[2] For an acerbic discussion of the ideology of progress, see John M. Staudenmaier, SJ, "Perils of Progress Talk: Some Historical Considerations," in Steven L. Goldman, ed., Science. Technology, and Social Progress (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1989):268-298.
[3] Within European scientific, health, and management theory at the turn of the century and after there was a considerable "ergonomic" trend, seeing the body as a energy-consuming machine that could be rationally ordered to yield maximum output. Until the mid-1920s, this approach within industrial labor process designers rivalled Taylorism; see William H. Schneider, "The Scientific Study of Labor in Interwar France," French Historical Studies XVII:2 (Fall 1991): 410-446, Georges Ribeill, "Les Débuts de l'ergonomie en France à la veille de la Première Guerre mondiale," Le Mouvement social 113 (October-December 1980): 3-34, and Olivier Christin, "L'enjeu de la rationalisation industrielle," mémoire de maîtrise (Université de Paris-I, 1982): 37-42. Nutritional theory was dominated by this approach and it was the standard in most health texts; see, for example, Dr. René Martial et Mme. Léontine Doresse, Hygiène féminine populaire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1923): 98-99.
[4] The best study of this set of issues remains Richard F. Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1981). For more specific cases, see James Laux, et al., The Automobile Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), Sylvie Schweitzer, Les engrenages à la chaîne (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1983), Yves Cohen, Ernest Mattern (thèse du troisième cycle, Université de Franche-Compté, 1983), and Martin Fine, "Hyacinthe Dubreuil: Le Témoignage d'un ouvrier sur le syndicalisme, les relations industrielles et l'évolution technologique de 1921 à 1940," Le Mouvement social 106 (January-March 1979): 45-64.
[5] My own earlier work does little to address the need to examine the cultural roots of the miracle; see my Alternating Currents: Nationalized Power in France, 1946-1970 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), Chs. 1-3. Herrick Chapman's book, State Capitalism and Working-Class Radicalism in the French Aircraft Industry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), skillfully bridges the period of World War Two, yet its focus is political and economic, not cultural.
[6] On X-Crise most recently, see De la recurrence des crises économiques: X-Crise, Centre polytechnicien d'études économiques: son cinquantenaire (1931-1981) (Paris: Economica, 1982); for a more academic analysis, see Philippe Bauchard, Les Technocrates au pouvoir (Paris: Arthaud, 1966). For the CGT, see Patrick Fridenson et Madeleine Rebérioux, "Albert Thomas, pivot du réformisme français," Le Mouvement social 87 (Apr.-Jun. 1974), 95-114, and Martin Fine, "Toward corporatism: the movement for capital-labor collaboration in France, 1914-1936," doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1971.
[7] Rosemary M. Wakeman, "The Transformation of the Provincial City: Toulouse 1945-1975," doctoral dissertation, University of California-Davis, 1985, and discussion paper, UC-Davis, 1988.
[8] Victor Margueritte, La Garçonne (Paris: Flammarion, 1922); see also, for example, C[ecile] Jeglot, "La jeune fille et le malaise moderne." Dossiers de l'Action Populaire 125 (juin 1926): 4. It is interesting to note that in a readers survey conducted by L'Art ménager in the late 1920s, the majority of respondents said they believed that in ten to fifteen years women would dress like men and hold similar jobs as men (untitled reader survey, December 1927, 338).
[9] Marie-Monique Huss, "Pro-Natalism in the Interwar Period in France," Journal of Contemporary History XXV:1 (1990): 39-68. Professor Offen offers a further sense of the dialectic discussed in this article: natalism was in many ways a very conservative movement, yet the realization of the natalist agenda demanded pursuit of the modernist programmes and the creation of a germinal welfare state; see Offen, "Body Politics: Women, Work, and the Politics of Motherhood in France, 1920-1950," in Gisela Bock and Pat Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies (London: Routledge, 1991)," 138-159. This irony is already apparent in the positions taken by the "Social Catholic" Action Populaire; see their articles on women's work, family life, and dénatalité, 1920-27. Maurice Thorez, Secretary-General of the Communist Party, explicitly called for a natalist agenda in a party conference in January 1937; see Regards, 28 January 1937, see also an article by Paul Vaillant-Couturier in L'Humanité, 31 October 1935. Scholars are fortunate that the natalist movement is the subject of several dissertations now underway.
[10] Jean-Louis Robert, "La CGT et la famille ouvrière, 1914-1918: Première approache," Le Mouvement social 116 (July-September 1981): 47-66.
