconded by public opinion, had clarly halted the trend toward night shifts in textiles and women's night employment in printing; it reduced women's evening and morning overtime. When the Chambers of Commerce rejected labour regulations for commerce in 1912, they made an exception for the law on uninterrupted rest at night.98 Political consensus on the 1911 law, transferred to the Labour Code, held until the 19703." Assessing whether the night work clauses of the 1892 labour law fulfilled the more extravagant predictions of reformers is impossible, because the actual text very imperfectly resembled the ban reformers wanted and because the ban was only part of an amorphous program to shore up the working-class family. Even deciding whether the clauses improved women's health and morals poses problems, for no one provided any hard evidence about their health and morals before or after the law came into effect. A few impressionistic and inconclusive appraisals can be ventured. The advantages in removing women from poorly lit, overheated plants at night were partly offset by their reassignment to longer day shifts or temporary loss of badly needed wages. Whether women were safer or less liable to drink on their way home from work at 9 P.M., is debatable. Nor is it certain that they became better housewives, for they were not at home to prepare lunch and dinner for their family. The generous exceptions for overtime, the impossibility of enforcing overtime rules, and the retreat into domestic sewing undermined the health benefits from

147 Banning Women

limiting the long hours of needlework in confined spaces, which even then were manifestly linked to eyestrain, exhaustion, and tuberculosis. Although the economic effects of the night work clauses are easier to discern and closer to reformers' expectations, they too are rather contradictory. The ban on night shifts in textiles did open up night jobs for men in the short run and the gradual removal of women from continuously fired factories and print shops helped reestablish male monopolies on higher-paying night shifts. At the same time, the generally slow pace of women's departure and their relatively low wages ensured that no massive unemployment resulted. Waddington's confident predictions about modernization proved correct in large plants but diametrically opposed to the trend to domestic labour in the garment industry. Of course, other factors were conducive to rationalization or deindustrialization. Finally, French production and profits did not suffer from the night work clauses, save in the short term in industries experiencing overproduction, like cotton and silk spinning.

Seamstresses: Midnight Strikes (Phot. Bibl. Nat. Paris)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Saving Women?: The Health and Safety Clauses

Occupational health and safety were not priorities in the sex-specific labour bills of the i88os. Added as afterthoughts, the articles applying health and safety standards to workplaces employing women and adolescent girls encountered little opposition in the Assembly. This chapter explains why these articles avoided serious objections and how they differed from more controversial and comprehensive health and safety acts. Legislators barely debated age- and sex-specific health and safety articles because they were minimal, vague, and preventive rather than punitive. Separating these articles from costly and complicated measures like workers' compensation also accounts for rapid legislative approval. Experts and lobbyists did not promote sex-specific provisions, although they campaigned for the more universal health and safety laws enacted from 1893 through 1903. Industrial hygiene provided more domentation about the spectacular dangers of masculine trades - and speculation about threats to working women's reproductive capacities - than information about the insidious hazards of feminine workplaces. Age- and sex-qualified safety provisions differed from more comprehensive regulations in their solutions to workplace problems. Whereas the qualified provisions eliminated designated personnel from unsafe workplaces, the genereal regulations mandated safer workplaces. The Consultative Committee on Arts and Manufactures banned women and adolescents from over sixty dangerous masculine trades. By contrast, the 1909 prohibition of white lead in public works removed the lethal substance, not categories of workers, from state enterprises. Another difference was the absence of women from the formulation or application of the laws and decrees. Unlike miners

150 Women, Work, and the French State

and railwaymen, working women were neither consulted nor cited in the brief debates about their safety. Sex-specific health and safety standards had implications beyond working conditions. The pattern of prohibiting women from some dangerous trades but permitting them in others reproduced the dual labour market. Since the forbidden occupations had few women, few lost jobs but all women lost access to occupations that were higherpaying than feminine trades. Alternatively, the ten dangerous industries entitled to employ women included the manufacturing of explosives. The rationale for this entitlement referred to traditionally feminine labor forces, "nimble fingers," and womanly patience. In tandem, the proscriptive and permissive clauses expressed and entrenched sex-typing of occupations; they sanctioned sexual segmentation in the labour market. Other provisions restricting women to the preparatory and finishing stages of production enforced internal labour markets, or male monopolies of primary jobs, leaving women auxiliary positions. Finally, the chapter estimates the effect of safety regulations on working conditions. When the inspection service encountered resistance to standards in important feminine workplaces, the administration vacillated. The 1909 decree setting maximum weights women could lift, carry, push, or pull evoked protests from food delivery services. The ministry responded by exempting food deliveries until new experiments established more acceptable maximums. In other cases, inspectors ignored infractions after employers threatened to fire all the women involved. Sometimes they tolerated violations because they considered the regulation too rigid or the modifications to the workplace too costly for the small entrepreneurs employing most women. One consequence was high rates of noncompliance decades after standards went into effect. By ignoring unsafe conditions in feminine trades, as well as by eliminating women instead of improving masculine workplaces, legislators and administrators thwarted attempt to ensure industrial health and safety. SLIPPING IN SAFETY

A safety article appeared in the Work Committee's comprehensive bill of 1884, after a ministerial inquiry was launched into complaints about inadequate application of the health and safety clauses in the 1874 child labour law and after a private bill was tabled to set safety standards for all worksites. This article extended to all worksites the 1874 requirements that workplaces employing children be clean,

151 Saving Women?

safe, and ventilated, with dangerous parts of machinery covered or out of the way.l When the next omnibus bill came before the Chamber in 1886, it covered only women and adolescents. Two articles had been added: one included adolescents in the earlier ban on women's and children's underground labour and another prohibited the three groups from work endangering them, exceeding their strength, exposing them to "emanations prejudicial to their health," or jeopardizing their virtue. These articles were vaguer than an intervening bill which would have forbidden women, adolescents, and children to handle explosive, corrosive, or poisonous materials, to polish metal, glass, or crystal, and to use lead-and mercury-based paints.2 The Labour Comittee referred tedious technical debates and long presentations from interested parties to the Consultative Committee on Arts and Manufactures. Limiting coverage to women, adolescents, and children avoided time-consuming debates about intervention in free men's labour. Although the Labour Committee had no intention of forbidding men any kind of work, it was preparing a separate bill to apply health and safety standards to most workplaces.3 However, the committee did not treat sex-specific provisions as preliminary steps in a process of piecemeal reform. More comprehensive regulations did not replace sex-specific measures. France did not repeal clauses assimilating women to adolescents in matters of dangerous, heavy or "immoral" work until igy5.4 The Labour Committee also kept safety standards distinct from a dozen bills to ensure compensation for industrial accidents, despite a logical connection between the prevention of and compensation for work injuries. Because these proposals raised questions of fault, indemnification, and court interference in masculine workplaces,5 where most serious accidents occurred,6 they were contentions. While the Labour Committee was formulating sex-specific health and safety provisions, subcommittees7 and an extraparliamentary commission were preparing reports on workers' compensation schemes. Their solution was a complex calculation of occupational risk which avoided judgments about fault and, when adopted, "normalized" the concept of work accidents.8 By the time the sex-specific health and safety articles came to be debated in 1888, 1890, and 1891, the only sign of dissatisfaction with the silence on accident insurance were a few observations about the opportunistic distinction between compelling employers to report accidents in this bill and holding them responsible for injuries incurred at work in another bill. Aside from exchanges over amendments to exempt youths from the ban on

152 Women, Work, and the French State

underground labour — ended by having the administration determine the conditions under which youths could work underground — the Chamber approved this section of the bill with little discussion.9 Dissent was minimal because the only innovation was the inclusion of women and adolescents in the lenient provisions of the earlier child labour law. Although Yves Guyot introduced an amendment to exclude women, his abstract argument about women's rights mustered only thirty votes.10 Even as the Senate Committee rejected women in the hours and night work clauses, it accepted women in the health and safety articles.11 The consensus on sex-specific safety standards survived application of the law. In 1898 Divisional Inspector Jarecjewski suggested removing women from the administrative decree that prohibited them from touching or being in the vicinity of exposed moving parts of motors. He felt this regulation was "not in the interests of the protected party." Other divisional inspectors reported that no one had complained, that women suffered injuries from contact with saw-tooth gears, and that their "free-floating" clothing invited accidents. Inevitably, there were unsubstantiated remarks about women's "nervousness and frequent mood swings" making them unreliable around machinery. When the feasibility of suppressing this article resurfaced in 1914, a majority of the inspectors advocated retaining it with no further justification than allusions to "reasons too evident to mention."12 Drafting the articles in general terms also defused opposition. Vague language about keeping worksites "in a constant state of cleanliness, adequately lit and ventilated" reduced apprehensions about the cost of compliance. Delegating the task of translating the articles into precise rules to the Consultative Committee on Arts and Manufacturers diverted opposition.13 Modest penalties were similarly reassuring. Sex qualifications and vague guidelines do not completely account for the accord on this issue. The Industrial Health and Safety Act of 1893 encompassed all workplaces except those employing only family members. The act assigned the Consultative Committee on Public Health the task of formulating precise regulations on lighting, ventilation, exhaust systems, fire prevention, and the provision of drinking water and toilets.14 But this law too had reassuring limitations. Although it more than doubled the number of establishments to be inspected, it made no provision either for expansion of the inspection service or for instruction in industrial hygiene. By 1903, 120 inspectors were expected to measure rooms, check equipment, and investigate sanitary conditions in 528,703 worksites.15 The administration

153 Saving Women?

did not seriously consider medical adjuncts until 1906, when it rejected the idea for budgetary reasons. Yet Belgium, Britain, and Germany were able to afford medical inspectors.16 The Ministry of Commerce did offer candidates for the inspectorate a course in industrial hygiene after 1906. While the course reviewed building codes, it provided little information on microbes or pathology.17 The 1893/1903 law also required warnings before citations for infractions, whereas the 1892 law left warnings to the discretion of the inspector.18 With these brakes on rigorous implementation, the industrial health and safety bill introduced in i8go19 proceeded with• • 20 out 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 19O2.21 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 18905 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.22 They were quoted in parliamentary speeches for the protective labour bill.23 However, these voluntary organizations campaigned against stateimposed measures. In the i88os their spokesmen argued that "state inspection dees not have the necessary elasticity to accommodate the many and varied exigencies of industrial labour." Throughout the i88os and 18905, they fought any scheme for accident insurance based on employer contributions as being disastrous for small employers and unreliable for workers.24 After the Industrial Safety Act of June 1893, industrial societies dismissed the consultative committees that drafted the administrative decree as inexperienced bureaucrats. 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 administrative 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.25 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.26 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.27 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,28 they acted to deflect pressure to have the state impose "social remedies" like short time.29 The Consultative Committee on Public Health participated in the preparation of government bills in the i88os and administrative decrees in the 18905. 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.30 The prestigous Annales d'hygiene publique et de medecine legale published 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.31 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.32 After several men lost their lives in an underwater project, the new Ministry of Labour instituted medical surveillance of personnel in pressurized compartments.33 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.34 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 Rene 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 personal hygiene, for workers took habits learned in the workshop home.35 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.36 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.37 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 suffered 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.38 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 18905 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.39 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.40 Consulted by the administration on the advisability of modifying regulations, inspectors generally suggested tightening enforcement or stiffening penalties, especially for sex-specific rules. Inquiries conducted 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 transport and treatment of dirty laundry.41 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.42 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.43 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.44 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.45 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.46 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.47 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.48 Inspectors' doubts about the mortality figures in 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.49. 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 politicians 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.50 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.51 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 Metiers advocated fortifying the acts of 1893 through igo3.52 By 1909 the conference demanded the extension of accident compensation to occupational diseases.53 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.54 Despite the growing number of lobbies and specialists, the health and safety acts were changed, in significant ways, only for women.55 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.56 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.57 Although doctors had long observed, diagnosed, and prescribed for occupational disabilities and diseases, systematic study dates from Charles de Freycinet's experiments on industrial sanitation in the 186os. 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.58 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,59 Pasteur reoriented the medical profession in the 1870 and i88os. Germ theory directed attention to nonspecific symptoms of exposure to invisible microbes and by-products like fibrous and paniculate 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.60 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.61 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.62 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.63 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.64 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 in 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.65 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.66 Even today, studies of menstruation and pregnancy are the two largest areas of medical research on women's work.67 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 indisposition, and that these women left work before having children.68 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 hand washing in harsh detergents, porcelain moulders and polisheers with saturnism from their pastes and paints, and silk workers with swollen, ulcerated skin from immersing silk cocoons in hot, fetid water.69 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 i ,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.70 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-

i6a

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.71 This happy ending was unique. A P P L Y I N G 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."72 Since fewer than one in ten of the employees in most of these trades were female73 — 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 4 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.75 However, the Consultative Committee 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 pressing rooms but also the lack of complaints from female pressers. Instead of changing the regulation, the committee accepted the inspectors' solution of better ventilation.76 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,77 even though these prescriptions were hard to enforce.78 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 explosives, 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.79 Not coincidentally, these industries employed fortyfive or more women for every 100 men.80 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,81 before legislators set maximum weights women could carry, push, or pull.82 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.83 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,84 this schedule permitted them in safer preparatory and finishing sheds in the same industries. This compromise helped prolong apprenticeship and family employment; it also perpetuated an internal labour market that placed women in secondary jobs.85 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.86 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,87 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.88 A 1905 circular actually sanctioned the custom of women dislodging lint or other waste from active machines.89 Three years later Jarecjewski'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.90 In 1912 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 onetwentieth of those harming men) happened while cleaning inside operating machinery.91 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 accidents, 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.92 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.93 Paying fines cost less than compliance.94

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.95 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.96 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.97 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.98 Resistance by the regulated industries and vacillation by the administration 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.99 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 if25c 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 depain 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.100 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.101 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 is 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.102 This regulation, the subject of more criticism than any other regulation, was promptly "postponed".103 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.104 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."105 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 features 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 little 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 Consultative 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 workplaces, 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 instruction 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.

Bread Delivery (Phot. Bibl. Nat. Paris)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Protecting Infants ?: The Long Campaign for Maternity Leave

Given French politicians' concern about depopulation, one might have expected the Assembly to pass laws prohibiting industrial work before and immediately after childbirth. Yet, when every other European nation except Russia mandated maternity leave of four to eight weeks before and/or after giving birth, France delayed.1 The delay seems puzzling, because spokesmen for maternity leave skilfully associated their cause with the issue of repopulation. The most likely explanation of this procrastination is that French legislators, who were hesitant to interfere in family life, refused to vote for maternity leaves without the benefits that made them feasible, and then could not agree on financing the program. This explanation fits the familiar interpretation of the "immobilism" of the Third Republic in social and fiscal affairs. Yet the idea of "immobilism" ignores the laws regulating child labour and wetnursing in the iSyos,2 the divorce and education acts of the i88os,3 the legislation on abandoned children in 1889 and igo4,4 not to mention the protective labour laws of 1892 and 1900. Late nineteenth-century legislators were reforming or, in Jacques Donzelot's terms, "policing" the family.5 Since the Assembly did not enact maternity leave and benefits until 1913, the germane questions are why the social and fiscal conservatism of French politicians retarded this kind of family reform and what finally overruled their reluctance. To find answers, it is necessary to analyse the arguments and tactics of the proponents of maternity leave in the context of contemporary political and intellectual debates about labour and social legislation. Legislative deliberations about maternity leave occurred in two distinct stages, from 1886 to 1892, then from 1903 to 1913; lobbying spanned the two stages but peaked between 1895 and 1905. This chapter will consider the three phases of the campaign sequentially, because the extralegislative propaganda altered the nature of legisla-

170 Women, Work, and the French State

tive debates. Scientific evidence and lobbying played a more significant role than they did in the passage of hours standards, the ban on night work, or the early health and safety measures. Chronology also helps account for confusion about the purpose of maternity legislation, a confusion that delayed its passage. When the original proposal for maternity leave emerged in a prolonged debate over restricting women's workday, politicians resisted humanitarian appeals for the protection of working mothers. Subsequently, obstetricians, demographers, and charitable organizations defined infant mortality as a major social problem, one that could be solved by maternity leave. Furthermore, they devised a "scientific" rationale for intervention in child-bearing which policymakers could use to create a consensus. In a move that was to have long-term consequences, they shifted the focus from helping working mothers per se to the more utilitarian but also more costly concept of public assistance for needy mothers to encourage "repopulation." The senator who sponsored the successful bill, Paul Strauss, combined elements of a limited labour law, a public assistance program, and the new social insurance system to gain leave and benefits. Combining these elements, however, created problems of definition. In the first place, there were differences over whether maternity leave was a component of labour, welfare, or social insurance legislation. In addition, disagreements arose about coverage, compensation, and financing. As long as the measure was attached to factory bills confined to industrial workers, critics asked why agricultural working women were excluded. Even after a separate bill encompassed nonindustrial workers, amendments to grant leaves to domestic workers and to give assistance to homemakers threatened the bill. Similarly, advocates of industrial leaves preferred compensation in the form of "indemnities" based on wages lost; spokesmen for broader coverage favoured insurance benefits without reference to wage levels. Furthermore, proponents of government financing quarelled over the division of costs between the three levels of government, while Marxists who wanted to tax all employers to fund the program argued with Social Catholics who thought the concerned parties — employers of women and working women of childbearing age — should contribute to maternity insurance schemes. DEPOPULATION AND MATERNITY

