Individual Lives and Family Strategies in the French Proletariat*

137

INDIVIDUAL LIVES AND FAMILY STRATEGIES IN THE FRENCH PROLETARIAT*

Louise A. Tilly**

During his imprisonment in Fascist Italy, phies. The historical product is description Antonio Gramsci was deprived of everyday and analysis of behavior patterns by cate- contacts with people and grasped at the gories of individuals. scraps of reading material that came his Alan Macfarlane (1977:204-205) con- way. It was under these conditions that he trasts the data which are the stuff of social wrote his thoughtful and stimulating history-&dquo;data ... almost all at the level prison notebooks and letters. In a letter to of behavior, describing events in the past, his sister-in-law Tatiana in 1928, he re- rather than at the normative or cognitive marked, &dquo;If you’re not able to understand level&dquo;-with the data of contemporary in- real individuals, you can’t understand vestigators. The latter &dquo;often have a what is universal and general&dquo; (Lawner, plethora of data at the normative level- 1973:136). people’s comments on how one ought to This aphorism strikes at one of the cen- behave in these ways-but rather little in- tral problems of the practice of social formation about how they actually do be- history. In their commitment to seeking have. Thus investigators are forced to infer out the history of the inarticulate popular the statistical level from the normative classes, social historians have necessarily data, whereas with [historical] material turned to sources which tell about people ... we have to deduce the patterns of rather than sources created by the people motivation from the patterns of action.&dquo; themselves. The typical records used by For the historian one path to normative social historians-censuses, marriage, evidence can lead through autobiography birth and death registers, tax records, -diaries, memoirs, correspondence. Mac- police and court records-and the typical farlane’s own masterful analysis (1970) of methods of analysis of these records the diary of Ralph Josselin is one of the produce collective, not individual biogra- most successful examples of the genre. His methodological handbook for the study of historical communities (1977) not surpris- *An earlier draft of this paper, titled &dquo;Women both statistical sources for and Family Strategies in French Proletarian Fam- ingly catalogs ilies,&dquo; was written while the author was a fellow at the collective biography and argues for the im- Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton Uni- portance of personal testimony. Most versity. That draft was read at Yale University, Liv- social historians are not lucky enough to ingston College (Rutgers) and the University of Cali- find in ready conjuncture a well-docu- fornia, Santa Cruz. The author wishes to thank col- mented like Earls Colne and a leagues and the audience at those presentations for village questions and comments. centrally-placed, long-lived diarist like its seventeenth century parson, Ralph Josse- **Louise A. Tilly, Ph.D., is Associate Professor lin. For these social historians, however, of at the History University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. contemporary autobiographical materials She and Kathryn Tilly are preparing an English from other can translation of Mémé Santerre, to be published by places suggest questions, Schocken Books. She is also completing research for comparisons, answers to verify and apply a book, Family and Class in Three French Cities. in their own community studies. Such is 138

the method used in this paper. people caught up in a process of large scale Although autobiography can provide structural change, or, on the other hand, precious clues about personal motives and the attempt to see into people’s minds, to feelings, it is not very helpful in general- study mentality or attitude, which can be izing about behavior. An individual may tautological. (As, for example, when discuss why he or she acted in some par- people’s attitudes are deduced from their ticular way rather than another, from his behavior, and then their behavior is said to or her own point of view. From the center be caused by these attitudes.) The concept of a set of economic and material relation- of family strategies works as a series of ships and social connnections, however, it hypotheses about &dquo;implicit principles,&dquo; as is difficult for an individual to see patterns Pierre Bourdieu (1976:141) puts it, less of behavior. Such &dquo;typical&dquo; patterns can rigid or articulated than decision rules, by be discerned and described by looking not which the household, not the individual at one individual but at many individuals or the society as a whole, acts as the unit in similar circumstances, and the connec- of decision making. tions among these individuals. Clearly There are family strategies for dealing social historians need to approach their with migration, fertility, schooling, labor subjects with as rich and varied a set of force participation, coresidence of chil- sources as possible. Individual biography dren, even age of marriage. These strate- and collective biography can complement gies have different effects on individuals, each other in describing behavior and sug- depending on their position and activities gesting motives and causes. in the family. All household members’ im- One way to conceptualize and examine peratives and choices are shaped by their the links between individual lives and col- position in the family, by the economic lective behavior is through the concept of and social structures in which the house- family strategies. The concept of family hold is located, and by the processes of strategies is analytically useful to the social change which these structures are under- historian seeking to understand the be- going. Strategies, as analyzed by Bour- havior of ordinary people in the past- dieu, tend to reproduce social relations. people who, even if they have left auto- When circumstances are changing, how- biographical statements, are seldom aware ever, strategies can change, too. Whether, of what in their lives is unique and what how, and when they change are the impor- they share with others acting in response to tant questions. Analysis of household and similar constraints and opportunities. family strategies addresses social behavior Analysis of strategy tries to uncover the in the past at a level where analysis is principles which lead to observable regu- meaningful; it examines decision-making larities or patterns of behavior among principles which are voluntary, proble- households. It asks who participates in matic and yet identifiable. Finally, the making decisions, what concerns and con- concept of family strategies is applicable straints impinge on them. It asks who both to individual biography, to the degree bears the costs or benefits from strategies that other family members and family in which individual interests or needs are interactions are discussed, and to collec- often subordinated. A focus on family tive biography. Systematic comparisons strategies reintroduces a problematic, an between the two levels can be mutually en- intentionality and uncertainty in history, lightening (see Laslett, 1978). without abandoning systematic analysis. It This paper applies this prescription for moves away from, on the one hand, any historical research to the history of prole- implicit acceptance of the powerlessness of tarian women, their families, and their 139