[11] Most systematically, see the work of Sylvie Zerner, "De la couture aux presses: l'emploi féminine entre les deux guerres," Le Mouvement social 140 (July-September 1987): 9-26, and idem, "Travail domestique et force de travail: Ouvrières et employées entre la première guerre mondiale et la grande crise," (thèse du doctorat, Université de Paris X, 1985). This is also the analysis shared by Martine Martin; see her "Femmes et société: le travail ménager (1919-1939)," thèse de troisième cycle, Université de Paris VII, 1984, Chapter 3. See also Evelyne Sullerot, "Condition de la femme," Chapter XII in Alfred Sauvy, Histoire économique de la france entre les deux guerres, Vol. III (Paris: Economica, 1984): 196-197 and 422-423, and Suzanne Buisson, Les Répercussions du travail féminin (Paris: Librarie Populaire du Parti Socialiste, 1934): 15. Theresa MacBride's work (The Domestic Revolution..., London: Croon Helm, 1976) doesn't extend much beyond 1920, but her figures imply that while domestics ceased to be live-ins, they indeed maintained their numbers as day servants (pp. 36 and 111). See also Geneviève Fraisse, Femmes toutes mains. Essai sur le service domestique (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1979): 28.
[12] Jacques Herbé, "Le Salon des Arts ménagers," La maison, décembre 1925. We should note here the portentious character of this linguistic inversion--it signalled the beginning of a dialectic which was ultimately to mean the end of the servant in the middle class home, even before the middle class came into its own. Few domestic servants ever unionized, in large part because many of them were Breton girls in their mid-teens, recently immigrated to Paris; see Catherine Rhein, "Jeunes femmes au travail dans le Paris de l'entre-deux-guerres," thèse de troisième cycle, Université de Paris-VII, 1977, Ch. 2.
[13] J. Guerquin de Monsegou, "Denise, ou l'art d'organiser judicieusement sa maison," L'Art ménager, February 1934, 74-75 and 220-221, Y.D., "Le Salon des Arts Ménagers," Petit Marseillais, 9 February 1927, and anon., "L'Art de s'adapter ou la révolution ménagère," Annales politiques et littéraires, 1 February 1931.
[14] The Foul and the Fragrant (Harvard University Press, 1986).
[15] A. Thery. "Ce que peuvent pour la famille les catholiques des professions." Dossiers de l'Action Populaire, 10 juin 1925, A.-D. Sertillages, Nos serviteurs (pamphlet), (Paris, SPES, 1934), and Léon Bizard, "La Syphilis et les domestiques," Bulletin de la Société Française de Prophylaxie Sanitaire et Morale 2, 3, and 5 (mars, avril et juillet 1923).
[16] On the Communist position, Georges Pitard, "La Crime des soeurs Papin," Regards 2 October 1933. The best overview of the Papin case is: Dr. Louis Le Guillant, "L'Affaire des soeurs Papin," Les Temps modernes 110 (November 1963), 868-913; citation to article in L'Oeuvrei is on p. 897.
[17] Ruth Schwartz Cowan has usefully pointed out the problem of rising standards of housework in the United States, yet she does little to show the source of that shift in expectations. See her More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
[18] André Hermant, "Cuisine-type," L'Art ménager 97 (mai 1935): 364-365; a similar design is proposed in Maurice Barret, "La Cuisine, coeur de la maison," Petit Guide du logement (supplément au no. 64 de La Revue de la famille (avril 1933), 26-27).
[19] Intervention of Bowkanowski, Association Nationale d'Expansion Economique, procès verbal de la séance du 3 février 1919, papers of Albert Thomas (AN série 94AP/374).
[20] Suzanne D. Nicolitch, Le Socialisme et les femmes, pamphlet (Paris, Librarie Populaire du Parti Socialiste, 1933): 25; for the Communists, see François Delpla, "Les communistes française et la sexualité (1932-1936)," Le Mouvement social 91 (April-June 1975): 145-149.
[21] See, for example, the responses to the [far from scientific] "survey" of Gaston Picard, entitled, "Mesdames, êtes-vous `arts ménagers'," L'Art ménager février, mars, avril 1928 (three articles). This reflects the tradition in French feminism referred to by Karen Offen as "relational"; see Karen Offen, "Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach," Signs XIV:1 (Fall 1988): 134-150.
[22] Wakeman, "The Transformation of the Provincial City...."
[23] Henri Allorge, "Petits Poèmes électriques et scientifiques," L'Art Ménager, April 1927, 43.
[24] Dr. Edouard de Pomiane, "Ma dernière conférence du Grand Palais (Salon des Arts Ménagers): La Cuisine en dix minutes," Presse Associée mimeographed copy, 20 February 1931, AN series 850023/555 (CNRS): Salon des Arts Ménagers.
[25] Quoted in Gaëtan Sanvoisin, "Une parisienne à l'Exposition des Arts ménagers," Gaulois 19 February 1927.
