Skeins, Scales, Discounts, Steam, and other Objects of Crowd Justice in Early French Textile Mills
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2107489 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William M Reddy (0000-0002-0929-1663, Duke University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1979 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 204-213 |
| Publication date | 1979-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0010417500012822 |
| OpenAlex | W2081605752 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 5 |
At 7:00 a.m. on 16 July 1833, M. Minder, owner of a cotton mill at Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, a small textile center in Alsace, announced to his spinners that he would henceforth be charging them 1 franc 20 centimes per week for dévidage, that is for the reeling and unreeling of roving or finished thread-a task accomplished by women in a separate workroom. In response, his spinners walked out of the mill. A local arbitration board (the Conseil des Prudhommes) would later rule that M. Minder had broken the work contract (the contrat du travail) since he had not given proper advanced notice to his laborers of the new charge for dévidage. In other words, the board ruled that the laborers had in fact become legally free to leave work by virtue of Minder's improper announcement. Even though all ninety-five of them walked out en masse, they did not thereby constitute an illegal coalition since their unwritten contract with M. Minder as denned by law had been broken first by Minder's failure to give notice. The laborers' subsequent actions, however, did constitute a coalition; and ten of them were later prosecuted under the anti-coalition statutes. They marched directly to several neighboring mills and tried to induce their fellow spin- ners to join them in the streets. Everyone in town knew that M. Minder had not acted alone, that most local mill owners planned to institute a charge for dévidage
Archaeology · Business · Mill · Notice · Political science · Statute · Work (physics) · Engineering · European Political History Analysis · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,09 |
| Citation span | 1980 - 1992 (13) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |