Work, Family, and Class Values in the Nineteenth Century: Colloquium on Denis Poulot's Le Sublime

Abstract

Denis Poulot (b. 1832) was worker who became small-time employer in the Parisian metal trades. His Le Sublime, ou le travailleur comment il est en 1870 et ce qu'il peut ?tre offers remarkable insights into the lives, labor, and families of his former comrades. Considered classic by social and labor historians, Le Sub lime has recently been republished by Editions Maspero with an introduction by Alain Cottereau. This new edition served as the basis of discussion at one-day colloquium in New Haven on March 27, 1981 sponsored by the Council on West European Studies and the Department of History at Yale University. The partici pants included France specialists as well as historians of other European countries and the United States. The gathering signified the increasing interest of students of nineteenth century workers' movements in the world of the mid-century middle class and its relationship to working class experience. Christopher Johnson began the morning session with remarks on Poulot's manipulation of the artisan ideologies of the eighteen forties in Le Sublime. Johnson demonstrated how Poulot reoriented artisan ideology away from its origi nal cooperative, fraternal mold and set it in competitive one while retaining al most all the old panaceas: political democracy, generalized primary education fol lowed by solid vocational training in state-financed schools, chambres syndicales, organized hiring practices through craft-run hiring halls, the institutions and values of the compagnonnages, reformed Conseils des Prudhommes, and the linchpin, cooperation of production financed by cooperative banques du travail. Johnson went on to suggest that Poulot presented a remarkably coherent progressive capi talist program for what John Foster calls 'liberalization,' and concluded by questioning the extent to which Poulot's ideology of management had triumphed in France in this period.