work in France from 1870 to 1914. The tion in or impact on their adjustment to word proletarian is used here in the sense economic realities. How families pursued of persons who work for wages and own no this goal differed, then, according to both capital. In France as in most of Europe, structural and historical factors. much proletarianization, on-going for cen- In nineteenth-century France, an adult turies, was rural. Peasants lost their small male usually acted as agent for the family holdings, or their holdings were subdi- in the public sphere, such as relations with vided to such a degree that they could not employers and the state. This was true support a family with their agricultural even when, as illustrated in the auto- product. In some areas, rural proletarians biography of Meme Santerre (Grafteaux, survived by working in cottage textile in- 1976:34), his literate daughter kept a dustry, producing cloth in their own small record (for the purposes of checking the houses for urban merchants and their paymaster’s totals) of the work the family agents. In other places, rural proletarians did. What the adult male role was in pri- worked as wage labor on large scale farms. vate decisions, such as those about fertility Over the course of the nineteenth century, and family size, is simply not known. In cottage production of textiles was driven this paper, families are conceived of as out of existence by competition from large acting in a unitary way to make decisions. scale factory industry. Rural weavers, their The behavioral consequences, whether textile wages pushed to starvation levels positive or negative, of strategies for indi- by urban competition, either supple- vidual family members, rather than their mented these wages by other work or presumed role in making decisions, are abandoned their villages and migrated to examined in the conclusion. industrial cities. One type of family strategy is illustrated The two cases examined here lie at two by the behavior of the rural farm laboring extremes of proletarian experience. In weavers from the village of Avesnes-les- each case two kinds of questions are Aubert, near Cambrai in the department asked: how did family strategies cope with of the Nord. These people were called and reflect the circumstances of proletar- Camberlots, after the chief city of their ianization ? and what were the conse- region. Their lives were shaped by their quences for women in these families? work as domestic weavers in a period when These questions will be examined for sev- the industry was being undermined by the eral specific strategies, viz. , marriage, fer- growth of a large-scale textile industry. As tility, schooling, and labor-force participa- their livelihood became more and more tion. The organization of work and precarious, the villagers sought other changes in it are the essential context for means to support their families. There the analysis of these strategies. were jobs for workers in the nearby sugar The concept of strategies implies ob- beet fields, so the first adaptation of the jectives. What objective did the families Camberlots was to supplement weaving examined pursue? Quite simply, they with farm day labor in the Nord. The sub- strove to promote nuclear family survival prefect of Cambrai, in his responses to the over the cycle of family expansion and con- national &dquo;Enqu8te industrielle&dquo; of 1873 traction, from marriage of the couple, (ADN M 605/4), noted that subdivisions through child bearing, child departures, at succession had led to an increased num- return to the solitary couple, and death of ber of tiny farms and landless laborers. its members. It was this goal which in- Both former peasants and weavers sought formed family responses to economic work in the sugar beet fields. The com- structure and change, to political interven- bination of agricultural work and weaving 140

produced, he wrote, &dquo;very fortunate con- Ironically, then, the Camberlots moved ditions which visibly increased their well- from work in manufacturing into agricul- being. &dquo; ture, albeit capitalist agriculture. This Within a few years, however, official Camberlot way of life was an adaptation to reports were less sanguine. In 1878, an specific circumstances in the Nord. It was &dquo;Enqu8te&dquo; on the condition of weavers in a case of people preserving an old way of the Nord (ADN M 581/141), said that &dquo;In living-weaving linen in the cottages of the arrondissement of Cambrai in particu- Avesnes-through adaptations which con- lar, handloom weavers are being replaced tinued, for many, until the First World by machines-and they must find other War broke the back of the domestic weav- ways to live.... in general, the workers ing industry. received barely two-thirds of what they The autobiography of Memo Santerre need to buy bread, not to speak of housing (Grafteaux, 1976) tells about three gener- or clothing....&dquo; Another report notes, ations from Avesnes-les-Aubert: that of &dquo;The workers understand what is happen- her mother and father, born in 1848; that ing, and they don’t struggle against events; of M6m6, their youngest child, born in some of them have emigrated, others work 1891; and that of her son, born in 1911.’1 in the fields; unfortunately, the population Other materials from French municipal, is too dense for agriculture to support their departmental, and national archives pro- needs, but most of them stay because they vide systematic evidence on the demogra- own a little house and are certain they can’t find a job elsewhere.&dquo; This opinion, that workers accepted their fate, proved to ’Serge Grafteaux, Mémé Santerre (Verviers: be wishful thinking. In 1886, some 90 per- Marabout, 1976). This life story was told to a journalist Marie Catherine in cent of the workers in Avesnes-les-Aubert by Santerre 1974, at which time she lived in an old people’s home in Meaux, near were in the textile In employed industry. Paris. Her doctor had been impressed by her stories February 1889, and in June 1895, there of her life and told his journalist friend about her. were weavers’ strikes in Avesnes; the Telling her life story was useful to the woman in deal- cause, according to the police reports, was ing with the death of her husband and facing her own remaining years of life. Her stories about her early inadequate wages (ADN M 619/7, years are particularly vivid and clear. I tried to M AN F 1973: verify 625/67; 12/4665; Perrot, her memories by going to the municipal archives of 113, 358-359, 570, 581, 585). Avesnes-les-Aubert, the Departmental Archives of Abel Chatelain (1977:679-680, 686- the Nord, for demographic and social information 691), in his study of temporary migrations about the village from the 1870’s to 1914. My check in France, shows how conditions in the of the dates in the autobiography revealed that Mémé Santerre usually had her own dates correct. She was Cambr6sis continued to in the change inconsistent about how long she spent in school, and and 1890’s. and 1880’s First, sugar beet I was unable to check that record. She gives her then chicory cultivation came into the mother’s year of birth as 1841, by several mentions of Nord. These commercial farmers brought her age at dates which can be internally checked by events. This would have made her 50 at the birth of their own workers, Belgians who had her thirteenth child. The birth for Mémé, worked for them in their native register already born in 1891, and of the registration of her marriage The farm country. Camberlot laboring in 1909 show her mother’s year of birth as 1848, weavers, denied employment in agricul- which fits with the timing of events in her life better ture nearby, followed the cultivation of the than the earlier date. Mémé Santerre’s death is entered in the next to her birth. She died 14 sugar beet to Normandy and the Paris register February, 1977, in the old people’s home in Meaux. region, about one hundred miles away. See Dufrancatel (1978:149-151) for a cautionary This adaptation delayed the final collapse opinion about Grafteaux’ motives in publishing this of the domestic linen weaving industry. autobiographical piece. 141

