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The economic legislation of the French Revolution was guided by individualistic ideas which expressed the interests of the rising middle classes who felt a necessity of removing the obstacles in the way of economic initiative and of personal effort. These interests and ideas dictated the law of March 2-17, 1791, which abolished the guilds and inaugurated the era of competition in France (Liberté du Travail). The law declared that henceforth everybody was “free to do such business, exercise such profession, art, or trade, as he may choose.”[2]

The abolition of the guilds cleared the way for the technical changes that had just begun and the development of which was yet in the future. These changes may be summarized as the application of science to industry and the introduction of machinery. The process went on in France irregularly, affecting different industries and different localities in various degrees. The first machine (machine à vapeur) was introduced in France about 1815; in 1830 there were about 600 in operation. Some idea of the later changes may be gained from the following table giving the number of machines in France from 1839 to 1907:

Year	No. of Machines	Total Horsepower
1839	2,450	33,000
1851	5,672	71,000
1861	15,805	191,000
1871	26,146	316,000
1881	44,010	576,000
1891	55,967	916,000
1901	75,866	1,907,000
1910	82,238	2,913,013[3]

The introduction of machinery meant the absorption of a larger part of the population in industry, the concentration of industry in a smaller number of establishments and the absolute and relative increase in the numbers of the working population of France.

This class of the population was regulated in its economic action for nearly a century by another law passed June 14-17, 1791, and known by the name of its author as the law Le Chapelier. The law Le Chapelier, though dictated by the same general interests and ideas as the law on the guilds, was made necessary by special circumstances.

The abolition of the guilds had as one of its effects an agitation among the journeymen for higher wages and for better conditions of employment. During the summer of 1791, Paris was the scene of large meetings of journeymen, at which matters of work and wages were discussed. The movement spread from trade to trade, but the struggle was particularly acute in the building trades. Profiting by the law of August 21, 1790, which gave all citizens the “right to assemble peacefully and to form among themselves free associations subject only to the laws which all citizens must obey,”[4] the carpenters formed L'Union fraternelle des ouvriers en l'art de la charpente, an association ostensibly for benevolent purposes only, but which in reality helped the carpenters in their struggle with their masters. The masters repeatedly petitioned the municipality of Paris to put an end to the “disorders,” and to the “tyranny” of the journeymen. The masters complained that a general coalition of 80,000 workingmen had been formed in the capital and that the agitation was spreading to the provincial towns.[5] The municipal authorities tried to meet the situation, but their “notices” and “decrees” had no effect. They then appealed to the Constituent Assembly for a general law on associations and combinations. The result was the law Le Chapelier.

The report by which the bill was introduced brought out very clearly the individualistic ideas by which the legislators of the Revolution were inspired. “Citizens of certain trades,” read this report, “must not be permitted to assemble for their pretended common interests. There is no longer any corporation (guild) in the State; there is but the particular interest of each individual and the general interest....” And further, “It is necessary to abide by the principle that only by free contracts, between individual and individual, may the workday for each workingman be fixed; it is then for the workingman to maintain the agreement which he had made with his employer.”[6]

The law identified the new combinations with the ancient guilds. Its first clause declared that “whereas the abolition of all kinds of corporations of citizens of the same estate (état) and of the same trade is one of the fundamental bases of the French Constitution, it is prohibited to re-establish them de facto under any pretext or form whatsoever”. The second clause formulated the prohibition to form trade organizations in terms which left nothing to be desired in clearness and precision. It read: “The citizens of the same estate or trade, entrepreneurs, those who run a shop, workingmen in any trade whatsoever, shall not, when assembled together, nominate presidents, nor secretaries, nor syndics, shall not keep any records, shall not deliberate nor pass resolutions nor form any regulations with reference to their pretended common interests.” The fourth clause declared all acts contrary to this law unconstitutional, subject to the jurisdiction of the police tribunals, punishable by a fine of 500 livres and by a temporary suspension of active rights of citizenship. The sixth and seventh clauses determined higher penalties in cases of menace and of violence. The eighth clause prohibited all “gatherings composed of artisans, of workingmen, of journeymen or of laborers, or instigated by them and directed against the free exercise of industry and work to which all sorts of persons have a right under all sorts of conditions agreed upon by private contract (de gré a gré)”. “Such gatherings are declared riotous, are to be dispersed by force, and are to be punished with all the severity which the law permits.”[7]

