Industrial Life and Labor in France 1815–1848

A new study of labor in France in the earlier nineteenth century seems justified for two reasons. First, a change in the point of view is desirable. Labor in that period has been treated as a movement related to political factors and to socialistic and other doctrines. I feel that it should be studied now in the light of the changes wrought in the lives of the French people by the advent of large-scale industry with its factories, machinery, and concentration of capital. It is important to realize that much of the unemployment from which French laborers suffered in this period was due to those recurrent crises in industry and trade which we now study as parts of the business cycle. We have been taught wrongly to believe that while England suffered from these crises early in the nineteenth century France was virtually exempt until 1857. Secondly, the study of French labor needs revision in the light of new evidence and of a reappraisal of some of the familiar evidence.