Gloves, Past and Present

by Willard M. Smith

In 1700 Vauban submitted a plan for enlarging extensively the city proper. This was not to be realized, however, until one hundred and forty years later. Already the tide had turned. The people were passing out through the gates of Grenoble, never to return. The eighteenth century was destined to be such a period of sacrifice and retardation, in a material sense, as the town had never known, even in the pestilence-ridden, war-mad days which preceded the advent of Lèsdiguieres.

The explanation of the exodus which ushered in the new century leads us back, for a moment, to certain events which, until now, we have not had occasion to mention. A great blessing to Grenoble in the past had been the Edict of Nantes, by which Henry IV., in 1598, had put an end to the religious wars. It had paved the way for the uninterrupted peace of the seventeenth century, and thus for the efflorescence of Grenoble’s crafts and industries. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV., in 1685, really marks the turning point in that city’s prosperity. The testimony of contemporaries confirms this opinion, and the verdict of those living twenty years later in the famous glove town, assigns to the same cause the steady shrinking of the population during the second decade after the Revocation.

The sudden withdrawal of religious liberty cost France three hundred thousand of her people who emigrated to Germany, Holland, and other Protestant countries. A large element in these emigrations were the skilled artisans. Grenoble alone was deprived of nearly three thousand persons, among them the family of the Lèsdiguieres, many others of the nobility and the gentlefolk, and a large body of masters and apprentices.

In 1705 the city lost five hundred individuals of the religious profession and seventy-three families of “gentilhommes,” whose disappearance was no trifling matter, as these personages had been liberal patrons of the glovers, and it was their wealth which, in great part, had made business move. Industry in Grenoble, on every hand, was in a grievous state—but especially glove-making, the home demand being suddenly removed, and foreign trade little developed at that period.

Such was the deplorable effect of the Revocation. The glovers, however, proved themselves possessed of almost unbelievable powers of recuperation. In 1729 we find the sale of Grenoble gloves spreading rapidly in Germany, Switzerland, Savoy and Piedmont. Foreign trade steadily increased, despite the fact that the population of Grenoble remained, virtually, at a standstill. But trade abroad brought also foreign competition. While the Revocation had actually served Grenoble, indirectly, by causing the ruin of her rivals in France—Blois and Vendome, which could not support the drain of their emigrations; and especially Grasse, which was seriously crippled by loss of its master glovers and the departure of most of its families of wealth—these selfsame emigrations doubtless stimulated the manufacture of gloves outside France. Many of those who had served their apprenticeship in Grenoble, and master glovers holding the secrets of her arts, probably became rivals, in other lands, of the city they once had called their own.

All this complicated subject of commercial relations, the advantages and disadvantages of foreign trade, and the history of the glove market, will be treated separately and in detail in the chapter which follows. For the present, let us keep to our main issue—the vicissitudes in general of gloves and glove-makers in the leading glove city of the world during the stormy years of the eighteenth century.

From 1737 to 1746 we learn that the life of the Grenoble glovers—on the surface, at least—was comparatively monotonous. The manufacture made some progress, but the possibilities of expansion were not such as to stimulate very keenly those at the head of things. The masters and the workers lived without disagreement, apparently; the time-honored rules of the craft continued to be observed on both sides. In the Corporation a public magistrate managed the affairs of the association; the glovers themselves, it would seem, being too indifferent to take an active part. Prosperity appears to have been just about commensurate with the needs of the Corporation.

And yet, beneath this evident torpor, a vast inquietude was moving, like an earthquake under the sea. A fermentation of social discontent—bred by the philosophy of the times, by the glaring disparity between the ruling class and the working people, the latters’ distrust of the morals and the assumed authority of the former, by the teachings of freemasonry and the trades unions—was slowly gathering momentum. In working centres—conspicuously in Grenoble and throughout the Dauphiné—the wealthy people were constantly framing remonstrances, begging the Royal Council to curb the mutterings of the proletariat.

The outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, in 1756, increased the industrial depression by cutting off a part of the foreign demand, particularly for gloves, and by calling away from France many men for the army. In 1759 a heavy tax was imposed by the crown upon skins. This proved the last straw. It meant that skins for tawing were hardly to be had, and thus the glovers were without materials for their manufacture. Their irritation was acute, and the parliament of Grenoble was obliged to carry before the king the united protestations of the Corporation des Gantiers.

This defence in behalf of the Grenoble glovers was at once an act of justice and an achievement of admirable foresight. The parliament did more than merely present the honest grievances of the industry. With a commendable vigor and pride it laid before the king a constructive measure which was to become the occasion in France of an economic revolution in the skin and glove trades. This was the beginning of the breaking down of custom duties on gloves between provinces. After a few years the internal taxes on this product were entirely abolished. Thus vanished all unfair competition at home, and neighboring glove cities ceased to come under the title of “the foreigner.” At the same time, the selling of skins from province to province became free and general. Great fairs were held by the skin merchants, the tawers and tanners, for the benefit of all the surrounding region. Exportation of skins decreased, while home manufacturers rejoiced in the abundance of excellent materials.