Even a cursory look at French population trends will clarify the change in the character of the two legislative debates. The birth rate had been falling longer than in any other major country; as a con-

171 Protecting Infants

sequence, natality was noticeably lower than in neighboring countries, especially Germany. Exacerbating the low birth rate was a relatively high infant mortality rate of over 135 in 1,000 in the iSgos. Published reports of an excess of deaths over births in 1890, 1891, 1892, and 1895 aroused anxieties about depopulation.6 As in England, where evidence of a decline in population growth gave an impetus to the infant welfare movement,7 the reports fostered demands to reduce mortality by improved infant care. The first reports appeared too late in the first round of debates to help supporters of maternity leave build a political consensus about such leave as a remedy for depopulation. Instead these reports informed lobbies to obtain prenatal rest homes, postnatal convalescent homes, baby clinics, and maternity leave. Their educational efforts and private clinics contributed to a precipitous drop in the infant mortality rate to 100 in 1910. During the second round of legislative deliberations, advocates argued that leave would enhance population growth and close the widening gap between the German and French armies.8 nationalistic and militaristic appeals did build a political consensus in the tense pre-World War i years. The case for postnatal leaves as a way of saving infant lives was relatively solid. In the 18905 systematic demographic studies confirmed that up to 45 per cent of the deaths between the ages of one day and one year occurred in the vulnerable first month of life. Medical reports in the i88os and 18905 proved that the neonates fed animal milk suffered more gastroenteritis and succumbed in far higher proportions than breast-fed babies. Although French demographers and doctors did not link infant mortality to maternal occupation (save for a few "dangerous" trades), geographic comparisons suggested a positive correlation between high infant death rates, especially from diarrhea, and concentrations of women workers, particularly textile workers. Strangely, researchers did not connect the incidence of infant diarrhea to the feeding practices of working mothers. Instead, they analysed maternity hospital records to show that most POOR women left hospital earlier than recommended so that they could return to work. On interviewing working women who had lost many babies, researchers learned that most had stopped nursing early to resume work. Given this indirect evidence,9 and new information about the large proportion of women of childbearing age in the labour force,10 many policymakers inferred that postnatal leaves would significantly lower the infant mortality rate. The case for prenatal leaves to prevent infant deaths rested on more specculative prognostications about maternal rest reducing the number of premature deliveries and underdeveloped, unviable newborn children.

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Because politicians and "scientists" emphasized the benefits accruing to infants and the nation, they generated very little data on the actual practices of, and provisions for, childbirth and infant care among working women. The three maternal breast-feeding charities established in the 18705 and i88os suggest many working-class women left childbed within two weeks and resorted to bottle feeding. However, the largest charity, the Society for the Propagation of Maternal Nursing, aided only 1,500 to 2,000 mothers a year in the first decade of the twentieth century.11 Despite the theoretical shift in attitudes toward single mothers from the moralistic criticism of their depravity earlier in the century to the medical model of concern about their infants' health in the Third Republic,12 private societies only served married women who remained home to breast-feed. As early as the i86os, the Dollfus family had introduced maternity leaves and benefits to encourage new mothers among their textile workers to rest, nurse, and develop "an attachment" to their babies. Despite publicity about their success in lowering the infant death rate in their workforce,13 few employers followed their example. A 1905 investigation into the protection accorded pregnant and parturient women in industry found only one factory that offered "organized protection for pregnant women." This textile factory in Rouen provided medical and pharmacological assistance and unemployment benefits if a doctor prescribed rest. Elsewhere pregnant women depended on the good will of foremen to reassign them to less taxing work stations or on the custom of workmates easing their task; if they had to quit work, they turned to charity. For new mothers, there were approximately 150 maternity insurance plans, mainly in textiles, such as Waddington's factories,14 the clothing and watchmaking trades, and department stores. Only the state tobacco monopoly covered all its female workers, and it had done so only since 1904. When owners contributed to the plan, they usually imposed conditions like a year's employment in the establishment, marriage, and residence with one's husband. One Lyonnais plant did give assistance to a single mother for her first pregnancy. Most plans were partially funded by working women's payments and paid monetary benefits in the form of a fixed sum or a portion of wages. Some also gave relief in kind in the form of layettes. Most plans were in southern cities like Bordeaux, Marseilles, or Toulouse, with a few in Paris, Rouen, and Lille. The divisional inspector in Lille estimated that thirty-one or .25 per cent of the firms employing women in his area offered insurance to 5,000 working women or about 5 per cent of the female labour force.15 In the absence of systematic charitable or paternalistic maternity schemes, some feminine trades tried self-help. In 1891 Felix Pois-

173 Protecting Infants

sineaux and other leaders of clothing unions founded a Maternity Insurance Association composed of clothing workers who paid annual premiums of six francs in return for benefits at childbirth. The membership peaked at 1,912 in 1896, then fell until the premiums were halved in 1905. State subsidies more than compensated for the loss. Honorary members' donations and union contributions always supplemented regular members' payments; after 1906 external sources provided four-fifths of the total revenue. By 1909 the association had 17,202 members and helped finance 2,667 births.16 After the infusion of state monies, the number of maternity insurance schemes shot up to 129. But politicians and scientists insisted self-help was inadequate, for young workers would not put away money for future pregnancies, the poorest workers could not afford even modest premiums, and women past child-bearing ceased to contribute. Aside from having too small a population-at-risk able to make payments, many of these plans imposed moralistic conditions that excluded the most needy women.17 T H E C H A M B E R D E B A T E , 1886-1892

One general observation must precede the analysis of the first debate. Attempts to identify political support beyond Social Catholics, Socialists, and outspoken individuals in the radical republican tradition have proved unsatisfactory, partly because few parties took a formal position on the issue, partly because individuals often voted for the principle, or motherhood, in the first reading, then sent bills back to committee in the crucial second reading. Nevertheless, a pattern is apparent. The loose coalition of the left and center which passed factory acts splintered over maternity leave. Early efforts to broaden the base of support by presenting maternity leave as a remedy for depopulation failed. Later efforts succeeded because new advocates, with new medical and demographic data, convinced the Assembly that leave contributed to national military strength. Linking issues to depopulation and nationalist sentiment was a common political ploy in prewar yars.18 In 1886, when the Social Catholic deputy, Albert de Mun, proposed pre- and postnatal leaves, the Chamber of Deputies was discussing the bill to reduce women's workday and bar them from night work. De Mun considered maternity leave a humane complement to these measures to lighten women's workload and revive family life. After he abandoned prenatal breaks because of objections about when they would begin, the Labour Committee revising the already complicated bill added an article prescribing a four-week postpartum

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leave. Although the article survived the first reading, it was hastily dropped after an amendment to permit an earlier return to work on presentation of a medical certificate drew criticism about women deceiving doctors about their health. When the Labour Committee reincorporated the article in the 1890 bill, conservative complaints about excluding nonindustrial women forced the article back to committee.19 Dr Dron tried to salvage the measure as a separate bill, while Emile Brousse, a reform socialist, suggested universal leave and assistance. The committee compromised on a bill prohibiting industrial work after childbirth but providing relief to all needy new mothers. Differences about coverage and financing buried that bill in November i8g2.20 Introducing the concept of mandatory maternity leave in a debate on protective labour legislation for women was logical, if problematical. Experience with legislation for children and the new consciousness of childhood as an essential stage of development had made it possible to justify banning young children from the workplace to protect their physical and intellectual development. To Albert de Mun, barring new mothers from factories so they could care for babies was the obvious corollary. Nevertheless, laissez-faire liberals balked at restricting women's freedom to work. At first, the fight over women's workday diverted attention from the issue of maternity leave and lulled the Labour Committee into false complacency. Once liberals lost the battle over the workday, they turned their critical attention to leave. Only then did the committee, through Dr Dron, offer a systematic defence. Few liberals or conservatives made purely ideological objections. Because liberals themselves were not convinced of mothers' right to work and because they knew about the custom of long confinements, few protested that mandatory leave was an infringement on individual liberty.21 Instead they emphasized individual differences between women and thus the tyranny of a fixed rest period for all. The point was temporarily blunted by the amendment authorizing earlier returns to work with medical approval, then discredited when a critic, Dr Armand Despres, failed to submit promised evidence that some women could resume work on the third day after giving birth. Despres, a specialist in venereal diseases, trivialized the issue with inappropriate references to "all husbands' knowledge" that women had to be "spared" three days a month. His tasteless remarks amused many deputies but offended others.22 Both the laughter and the indignation leave the impression that politicians felt uncomfortable discussing a subject that reminded them of sexual intercourse and "unmentionable" bodily functions. To counteract Despres' self-

175 Protecting Infants

proclaimed expertise, Dron belatedly consulted the Obstetrical Society, which promptly and obligingly confirmed the need for four weeks' rest after childbirth.23 Dron also denied charges that the committee was trying to initiate change in personal life and argued in a familiar vein that they were trying to "generalize" the practice of "responsible" employers.24 In 1891 a liberal, Francois Deloncle, noted that supporters of leaves treated "maternity" (pregnancy and delivery) as an infirmity. However, neither Deloncle nor anybody else took the trouble to note the disturbing implications of this conceptual framework, so endemic was the notion of childbirth as illness.25 Deloncle further observed that leaves without pay would throw working women into poverty precisely when they needed extra income. Deloncle's insight inspired Emile Brousse to move that new mothers be compensated for wages lost on leave. Fearful that the principle of compensation could be applied to, and thereby destroy, provisions for a weekly holiday in the bill, the Labour Committee refused to consider the motion. When the Chamber welcomed it, the committee insisted on detaching leaves from the labour bill.26 Then Brousse tabled a bill calling for leaves and "indemnities" of one franc a day for all working women. Deputies who were worried about the inequity of protecting only one category of workers rallied behind the bill and obstructionists who reasoned that a more expensive program would prove politically unpalatable joined them to vote the bill back to committee.27 By the time the Labour Committee considered maternity leave as a separate measure, they had read the French delegation's report on the International Conference on Labour Legislation written by the respected liberal, Jules Simon. At the Berlin Conference of 1890, the new kaiser's representatives had proposed several ways of "protecting" working women and children. The French delegation, which voted with the minority opposing restrictions on women's workday, voted with the majority on forbidding work for four weeks after giving birth. To justify the negative vote, Simon referred to reservations about regulating adult labour. But he accepted maternity leave as protection due "persons whose health and safety can only be safeguarded by the State," just as he accepted limits on child labour as a State "obligation." He characterized maternity leave as a restraint on freedom "done in the name of the evident and superior interest of the human race." He even admitted that mandatory leave would "create a new public assistance responsibility for the State."28 The Berlin Conference, the Simon Report, and the new rationale about higher interests profoundly influenced Dron's report, released in 1892. Responding to objections that maternity leaves would make

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French industry uncompetitive, Dron cited the resolutions of the Berlin Conference and maternity legislation in Austria, Belgium, Germany, and four other European countries. The report also replied to assumed, if largely unexpressed, concern about infringing on individual liberty by quoting Jules Simon, who could not be "suspected of socialism." More specifically, Dron contended that enforced leaves were in the best interests of the mother, the child, and the nation. Mothers would benefit from better health; breast-fed babies would escape gastroenteritis, the major cause of infant mortality; lowering infant mortality would halt the natural decrease in population revealed in the last census and ensure "the future and even the very existence of the race." Although Dron quoted the Bible on forty days' confinement and delivered homilies on "the maternal instinct," he stressed that he intended to base his report on "medical treatises, the authorities in this matter." He cited the opinion of the Obstetrical Society and called it "exclusively scientific, leaving nothing equivocal," footnoted one medical report, appended another, and reproduced mortality statistics.29 This report marks a transition from the humanitarian to the utilitarian rationale and, simultaneously, a transfer of focus from mothers to babies and the nation as principal beneficiaries. No one questioned the rationale or lamented the displacement of mothers. Opponents did attack and amend the details about coverage. Dron defended the limitation of leaves to women employed in the industrial sector on grounds of their long, uninterrupted work away from home and the pragmatic consideration that the work inspectors could not enforce leaves on farms. Pursuing his distinction between industrial women and poor women, he offered the former indemnities of half their daily wages to a ceiling of two francs and the latter daily "aids" of fifty centimes to one franc.30 In the final debates of October - November 1892, opponents countered with examples of field labourers who put in long hours of heavy physical labour away from home and pointed out that such paltry assistance would hardly prevent poor women from working. After the committee refused an amendment to forbid new mothers agricultural labour, the Chamber adopted the amendment by an overwhelming majority of 431.31 However just — and therefore hard to reject in first reading — the amendment pushed the bill beyond the realm of existing labour legislation and effective enforcement. As the committee predicted, it lost the support of the fragile coalition of factions that had just passed the 1892 labour law. The amendment dealt a mortal blow to the bill. Further complications came in the form of questions about Dron's estimates of eligibility and expenses. Using national figures on natal-

177 Protecting Infants

ity and women of child-bearing age, Dron established an annual ratio of one birth for every nine women and applied this ratio to the number of industrial and indigent women to estimate that 223,918 births would be eligible for assistance. Assuming an average payment of thirty francs a birth, he calculated an annual cost of 6,417,704 francs.32 In debate other advocates used different figures. By drawing an analogy with the operation of the system of relief for poor army reservists' families, Paul Doumer, another radical republican, argued that half the new mothers would apply for assistance. By multiplying half the total annual births by twenty-eight francs, he nearly doubled Dron's cost estimate. Andre Castelin, a Boulangist deputy, offered more speculative statistics. Starting with the number of women of childbearing age, he subtracted those who were single or presumed infertile to compute a net birth rate of 132 and a cost of 8,064,000 francs. His contention that his estimate was "rigorously determined by statistics that cannot be contested because they are official" prompted derisions.33 Dron's financial provisions also drew fire. Although he divided the financial burden equally among the three levels of government, he only arranged for the communes and departments to raise their revenues to cover expenses. Further, he did not consult the Budget Committee, probably because he expected a negative reaction from the finance minister, Maurice Rouvier, who preached and practised liberal financial orthodoxy. After the requisite statement in favour of the principle, Rouvier flatly declared that the state did not have the funds for such an expensive subsidy and suggested that the communes assume the entire burden, since they were, "in effect, extensions of the family." The committee had resisted passing along the costs because they knew that small, poor communes had the highest natality and that conservatives, who posed as defenders of the communes, would accuse them of fiscal irresponsibility. In debate, both the committee and the conservatives opposed the suggestion. Meanwhile, counterproposals came from right and left. Protesting that government financing undermined self-help, de Mun proposed that working women and their employers pay premiums into a maternity insurance scheme.34 The same day, Paul Lafargue of the Parti Ouvrier introduced a bill to indemnify all working women by an allowance of three to six francs a day, depending on the cost of living in their area, from the fourth month of pregnancy to the end of the first year after childbirth. The bill included a tax on all employers to pay for this radically enlarged program. The preamble explained that childbirth was "a social function" and it was the state's "duty" to intervene as long as capitalism "pulls women and children out of the

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domestic sphere to transform them into instruments of production"35 At this stage in the discourse, the concept of childbearing as a social function to be rewarded elicited laughter in the Chamber. The only acceptable feature of the bill was the idea that women belonged in the home. De Mun complained that Lafargue's proposal transformed the bill from an attempt to regulate work into an effort "to encourage population". De Mun also initiated a purely ideological exchange about state socialism. Dron wearily recommended that the Chamber await the bill on men's hours before debating the state's role in relations between capital and labour. Lafargue's bill did not come to a vote, but less radical amendments passed on the understanding that they would be revised between readings. When the government warned the committee to ignore amendments that would "compromise the final vote,"36 the committee abandoned the bill and ended parliamentary consideration of the issue for over a decade. With de Mun diverted into more conventional conservative politics and Dron preoccupied with universal hours standards, no influential member of the Assembly pressed for maternity leave. THE MEDICAL AND CHARITABLE CAMPAIGN, 18908—1912

Outside the Assembly, however, medical scientists continued to investigate the relationship between maternal work and childbirth and to make a case for maternity leave as a deterrent to infant mortality. In the late i88os industrial hygienists studied how early return to a job affected the reproductive organs. When this line of inquiry ran into controversy, obstetricians and the emerging specialists, pediatricians, turned to correlations between bottlefeeding and infant diarrhea. The Labour Committee had queried the reputation of the Obstetrical Society in i8go,37 but no one questioned the authority of medical specialists a decade later. In the interval, many doctors became crusaders for maternal breast-feeding and postpartum rest to reduce infant mortality. Obstetricians proselytized for prenatal rest in order to reduce the number of premature deliveries. Both types of researcher joined philanthropic organizations and pressure groups promoting population growth. These lobbies mobilized public opinion in favour of maternity leave. In the late i88os Dr Henri Napias of the Society for Public Medicine reported in the Revue d'hygiene that most poor mothers left the charity hospitals or midwives' rooms provided by Public Welfare nine to twelve days after delivery. Citing four prominent obstetricians who