2 phy, economy, and collective action of the stitutions, and collective action.2 people of Avesnes-les-Aubert. We turn now to an examination of A different type of family strategy is il- women and family strategies in the two lustrated by examination of the residents cases: that of the Camberlot farm laboring of Roubaix, an industrial city also in the weavers of Avesnes and that of the indus- department of the Nord, about forty miles trial workers of Roubaix. Both cases con- from Avesnes and Cambrai. Roubaix had cern proletarian workers in France, but been an important cotton textile pro- each case produced a different set of strat- ducing center since the 1820’s. In the egies and adaptations. Each case also has 1860’s, the city boomed as a center of its own type of sources. The individual factory textile production, based by then autobiography, illustrative of the Camber- on wool rather than cotton. It was not a lot way of life will be used for comparative &dquo;typical&dquo; French city, but it shared many insights on which collective biography is characteristics with other textile cities. silent. The conclusion returns to women’s Belgian migrants were attracted to the lives and to family strategies in their broad rapidly growing city at the end of the nine- outline and examines the consequences of teenth century, migrants from areas of the latter for individual women over their Belgium where domestic weaving was in a life cycle. disastrous decline similar to that around Meme Santerre and the Cambrai (Reardon, 1977; Lentacker, Camberlot Way of Life 1950). Migration to Roubaix was not sea- Here is Meme Santerre’s description of sonal. Yet it was probably temporary for her family’s work life (and that of other vil- and considered many migrants, initially lage families) near the turn of the century temporary by many others, who later be- (Grafteaux, 1976:10-11). came permanent migrants. Thus migra- The village men didn’t like to have their wives tion to Roubaix and factory employment away from home. They needed them in the was another possible adaptation of fami- cellar.... There in the big half-dark room, lies whose livelihood in the domestic textile lit only by several high windows, were the looms on which everyone in the village wove was Rather than industry being destroyed. during the winter months for eighteen hours sharing manufacturing and agriculture, as each day. did the people of Avesnes, all the while After my time at school-being the young- continuing to be proletarians, migrants to est, I was given the chance to go ... I too Roubaix moved to the prototypical indus- had &dquo;my loom.&dquo; I was still so tiny when I first wove that I had to have wooden &dquo;skates&dquo; trial textile setting-a factory city. attached to my feet so I could reach the The chief source of evidence for Rou- 2The Roubaix material is of that baix is a machine readable file of a syste- part gathered for a larger research project comparing work, family, matic sample of all individuals in ten per- and collective politics in three French cities, 1870 to cent of the households drawn from the na- 1914. Three papers based on this material are Tilly, tional censuses of 1872 and 1906. Family 1978; Tilly, forthcoming; and Tilly and Dubnoff, relationships and labor-force participa- 1978. Research support was provided by the Rocke- tion, as well as individual characteristics feller Population Policy Program, 1974-1976, by the Rackham School of Graduate Studies, 1976-1977, (age, sex, marital status) for individuals and by an American Philosophical Society Grant, within households, household residence 1977-1978. patterns, and other characteristics have The condition of the hand-loom weavers of the been analyzed. Other material about Rou- Cambrai region is discussed in Charles Blaise, Le Tis- a la main du Cambrésis. Etude d’industrie à baix includes archival, newspaper, and sage domicile (Lille: Bigot, 1899), and E. Simonet, "Chez information on secondary housing, wages, les tisserands du Cambrésis," L’Echo du Nord, 12-16 prices, material culture, work process, in- September, 1906. 142

pedals. My legs were too short to reach would never arrive at the end, for the rows them.... were long.... At four a.m. we awoke. Dressing quickly, When one arrived at the end, one had to with water from the court fifty meters away, turn immediately and make one’s way back, where a well served all the families in our standing upright as little as possible.... coron [an attached row of houses], and hop! Later ... we had to thin the sugar beets. we went down to the cellar with two coal-oil Interminable furrows where we left the strong- lamps. During this time, my mother lit the est and best-centered plants so that the row round stove that heated the main room.... would be straight as the letter I. she called us, at around 10, to come upstairs Each row brought us three sous. We could and get our &dquo;coffee.&dquo; It was a long time to do up to four in a day, if we didn’t fool around wait after waking before we got this hot drink or look at the flies in the process; we worked that seemed delicious to us....My sisters bent constantly over the furrow, a foot on each and I, we made handkerchiefs that we wove side and a short hoe in our hands. into big rolls of linen. My father, who was more skillful, made the wider pieces of How did the families of Avesnes behave linen... himself. within these brutal work regimes? How did Every Saturday, one after another, running, because we wished to waste as little time as family strategies affect the lives of Marie possible, we would take our cloth to the agent, Catherine Gardez, born in 1848, and of an inhabitant of the coron like us, who collec- her last child, Marie Catherine (Mémé) ted the work, and got the money for it. Santerre, born in 1891? M6m6’s auto-