[26] Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
[27] The notion in this discussion of a modernist movement in interwar France is taken largely from Kuisel, Capitalism..., Chs. 2-4. The movement included those indicated by Kuisel--reformist trade unionists and socialists, industrialists in the newer sectors (electricity, oil, non-ferrous metals, and the like), and state sector technocrats. To his grouping we would include, with caution, some of the "Social Catholics" and a number of feminists; see my "Rationalizing Interwar France: Wiring Together the Modernization Coalition," conference paper, Society for the History of Technology meetings, Madison, October 1991, available on request.
[28] Henri Le Chatelier, "La philosophie du taylorisme," in La Conférence de l'Organisation Française, ed., L'Organisation scientifique. 2e Congrès, Paris, 1924 (Paris: La Conférence de l'Organisation Française, 1924): 7-16; see also Jean Coutrot, Le Méthodes d'organisation rationnelle et ce qu'elles peuvent apporter à l'activité économique française, pamphlet (Rennes: Imprimeries Réunies, 1937): 25.
[29] Georges Etienne et André J.-L. Breton, "Gisèle ou de la comptabilité ménagère (VI)," L'Art ménager, août 1928, 642-643, 664.
[30] See, for example, Paulette Bernège, De la méthode ménagère (Paris: Dunod et Mon chez moi, 1928), entire. On the invention of the modern housewife, see: Martine Martin, "La rationalisation du travail ménager en France dans l'entre-deux guerres," Culture technique 3 (1980):154-161, and Martin, "Ménagère: Une profession? Les dilemmes de l'entre-deux-guerres," Le Mouvement social 140 (juillet-septembre 1987): 89-106. On the symmetry between domestic and industrial modernization and rationalisation, see Michelle Perrot, "Histoire de la condition féminine et histoire de l'électricité", in L'Électricité dans l'histoire, problèmes et méthodes, Actes du colloque de l'Association pour l'histoire de l'électricité en france, Paris, 11-13 octobre 1983 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985), pp. 175-184. See also Françoise Werner, "Du ménage à l'art ménager: l'évolution du travail ménager et son écho dans la presse féminine française de 1919 à 1939," Le Mouvement social 126 (Jan.-Mar. 1984), 61-87.
[31] For a superb discussion of public reaction to Margueritte's novel, see Anne-Marie Sohn, "La Garçonne face à l'opinion publique: type littéraire ou type social des années 20?," Le Mouvement social 80 (July-September 1972): 3-27.
[32] For example, Charles Mascart, "Mémoire: Projet de Concession de Chemin de Fer et de Terrains dans le Nord-Est de Paris pour loger économiquement et sainement les classes modestes," brochure, (Croissy-sur-Seine, 29 Novembre 1919), in AN series 39 AS 396, see also Pierre Hamp, "Le Beau métier de mère de famille," Le Quotidien 4 November 1924, Jeglot, "La jeune fille et le malaise moderne...," Henri Schwab, "La Mode et l'Hygiène," L'Hygiène sociale, 25 avril 1929, and Fernand Hauser, "Les Bruits de Paris," Les Coulisses, 3 Novembre 1923. On feminism as a negative tendency against which the new housewife was to emerge, see Marie Boutier, "La Femme chez elle," L'Art ménager 84 (March 1934): 273-276.
[33] See, for example, anon. "Les Conditions sociales de l'existence d'un famille ouvrière," Dossiers de l'Action Populaire 10 December 1928: 3 and 5, and Eve Badouin, La Mère au travail et le retour au foyer (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1931): 43-53.
[34] Offen, "Body Politics...."
[35] Paulette Bernege, "Le `Home Service' des compagnies gazières américaines," L'Art ménager, (February 1931), 50-51, 116. Gilbreth was immortalized by her husband in Frank Gilbreth, Cheaper By The Dozen (New York: T.Y. Crowell Co., 1948). Bernege also used the pages of L'Art ménager and Mon chez moi to promote the image of Christine Frederick, the American advocate of domestic Taylorism.
[36] On leisure in the interwar era, see Gary Cross, A Quest for Time: The Reduction of Work in Britain and France, 1840-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), Ch. 8.
[37] Javette, "Propos ménager," Le Journal, 3 February 1931.
[38] anon. "La mentalité malthusienne." Dossiers de L'Action Populaire, 25 avril 1923, 3, and draft of speech by Albert Thomas, Thomas papers, 94AP/373.
[39] Georges Morel, "La décoration et l'aménagement de la maison familiale," L'Écho du meuble January 1931: 29-30
[40] Jean Fourastié et Françoise Fourastié, "Le Gendre de vie," Chapter XIII in Alfred Sauvy, Histoire économique de la france entre les deux guerres, Vol. III (Paris: Economica, 1984), pp. 214-222, and Augusta Moll-Weiss, "Le Monde de travail à table," L'Art ménager (November 1928): 770. The enquêtes of the Catholic Action Populaire also bear this out: see Dossiers de l'Action Populaire, 1920-1929, especially anon., "L'<<embourgeoisiement>> des ouvriers et paysans français," Dossiers de l'Action Populaire, 10 January 1925: 1-16.
