National Workshops

The national workshops are an organization intended to provide work to the Parisian unemployed after the revolution of February 1848. The State intervenes while providing, while organizing and by paying work.

Origin

Theorized in the Organization of work (1839) of White Louis. This last, under the name of social Workshops, envisaged the creation of co-operatives of production, associations of workmen of the same profession, without owner. The State was to support creation by providing the start-up capital. The national Workshops take as a starting point enough far from this model.

The revolution of 1848 carries Louis Blanc to the provisional government which proclaims, on February 25th, the Droit to work. White Louis request vainly with his/her colleagues of the government, the creation of a Ministry of Labor, with a team, a budget and the political possibility to take decrees. In order to oblige it to remain interdependent of the government and to calm the popular classes (dixit Lamartine the most influential member of gouvenement), while moving away it from the center of decision making Louis Blanc is charged to direct the Commission of Luxembourg where liberal economists, socialist and delegated theorists Parisian workmen must set up a Plan of organistion of work. The " workman Albert " , also member of the government is named vice-president.

Created by the public Minister for Labor Marie, the national Workshops are regarded as having been open the February 27th 1848, closed the June 21st 1848. The direction of the national Workshops is entrusted to Emile Thomas, an engineer who is helped by the pupils of the Central École. At the beginning the workmen unemployed must go to the town hall of their arrondissemnt with a certificate of the owner or the landlord of furnished sound which guarantees its residence in Paris or in the department of the Seine. This certificate aimed by the police superintendent of the district is exchanged against a bulletin of admission to the national Workshops. But the town halls are overflowed by the surge of the unemployed. They pass from 6.000 on March 15th, to 30.000 on March 30th, then to 64.000 on April 16th to culminate to 117.000 on April 30th. Suceptible work to be to them provided does not follow, and the gotten rid of unemployed recriminate. Also to prevent the risk of disorders, and regrouping of workmen of the same profession which can become a leaven of coalition, Thomas quickly decides to centralize the requests by an office on the level of the district where the unemployed will have to go to one day fixed.

The national Workshops are organized militarily. At the base the section of 11 men under the responsibility of a escuadier (carrying a wool blue-sky arm-band). Five sections form, brigade ordered by a sergeant raising a fringed arm-band of red. Four brigades form a lieutenancy of 225 men. Four lieutenancies form a company of 901 men. Three companies are under the responsibility of a department head who depends on a chief of district. This organization aims so that never more than 10 men are joined together for work or the pay. Moreover, the minister Marie in a maintenance reported by Thomas, evokes possibility qu E the workmen of the national Workshops are called one day with " to go down in the rue" and makes post in the building sites qu'" they (workmen) must be ready to defend the Fatherland, to protect, made the aurpès of almost Republic tricolore" with the first call of the authorities. The workmen are besides members of the National guard which since March 8th is opened with all (manpower pass then from 56.751 on May 1st February to 190.299 on March 18th). Any workman who carries out a turn of duty receives 2 franc against the presentation of his ticket of guard. May 7th, 1848, during the first meeting of delegated national Workshops, new organization intended to make part with the Commission of Luxembourg, one tells them " that the flag of the national Workshop is a signal of ordre" . The republican government considers in the workmen of the national Workshops like a reserve army which, at the sides of the mobile Guard and army, can internevir in the repression of a working rising.

The departure for the building site is fixed at 6 a.m. A pause with place between 9 and 10 hours. The meal is taken enters 14 and 15 hours. The building site is finished at 6 p.m. The presence is checked by two daily calls and any absence is sanctioned by a fine of 25 centimes if one does not answer the first call of the day, and the day is not paid if it there absence with the second call. For any abscence not - authorized the fine is of 50 centimes, two days consecutive of abscence not - authorized are worth the radiation of the organization. The simple workman perceives 2 francs per day, the escouadier 2,50 francs, the sergeant 3 francs, the lieutenant 4 francs, the high ones of the Central School 5 francs some is their rank. As it is impossible to employ the every day the workmen (one estimates at one day out of four effective work) an allowance of inactivity is versed is a reduction of 50 centimes on an ordinary pay. As of on March 17th one still reduces by 50 centimes the allowance and the pay of Sunday is removed. At this time bread delivers it costs on average 35 centimes. The workmen also profit from help gotten by the office of help. Goods of bread, meat and bubble are allocated each day. If the workman is sick the hospital expenses are dealt with by the office and his wife and her children are helped in their residence. In the event of industrial accident, the family perceives the amount of the allowance of inactivity. The national Workshops have a medical office or one can consult and who makes visits in residence.

