I: Introduction
1. Good introductions to this immense literature are Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), Gary P. Freeman, Immigrant Labor and Racial Conflict in Industrial Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), and Georges Tapinos, L’immigration étrangère en France (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1975).
2. For example, see Centre des études anti-imperialistes, Les immigrés (Paris: Stock, 1975), p. 32, and Colin Dyer, Population and Society in Twentieth-Century France (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978), p. 71.
3. For a recent discussion of U.S. immigration policy options see International Migration Review, 5 (Winter 1978).
4. The best study of intercontinental migrations is Brinley Thomas, Migration and Economic Growth (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1973).
5. Adolphe Landry, La révolution démographique (Paris: Recueil Sirey, 1934), p. 11.
6. Jacques Bertillon, La dépopulation de la France (Paris: F. Alcan, 1911), p. 2. Bertillon claims that 90 of 106 doctors interviewed in 1893 attributed the low reproduction rate to the “crime of Onan.” See p. 97.
7. Landry, Révolution, pp. 30–31.
8. Bertillon, Dépopulation, p. 110.
9. Jean Mesnaud de St. Paul, De l’immigration étrangère en France consideré au point de vue économique (Paris: A. Rousseau, 1902), p. 80.
10. Charles Gide, La France sans enfants (Paris: 1914), p. 373.
11. Alfred Sauvy, The General Theory of Population (New York: Basic Books, 1969), p. 484.
12. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, “La question des étrangers en France au point de vue économique” Journal de droit international privée (1888), p. 175.
13. Sauvy, Population, pp. 445–446.
14. Kenneth Willis, Problems in Migration Analysis (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1974), p. 50.
15. T. H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship and Social Development (Garden City: Doubleday, 1964).
16. Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1976).
17. Examples of anti-Malthusian organizations are J. Bertillon’s L’Alliance nationale pour l’accroissement de la population française and Le Comité français pour le rélévement de la natalité. See Bertillion, Dépopulation, pp. 249–250, and Archives nationales (hereafter cited with “F” numbers) F7 13955.
18. Sauvy, Population, p. 47.
19. F7 13955.
20. See Joseph Spengler, France Faces Depopulation (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968).
21. James O’Conner, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973) develops this theme.
22. The literature which deals with migration theory is immense. A good summary is in Georges Tapinos, L’économie des migrations internationales (Paris: Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1974), and Migration and Urban Development (London: Methuen, 1972). For recent studies see James McDonald, “Toward a Typology of European Labor Migration,” International Migration, 7 (1969), 6–24; E. Lee, “A Theory of Migration,” Demography, 2 (1966), 45–57; and “Migration Models and their Significance of Population Forecasts,” Milband Memorial Fund Quarterly, 13 (January 1963), 56–76.
23. Gaeton Piou, “La main-d’oeuvre étrangère en France,” Revue socialiste, 51 (May 15, 1912) 413.
24. France, Statistique générale, Résultats statistiques du recensement général de la population (hereafter cited as Recensement), 1 (1906), 140.
25. For a discussion of this problem see A. Souchon, La crise de la main-d’oeuvre agricole en France (Paris: A. Rousseau, 1914).
26. See Peter Stearns, Lives of Labor (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1975).
27. Jean Gravier, Paris et le désert français (Paris: Flammarrion, 1972), p. 52.
28. Leroy-Beaulieu, “La question des étrangers,” p. 176.
29. Paul Gemahling, Travailleurs au rabais, la lutte syndicale contre les sous-concurrences ouvrières (Paris: Bloud and Cie, 1910), p. 14.
30. Piou, “La main-d’oeuvre,” p. 445.
31. Charles Kindleberger, Europe’s Post War Growth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).
II: State, Society, and Supplemental Labor
1. France, Statistique générale, Résultats statistiques du recensement géneral de la population (hereafter cited as Recensement), 1, no. 5 (1936), 41.
2. For recent discussions of corporatism see Martin Fine, “Toward Corporatism” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1973); Charles S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade after World War One (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); F. B. Pike and T. Stretch, eds., The New Corporatism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974); and Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London: Sheed and Ward, 1973).
3. Henri Bunle (Institut national des études économiques), Mouvements migratoires entre la France et l’étranger, Études et documents, 4 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1943), 67. cf. Recensement, 1, no. 2 (1921), 55.
4. Henry Wilcox, International Migrations, 2 (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1931), 223.
5. Recensement, 1, no. 1 (1936), 36.
6. Ibid, 1, no. 1 (1906), 140.
7. Maurice Hollande, La défense ouvrière contre le travail étranger (Paris: Bloud, 1912), p. 179. See also M. de Bryas, Les peuples en marches, les migrations politiques et économiques en Europe depuis la guerre mondiale (Paris: A. Pédone, 1926), p. 13; M. Ronse, “L’émigration saisonnière en Belgique,” Bulletin de l’Association internationale pour la lutte contre le chômage (October–December 1913).
8. Archives de la Préfecture de Police (hereafter cited as PP), 67, untitled report, April 17, 1907.
9. Numa Raflin, Le placement et l’immigration des ouvriers agricoles polonais en France (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1911), p. 8.
10. M. Sorre, Les réssources, l’outillage et la production de la région du Nord (Lille: 1927), p. 99.
11. Philippe Ariès, Histoire des populations françaises (Paris: SELF, 1948), p. 103.
12. Georges Hottenger, Le pays de Briey hier et aujourd’hui (Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1912), p. 90.
13. Stephane Wlocevski, “La main-d’oeuvre polonaise en France,” Pologne, 14 (November 1933), 63.
14. Louis Poszwa, L’émigration polonaise agricole en France (Paris: Gebethner et Wolff, 1930), p. 50.
15. Main-d’oeuvre agricole (hereafter cited as MOA) (July 1915), p. 11.
16. Edouard Payen, “Les étrangers en France,” Économiste française, 38 (March 19, 1910), 200. See also Poszwa, L’émigration polonaise, p. 54.
17. Raflin, Le placement et l’immigration, pp. 8–15. See also, MOA (July 1915), p. 12.
18. Wlocevski, “La main-d’oeuvre polonaise en France,” p. 64.
19. Ibid., p. 68.
20. Hottenger, Le pays de Briey, p. 94.
21. Claude Woog, La politique d’émigration de l’Italie (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1930), pp. 197–198; Hollande, La défense ouvrière, pp. 139–140; Comte de Canisy, La question ouvrière dans le bassin de Briey (Paris, 1919), pp. 33–34.
22. Woog, La politique d’émigration, pp. 200–205; Bertrand Nogaro and Lucien Wiel, La main-d’oeuvre étrangère et colonial pendant la guerre (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1926), p. 33. Cf. E. Lemonon, L’après-guerre et la main-d’oeuvre étrangère en France (Paris: F. Alcan, 1918), pp. 28–29, 45–46.
23. Lemonon, L’après guerre, p. 74. A. Landry in Chambre des députés, Annales, Débats parlementaires (hereafter cited as CDeb), of December 28, 1915, opposed direct government hiring of immigrant workers as contrary to employer prerogatives but favored government action to prevent an excessive number of recruitment organizations from competing in the same labor market.
24. Paul Gemahling, Travailleurs au rabais, la lutte syndicale contre les sous-concurrences ouvrières (Paris: Bloud 1910), p. 219. See also Hollande, La défense ouvrière, pp. 205–208; and Jean Delevsky, Antagonismes sociaux et antagonismes prolétariens (Paris: M. Giard, 1924), p. 258.
25. In the case of the entertainment and food industries, foreigners frequently went to France to learn the tricks of the trade in much the same way as provincial apprentices had gone to Paris to learn a skilled craft in the nineteenth century. German and Swiss hotel workers were often preferred because of their knowledge of languages. Hollande, La défense ouvrière, p. 208; Gemahling, Travailleurs au rabais, p. 219; Delevsky, Antagonismes sociaux, p. 257, and Confédération générale du travail (CGT), Congrès du Bâtiment (1914), p. 464.
26. See an interesting report on CGT construction unions’ attempts to organize unions of migratory workers in the Alpes-Maritimes, which were immigrant-dominated. CGT, Congrès du Bâtiment (1914), pp. 69–78.
27. Gemahling, Travailleurs au rabais, p. 198.
28. Chambre des députés, Annales, Documents parlementaires (hereafter cited as CDoc) (1903), p. 1761. See also Hollande, La défense ouvrière, p. 185.
29. CGT, Congrés des travailleurs de l’agriculture (1920), p. 181.
30. Ibid., and Gemahling, Travailleurs au rabais, p. 218.
31. Delevsky, Antagonismes sociaux, p. 257.
32. Hollande, La défense ouvrière, pp. 205–208.
33. Paul Frezouls, Les ouvriers étrangers en France (Montpellier: Imprimerie G. Fermin, 1909), pp. 253–307.
34. J. Didion, Les salaires #x00E9;trangers en France (Paris: M. Giard, 1911), p. 23.
35. Archives départementales, Pas-de-Calais (hereafter cited as PC) M 2774. See also Delevsky, Antagonismes sociaux, p. 253 and Gemahling, Travailleurs au rabais, p. 218. M. Perrot in Les ouvriers en grève, I (Paris: Mouton, 1974), pp. 170–177, counts 89 “xenophobic” riots between 1867 and 1893, 58 of which were between 1882 and 1889.
36. Archives départementales, Seine-et-Oise, 16 M 19, Ministry of Interior circular, September 13, 1893.
37. Charles Tilly et. al., The Rebellious Century, 1830–1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 48–61.
38. Delevsky, Antagonismes sociaux, p. 290.
39. At a convention of construction workers (CGT) held in 1912, a union organizer from Marseilles admitted that it was impossible to unionize Spanish and Portuguese workers because no French member could speak their languages. He complained that strikebreaking Belgian brick workers in the Nord were isolated from the union because they worked all of their nonsleeping hours. CGT, Congrès du Bâtiment (1912), pp. 39–40.
40. CGT, Congrès des travailleurs de l’agriculture (1920), pp. 66–8, 196.
41. Perrot, Les ouvriers en grève, I, pp. 169–177.
42. Office du Travail, Associations professionales ouvriers, pp. 2, 310, 320, 420–421, 771. See also, Bulletin de l’office du travail, 11 (1904), 332, 598, and Delvesky, Antagonismes sociaux, p. 282.
43. For example, see Paul Louis, La guerre économique (Paris: Éditions de la Revue blanche, 1900).
44. D. I. Ferenczy, Rapport sur le chômage et les migrations internationales des travailleurs (Paris: 1913), pp. 48, 68.
45. Didion, Les salaires étrangers, pp. 75–77.
46. For a complete list of restrictionist bills see Didion, Les salaires étrangers, p. 75; also Emile Mas, “La main-d’oeuvre étrangère en France,” Revue politique et parliamentaire, 11 (March 1904), 474 and P. Pic, Traité élémentaire de législation industrielle (Paris: A Rousseau, 1902), pp. 160 ff.
47. Hollande, La défense ouvrière, pp. 190–194; Didion, Les salaires étrangers, pp. 75–79.
48. CDoc, 1902, p. 538; Didion, Les salaires étrangers, p. 77.
49. Jean Mesnaud de Saint-Paul, De l’emigration étrangère en France (Paris: A. Rousseau, 1902), p. 12.
50. CDeb, (November 19, 1931), p. 11, 897.
51. PP 67, Interior to Prefect of Police, June 8, 1916.
52. Lucien Wiel, La main-d’oeuvre étrangère et coloniale pendant la guerre (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, n.d.) p. 7.
53. F14 11331, “Rapport, Conférence interministérielle de la main-d’oeuvre” (hereafter, CIMO), July 7,1917; Wiel, La main-d’oeuvre étrangère, p. 9.
54. F14 11331, Report on the Mission Truptil to China, January 17, 1917.
55. F14 11334, CIMO, January 27, 1917, April 14, 1917.
56. Wiel, La main-d’oeuvre étrangère, pp. 19–21.
57. PP 67, Interior Ministry to Prefect of Police, June 8, 1916; F14 11334, “Cahiers des chargés pour les travailleurs chinoises” (1916).
58. So much a problem was the “run-away” colonial that in December 1917 a bounty of 10 francs was offered police for each captured runaway. Officials were anxious to prevent their gravitation to Paris, where they could easily hide. Archives départementales, Bouches-du-Rhône (hereafter cited as BR) 6 M 1520, War Ministry Circular, December 12, 1917; Usines de guerre, January 8, 1918.
59. “Migration,” International Labour Review, 2 (October 1922), 599.
60. F14 11334, CIMO, May 1, 1917.
61. Ibid., July 7, 1917.
62. Ibid., May 19, 1917.
63. Wiel, La main-d’oeuvre étrangère, p. 21.
64. F14 11331, Instructions of P. Famin, Directeur général des troupes coloniales, September 26, 1916.
65. Archives des Charbonnages de France (hereafter cited as CH) 40, CIMO, November 25, 1916, and PP 67 Ministry of War circulars, November 24, 1917, and February 27, 1918.
66. F14 11331, Correspondence between the Ministry of Public Works and the port authorities, July 1917 to December 1918.
67. Office national de la main-d’oeuvre agricole (ONMA), “Placement et immigration de la main-d’oeuvre agricole” (a pamphlet dated August 25, 1918). See also MOA 16 (October 10, 1919), 7; 11 (August 10, 1914), 6; and 12 (May 1915), 7.
68. MOA, 12 (June 1915), 4.
69. MOA, 15 (August 25, 1918), 7.
70. Michel Augé-Laribé, L’agriculture pendant la guerre (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1925), pp. 73, 81,83, and 87.
71. MOA, 13 (May 1916), 3.
72. Augé-Laribé, L’agriculture, p. 69.
73. Ibid., pp. 81, 83, and 87.
74. MOA, 15 (May 1918), 4.
75. Until the spring of 1918 militarized French workers were paid only 1.9 francs per day, while POW’s received only fifty centimes. Foreigners were not only expensive to import but cost roughly the same as free French workers (3.5 francs per day in 1916). See Office national de la main-d’oeuvre agricole, “Placement et immigration,” p. 3.
76. MOA, 14 (May 14, 1917), 34.
77. Office national de la main-d’oeuvre agricole, “Placement et immigration,” p. 5.
78. A study by the ONMA found that only 100 of 215 Algerians hired in September of 1915 at the sugar beet farms of the Beauce remained more than one week. The study attributed this turnover to a combination of factors: they received the meager wages of 3.5 francs per day; they often had only pork meat to eat (religiously objectionable); and they had to sleep on beds of straw. Those who quit also had job options. They went mainly to the war factories of Lyons, St. Etienne, Rouen, and Paris where they could earn up to one franc per hour. MOA, 13 (April 1916), 4.