179 Protecting Infants held that the uterus took three to four weeks to recover, Napias argued that resuming work in less than four weeks could cause prolapse and chronic inflammation of the uterus, which would make the next pregnancy difficult, even impossible. He concluded that "hygienists of a country with as feeble natality as France should not be indifferent to future fecundity."38 Even then, at least one medical text advised only one week's rest and medical anthropologists claimed that "primitive" women who promptly returned to their tasks were less likely to experience puerperal infection.39 In the ensuing decade, German and French experiments found that standing and walking days after birth helped drain the uterus and therefore lowered the risk of infection. The Parisian obstetrical establishment retorted that "civilized" women were "deformed," patients could sit up in bed for drainage and "brisk movements" caused fallen wombs.40 Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, most obstetricians prescribed eighteen to twenty-five days' bed-rest and continued to do so into the twentieth century. As late as 1912 Dr Louis Pierra had to deny he was a revolutionary for getting new mothers up progressively between the fifth and fourteenth days.41 While the controversy continued, Dr Napias disseminated a questionnaire about the "legislative, administrative, and medical remedies" for infant mortality. When the alleged experts disagreed on the appropriate remedies, Napias's report to the 1889 Congress on Hygiene and Demography recommended a "rigorous inquiry" into infant feeding practices as well as measures to encourage maternal breast-feeding and limit women's workday.42 The congress adopted his recommendations with little discussion. Research into infant feeding practices was already under way. Dr Jules Comby, among others, demonstrated that most infants dying from gastroenteritis had been fed animal milk. Recognizing that maternal breast-feeding, the obvious preventive measure, posed economic problems for working women, Comby suggested that they come home once a day to nurse, then nurse six to eight times at night. He was satisfied that this would assure babies of enough food and sleep; he did not, however, explain when mothers would sleep.43 Despite such ludicrous proposals, the point about breast-feeding being conducive to infant health remained valid. Chemical analysis of different milks proved that cow's milk, which was chemically closest to human milk, was harder to digest. Bacteriological counts showed that cow's milk had more harmful microbes, especially after dilution, adulteration, and standing for several hours without refrigeration, as happened in working-class shops and homes.44 After publicity through the Society for the Protection of Children,45 these studies

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informed campaigns to promote maternal nursing and impose sanitary standards on dairies. The indefatigable propagandist of maternal nursing and postpartum rest was Dr Pierre Budin, a professor of obstetrics at the Paris Medical School and chief obstetrician at two maternity hospitals. In the course of his work with premature babies, Budin developed theories about how much milk to feed babies based on their weight and consequently insisted on supervising feedings and weighing babies during and after confinement. With the help of Paris City Councillor Paul Strauss and funds from the municipal welfare bureau, Budin established the first free baby clinic in 1892. To gather evidence for a nationwide drive for public and private financing of clinics, Budin asked a doctor and a public health statistician to undertake a survey of the extent and etiology of infant mortality.46 The Balestre and Gilletta study, published in 1901, confirmed that infant diarrhea accounted for a quarter of all infant deaths, 44 per cent of infant deaths in a large cities, and over half of the high infant mortality rates in industrial cities like Amiens, Lille, and Rouen. Balestre and Gilletta calculated that infant diarrhea and other "preventable" infant diseases killed 36,000 a year; on the assumption that one-fifth of the infants would not have survived to the age of twenty, this would leave 30,000 including 15,000 youths eligible for armed service. Drawing the obvious conclusion, they claimed that France lost one army corps a year to preventable infant disease. To stop this drain on France's armed strength, they advised the state to fund baby clinics and fight premature return to work after childbirth. They did not say how to keep mothers from going back to work, since this was "a delicate point in social science."47 Professor Budin had links with Solidarist Radicals who believed that the "most pressing" of the state's social obligations was the protection of human life. In a series of political speeches and academic conferences all over France, and in a major report to the ExtraParliamentary Commission on Depopulation set up in 1902, Budin promoted a new bill on maternity leave and assistance, rest homes for pregnant women, convalescent homes for parturient women, breastfeeding allowances, and baby clinics.48 Paul Strauss, who had been elected to the Senate in the interval, had tabled the bill. Although France's preeminent demographer, Jacques Bertillon, questioned Budin's stress on industrial cities, noting that Balestre and Gilletta found the highest infant mortality in a fishing village, Budin's answer about mill women in the village satisfied the Commission on Depopulation. The commission, which included Dr Dron, Senator

181 Protecting Infants

Strauss, and other supporters of maternal leave, quoted Budin's report for a decade as the definitive statement on infant mortality.49 Budin was also a founding member of the League against Infant Mortality, which was composed of obstetricians, pediatricians, public health administrators, and philanthropists from the maternal and infant charities. Many of the philanthropists were women, who were virtually the only women involved in the entire campaign. The league tried to sustain private charities and "where necessary, appeal for public intervention" for maternity insurance plans, breast-feeding allowances, baby clinics, sterilized milk dispensaries, and creches. In concert with dozens of maternal and infant charities, the league seconded Senator Strauss's efforts to obtain leave and benefits.50 Professor Budin also sponsored doctoral theses on maternal nursing. One of his doctoral students, A.L.D. Binet, was inspired by Budin's belief that doctors should go beyond individual pathology "to discover and cure social ills." He interviewed 479 working-class mothers who had cumulatively lost two-fifths of their children by the age of two, and learned that almost all had stopped nursing early to go back to work. Citing another thesis showing that most new mothers did not know Budin's theory about fixed nursing schedules, Binet deduced that mothers must be taught "maternal science" in baby clinics, "veritable schools of motherhood." Since staying home to nurse on schedule would mean financial hardship for working-class households, he endorsed Senator Strauss's bill. But Binet went further. Stating it was "more profitable for Society to exploit women ... as producers of children" and claiming that "the mother's milk is the child's property," he advocated a legal obligation to breast-feed.51 Although few repeated his blatant remarks about exploiting women as reproducers or pursued his bizarre notion of a legal duty to breast-feed, many supporters of maternity leave agreed that the breast belonged to the baby. The old medical practice of advising working-class women on infant care was changing by broadening the media and narrowing the message. In earlier times, advice came in pamphlets disseminated, at birth, by maternal charities and Public Welfare. In the early igoos Budin's disciples offered personal instruction in baby clinics and Professor Adolph Pinard of the Paris Medical School introduced preparatory education in a new subject called puericulture, designed for the intermediate girls schools. In the clinics and classrooms, the previously accepted notion that some women had to work and therefore had to supplement their milk,52 ceded to insistence on regularlyspaced, daytime nursing. Budin and Pinard did concede that some 2

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per cent of women were physiologically incapable of breast-feeding. For these women, they provided minute instructions on sterilizing animals milk and on the one type of bottle judged safe.53 Pinard influenced women's groups and journals, including the equal-rights feminist journal, La Fronde, to campaign for girls' school training in infant care. However, puericulture did not enter the regular curriculum until the postwar period.54 After Budin died, Pinard, who also sat on the Extra-Parliamentary Commission on Depopulation, became the most effective medical spokesman for leave. Pinard had specialized in prenatal care. As early as 1890 he had publicly condemned the popular opinion of pregnancy as a "nine month illness" and called it a "physiological state" characterized by "physical and moral depression," "languor and despair." If his definition was less pathological, his description of the symptoms reaffirmed the popular view of pregnancy as travail. His assertion that pregnant women "forced to work" suffered a "special functional impotence" which often led to "incurable infirmities" reinforced bourgeois prejudice. In 1891 he decried the treatment of unwed mothers-to-be and joined a charity drive for refuges for abandoned women. After the opening of the Asile Michelet and another refuge,55 he compared the weights of neonates whose mothers had rested in refuges with those whose mothers had worked to term. In 1895 he reported to the Academy of Medicine that neonates whose mothers had rested weighed, on average, ten to twelve ounces more. He also calculated the length of gestation — measured from the last day of the last menstrual period — to find that women working to term were slightly more liable to deliver prematurely. Oblivious to problems of comparing two different populations, to the possibility that proper prenatal nourishment played a role, to concepts of statistical significance, or to the common sense explanation that women delivering prematurely would more likely be at work, he used these figures to prove the need for prenatal rest.56 When other members of the Academy of Medicine objected that parental physique and birth order determined neonatal weight, Pinard put his doctoral candidates to work studying the relationships between maternal work, neonatal weight, and length of gestation. An 1897 dissertation examined the effects of "tiring" versus "non-tiring" occupations - very subjectivly classified by the amount of physical exertion - and of prenatal breaks for both occupational categories. Discovering an insignificant weight difference between babies born to the two types of working women, Dr Louis Letourneur rationalized that most subjects in the non-tiring category were seamstresses, who were "frail, elegant and gracious, but incapable of carrying large

183 Protecting Infants foetuses," while most in the tiring category were domestics, who were bigger, stronger, and "capable of carrying superb foetuses in their flanks."57 Since Letourneur had conceded the critics' point about physique and raised the problem of different populations, Pinard did not publicize his thesis. Two other dissertations confirmed Pinard's theory. First, Dr F.C. Bachimont tabulated the weights of 4,445 neonates according to birth order and whether or not their mothers had rested before childbirth. The tables revealed that babies of rested mothers weighed four-anda-half to twelve ounces more than babies in the same birth order whose mothers had worked to term. Contending that his tables proved "with mathematical rigour" the beneficial effects of prenatal rest, Bachimont concluded that it was necessary "to intervene to protect the pregnant woman in the final three months of her pregnancy."58 Pinard publicized this thesis and explained that standing in the final months precipitated the descent of the uterus, which induced premature deliveries.59 One of Budin's students made a complementary study of the length of gestation in women in refuges compared with those coming directly to the hospitals. Like Bachimont, Mme Livcha Sarraute-Lourie controlled for birth order but not for physique. (Information on physique was not recorded on the hospital forms that served as their major source.) On average, women in refuges carried twenty days longer. Noting that the foetus gained the most weight in the final three weeks, Sarraute-Lourie demanded more "sanatoria for pregnancy."60 The number of subjects and the handy tables in these statistical studies impressed lobbyists and publicists, who quoted figures from them in speeches and tracts. Politicians who cited the same figures apparently extracted them from popularizations of the rather dry theses. By 1899 there were enough medical studies on work and maternity to warrant a more popular survey of literature. Dr Deborah Bernson advertised her political purpose in her title, The Necessity for a Law Protecting Working Women before and after Giving Birth. Perhaps because she was one of the few French women in the medical profession, her book differs from other medical studies in paying some attention to the impact of wage work on all women's health. Still, Bernson devoted only three pages to the impact on pregnant women's health and most of that section consists of commonsensical observations. The bulk of the book reviews the previously mentioned theses, introduces more specialized research done in other countries, and presents infant mortality data graphically. While English and German doctors had monitored infant mortality among specific occupational groups, in-

184 Women, Work, and the French State

eluding factory women, French doctors had only isolated the notorious lead trades and otherwise relied on mortality statistics compiled by cities. When these statistics showed high infant mortality in textile towns, the doctors, including Bernson, blamed women's work without bothering to consider the high natality and environmental conditions in industrial cities.61 After the publication of Bernson's widely read book, doctoral candidates did analyse infant mortality by quartiers and considered explanatory factors such as poverty. Since one of their indices of poverty was the number of women in low-paying jobs, they continued to advocate restricting pregnant and parturient women's work.62 Many theses became explicitly political. A 1900 thesis began by acknowledging that the issue of maternity leave was "agitating" France, politicians were asking doctors for "practical advice," and doctors needed "preconceived solutions." After assessing the services provided by private rest homes, Dr Thiroux decided that private solutions were insufficient. After evaluating foreign legislation, he opted, pragmatically, for a mandatory leave of six weeks before and six weeks after birth. His adviser, Pinard, insisted that he increase the time to two months before and two months after birth.63 Practicing physicians associated themselves with overtly political pressure groups. In 1903 Dr Georges Fauquet outlined the medical and legislative case for maternity leave before the Association for the Legal Protection of Workers, which voted unanimously for leave and benefits. They also adopted resolutions in favour of nursing facilities in the workplace. A decade later, when Senator Strauss spoke to the association, the membership endorsed his bill. As always the association publicized its conferences and resolutions. After the Strauss bill became law, in the first year of World War i, the association posed the question of how to assure maternal and infant care "in this troubled time." Perhaps because the report was written by a woman, Marguerite Gemahling, it acknowledged that declining infant mortality did not automatically increase the population, since families adjusted the number of births to fit the number of living children. She proposed improving the conditions of maternity, so women would not see it as a burden. More specifically she advocated the extension of coverage to all women with infants, the inclusion of an obligatory prenatal rest, and the incorporation of mandatory insurance "as an absolute right."64 In the hiatus between the two parliamentary debates, municipalities did extend welfare to needy mothers. In addition to a handful of refuges and clinics jointly funded by municipalities and

185 Protecting Infants

philanthropists, 65 Paul Strauss arranged for the Paris Welfare Bureau to provide "pregnancy relief'66 and Dr Dron, in his capacity as mayor of Tourcoing, started an aid program for new mothers.67 The 1893 law on free medical assistance assimilated childbirth to illness so that needy women could get "free medical and pharmacological assistance" from municipal welfare bureaus. Although this law encouraged the development of maternity clinics in the provinces, most of these facilities only admitted married mothers-to-be. The Council of Public Assistance, which had recommended more comprehensive maternity aid, later backed Senator Strauss's bill.68 THE SENATE DEBATE, 1903—1913

The medical and philanthropic interest groups, and the election of Strauss to the Senate in 1897, transformed the campaign. Strauss was a more tenacious parliamentary advocate of leave than de Mun or Dron, although, like them, he had other goals. Because he was primarily interested in compulsory social insurance or, failing that, public assistance for the young and aged,69 the second phase of parliamentary debate intersected less with stalled efforts to extend hours standards than with the newer movement for social security. Strauss never asked for indemnities based on wages. Instead, he called for assistance as an interim measure until France accepted "the cycle of insurance."70 In this second round of debates, proponents of leave presented fewer appeals to humanitarian sentiments and more arguments about the "the grave national peril" of depopulation. As Senator Strauss wrote, "A utilitarian preoccupation has come to redouble and reinforce the humanitarian concern. Patriots and philanthropists must therefore cooperate." Since the patrie needed babies "for its defence and maintenance," maternity leave was a way to save infants lives "for the national advantage."71 Once the idea of childbirth as a social function was connected to the more acceptable concept of a "patriotic duty" — and separated from Utopian schemes for long-term financial support — it ceased to be an outrageous proposition. Particularly after the Agadir crisis of 1906, concern about military weakness made social policy on maternity leave more respectable. The connection to military affairs was most overt in a 1906 bill to guarantee women jobs on their return to work if they took leaves of absence for childbirth. The deputy who tabled the bill, Fernand Engerand, borrowed the language from a law guaranteeing army reservists their civilian jobs on their return from active duty. Engerand and Strauss (not to

i86 Women, Work, and the French State

mention feminists like Nelly Roussel) delighted in drawing parallels between men called up for armed service and women called upon for maternal service to their country.72 By the early twentieth century, Engerand, Strauss, and other spokesmen could quote extensively from medical and demographic studies. Although they oversimplified and overstated the implications of this literature, almost no one challenged their scientific and statistical evidence. An early critic, Dr Alcide Treille, did point out that much of the evidence was based on pathological cases, because it came from hospitals, which admitted difficult deliveries. Senator Treille, who had some qualifications in the field as the editor of a book on lead poisoning, correctly characterized Pinard's publications as propaganda. He added that doctors were not unanimous on the need for leave and consulted the forty doctors in or recently in the Assembly on how they would determine when a woman was two weeks away from delivery, so she could start her prenatal rest. Treille's informal survey raised enough doubts to remove the prenatal portion of the leave from the 1906 version of the bill. Beyond this, though, Treille preferred to make irrelevant remarks about the greater necessity for conjugal separation throughout pregnancy - and "the delicate time of the month." Deciding too late in his speech that it would be "indecent" to continue, he concluded by asking his laughing audience if the state intended to assign gendarmes to the bedrooms of the nation.73 With the exception of this sarcastic reference to the prospect of infringing on individual liberty in the bedroom, no one raised objections on the grounds of individual rights or differences, though opponents of hours and safety standards for men continued to object on these grounds. Given a consensus on the principle of state intervention, the obstacles to leave and benefits were finally tactical, technical, and financial. Tactically, Senator Strauss erred by embedding leave and assistance in an "entire program of preventive maternal assistance." His 1899 bill included a nation-wide network of refuges for pregnant women, separate maternity wings, arrangements for home births, convalescent homes for parturient women, breast-feeding allowances or free sterilized milk for all needy mothers, supervision of feeding practices in the family, and stricter regulation of dairies.74 When the bill finally came to debate four years later, Dr Treille wittily complained that the "noble project... embraced mothers, babies and cows at the same time." Although the omnibus bill passed first reading intact, the Senate Committee on Assistance promised to pare it between readings.75 Senator Strauss was absorbed in preparing laws on children's aid and old age pensions. When he returned to the bill in