... I would return home and the give biography shows that money to my mother. Then my sisters would despite brutalizing work and go, then papa, to take their work. poor living conditions, these We couldn’t make ends meet with these women led lives of dignity in which they earnings. We had to live all winter on credit. enjoyed and bestowed love and respect. We on our return from the season in paid up Love, anger, resentment, hope, disap- the which took us from home country, away luck, character, vicis- for six months, to a farm in the Seine- pointment, political Inferieure. situdes like war all affected the family lives of the Gardez and Santerres and the other From May to November each year, the Camberlots. on the effect of Gardez, M6m6’s natal family, worked on Focusing the farm in Normandy. Here Meme des- work on family strategy provides a means of much of their cribes the work on the farm (Grafteaux, understanding behavior, 1976:25-26, 29). but not all of it. It helps us examine that of the lives of and of The domaine of Saint-Martin, where we part these families, worked, produced only wheat and sugar- the other villagers, which was governed by beets. It belonged to a big company in Paris the obligation of their families to sell the which owned farms France. We throughout labor of several members in order to sur- were paid by the job, such as, for the harvest. vive. At the same time, The more one did, the more one earned. And using autobiogra- us realize reali- each family member had his or her allocation phy helps that the material of land. ties of the poor are not such powerful con- ... We were paid all together when we left straints, that emotions and feeling are not in November, a of such large quantity money brutalized or absent. Autobiography can as we never otherwise saw at one time... , contribute to an analysis which allows us That year, as others, our moving-in accom- to the collective indi- plished, we set to work at 6 a.m. We could see interpret behavior, the size of the farm; fields rolling to infinity; vidual behavior, and feelings of ordinary in early May the fields were covered with fine people in a holistic way. One conceptuali- green sprouts. Fields of wheat undulated fur- zation of this need is the &dquo;way of living,&dquo; ther and those were the fields we worked out, which E. P. Thompson (1977:501) notes, in first, to pull out the thistles.... &dquo;not a of but also a It was hard work, however, for a little girl! merely way surviving, When I saw the parcel that had been assigned way of relating and valuing.&dquo; He con- to me stretching out, it seemed as though I tinues, &dquo;For the vast majority throughout 143

history, familial relations have been inter- aged 20-49 for the village, calculated from meshed with the structures of work. Feel- the 1886 census summary (ADN M 473/ ing may be more, rather than less, tender 33), was 1.3, extremely high. or intense because relations are ’economic’ Apparently, families in Avesnes were and critical to mutual survival.&dquo; doing little at the end of the nineteenth Here, briefly sketched, are the life century to restrain their fertility, despite stories of the two women. The elder Marie the poverty in which they lived. For them Catherine was illiterate; she married in fact, children could be a solution to young, and she and her husband set up a their poverty, for multiple wage earners in new household; they had 13 children. As a family were the most certain route to an the children grew up, they were set to work adequate income at some time in the fam- each in turn at the looms in the cellar and ily cycle. Nevertheless, many years had to in the fields of Normandy. The daughter, pass before children could contribute to Marie Catherine, went to school for four family income, and those years could be years before she joined her sisters and difficult years for the family economy. father in the cellar. She married at 18 and As the children grew up, parents waited set up a new household with Auguste anxiously for the moment when they could Santerre, a farm laboring weaver like her become wage workers. They did not invest father. After 1914, they stayed in Nor- in their children’s futures by sending them mandy, becoming full-time workers on the to school. Both Marie Catherine Gardez farm and in the sugar beet refinery. They and her husband Pierre were illiterate. had only one son, whom they sent to school None of their children born in the 1870’s and apprenticed. He left home to follow and 1880’s went to school. The 1873 his occupation and eventually married. &dquo;Enqu6te industrielle&dquo; remarked that only Meme and Auguste, his parents, later about one-quarter of the adult manufac- moved (although continuing to work for turing workers in the arrondissement of the same large agricultural firm) to live Cambrai knew how to read and write. near their son. This brought them to the M6m6, the last born, went to school for Paris region, where all three finally died. four years, but her older brother and sis- Let us look more closely at family strate- ters had been needed as workers on the gies in the Gardez family of Avesnes-les- looms in the cellar of the cottage and in the Aubert and of the other villagers in the last fields. This alternating pattern of work quarter of the nineteenth century. kept the children busy year round, and left In this period, fertility was high in the no &dquo;dead season&dquo; like that in settled agri- village of Avesnes-les-Aubert. M6m6 culture, in which the children could attend Santerre believed that most families in school. Even in the 1890’s, weaver fam- their coron had at least ten children. She ilies apparently continued to act according also notes that many families took six or to a similar short-term strategy, and eight children to work in the fields. Her M6m6’s school attendance may have been own natal family had 13 children, her hus- a consequence of her birth order rather band’s at least 11.~ The number of chil- 4See Furet and for comment dren under five per ever-married woman Ozouf, 1977:258, on the damaging consequences of year round employment in industry for children’s schooling. The 3Grafteaux, 1976:24, 51. The autobiography "Enquête" of 1873 (ADN M 605/67) notes that notes that Auguste was the oldest of nine children; among the agricultural populations around Cambrai, the census list for Avesnes-les-Aubert in 1906 "progress" had occurred in instruction, but "a large (ADN M 474/38) lists eleven Santerre children, the number of children only attended school in the last born in 1906. winter." 144

