Rationalization and Railway Workers in France: Raoul Dautry and Les Chemins de Fer de l'Etat, 1928-1937

Abstract

Historians have paid surprisingly little attention to employers in France, despite the critical influence of their attitudes and policies on the development of the labour movement and ultimately on political life.2 The problem is partly ideological and partly methodological. Because of their own sympathies, academics often prefer to study workers rather than employers and tend to concentrate on trade union history. The problem is compounded by the lack of source materials, about which every historian of the patronat has complained, perhaps unjustly, for in the twentieth century, at least, many industrialists and managers engaged openly in debate and tried to influence public opinion.3 One of the most eloquent was Raoul Dautry (1880-1951),4 head of the State Railway from 1928 to 1937, and author of many speeches and reports, which, one trade union journal noted with annoyance, were 'immediately reported... with the same degree of attention and care and the same admiring commentaries usually devoted to the speeches of heads of states, dictators and ministers'. Dautry had a good sense of public relations.5