187 Protecting Infants

1906, he removed the medical, milk, and dairy clauses "to ensure the adoption of the essential measures from which," he felt, "all the others will follow."76 Another tactical problem was Strauss's failure to generate or utilize nonmedical evidence. The 1904 inquiry into the textile industry included questions about provisions for maternity breaks. The 1905 report revealed the abuses that motivated Engerand's bill77 and stirred another deputy, Rene Renould, to demand the 1905 investigation into protection for pregnant and parturient women. These two surveys were the only efforts made to ascertain the general condition of pregnant and parturient working women. Only the textile investigators interviewed female operatives and discovered, not surprisingly, that they were dissatisfied.78 Strauss preferred, like Dron, to quote "the authorities in this matter." While the medical "authorities" were respected sources, their aggregate data might have been more evocative in combination with touching illustrations of how pre- and postnatal employment contributed to infant mortality. Working women's testimony would also have directed attention to the need for adequate income during the leave. Furthermore, Strauss was slow to mobilize support from economic interest groups. Engerand, whose voluntaristic approach was more congenial to employers, quickly gained an ally in the paternalistic textile magnate, F. Bonnier. After Engerand accepted his advice to limit the prenatal break to one month, Bonnier orchestrated a barrage of Chamber of Commerce petitions in favour of an eight-week break.79 There were signs that "benevolent" employers, who had longer perspectives on the labour supply, would have welcomed more comprehensive, compulsory programs.80 As one deputy observed, maternity assistance was not a charge upon employers for actions "foreign to working conditions," from which they "derived no special profit." State assistance would cost employers very little.81 Nevertheless, Strauss did not get significant support from employers until 1913, in the final push for passage of his bill.82 Although Radical minister displayed interest by instituting leaves and benefits for female post office employees and civilian personnel in military establishments, Strauss, a Solidarist Radical, did not seek government assistance until 1906, when a Radical government formally committed to social reform came to power.83 Since he did not consult the Finance Committee or finance minister, he encountered their scepticism in debates. The 1907 Finance Committee report took a dim view of imposing over 80 per cent of the expenses on the departments and communes (a formula borrowed from the 1893 law on free medical assistance). The finance minister, Joseph Cailloux,

188 Women, Work, and the French State

also challenged the cost estimates. Strauss publicly asked Cailloux to collaborate on a revision of the bill.84 But cooperation awaited the appointment of a pronatalist finance minister in Aristide Briand's first cabinet (1909—io).85 Just as Strauss approached an accord with the Finance Ministry, a spokesman for large industry, Eugene Touron, disingenuously complained about the exclusion of nonindustrial women. A pronatalist and women's rights advocate moved that leaves apply to all women "who habitually do wage work." The reform socialist labour minister, Rene Viviani, secured the bill's return to Committee.86 With the cooperation of Briand's cabinets, the senate committee arrived at a compromise whereby industrial and commercial workers would get leaves and all mothers working away from home would get assistance. When the revised bill came to debate in 1912, pronatalists offered amendments to include domestic workers, homemakers, and "all women of French nationality." The principal critic, Emile Ray, who had sponsored the law on free medical assistance, drew attention to the replacement of indemnities, implying compensation for wages lost, with assistance, signifying relief for needy mothers. The new finance minister, Louis-Lucien Klotz, detached the amendments so the bill could pass.87 As early as 1906, Engerand and other deputies had despaired of an early resolution in the slow-paced Senate and had introduced a compromise proposal to guarantee jobs after voluntary maternity leaves.88 Strauss had supported this bill, which had the advantage of costing the taxpayers - and therefore the politicians — very little. Senators with industrial connections delayed passage by inserting superfluous clauses to safeguard an employer's right to fire a pregnant or parturient women for "just cause." After three years, the Senate abandoned the safeguards and Engerand's bill passed into law.89 Accordingly, the final negotiations with the Chamber of Deputies produced few revisions. Both the Labour Committee and the Assistance Committee considered Strauss's bill, which included elements of labour and social welfare legislation. When pronatalists suggested including homemakers, the chairman of the Labour Committee objected by pointing out the need to enforce leave. In a speech reminiscent of one he had delivered twenty-two years before, Dr Dron admonished the deputies that it was this admittedly imperfect measure or nothing. Still faithful to the piecemeal approach, he promised to table a bill extending assistance to all needy mothers. After a listless debate, the eighth version of the bill passed in June

189 Protecting Infants

The act accorded any women "in an apparent state of pregnancy" the right to take a break from paid employment without penalties. This prenatal break of up to four weeks was optional. The postpartum leave of four weeks was obligatory for women in "all industrial and commercial establishments." The law established a daily allowance for eight weeks before and after birth, for "all women of French nationality who habitually work for wages outside the home, whether as a worker, an employee, or a domestic." Although prenatal aid was predicated on medical verification that the recipient could not work without endangering herself or her baby, postpartum allowances had no medical prerequisites.91 In the end, then, French legislators did resolve the problem of whether the measure was to be a limited labour law or a broader welfare or social security law. Although they expanded the original conception by extending leave to employees and allowances to all wage workers outside the home, and soon to wage workers in the home,92 they never covered the large contingent of nonwage workers, including peasant wives. The act went beyond previous labour legislation but never to the point of becoming a comprehensive welfare or social security law. The renewed debate about maternity leaves during World War i illuminated the unequal mix of humane and patriotic motives behind maternity legislation. In the winter of 1916—17, Professor Pinard publicly protested "the natality crisis," defined as rising rates of stillbirths, premature deliveries, infant deaths, and, in a rare recognition of maternal health, maternal mortality. Together with Mme Jules Siegfried of the Society for the Protection of Maternity, Pinard lobbied to have women banned from war production for six months before and six months after childbirth. Senator Strauss, the nationalist politician, objected that factory work was only one factor in the natality crisis and reactivated his Consultative Committee on Women's Work, composed of industrialists, workers of both sexes, and civil servants, to get "practical advice" on measures to protect pregnant and parturiant women at work. After an inquiry which found that few women quit war production jobs before the final month of pregnancy (indeed, only one-quarter took leave in the final month, as entitled by law), the committee recommended regular consultations with mid wives at the factory and guidelines about jobs that posed "a manifest risk to the safety of the pregnancy," so women could be transferred to safer posts. Later the committee urged nursing rooms and creches in the factories. The Ministry of War, satisfied these measures would not "hinder the recruitment of the female

igo Women, Work, and the French State

labour force," cooperated with the committee and the League against Infant Mortality to implement them. Although their efforts were only partially successful,93 they indicate that a more positive approach to work and maternity was possible, when there was a perceived need for women workers.

Conclusion

Immediately after the declaration of war in 1914, the French government directed inspectors to ignore protective laws in war industries. According to Marxist feminists, setting aside sex-specific protection in wartime proves the prior existence of a state policy of manipulating women as a reserve army of labour. Deducing a previous coherent policy from wartime experiences is risky. But when we find government discarding sex-specific regulations before a serious contraction in the supply of masculine labour, we may surely suspect motives obscured by public rationales. By dismantling the regulatory system in anticipation of labour shortages, administrators revealed that, whatever the reformers of the i88os and iSgos intended, administrators considered sex-specific protection a barrier to women's opportunities in masculine occupations and a barricade between two sexually-distinct labour markets. They also affirmed the precedence of military and patriotic motivations over economic and social goals like reinforcing the dual labour market or the patriarchal family. Yet they were prepared only to shelve, not to abandon, legislative supports for fundamental institutions such as a sexually-segmented labour force and the patriarchal family.

PATRIOTISM, "PROTECTION," AND "PATERNALISM" As early as 2 August 1914, the minister of labour lifted the overtime decrees for industries involved in national defence. Three days later the minister instructed work inspectors to stress maintaining production in national industry and "to seek industrial and commercial establishments which can continue to function by using adolescents, women and old men as replacements for mobilized men." No sum-

192 Women, Work, and the French State

mons were to be issued until investigations ascertained whether the illegal practice "compromised the health of the labour force." To "clarify" the position on work regulations, a ministerial circular ordered "the broadest exemptions everywhere to encourage national production." After this breach in age- and gender-barriers between the two labour markets, the ministry had to cover its flanks: another circular explained that overtime would not be tolerated in regions with serious, i.e. masculine, unemployment.1 Where there was an adequate supply of male labour, no assault on masculine job preserves could be allowed. Another indication of indifference to sex-specific — and universal — protection during national emergencies was the treatment of the inspection service. In the course of the war, the army called up eighty-nine of the 114 work inspectors for active duty; only nineteen of them were reassigned to their old duties. Although this depleted the corps, women were not invited to fill the vocated positions. On the contrary, some inspectrices retired early in the war and were not replaced.2 The remaining inspectors had to share their authority with military officials in charge of the civilian labour force in war industries. Inspectors identified violations and issued warnings; military officials were supposed to ensure compliance. When inspectors issued warnings about health and security infractions, officers executed their orders only if there were work stoppages. When military officials did try to impose health and safety measures, industrialists challenged their competence. In 1917 the president of the Public Health Council concluded that conditions were defective in many munition factories due to the regime of "broad exemptions," to the mobilization of inspectors, and to divided authority. His suggestion about a special executive body to supervise health and safety conditions in munitions factories was implemented, but his proposal about including health and safety requirements in state contracts was ignored.3 By the spring of 1915 unions were criticizing conditions in factories producing war materials. According to the still heavily masculine unions, the worst abuses derived from violations of hours standards: women worked from 7 A.M. to 7 P.M. with a few minutes' break "for a ridiculous wage." Other complaints involved women on night shifts. Bosses rejected union request for a fortnightly day of rest; divisional inspectors did not investigate grievances and workers who grieved were "brutally fired." When these protests reached the Labour Committee in the Chamber, the minister of labour denied that work regulations had been suspended during the war, noting that the original decree permitted adolescents to work overtime in matters of

ig3 Conclusion

national security. In a revealing slip, he reported that women had to be recruited as mechanics due to a "deficient labour pool." Clearly women were not a part of the customary or preferred labour pool. Although he acknowledged that women worked nights, he excused this because there were no complaints, presumably from women on night shifts. Radicals on the Labour Committee nevertheless forced the appointment of a subcommittee to inquire into the application of military decrees in state manufactures.4 The following year Marguerite Durand drew the government's attention to "low morale" among female personnel in munitions factories. Durand even warned of "mass desertions" in response to "the shameful exploitation of certain bosses, the deliberate injustice and brutality of foremen and supervisors, the efforts of masculine unions to make factory work disgusting for women." Durand demanded an official Women's Labour Bureau to study and propose solutions to an array of problems arising from the employment of women in military and civil services, including the execution of sexspecific laws, especially for pregnant and lactating women, and to defend women's interests during and after the war, notably by reserving certain jobs for women. Although the current minister of labour, Briand, accepted the proposal, he fell from power before any action was taken.5 If feminist concern about women's working conditions did not move politicians, pro-natalist clamour about a natality crisis prompted Senator Strauss to reactivate his Consultative Committee on Women's Work. The committee of industrialists, workers, and civil servants did research some of the issues raised by Durand but relied heavily on information from military officials in charge of war production and work inspectors under their jurisdiction. The committee focused on widespread evasion of provisions for pregnant and parturient women, paid attention to equally extensive infractions of health and safety regulations, but did not pursue contraventions of hours standards.6 Their agenda reflected a broader consensus on the position that facilitating the housewifely role could be ignored during the war. Their research reaffirmed the continuing importance of the wage gap, the sexually-segmented labour market, and sexual hierarchies within labour markets. The report on hiring in war industries deplored the number of skilled working women attracted to the higher wages in munitions, because the displacement of skilled women hindered the recovery and prosperity of feminine trades like luxury goods and clothing. The author advocated hiring unskilled women, leaving skilled women in feminine occupations, and thereby minimiz-

ig4 Women, Work, and the French State

ing disruption of the dual labour market. The report on accidents in munitions factories documented more accidents injuring women and adolescents as more of the formerly "protected" workers moved into new areas of arms production. The same report showed twice as many accidents injuring men, because men still outnumbered women and adolescents in primary production jobs, while most women and adolescents remained accessory workers.7 War conditions challenged but did not defeat male dominance of heavy industries and battered but did not raze the internal labour market whereby men held the primary jobs and women and adolescents the auxiliary jobs. Toward the end of the war, more effort was made to apply health, safety, and even hours standards. Once past the point where the state required production "under any conditions," military officials instructed inspectors to ensure that women did not handle lead or undertake unhealthy jobs or tasks beyond their strength. An unprecedented directive ordered employers to provide coveralls, in conformity with the law. Although women continued to work at night, they were to have the breaks required by law. Measures to facilitate women's dual role discussed before the war were instituted during the war. Extension of the seat law to industry as a means of fostering full-term pregnancies had been debated but not enacted. In 1917 military officials urged industrialists to provide seats for female operatives. After a 1917 law allowed new mothers an hour a day to breast-feed their babies, the Ministry of War studied the prewar idea of on-site nursing rooms and creches. Once satisfied that nursing rooms and creches would not "hinder recruitment of the female labour force," military officials encouraged industrialists to provide these facilities, so that women could combine productive labour with infant care.8 After strikes and other incidents in the garment industry, the minister of labour secured a law offering female garment workers Saturday afternoon off or the English week.9 This had long been advocated to ease the housewifely role. After the war feminists took contradictory stances on universal and sex-specific protection. Delegations from the International Council of Women presented testimony to the Peace Conference criticizing special legislation protecting women's labour for "excluding them from some industries while leaving them free to take work ... prejudicial to their health." Memoranda from the council, under the signature of Mme Duchene of France, asked "that all protective labour legislation be established on the basis of absolute equality." Yet, accepting that women would be excluded from some jobs, Mme Duchene attempted to limit their number. She argued that bans should cover particular manufacturing processes, not entire indus-

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Conclusion

tries, and should be "strictly limited after consultation with committees composed of delegates of women's unions, inspectrices, physiologists, hygienists and women doctors" to determine whether insalubrious processes "could and should be modified in the interests of male as well as female workers." She insisted upon the protection of maternity "on the same basis as that of childhood." Another Council of Women memorandum, from Mme Avril de Sainte-Croix, also of France, dealt more directly with the deeper problems of job ghettces and the wage gap by demanding access to all men's occupations for women "of equal competence" and "equal pay for equal work." Despite recommending a forty-four hour week for all, this memorandum advocated suppression of night work "wherever it will not disadvantage women" and submission of all "exceptional legislative measures" to female work committees. Other feminist associations outlined bases for exceptional legislation. The Suffragists had a very loose definition: "Women should not be employed in tasks recognized as truly dangerous for eventual maternity." Given ignorance about the relationship between women's health and pregnancies, this might have opened the door for massive restrictions. More specifically, Suffragists wanted to prohibit all heavy labour or standingjobs during pregnancies and demanded benefits equal to the minimum wage, six weeks before and after birth. The peace treaty and international conventions were also inconsistent. One of the League of Nations' fundamental principles was "equal wages without distinction of sex, for work of equal value." Each country was urged to organize an inspection service which included women "in order to assure application of laws and regulations for workers." Although this suggested universal regulations, the commission drafting the relevant section of the treaty consigned "protecting children, adolescents and women" to the International Labour Organization. The agenda of the 1919 International Labour Conference included maternity leave and benefits as well as items on employing women at night and in insalubrious trades. The conference endorsed an optional leave of six weeks before and a mandatory leave of six weeks after birth, with benefits, and extension of the Berne Convention prohibiting women's night work. After considering regulations for unhealthy industries, they decided they had insufficient medical evidence on the "relative receptivity of men and women in most unhealthy industries."10 Consequently, they only recommended banning women from eight occupations handling lead and special hygienic measures for women handling lead alloys.11 While French governments did not duplicate all the international conventions of 1919 and later, their legislation broadly conformed.12

196 Women, Work, and the French State

The famous law of 23 April 1919 establishing an eight-hour day did not abrogate sex-specific provisions of the laws of 1874, 1892/1900, 1909, 1913, 1915, and 1917 in the Labour Code. Although industrial workers of both sexes were entitled to an eight-hour workday, feminine occupations like domestic service and retail clerking, as well as masculine professions, were still not covered. Provisions for overtime and weekly holidays differed for men and women/adolescents. Only women and adolescents were forbidden underground labour, most night work, and an increasing number of dangerous trades. Preoccupied with favouring natality, legislators increased maternity allocations and offered them to nonworking mothers.13 In the interwar period, sex-specific health and safety regulations increased; many remained on the books until the Equal Rights Act of 1975.14 Some still exist. The fact that bans and restrictions on women's work did not disappear with the achievement of universal hours standards suggests that sex-specific regulations were not simply preliminaries to comprehensive coverage. Sex-specific measures always differed from universal measures in their sources of support, their rationales, their provisions, their implementation, and their impact. Socialists were the most consistent advocates of comprehensive hours and safety standards from 1879 through 1919, but radical and republican politicians led the drive for partial measures in the 1880 and 18905. While remaining faithful to the ultimate goal of universal hours and safety standards, some socialists compromised on age- and sex-specific hours limits and bans on night employment to win over the moderate majority in the Chamber of Deputies and to surmount deep-seated opposition in the Senate. They followed the lead of pivotal figures like the republican, Richard Waddington, and the radical, Dr Dron, who gathered a diverse group of supporters for special or targeted regulation. The loose coalition of political factions ranged from the far right, in the case of Social Catholics, to Marxist socialists formally committed to sexual equality in the workplace. Only by threats could the consummate political manipulator, Alexandre Millerand, as minister of commerce, force this coalition to include some men in protective labour legislation. When Dron and even solidarist radicals in the Clemenceau government tried to incorporate all working men, the essential centre did not hold. Socially as well as politically, support was more diverse for partial than for comprehensive labour legislation. Most organized working men wanted both universal hours standards and sex-specific restrictions on night and dangerous work. A tiny minority of "benevolent" employers were prepared to protect their investment in their labour