than changed strategy. Auguste Santerre, and three little children. The infant she later to be M6m6’s husband, was born in gave to a neighbor to mind died due to the 1888, the oldest of 11 children in an baby-sitter’s carelessness. The two girls Avesnes family of farm laboring weavers. died of illness. When her husband heard He did not get any schooling, despite the the news of his children’s deaths, Gardez compulsory free schooling decreed by ran away from his regiment, and returned French law in 1884. Until parents had the home-to weave. He flung himself into the extra income provided by several child cellar like a madman and vowed that he workers, they did not send children to would not leave until he had woven enough school. cloth to support his wife through the birth The other side of lack of schooling for of their fourth child. The military police children was their early labor-force par- who came to take him back to his unit ticipation. We don’t know at what age respected this need and let him stay home M6m6’s mother, Marie Catherine Gardez, to finish the work. The couple’s division of started to weave with her parents, but it labor required the husband’s labor, and was probably very early. In 1873, the wages, to support his wife in her child- &dquo;Enqu6te industrielle&dquo; (ADN M 605/4) bearing years when there were no children noted that 20 percent of the industrial old enough to work. labor force of the Cambrai arrondissement The French census takers in 1906 listed were children. In the 1895 strike in Aves- no occupation for Marie Catherine Gardez nes, 37 percent of the striking workers when they came around to the weavers’ were children (ADN M 625/67). The cottages that year. Yet Meme testifies Gardez children all descended to the (Grafteaux, 1976:11) that her mother did looms in the cellar of the cottage in vital tasks: Avesnes 8 to 10. The last born by age Mama tended to the housecleaning, child, M6m6, started to weave when she scoured the floor, scraped the table with a was ten. She notes that her father criti- shard of glass, threw fresh sawdust on the cized families who took their five and six tiles, and boiled potatoes, and at the same time prepared the warps that we would weave year olds into the fields. He said, she the next day. writes (Grafteaux, 1976:24), &dquo;There is a time for everything in life. Just because Madame Gardez did not receive a separate you yourself started work early with kicks wage-only the weavers did; they were in the behind, you don’t have to press your paid for each piece of cloth they took to the own children the same way.&dquo; He felt that it merchant’s agent. They immediately was early enough to start field work at 11, handed their wages to her, the wife and which is what he did with his children. mother, to spend for the consumption Early labor-force participation was part of needs of the family. This was true of her the end of the century pattern in agricul- husband as well as of her daughters. There ture as well as industry. was no surplus for the head of the house- An illustration of the fragility of high hold to spend on his personal leisure or fertility strategy occurs in M6m6’s story of pleasure. The family, in fact, lived most of her parents (Grafteaux, 1976:16-15). In the winter on credit for their very bread; 1871, the Gardez were a young couple with they only paid the baker on their return three children under five. Pierre was called from the season in Normandy. to serve in the Franco-Prussian War, and a In the weaver’s cottages, husbands, tragic drama ensued. Marie Catherine, wives, and children made vital contribu- pregnant with her fourth child, was not tions to the family economy. Since there able to weave enough to support herself was no surplus, there was little inequality 145

in distributing it. When the family did not was 19; and the first child of her brother go to Normandy, in the last summer before Leandre was born when his wife was 20 M6m6’s marriage, everyone restricted con- (ADN M 474/38). Four other older sisters sumption further, and worked harder. The no longer lived in Avesnes; they had family ate no meat whatever; they repaired married farm laborers and lived elsewhere their shoes with bits of leather from the in the region. The census age, sex, and harness of their looms. Meme remarks marital status summaries for 1886 (ADN (Grafteaux, 1976:48) that it was hard for M 473/33) make it possible to calculate the children to understand. &dquo;But did we proportions of single people in various age ever understand? We spoke so little among cohorts in the village. These confirm a ourselves. There was no place in life for pattern of early marriage and little words. Our fixed, our only goal, was to celibacy: only 50 percent of women aged eat, sleep, and work.&dquo; 20 to 24 were single, 28 percent of those 25 Although couples had many children to 29, and three percent of those aged 50 to and valued them as workers, nevertheless 54. grown children tended to marry young in The family lives of the Gardez family Avesnes-les-Aubert (cf. Levine, 1977; and their neighbors in Avesnes-les-Aubert Braun, 1966). Marie Catherine Gardez reflect the organization of their work as and her daughter Meme married at 18 or weavers and the web of opportunities they earlier. (Marie Catherine Gardez’ age of followed to find supplementary work as marriage was deduced from the fact that the domestic textile industry declined. at 22, in 1871, she had three children and They sought to maximize their children’s was about to give birth to a fourth.) Both labor and contribution to family subsis- women set up households apart from their tence and the family’s future. They had parents. The older couple also apparently many children and did not send them to lived in a village in which they had no rela- school. Yet the fact that the productive tives to help them, for the mother had to unit was still the household led to early go to a neighbor for assistance for child marriage and relatively short coresidence care in 1871. Meme lived close to her of adult unmarried children. In the weav- mother-at her birth her brother had de- ing period of their yearly work cycle, clared to the parents that this daughter daughters received individual wages; in would be a &dquo;crutch in their old age.&dquo; She the agricultural labor phase they received benefited from her mother’s warp-making no individual wage. Neither the family even when she was married and weaving wage nor the household productive unit with her husband in another cottage. The kept the family together, however. Just the grandmother also cared for Meme and contrary: there was a limited number of Auguste’s little son while they wove, and places in that household unit. With their for the entire summer season when the four looms, they could keep only four younger couple went to Normandy. The workers and a helper occupied at one time. older Gardez children, born in the 1870’s As younger children took their place at the and 1880’s, also married and left home loom, older children moved on to find early. In 1906 (ADN M 474/38), only four work. Sometimes they moved, as servants, unmarried sisters were at home, ages 14 into a situation of dependency resembling (M6m6 herself), 17, 18, and 20, according their position in their household of origin. to the census. M6m6s sisters had married Sometimes they married and formed a new young. The first child of her sister Zulma household in order to work in weaving or was born when she was 17; the first child agricultural labor (cf. Rapp, 1978:90-91). of her sister Lucie had been born when she The consequence of the continuation of a 146