79. Office national de la main-d’oeuvre agricole, “Placement et immigration,” pp. 4, 11.
80. B. Nogaro, “La main-d’oeuvre étrangère pendant la guerre,” Revue d’économie politique 44 (1920), 720. See also Usines de guerre (May 5, 1916), pp. 37–38 and (March 19, 1917), p. 373.
81. Nogaro, “La main-d’oeuvre”, pp. 731–722.
82. Bulletin du Ministère du travail, 27 (January–February 1920), pp. 19–20.
83. F14 11332, Report of Service de la main-d’oeuvre étrangère to Commission interministérielle de la main-d’oeuvre, December 6, 1917.
84. Nogaro and Wiel, La main-d’oeuvre étrangère, pp. 52–55.
85. Bulletin de l’Association internationale pour la lutte contre le chômage (November 1917), p. 6; Peyerimhoff claimed turnover in the mines jumped from 25–30 per cent before the war to 200 per cent in 1916. CH 40, CIMO, May 20, 1916.
86. Nogaro, “La main-d’oeuvre étrangère,” Revue d’économie politique (1920), 730.
87. Ibid., p. 725. Usines de guerre (March 4, 1917), p. 373, and (September 25, 1916), p. 172.
88. PP 67 Interior Circular, June 16, 1916.
89. Ibid., June 8, 1916.
90. CH 40, Compte rendu de l’Association national d’expansion économique (November 7, 1916), and Lemonon, L’aprés guerre, p. 18.
91. Journal officiel de la République de France, Lois et décrets (hereafter cited as JO) (April 22, 1917), p. 3186.
92. Members of the Commission included the main government manpower chiefs (L. Wiel, F. A. Brancher, and B. Nogaro), as well as Arthur Fontaine and Charles Picquenard from the Ministry of Labor. It also included representatives from key employer groups (Robert Pinot from the Comité des forges and G. de Peyerimhoff from the Comité des houillères). Joining them infrequently was Léon Jouhaux, chief of the CGT, and Auguste Keufer from the printers union. See F14 11334, CIMO, March 1917.
93. Ibid., February 10, 1917.
94. F14 11332, CIMO, October 22, 1917.
95. Ibid., November 1, 1917.
96. F14 11334, CIMO, April 14, 1917.
97. Ibid., January 20, 1917.
98. F14 11332, CIMO, January 26, 1918.
99. Compte rendu de la deuxième Conférence des Offices régionaux, départementales, et munipicaux du placement (January 9–11, 1919).
100. F14 11334, Circular of the Office central de placement, December 26, 1916; CH 40, Henri Cheron, “Rapport sur la loi du placement,” December 15, 1916.
101. Bulletin du Ministère du travail, 22 (March 1915), p. 50.
102. Henri Sellier and Emile Deslandres, “La constitution de l’office départemental du placement: rapport au Conseil général de la Seine,” October 30, 1918.
103. F14 11334, CIMO, June 9, 1917, and July 7, 1917.
104. CH 40, “Procès verbal, Commission administratif de l’office central de placement,” November 16, 1916. It is significant that de Peyerimhoff of the Coal Committee opposed this resolution on the ground that the offices were not competent to pass a decision on the labor needs of big industries. At this same meeting, Jouhaux proposed that foreigners not be expelled. His proposition was tabled due to the opposition of several business representatives who held that expulsion was a purely administrative matter.
105. F14 11334, CIMO, July 7, 1917.
III: Organizing Immigration after the First World War
1. Association nationale d’expansion économique (ANEE), Enquête sur la production française et la concurrence étrangère (Paris: Lib.-imp. réunies, 1917). The Agricultural Commission of the ANEE included key representatives of big farming such as Ferdand David, F. I. Brancher, Henri Hetier, and Albert Souchon. The Industrial Commission included Henri Hauser, Paul de Rousiers (Comité des armateurs), and Robert Pinot (Comité des forges).
2. A. Souchon in Ibid., p. 451. On the opposition to the continuation of colonial immigration, see “La main-d’oeuvre après la guerre,” Réforme social, 28 (1917), 127–128.
3. P. de Rousiers in Enquête sur la production, p. 175.
4. See Main-d’oeuvre agricole (hereafter cited as MOA), 15 (April 1918), 4–5, and 15 (June 5, 1918), 3 for reports on French fears that foreign governments would interfere in their efforts to recruit Portuguese and Irish farm workers.
5. Souchon, in Enquête sur la production, p. 453.
6. MOA, 14 (October 9, 1917), 7.
7. Ibid., 13 (October 1916), 6 and (May 1916), 2–3.
8. Not surprisingly, when Gaston Treigner of the Agricultural Commission of the Chamber of Deputies surveyed 4,000 farm societies on the question of whether the farm placement offices should be joined to the industrial labor exchanges, only 4 per cent approved. MOA, 15 (June 5, 1918), 6.
9. Brancher claimed in 1919 that 250,000 farm workers were lost to industry during the war. Bulletin de l’Association internationale pour la lutte contre le chômage (March 1920), p. 4.
10. Souchon in Enquête sur la production, p. 453.
11. For Meline’s ideas on farm worker unions see MOA, 13 (August 1916), 2–3.
12. Emile Fuster, director of the Paris Placement Office, Arthur Fontaine, Director of Labor in the Ministry of Labor, and Charles Picquenard, often Minister of Labor, were active in this association. Founded in 1900 as the Association pour la protection légale des travailleurs, this organization had long strived for ameliorative labor legislation in Western European countries as well as cooperation between labor, business, and the state. See Bulletin de l’Association internationale pour la lutte contre le chômage (January 31, 1919), p. 1.
13. Ibid. (November 1917), p. 5.
14. Ibid. (March 15, 1918), p. 11.
15. Léon Jouhaux, “Le Marché du travail,” Europe nouvelle, 13 (August 6, 1917), 1041.
16. La vie ouvrière, 4 (December 1922), 767 and CGT, Questions ouvrières, pp. 9–10.
17. For details on postwar politics in France, see Arno Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: 1918–1919 (New York: Knopf, 1967), chapter 19; Charles Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 53–87, 91–108, 458–480; and Georges Bonnefous, Histoire politique de la Troisième République (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1956), vols. II and IV.
18. The best source on the split of the left remains Annie Kriegel, Aux origines du communisme français, 1914–1920 (Paris: Mouton, 1964), especially pp. 359–547.
19. Voix du peuple, 4 (July 1922), 418.
20. French fears of job competition were well-founded. Placement offices reported French veterans complaining that foreign workers had taken jobs which the soldiers had held before the war. In response, the foreign labor office in Paris channeled foreign workers outside the crowded Parisian labor market. See Archives nationales (hereafter cited with “F” numbers) F22 2565, Labor Ministry report, March 8, 1919. For further information on colonial repatriation see Henri Bunle (Institut national des études économiques), Mouvements migratoires entre la France et l’étranger, Études et documents, no. 4, p. 77, and Michel Huber, La population de la France pendant la guerre (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1931), p. 509.
21. F14 11335, report from the Ministry of Public Works to the Labor Ministry, November 25, 1918. See also F14 11334, circular from the Labor Ministry, December 20, 1918. Other sources on early postwar policy are Bulletin du Ministère du travail, 27 (January–February 1920), pp. 20,23. See also Archives départementales, Meurthe-et-Moselle (hereafter cited as MM) 40 M 34, Interior Ministry circular, June 19, 1918.
22. Journal officiel de la République de France, Lois et décrets (hereafter cited as JO) (March 4, 1919), p. 2383.
23. Foreign labor continued to be recruited through placement offices at Perpignan, Hendaye, and Marignac for the Iberian migation, at Baisieux for the Belgian, and at Pontailler for the Swiss. Offices at Modane and Menton collected Italians, while the Toul office gathered in Poles, other eastern Europeans, and a few Germans. See JO (October 24, 1919), p. 11799 and (August 6, 1919), p. 8221.
24. Ibid. (June 27, 1919), p. 1844. See also Bulletin du Ministère du travail (January–February, 1920), p. 21.
25. Copies of these treaties can be found in Ibid., pp. 7–10, and for Poland in JO (February 4, 1920), p. 1844 and for Italy in Chambre des députés, Annals, Documents parlementaires (hereafter cited as JDoc) (annex number 1036, 1920), pp. 1607–1608.
26. MOA, 17 (January 25, 1920), 2.
27. Robert Stahl, L’organisation du relèvement économique dans le Nord libéré, un an de reconstruction (Lille: 1920), p. 30. See also Huber, La population française, pp. 501–504.
28. Stahl, L’organisation du relèvement économique, p. 84, and Bulletin quotidien (June 23, 1920).
29. Le Bâtiment (August 8, 1919).
30. “Notes on Migration,” International Labour Review, 2 (April 1922), 542.
31. Of these 135,044 immigrants involved in the reconstruction in September of 1922, 79,493 were Italian; 26,665 Belgian; 10,431 Portuguese; 64,470 Spanish; 6,202 Polish; 1,634 Czech; and 4,146 from various nationalities. William Oualid, “The Occupational Distribution and Status of Foreign Workers in France,” International Labour Review, 9 (August 1929), 178.
32. Alfred Morain, La réconstitution du Nord dévasté: au 1er septembre 1923 (Lille: Impr. Martin-Mamy, 1923).
33. Between 1920 and 1924, French officials recorded 649,611 immigrants entering non-agricultural employment and 362,399 hired as farm workers. See Bulletin du Ministère du travail, 33 (July–September 1926), p. 267. While all of these workers entered France under a work contract, an undetermined additional number entered as tourists later finding jobs. Furthermore, the government had only a perfunctory role in recruiting 210,601 eastern Europeans. See note 52.
34. Bunle, Mouvements migratoires, p. 18.
35. Archives départementales, Meurthe-et-Moselle, 10 M 37, Interior Ministry circular, November 13, 1919.
36. Ibid., prefect’s report to the Interior Ministry, March 15, 1920.
37. Ibid., report of J. Baches, Director of the foreign labor depot at Toul to the Labor Ministry, October 23, 1920.
38. Chambre des députés, Annales, Débats parlementaires (hereafter cited as CDeb), July 7, 1920, pp. 2825–2826.
39. Informations sociales, 12 (April 14, 1922), 6. See also JO (August 4, 1920), p. 11184 and MOA 18 (June 1920), 2 and 19 (November 1921), 9.
40. MOA, 19 (November 1921), 9.
41. Ibid., 18 (July 1920), 2.
42. Ibid., 19 (January 1921), 708.
43. The Ministry of the Liberated Regions provided CARD a subsidy of 500,000 francs in 1920–1921. See CDeb, March 16, 1923, p. 1324.
44. “Notes on Migration,” International Labour Review, 4 (May 1924), 744.
45. Revue d’immigration, 2 (January 1928), 1.
46. Industrial and Labour Information, 4 (March 31, 1924), 484.
47. “Notes on Migration,” International Labour Review, 4 (May 1924), 744.
48. Revue d’immigration, 2 (August 1928), 23.
49. CH 109, SGI meeting notes, May 17, 1924. Included among the SGI’s clients were a number of metal-mechanical firms, construction materials companies, Alsatian textile mills, Lyons silk factories, hydro-electric plants in the French Alps, paper mills in the Dauphiné, and glass works in the Vosges. CH 109, SGI report, May 31, 1927.
50. Ibid.
51. International Labour Office, Studies and Reports, Series O, no. 5 (1925), p. 95.
52. Bunle, Mouvements migratoires, p. 91 and Revue d’immigration, 6 (April 1932), 26.
53. Revue d’immigration, 6 (April 1932), 32.
54. Ibid., 5 (April 1931), 17.
55. “Notes on Migration,” International Labour Review, 4 (May 1924), 741.
56. International Labour Office, Studies and Reports, Series O, no. 5 (1925), p. 135.
57. Revue d’immigration, 6 (April 1932), 26.
58. For a graphie description of the SGI’s recruitment practices by an author who, with the co-operation of the SGI, followed a Pole through the immigration process, see G. Le Fevre, L’Homme travail (Paris, 1929), pp. 43–74; Le Peuple (January 16, 1930).
59. The SGI usually received requests from French employers through their employers’ syndicats. These requests were sent to the Foreign Labor Services of the Labor or Agriculture Ministries and then to the departmental placement offices for summary approval. In the cases of job offers in agriculture and mining, this last step was not required. The centrality of the SGI can be seen in the accompanying diagram of how the immigration process worked. In its advertising, the SGI claimed that any effort to bypass
its services would result in “long delays” and “numerous contacts” with the Labor Ministry. Revue d’immigration, 3 (February 1929), 16.
60. Le Tribune des mineurs, October 10, 1933.
61. These impressions of Polish immigrants were gathered by the Institut national d’études démographiques between 1950 and 1952 in a study of long-term assimilation. The institute interviewed 94 Polish miners, as well as similar numbers of Polish farmworkers (Aisne), Italian construction workers and artisans (Seine), and Italian farmers (Lot-et-Garonne).
These interviews are limited to long-term residents (a sample biased in the Polish case because of the repatriation of leftist Poles during the depression and especially in 1946–1948); still they are one of the few sources available which present the immigrants’ viewpoint. See Alain Girard and Jean Stoetzel (Institut nationale des études démographiques) Français et immigrés: l’attitude française, l’adaptation des italiens et des polonais, Travaux et documents, Cahier no. 19 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de la France, 1953), pp. 456, 386–387.
62. CH 48, SGI, report, July 1, 1926, CH 109, SGI, reports, March 16, 1927, and May 15, 1927.
63. By 1932, of the 25, 202, 219 francs held by the SGI, this finance company represented 18.8 million francs. The SGI grew from an initial capital investment of 5 million francs in 1924. CH 109, SGI reports, May 10, 1933, March 16 and December 28, 1927, as well as September 2, 1926.
64. CH 107, SGI report, December 9, 1929.
65. As early as September 1928, de Warren noted that the Poles had just demanded more control over the immigration of farm workers, but doubted that the Polish government could “close the doors” because “Yugoslavia ought to be able to give us what we want.” CH 48, September 4, 1928. See also the archival reports of M. Paon on his complex maneuverings to limit the SGI in Poland. Paon supported a group of distillers seeking to recruit Poles outside the SGI. In response to de Warren’s complaint about this new competition, Paon noted that farmers were critical of excessive SGI profits, F10 2754, Paon to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, October 17, 1930.
66. René Martial, Traité de l’immigration et de la greffe inter-raciale (Cuesmeslez-Mons: Imprimerie fédérale, 1932), pp. 50–52.
67. Revue d’immigration, for example, was a monthly newsletter published by the SGI to advertise its ideas and to provide its customers with information on immigration. It was sponsored by the Comité des houillères, Union des industries métallurgiques et minières, Association de l’immigration des forges et mines de fer de l’Est de la France, Union des industries chimiques, Comité central des fabricants de sucre, and the Office central de la main-d’oeuvre agricole.
68. Jean-Charles Bonnet, Les pouvoirs publics français et l’immigration dans l’entre deux guerres (Lyons: Centre d’histoire économique et sociale de la région lyonnaise, 1976), pp. 100–101.