After the law was passed by the Assembly, the author of the law, Le Chapelier, added:

I have heard some say that it would be necessary to make an exception in favor of the Chambers of Commerce in cities. Certainly you understand well that none of us intend to prevent the merchants from discussing their common interests. I therefore propose to insert into the proceedings the following clause: “The National Assembly, considering that the law which it has just passed does not concern the Chambers of Commerce, passes to the order of the day.”

The proposition was adopted. “This last vote,” remarks the official historian of the Office du Travail, “demonstrates sufficiently that the law was especially directed against the meetings, associations and coalitions of workingmen.”[8]

The determination to prevent collective action on the part of the workingmen also guided the legislative activity of Napoleon. In 1803, during the Consulate, a law was passed against coalitions; the same law contained a provision whereby all workingmen were to have a special certificate (livret)[9] which subjected them to a strict surveillance of the police. The law of 1803 against coalitions was replaced in 1810 by the clauses 414-416 of the Penal Code which prohibited and punished all kinds of coalitions. These articles which made strikes and all collective action a crime, and which showed clearly discrimination against workingmen, were as follows:

Art. 414. Any coalition among those who employ workingmen, tending to force down wages unjustly and abusively, followed by an attempt or a commencement of execution, shall be punished by imprisonment from six days to one month and by a fine of 200 to 3,000 francs.

Art. 415. Any coalition on the part of the workingmen to cease work at the same time, to forbid work in a shop, to prevent the coming or leaving before or after certain hours and, in general, to suspend, hinder or make dear labor, if there has been an attempt or a beginning of execution, shall be punished by imprisonment of one month to three months maximum; the leaders and promoters shall be punished by imprisonment of two to five years, and

Art. 416. There shall also be subject to penalty indicated in the preceding article and according to the same distinctions, those workingmen who shall have declared fines, prohibitions, interdictions and any other proscriptions under the name of condemnations and under any qualification whatsoever against the directors of the shops and employers, or against each other.

In the case of this article as well as in that of the preceding, the leaders and promoters of the crime, after the expiration of their fine, may be made subject to the surveillance of the police for two years at least and five years at most.[10]

The prohibition against combination and organization was aggravated for the workingmen by articles 291-294 of the Penal Code which forbade any kind of associations of more than twenty persons. These articles were made more stringent by the Law of 1834 which prohibited associations even of twenty persons, if they were branches of a larger association.[11]

The workingmen, however, soon began to feel that the Liberté du Travail as interpreted by the laws of the country put them at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence. Individually each one of them was too weak to obtain the best bargain from his employer. This was notoriously so in the industries in which machinery was making headway, but the relations between employer and workingmen were aggravated by competition even in those industries where the old conditions of trade did not change perceptibly for some time. Competition forced the employer to become a “calculator above everything else” and “to consider the workingman only from the point of view of the real value which his hands had on the market without heed to his human needs.”[12] The workingman, on the other hand, to remedy his individual helplessness was driven to disregard the law and to enter into combinations with his fellow-workers for concerted action.

The figures published by the Department of Justice give the number of those prosecuted for violating the law on strikes—the number of accused, of acquitted and of condemned. These figures are incomplete. They give, however, some idea of the frequency and persistence with which the workingmen had recourse to strikes in spite of the law. The figures have been published since 1825. The table on the next page gives the annual figures from that date to 1864, when a new law on strikes was passed.