family wage and a household productive was in Avesnes. Crude birth rates con- unit was an early break away from family tinued in the high 30’s per thousand of origin to set up a new family of procrea- through the 1880’s-in 1886, 36 per thou- tion. sand. The ratio of children to women in 1872 was .86, lower than that of Avesnes. Industrialized Roubaix and This figure reflects not simply births but Roubaisien Workers infants who have survived up to five years With the mechanization of wool combing of age. Infant mortality (deaths of children and weaving in the 1860’s, Roubaix com- under one per 1000 births) in Roubaix in pleted its industrialization. &dquo;At the end of this period was consistently over 200 (Fel- the Empire [1870],&dquo; Claude Fohlen (1956: hoen, 1906:12). Thus, the Roubaix child/ 339) writes, &dquo;Roubaix possessed ten thou- woman ratio, already high, understates sand mechanical looms, about half such fertility. Apparently, Roubaix proletarian looms in France.&dquo; Most workers after 1870 families were acting in ways similar to were employed in large mills at whirring those in Avesnes as far as fertility was con- machines powered by steam. Work hours cerned, for their children could also be went from 5:30 in the morning to 7:30 in workers while quite young. the evening in the summer, 7 a.m. to 9 They acted similarily also regarding p.m. in winter, with a two-hour break for schooling. Roubaix parents, like those of lunch. According to the census of 1872, Avesnes, were themselves likely to be il- more than 50 percent of the labor force literate. The mayor of Roubaix noted was employed in the textile industry. (Rapport, 1864:7) that in 1863, only 29 Almost half the textile workers were fe- percent of brides could sign the marriage male, mostly unmarried girls: 81 percent register. He continued that this was not of single females (over 15) worked, but surprising, considering the fact that &dquo;a only about 17 percent of married women. 5 great number of the marriage partners Roubaix was flooded by migrants from were born in Belgium, from which they Belgium and the French countryside in the arrive, deprived of any instruction, to seek 1860’s. Housing was scarce and crowded. jobs....&dquo; The brides were less likely to Courts and various types of brick row sign than their grooms. The men’s rate of housing were built, but they were inade- signature (44.5 percent), when compared quate for the numbers of new residents to the literacy of the men called to military arriving. Larger tenements were no better. service that year (62 percent), showed the &dquo;The interior court common to all was a grooms to be less literate. This suggests a receptacle for sewage, for stinking water connection between migrant status and il- which could become the source of pesti- literacy, for those called to military service lence.... An air of misery and abandon- were native-born men. The following year ment reigned throughout,&dquo; wrote a visitor the mayor’s report (Rapport, 1865:6-7) (Reybaud, 1867:208) to the Fort de analyzed marrying persons by place of birth Roubaix in the 1860’s. (but not by sex), and found that 45 percent How did families in Roubaix cope with of the French-born had signed the act, but these conditions of work and life? only 26 percent of the Belgian-born. Furet Fertility was high in Roubaix, just as it and Ozouf (1977:257-260) show a decline of literacy, as measured by ability to sign 5These figures and all other analyses of Roubaix marriage registers, in the industrial ar- statistics, unless otherwise indicated, are calculated rondissements of the since the on a ten percent sample of households in the 1872 Nord, and 1906 census nominal lists. urban school systems were overwhelmed 147

by the children of migrants. The marriage ily. Employers’ preference for young rolls were filled by illiterate adult migrants workers meant that a young wife could marrying in the city. find work more easily than an old one. Only 35 percent of children under 15 Nevertheless, it was primarily wives of ill- who lived in Roubaix in 1872 were in paid and unskilled men, or mothers in school. Migrants to the city were acting families where the male head was unem- like seasonally migrating weavers in agri- ployed, who worked at this stage. Young culture. They were not investing in their wives with several young children at home children’s futures by sending them to were less likely to work than those with school, for their children could find un- only one. Those wives with children under skilled year-round jobs when quite young five who did wage work had heavy respon- at relatively good pay. sibilities at home and in the factory, and In Roubaix, boys and girls did wage the contradictions in their situation were labor in 1872, just as the Gardez children so strong that families were unlikely to see of Avesnes. Of children aged 10 to 14, 38.9 much benefit in such wage labor except in percent of girls and 36.5 percent of boys situations of real necessity. listed occupations in the census that year. Among young wives (15 to 25) in Rou- Migrant families, recently arrived in Rou- baix households in 1872, 35 percent listed baix from areas in which they had been occupations, while only 8 percent of those weaving in domestic production, con- 50 to 60 did. If we look more closely at the tinued to see the household as a wage- older wives, another characteristic of earning unit, even though it had ceased to Roubaix family life becomes evident. This be a productive unit. Migrant families in is the large proportion of households Roubaix needed the multiple wages of headed by older women. Of women aged several family members in order to make 50 to 60 living in multi-person households, ends meet. In most families, children over 24 percent were heads of household in ten became wage earners in preference to 1872. These female-headed households their mothers, who were more likely to stay were due both to high adult male mortality home (Tilly, forthcoming). and to the migration of single parent Wives worked most commonly when households to the city where children there were no children in the household. could work. The household productive Nevertheless, there were wives who did unit of the weaving village required an wage labor in Roubaix in 1872 even when adult male member, but a household there were children under five in the which sent its workers out to factory work household, because this period when most did not. These family economies were of the children were very young, was the likely to be fragile, as indicated by the fact time of greatest need for the household. that more wives worked in female-headed Children were then consumers of goods households than in two spouse households. but contributed no wages. This was the Thus an important contributing factor to family-cycle poverty squeeze, which has older wives’ labor-force participation was already been noted in the family history of their responsibility as heads of single the Gardez. Wives in the industrial setting parent households. of Roubaix found it even more difficult to In Roubaix, 1872, age of marriage was work for wages at this moment because of later than in Avesnes and spinsterhood conflicting demands at home. Families was more common. Sixty-seven percent of needed wives’ wage work when the ratio of women aged 20-24 were single and 33 consumers to workers was high-that is, percent of those aged 25-29. Over 12 per- when there were small children in the fam- cent were still single in age group 50-54. 148

