History 541: France since 1815 S2002 Prof. Jeremy Popkin

An Inquiry into the Conditions of the Nineteenth-Century French Working Class

One of the most important developments in 19^th-century France was the growth of an urban working class. At several points during the century, the French government commissioned extensive reports on the condition of urban workers. In this class, we will use our reading of the French workers’ first-hand accounts of their own lives in Traugott, ed., The French Worker, to produce our own collective report. Teams of students will work together to develop articles dealing with different aspects of 19^th-century French workers’ lives, and we will assemble all these articles into a pamphlet to be shared with all members of the class and posted on the Internet as an educational resource.

Due Date: Contributions for our pamphlet are due in class by Monday, 4 Feb. 2002. Contributions will be turned in as ‘hard copy’ for the professor to grade, but each student will then be responsible for submitting his/her revised contribution in electronic form so that it can be included in the finished pamphlet.

Procedure: Each student in the class will have primary responsibility, either for compiling and writing up information on a topic concerning working-class life in the 19^th century, or for one of the editorial tasks involved in assembling the pamphlet. (Editorial tasks will have to be completed after other students have handed in their contributions.) A few assignments may require limited reading in other sources, but most research will be based on the required readings in Traugott.

Editorial Tasks (some of these require special skills):

• Web page design (requires experience with a Web page program, preferably Dreamweaver)
• Newspaper layout (ideally, requires experience with desktop publishing)
• Illustrations (requires using library to find appropriate illustrations, and using scanner to prepare them for publication)
• Editing (work with professor and other students to achieve uniformity in style and correct grammar and spelling in articles)
• Overall introduction (must be good and fast writer!)

Research Topics

Workers’ living conditions

• Food
• Housing
• Clothing and its significance
• Sickness and death
• Family structure and relations
• Childhood experiences
• Women workers
• Education
• Literacy
• Life in the provinces
• Moving to Paris
• Handling money
• The ‘Tour de France’

Conditions of labor

• Nature of workers’ skills
• Pay and working conditions
• Relations with employers
• Relations with other workers

Workers and the state

• Relations with the government
• Workers as citizens
• The police and the law
• Government inquiries
• Restoration and July Monarchy
• Revolution of 1848
• Second Empire

Workers’ Organizations

• Mutual-aid societies
• Unions
• Strikes
• Workers and political movements
• Workers’ newspapers (requires limited outside reading)

Workers’ Inquiry: Sign-Up sheet and Check-Sheet

Student Name: ________________________________________

Topic or Assignment Preference:

1^st choice: _______________________________

2^nd choice: _______________________________

3^rd choice: _______________________________

Topic assigned (to be filled in by professor): ______________________________

Article handed in: _____________

Revisions made: _______________

Revised article in electronic form: ______________

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