69. See Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe, pp. 458–480, 494–510 for an account of the Cartel des Gauches.
70. See Archives départementales, Pas-de-Calais (hereafter cited as PC) M 2382, Report of Commissiare spéciale of Carvin, March 8, 1920, for an account of a short strike of reconstruction workers against the hiring of immigrants.
71. For example, see Confédération général du Travail, Congrés national corporatif: compte rendu des travaux (1918), pp. 22–23.
72. For the opinions of public health officials, see the entire issue of La Revue d’hygiène, 48 (November 1926), which was devoted to the problem of immigration and public health. For police fears of Polish enclaves, see Archives départementales, Nord (hereafter cited as N) M 208–135, Report of Procureur of Douai to the Justice Ministry, May 10, 1922.
73. Charles Lambert, France et les étrangers (Paris: Delegrave, 1928).
74. Jean-Charles Bonnet, Les pouvoirs publics français, pp. 71–79.
75. See Italy, Commissariato generale dell’emigrazione, L’emigrazione italiana, 1910–1923 and 1923–1925 (Rome: Edizione del commissariato generale dell’emigrazione 1924 and 1926), for the official position of the Italian government on emigration. Attilio Oblath reviews Italian policy in the late 1920s in “Italian Emigration and Colonialization Policy,” International Labour Review, 11 (June 1931), 805–834.
76. Among the proponents of de Warren’s bill were the Union des industries métallurgiques et minières, the Fédération national du bâtiment, and the Fédération des employeurs industriels et commercials. See Industrial and Labour Information, 4 (March 31, 1924), 486. This bill appears in the Chambre des députés, Annales, Documents parlementaires (hereafter cited as CDoc) (Annex number 2343, 1921), pp. 1444–1446.
77. For a discussion of the CGT’s position, see Confédération général du travail, Congrès national corporatif: compte rendu des travaux, 19 (1923), 116–118. See also Le Peuple (September 9, 1924).
78. See “Notes on Migration,” International Labour Review, 3 (July 1923), 109, Industrial and Labour Information, 3 (May 4, 1923), 216, and Le Temps (December 8, 1924).
79. B. Nogaro was a veteran administrator from the Ministry of Labor and in charge of negotiations during the war for procuring European immigrant workers. As Deputy from Gers and a rapporteur of the Commission du travail, he inserted his proposal for an immigration office into the budget request of the Ministry of Labor for 1925. It can be found in CDoc (Annex number 517, 1924), p. 1995. Parliamentary discussion of this proposal appears in CDeb (December 17, 1924), pp. 4383–4386, 4602.
80. For an overview of the debate on Nogaro’s proposal, see Louis Pasquet, Immigration et la main-d’oeuvre étrangère en France (Paris: Rieder, 1927), p. 108. The CGT’s response appears in Le Peuple (November 12, 1924, and March 17, 1925). The criticisms of agricultural organizations and parliamentary representatives appear in MOA, 20 (January 1925), 16 and 20 (May, 1925), 16.
IV: Farms, Mines, and Poles
1. Data on French economic development in this period are found in Alfred Sauvy, Histoire économique de la France entre les deux guerres (Paris: A. Sauret, 1969), especially volume 2, chapter 5; Jean Jacques Carré, éd., French Economic Growth (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), pp. 41, 169; and William Ogburn and William Jaffe, The Economic Development of Post-War France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929).
2. Annuaire Statistique de la France (1910), p. 152; (1928), p. 128.
3. Henri Bunle (Institut national des études économiques), Mouvements migratoires entre la France et l’étranger, Études et documents, no. 4, p. 96.
4. France, Statistique générale, Résultats Statistiques du recensement général de la population (hereafter cited as Recensement), 1, no. 5 (1931), 65.
5. Main-d’oeuvre agricole (MOA), 20 (March 1922), 5.
6. A. Fontaine, L’industrie française pendant la guerre (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1925), p. 58.
7. Annuaire statistique (1910), p. 153; (1928), p. 128.
8. The mean daily wage in industry rose from four francs (10-hour day) in 1911 to 33.8 francs (8-hour day) in 1930; by contrast, the daily wage in agriculture rose only from 3.3 francs in 1911 to 24.7 in 1930 (high in comparison to other sources see note 25). Thus, while in 1911 farm workers earned 83.5 per cent of industrial wages, by 1930 they earned only 73 per cent of industrial wages and worked for a much longer day (often twelve or more hours). See Annuaire statistique (1966), pp. 422, 424–425. See also Michel Augé-Laribé, “Labour Conditions in French Agriculture,” International Labour Review, 12 (January 1932), 38–39, and Bulletin du Ministère du travail, 29 (April–June 1922), 177.
9. MOA, 20 (March 1922), 4–5.
10. See Michel Augé-Laribé, Le paysan français après la guerre (Paris: Garnier frères, 1923), chapters 1–3, and Confédération général du travail (CGT), Le Congrès de travailleurs de l’agriculture (1920), pp. 37–39.
11. Augé-Laribé, “Labour Conditions,” p. 33.
12. Bulletin du Ministère du travail (1929–1931).
13. In 1931, 50 per cent of the aliens working in agriculture and fishing were employed in the 25 departments directly on the frontier. Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1931), 234, 236.
14. Bunle, Mouvements migratoires, p. 96.
15. Michel Huber, La population de la France (Paris: Hachette, 1937), pp. 780–781.
16. CGT, Congrès de travailleurs de l’agriculture (1920), pp. 181, 195, and Augé-Laribé, Le paysan, p. 461.
17. Chao Ying Li, Le mouvement de la main-d’oeuvre étrangère en France (Dijon: Langres, 1940), pp. 25–26.
18. MOA, 20 (April 1922), 5.
19. See Bunle, Mouvements migratoires, p. 96, and Annuaire statistique (1929), pp. 54* and 84*, which show that the number of sugar beet workers increased from about 20,000 in 1922 to 29,700 in 1930.
20. Chambre des deputés (CDeb), Annales, Débats parlementaires (November 29, 1927), pp. 335–337.
21. International Labour Organization, Monthly Record of Migration, 1 (April 1926), 172–174.
22. Augé-Laribé, “Labour Conditions,” p. 33.
23. Ibid. See also CGT, Congrès de travailleurs de l’agriculture (1920), pp. 180–195.
24. René Martial, Traité de l’immigration et de la greffe inter-raciale (Cuesmeslez-Mons: Imprimerie fédérale, 1930), p. 230.
25. Zdzislaw Ludkiewicz, “Agrarian Structure of Poland and France from the Point of View of Emigration,” International Labour Review, 10 (August 1930), 173–176.
26. MOA, 18 (November 1920), 2. See also Albert Demangeon and Georges Mauco, Documents pour servir à l’étude des étrangers dans l’agriculture française (Paris: Hermann, 1939), p. 128.
27. Archives des Charbonnages de France (CH) 109, Société général d’immigration report, May 15, 1927.
28. Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1931), 258–328.
29. CH 109, Société général d’immigration report, May 15, 1927.
30. MOA, 20 (October 1922), 4. Note that between 1921 and 1926, 37 percent of the Polish farm workers entering France were women (29,549). In comparison, for the immigrant population as a whole the figure was only 27 percent (1931) and for the same period as that of the Poles, only 18 percent of the Italians, 4 percent of the Belgians, and 31 percent of the Spanish were women. Huber, Population, p. 816, and Recensement, 1, no. 3 (1926), 181.
31. Louis Poszwa, L’émigrationpolonaise agricole en France (Paris: Gebethner and Wolff, 1930), pp. 97, 100–101.
32. CDeb, November 29, 1927, p. 3258. Marcel Paon, chief of the labor service of the Agricultural Ministry, admitted that farmers paid foreign workers below the French rate because farmers had no guarantee of the immigrants’ “professional value” when they were first hired. Seldom, however, did the French raise their pay. Le Peuple (February 15, 1927).
33. Poszwa, L’émigration polonaise, p. 116.
34. MOA, 20 (October 1922), 5.
35. Augé-Laribé, Le paysan, p. 102.
36. This at least was the claim of deputy Eugen Raude, CDeb, December 21, 1931, p. 822.
37. André Pairault, L’immigration organisée et l’emploi de la main-d’oeuvre étrangère en France (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1926), p. 213.
38. Huber, Population, p. 831.
39. Martial, Traité, p. 215.
40. Archives départementales, Pas-de-Calais (hereafter cited as PC) M 3210–11, passim.
41. Revue d’immigration, 6 (April 1932), 8.
42. MOA, 18 (July 1920), 3.
43. See “L’Opieka d’Amiens,” Les Dossiers de l’Action populaire (September 15, 1925), pp. 770–777, and “Un noyau polonais dans le département de l’Aisne,” Les Dossiers de l’Action Populaire (October 25, 1925), pp. 841–845.
44. For an example of this belief that rural proprietorship would instill petty bourgeois attitudes, see Le Temps (September 27,1924). See also “La valeur de la terre et l’immigration,” Moniteur des intérêts materials (June 23, 1926), for this notion of land acquisition as a solution to the problem of immigrant instability.
45. In 1927, there were 4,797 Belgium, 14,719 Italian, 8,045 Spanish, and 3,413 Swiss landowners. However, there were only 109 Polish, 68 Hungarian, and 27 Czech landholders. See Ministère de l’Agriculture, Enquête sur les étrangers (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1929), pp. 46–47.
46. Robert Lafitte-Leplace, L’économie charbonnière de la France (Paris, 1933), chapters 1–2.
47. “Situation de personnel employé dans les etablissements sinistrés,” Réconstitution industriel, 4 (January 1, 1923), 12. Stephane Wlocevski, “La main-d’oeuvre polonaise en France: enquête dans le bassin houille du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais,” Pologne, 14 (November 1933), 537.
48. Miners in 1922 earned about 19 francs per day while masons’ assistants could earn 30 or more francs. Annuaire statistique (1938), pp. 173* and 200*.
49. CH 7, Report to the General Assembly of the Comité des houillères, March 26, 1920. On January 1, 1918, there were only 5,734 non-militarized French miners in the mining population of 145,721, a fact that helps explain the problem of reconstituting a free labor force after the war. F14 13423, Report of the Ministère du travaux publics, January 1, 1918.
50. Conseil général du Pas-de-Calais, 3 (1920), Report of Ingenieur des mines, 437.
51. Ibid., pp. 430, 438; see also Annuaire statistique (1966), p. 229.
52. Bulletin quotidien (January 26, 1920), and Le Temps (August 31, 1920).
53. The birth rate in the mining town of Bully, for example, dropped from 400 annually per 10,000 in the period of 1901–1911 to 280 per 10,000 in the decade 1921–1931. Phillipe Ariès, Histoire des populations françaises (Paris: SELF, 1948), pp. 228, 249–262.
54. Hans Urig-Wehren, “Die Polen im Ruhrgebiet bis 1918,” in Moderne Deutsche socialgeschichte, ed. Hans Urig-Wehren (Cologne: Kiepenheur, 1968), pp. 437–55.
55. Czeslaw Kaczmarek, L’émigration polonaise en France après la guerre (Paris: Berger, 1928), p. 131, for the years 1922 to 1925, and Lafitte-Laplace, L’économie charbonnière, pp. 197–198 for 1919–1921 and 1926–1929.
56. M. Georges, “Le développement de la production en 1923 dans les mines du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais,” Revue de l’industrie minérale, 4 (January 8, 1924), 345.
57. Reveil du Nord (April 18, 1923).
58. Annuaire statistique (1932), p. 62*.
59. When one uses the census figures for 1911 and 1931, which include the entire mining class (no figures for coal only), 95 per cent of the growth in the mining work force is a result of immigration. Recensement, 1, no. 3 (1931), 19, and 1, no. 5 (1931), 122.
60. CH 7 Report of the Comité des houillères, 1920.
61. Annuaire statistique (1931), p. 62*.
62. Jean Condevaux, Le Mineur du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais (Lille, 1928), pp. 10, 15.
63. Conseil général du Pas-de-Calais, 3 (1924), Report of the Ingenieur des mines, 133. In December of 1934, foreigners comprised 42 percent of the underground miners in the Pas-de-Calais mines and 46 percent of those in the Nord. This involved 87 per cent of the foreigners employed by the mines. PC 1 Z 501 subprefect of Douai report, February 3, 1935.
64. M. Georges, “Renseignements statistiques sur les mines du Pas-de-Calais en 1924,” Revue de l’industrie minérale 4 (August 1, 1924), 396.
65. PC M 2384, M 6679, passim.
66. Conseil général du Pas-de-Calais, 3 (1925), Report from Ingenieur des mines, 118. One police report claimed that the mines eliminated unmarried foreign workers “with the slightest pretense” in order to lower production costs. The operators expected no serious opposition as “no one cares about them.” PC M 382, Report of Commissaire de Police of Bruay, March 13,1928.
67. Kaczmarek, L’émigration polonaise, p. 224.
68. PC M 8213, mine company correspondence with prefect, May 28,1929. In some cases labor-hungry construction companies sent agents to the mines to hire directly at the canteens and barracks. Despite pledges not to pirate the immigrants of other mines, some operators in the Loire induced Poles to leave their jobs in the mines of the north. See PC M 6857, Labor Ministry report to the prefect, May 34, 1923, and PC M 3213, report of (Commissaire spécial) of Lens, June 22, 1929.
69. For example, Alfred Morain, the prefect of the Nord, required that the name of the importing employer be placed on the identity card of the immigrant to discourage job-hopping. Alfred Morain, La réconstitution du Nord devasté au 1er septembre 1923 (Lille: Martin-Mamy, 1923), p. 127.
70. PC M 3213 contains numerous examples of state aid for employers suffering contract ruptures for the years 1929–1930. However, in the case of thirty-two Poles who the mines of Ostricourt had identified as runaways in 1929, only four could be found from forwarding addresses left at the mine.
71. Archives départementales, Nord (hereafter cited as N) M 208–135, Report of procureur of Douai to the prefect, May 10, 1922.
72. Ibid., Report of CS of Lille, March 21, 1923.
73. Conseil général du Pas-de-Calais, 3 (1924), Report of the Ingenieur des mines, 193.
74. N M 208-135, Prefect’s report to subprefects, March 2, 1923.
75. For descriptions of coal mining housing, see Ariês, L’histoire des populations françaises, pp. 249–262, and Rolande Trempé, Les mineurs aux Carmaux: 1848–1914 (Paris: Les éditions ouvrières, 1971), passim.
76. One could easily exaggerate the role of housing, for there were higher proportions of workers per house in the 1920s than before the war, a fact which may have contributed less to stability than to the inexpensive maintenance of the new miners. See M. Georges, “Les mines du Pas-de-Calais en 1924,” p. 346.
77. Morain, La réconstitution du Nord, p. 74, and N M 208–135, subprefect at Valenciennes to the prefect, March 16, 1927.