Children by and large lived with their par- linked services could only be enjoyed by ents until they married, but once married, coresident children. they seldom lived in their parents’ household. Of female children aged 15-19, 86 Change percent lived with their parents in 1872 as Matters changed very little in Avesnes be- did 45 percent of those 20-24. Only 2 per- fore World War I. Fertility had declined cent of the women 20-24 living in their own somewhat and more children were in households were not wives themselves. school. Yet evasion of school and child Thus the availability of individual wages labor laws was hard to control in domestic for young people and the separation of industry, so this legislation was not effec- work place from residence did not lead to a tive among weaver families in Avesnes. period of autonomous living in most The tragic and dramatic shock of the First women’s lives. The coresidence of adult World War hit the weaving village in children in their 20’s with Roubaix parents August, 1914, when many villagers were offers a strong contrast with the situation away in Normandy during the seasonal mi- in Avesnes. But it should be noted at the gration. Many others fled the advancing same time that the young women of Germans. The Monument aux Morts for Avesnes who left their parents’ household the War of 1914-1918 in the village square did so not for any independent living ar- is dedicated to the dead of Avesnes: 155 rangement but to enter another household military, 7 civil victims, and 1630 victims through marriage. of the evacuation. Some 36 percent of the In Roubaix in 1872, as in Preston, Lan- villagers died in the war. Others, like cashire (1851) described by Michael Meme and Auguste Santerre returned Anderson (1972:233-234), there was an only to find their house occupied by some- apparently successful family effort to keep one else, their relatives dead and dis- children in the household, working for the persed, the weaving industry definitely family wage fund. As Anderson suggests, destroyed. The Santerres, their son, and and as our comparison of Roubaix with Auguste’s parents returned to Normandy the fragmentary evidence for the Avesnes to work on the farm year round. weavers corroborates, parents and chil- In Roubaix, change had started earlier dren lived together longer in the textile city and was more gradual. Family strategies than in agricultural or weaving villages. changed as the economic and political Why did Roubaix adolescent and young situation changed. adult children reside with their parents? Starting in the late 1880’s, fertility Part of the explanation lies in the fact that began to decline in Roubaix. By 1906 the wages of children under 15 were very low; ratio of children to women was half that of children could not afford to live alone. 1872; the crude birth rate had dropped to Families also had advantages to offer older 21.5 per thousand. Family strategies had children whose wages might be higher. changed in response to compulsory school- Housing itself was in short supply in ing, child labor laws, changing techno- Roubaix. Factory jobs provided no logical demands of the textile industry, housing, as did service or agricultural and more importantly, better real wages labor jobs. In working-class households, for men and, consequently, reduced need wives provided services for their employed by households for child workers. There husbands and children. Kin networks were much smaller proportions of children facilitated migration, and kin or neighbor- 10 to 14 with reported occupations: 15 hood networks helped people find jobs or percent for girls, 10 percent for boys. gave aid in times of need. These family- Families were investing in their children by 149

delaying the age at which they began wage children. Nevertheless, there were similar labor and by sending them to school patterns of children in residence with their longer. parents in 1906 and 1872. The number of Roubaix increased the number of its years of their lives in which mothers had schools in the late 1880’s and 1890’s to coresident children had not changed. bring the city into accordance with the new Combined family members’ wages were national compulsory education laws. By still needed to keep families above the sub- the end of the century, its population was sistence level (Tilly and Dubnoff, 1978). In more often urban born, and the short term these families, the mother’s contribution &dquo;work, not school&dquo; strategy was no longer of services provided the margin for the the rule for Roubaix families in 1906. children’s and the father’s expenditure for Seventy-eight percent of the children leisure or savings. under 15 in Roubaix were in school in that The increased proportion of young year. females who lived in their own households Many more wives worked in 1906: 31 in Roubaix in 1906 as single women, not percent total average, 57 percent of very wives, was part of the large pattern of young wives 15 to 25, and 22 percent of demographic change in the city. Sex ratios those 50 to 60. The young wives who lived in the city had dropped sharply since 1872. with their husbands and also worked had The male to female ratio of the sample was on the average half the number of children 109 in 1872, 92 in 1906. Female nuptiality of those who stayed home, and they were had declined. Seventy-five percent of much less likely to have a child under five. women 20 to 24 were single, 42 percent of Fewer children, born in less rapid succes- those 25 to 29, and 19 percent of those 45 sion, were characteristic of the families of to 54. By 1906, there were many working young worker wives. The proportion of women in Roubaix whose lives were not women aged 50 to 60 who were heads of affected by the strategy of the family they multi-person households stayed about the lived with, because they did not live with same-23 percent. The proportion of older their own families. In the 15 to 25 age wives who worked in these female-headed group of working women, these amounted households had increased to 64 percent. to 3 percent living in single person house- An equally dramatic increase had occurred holds, 12.5 percent living as lodgers, ser- in the number of older wives working in vants, or other non-relative position in husband-headed households (15 percent). other households. Among working women These older working wives had much fewer aged 50 to 60, 8 percent lived by them- children than stay-at-home wives of the selves, 4.7 percent with non-relatives. The same age and status-an average of 1.3 as relatively sharp separation of home and compared to 2.2. They had no children work place in Roubaix, 1906, the low sex under five and many fewer of their coresi- ratios of the city, and the availability of dent children were working-0.8 as com- better individual wages meant that some pared to 1.5 for non-working wives of the women were living on their own, apart same age. Wives were spending more of from their families. Their numbers were their lives as wage workers in Roubaix in quite small, but the proportion is notably 1906, to the benefit of their fewer children higher than in 1872. Whether these who spent more time in school and entered women’s independent lives were the conse- the labor force at a later age. In 1906, the quence of independence of family strategy, family strategy of labor force allocation defiance of family strategy, or acceptance was sending wives to work rather than of family decisions which sent them out of 150