[41] The strike reports from the labor inspectors in the Ministry of Labor reveal that 6 francs per hour was actually rather high: see AN série F22 191.
[42] Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
[43] Pierre Bourdieu gives a fine sense of the search for difference in the accumulation of social markers; see his La Distinction: critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Éditions du Minuit, 1979), Ch. 1. Luc Boltanski errs on the opposite temporal side from Williams, seeing the new middle class and its world of goods emerging only in the 1960s, though taking uncertain root in the 1930s; see his Les Cadres: la formation d'un groupe social (Paris: Éditions du Minuit, 1982), Chs. 1-2. For the American case, see Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars: Life and Culture on The Lower East Side, 1890-1925 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1985).
[44] On Calor, see François Robert, "Gestion du personnel et esprit-maison dans une entreprise lyonnaise entre 1913 et 1955," Research Report No. 25, Centre d'Etudes de l'Emploi (51, rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, Paris), June 1989. On Thomson, see infra. The situation of Manufrance appears to have been the most common, mixing mass production with artisanal techniques (one is tempted to see in it a specifically French model of rationalization), yet never really achieving the cost reductions of American-style rationalization; see Jean-Paul Burdy, "Entre l'atelier artisanal et la manufacture taylorisée: les ouvriers du cycle à Saint-Etienne, 1900-1950," in Yves Lequin et Sylvie Vandecasteele, eds., L'Usine et le bureau (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1990): 75-91. This notion of a mixed model of hesitating rationalization may be more generalizable than many scholars have thought; see Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin, "Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets, and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Industrialization," Past and Present 108 (August 1985): 133-176.
[45] Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), Latour, "Sociology of a Door," CSI/École des Mines discussion paper (1988), and Akrich, "How Can Technical Objects be Described?," conference paper, Twente colloque, 3-5 September 1987 (Paris: CSI/École des Mines discussion paper, 1988).
[46] Gerard Swope, "Historical Review of GE's Foreign Business as Affected by the US Antitrust Laws," internal paper, October 31, 1972, GE archives, Schenectady (thanks be to George Wise for this source), "Procès verbaux du Conseil d'Administration," Thomson-France, Archives de Thomson (239, bd Anatole-France, St.-Denis), and anon., Historique Thomson. Le Groupe de 1893 à 1977, internal history (Paris: Thomson, 1979: not published), Tome I: Jacques Mars, "Essai de monographie de la Compagnie Française Thompson-Houston" (1937), p. 15.
[47] Suzanne Balitrand, "Le Salon des Arts Ménagers," Eve, 5 March 1927, L.D.F., "Les arts ménagers et l'électricité," L'Électricien, 15 February 1931, and Eve Baudouin, "La Femme moderne et le foyer: Du sens de la mesure," L'Aube, 19 June 1932.
[48] Léon Vibert, "Le Ménage à la machine," Paris-Soir, 25 October 1923, anon., "Personnel collectif," Le Quotidien, 6 September 1924, anon., "Critical Palates Testing Food at Paris Housekeeping Exhibition," New York Herald Tribune, 20 October 1924, anon., "Une centrale de travaux ménagers pour mille locataires," Je sais tout, February 1931: 627, and most forcefully, Marthe Bigot, "Après le Salon des Arts Ménagers," La Révolution Prolétarienne 6 (April 1927), 102.
[49] For a telling description of the real stagnation and lack of modernization in working class domestic life, see Marie-Christine Allart, "Les Femmes de trois villages de l'Artois," Revue du Nord 250 (juillet-septembre 1981): 703-723. The best work on women's education in the period remains Edmée Charrier, L'Evolution intellectuelle féminine (Paris: Editions Albert Mechelinck, 1931).
[50] In this respect, see Michael Seidman, "The Birth of the Weekend and the Revolts against Work: The Workers of the Paris Region during the Popular Front (1936-1938)," French Historical Studies (1981). More subtly, see Patrick Fridenson, "Les Ouvriers de l'automobile et le sport," Actes de recherche en sciences sociales 79 (septembre 1989): 51-62.
[51] Dossier: "Résumés retrospectives des Salons," series of reports on attendences and finances of annual Salons des Arts Ménagers by Salon staff, 1923-1939, AN série 850023/3. Admittedly, the Salons' popularity might well have been due in part to its timing, price, and promotion: it was held in the quiet dead of winter (mid-January to mid-February), admission was only five francs, and free transportation was available.