78. Stephane Wlocevski, “Le Scoutisme,” Pologne, 13 (November 1933), 52.
79. PC M 6689, Circular from the Ministry of Labor, March 16, 1930, and October 23, 1928.
80. Calculated from Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1931), 168–172, 158–161.
81. In the Commune of Lens (17 percent foreign in 1926) the birth rate was double that of Cambrai (2 percent foreign). Georges Mauco, Les étrangers en France (Paris: A. Colin, 1932), p. 185.
82. N M 208-135, Report of the subprefect of Valenciennes to the prefect, March 16, 1923.
83. Ibid., Letter of the prefect of the Nord to the subprefects, March 2,1923. Note also that the General Immigration Society advocated that Polish assimilation in France should be delayed for two generations. Documents du Travail (March–June 1930), p. 57.
84. Morain, La réconstitution du Nord, p. 77.
85. Archives diplomatiques, Poland, 283, (November 1924), 38.
86. Chambre des députés, Annales, Documents parlementaires (hereafter cited as CDoc), Annex number 607 (1928), p. 1579.
87. The commissaire spécial (CS) of Lens noted the “precious aid in the purification of the Polish colony of the principal extremists” provided by a Polish journalist. PC 1Z 501, April 20, 1926.
88. Kaczmarek, L’émigration polonaise, pp. 280, 287, 294.
89. In the period between March 1923 and January 1925, some 31,527 Westphalian Poles passed through the depot at Toul; of these, 5,260 were men (i.e., mostly miners) or 32 percent of the total; 7,540 were women or 24 percent; and 13,904 were children (under 16 years old) or 44 percent. In contrast, between April and December 1924, the Poles who migrated directly from Poland were distributed as follows: 15,121 men (47 percent), 6,677 women (21 percent), and 10,099 children (32 percent). MM 10 M 37, reports of prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle to the Ministry of Hygiene, April 10, 1923 to February 15, 1925.
90. PC M 6857, reports of the Procureur of Arras, 1929; Kaczmarek, L’émigration polonaise, p. 367; and Alain Girard and Jean Stoetzel, Français et immigrés: l’attitude française, l’adaptation des italiens et des polonais (Cahier 19, Institut national des études démographiques) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1953), p. 459.
91. Bunle, Mouvements migratoires, p. 100.
92. There were, of course, problems of adjustment. The Westphalian Poles had been accustomed to German mines, which were more modern and provided better safety and hygienic standards. Their coming to France often resulted in a drop in status and position in the occupational hierarchy since they were not given seniority. Kaczmarek, L’émigration polonaise, pp. 280–294. See also E. Gogolewski, “Les polonaises en France avant la seconde guerre mondiale,” Revue du Nord, no. 242 (1979), 649–663.
93. Ibid., p. 118.
94. PC M 3231, report of the CS of Lens, February 8, 1923.
95. R. Poignant, “L’immigration polonaise dans le Pas-de-Calais,” (Arras: unpublished MS.), pp. 18, 22.
96. PC 1Z 501, report of the CS of Lens, February 12, 1924.
97. N M 208-135, report of the CS of Douai, November 24,1924, and PC 1Z 501, report of the CS of Lens, February 24, 1926.
98. For information on the ZRP, see R. Poignant, “L’émigration polonaise,” pp. 44–45, and Stephane Wlocevski, “Chronique de Immigration polonaise en France,” Pologne 13 (December 1933), 112.
99. PC M 3229, report of the CS of Bethune, September 12, 1925.
100. PC 1Z 501, report of the CS of Bethune, October 23, 1924.
101. Ibid., report of the Commissaire de police of Bethune, June 29, 1924.
102. Ibid., Report of the CS of Lens, January 17, 1926.
103. Archives nationales (hereafter cited with “F” numbers), AN F7 13269, Correspondence between the CGT and the ZRP, January 1927.
104. In the mines of Anzin (Nord), Martial reported that contract ruptures for the entire work force dropped to 5 percent by 1925 from a prewar figure of 19 percent. Martial, Traité de l’immigration, p. 257.
105. Revue d’immigration, 5 (January 1931), 17; Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1931), 57.
106. Informations sociales, 13 (June 5, 1933), 374, and AN F7 14369, Interior Ministry correspondence with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, March 10, 1928.
107. Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1931), 317, 299; 1, no. 3 (1931), 172–173.
108. PC M 6857, report of the CS of Bethune, September 30, 1929.
109. PC 1Z 501, Narodowiec, February 13, 1926 (French translation).
110. Ibid., report of the CS of Lens, January 4, 1925, and April 27, 1925.
111. N M 208-135, report of the CS of Douai, September 30, 1925.
112. Archives diplomatiques, Pologne, 271 (February 1927), 83–87.
113. AN F7 13469, report of the prefect of the Nord, October 1, 1925.
114. N M 208-135, report of the CS of Douai, September 30, 1925.
115. Ibid., report of the CS of Lille, September 30, 1926, and translations of Wiarus Polski, November 17, 1927, and April 11, 1929.
V: The Fascist State and Italian Emigration
1. France, Statistique générale, Résultats statistiques du recensement général de la population (hereafter cited as Recensement), 1, no. 3 (1911), 146–147. See also Comte de Canisy, La question ouvrière dans le bassin de Briey (Paris: 1919); G. Hottenger, Le Pays de Briey (Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1912); G. Reynaud, “La colonie italienne d’Homecourt,” Le musée social, 15 (October 1910), 205–241; Serge Bonnet, C. Santini, and H. Barthelemy, “Les Italiens dans l’arrondissement de Briey avant 1914,” Annales de l’Est, 35 (1962); and Jean-Baptiste Duroselle and E. Serra, L’immigrazione italiana in Francia prima de 1914 (Milan: F. Angeli, 1978).
2. Commissiarato generale dell’emigrazione (CGE), Annuario statistico dell’ emigrazione italiana (Rome: Edizione del CGE, 1925), pp. 375–376.
3. Istituto centrale di Statistica, Sommario di statistische storiche dell’Italia, 1861–1965 (Rome: ISSN, 1966) pp. 28–29.
4. See Anne Marie Faidutti, L’immigration italienne dans le sud-est de la France (Gap: Editions Ophrys, 1964), for a description of the origins and distribution of Italian labor in France before the war, especially pp. 1–50. Annuario statistico dell’emigrazione italiana, pp. 275–276.
5. For background on international migrations in Europe in the 1920s, see John W. Brown, World Migration and Labor (Amsterdam: International Federation of Trade Unions, 1926); Donald Taft, Human Migration (New York: Ronald Press, 1936); and Louis Variez, Les migrations internationales et leur réglementations (Paris: Recueil des cours, 1929).
6. In 1925, 34 percent of the Italian immigrants originated from Venetia, 18 percent from Piedmont, 12 percent from Lombardy, 9 percent from Tuscany, and 7 percent from Emilia—all northern provinces. The other 20 percent came from central and southern Italy. Data derived from Opera Bonomelli, Vadecum dell’emigrante (Milan), p. 100.
7. CGE, L’emigrazione italiana, 1910–1923, p. 70.
8. John W. Brown, World Migration and Labour (Amsterdam: International Federation of Trade Unions, 1926), p. 80.
9. P. Armenjon and G. de Fonclare, “L’immigration italienne dans la région des Alpes françaises,” Revue économique internationale: Bruxelles, 21 (May 1929), 285.
10. Gérard Walter, L’évolution de problème de la main-d’oeuvre dans la métallurgie de la Lorraine (Maçon: J. Buguet-Comptour, 1935).
11. Recensement, 1, no. 2 (1931), 149–155 and 1, no. 1 (1931), 76.
12. Ibid., 1, no. 3 (1931), 149–155 and 1, no. 5 (1931), 76.
13. CGE, L’emigrazione, 1910–1923, pp. 95–96. See also Guiseppe de Michelis, La corporazione del mondo (Milano: V. Bompiani, 1934), for details on his philosophy of labor exchanges.
14. CGE, L’emigrazione, 1910–1923, pp. 102–103.
15. CGE, L’emigrazione italiana, 1924–25, pp. 408–409.
16. Ibid., pp. 342–349, 425–432.
17. Ibid., pp. 342, 344.
18. Ibid., pp. 55–56, 349–351, 336–340.
19. CGE, L’emigrazione, 1910–1923, p. 110.
20. CGE, L’emigrazione, 1924–1925, pp. 358–360, 374.
21. CGE, L’emigrazione, 1910–1923, chapter 4. See also CGE, L’emigrazione, 1924–1925, pp. 66–67.
22. In 1924, French employers recruited 18,293 emigrants under individual contracts, while the Italian state recruited 38,463 Italian workers anonymously for the French under collective contracts. Ibid., pp. 349–351, 336–340. See also CGE, L’emigrazione, 1910–23, pp. 364, 356.
23. Quoted in E. Albonico, Saggio di una prima inchiesta sulla emigrazione italiana in Europa (Milan: Lanzani, 1921), p. 10.
24. Serge Bonnet, “Italian Immigration in Lorraine,” Journal of Social History, 2 (Winter 1968), 137.
25. CGE, L’emigrazione, 1910–23, pp. 602–632.
26. Opera Bonomelli, Vadecum, pp. 65–66. See also André Pairault, “La politique italienne d’émigration,” Revue Politique et parlementaire, 10 (October 12, 1927), 468; for details about the foundation of this religious mission, see Carlo Bello, Geremia Bonomelli (Rome: Bescia, 1961).
27. “Notes on Migration,” International Labour Review, 2 (August 1922), 268.
28. Archives départementales, Meurthe-et-Moselle (hereafter cited as MM), 10M 34, report ofCommissaire spéciale (CS) ofBriey, August 2,1924.
29. Archives nationales (hereafter cited with “F” numbers), F7 13453, Report of CS of Strasbourg, December 9, 1921.
30. Albonico, Saggio, p. 13.
31. Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1931), 76–78, and 1, no. 3 (1931), 96.
32. Raoul Blanchard, “L’électrométallurgie et l’électrochimie dans les Alpes françaises, II,” Les alpes économiques, 5 (October 1924), 204.
33. F7 13456, undated Interior Ministry report.
34. In Le Peuple (May 10, 1921), for example, H. Cordier complained that anti-union Italians moved into the old CGE stronghold of St. Claude in Jura under the tutelage of the Opera Bonomelli. Le Peuple (September 9, 1923) reports that Italian clergy and fascists spied on those Italians at St. Claude who participated in a leftist demonstration, leading to their expulsion.
35. Archives diplomatiques, Italie, Volume 85, letter from Robert Pinot, December 2, 1920, pp. 3–28.
36. CGE, L’emigrazione, 1910–23, pp. 148–151.
37. G. F. Rosoli, éd., Un secolo di emigrazione italiana (Rome: CSER, 1978), p. 37.
38. CGE, Uemigrazione, 1910–23, p. 119.
39. Philip Cannistraro and Gianfausto Rosoli, “Fascist Emigration Policy in the 1920s: An Interpretive Framework,” International Migration Review, 13 (Winter 1979), 683. See also C. Noble, “Politicia migratoria evicende dell’emigrazione durante il fascismo,” II Ponte (November–December 1974), pp. 1325–1333.
40. Cannistraro and Rosoli, “Fascist Emigration Policy,” p. 675.
41. For the fascist demographic program, see B. Mussolini, “II problema demografico italiano,” Bollettino delVemigrazione, no. 6 (1927), 10, and M. Appelius, “L’emigrazione italiana e il fascismo,” Bollettino dell’emigrazione, no. 5 (1925), pp. 40–42.
42. Archives diplomatiques, Italie, Volume 185, report of the French consul at Ventimille, January 25, 1928, p. 199.
43. Corriere della sera (July 23, 1926), clipping in F7 13458.
44. See speech of Dino Grandi, Italy, Camera dei Deputati, Atti parlemetarii, March 31, 1927, quoted in Attilio Oblath, “Italian Emigration and Colonization Policy,” International Labour Review, 11 (June 1931), 808.
45. For background on Mussolini’s colonization program, see Oblath, “Italian Emigration,” pp. 831–832. For recent studies of internal colonization see A. Treves, Le migrazioni interne nell’Italia fascista (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), and E. Scarzanella, “L’emigrazione veneta nel periodo fascista,” Studi Storici, 18 (1977), 171–199. For Mussolini’s imperialist alternative to emigration, see R. Cantalupo, LTtalia Mussulmana (Rome: La Voce, 1928), Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini’s Roman Empire (New York: Longman, 1976), and Esmonde M. Robertson, Mussolini as Empire Builder (New York: Macmillian, 1977).
46. Cannistraro and Rosoli, “Fascist Emigration,” pp. 679–681.
47. International Labour Office, Monthly Record of Migration, 3 (December 1928), 433.
48. For details of the new decrees, see Ibid., 3 (September 1928), 313. See also the following articles in the Bollettino dell’emigrazione: B. Mussolini, “Spiriti e forma della nuova politica dell’emigrazione,” no. 5 (1927), 10; Dino Grandi, “La soppressione del Commissariato generale dell’emigrazione nei documenti parlamentari,” no. 6 (1927), 38–40; and B. Mussolini, “La nuova politica dell’emigrazione,” no. 7 (1927) 75–77. For another interpretation of fascist change of policy in 1927, see Cannistraro and Rosoli, “Fascist Emigration,” pp. 686–689.
49. Archives départementales, Isère, 165 M-2 prefect’s report to the Ministry of Labor, March 24, 1928.
50. International Labour Office, Monthly Record of Migration, 3 (September 1928), 314.
51. Archives diplomatiques, Italie, Volume 185, report of Consul of Vintimille, January 25, 1929, p. 199.
52. Italy, Atti Parlamenti: Camera di Deputati (May 26, 1927), p. 7617. See also, Claude Woog, La politique d’émigration de l’Italie (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1930), pp. 127 ff.
53. International Labour Office, Monthly Record of Migration, 3 (September 1928), 314.
54. Conseil générale de Bouches-du-Rhône (1929), pp. 429–430, and Conseil général de l’Isère (1928), pp. 121–122.
55. Archives départementales, Isère, 165 M-2, report of prefect to the Interior Ministry, March 4, 1928.
56. F7 13458, Interior Ministry report, October 13, 1926; International Labour Office, Monthly Record of Migrations, 1 (April 1926), 130–133 and 3 (December 1928), 399. See also Woog, Politique d’émigration, p. 109; Armenjon and de Fonclare, “L’immigration italienne,” p. 300; and Oblath, “Italian Emigration,” pp. 805–834.
57. “Notes on Migration,” International Labour Review, 3 (February 1923), 649.