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Conclusion

force. They usually provided safety devices and occasionally maternity leaves and creches. Few accepted state intervention; those who did favoured restrictions on women and children and fought standards for men. Doctors and other professionals who contemplated the matter preferred public injunctions on women's and children's labour. The rationales for universal regulations were diametrically opposed to justifications for sex-specific measures. Socialist proponents of universal protection listed the benefits to working men — and meant the male sex; radical proponents added the advantages for the state. In the first category came better health and more leisure to pursue an education or to enjoy family life. Later these assets were linked to democratic goals, like a better-educated citizenry, and military objectives, like healthier recruits for the army. Advocates of limits on children's and adolescents' labour pleaded their need for rest to permit proper physical development and education. By the end of the nineteenth century, this mode of argument was so widely accepted that there was little allusion to militaristic or patriotic purposes. When spokesmen for restrictions on women's labour put their case to the political nation, they made perfunctory appeals to humanitarian concern about women's health and no reference whatsoever to women's educational or recreational needs. After Waddington's paternalistic pleas about women's weakness failed to stir the majority, he adopted utilitarian rationales about the "social interests" of working-class men, children, and families or the "superior interests" of social peace, population growth, and national defence. Socialists approved sex-specific restrictions which disadvantaged women in high-wage, i.e. masculine, occupations. Some explained that they acted to combat male unemployment, but virtually no one offered the defence of the mythical "family wage" as a vindication. The distribution of occupations by gender seemed so "natural" that no one commented on the inconsistency in the socialist position, given their commitments to sexual equality and class solidarity. Radicals and republicans wanted to allow women more time for child care and housework in order to improve child-rearing and family life. Radicals, republicans, and Social Catholics contended that better-disciplined working-class children and better-run homes would translate into social order; some claimed it would diminish socialist agitation. Later patriots argued that maternity leaves and more time for mothering would mean healthier infants, children, and, ultimately, recruits. Interventionist economic principles upholding universal protection differed markedly from the odd combination of practical econo-

198 Women, Work, and the French State

mic and hypothetical social justifications for sex-specific protection. When socialists espoused universal standards, they encountered liberal opposition to restraints on men's freedom to work and laissezfaire objections about lower production and wages and a less competitive position in the international market. In response, they developed distinctions between abstract and concrete freedom and elaborate theories about short-time improving productivity and wages. Later came fulsome (and often tedious) critiques of classical political economy and Marxist economics. Few spoke of male workers as weak or incapable. In contrast, liberal opponents rarely attacked restrictions on women's work as infringements on their liberty, while supporters were adamant in their denial of women's freedom, since women had no political and limited civil rights. Drawing on his experience as an enlightened employer, Waddington illustrated how technological advances and efficient organization of labour compensated for short time. Equally pragmatically, he linked sex-specific labour laws to protective tariffs. In addition to averting arid ideological debates about productivity and competitiveness, he and other supporters of sex-specific measures avoided discussion of wages or working conditions. Instead they focused on women's frailty, disabilities, and, above all, reproductive role. By justifying partial protection on the ground of women's inferiority to men, they made it more difficult to include men. By concentrating on women's reproductive role, they lost an opportunity to improve working conditions for all. Whereas economic conjecture played a modest role in the campaign for sex-specific measures, the Great Depression provided the setting, and sociological theory the ideological prop, for state intervention in women's labour. The influx of women into the labour market during the recessions of the i88os and 18905, when men suffered from falling wages and rising unemployment, prompted socialists to propose sex-specific hours standards as means of assuring employment for men. Republicans and conservatives concerned about social upheaval after the Commune saw limitations on women's paid labour as bolsters for the housewife/mother role as the source of moral authority in the working-class family and, as such, as a safeguard against class warfare. Left and Right alike drew upon Comtean sociology, with its totally inappropriate bourgeois conception of the "angel of the hearth," to justify intervention for women alone. The sentimental appeal of this ideal precluded any serious investigation of working women's actual opportunities to fulfil these expectations or of working-class men's ability to support full-time homemakers. For-

199

Conclusion

tunately. Le Play's more realistic calculations of working-class women's contribution to the family budget prevailed. Reformers devoted to sex-specific labour standards also differend from socialists and radicals dedicated to universal standards in their paternalistic attitude toward the objects of their solicitude. Male reformers did not bother to muster support among or to consult working (or bourgeois) women until political opponents organized petitions and delegations from female operatives. Even then, reformers remained suspicious of working women's capacity to assess their situation or needs. When they had working women's testimony approving maternity leave, they eschewed it in favour of "expert" medical evidence. More often, reformers acted without full information about women's work life or wages. One ironic consequence was that labour legislation was drafted with no understanding of the impact on women's wages or working families' budgets and no guarantees about income levels. Another irony was the imposition of rigid schedules on women burdened with overlapping obligations in the workplace and the home. If reformers hoped to encourage homemaking, they had to make concessions to financial and ideological restraints. In the case where they recognized the necessity of ensuring some income by requiring maternity benefits, financing the program was the stumbling block. No one suggested compensation for jobs lost due to the ban on night and dangerous work; few contemplated guaranteeing take-home pay when limiting hours. For all the rhetoric about women's reproductive role, few reformers suggested a family wage or compensation for housework to sustain full-time housewives. Rather, reformers reduced women's work time outside the home without providing for flexible scheduling to facilitate the difficult feat of juggling nearly full-time paid jobs with part-time unpaid domestic duties. Until 1900 they actually made child care harder by legislating different hours for adolescents. While they did exempt paid labour in the home, which eased the burden of performing two roles, many home-workers put in longer hours for lower pay. The ultimate paradox is the failure to offer any incentives to do housework or to monitor whether the laws had any effect on housewifery. Such intervention was anathema as "violation of private residences" and surveillance of the "sacred" family unit. Financial qualms and ideological scruples sheltered backward sectors, fostered deindustrialization, and exaggerated sexual segmentation of the labour market. Exempting family workshops from coverage encouraged decentralization and sweating in feminine trades; it

20O Women, Work, and the French State

swelled the flow of women into labour-intensive, low-wage industries. The ideological predispositions of the reformers combined with the fiscal conservatism of their constituents explain the omission of agricultural labour and retail employment from the essential hours standards. The exclusion of over three-quarters of all working women served the needs of largely female sectors of the economy; the absence of constraints in certain sectors also expedited the feminization of these sectors. In the targeted sector, manufacturing interest groups intervened to trim the regulations to fit their demand for female labour. Powerful employers' groups besieged legislative and consultative committees, and subsequently administrators, with representations about their reliance on female labour and their need for overtime. Waddington quickly conceded the "necessity" for overtime in the clothing trades, which employed one-third of the women in manufacturing, in order to maintain France's competitive edge in the international market. Yet these trades were notoriously sweated and impossible to monitor. Spokesmen for seasonal industries that were not major exporters had to address the Senate to extract overtime for their industries. When hours standards were applied to men working with — but carefully distinguished from — the protected population, employers procured "additional hours" for masculine personnel. Once again, government acknowledged the economic realities of a dual labour market. In 1902 they accommodated the primary labour market of supervisory and skilled male employment; a decade earlier, they had recognized the secondary labour market of unskilled, seasonal, female employment. A more egregious example of dissimilarity between sex-specific and subsequent universal regulations is found by comparing the prohibition of some hazardous work for women to the elimination of toxic substances from some workplaces. With the prohibition, as with hours limitations, exceptions congenial to industry were accorded. When legislators embraced exceptions for dangerous work in traditionally feminine occupations, they delegated the difficult task of designating the privileged industries to consultative committees and administrative decrees. Some of their decisions expressed unexamined prejudices reflecting existing economic patterns. After little deliberation, women were allowed to work in explosives allegedly because of their manual dexterity and patience, actually because they already dominated the labour force and employers refused to pay wages attractive to men.

201

Conclusion

Enforcement of sex-specific labour laws also involved compromises. Legislators provided inadequate funding for the inspection service; they set modest penalties for infractions. Administrators, in turn, bowed to circumstances, while lenient courts imposed pitifully small fines. Initially, the administrative policy of "persuading" employers slowed implementation of controversial clauses. Even after the administration took a punitive approach, employers' responses to regulations were largely determined by swings of the business cycle, competition in the industry, and the nature of the labour force. Industries with leading firms and a secure market position adopted hours standards to reduce inventories and expenses during slumps; industries with many marginal producers, i.e., most feminine workplaces, found it harder to impose standards and easier to abandon them during peaks. Until a 1901 decree prohibited swing shifts, industries with a majority of male workers maintained twelve-hour schedules by introducing rotating shifts for women and adolescents. After 1901 employers evaded the ten-hour day for men employed in "the same places as the protected categories" by physically separating the sexes, so men could continue to work twelve hours. One of the enduring consequences was a more visible sexual segregation of labour. Before 1900 the exclusion of workers from the inspection service hampered application of the laws. Even when Millerand reformed the service, working-class men, not women, were recruited. His instructions to investigate union grievances affected very few women, because very few women were organized. The early emphasis on educating employers delayed inspectors' efforts to inform workers of the laws and discouraged receptivity to workers' complaints. Employer coercion of workers aided but did not fully account for women's collusion in breaches of the law. Many working women perceived regulations made without their advice or approval as threats to their livelihood. Most counted on overtime pay to survive the off-seasons. Piece-rate workers did not want to forfeit pay during inspections; all feared that discovery of safety infractions might entail temporary unemployment while the plant was renovated. Despite their apparent powerlessness, working women were able to modify the implementation of sex-specific regulations and, with the cooperation of unions, to moderate their impact. Inspectors had little recourse against women's passive resistance and collective silence about abuses. Some learned to respect women's own assessment of their capacities, as in the case of weight limits. Although most working women accepted pay cuts when hours standards were first enforced,

2O2

Women, Work, and the French State

thousands of women, with the support of resistance societies, struck to maintain their wages in 1893—4. By the time the ten-hour limit was applied to men as well as women and adolescents, women participated in job actions for raises organized by masculine unions. After a decade of evading sex-specific regulations, industry adopted the legal workday, replaced women at night, and introduced some sanitary and safety measures. This involved redefining the workday as time spent on productive labour, not the older conception of presence at the plant; it also regimented the workday. Plants began work on time, eliminated most breaks, established regular lunch breaks, forbade casual socializing, and installed continuous-action machines. To impose the new clock discipline and ensure constant attention to machines, employers increased supervision. Women, and men working with them, put in a shorter but more intensive workday. They also lost what control they had over the pace of their labour and some of the pleasures of workplace sociability. In the workplace as in the home, the reality of sex-specific protection was less positive than problematic. In the workplace, women gained shorter days and some safety devices in return for the loss of some wages, independence, and sociability. In the home, the focus of so much rhetoric, we do not know if they did more housework or exercised an increased moral authority.

APPENDIX

Key Articles of the Labour Laws of 1892 and 1900

LAW OF 2 N O V E M B E R 1 8 9 2 *

Article i: "The work of children, minor girls and women in factories, manufactures, mines, quarries ... workshops and their outbuildings ... is subject to ... the present law." "Work done in establishments employing only family members under the authority of the father, mother or tutor is exempted." Article 3: "Children of both sexes aged less than sixteen years cannot be employed at effective labour more than ten hours a day." "Young workers of sixteen to eighteen years cannot be employed at effective labour more than sixty hours a week, with daily labour not exceeding eleven hours." "Girls over eighteen years and women cannot be employed at effective labour more than eleven hours a day." Article 4: "Children aged less than eighteen years, minor girls and women cannot be employed at any night work ..." "Any work between g P.M. and 5 A.M. is considered night work; nevertheless, work will be authorized from 4 A.M. to 10 P.M. when it is divided between two shifts working no more than nine hours each." "For women and girls over eighteen, certain industries ... will be accorded the right (faculte) to prolong work until 11 P.M. ... for a period not exceeding sixty days." "Certain industries ... will be authorized to permanently avoid these dispositions ... if the work does not exceed seven hours a day." Article 12: "Work of a hazardous nature, beyond the strength, or dangerous to morality, which will be forbidden to women, girls and children, will be determined by an administrative ruling."

204 Women, Work, and the French State Article 13: "Women, girls and children cannot be employed in unhealthy or dangerous workplaces, where the worker is exposed to materials or emanations prejudicial to their health, except under special conditions for each of these categories of workers determined by administrative rulings." LAW OF 30 — 31 M A R C H 1 Q O O 2

Article i: "At the end of two years ... the length of work will be reduced to ten and a half hours and, at the end of a new period of two years, to ten hours." Article 2: "To article i of the decree law of 9—14 September 1848 will be added the following dispositions: 'Nevertheless, in establishments enumerated in article i of the law of 2 November 1892 which employ in the same places men and the persons covered by the said law, the day of the male workers shall not exceed eleven hours of effective labour. ... at the end of two years ... the day will be reduced to ten and a half hours and, at the end of a new period of two years, to ten hours'."

Notes

ABBREVIATIONS

Archives ADMM ADN ADR ADV AN APP BHVP BMD

Archives Departementales du Meurthe-etMoselle Archives Departementales du Nord Archives Departementales du Rhone Archives Departementales des Vosges Archives Nationales Archives de la Prefecture de Police Bibliotheque historique de la Ville de Paris Bibliotheque Marguerite Durand Published Sources

ACD, Documents AS, Debats AS, Documents BIT BSG CST, Rapports

JO, Debats JO, Lois et decrets

Annales de la Chambre des Deputes, Documents Annales du Senat, Debats Annales du Senat, Documents Bulletin de I'Inspection du Travail Bureau de la Statistique Generale Commission Superieure du Travail, Rapports sur I'application pendant I'annee 1893 (— 1913) des lois reglementant le travail (Paris 1894—1913). Journal Officiel, Debats Journal Officiel, Lois et decrets

206 Notes to pages 5-9 INTRODUCTION

1 Dalloz, Code du Travail, 1986, 293—6. 2 E.g., J. Bron, Histoire du mouvement ouvrier fran^ais; F. Ewald, L'etat providence; B. Mattel, "La normalisation des accidents du travail"; and M. Perrot, Les ouvriers en greve. 3 L. Shai Weissbach/'Qw'on ne coupe le ble en herbe: A History of Child Labor Legislation in Nineteenth-Century France" (PHD diss., Harvard University, 1975); D. Reid, "The Role of Mine Safety in the Development of Working Class Consciousness and Organization"; and G. Cross, "The Quest for Leisure," and "Les Trois Huits." 4 A. Lehmann, De la reglementation legale du travail feminin: Etude de legislation comparee (These, Law, Paris, 1924), 9—14. 5 See J.W. Scott, "Gender." 6 These critics are reviewed in G. Pascall, Social Policy. 7 For example, A.C. Hill, "Protection of Women Workers and the Courts: A Legal Case History," Feminist Studies 5, 2 (Summer 1979); R. Ratner, "The Paradox of Protection: Changes in Hours Legislation in the United States" (paper presented at Conference on Protective and Restrictive Legislation, Smith College, 1977); A.S. Orloff, "Labor and the State: Labor Legislation in America, 1897-1978, A Time Series Analysis," and A.S. Orloff and T. Skocpol, "Why Not Equal Protection? Explaining the Politics of Public Social Welfare in Britain and the United State, 1880-1920" (papers presented at American Sociological Association meeting, 1983). 8 W. Seccombe, "The Housewife and Her Labour under Capitalism." 9 J. Gardiner, "Women's Domestic Labour." 10 H. Hartman, "Capitalism, Patriarchy and Job Segregation by Sex," and "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism." 11 J. Humphries, "Class Struggle and the Persistence of the Working Class Family." 12 M. Coulson et al., "The Housewife and Her Labour under Capitalism — A Critique"; W. Seccombe, "Domestic Labour — Reply to Critics." 13 H. Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital; P. Connelly, Last Hired, First Fired. 14 W. Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture, and Money and Liberty in Modern Europe. 15 M. Reich, D.M. Gordon, and R.C. Edwards, "A Theory of Labor Market Segmentation." 16 P.B. Dceringer and M.J. Piore, Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis. 17 C. Hakim, Occupational Segregation. 18 E. Brooke, A Tabulation of the Factory Laws of European Countries, \ 1—29.