The national Workshops deal with various building sites. Provided work is not obligatorily that of the qualification of the workmen unemployed. An investigation of May 19th, 1848, counts 216 different professions, of which many craftsmen, the great Parisian speciality (bijputiers, metal workers, engravers on bronze, cabinetmakers…). In fact especially public works were requested. The levelling of the Place of Europe (close to the Saint-Lazare station) is their work. They take part in work of the private companies of railroad: the prolongation of the line of Seals with Orsay, the digging of sliced of Clamart, they ensure of work on the line from Paris in Versailles and prepares the earthwork of the future station of the railroads of the West. But work misses. Also sees one the workmen clearing the trees shot down during the events of February to replace them by new trees coming from the national seedbeds. However much of unemployed remain désoeuvrés.

Closing and repression

Symbol of the fraternization and the republican unanimism which prevail the shortly after the revolution of February, the national Workshops will be the victims of the political change which takes place in spring 1848. The revolution is the work of the Parisian ones, but the introduction of the male vote for all, will give to the province an enormous political power. The notable ones which temporarily disappeared will reappear and take again the real capacity. The results of the elections of April 23rd to the National Assembly are a great disappointment for the republican mediums progressists. The very great majority of the elected deputies are moderate republicans or many republican of the following day (in fact of the camouflaged royalists). May 10th, the provisional government installed at the time of the revolution of February yields the capacity to the Executive commission from where Louis Blanc and the working Albert was excluded.

For new (in fact old the) leader of France, the national Workshops are an economic and social horror and a political danger. Elected by owners, tradesmen, shareholders, they are counterirritated with the idea that one pays workmen nothing to make and that helps are organized, whereas for them private charity must provide for it. More basically they are opposed to an intervention of the State in the economic domain and the regulation of the relations between the contractors and their employees (the strike and the trade unions are then prohibited and the law of 1841 on the child work with good of the evil to being applied in France). For them the national Workshops are a financial drain and a moral disaster (" a strike organized with 170.000 francs per day, is 45 million per annum… an active hearth of permanent fermentation… deterioration more afflicting with the so glorious and so proud character of the travailleur" according to the Count de Falloux). Moreover the incapacity required employment necessary, makes many workmen désoeuvrés and available, on their gathering places or the boulevards, to the political propaganda of the republicans and the Socialists but also of the Bonapartists whose applicant Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is the author of the Extinction of pauperism (1844).

The failure of the popular demonstration of May 15th decapitates the republican movement progressist. As of on May 16th the Commission of Luxembourg is removed and Louis Blanc threatened of continuations by the National Assembly. The lists of inscription to the national Workshops are closed. The Count de Montalembert and the Count de Falloux, members influential of the preserving majority of Assemblé national tackle the existence of the national Workshops unceasingly, that some indicate ironically like the “national racks”. May 14th, Ulysses Trélat public Minister for Labor, returns Emile Thomas, the director of the Workshops and issues their closing. But the Executive commission balking to remove this symbol of the spirit of February and Na news republic, the decree is suspended. However on May 30th, the Parliament votes that the workmen residing since less than three months has Paris and in the Département of the Seine must regain the province, thus hoping to deflate the rows of possible resistant to an government action. The government project to nationalize the railroad companies, which would thus make it possible at the State to overcome the unwillingness of the engineers of the private companies open new building sites, precipitates the events. May 19th the Parliament creates a special subcommittee on the national Workshops, Michel Goudchaux is the president and Falloux the rapporteur. June 20th, the Parliament votes the closing of the Workshops and on June 21st the Executive commission puts the decree of May 24th into force. The old workmen from 17 to 25 years must enlist in the army, the others must go to the Sologne or in the Moors of Gascogne to make afforestation or drainage works there. June 22nd, the official journal of the time the Monitor publishes the decree. A working delegation is violently gotten rid of by Marie member of the Executive commission. The first barricades rise then in Paris. It is the beginning of the popular insurrection of the Journées of June

The government of the time very quickly endeavoured to make silence on these terrible events, which inspired with Karl Marx its work the class struggles in France (1850), where it qualifies them " Workhouse S English with sky ouvert" . Even historians of left, like Maurice Agulhon and Michelle Perrot, evoke them only in a partial way.

Another source is the book of Louis Ménard, '' Prolog of a revolution, February-June 1848 '', Paris, 1849. Ménard was condemned, to have written this book, at three years of prison. It was exiled in Belgium. See also the accounts of Engels for the '' Nouvelle Rhenish Gazette '', and of Gustave Flaubert (in a fast way) in sentimental Education , as well as Daniel Stern (alias Marie d' Agoult).

The epilog of June 1848 will be the destruction symbolic system of the Parisian central districts by Haussmann, whose urban openings (the boulevard of Sébastopol in particular) cut in their heart the places of the insurrection, where were drawn up many barricades, but also from which came from many insurrectionists, workmen and craftsmen of the Parisian factory. Places of another modernity that Walter Benjamin tried, in the years 1930, to make reappear in its Livre of the passages …

Sources

White Louis, History of the Revolution of 1848
Emile Thomas, History of the National Workshops
Georges Duveaux, 1848 , Gallimard, collection Ideas.

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