58. International Labour Office, Monthly Record of Migration, 2 (February 1927), 65.
59. Ibid., 1 (February 1926), 47–48.
60. Congrès du Bâtiment (Independent) (1925), p. 146.
61. L’Humanité (August 6, 1926) and (January 4, 1927).
62. Archives de la Préfecture de Police (hereafter cited as PP) 67, “Main d’oeuvre” report, 1924.
63. F7 13456, Interior Ministry reports to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, May 20, 1925, August 22, 1926.
64. F7 13458, report of the CS of Lyons, October 7 and 17, 1926.
65. F7 13458, report of the prefect of Loire-Atlantique (Nantes), November 9, 1926.
66. Archives départementales, Bouches-du-Rhône (hereafter cited as BR), 6 M 10895, passim.
67. F7 13458, report of the CS of Toulouse, June 8, 1926.
68. F7 13454, report of the CS of Menton, December 9, 1922.
69. F7 13454, report from the prefect of the Drome, December 9, 1925.
70. Archives diplomatiques, Italie, Volume 185, internal report, December 23, 1925.
71. Archives départementales, Gard, M 130, report of the prefect to the Interior Ministry, January 19, 1939.
72. CGE, L’emigrazione, 1924–25, p. 259.
73. F7 13461, Interior Ministry report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, May 12, 1928.
74. PP 283, report of the Prefect of Police to the Interior Ministry, August 19, 1928.
75. F7 13460, report of CS of Toulouse, January 2, 1927.
76. Archives diplomatiques, Italie, Volume 185, undated report (about 1924), p. 226.
77. For example, sixteen Italian organizations, eight language schools, and a vigorous fascist press functioned at Lyons in the early 1920s. Ibid., pp. 241–242.
78. For the demands of French employers for more labor see Revue d’immigration, 2 (October 1928), 24; 3 (January 16, 1929), 3; and 3 (September 8, 1929), 30–31. See also Le Nord industriel (August 10, 17, and 31, 1929) and Informations sociales, 10 (April 7, 1930), 139.
79. Revue d’immigration, 3 (February 1930), 18.
80. Ibid., 2 (October 1928), 39. This source reported that the unemployed in Poland decreased from 250,000 in 1927 to only 100,000 by mid-1928.
81. Informations sociales, 10 (January 6,1930), 118, and 9 (July 22,1929), 33.
82. Polish authorities complained that Polish women worked at men’s jobs for “female pay” and frequently were sexually exploited by their employers. Revue d’immigration, 3 (January 6, 1929), 7.
83. Ibid.
84. The French Ambassador to Poland quoted a Mr. Stemler who, at a meeting of the “Assembly of Poles Living Abroad,” claimed that miners in France contributed to unemployment in Poland for they competed with Polish coal. Archives diplomatiques, Poland, Volume 271, report dated July 18, 1929, p. 141.
85. CH 48, report of an agent of the Société générale d’immigration, December 16, 1929.
86. Le Temps (April 27, 1926).
87. International Labour Office, Monthly Record of Migration, 1 (May 1926), 161; 1 (September 1926), 332–333; and 3 Qanuary 1928), 173.
88. Revue d’immigration, 3 (January 1929), 7.
89. Informations sociales, 10 (March 10, 1930), 467; and 10 (November 3, 1930), 508. See also International Labour Office, Studies and Documents, Series O, no. 5 (1925), p. 80.
90. Derived from H. Bunle (Institut national des études économiques), Mouvements migratoires entre la France et l’étranger, Études et documents, no. 4 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1943), p. 91.
VI: Foreign Labor in a Period of Growth
1. France, Statistique générale, Résultats statistiques du recensement général de la population (hereafter cited as Recensement) 1, no. 5 (1931), 74. It is not the purpose of this work to describe in detail the various nationalities which comprised the immigration of the 1920s nor their occupational or regional distribution. For an encyclopedic treatment of these topics, see G. Mauco, Les étrangers en France (Paris: A. Colin, 1932).
2. The cartons Archives de la Préfecture de Police (hereafter cited as PP) 67 and Archives départementales Bouches-du-Rhône (hereafter cited as BR) 6M 6262 contain reports of these efforts to flush the North Africans out of Paris and Marseilles.
3. Norbert Gomar, L’émigration algérienne en France (Paris: Les presses modernes, 1931), p. 21.
4. BR 14 M 23-21, Arab petition to the prefect, January 22, 1921, and prefect’s report to the Ministry of the Interior, January 20, 1921.
5. Ibid., undated (1924) departmental placement office report, pp. 21 and 24.
6. Gomar, L’émigration, p. 71, and chapter II. Most colonial immigrants originated from a few districts in Algeria: of the 37,499 Algerian immigrants in 1923, 18,096 came from the department of Tizi-Ouaou, 11,861 from Bougie (Constantine), 3,108 from Selif, and 2,354 from Algiers. See France, La Situation générale de l’Algérie (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1923), p. 536.
7. M. Huber, La population de la France pendant la guerre (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1931), p. 793.
8. BR 14 M 23-20, undated departmental placement office report, pp. 4–5.
9. In a study (1924) of 258 metal works employing 60,000 immigrants, only 15 percent of the Arabs were considered by the employers to be “good workers,” compared to 85 percent of the Belgians, 70 percent of the Italians, 65 percent of the Poles, and 50 percent of the Portuguese, Spanish, and Russians. See André Pairault, L’immigration organisée et l’emploi de la main-d’oeuvre étrangère en France (Paris: Rieder, 1927), p. 273.
10. Gomar, L’émigration, p. 39.
11. Louis Chevalier, Le problème démographique Nord-Africain (Institut national des études démographiques, Cahier no. 6) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1947).
12. Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1936), 66.
13. BR 14 M 23-2, undated departmental placement office report, p. 24.
14. Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1931), 78.
15. For details on French controls over Algerian migration, see “Notes on Migration,” Industrial and Labour Information, 12 (October 6, 1924), 47, and International Labour Office, Monthly Record of Migration, 2 (April 1927), 114; 2 (November 1927), 421; and 3 (September 1928), 307.
16. Moroccans and Tunisians had to place a deposit of 1,000 francs. BR 6 M 9097, report from the Résidence générale de Maroc to the prefect, October 17, 1931.
17. BR 6 M 8410, 9119, 9117, and 9097 for police reports on clandestine North African immigration.
18. See BR 6 M 9097, 9117, 4949, 6363, and 5582 as well as BR 14 M 23-4 for details on the importation and distribution of refugees. See also G. Mauco, Les étrangers, pp. 168 and 172.
19. “Statistics,” International Labor Review, 10 (February 1930), 275.
20. Mauco, Les étrangers, pp. 97–104.
21. For example, Marseilles, as early as 1911, had 97,057 Italian residents (110, 421 total foreigners). A survey by the Italian consul claimed that Italians constituted 45 percent of the coopers (770), 80 percent of the cabinet makers (400), 40 percent of the carpenters (1,400), 40 percent of the stone masons (500), and 30 percent of the painters (660). They also comprised a large share of the employees of heavy industries such as chemicals, olive oil, and gas. See G. Selli, Marsiligilia a la sua colonia italiana (Marseilles, 1913).
22. Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1936), 66.
23. Jean Gravier, Paris et le désert français (Paris: Flammarrion, 1972), p. 52.
24. Mauco, Les étrangers, p. 312.
25. Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1931), 59, 61.
26. Mauco, Les étrangers, p. 312.
27. Ibid., pp. 286–309, and Commissariato generale dell’emigrazione, L’emigrazione italiana, 1910–1923 (Rome: Edizione del CGE, 1924), p. 39.
28. For the suburbs the alien work force rose from 5 percent to 12.3 percent in the 1920s, whereas it rose in Paris from 6.5 percent to 9.5 percent. Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1931), 50.
29. Recensement, 1, no. 1 (1931) 62.
30. Ibid., 1, no. 5 (1931), 206–207, 59 and 1, no. 3 (1931), 174–177.
31. Ibid., 271.
32. Ibid., 324.
33. Ibid., 317.
34. Ibid., 315.
35. Between 1921 and 1931, there was a 7 per cent decrease in the proportion of the foreign population living in the border regions. Ibid., 9–10.
36. Commissariato generale dell’emigrazione, L’emigrazione italiana, 1924–25, p. 388.
37. Mauco, Les étrangers, p. 256.
38. Archives nationales (hereafter cited with “F” numbers) F7 3528, report of Commissaire spéciale of Albi, May 26, 1925. See also Confédération générale du travail Congrès nationale de la Fédération nationale des travailleurs de l’industrie du bâtiment (April 1914), pp. 181–192.
39. L’Humanité (November 11, 1925), and N M 595-46, trade union poster from Armentières, January 1924.
40. F7 13518, report of the prefect of the Somme, March 12, 1925.
41. Congrès du Bâtiment (Independent) (1925), p. 142.
42. PP 314, internal police reports, July 7, 1927, and December 12, 1930.
43. Paul Mauriri, La main-d’oeuvre immigré sur la marché du travail en France (Paris, 1933), p. 66.
44. Le Peuple (April 2, 1930).
45. Archives départementales, Pas-de-Calais (hereafter cited as PC) M 6857, Service de la main-d’oeuvre étrangère (Préfecture), letter to the Ministry of Labor, June 28, 1929.
46. BR 14M 22-5 contains a file of reports from departmental labor inspectors (1928) which show numerous cases of clothing shops and tanneries employing illegal immigrants who worked in crowded and unsafe conditions.
47. Archives départementales, Nord (hereafter cited as N) M 208-135, Labor Ministry to Prefect, December 18, 1927.
48. Mauco, Les étrangers, p. 274. See also BR 14M 23-3, “Conférence régionale des Offices du placement,” 1923.
49. For details on immigrants in the iron and steel industries, see William Oualid, “Foreign Workers in France,” International Labour Review, 9 (August 1929), 177; Mauco, Les étrangers, p. 256; and Georges Daulatly, La main-d’oeuvre étrangère en France et la crise économique (Paris: Loviton, 1933), p. 58. For the Alpine industries, see Raoul Blanchard, “L’électrométallurgie et l’électrochimie dans les Alpes françaises, II,” Les alpes économiques, 5 (October 1924), 204; P. Armenjon and G. de Fonclare, “L’immigration italienne dans la région des Alpes françaises,” Revue économique internationale: Bruxelles, 21 (May 1929), 285.
50. Some of the business and trade union descriptions of these industries indicate the rudiments of a program designed to stabilize immigrant workers. There were family housing projects at the Belleviller potash works, for example. S et L’Humanité (May 24, 1930). Similar projects were undertaken by several plants in the Alpine hydro-electric district (Blanchard, “L’électrométallurgie,” p. 205) and in the Lorraine steel centers (Martial, Traité de l’immigration (Cuesmes-lez-Mons: Imprimerie fédérale, 1930), p. 251). Yet reports of overcrowded barracks predominated. L’Humanité (May 28, 1930) and Blanchard, “L’électrométallurgie,” p. 205.
51. Le Peuple (December 1 and 4, 1928) for reports on government studies of the immigrant in the Moselle iron and steel industry. For additional background, see Compte de Canisy, La question ouvrière dans le bassin de Briey (Paris, 1919), pp. 55–75, and Serge Bonnet, L’Homme de fer: mineurs de fer et ouvriers sidérurgistes lorrains, 1889–1930 (Nancy: Centre lorraine des études sociologiques, 1976), p. 281.
52. Mauco, Les étrangers, p. 275.
53. Blanchard, “L’électrométallurgie,” p. 205, and Armenjon and de Fonclare, “L’immigration,” p. 285.
54. Le Peuple (December 26, 1929) reported that only 10 percent of the international coal and metallurgical regions, which included French Lorraine, the German Saar, and Luxembourg, were unionized. This was partially attributed to the fact that 60 percent of the workers of this district were not citizens of the countries where they worked.
55. F14 11334, Ministry of War circular, “Instructions relatives à l’emploi de main-d’oeuvre algérienne, tunisienne, morocaine, et chinoise,” 1917.
56. André Paircault, L’immigration organisée, p. 177.
57. Blanchard, “L’électrométallurgie,” p. 205.
58. Armenjon and de Fonclare, “L’immigration italienne,” p. 285.
59. L’Humanité (March 28, 1930).
VII: Acceptance without Integration
1. General background on CGT immigration policy is found in Leon Gani, Syndicats et travailleurs immigrés (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1972), pp. 20–24. See also CGT, Congrès confédéral, compte rendu (1919), pp. 46–47. For efforts of the construction unions of the northern region, see PC M2373 and M2382, reports of the Commissaire spécial of Lens, November 1921 to March 1924.
2. PC M 2372, report of the Commissaire spécial (CS) of Lens, December 12, 1923. See also CGT, Voix du peuple, 20 (September 1938), 26–27.
3. N 599-43, report of the CS, December 10, 1929. See also Georges Kletch, “L’organisation syndicale des travailleurs étrangers” (unpublished in A.D. Pas-de-Calais), pp. 4–5.
4. Annie Kriegel, La Croissance de la CGT: 1918–21 (Paris: Mouton, 1966), p. 29; Antoine Prost, La C.G.T. à l’époque du Front populaire (Paris: A. Colin, 1964), pp. 102, 182; and France, Statistique générale, Résultats statistiques du recensement général de la population (hereafter cited as Recensement), 1, no. 5 (1931), 53. When calculating the percentages for “industry,” we included the following industries: metals, textiles, garments, construction, mines, chemicals, stone-ceramics, glass, leather, and docks. For a liberal estimate of trade union membership, see David Saposs, The Labor Movement in Post-War France (Columbia University Press, 1931), pp. 118, 137.
5. CGTU, Congrès de la Fédération unitaire des ouvriers et ouvrières sur métaux (1925), pp. 111–112, and Congrès de la Fédération nationale unitaire des travailleurs du sous-sol et similaires (1926), p. 123.
6. Alain Girard and Jean Stoetzel (Institut national des études démographiques), Français et immigrés, Travaux et documents, Cahier no. 19 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1953), pp. 191,461.
7. CGT, Congrès national de la Fédération du bâtiment (1929), p. 36.
8. For example, see CGT, Congrès national de la Fédération des métaux (1921), pp. 26–27 and (1927), p. 111. See also CGT, Congrès national de la Fédération du bâtiment (1929), p. 36. These sources also reveal persistent French displeasure over the continued membership of Belgians in their unions back home, which provided them with emergency benefits unavailable from French unions.
9. Girard and Stoetzel, Français et immigrés, pp. 329, 365, 389–390, 421, 456–458.
10. Ibid., pp. 448–449, 466, 475–477.
11. One hundred construction workers struck briefly in 1921 over the hiring of foreign workers; textiles workers from the Nord also demanded priority over Belgian commuters in a meeting with employers from the Roubaix-Tourcoing region. See PC M 2382, report for the Commissaire de police of Carvin, March 8, 1921, and N M 599-43, report oftheCS of Lille, January 10, 1921.
