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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

YearNumber
of Cases		AccusedAcquittedCondemned
to Prison
for One
Year or
More		Condemned
to Prison
for Less
than a
Year		Condemned
to Pay a
Fine Only
1825 92 144 72 1 64 7
1826 40 244 62 3 136 43
1827 29 136 51 2 74 9
1828 28 172 84 .. 85 3
1829 13 68 26 1 39 2
1830 40 206 69 2 134 1
1831 49 396 104 .. 279 13
1832 51 249 85 1 140 23
1833 90 522 218 7 270 27
1834 55 415 155 7 227 26
1835 32 238 84 1 141 12
1836 55 332 87 .. 226 19
1837 51 300 64 5 167 64
1838 44 266 86 1 135 44
1839 64 409 116 3 264 26
1840 130 682 139 22 476 45
1841 68 383 79 .. 237 67
1842 62 371 80 2 263 26
1843 49 321 73 .. 240 8
1844 53 298 48 .. 201 49
1845 48 297 92 3 778 124
1846 53 298 47 .. 220 31
1847 55 401 66 2 301 32
1848 94 560 124 2 399 35
1849 65 345 61 1 241 42
1850 45 329 59 14 182 74
1851 55 267 33 6 199 29
1852 86 573 119 2 396 56
1853 109 718 105 1 530 82
1854 68 315 51 13 196 55
1855 168 1182 117 24 943 98
1856 73 452 83 4 269 96
1857 55 300 37 11 204 48
1858 58 269 34 1 202 32
1859 58 281 29 .. 223 29
1860 58 297 34 .. 230 33
1861 63 402 78 .. 283 41
1862 44 306 44 1 199 62
1863 29 134 17 .. 43 74

There is other information to show that the strikes often assumed the character of a general movement, particularly under the influence of political disturbances. During the years that followed the Revolution of July (1830) the workingmen of France were at times in a state of agitation throughout the entire country, formulating everywhere particular demands, such as the regulation of industrial matters, collective contracts and the like.[13]

In many cases, the strikes were spontaneous outbursts of discontent among unorganized workingmen. Frequently, however, the strikes were either consciously called out or directed by organizations which existed by avoiding the law in various ways.

These organizations were of three different types: the compagnonnages, the friendly societies (mutualités) and the “societies of resistance”.