207 Notes to pages 9—21 19 E.g., E.G. Harvey, Labour Laws for Women and Children in the United Kingdom; B.L. Hutchins and A. Harrison, A History of Factory Legislation, B.L. Hutchins, Labour Laws for Women inFrance; W.S. Jevons, The State in Relation to Labour, and N. Vynne, Women under the Factory Act.

20 Brooke, 7—8. Millerand is the best known proponent of this point of view, but see also the "revolutionary" socialist, Edouard Vaillant, in^O, Debats, 21 December 1899, 2274. 21 Brooke, 2-9 and 46—7; Harvey, 8 and 18—19; Jevons, 67-8, and Pipkin, 14. 22 See R.W. Cobb and C.D. Elder, "The Politics of Agenda-Building." 23 E.g., J. Donzelot, The Policing of Families.

24 Weissbach, 43, 49, and 73ff. 25 C.E. Bellairs, Conservative Social and Industrial Reform, 1800—1945.

26 Communication from R. Kcepke. 27 Bettina Berch, "Industrialization and Working Women in the Nineteenth Century: England, France and the United States" (PHD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1976). 28 S. Elwitt, The Making of the Third Republic. 29 J. Stone, The Search for Social Peace. 30 P.G. Nord, Paris Shopkeepers and the Politics of Resentment.

31 R. Fuchs, Abandoned Children, and "Morality and Poverty: Single Mothers and Welfare Inspectors in Paris: 1880-1904" (paper presented at Society for French Historical Studies meeting, 1986). 32 Patrick Kay Bidelman, Pariahs Stand Up!. 33 JO, Debats, 21 December 1899, 2274. CHAPTER ONE

1 Orloff and Skocpol, "Why Not Equal Protection?" and Orloff, "Labor and the State." 2 For instance, E. Auzeby, "L'ouvriere devant les lois du travail et de la prevoyance sociale" (These, Montpellier, 1911), loff; L. Chabrol, "La reglementation legale de la duree du travail dans 1'industrie francais" (These, Paris, 1901), 7ff; and J. Fauren, Reglementation de la duree du travail en France, 18. 3 Brooke, A Tabulation of Factory Laws.

4 For statistics on growth, see Marczewsky, "The Take-Off Hypothesis and French Experience," 125—31; I have also been influenced by D. Pinkney's thesis about the 18405 as a turning-point. 5 TJ. Markovitch, "The Dominant Sectors of French Industry," 226—44. 6 All the statistics on departmental economies are based on the percentage of the active population in industry and in agriculture by departments, as established by a 1910-12 Enquete reproduced in J. Bouvier et al.,

208

Notes to pages 21-8

Histoire economique et sociale de France, vol. 4, L'ere industrielle et la societe d'aujourd'hui, 318. I classified departments with over 40 per cent of the active population in industry as industrial, those with 31 to 40 per cent in industry as mixed but essentially industrial; 21 to 30 per cent in industry as mixed-agricultural and 20 per cent or less in industry as agricultural. 7 The names of the 502 deputies voting for standards in roll-call votes from 1881 through 1899 were checked against A. Robert, Dictionnaire des parlementaires fran^ais ...a 1889 and J. Jolly, Dictionnaire des parlementaires franc^ais de 1889 a 1940. 8 The statistics on the proportion of women in the labour force and employed in manufacturing are from BSG, Annuaire statistique (1899), 208—9, and (1900), 16-21. 9 D. Lenoir, Notice necrologique sur M.R. Waddington, 19. 10 "Obseques du Dr. Dron,"Revuephilanthropique 51 (1930), and AMT, 2Fi4, Dron dossier, funeral speeches. 11 ADN iNi37, Sessions du Conseil General, 22, 23, and 31 August 1892. 12 T. Deldyke et al., La population active et sa structure, 174. 13 Ibid. 14 JO, Debats, 22, 22, 23, and 30 March 1881. 15 AN €5429, 7 and 11 July 1888. 16 JO, Debats, 5 July 1890. 17 Ibid., 3 June 1888. 18 On the comparative status of English regulations, see P. Louis, L'ouvrier devant I'etat, 241—8; on married women's employment in England, see Deldycke, 183-5. 19 T. Kemp, French Economic Development — A Paradox, 52—80. 20 L.A. Tilly and J.W. Scott, Women, Work, and Family, 8gff. 21 M. Guilbert, Les femmes et I'organisation syndicate avant 1914, 22—3; J.L. L'Homme, "Le pouvoir d'achat de 1'ouvrier frangais au cours d'un siecle, 1840-1940," 44-5. 22 Guilbert, 49-118 and 186-9. 23 Ibid., 34-7. 24 Ibid., 389-414. 25 B. Mitchell, The Practical Revolutionaries, 70—130. 26 Guilbert, 17—9. 27 Ibid., 37—9; P. Hilden, Working Women and Socialist Politics in France, 1880-1914, 132-6. 28 Guilbert, 204—24. 29 Mitchell, 139—44. 30 Guilbert, 228-9. 31 Ibid., 189—92. 32 Ibid., 197-9. 33 Mitchell, 13—7.

209

Notes to pages 28—33

34 JO, Debats, 29 March 1881 (Ballue speech), 5 July 1890 (Waddington speech), and 8 July 1890 (Boyer speech). 35 JO, Debats, 12 June 1896 (Prudent-Dervilliers speech), 28 June 1898 (Vaillant amendment). 36 ACD, Documents, 1898, nos. 33 and 115; and/O, Debats, 21 December 1899. 37 Membership lists were compiled from JO, Debats, 19 July 1879 (Diancourt Report), AN C32gi (Labour Committee, 1880), ACD, Documents, 1884, no. 1884 (Waddington Report), AN €5429 (Labour Committee, 1886), ACD, Documents, 1887, no 731 (Waddington Report), ACD, Documents, 1891, no. 334 (Jamais Report), ACD, Documents, 1895, no. 1724 (Dron Committee), and AN C5673 (Labour Committee, 1898). Biographical data came from Robert and Jolly. 38 Robert and Jolly. 39 AN C32gi, 19 March 1880. 40 AN C542g, 25 May and 8 June 1887. 41 JO, Debats, June 1880, Waddington Report, 7166—71. 42 ACD, Documents, 1887, no. 2204, third Waddington Report, 731—42. 43 ADSM, 6 AiP 12, Sessions du Conseil general, 16 April 1885. 44 Le Petit Rouennais, 30 March 1891 and i November i8g2. 45 Le Temps, 30 November 1888 and i February 1889. 46 Le Petit Rouennais, 5 and 19 January 1891. 47 P. Bousquet, "L'Opinion publique en face de la journee de dix heures,"

348 AS, Documents, 1903, no. 364, and igo4, no. 65. 4g Lenoir, 4 and 25. I have benefited from a note on the Waddington business by Georges LeRider reproduced in H.I. MacAdam, "William Henry Waddington: Orientalist and Diplomat," unpublished paper. 50 J.P. Chaline, Les bourgeois de Rouen, 153—4. 51 Lenoir, 19—23. 52 P.T. Moon, The Labor Problem and the Social Catholic Movement in France, 11

3-953 D. Legrand, Appel respectueux d'un industriel de la vallee des Vosges ... 43 E. Tallon and G. Maurice, Legislation sur le travail des enfants dans les manufactures. 55 AN C32gi, Villain, Waddington et al. bill. 56 Berch, 76 and 182. 57 Le Petit Rouennais, 26 January, i and 4 February, ig April, 2 May, and 6 June 1891, and g July and 10 August i8g2. 58 On Charles, see Institut de France, Notices biographiques et bibliographiques, i (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, ig67), 21—5; on William, see MacAdam. Richard's magnum opus was La guerre de sept ans: Histoire diplomatique et militaire, 5 vols. (i8gg— igi4).

2io

Notes to pages 33—7

59 Chaline, 325. 60 ADSM, 3M3o6, Waddington's election statement, 1881. 61 ADSM, o A1P 9 and 16, Sessions du Conseil General, 2 2 August 1883 an 1898, and 1902. 71 R. Baker, "A Regional Study of Working-Class Organization in France: Socialism in the Nord, 1870-1924," (PH D diss., Stanford University, 1967), 63—116, and Ameye, 28—37. 72 AMT, 2Fi4, Jules Passy's funeral speech. 73 ADT, Proces-verbaux du Conseil Municipal, 1886; J. Lahousse, Histoire des Hospices de Tourcoing, 333—5. 74 ADN, IN, Session du Conseil General, 13 April 1899. 75 AMT, Proces-verbaux du Conseil Municipal, 8 December 1890, 2 September 1891, 30 September and 18 November 1892, and Lahousse, 336 and 342. 76 ADN, IN, 10 April 1893, 29 April and 26 August 1897, and 24 August 1899. 77 AMT, Proces-verbaux du Conseil Municipal, 6 December 1903, 10 and 29 March 1904, 10 August 1906, and 20 December 1907. 78 Lahousse, 388—411, AMT, 2Fi4, H.E. Labbe, Hommage a la memoire de Gustave Dron (Tourcoing 1933), and Passy and Wachmer funeral speeches. 79 AMT 2Fi4, funeral speech by the President of the Dames Charitables, 2j i, Association des Dames Charitables, J. Ameye, "Les Dames Charitables," Brotteux, 187(16 March 1986), and "Les Dames Charitables, ouimais ..." ibid., 188 (30-1 March 1986). 80 AMT, 2Fi4, Dron file, extract from his will, and Lahousse, 453. 81 AN C5673, 22 November and 6 December 1899, and 27 March 1900. 82 TJ. Markovitch, "Les cycles industriels en France," 27—30. 83 Direction du Travail, Resultats statistiques du recensement des industries et professions ... 1896, 4, Resultats generaux, LXIII. 84 M. Spuller, "Rapport presente par la Commission d'Enquete parlementaire sur la situation des ouvriers de 1'agriculture et de 1'industrie en France," in ACD, Documents, 1884, no. 2695.

211

Notes to pages 37—44

85 AN 05429, 9 and 25 February 1887,70, Debats, 3 June 1887, 1617. 86 ACD, Documents, 1887, no. 2204, third Waddington Report, 731-42. 87 AN 03364, 03365, and 03369, Enquete sur la situation des ouvriers, 1884; AN 05517, 5521, and 5526, Enquete sur le travail, 1889—90. 88 Deldycke, 174. 89 BSG, Salaires et cout de I'existence a divers epoques jusqu'en 1910. go Resultats statistiques du recensement des industries, LXXX—v. 91 Salaires et cout de I'exsitence, 21—3. 92 AN 03369*, Enquete 1884, Rhone, Chambre Syndicale des Tisseurs. 93 Ibid., testimony of a piqueur. 94 AN 03365, Enquete 1884, Meurthe-et-Moselle, testimony of P. Senee. 95 Ibid., Nord, testimony of a marble cutter. 96 Deldycke, 174. 97 AN 05429, 22 June 1887, and ACD, Documents, 1887, no. 2204. CHAPTER TWO

1 Cross, "Les trois huits." 2 For example, G.J. Weil, Histoire du mouvement social en France, 1852— 1924. Recent examples are J. Stone, The Search for Social Peace, and S. Elwitt, The Third Republic Defended. 3 Cross, "The Quest for Leisure." 4 Ibid.; see also A. Rabinbach, "The European Science of Work." 5 C.G. Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century. 6 M. Villerme, Tableau de I'etat physique et moral des ouvriers employes dans les manufactures de colon, de laine et de soie, 31—3, 106—97, and 122—3; Weissbach, i48ff. 7 A. Corbin, Les filles de noce; Fuchs, Abandoned Children. 8 J. DeGroat, "Representative of Her Class: Images of Working Women in the July Monarchy" (paper presented at Society for French Historical Studies meeting, 1988). 9 E.g., A. Audiganne, Les populations ouvrieres et les industries de la France, i: 6

10 11 12 13 14 15

5> 94- i79-8°Philip A. Bertocci, Jules Simon, 7, 124—8. J. Simon, L'Ouvriere. J. Donzelot, The Policing of Families, 34—6. P. Foucart, De la fonction industrielle des femmes. F. Le Play, L'Organisation du travail, L'Organisation de lafamille, and Les ouvriers europeens. A. Bechaux, "Frederic Le Play a 1'occasion de son centenaire"; A. Cochin, Etudes sociales et economiques, 80—129; and Charles Badiou, Essai sur la reglementation du travail dans Vatelier defamille du tisseur de soie,

212

Notes to pages 44-8

16 J. Simon, "Le peril moral," i. For thorough analysis of sociologists on the family, see E.S. Kanipe, "The Family, Private Property and the State in France, 1870-1914," (PHD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1976), 32. 17 AS, Debats, 1891, 369 and 409—11. 18 Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "Le travail des femmes dans la petite industrie" and "Les ouvrieres de fabrique." 19 Pierre Legendre, Histoire de Vadministration de 1750 a nos jours, 77—8 and 246-7.

20 For instance, Leroy-Beaulieu, "La protection legale des travailleurs," versus C. Lavallee, "La liberte du travail et les lois ouvrieres." 21 See Souvenirs de Charles Benoist, 1:348—57 and 2:439ff., and C. Benoist, Les ouvrieres d'aiguille a Paris.

22 E.g., ADN M6o5, 4, Enquete parlementaire, 1873, dossiers on responses by arrondissements. 23 AN 63326, Enquete, 1884, "Projet de questionnaire propose par M. Clemenceau," and the questionnaire; AN F22333, Ministere du Commerce, Enquete sur les modifications a apporter aux lois du 9 septembre 1848 et du 19 mat 1874. 24 AN 05517, Enquete, Questionnaire and report from the President of the Labour Committee to the Chamber of Deputies, 6 August 1890. See also AN €5518—26, Petitions ... syndicats and Reponses ouvrieres. 25 Stone, 25—6 and 37—9; P. Pic, Traite elementaire de legislation industrielle, 29-3326 E.g., C. Rist, "La duree du travail dans 1'industrie francaise de 1820 a 1870." 27 C. Rist, Lajournee du travail de I'ouvrier adulte en France et sa limitation par la loi.

28 L. Brentano, "Les rapports entre le salaire, la duree du travail et sa productivite." 29 E.g., G. Alfassa, "La nouvelle proposition de loi Waddington sur la duree du travail," Questions pratiques de legislation ouvriere et d'economie sociale 4 (1904); J. Vermorel, "Le travail a domicile dans 1'industrie de la lingerie," ibid., 11 (1910); and A. Berthod, "Le minimum de salaire des ouvrieres a domicile dans 1'industrie du vetement," ibid., 14 (1913). 30 E.g., G. Alfassa, "Association nationale francaise pour la protection legale des travailleurs: La duree du travail." 31 E.g., E. Payen, La reglementation du travail realisee ouprojetee, ses illusions et ses dangers. 32 E.g., C. Lavallee, "La liberte du travail et les lois ouvrieres"; LeroyBeaulieu, "La protection legale des travailleurs." 33 CST,Rapports, 1895, vn and xvm, 149, 249, and 319; 1897, vn; and 1898, XXIX.

213

Notes to pages 48-51

34 Ibid., 1894, xvi. 35 E.g., "Application des lois reglementant le travail pendant les annees ...," Questions pratiques de legislation ouvriere et d'economie sociale 9 and 14 (1908 and 1913); J. Vermorel, "Le travail a domicile dans 1'industrie de la lingerie," ibid., 11 and 12 (1910 and 1911). 36 Ministere du Commerce, Rapports presente a M. le Ministre ... par les inspecteurs divisionnaires du travail... sur la question de I'inter diction du travail de nuit, 72 and 77. 37 E.g., A. Cavaillon, Manuel pratique des lois sociales. 38 Auzeby, 11—15. 39 A. Philippe, Reglementation du travail industriel des adultes, 11—19. 40 A. Bechaux, La reglementation du travail; R. Jay, La limitation legale de la journee de travail en France', and G. Deligny, Le reglement de travail. 41 College libre des sciences sociales, L'ceuvre sociale de la III' Republique; E. Cohendy and M. Grigaut, Legislation ouvriere; and Fauren. 42 E. Spillman, "Reglementation de travail de la duree du travail des hommes" (These, Law, Nancy, 1902), 5. 43 Louis, 39-41. 44 Office du Travail, Notices et compte-rendus, nos 1—7 (1892—3) and Enquete sur le travail a domicile dans I'Industrie de la lingerie, 5, Resultats generaux (1911), 5-15145 Conseil Superieur du Travail, Compte-rendu, Premiere session (1891). 46 Conseil Superieur du Travail, Allaitement maternelle au magasin et a I'atelier, especially xvn, and La reduction de la duree du travail le samedi, III—XXXVII.