12. Archives de la Préfecture de Police (hereafter cited as PP) 67, unsigned internal police report, September 24, 1924, and CGT, Congrès des travailleurs de l’alimentation (1919), pp. 53–54. For additional information on anti-immigrant unions, see G. Mauco, Les étrangers en France, pp. 476,481 ; René Martial, Traité de l’immigration et de la greffe inter-raciale (Cuesmes-lez-Mons: Imprimerie fédérale, 1930), p. 154; and Jean-Charles Bonnet, Les pouvoirs publics français et l’immigration dans l’entre deux guerres (Lyons: Centre d’histoire économique et sociale de la région lyonnaise, 1976), p. 86. Note also another center of anti-immigrant sentiment, a fraction of the CGTU’s construction workers, which became independent in 1924. Dominated by anarcho-sydicalists from Lyons, this group expressed a deep hostility to immigrants. A report at its congress in 1925 declared that immigrants came “to France only for a short time and accepted any working conditions. Their ambition is to get as much money as possible; their appetite for money makes them enemies of all social development and makes them go against us.” The report warned them to respect the eight-hour day, refuse to work on the piece rate, and to adhere to the French union. If they did not, they “placed themselves outside the French workers movement. Anyone who fights the proletariat with or without knowledge exposes himself to its wrath. . . .” This “friendly warning” was distributed throughout the worksites in which this union had influence. See Congrès du bâtiment (Independent) (1925), pp. 139–149.
13. David Saposs, The Labor Movement in Post-War France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), pp. 155–163.
14. L’Humanité (September 22, 1924, March 3, 13, and 16,1926, and August 17, 1927).
15. Ibid. (January 7, 1927, September 28, 1927, and January 9, 1928). See also CGTU, Congrès national, compte rendu des débats (1927), p. 478.
16. Ibid. (1925), p. 392.
17. CGTU, Congrès de la Fédération nationale unitaire des travailleurs du sous-sol et similaires (1926), p. 54.
18. PP 300, untitled internal report, February 21, 1929.
19. CGTU, Congrès de la Fédération nationale des travailleurs du bâtiment (1927), p. 152.
20. Prost, La C.G.T., p. 202.
21. Especially construction and taxi driver unions affiliated with the CGTU resisted the policy of solidarity with foreigners. See CGTU, Congrès . . . des travailleurs du bâtiment, pp. 179–180, where a delegate admitted that there were strong nationalist sentiments against immigrants in the building trades unions of Paris and doubted that immigrants would be organized into these unions as a result.
22. See M. Huber, La population de la France pendant la guerre (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1931), p. 509, and Henri Bunle (Institut national des etudes économiques), Mouvements migratoires entre la France et l’étranger, Études et documents, no. 4 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1943), p. 77.
23. Main-d’oeuvre agricole, 17, no. 9 (January 25, 1920), 2.
24. For example, the subprefect of the Vienne in Isère asked textile manufacturers to lay off colonial and foreign workers before the French. Archives départementales, Isère, M 165-2, subprefect’s report, November 23, 1920.
25. Data for this figure was derived from the Bulletin du Ministère du travail, 43 (January–March 1936), p. 25; 43 (July–September 1936), p. 290; and 45 (January–March 1938), p. 17.
26. For an official description of the powers of the Foreign Labor Service, see “Organisation du placement,” an unpublished internal report of the Service (1930?) found in Archives départementales, Bouches-du-Rhône (BR) 14 M 22-23.
27. Derived from Bulletin du Ministère du travail (1921–1931).
28. In 1928, some 32,136 immigrants requested regularization, of which 68 percent were approved. This was 33 percent of the 97,742 immigrants who entered France in 1928 with a work permit and under the control of the Foreign Labor Service. Mauco, Les étrangers, pp. 131, 135.
29. Le Temps (February 28, 1927), and International Labor Office, Monthly Record of Migration, 2 (March 1927), 95–96. See also Archives nationales (hereafter cited with “F” numbers) F7 13423, Interior Ministry circular, January 21, 1927.
30. Le Peuple (January 7, 1927).
31. Ibid. (December 11, 1929).
32. F7 13527, Prefect of Police report to the Interior Ministry, November 7, 1927, and Prefect of Police report to the Labor Ministry, November 12, 1927. See also International Labor Office, Monthly Record of Migration, 2 (March 1927), 96, and 2 (April 1927), 114.
33. Unemployment funds were restricted to those workers who fulfilled a residence requirement (six months to a year depending on the commune or township), a qualification that many of the transient foreigners could not meet. Also, because communes were required to give aliens this aid by treaty rather than general law, only the nationals of Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Belgium had a legal right to unemployment funds. As a general indication of how few immigrants obtained relief benefits, only 37 of the 2,942 beneficiaries of these funds in St. Etienne in 1927 were immigrants. The figure was only 18 of the 377 recipients in Meurthe-et-Moselle. F7 13423, reports of the prefects to the Labor Ministry, and return directives, September 1927.
34. F7 13427, Prefect of Police report to the Labor Ministry, November 14, 1927.
35. Le Temps (March 4, 1927).
36. See, for example, the editorial of the CGT leadership, Le Peuple (July 11, 1925).
37. BR 14 M 23-20, departmental placement office report, 1920.
38. In many cases, according to the CGT, these commissions met only biannually, functioning primarily as window dressing for an otherwise bureaucratic operation. See Le Peuple (November 4, 1930).
39. For example, the director of the placement office of the Isère claimed that during the recession of 1921 he tried to prevent a flood of cheap foreign workers from affecting prevailing wage levels. Archives départementales, Isère, 169 M 1, placement office report July 21, 1921, pp. 368–369. The director of the placement office of the Bouches-du-Rhône frequently investigated whether employers seeking to hire immigrants were offering them substandard wages. BR 14M 23–24 letter from the placement office director to the Foreign Labor Service, March 28, 1926.
40. Even in 1924, a year of economic prosperity, the placement office director of the Seine declared that he treated any immigrant’s request for a work permit to be an “offer of employment for a French worker.” Office départemental de placement de la Seine, Rapport au Conseil général (1924), p. 147.
41. In the Gard, for example, the parity commission was composed of eight workers, five of which were identified by profession; a carpenter, rope maker, an accountant, mason, and mechanic. The employers’ representatives included a candy manufacturer, two bakers, a construction contractor, a local “industrialist,” and three farmers. Archives départementales, Gard 14 M 1174, report of the departmental placement office, September 4, 1922.
42. BR 14 M 23-20, report of the departmental placement office, 1920. See also Henri Sellier and Emile Deslandres, “La constitution de l’Office départmental du placement et de la statistique du travail de la Seine” (1918), p. 2.
43. Office départemental de placement de la Seine, Rapport au Conseil général (1930), p. 59.
44. See Le Peuple (May 14, 1924), and L’Humanité (April 5, 1924) for evidence of fears of immigrants flooding the construction industry of Paris.
45. Office départemental de placement de la Seine, Rapport au Conseil général (1930), p. 59, and Archives départementales Isère, M 162-2, report of the departmental placement office, 1929.
46. See Charles Tilly et al., The Rebellious Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 48–55.
47. The National Manpower Council included six members from each of the following groups: the CGT, employer associations (including the Comité de forges and the SGI), parliament, and the government bureaucracy. See Voix du peuple (March 27, 1927), 1, and Revue d’immigration, 1 (October 28, 1927), 2.
48. Le Peuple (June 25, 1925).
49. M. Labe, a CGT delegate to the National Manpower Council and secretary of the metal workers, had high hopes of the council’s becoming a tool with which to organize the national labor market. He expected it to frame government policy, to lead to the elimination of private manpower offices, and to more effectively control immigration. He was convinced that allies of the CGT from the chamber (e.g., B. Nogaro) that were also on the council would help to realize these goals. See CGT, Congrès de la Fédération des ouvriers des métaux (1925), pp. 196–197.
50. The Agricultural Ministry, which was to control farm labor immigration, never exercised any controls in the interests of local labor, according to the CGT. The same was true of the departmental placement offices in mining regions. See Le Peuple (May 21, 1926).
51. Ibid. (August 18, 1925, May 3, 1926, and May 21, 1926). See also Revue d’immigration, 2 (May 1928), 24, and 3 (June 1929), 18.
52. For example, see Information sociale et ouvrière, 6 (July 1923), 8.
53. Le Peuple (July 11, 1925).
54. Journal officiel de la République de France, Lois et décrets, August 10, 1926, p. 9171 for the text of the law. Note that even though employers could be fined for infractions of this law, the “harmed employer” had to make a complaint. The investigative resources of the Ministries of Labor and Agriculture were inadequate; they had to rely on local police for information. For more details, see Revue d’immigration, 3 (January 7, 1929), 8.
55. Only 440 cases of violations of this law were prosecuted in 1928. Revue d’immigration, 3 (June 1929), 17.
56. See Ibid., 5 (April 1931), 2–3.
57. Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1936), 58.
58. Ibid, 51.
59. Ibid, 1, no. 5 (1931), 59.
60. Ibid, 1, no. 5 (1931), 52.
61. The scales were derived from ibid, 107. Annuaire statistique de la France (1909), pp. 126–129 and (1935), pp. 188–190. The percentages were calculated from the following equation: where economically active French in each industry in 1906 equals FA 6, total economically active population in 1906 and 1931 equal TA 6 and TA 31, the expected French actives in 1931 equal FE 31 and actual French actives in 1931 equal FA 31, the rate of displacement is calculated as follows:
Displacement rate =
These displacement rates, calculated for each industry, were then corrected to discount the effect of French war losses and population decline and to isolate the factor of occupational migration. The correction is the displacement rate for the entire French workforce in 1931 or 4.4 percent. The corrected displacement rate for each industry involved subtracting 4.4 percent from each of the rates.
1. Jean Charles Bonnet, Les pouvoirs publics français et l’immigration dans l’entre deux guerres (Lyon: Centre d’histoire économique et sociale de la région lyonnaise, 1976), pp. 13–45.
2. France, Statistique générale, Résultats statistiques du recensement général de la population (hereafter cited as Recensement), 1, no. 1 (1931), 41.
3. Ibid., 1, no. 2 (1931), 57 and 81.
4. Le Reveil du Nord (June 28, 1924).
5. René Martial, “Le Problème de l’immigration,” Revue politique et parlementaire, 22 (December 10, 1926), 401.
6. Georges Dequidt, La Revue d’hygiène, 48 (November 1926), 1000 and 1019; see also Information sociale et ouvrière (July 10, 1926), and G. Dequidt, “Assistance aux étrangers” (report for the Ministry of Interior, 1929), p. 140.
7. Archives départementales, Nord (N) M 208-135 (the entire file contains reports relating to police reaction to the influx of Poles into the mines of this department).
8. Archives diplomatiques, Italie, 185, note from the Ministry of Interior to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1926, p. 130.
9. Georges Marcel-Remond, L’immigration italienne dans le sud-ouest de la France (Paris: Dalloz, 1928), p. 22.
10. Archives diplomatiques, Italie, Volume 185, French Ambassador to the United States letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, March 21,1924, p. 134, and N M 605-19 Ministry of Foreign Affairs circular to the prefects, November 1, 1926.
11. Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (New York: H. Fertig, 1973).
12. N M 6857 (B), prefectural report to the Ministry of Interior.
13. L’Homme libre (April 6, 1926).
14. Paul Geuriot, “Politique d’immigration,” Revue politique et parlementaire, 20 (June 10, 1924), 434.
15. Le Tribune du mineur (October 16, 1926).
16. Ibid. (October 24, 1924).
17. Archives de la Préfecture de Police (hereafter cited as PP) 335 police report on the CGTU, 1927.
18. PP 67; internal report entitled, “Rapport sur la main-d’oeuvre étrangère,” 1923. See also Archives nationales (hereafter cited with “F” numbers) F713455, internal report entitled, “Au sujet de l’activité politique des italiens résidants en France,” October 15, 1924. This report notes that Italians had twenty-four of the thirty-five comités intersyndicaux (foreign language organizations) of the CGTU.
19. PP 300, Internal report on the CGTU, May 1930, pp. 66–67.
20. See CGTU, Congrès de la Fédération nationale des travailleurs du bâtiment, 5 (1927), 152, and Georges Kletch, “L’organization syndicale des travailleurs étrangers” (unpublished in A.D. Pas-de-Calais), p. 4.
21. William Oualid, “La France deviendra-t-elle un pays de minorités nationales?” Le Musée social, 34 (May–June 1927), 125–159.
22. For a discussion of the American policy of assimilation and preselection see Maurice Davie, A Constructive Immigration Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923); Roy L. Garis, Immigration Restrictions: a Study of the Opposition to and Regulation of Immigration in the U.S. (New York, 1927); William Bernard, ed., Americanization Studies, 10 volumes (Montclair, N.J.: Paterson Smith, 1971).
23. La Volonté (May 9, 1926). See also Information sociale et ouvrière (July 10, 1926), René Martial, Traité de l’immigration et de la greffe interraciale (Cuesmes-lez-Mons: Imprimerie fédérale, 1930), chapters 19–20, and G. Dequidt, Revue d’hygiène, 48 (December 1926), 1035, 1048.
24. Charles Lambert, France et les étrangers, p. 183.
25. Marcel Paon, L’immigration en France (Paris: Delagrave, 1928), pp. 140–157. Note also that William Oualid, head of the Immigration Committee of the conservative business study group, Redressement français, also advocated the formation of a “Commission nationale de l’immigration” with employer, worker, and philanthropic membership. It was to plan for an improved government control of immigration, to prevent the formation of autonomous ethnic concentrations, and to improve the selection process. See Redressement français, Cahier 23 (1927), pp. 34–35.
26. Bulletin du Ministère du travail, 33 (January–March 1927), p. 15.
27. Archives départementales, Bouches-du-Rhône (hereafter cited as BR) 14 M 1174, Labor Ministry circular, March 4, 1928.
28. Bonnet, Les pouvoirs publics français, pp. 91–94.
29. La Volonté (September 5,1926) declared that the French “must choose to assimilate the foreigners or be colonized by them.” For a review of French acceptance of assimilation, see International Labour Office, Monthly Record of Migration, 2 (February 1927), 73–74.
30. Oualid, “La France deviendra-t-elle,” p. 173.
31. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976).
32. Czeslaw Kaczmarek, L’émigration polonaise en France après la guerre (Paris: Berger, 1928), pp. 280–294, and Alfred Morain, La réconstitution du Nord dévasté au 1er septembre 1923 (Lille: Martin-Mamy, 1923), p. 740.
33. Chambre des députes, Annales, Documents parlementaires (hereafter cited as CDoc), February 11, 1931, Annex Number 4511, p. 187. See also Le Foyer français, compte rendu, 1ere année: 1924–25, and Paul Raphael, “Le Problème des étrangers,” Grande revue, 29 (August 1926), 213–214.
34. Archives départementales, Nord (hereafter cited as N), M 484–3, undated declaration of the Comité de protection polonaise.
