De la toile cirée au P. V. C. Une industrie de la banlieue lyonnaise : les Établissements Maréchal à Vénissieux

Abstract

From the oiled cloth to the polyvinyle chloride (P.V.C.) An industry of Lyons suburbia : the Maréchal Factories at Vénissieux. The Maréchal factories, more than a century old, have invented and produced a common use article, the plastic adhesive sheet Vénilia, so that it has henceforth become a noun used in common language. Considering this concern as an object of history is tantamount to associate a space, men, events and social relations to the world of technology — from the linseed oil cloth to the polyvinyle chloride. The Maréchal industrial concerns, born from the flight before the Prussians in 1870 of an Alsatian family, allowed Venissieux, a township in the suburbs of Lyons, to enter the Industrial era. Its expansion and its slump in the thirties have contributed to make up the city : as an element of economic structuration, by attracting and fixing the work-force, as a place where to live, by setting up a home social policy, as a place of conflict at Iast, with the big strikes of 1906, the fîrst ones at Vénissieux. Seen under its various sides, this concern appears as an epitome of the problems of the contemporary world.