47 Conseil Superieur du Travail, Salaire minimum pour les ouvrieres a domicile, x and 1—5. 48 Review of Dr S. Icard's book, Lafemme pendant la periode menstruelle: Etude de psychologic morbide et medecine legale, in Annales d'hygiene publique et de medecine legale 3rd ser. 23 (1890): 286. 49 E.g., A. Layet, Hygiene des professions et des industries, passim, and I. Sachnine, "Etude sur 1'influence de la duree du travail quotidienne sur la sante generate de 1'adulte" (These, Medicine, Lyon, 1900), 227ff. 50 Dr Arnould, "Conditions de salubrite des ateliers de gazage dans les filatures de colon," Annales d'hygiene publique et de medecine legale (1879): 114-15. 51 E.g., J.L. Breton, Les maladies professionnelles, 126—46. 52 H. Napias and AJ. Brouardel, L'etude et leprogres de I'hygiene en France de 1878 a 1882, 114, and H. Napias, "Dispositions legales prises dans les differents pays de 1'Europe au point de vue de I'hygiene des enfants et des femmes travaillant dans 1'industrie," in BIT, 5 (1897): 278.

214

Notes to pages 51-4

53 Rabinbach, 479—85. See also Commission de physiologic et d'enquetes relatives au travail, Sous-commission des recherches physiologique, "Inventaire des faits acquis dans 1'etude physiologique du travail professionnel, Rapport de MJ. Amar," in AN F225i6. 54 Dr A. Imbert, "Dans quelle mesure peut-on, par des methodes physiologiques, etudier la fatique" (paper presented at nth International Congress on Hygiene and Demography, 1903); Dr Laufer, "L'organisation physiologique du travail," La nouvelle revue (15 September — November 1907), letter to Imbert, n September 1905; and Imbert, "Tableau methodique des professions qui appelent des recherches," in AN F22516. 55 Tableau methodique, Arrete, 9 June 1913, Commission de physiologic d'enquetes relatives au travail, documents on composition and agenda, and Premiere sous-commission, Recherches physiologiques, minutes for 25 June 1913, in AN F225i6. 56 Sachnine, 228—30. 57 Imbert, "Tableau methodique ...," in AN F225i6. 58 Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Conference Internationale de Berlin, 17-86. 59 Souvenirs du Charles Benoist, 1:219. 60 Congres international de legislation du travail Rapports et compte-rendu analytique des seances. 61 JO, Debats, 2 June 1900, 356. 62 Association internationale pour la protection legale des travailleurs, Assemblee constitutive tenue a Bale, \ 1—166. 63 Association nationale francaise pour la protection legale des travailleurs, Statuts et documents administratifs. 64 P. Pic, "La Commission internationale de Bale," 44. 65 Association nationale ..., Statuts et documents administratifs. 66 Association nationale ..., La protection legale des travailleurs, x. 67 Association nationale ..., La duree legale du travail (Fagnol report) and La limitation de lajournee du travail en France (Fauren report) (Paris 1906). 68 AS, Debats, 23 February 1882, 113—41. 69 AS, Documents, 1889, no. 182, Ferry Report, 304—7; AS, Debats, 4—5 July and 26—28 November 1889. 70 AN C3291, Proces-verbaux de la Commission, 13 March 1880; AN C5515, Proces-verbaux, 23 January 1891. For more examples, see chapters 5, 6, and 7. 71 See the pamphlets and letters from industrialists in AN C5515 and AN C5517- See also chapters 5, 6, and 7. 72 AS, Documents, 1891, no. 138, Tolain report, 220—8; AS, Debats, 3— 17 July and 26 October —5 November 1891. 73 ACD, Documents, 1892, no. 2171, Sibille report, 257—65.

215

Notes to pages 54-60

74 E.G.,JO, Debate, 3 and lojune 1888, 1616-17 (Passy speech) and 1717— 19 (Guyot speech). 75 Bousquet, 43—64. Bousquet gives a good review of the debates in parliament and the press but underestimates the role of northern textile magnates because he did not consult committee reports. 76 S.C. Hause and A.R. Kenney, Women's Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic, 4off. 77 K. Offen, "Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Fin de Siecle France," 654. 78 Moses, 221-2. 79 C. Dissard, "Opinions feministes a propos du Congres feministe de Paris de 1896." 80 Dissard, "Chronique feministe," La Fronde (3 July 1899); Pognon, "La loi nefaste de 1892." 81 Congres international de la condition et des droits des femmes, Vceux adoptes, 1—6; Deuxieme Congres international des ceuvres et institutions feminines, 1:202; and M. Maugeret, "Rapport sur la liberte du travail au Congres catholique de 1900." 82 H. de Moly, La reglementation du travail en France et les Catholiques (extract from La Reforme sociale). For a later, more positive approach to regulating men's labour, see E. Duthoit, La protection legate des travailleurs. 83 Maugeret, 211—14. 84 Donzelot. 85 I treat "expertise" much as Everett Mendelsohn deals with science in "The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge," as "a sociallyconstructed reality" reflecting not only specialized knowledge and ways of knowing but the "social matrix, the structure and processes of the broader social order." See E. Mendelson et al., The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge, 6. CHAPTER THREE

1 Most recently Judith Stone has made this argument about the social bases of the radicals' support in her The Search for Social Peace. 2 AN C329i,Proces-verbauxde la Commission ... concernant la duree des heures du travail, 19 March 1880; JO, Debats, 22 and 29 March 1881, 599-602. 3 AN C542g, Commission ..., proces-verbaux, 23 March and 8 June 1887. 4 The Opportunists, Progressives, and Union Republicans comprised between 45 and 55 per cent of these committees. Radical Republicans formed the next largest category, accounting for 14 to 50 per cent. 5 The Chamber did accept Nadaud's bill at the first reading. See JO, Debats, i December 1880, 11,768, and 22 March 1886, 600—2.

216

Notes to pages 61—6

6 Ibid., 10 and 15 June 1888, 1720—21 (Camelinat speech) and 1762-4 (Millerand speech). 7 Ibid., 12 June 1896, 925—7. 8 M. Perrot and A. Kriegel, Le socialisme franqais et le pouvoir, 13—64. 9 JO, Debats, 12 June 1896, (Guesde's speech) and 20 December 1899 (Vaillant's speech); Hilden, i85ff. 10 ACD, Documents, 1898, nos. 33 and 115; AN 05673, Commission du Travail, Registres, 5 July 1898; and/0, Debats, 21 December 1899, 2309. 11 ACD, Documents, 1896, no. 1845, 1 ^97,no. 2652, and 1898, no. 2951; AN 05613, €7414 and 07435, Proces-verbaux du Commission du Travail, 1892-8, 1906-10, 1910-12, especially 6July 1912. See also Code du Travail ... Livre n, De la reglementation du travail," in Dalloz,/Mra/>rwdence generate (1913), 63. 12 APP DB 43, Decret du 3ojuin 1913. 13 "L'oeuvre legislative d'Albert de Mun dans le domaine social," 142, 145—6, and 164—89; and B.F. Martin, Count Albert de Mun, Paladin of the Third Republic, i6ff. Two other aristocratic, Catholic monarchist supporters of protective labour laws were Viscount Blin de Bourdon and Baron des Rotours. 14 AN 05429 and 5515, Commission(s) du Travail, Proces-verbaux, 9 March and 25 May 1887 and 14 and 21 May iSgoj/O, Debats, 12 June 1888, 1727—9, and 6 July 1890, 1330—3. 15 JO, Debats, 1881, 679 and 681 (Keller and Villain speeches). 16 Ibid., 3 June 1888, 1616-17 and 1715-19 (Passey and Yves-Guyot speeches), and 10 June 1888, 1710-14 (Lyonnais speech). 17 Ibid., 2 February 1889, 304-11 (speeches by Achard and the minister of commerce), 8 July 1890, 1347—9 (Dron speech), and 3 February 1891, 185-8 (Lemercier and de Mun speeches). See also ACD, Documents, 1886, no. 411, Laur report. 18 AN 05429, 9, 23 and 25 March 1887. 19 AN 05515, 7 and 13 May 1890. 20 AN 05515, 5 February 1890 and chapter six. 21 "Necrologie: Obseques du Docteur Dron," 799—806, and entry in Dictionnaire biographique des philanthropes ..., 169—70. 22 ACD, Documents, 1893, no. 2874, especially 3ogff. 23 Ibid., 1895, no. 1724, 5-16, 29—43, and 89. 24 JO, Debats, 17 and 26 June 1896, 925-52 and 1052-60, and 28 June 1898, 1076—81 (Vaillant amendment and Vaillant and Rivet exchange). 25 AN 05673, Proces-verbaux du Commission du Travail, 22 November and 6 December 1899 (Ferry and Dubief speeches). 26 JO, Debats, 21-3 December 1899, 2269-73 (see especially Dron, Vaillant, Ferry and Dubief speeches). 27 ACD, Documents, 1902, no. 296.

217

Notes to pages 66—70

28 AN 07338, 27 May 1903 and 29 May 1905, AN 07414,4 September 1906 (Dron speech). 29 ACD, Documents, 1906, no. 236, 1-3. 30 AN 07414, 14 October 1906. 31 ACD, Documents, 1907, no. 876. 32 JO, Debats, 18 June and 2 July 1908, 1235—1349 and 1485—92; AN 07414, i6June 1908. 33 ACD, Documents, 1910, no. 272. 34 JO, Debats, 8, 15, 22, and 29 February and 5, 7, 11, 14, and 18 March 1912. 35 AN 05429, 9 and 25 February 1887; JO, Debats, 3 June 1888, 1617. 36 CST, Rapports, 1901, 1904; 1905, vin, vn, and vi respectively. The later figures are 413,269 of 508,849 establishments in 1904 and 415,323 of 511,783 in 1905. 37 ANC5515,14 May 1890and 18 November iSgijAS,Debats,9 July 1891, 43°-338 JO, Lois et decrets, 3-4 November 1892. 39 L.A. Coons, "Orphans" of the Sweated Trades: Women Homeworkers in the Parisian Garment Industry (1860—1915)" (PHD diss. New York University, 1985, 63—4. 40 AS,Debats, 3,6,andg July 1891,370—2, 376-81,and429-331/0,Debats, 29 January 1891, 126—30. 41 JO, Debats, 1891, 156 and 22 June 1896, 958-9 and 1027-8. 42 CST, Rapports, 1898, xv. 43 JO, Debats, 22 December 2290—5. 44 JO, Lois et decrets, 31 March 1900. 45 CST, Rapports, 1901, xxv—vi; 1908, xvm-xix. 46 CST, Rapports, 1902, xxiv; 1905, xvn; and 1908, xix. 47 M. Boxer, "Protective Legislation and Women's Work in France: The Case of Home Industry" (paper presented at Sixth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, 1984). 48 CST, Rapports, 1902, xxn; 1907, xxn. 49 E. Payen, in L'economiste franqais (30 July 1904), 161—3. See also Revue politique et parlementaire (10 September 1905). 50 Association nationale pour la protection legale des travailleurs, Le travail a domicile en France: Rapport de MM. P. Pic et A. Amieux. 51 Dr Romme, "Rapport sur les conditions economiques dans 1'etiolage sociale de la tuburculose," Congres international de la tuberculose; Dr Rey, Considerations sur I'hygiene du travail a domicile (These, Paris, 1906); and Dr L. Graux, Le sweating system et la loi sur la protection de la sante publique. 52 Office du Travail, Enquete sur le travail a domicile dans Vindustrie de la lingerie, vol. 5, Resultats generaux, 1—9. 53 Ibid., 57-75.

218

Notes to pages 70-3

54 55 56 57 58

Ibid., 76—8 and 92—106. BSG, Salaire et cout de I'existence 21, 23. Office du Travail, Enquete sur ... lingerie, 107—19. Ibid., 131-51. AN F22 571, dossiers on the inquiry into artificial flowermaking, 1908—11, and Office du Travail, Enquete sur le travail a domicile dans I'industrie de la fleur artificielle. For more information on artificial flowermaking, see M. Boxer, "Women in Industrial Homework: The Flowermakers of Paris in the Belle Epoque," 401-23. 59 E.g., Frollo, "Salaires des femmes"; L. Brocard, "Le travail des femmes a domicile dans la region de Nancy," Questions pratiques de legislation ouvriere (1909); J. Vermorel, "Le travail a domicile dans I'industrie de la lingerie," ibid. (1910 and 1911); and A. Berthod, "Le minimum de salaire des ouvrieres a domicile dans I'industrie du vetement," ibid. (1913)60 A. Carcassone, "Etude sur la loi sur le paiement des salaires aux ouvrieres et employes" (These, Law, Paris, 1913). 61 J. Lupiac, "La loi du lojuillet 1915 pour la protection des ouvrieres dans I'industrie du vetement" (These, Law, Paris, 1918), 13—14; ACD, Documents, 1910, nos. 261, 469, and 545. 62 AN 7486, Commission du Travail, Proces-verbaux, 22 March, 7 June, and 6 December 1911. 63 ACD, Documents, 1912, no. 1785. 64 AN 7486, 17 January and 20 November 1912. See also the petitions and pamphlets from Chambers of Commerce in the register. 65 BHVP, Fonds Bougie, "Articles desjournaux - Themes," "The Consumers League"; BMD, Second Congres international du travail a domicile (Zurich 1912). 66 JO, Lois et decrets, 10 July 1915. 67 BMD, Congres du travail feminin, Rapport General, 13; Coons, 300—1. 68 BMD, Travail a domicile, note on the law. 69 See, for example, ADV, M293, letter from Mayor of St Michel-surMeurthe, St Die, 20 October 1916, and from the Groupement regional de 1'Est des Fabricants de Bonneterie, 30 August 1919. 70 BMD, Travail a domicile, Activite de 1'Office frangais du travail a domicile, 1916—17, Situation du travail a domicile, 1921, and Diverses methodes de fixation de salaires ... 1928, and Coons, 302. 71 T.B. Caldwell, "The Syndicat des Employes du Commerce et de I'industrie (1887-1919)," 228-66. 72 AN C5515, 21 March, 14 and 16 May 1890. 73 JO, Debats, 14 and 16 May, 5 July 1890, 1321—3. 74 Ibid., 27 January 1891, 124—5.

219

Notes to pages 73-5

75 GST, Rapports, 1894; Conseil Superieur du Travail, Rapport sur les conditions du travail des personnes non protegees par la legislation actuelle, Rapport special sur les petites industries de Valimentation, ix. 76 AN €56ig 2 , 15 March 1895. 77 ACD,Documents, 1895,no. X 7 2 4' 17~~26;/O,Debats, i7and23 June 1896, 960—4 and 1020—3. 78 ACD, Documents, 1895, no. 1724, and 1900, no. 1934. 79 Conseil Superieur du Travail, Rapports et documents sur la reglementation du travail dans les bureaux et magasins, AN €5673, 7 December 1900. 80 JO, Lois et decrets, 31 December 1900.The 1900 hours law did not include commercial workers, as T. McBride asserts in "A Woman's World: Department Stores and the Evolution of Women's Employment, 18701920," 673. 81 AN €5673, 14 and 28 January 1900,70, Debats, 8 February 1900, 371; AS, Documents, 1900, no. 397. 82 AN 05673, Letter from Millerand as Minister of Commerce to the President of the Work Committee, 28 June 1901. 83 CST, Rapports, 1901, 35-6,; 1902, 301. 84 AN F22439, file on department stores, six petitions and responses dating from 15 May 1899 to 14 October 1912. 85 V. Aldabe, Les employees des grands magasins de nouveautes; Leurs revendications (Paris 1901) in AN F225O4. 86 ACD, Documents, 1906, no. 236. 87 Ibid., 1910, no. 273; 1911, no. 668, and 1914^0. 3660; ANF 22 33g, Note for Justin Godard, August 1912, report of the Federation des Commerc.ants detaillants, June 1912, and note on the bills, 12 February 1913. 88 AN 07486, 22 and 29 November 1910; 17 January 1912; 19 and 26 February 1913; and 18 February 1914. 89 AS, Debats, 28 November 1889, 119-22 and 127-81/0, Debats, 17 June 1888, 1789-9390 AN 05673, 13 March 1901; Aldabe, Les employees ..., in AN F225O4; and dossier on workers' resolutions in AN F 22 34i. 91 AN F2234o, brochures on the League, Sunday rest, the International Congress on Sunday Rest. 92 The history is described and documented in Conseil Superieur du Travail, Le repos hebdomadaire: Rapport de Mile Blondelu; AS, Documents, 1905, no. 28; and ACD, Documents, 1906, no. 221. 93 AN F22341, dossier on employers' reactions; Conseil Superieur, Rapports et documents (1901), deposition of M. Honore, 21—23. 94 CST, Rapports, 1911, LIV; AN F22438a. 95 CST, Rapports, 1913, LXIV. 96 AN F22353, dossier on the Samaritaine, especially Aubriot resolution, 20 January 1911, and the attached note.