35. Ibid, circulars from the Central Farm Labor Service (Ministry of Agriculture), January 19, 1929, and April 4, 1929. See also prefectural reports on the Comité de protection polonaise, December 12,1929, May 9,1931, June 30, 1931, and general report for 1933.
36. Martial, “Le Problème de l’immigration,” Revue politique et parlementaire, 22 (December 10, 1926), 400. See also Voix du peuple, 11 (February 1929), 86.
37. The CGT claimed that only 1,991 Polish families joined their working heads of families in 1927 before the protocol, but 2,808 joined them in 1928 after the protocol was signed. Ibid.
38. Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1931), 31.
39. As a result of depopulation during World War One (a loss of 126,761, or 9 percent of the population), four departments in the southwest (Gers, Haute-Garonne, Tarn-et-Garonne, and Lot-et-Garonne) suffered a farm-labor shortage. Landowners responded by attracting Italian and Spanish settlers to the region as sharecroppers and tenants. The number of Italians in the region rose from 917 in 1921 to 37,113 by 1931. Throughout the interwar period, this peasant immigration was glorified as the proper way of assimilating foreigners in contrast to the unstable and alien urban immigration. See M. Huber, La population de la France (Paris: Hachette, 1937), pp. 834–888, and Alfred Sauvy, The General Theory of Population, (New York: Basic books, 1969) p. 462. Nevertheless, this ideal immigrant to the southwest constituted only 1.3 percent of the immigrant population (1926) and immigrants in the agricultural sector remained a small part of the foreign influx. Recensement, 1, no. 2 (1931), 112–113. For more information about migration to the southwest, see Georges Marcel-Remond, L’immigration italienne dans le sud-ouest de la France (Paris: Libraire Dalloz, 1928). See also the recent local study, Rosa Dalla, “L’immigration étrangère dans le Lot-et-Garonne,” 96e Congrès de la Société des savantes, Toulouse, Section géographique (1975), pp. 217–237.
40. For a summary of the laws on naturalization, see Pierre Depoid, Les naturalisations en France, in Institut national des statistiques et études économiques, Études et documents, no. 3 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1942), p. 16.
41. For a review of sentiment in favor of a revision of naturalization laws, see “Migrations,” International Labour Review, 3 (September 1923), 424, and Le Peuple (October 31, 1925, February 27, 1927).
42. Congrès de la natalité (Marseilles: Éditions de la cité chrétienne, 1926), p. 35. See also Louis Escasaut, Pour la plus grande France (Paris: A. Colin, 1932), pp. 117–118, for the expression of similar themes.
43. Attilio Oblath, “Italian Emigration and Colonization Policy,” International Labor Review, 11 (June 1931), 805–834.
44. Journal officiel de la République de France, Lois et décrets (hereafter cited as JO), August 14, 1927, p. 8702.
45. Congrès de la natalité (1926), p. 35.
46. JO, August 14, 1927, p. 8702 for a text of the law. See also Depoid, Les naturalisations, pp. 16–19, and Bonnet, Les pouvoirs publicsfrançais, pp. 150–170. With the revised naturalization law of 1927, children born in France to a foreign father, but who had a French mother, automatically became French at 21 years of age; formerly they had the option of adopting their father’s nationality. The new law also eliminated the need of foreign parents of children born in France to request their naturalization when they became 21 years old. Finally, the law removed the possibility of children of naturalized parents renouncing their automatic naturalization. Given the fact that there were in 1925 426,500 children of immigrant fathers, the unfettered “francification” or automatic naturalization of this group was important for French population growth. See Depoid, Les naturalisations, p. 100.
47. Ibid., pp. 24–31, 47–48.
48. Ibid., p. 51, and Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1931), 59.
49. Ibid.
50. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the U.S.A., 1 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 114, and Recensement, 1, no. 2 (1931), 55.
51. Temporary immigration is difficult to document because of poor government counting procedures, especially regarding repatriations of foreigners. Government statistics indicate that repatriations accounted for 34 percent of entries between 1921 and 1930, based on 571,770 controlled repatriations and 1,666,474 controlled entries of foreign workers. Both figures probably greatly undercount the true numbers. Henri Bunle (Institut national des etudes économiques), Mouvements migratoires entre la France et l’étranger, Études et documents, No. 4 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1943), p. 91.
52. Alain Girard and Jean Stoetzel (Institut national des études démographiques), Français et immigrés: nouveaux documents sur l’adaptation, Travaux et documents, Cahier no. 20 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1954), pp. 525–526. For recent studies of naturalization, see Jean-Charles Bonnet, “Naturalisation et revisions de naturalisation de 1927 à 1944: l’exemple du Rhone,” Mouvement social, 98 (January–March 1977), 43–74, and Louis Köll, “Immigration italienne et integration française à Auboue (M et M.) (1901–1939), “Annales de l’Est, 5e serie 30e année (1978), 231–265.
53. Data derived from Archives départementales, Pas-de-Calais (hereafter cited as PC) M 2412, 6677, and 6846.
54. PC 1Z 306, identity card reports 1920–1926. PC 1Z 311, identity card reports 1927–1931. See also PC M 3198, identity card correspondence 1927–1931; N M 605-19, identity card correspondence 1920–1931.
55. M. Auzemat (Interior Ministry), Rapport présenté par l’inspection générale de Services administratives, 1932: Réglementation du séjour des étrangers en France (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1932), pp. 42–44.
56. Alexis Martini, L’expulsion des étrangers (Paris: L. Larose, 1959). See also PP 65, “Rapport sur les étrangers dans la Seine,” no date.
57. PC M 2412, Interior Ministry circular, October 5,1926. See also PP 64, Interior Ministry circular, December 3, 1930.
58. JO, January 12, 1933, p. 5718. Note also that of 13,230 expulsions between July 1926 and February 1927, 11,675 followed imprisonment for criminal convictions. Only 1,565 immigrants were expelled administratively, i. e., without judicial condemnation. F7 13230, Interior Ministry report, no date. This group of administrative expulsions was proportionally larger in the Seine: 481 compared to 880 judicial expulsions in 1927, and 398 to 427 in 1929. Of these administrative expulsions, in these two years, 152 and 172 were for political reasons. PP 65, Statistics on expulsions, 1927 and 1929.
59. Only about 20 percent of the immigrants sentenced for violation of the criminal code were expelled, according to an estimate of the Interior Ministry. F7 13518, Interior Ministry circular, 1927. Le Journal (September 23, 1925), and L’Humanité (September 24, 1925).
60. F7 13469, report of the Commissaire spécial (CS) of Douai to Interior Ministry, August 24, 1925, and November 7, 1929. PC M 2412, CS of Arras, June 8, 1925, N M 154-202B. CS of Valenciennes, March 21, 1927: all these reports contained examples of police singling out “leaders” among the Poles that spoke out in CGT meetings. A similar pattern occurred in the south in police action against Italian CGTU members. F7 13458, CS of Toulouse, July 5, 1926.
61. CGTU, Congrès des ouvriers et ouvrières sur métaux, 3 (1925), 70–73, 113.
62. PP 67, Reports on P. Maurin, CGTU foreign labor organizer, August 12, 1931. See also CGTU, Congrès des travailleurs du sous-sol, 2 (1923), 47, and l’Humanité (October 23, 1931).
63. Conseil général du Pas-de-Calais (1924), 3 (Report of the Ingenieur des mines), 193. During a mine strike in April 1931, foremen warned Poles that they would be expelled if they participated; L’Humanité (April 11, 1931). This threat was easily carried out for companies did not hesitate to provide police with the names of “subversives.” For example, in PC M 8865 there is a list of 78 “extremists” provided by the Mines de Lens to the Prefecture for expulsion or non-renewal of the identity card (March 29, 1935).
64. These newspapers included: Robotnik Polski (outlawed in December 1923), L’Émigrant (August 1925), Information Zycie Polski (October 1925), Robotnik Polski we Francji (November 1925), Robotniczy and Try buna Robotnicz (August 1926), Na Tulaczce (September 1926), Glos Pracy (April 1928), Nasza Gazeta (November 1928), Trybuna Emigranta (September 1929), Nova Gazetta (December 1929), Nasza Obona (May 1931), Nasza Pomoc (March 1931), Porzeglad Robotinczy Wiezieme (March 1932), Mysa Robotnicza (April 1932), Wiadomosi (June 1932), Jednosc Robotnicza (July 1932). AN F7 13469–70. See Andrzek Packowki, “La presse des emigres polonais en France: 1920–1940,” Revue du Nord, 60 (January 1978), 151–162.
65. F7 13453–5 reports on repression of Italian communists.
66. F7 13469–70, The CS of Lille used the lists of subscribers which police seized from the offices of banned foreign language newspapers to identify “subversives.” N M 154-202B, CS of Lille, June 26, 1928.
67. N M 154–202A, report of CS of Valenciennes, August 14, 1925.
68. Quoted in S. Bonnet, UHomme defer, 1 (Nancy: Centre lorraine d’études sociologiques, 1976), 195.
69. Girard and Stoetzel, Français et immigrés, pp. 284, 306, 513, 525.
IX: Depression Regulating the Immigrant Worker during the
1. See Michael Piore, Birds of Passage (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1979).
2. Informations sociales, 11 (April 7, 1931), 320.
3. Le Peuple (June 1, 1930), and Chambre des députés, Annales, Débats parlementaires (hereafter cited as CDeb), February 13, 1931, p. 571.
4. From early 1928 until the spring of 1930, the French placement offices tolerated and even encouraged illegal Italian entry into France over the Alps. By mid-1930, as Italians anticipated restrictions, the offices reported with alarm a flood of irregular entries. Conseil général du Isère, 3 (1931), placement office report, p. 515, and Archives départementales, Bouches-du-Rhône (hereafter cited as BR) 6 M 9096, Commissaire de police (Marseilles), March 1, 1930.
5. The prefect of the Nord noted in a letter to the Ministry of Labor that the entry of frontaliers should be restricted because their lower cost of living in Belgium allowed them to compete unfairly with the French. Archives départementales, Nord (hereafter cited as N) M 208-135, prefect letter to Ministry of Labor, 1932. A series of six articles in the popular La Reveil du Nord from January 17 to 28, 1932, made the same point. See also Archives départementales, Moselle, 10M 142-3 for reports on opposition to frontaliers.
6. The Italians were famous for their skilled masonry, cabinet making, and ornamental stone crafts. For complaints against the cost-cutting practices of Italian subcontractors, see Le Peuple (September 11, 1930, and April 30, 1931).
7. Archives nationales (hereafter cited with “F” numbers) F7 13541, Prefect of Police report to Interior Ministry, November 14, 1931.
8. Le Peuple (February 13 and 14, 1931).
9. Ibid. (November 30, 1931).
10. F7 13541, Prefect of Police report to the Labor Ministry, January 14, 1931.
11. Informations sociales, 10 (November 11, 1930), 516. See also Voix du peuple, 12 (November 1930), 838. The CGT also published leaflets in Italian that warned of the futility of immigrants seeking work in Paris. They were distributed within the provincial construction trades. F7 13541, Prefect of Police report to the Interior Ministry, January 14, 1931.
12. For example, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, the number of regularizations (work permits granted immigrants who entered France as tourists) dropped from 623 of 783 requests in the first three months of 1930 to 618 of 1,178 for the same period of 1931. See Conseil général de Bouches-du-Rhône, 3 (1931), 518. A Labor Ministry circular of December 1, 1930, demanded stricter control over regularization. In the cartons, F22 669–70, prefects from twenty departments reported that they complied with this and other new regulations intended to restrict the access of immigrants to jobs.
13. The Prefect of Police in Paris, C. Chiappe, promised in January of 1931 to expel any immigrant who lacked the prescribed identity card. His prosecutions of delinquents rose from 511 for the first eleven months of 1930 to 557 for December alone. Informations sociales, 11 (February 16, 1931), 258. See also Jean-Charles Bonnet, Les pouvoirs publics français et l’immigration dans l’entre deux guerres (Lyons: Centre d’histoire de la région lyonnaise, 1976), p. 269.
14. Informations sociales, 10 (November 3, 1930), 335–336.
15. Le Peuple (March 21, and 23, 1931) and CGT, Congrès confédéral (1931), p. 63.
16. CDeb. February 13,1931, p. 569, and December 22,1931, pp. 808,836.
17. F7 13541 report of the Prefect of Police to the Interior Ministry, January 17, 1931. The same pattern of veteran support for native labor appeared in Marseilles; see BR 14 M 23–20, prefect’s report, October 17, 1931. Note also that a veterans’ group in Paris led a group of 300 unemployed musicians to confront a proprietor of a music hall who employed an all-Russian band; shortly thereafter they distributed leaflets in the Montmartre district which denounced the faddish enthusiasm “for black and other exotic music as only a sign of snobbery.” See F7 13541, Report of the Prefect of Police to the Interior Ministry, October 1, 1930, and November 30, 1930.
18. Ibid., January 9, 1931.
19. La Victoire (November 14 and 17, 1931).
20. F7 13541, Prefect of Police report to the Interior Ministry, February 6, 1931, and December 10, 1931.
21. La Victoire (December 5, 1931).
22. For a summary of this literature, see Informations sociales, 12 (April 21, 1931), 7, and Revue d’immigration, 5 (January 1931), 36, and 5 (January–March 1931), 18.
23. Revue d’immigration, 5 (March 1931), 28. See also Informations sociales, 12 (July 30, 1931), 135, and Revue d’immigration, 5 (September 1931), 22.
24. La journée industrielle (November 14, 1931). For a review of the big-business press on immigration policy in 1931, see Revue d’immigration, 5 (November 1931), 38–39, and 5 (December 1931), 20.
25. Le Tribune des mineurs (April 20, 1934).
26. See Le Populaire (November 16, 1931) for the view of the socialists on the necessity of immigration. See also Leon Gani, Syndicats et travailleurs immigrés (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1972), p. 17.
27. CGTU, Congrès confédéral (1933), pp. 307–316, and 593–595. Information on immigrant sections of communist “unemployment committees” is found in F7 13527, and details of communist involvement in expulsion cases (including the expulsion of the former chief of the Polish state, E. Giereck, in August of 1933 from Leforest) are in Archives départementales, Pas-de-Calais (hereafter cited as PC) M 5006.
28. Chambre des députés, Annales, Documents Parlementaires (hereafter cited as CDoc), March 25, 1928, Annex no. 7393, pp. 674–675 and January 17, 1924, Annex no. 6948, p. 177.
29. Ibid., November 26, 1931, Annex no. 1561, p. 244, and November 12, 1931, Annex no. 5557, p. 142; see also CDeb, February 28, 1931, pp. 1261–1262, and February 28, 1931, p. 572.