the household to migrate on their own to make ends meet. Mothers bore many chil- the city, we cannot know with the evidence dren ; their daughters worked hard as chil- at hand. dren (as did their sons) and then moved into a parent/worker role. A woman whose Conclusion husband did not drink or spend sparse Just as there were varieties of proletarian- family earnings on his personal leisure ization in nineteenth-century France, so in probably spent about the same amount of turn were there different family strategies time working as he did, and endured and patterns of behavior. In Avesnes-les- about the same amount of physical strain Aubert, the Camberlots began an arduous in a relatively equal down-trodden posi- seasonal migration in agricultural labor tion. when local opportunities for wages to sup- In Roubaix, more alternatives emerged plement their sub-subsistence weaver’s for families in time. Mothers and children earnings dried up. Wage earning families suffered the brunt of family strategy when on the sugar beet farms of Normandy con- high fertility and multiple wage earners tinued weaver family strategies: low age of were the family adaptation. In the later marriage; formation of a new household period, the sacrifice of children was atten- productive unit on marriage; high fertility; uated. The cost to mothers changed form high labor-force participation by children. but did not disappear. By 1906, women Migrants from areas of domestic indus- had fewer children so they had fewer child- try who moved to an industrial city with bearing and child-care burdens. Married wage-earning opportunities for women women then were more likely to do wage and children modified their family strate- work, however, so their leisure did not in- gies in rhythm with changing patterns of crease. Children were less the victims of opportunities in the city. At first, fertility family strategy, more often the hope of was high and children were put to work that strategy. But mothers bore the costs early. Since formation of a new household of their children’s and their husband’s lei- was not a prerequisite for production, sure, and of whatever saving they did. however, there was an effort to keep chil- Women who lived with their natal fam- dren home with their parents, working and ilies as daughters in 1872 or 1906 bene- contributing to that family economy. With fited to some degree from coresidence. time, child labor became less common in Any benefit, however, came at the cost of the city; some schooling was enforced by their mothers. These daughters submitted law. Although fertility declined, control to some family demands, for at least part over children was still the goal of parents, of their wages, for the delay in their mar- who prolonged their semi-dependence riage. Single women living on their own through coresidence. The services that are an enigma. In Avesnes, there were mothers provided their unmarried, coresi- practically none, as was the case for Rou- dent adolescent and adult children were an baix in 1872. By 1906, however, there were important factor in the continued coresi- many women of all ages living in the textile dence of those children. city on their own. Here an autobiography Women were entwined in family strate- could help us understand what kind of gies in both Avesnes and Roubaix. It is lives they led, since the census is silent. hard to apportion the costs of family In closing, I return to the question of strategies in Avesnes-les-Aubert among interpersonal relationships of parents and the individual family members. Everyone children in a situation which could be in the family was a victim-working called child-sacrificing. Meme Santerre grueling hours, eating minimal diets to provides insight here. In fact, she offers 151

two clearly contrasting cases. Her parents lar to their covillagers, were made up of were tender and caring about their chil- individuals, as were the Roubaisiens. As dren even as they involved them in the this paper shows, labor market conditions same exploitation of which they themselves and productive systems influenced the were victims. The father insisted that the strategies of families in which these indi- girls take a break in their weaving day and viduals lived. Important as the family was walk outdoors; the parents carried their as a mediating structure with the econ- exhausted daughters to bed after the back- omy, there was a space in the lives of indi- breaking days in the sugar beet fields. viduals in which caring and valuing-or Meme Santerre fondly recites the gay, hating-were to be found. romantic songs her father sang to keep their spirits up. The father made his daughters little treats-tiny loaves of bread-when he baked the family’s large BIBLIOGRAPHY loaves. The parents celebrated holidays Michael and life like first Anderson, transitions, communion, 1972 "Household Structure and the Industrial with special food for the children-an Revolution. Mid-Nineteenth Century Pres- orange, a bit of meat for dinner. Quite a ton in Comparative Perspective." In Peter contrast to the piles of cream puffs at the Laslett and Richard Wall, eds., Household and Family in Past Time, 215-235. Cam- communion feast described in a bourgeois Press. from bridge : Cambridge University autobiography (Motte, n.d.:10-11) Archives Départementales du Nord (ADN) Roubaix in the same period, but nonethe- M 473/33. Census Summary (1886). less sharing the same spirit of celebration M 474/38. Avesnes-les-Aubert Census of children’s passage to adulthood. (1906). M 581/141. sur la situation des M6m6’s marriage involved sacrifice on the Enquête de of her but ouvriers tisseurs département [Nord] part parents, they indulged her, (1878). as their youngest child. This indulgence M 581/141. Minute of Perfect of the Nord was made easier by the fact that her two (May 8, 1878). older sisters were still at home when she M 605/4. Enquête industrielle. Report of married, wearing her mother’s worn silver Subprefect of Cambrai (1873). band. M 619/7. Avesnes strike (1889). wedding M 625/67. Avesnes strike (1895). Life was not so full of concern and love Archives Nationales de la France (AN) in all Camberlot families. In his late teens, F12 4665. Avesnes strike (1889). August Santerre was in constant conflict Bourdieu, Pierre with his parents. His father beat him and 1976 "Marriage Strategies as Strategies of Social In Robert Forster and tried to his As the eldest Reproduction." prevent marriage. Orest Ranum, eds., Family and Society. Se- son in a family, with ten children behind lections from the Annales: Economies, him, his wages were vital to the family, Sociétés, Civilisations, 117-144. Baltimore: and his father claimed them with violence. Johns Hopkins University Press. These difficult times passed, and father Braun, Rudolf 1966 "The Impact of Cottage Industry on an and son were reconciled when a grandson Agricultural Population." In David Landes, was born, despite the son’s earlier defiance ed., The Rise of Capitalism, 53-64. New of his father’s wishes. Families who were York: MacMillan. pursuing similar strategies could be char- Chatelain, Abel acterized by entirely different emotional 1976 Les Migrants temporaires en France de 1800 à 1914. Lille: of Lille III. climates. University Dufrancatel, Christiane The Gardez and Santerre families, 1978 "Autobiographies de ’femmes du peuple."’ though they acted in patterned ways simi- Le Mouvement social 105:147-156. 152

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