Peter N. Stearns

Against the Strike Threat: Employer Policy toward Labor Agitation in France, 1900-1914

The two decades before World War I were among the most dynamic in French industrial history. Manufacturers in many industries undertook major innovations. Industrial horsepower more than tripled; the formation of corporations increased rapidly, and in many industries the size of the average firm doubled or tripled; production advanced at an unprecedented rate.2 In this same period, industrialists faced a rising tide of worker unrest. During the 1890s, an average of 92,448 workers conducted 421 strikes each year. Beginning in 1899, when 740 strikes occurred, the rate of protest stepped up decisively: the average strike rate more than doubled, through 1913, to 1,067 per year, and the annual number of strikers rose two and a half times. Significant strike movements spread to almost all areas and industries in France. Virtually every conceivable method of striking was tried, often for the first time: the sit-down strike, the slow-up, the blacklist of one company at a time, nationwide industrial strikes, regional general strikes-all became common. The increased rate and intensity of labor agitation posed clear and, on the whole, novel problems for French manufacturers. Their reaction was at first uncertain. Except in isolated instances, no new methods were introduced to repress or to conciliate the labor force. But as agitation continued to mount, something had to be done. From 1908 onward, an array of defenses against strikes was established, and by 1911 some of the most objectionable features of worker protest had been tamed. For most industrialists in 1900, strikes were not a matter for major or ordinary concern. If they occurred, they were dealt with by individual manufacturers, and most strikes affected only a single firm in any case. Concessions might be granted; even before 1899, a scant majority of strikes succeeded to some degree. But changes in the basic methods of dealing with labor were avoided. There was little