220

Notes to pages 75-81

97 CST, Rapports, 1908, LVI—LXI; 1910, LI-LIV and LXIV. CHAPTER FOUR

1 Weissbach, 118-244. On the Seine, see APP, D A i35, Program de 1'examen and Deliberations du Conseil General, 8 June 1878. The Nord also had paid officials. See D. Reid, "Putting Labor Reform into Practice," 692 E. Tallon and G. Maurice, Legislation sur le travail des enfants dans les manufactures, 15-615/0, Debats, 11 May and 25 November 1873. 3 Commission Superieure du Travail des Enfants, Rapport sur I'application de la loi du 19 mai 1874, 4—12; ACD, Documents, 1890, no. 649, third Waddington report, 153-4 and 159-61. 4 See AN F22544, "Notes pour servir a la reorganisation du service ...," and ADMM, ioMa, "Organisation du Service," reports on the 1879 General Council decisions on proposals to add departmental inspectors in Aisne, Ardennes, Aube, Marne, and Meuse; also ADMM, ioMg, Minutes on General Council meeting, August 1885, in the Aisne. 5 G. Thullier, Bureaucratie et bureaucrates en France au x/x* siecle, i isff. 6 L. Durassier, Etude sur I'inspection du travail. 7 ACD, Documents, 1887, no. 2204 (second Waddington report), 731-42. 8 JO, Debats, 19 June 1888, 1822-89, and 5 February 1889, 324; AS, Documents, 1889, no. ^2, Ferry report, 307; and AS, Debats, 4 July 1889, 489, and 29 November 1889, 130. 9 ACD, Documents, 1890, no. 649, 160-6; JO, Debats, 6 February 1891, 254-6. 10 JO, Debats, 8 February 1891, 259-65; AS, Debats, 5 and 9 November 1891, 90-4 and 99—102; and ACD, Documents, 1891, no. 1750, Jamais Report, 336, and 1892, no. 2171, 258ff. 11 AN F22544, "Note pour servir a la reorganisation du service ...," and F22547, "Organisation du Service ... Decret du 13 Decembre 1892." 12 CST, Rapports, 1893, 18. 13 Ibid., 1894, x, and 256; 1895, ix, 33, 246-7; 1896, 33, 400-1; and 1899, xvu, 551 and 556; AN F22547, Arretes, 5 March 1897 and 18 April 1898, and Reports, 24 December 1901 and 29 April 1902. 14 AN F22547, Reports, 24 December 1901 and 29 April 1902. 15 CST, Rapport, 1903, m and xi; 1913, vi and xv. See also AN F22547, Fontaine's reports of 28 March 1908 and 4 April 1909, and Direction du Travail, Inspection du Travail: Divisions territoriales et personnel au 1 mai 1912. 16 Association nationale frangais pour la protection legale des travailleurs, 5th ser., no. 4, La reforme de I'inspection du travail en France; Conseil Superieur du Travail Rapport sur la reorganisation du Service de I'inspection

221

17 18

19 20 21 22

23

Notes to pages 84-4

du Travail presente par M. Bourderon; and Compte-rendu, sixieme session, novembre 1906; AN F22g 12, Comite consultatif des Arts et Manufactures, Rapports et avis, 1913 (Berard report), and F22548, Rapport... Decret du 6 aout 1611. AN F223O5, dossiers on appointments, 1875—80, and report on the incumbents, 26 December 1892. See ADN, M593, i, Correspondence from the ministries of the Interior and Commerce, 16 February 1882, 17 May 1884, and 23 May 1889, and notes on inspectors dated 1883 and 30 November 1892. CST, Rapports, 1906, 194; Association Nationale pour la Protection ..., La reforme de I'inspection du travail, 2. AN F22543, "Conditions d'admissabilite et programme du concours ..." AN F22547, Concours 1900; Le concours pour I'emploi d'inspecteur ou d'inspectrice du travail..., 13—14, 4iff. F. Benoit, La reglementation du travail; L. Grillet, L'hygiene du travail...; P. Razous, Inspection du travail: Elements du droitpenal. Grillet and Razous published several guides. AN F22543, "Notes pour servir la reorganisation du service ...," and "Projet de loi, Article 18, Renseignements sur 1'organisation ... dans les pays etrangers"; AN F22544, "Organisation du Service"; and Thuillier,

!3524 BIT 4(1896): 24; 5 (1897): 67-73; 6 (1898):g6ff.; 10(1902): 330-2; and 14 (1906): 151-2; Bulletin de 1'Association Amicale des Inspecteurs, 20 May 1914; u.s. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Administration of Labor Laws and Factory Inspection in Certain European Countries, 80 and 186. 25 AN F22547, Fontaine reports, 24 December 1901; AN F22548, Promotion lists, 1909 and 1911; AN F223O5, Fontaine report, 17 May 1909. 26 AN F223O5, "Classement definitif, Candidats admis 1893"; CST, Rapports, 1893, 18; andfi/7 i (1893): 106-7, H4-1?' and 2 (1894): 802-3. 27 AN F22547, Fontaine report on 1900 exam, June 1900; Le concours ..., 57ff. On the differences in girls' schooling, see L. Clark, Schooling the Daughters of Marianne, 16—18, 61, 67, and 79. 28 On the number of teachers, see Le concours, 12; on commerce, BIT 5 (1897): 207, 16 (1908): 501, and 18 (1910): 13. 29 ADR, loM, Inspection du travail, Correspondance, Boulins to Barral, 6 October 1899. 30 ADMM, ioM2, Reports from 3rd and 4th sections, 1898. 31 JO, Debats, 9 July 1890, 1384-5, and 8 February 1891, 248 and 252. 32 ACD, Documents, 1898, nos. 182 and 312. There had also been a bill immediately after enactment of the 1892 law: see ibid., 1893, no- 3 J 933 AN F22543, Work Committee report, 17 November 1899, and Millerand's draft bill; see also ACD, Documents, 1907, no. 919.

222

Notes to pages 84—9

34 Association Nationale pour la protection ..., La reforme, 34, 64-88; 5th ser., no. 5, Collaboration des ouvriers a I'ceuvre de ['inspection du travail. 35 E.g., Societe pour la Defense du Commerce et de 1'Industrie, Projetde loi sur les delegues-adjoints ...; Societe des Industriels et Commercants, Projet de loi sur les delegues-adjoints ..., and Chambers of Commerce pamphlets of same title, published in 1908. 36 ADMM, ioM8, Inspection report, 1893; ADR, loM, Inspection du Travail, Correspondance, Boulins to Barral, 11 October 1897 and 30 November 37 38 39 40

41 42

43

44

45 46 47

1899CST, Rapports, 1896, xvm; 1897, 240. AN F22543, responses to Millerand's inquiry, 1899. Ibid., Millerand's circulars of 19 February 1900. AN F22563, Laporte report and documentation, i February, 2 August, and 5 November 1900 and 25 January 1901; reports on conferences, 1900—2. See Jarecjewski's disillusioned report of 22 December 1902. CST, Rapports, 1912, xcm-cvi; 1913, xc-cm. AN F22563, correspondence of 16 March and 19 August 1901; correspondence about Nimes and Toulon incidents, August and i December 1904, and August and 18 October 1910. Ibid., letters of 21 March, 26 June, and October 1901; AN F22547, letters about Pech, 9 and 21 October, 14 November, and 15 December 1910; and BIT 11 (1903): 200. AN F22543, Raffin report, 5 March 1900; twenty-three petitions dating from 20 June 1905 to 22 October 1909, clippings from Le Recueil du Nord and L'ouvrier vosgean and note about other petitions, 4 December 1911. AN F22563, letters from Dourlon and Bourgeois, 10 and 13 April 1900. Ibid., nine complaints, 15 July 1900 —August 1904; two complaints, 1910 and 1913. CST,Rapports, 1904, LXXIX; 1912, xcn, 89; 1893,90 and 96; 1894,51 and

!5448 CST, Rapports, 1893, 90 and 96; 1894, 51 and 154. 49 Ibid., 1895, XLII; 1896, LX, 75-6, 99-100, 233, and 276; 1897, LXIVLXVI, 87, 148, 253-5; 1^98, LXXVIII; and 1899, xxxin, xci-xcu. 50 Ibid., 1900, cxvn, 1903, LXXIX; 1910, LXXX; 1912, xciv; and 1913, xcn. 51 ADMM, ioM2, Chery reports, 1893, 1897, 1 9 O1 > 19O3> 19°5>19°7' and 1912. 52 Ibid., monthly reports, May and July 1893,an 130-1, 153, 165 Employers' response to labour laws, 86—9, 92, 100-19, 134—5, 137' 1 44ff-> 164—6, 187—8, 192, 196—7, 200-1 Enforcement, 77-9, 84-8, 91-2, 94-5, 134-5, 138, 140-3, 152-4, 156, 164-6, 191-3, 201 English weekend, 49, 53, 194 Equal pay for equal work, 27, 136—7, 139, 195 Exemptions, 14, 16, 39, 73, 75, 106—8, 121, 126—8, 134-5.137~43. 15°> 162-6, 192-3, 200 Family, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 15, 26, 31, 34-5, 42-6, 50, 57, 59, 61, 63-4, 127-9, 132- 136, 173. 177.191-197 Family wage, 15, 55, 197, 199 Family workshops, 14, 20, 59, 67-72, 199 Fatigue, 50-2, 68, 129-30, 132, 159 Female labour force, 21-3, 42-3, 171, 194; in textiles, 99-100 Feminists, 8, 10, 27, 52, 55-7, 93, 137-9, 143, l8 2, 186,193-5 Ferry, Charles, 54-5, 68, 103, 128, 131 Flowermaking, 4, 71, 95, 140, 157 Fontaine, Arthur, 145, 156 Food workers, 73—5, 140, 165 Garment workers, 4, 38, 68—71, 123—4, !32—3, 140-4, 194, 200 Glassworks, 94, 124, 126, 146 Great Depression, 12,36-7, 101, 115, 117, 125, 198 Guyot, Yves, 54, 128, 152 High Commission on Labour, 49, 71,81,91, 136, 139 Hours standards, 3, 41, 46—8, 60-76, 97—8, 178, 203; eleven-hour limit (1892 act), 3, 16, 41, 97ff.; eighthour limit (1919 act), 4, 41, 64, 196; twelve-hour limit (1848 act), 10, 78; ten-hour limit (1900 act), 41, 98, 204 Housewife, housework, 4—7, 11, 24, 31, 43—4, 50, 57, 63-4,67, 128-30, 198-9 Industrial Health and Safety Act (June 1893), 74, 80, 151—3, 162—7; revision in 1903, 59, 88, 90 Industrial health and safety standards: 1892 act, 4—5, 94-6, 149-67, 192, 194, 203-4; in World War i, 196 Industrial hygiene, 50-2, 81, 95, 129, 149-61, 178 Infant mortality, 171-2, 176, 179-81, 183-4, 187, 189-90 Infractions of 1892 and 1900 laws, 75, 86—8, 101—8, 138,141-3, 165, 193 Inspection, 68-9, 74, 77-96, 99, 138, 140-3, 165; reports, 15, 48

275

Index

Inspection service, 4, 16, 48, 74, 80-6, 89—93, 99, 152—3, 192, 201; worker adjoints, 83-6; medical adjuncts, 153—6; safety delegates, 155—6 Inspectors: Boulins, 84, 89, 92, 164; Boulisset, 92—3, 95, 164; Chambard, 85; Chery, 87—8; Jaracjewski, 85, 152, 164, 166; Laporte (Chief Inspector, 1892—1905), 85, 89, 92, 94, 131-2, 138, 143, 163; Mongel, 84 Inspectrices, 82—3, 89-93, J 9 2 ' 195> ^e ^a Ruelle, 90-1, 93; Courtet, 91; Juillerat, 93, 144; Meffre, 91 Internallabour markets, 150, 164, 193-4 International labour conferences, 52—3, 134, 144—5, 158,175-6, 195 International labour conventions, 144-5, J 5^> X95 International Labour Organization, 195 Jamais, Emile, 24, 30 Joubert, Ambroise, 33, 44, 78, 125 Keufer, Auguste, 49, 55, 91, 136-8, 144 Labour Code, 4—5, 62, 146, 196 Labour Office, 49—50, 69—70, 156 Laundries, 91, 156, 165 Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul, 44, 47 Lingerie industry, 49, 69-71 Logic of industrialization thesis, 19—25 Matchmaking, 26, 156, 161-2 Maternity benefits, 170, 172-4, 176-7, 185, 188—9, 195 Maternity leave, 16, 53, 63-4, 129, 169-90, 195; 1913 act, 16, 189—90 Medical profession, 50-2, 129-30, 174-87 Menstruation, 50—1, 62, 129, 159, 174, 186 Millerand, Alexandre, 12, 35, 53, 61, 65, 68, 71, 83, 85, 102-3, lo6, i39> *43' !57. J 9 6 > 201 Minimum wage, 4, 49-50, 59, 63, 69-72, 144, 159, 195 Mun, Albert de, 10, 53, 63, 67, 71, 127, 132, 173-4, 177-8 Nadaud, Martin, 60, 131 Napias, Dr Henri, 51, 154, 163, 178—9 Night shifts, 4, 134-9, 146, 193 Night work, 122—4, 132-4? bans on, 4, 53, 64, 195; 1892 act, 16, 68, 134-5, 203; 1910 act, 146—7 Occupational diseases, 71, 129-30, 137, 154-61 Overtime, 4, 16, 37-8, 101, 104-8, 122, 124, 133, i39-44> M6. 191-*, i96. 200

276

Index

Pay, 26-7, 37-8, 68—72, 110—16, 136—9, 198—9 Penalties in protective labour laws, 77-80, 87, 101, 103—4, J S6> 201 Pinard, Dr Adolphe, 181-4, 186, 189 Porteuses de pain, 165—6 Pregnancy, 63, 160, 172, 175, 179, 182—7, 195 Printing, 135-9 Protective labour bills, 28—31, 36-9, 41, 54—5, 60-73, 78—80, 97—8, 107; on night work, 125—8; health and safety, 150-2, 158; and maternity leave, 173—8, 184-8 Protective labour laws, 5-6, 41, 196; child labour laws, 5, 9; of 1841, 10, 77-8; of 1874, 78, 125, 149, 196; sex-specific labour laws, 5-6, 56-7, 197; of 2 November 1892, 3, 32, 41, 97ff., 134, 176, 203—4; of 30-1 March 1900, 3, 41, 59, 65, 68, 98, 103, 105—8, 204; universal labour laws: of 1848, 10; of 1919, 196; maternity leave laws: of 1909, 188, 196; of 1913, 184, 189-90, 196 Prudent-Dervilliers, 61—2 Radicals, 29-30, 60-4, 66-7, 97, 127, 131, 144, 173, 180, 187, 193, 196-9 Relays (rolling and split shifts), 16, 65, 99—105. 201 Right to work, 3, 11, 20, 41, 62, 174-5, 19& "Seat" law (December 1900), 59, 72, 74, 80; extended to industrial establishments, 194 Secondary labour market, 8-9, 14, 37-40, 57, 67, 119, 143,150, 162-3,l&7> 200-1 Sexual segmentation of labour force, 8—9, 14, 27—8, 37-40, 103,107,114, 118-19,150,162, 167, 191-3, 197, 200-1 Simon, Jules, 43-4, 53, 55, 175-6 Social Catholics, 11, 63, 126, 170, 173, 177, 196-7 Social demand theses, 19, 25-9 Social insurance, 19—20, 170, 185-6, 188—9 Socialists, 10, 12-13, 19-20, 28-9, 34, 55, 59-62, 646, 113, 125, 127, 170, 173-4, 177~8, 188, 196-9 Sociologists, 19—20, 42—4, 198—9 Solidarists, 12, 35, 66, 144, 180, 187, 196-7 Strauss, Paul, 35, 170, 180-9, J93 Strikes, 4, 27, 49, 99, 111-15, 138—9, 162, 202 Sugar refineries, 124, 126, 146 Supreme Work Committee, 48, 69, 73, 78, 80, 86-7 Textile industries, 38, 98—119, 122—4, 132~5> J 84, 187 Tuberculosis, 52,66, 129, 154, 157, 159 Unions, 7, 19-20, 25-8, 49, 72-5, 84-6, 93, 105, 11215,126,135-9,"55-7' 161-2, 164-5, !73> J 92~3

277

Index

Vaillant, Dr, 53, 62, 66, 68, 159 Veillees, 122, 124, 133, 140—4, 146 Villain, Jean-Louis, 23, 30, 33, 125 Viviani, Rene, 66, 84, 145, 188 Waddington, Richard, 11, 21-3, 28-9, 31-4, 53, 63, 172, 196—8; on Spuller Commission, 36—7; exemptions, 39, 67, 73; on inspection, 48, 79, 83, 126-8; bills, 54, 60; on night work, 126, 131, 133, 145 Wartime measures, 191—4 Weekly holiday provisions: 1814 act, 10; 1906 act, 10, 59. 72, 75; l892 act> !74 Weight limits, 5, 94, 150, 155, 163-6 Work accidents, 64, 66, 151, 155, 160-1, 164, 194 Work breaks, 52, 108—9, 194' 2O2 Workday, 37—8, 54, 68—70, 72ff., 99—110, 202 Workers' compensation, 34; 1898 act, 80, 83, 151, 156 Working conditions, 68, 70-1, 74, 109—10, 117—19, 122—4, 129~3°> 150, 158-66, 172, 192—3, 198, 202 Working women's response to labour laws, 4, 15, 93— 6,131-3, 137-9, 141,155-6. 164-6, 201-2