Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T08:40:52.815Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Productivity and Labor Discipline in the Montgolfier Paper Mill, 1780–1805

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Leonard N. Rosenband
Leonard N. Rosenband
Affiliation:
The author is a member of the Department of History, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84321.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The daily, weekly, and seasonal rhythms of production in the Montgolfier paper mill, one of the largest in eighteenth-century France, are examined here. Based on the comments of pioneer manufacturers, historians have been led to believe that early industrial work was irregular and unpredictable. The Montgolfiers as well complained of undependable workers. Yet their own output registers reveal a pattern of regular productivity unaided by advanced machinery or steam power.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 435 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Quoted in McKendrick, Neil, “Josiah Wedgwood and Factory Discipline”, Historical Journal, 4 (1961), p. 46.Google Scholar

2 Thompson, E. P., “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present, 38 (12. 1967), p. 71.Google Scholar

3 Archives Nationales (Paris), [henceforth A.N.], F12 1477.

4 Lefrançais de Lalande, Joseph-Jérôme, The Art of Papermaking, trans. Atkinson, Richard (Sixmilebridge, Ireland, 1976), p. 56. Lalande published his Art de faire le papier in 1761.Google Scholar

5 Thompson, E. P., “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present, 38 (12. 1967), p. 71.Google Scholar

6 Thompson, E. P., “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present, 38 (12. 1967),. p. 37.Google Scholar

7 Desmarest, Nicolas, “Papier (Art de fabriquer le),” Encyclopédie méthodique: Arts et métiers mécaniques (1788), vol. 5, p. 511.Google Scholar

8 Lalande, Art of Papermaking, p. 41.Google Scholar

9 Coleman, D. C., The British Paper Industry (Oxford, 1958), p. 163, n. 2.Google Scholar

10 Desmarest, Nicolas, “Papier (Art de fabriquer le),” Encyclopédie méthodique: Arts et métiers mécaniques (1788), vol. 5. p. 511.Google Scholar

11 Archives Départementales de l'Hérault (Montpellier), C 2676, “Etat des moulins à papier.”Google Scholar

12 Lalande, Art of Papermaking, p. 60.Google Scholar

13 A.N., 131 MI 53 AQ 23, document 8 (300 days) and document 10 (295 days).Google Scholar

14 Janot, Jean-Marie, Les moulins à papier de la région vosgienne (Nancy, 1952), vol. 1, p. 83.Google Scholar

15 A.N., 131 MI 53 AQ 24, Journal, November. 1789.Google Scholar

16 A.N., 131 MI 53 AQ 265 and 266.Google Scholar

17 Gazel, Henri, Les anciens ouvriers papetiers d'Auvergne (Clermont-Ferrand, 1910), p. 91;Google Scholar and the English holiday calendar, from Johnson, R., “The Paper-Maker and Stationers' Assistant” (London, 1794)Google Scholar, is reproduced in Labarre, E. J., Dictionary and Encyclopedia of Paper and Paper- Making (London, 1952), p. 127.Google Scholar

18 Rudé, George, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford, 1959), p. 251, Appendix vii, Table 1, n. 2.Google Scholar

19 Lalande, Art of Papermaking, p. 57.Google Scholar

20 Archives Départementales de l'Hérault, C 2676, “Etat des moulins à papier.”Google Scholar

21 Quoted in Reid, Douglas, “The Decline of Saint Monday 1766–1876,” Past and Present, 71 (05 1976), p. 81.Google Scholar

22 For the years 1799 through 1805, the total of posts for each day of the week (rounded to the nearest 50) was: Monday, 4,350; Tuesday, 4,550; Wednesday, 4,550; Thursday, 4,400; Friday, 4,600; and Saturday, 4,650. From A.N., 131 MI 53 AQ 265 and 266.Google Scholar

23 The quotas appear in the tarif issued by the Montgolfiers in November 1789 (A.N., 131 MI 53 AQ 24, Journal), and in A.N., 131 MI 53 AQ 23, document 15.Google Scholar vidalon's masters frequently modified these quotas. In doing so, they took account of the weight and tint of the paper, the quality and nature of the raw material, and the manner in which the rags were pulped; but they inevitably failed to record their reduced or enhanced expectations in the output register. Thus, if a vat crew turned out a particular sort of paper at an unvarying pace for several weeks, and if this rate deviated little from the posted goals and provoked no complaint from the masters, I have assumed that this new pace was the one the masters wanted—or accepted. For a fuller discussion of quotas and quota-making at Vidalon-le-Haut, see my forthcoming book, Managing to Rule: The Monigolfier Paper Mill, 1761–1805.Google Scholar

24 A.N., 131 MI 53 AQ 24, Journal, October. 30, 1785.Google Scholar

25 Reid, Douglas, “The Decline of Saint Monday 1766–1876,” Past and Present, 71 (05 1976)., 01. 16, 1786.Google Scholar

26 AN., 131 MI 53 AQ 23, document 16.Google Scholar

27 Reid, Douglas, “The Decline of Saint Monday 1766–1876,” Past and Present, 71 (05 1976)., document 10.Google Scholar

28 Reid, Douglas, “The Decline of Saint Monday 1766–1876,” Past and Present, 71 (05 1976)., document 4.Google Scholar

29 Reid, Douglas, “The Decline of Saint Monday 1766–1876,” Past and Present, 71 (05 1976)., document 40.Google Scholar

30 Reid, Douglas, “The Decline of Saint Monday 1766–1876,” Past and Present, 71 (05 1976)., document 17.Google Scholar

31 Reid, Douglas, “The Decline of Saint Monday 1766–1876,” Past and Present, 71 (05 1976)., document 19.Google Scholar

32 A.N., 131 MI 53 AQ 24, Journal, December. 2, 1785.Google Scholar

33 Reid, Douglas, “The Decline of Saint Monday 1766–1876,” Past and Present, 71 (05 1976)., 09. 7, 1785.Google Scholar

34 Reid, Douglas, “The Decline of Saint Monday 1766–1876,” Past and Present, 71 (05 1976)., 03 15, 1788.Google Scholar

35 Uncatalogued; a copy of the document is in the author's possession. The original is in the mill archives.Google Scholar

36 See A.N., F12 1477, in which Vidalon's masters complained about the “sloth” of France's paperworkers; see also Augustin Montgolfier's remarks in A.N., 131 MI 53 AQ 23, documents 47 and 48.Google Scholar