30. CDoc, November 17, 1931, Annex no. 5658, pp. 191–192.
31. Le Populaire (December 1, 1931).
32. CDoc, November 17, 1931, Annex no. 5566, p. 146.
33. CDeb, December 21, 1931, p. 821.
34. Ibid., pp. 810–815.
35. CDeb, December 21, 1931, pp. 821 and 824–825.
36. Journal officiel de la République de France, Lois et décrets (hereafter cited as JO), August 10, 1932, p. 8818. In the final vote both the Socialists and Communists abstained, the former because farm workers were excluded from the bill and the latter because they opposed quotas and wanted instead an equal pay law. See CDeb, December 21, 1931, pp. 801, 841.
37. See Jean-Charles Bonnet, Les pouvoirs, pp. 211–212.
38. Pierre Laroque, “Rapport sur l’organisation des Services de la main-d’oeuvre étrangère en France” (unpublished report in PC, 1937), p. 809. This report was made for the Labor Ministry and emphasized the need for greater administrative autonomy and less interference in labor market regulation from “personalities,” “local interests,” and other organizations.
39. Lists of requests for quota decrees were published weekly in the JO, from October 22, 1932, p. 11348, to October 31, 1934, p. 10932. For the evidence of CGT initiation of many of these decrees, see Le Peuple (August 6, 1932), and Congrès de la Fédération des travailleurs de l’alimentation (1932), p. 152.
40. Stephane Wlocevski, “Y a-t-il trop de travailleurs étrangers en France?” Revue d’économie politique, 49 (1935), 340.
41. Revue d’immigration, 1 (March 1933), 29–30.
42. Derived from Henri Bunle (Institut national des études économiques), Mouvements migratoires entre la France et l’étrangers, Études et documents, No. 4 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1943), p. 96.
43. Ibid. =
44. See Bulletin du Ministère du travail, 39 (January–March 1932), 30–32. The Comité central de fabricants de sucre promised the government to repatriate all their alien workers at the end of their contracts, which lasted from September to January. PC M 8865, Labor Ministry circular, October 23, 1934.
45. Bulletin du Ministère du travail, 39 (January–March 1932), 30.
46. Office départemental de placement du Seine, Rapport au Conseil général (1932), p. 194, and (1933), p. 141.
47. F22 669 includes fifteen reports written by the prefects to the Labor Ministry on the measures which they undertook to overcome unemployment. All listed stiffer investigation of requests for work permits, especially of irregular immigrants, who had entered France without previous authorization to work.
48. Between January of 1931 and 1932, the farm labor section of the SGI, the Office central de la main-d’oeuvre agricole, also persuaded 7,098 immigrants who had been employed in industry and mining to “return to the land,” mostly as sharecroppers and often on land owned by the SGI. Revue d’immigration, 1 (March—May 1933), 32.
49. Ibid., 6 (July 1932), 194.
50. A decree of May 1932 required hotel and apartment owners to report all foreign residents as a means of flushing out illegal foreigners. The League for the Rights of Man complained about a wave of expulsions which followed the appearance of this decree. Archives de la Préfecture de Police (hereafter cited as PP), 68, Interior Ministry Circular, May 26, 1932.
51. Informations sociales, 16 (January 21, 1935), 97.
52. Revue d’immigration, 1 (April 1933), 30.
53. CH 48, Internal report, March 22, 1937. France, Statistique générale, Résultats statistiques du recensement général de la population (hereafter cited as Recensement), 1, no. 5 (1936), 50, and 1, no. 5 (1931), 52.
54. One index of economic contraction were the monthly reports of the labor inspectors on the decline in man-hours worked in industrial and commercial enterprises from the base year of 1930. While there was a decline of 36.5 percent in June 1933 this figure dropped in June 1934 to 29.4 percent. However by December the decline had reached 32 percent compared to only 25.4 percent a year before. This trend bottomed out in February of 1935 at 36.2 percent compared to 28.5 percent the year before. Bulletin du Ministère du travail, 42 (October–December 1935), 404.
55. Le Peuple (November 5, 1934, December 2, 1934). See also CGT, Congrès des travailleurs de l’alimentation (1933), pp. 18 and 53.
56. F22 676–678, passim.
57. F22 676–678, passim.
58. Isère demanded that a 10 percent maximum of foreigners be allowed in all industry and that all immigrant occupational transfers be approved by the placement offices. Seine-et-Oise demanded the exclusion of all immigrants from public contract work. The Conseil général of Alpes-Maritimes requested greater efforts to eliminate Italian competition in skilled building trades, while the Seine-Inferieure found that unacceptably high numbers of foreigners were hired as general laborers. See F22 672–676.
59. Informations sociales, 15 (April 30, 1934), 227; CDoc, March 8, 1934, Annex no. 3212, p. 304; and Annales du Sénat, project de lois, November 8, 1934, Annex no. 566, p. 864.
60. Informations sociales, 14 (December 20, 1934), 1. See also Revue d’immigration, 8 (February 1934), 36–37 for review of the new wave of xenophobia.
61. Informations sociales, 14 (April 30, 1934), 229.
62. CDeb, November 13, 1934, p. 2787.
63. Le Temps (November 21, 1934).
64. Laroque, “Rapport sur l’organisation,” pp. 5–6.
65. A list of recommendations from this committee was published in Le Temps (November 24, 1934). The following notes list the references to their implementation in décret-lois, arrets, and circulars.
66. J. C. Bonnet, Les pouvoirs publics français, p. 303.
67. Informations sociales, 16 (June 3, 1936), 324–326. See also BR 6 M 9096, Labor Ministry circular, March 3, 1936.
68. PP 64, Interior Ministry circular, January 18, 1935.
69. Archives départementales, Moselle M 1994, Confidential circular from the Labor Ministry, December 2, 1935.
70. CDeb, November 29, 1935, p. 2297.
71. CDoc, February 28, 1935, Annex no. 4830, pp. 379–380.
72. JO, April 2, 1935, p. 3714.
73. N M 605-21, Labor Ministry letter to the prefect, April 5, 1934. The government asked coal mines to pay half of the costs of repatriating unemployed immigrant miners. See also Alain Girard and Jean Stoetzel (Institut national des études démographiques), Français et immigrés: nouveaux documents sur l’adaptation, Travaux et documents, Cahier no. 20 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1954), p. 191.
74. Derived from Bunle, Mouvements migratoires, pp. 53, 96.
75. JO, February 8, 1935, p. 1675.
76. N M 605-21, Douai police report, September 5, 1934. See also Informations sociales, 13 (April 30, 1934), 183.
77. Ibid., 14 (March 28, 1935), 7. See also PC M 8865, report of the Commissaire spécial of Bethune, January 6, 1937 and Girard and Stoetzel, Français et immigrés, p. 513.
78. BR 14 M 22-24, Labor Ministry circulars, May 11, 1935, September 5, 1935, September 24, 1935, January 14, 1936, February 7, 1936, and May 23, 1936, which informed the prefects that the “privileged status” had been granted not only to the Swiss and Belgians but also to Italians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Poles, and Luxembourgeois.
79. There was a decline in unemployment in 1935. A fairly reliable index of unemployment was the percentage of partial unemployment which peaked at 44.9 percent in February of 1935 and dropped to 32.7 percent by December 1935. This can be compared with rates of 34 percent and 42.3 percent for the same months in 1934. See Bulletin du Ministère du travail 42 (October–December 1935), 304. This decline in unemployment in 1935 was paralleled by an increase in economic activity. The drop in production stabilized in December 1934 at an index figure of 93 (1913= 100) and rose slowly to 98 by January 1936. See France, Annuaire statistique (1936) p. 74. There is no indication that the drop in the unemployment rate was linked to the elimination of foreign labor.
80. See BR 14 M 22–24, Correspondence between the Labor Ministry and the departmental placement office, February 8, 1935, and February 19, 1935.
81. CDeb, February 19, 1935, p. 578. See also Bonnet, Les pouvoirs publics, pp. 307–308.
82. Recensement, 1, no. 5 (1936), 57.
83. Ibid., 1, no. 4 (1931), 64–65; 1, no. 5 (1931), 121–123; 1, no. 4 (1936), 66–67; and 1, no. 5 (1936), 121–123.
84. Ibid.
85. Gani, Syndicats, pp. 23–24, presents this information—without drawing my conclusions.
86. Voix du peuple, 15 (March 1935), 147–148.
87. JO, October 24, 1936, p. 11107. Informations sociales, 17 (April 30, 1937), 400. See also JO, April 14, 1937, p. 4233, and BR 14M 22-24, Labor Ministry Circular, August 6, 1937. Also note that even before the Popular Front in February 1936, the Interior Ministry liberalized its expulsion policy by granting a two-year probation for most expellees. PP 64, Interior Ministry Circulars, February 3, 1936, and April 28, 1936.
88. The Labor Ministry asked the placement offices to obtain the opinion of local mayors and trade unions before granting requests for work authorizations for newly imported farm workers. BR 14 M 22-24, Labor Ministry circular, March 10, 1937.
89. BR 14 M 22–24, Labor Ministry circular, December 2, 1937.
90. See Alfred Sauvy, Histoire économique de la France entre les deux guerres, 2 (Paris: A. Sauret, 1967), 209, 330. Also note that in November of 1936, for example, the Labor Ministry directed the placement offices to advertise for recruits to the Lorraine metallurgical mills and mines (there were about 7,000 openings). Because it was obvious that insufficient numbers of French workers would apply, the Labor Ministry instructed the offices to encourage immigrants to accept these jobs as an alternative to the importation of additional foreign workers. BR 14 M 22-24, Labor Ministry circular, November 27, 1936.
91. Ibid., Labor Ministry circulars, January 14 and 27, 1937.
92. Sénat, Annales, Débats Parlementaires (hereafter cited as SDeb), March 10, 1937, p. 127, and March 11, 1937, pp. 272–275.
93. BR 14 M 22–24 Labor Ministry circular, February 5, 1937.
94. JO, May 28, 1938, p. 6000.
95. Ibid., May 24, 1938, p. 5830.
96. Ibid., May 28, 1938, p. 6000.
97. For example, see de Tastes’ speech condemning Jewish peddlers in Paris and demanding their expulsion. CDeb, November 6, 1934, p. 2254.
98. JO, October 31, 1935, p. 11490.
99. Voix du peuple, 13 (November 1933) p. 708–709, which describes how Mme. Lefranc of the Hatmakers Union, with the support of “some employers,” petitioned the Labor Ministry to investigate and institute control over these small immigrant artisans. Also Le Peuple (August 21,1934) reported that the Federation of Clothing Workers demanded that the August 10, 1932, law be extended to cover artisans.
100. JO, August 9, 1935, p. 8699. For background, see Revue d’immigration, 8 (January 1935), 19–21.
101. JO, June 23, 1938, pp. 7333–7334.
102. See CDoc, November 16, 1933, Annex no. 2, 522, p. 275.
103. JO, May 15, 1938.
104. By June 1939 no unrestricted ID cards had been delivered, according to Bonnet, Les pouvoirs publics, p. 347.
105. PP 64, Interior Ministry Circular, April 20, 1939.
106. PP 335, clipping from Le Petit parisien (March 25, 1939). Additional anti-immigrant sentiments are found in Prosper Josse and Pierre Rossillion, L’invasion étrangère en France en temps de paix (Paris: La Nation, 1938), Raymond Millet, Trois millions d’étrangers en France (Paris: Librairie de Medicis, 1938), and René Martial, Les métis (Paris: Flammarion, 1942).
107. For details on the Spanish refugee problem, see Bonnet, Les pouvoirs publics, pp. 351–56, and especially Louis Stein, Beyond Death and Exile: The Spanish Republicans in France, 1939–55 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979).
X: Conclusion
1. Important works in this discussion of the modern state and social classes are Theda Skucpol, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), and Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London: Sheed and Ward, 1973). See also articles by Alan Wolf, Amy Bridges, and Jean-Claude Girardin in Politics and Society 4 (Winter 1974), 131–224. For an interesting treatment of the political impact of social discontinuities, see A. F. K. Organski, The Stages of Political Development (New York: Knopf, 1965). Note also Michael Piore and Suzanne Berger, Dualism and Discontinuity in Industrial Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
2. Two important post-1945 studies of immigration which deal with the interwar period are Louis Chevalier, Le problème démographique Nord-africain (Institut national des études démographiques, Cahier no. 6) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1947), and Alain Girard and Jean Stoetzel, Français et immigrés (Institut national des études démographiques, Cahier no. 19) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1954).
3. For analysis of post-1945 immigration, see Xavier Lannes, L’immigration en France depuis 1945 (La Haye: M. Nijhoff, 1953), pp. 3–18, Georges Tapinos, L’immigration étrangère en France (Institut national des études démographiques, Cahier no. 71) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1975), pp. 27–36, and Gary P. Freeman, Immigrant Labor and Racial Conflict in Industrial Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 68–76.
4. Freeman, Immigrant Labor, pp. 77–85; Tapinos, L’immigration, pp. 47–62.
5. For an analysis of the ONI and its evolution see Tapinos, L’immigration, pp. 22–33, Juliette Minces, Les travailleurs étrangers en France (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1973), pp. 127–128, and especially Leon Gani, Syndicats et travailleurs immigrés (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1972), pp. 30–46.
6. Tapinos, L’immigration, chapter 3, and Minces, Les travailleurs étrangers, pp. 128–129.
7. Daniel Kubat, éd., The Politics of Migration Policies (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1979), pp. 134–138; Tapinos, L’immigration, pp. 87–93; and Freeman, Immigrant Labor, pp. 85–98. For a description of trade union policy concerning immigration, see Gani, Syndicats, especially pp. 74–84. For a communist view of alien labor, see André Vieuguet, Français et immigrés: le combat du C.P.F. (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1975). The position of the other major union group, the Confédération français democratique du travail (CFDT), is outlined in Françoise Pinot, Travailleurs immigrés dans la lutte de classes (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1973). Finally, a left-wing critique of the CGT position on immigrants is found in Bernard Granotier, Les travailleurs immigrés en France (Paris: F. Maspero, 1970).
8. A good survey of European immigration after 1945 is Phillip Martin and Mark Miller, “Guest Workers: Lessons from Western Europe,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 33 (April 1980), 315–330. See also Stephan Castles and Godula Kosack, Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe (London: Oxford University Press, 1973).
9. Martin and Miller, “Guest Workers,” pp. 326–327. For an analysis of the contemporary impact of alien labor on advanced capitalist countries, see Michael Piore, Birds of Passage (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1979), pp. 86–115. Note also the interpretations of André Gorz, “Immigrant Labour,” New Left Review, 11 (1970), 11–13, and Anthony Ward, “European Capitalism’s Reserve Army,” Monthly Review, 27 (November 1975), 3–30. For a sensitive description of the lives of guest workers, see John Berger and Jean Mohr, A Seventh Man (New York: Viking Press, 1975). For a treatment of the new political impact of immigrants in the 1970s, see Mark Miller, Foreign Workers in Western Europe: An Emerging Political Force (New York: Praeger, 1981).