Compagnie minière de Carmaux

Minehead in Blaye-les-Mines

In 1854 an imperial decree granted the Solages company a concession to build a railway connecting Carmaux to Albi at its own expense. In 1856 the enterprise became a limited company, the Compagnie des Houillères et Chemins de Fer de Carmaux Toulouse (Carmaux Toulouse Coal Mine and Railways company).[4] The line opened in 1857 and allowed transport of coal via other railways established soon after that linked to the large networks.[6] The Carmaux Mining Company was almost destroyed in the 1850s during the speculation over the Grand Central Railroad. In 1862 it was relaunched as a société anonyme with new capital and Baron René Reille as the representative on the board of the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans. Reille was chairman from 1884 to 1898.[10]

The company was reorganized as the Société des Mines de Carmaux (SMC) in 1873, having sold the glass works and railway.[6] In the 1870s and 1880s the company upgraded its equipment and built a plant to make coal briquettes for use by locomotives and steamships. Output rose to more than 475,000 tons per year in the last quarter of the century.[10] In 1880 it employed 729 workers.[6] By 1892 there were 2,000 workers.[11]

In 1885 the Albi coalfield was discovered, with deposits outside the Carmaux concession. The La Société des Mines Albi was established in 1886 to exploit the new field, and employed 1,000 workers by 1900. The railways allowed the coal to be carried to new markets, and production from the Carmaux concession increased to 300,000 tons in 1880 and 500,000 tons in 1890.[6]

Coal breaker at Carmaux 1889

From the second half of the 19th century wages were relatively high and the miners could even enjoy retirement after their working career.[8] The pay of the miners in the second half of the 19th century increased, but not as fast as the profits to the owners. Working conditions were poor, with workers suffering from explosions, suffocation, anaemia and tuberculosis. They were thrown out of work during periods of low demand.[12] Between 1880 and 1892 thirty six men died in the Carmaux mines.[13] It took time for the farm laborers to adapt to mining, where they were expected to work regular hours, work hard and accept the discipline of the company. They became proletarians rather than peasants, learned to buy on credit, and became discontented with the political structure.[14]

During the 19th century industrial revolution the miners organized themselves and fought for shorter working hours, higher wages, improved safety and social insurance.[15] A strike in 1883 failed, but when the law of 1884 made it legal the Carmaux workers formed a union. Marcelle Auclair wrote in 1954 that towards the end of the 19th century the Carmaux workers were starting to say, "Without Carmaux, where would the Solages clan be?" On 28 November 1886 the deputy Charles Emile Wickersheimer (1849–1915) attacked the 1810 mining law, saying "The State has no right to commit future generations; to say that mining property is property like any other is an obvious mistake." On 19 November 1889 several left-wing deputies proposed nationalization, and demands for nationalization or regulation grew as the number of miners strikes grew.[7]

Baron René Reille (1835–1898) was a member of the Comité des houillères, the coal mine owners' association, and president of the board of directors of the Compagnie minière de Carmaux.[16] Reille was the father-in-law of the Marquis de Solages.[7] His opponents called him the "King of the Black Mountain."[17] In the election of 22 September 1889 Reille was elected for the 2nd district of Castres, presenting himself as a "resolute conservative and a sincere Catholic."[18] In the election the Reille-Solages industrialists and the clergy opposed the Republican deputy Jean Jaurès (1859–1914), who was defeated by Reille. Jaurès wrote that the Marquis de Solages had won election in the Carmaux constituency by implying to the workers that their jobs depended on his victory. When Solages joined the board of directors of the glass factory, Jaurès implied that the glass workers would also come under the control of the Reille-Solages group.[19]

Illustration of the 1892 strike by Alfred Philippe Roll, Le Petit Journal, 1 October 1892

Jean Jaurès played a leading role in the Carmaux miners strike of 1892, and the glass workers strike that followed in 1895.[20] A strike almost began in early 1892, mainly over demands for wage improvements, but was defused by mediation. Later that year there was a strike for political reasons. The militant socialist Jean-Baptiste Calvignac,[lower-alpha 2] one of the miners' union leaders, was elected mayor of Carmaux. The company would not give him time to perform this job, and when Calvignac simply took the time he needed he was fired on 2 August 1892. The workers claimed that the company was attacking their right of suffrage, while the company said a worker must do his job or be fired. The miners held a stormy meeting on 15 August 1892. The strike began the next day and would drag out for ten weeks.[22]

The moderate Republican paper Le Temps supported the company, noting that many small merchants and professionals accepted economic loss when they accepted public office. An editorial said that although Calvignac had the right to become mayor, the company had the right to sack him.[11] Jaurès wrote in La Depeche de Toulouse deriding the company's statement that it was impossible to grant the mayor two days a week to discharge his political duties,

Impossible? The entire issue is concentrated there. For if the company was unable to grant just two free days a week to a worker elected mayor by universal suffrage, it was because it consciously sought to destroy the effectiveness of the popular vote; it thus struck a blow at universal suffrage; and by making a mockery of the ballot, it criminally provoked the workers to violence. ... At Carmaux there are 2,000 miners, and Baron Reille who governs them doesn't even know them by sight. He lives in Paris during the winter and in Saint-Amans in the summer. . . . The workers of Carmaux are merely so many coins for him, accumulating in his cash-drawer.[11]

Statue of Jean Jaurès and miners in the Place Jean Jaurès in Carmaux

By mid-September Jaurès was writing that the company was breaking the law that made intimidating an elector by threat of dismissal from employment a criminal offense. As the strike dragged on the miners suffered from hunger, while strikebreakers and troops to protect them arrived. The company may have sponsored agents provocateurs to encourage violent acts that would discredit the miners.[23] The strike of the Carmaux miners in 1892 had national impact.[15] The Quarterly Register of Current History reported that the strike had surpassed all other labor movements of the quarter in interest.[24] Collections were organized to support the miners, whose determination, solidarity and discipline was widely admired by ordinary people.[25] The politicians Duc-Quercy, Pierre Baudin, Alexandre Millerand, René Viviani, and Alfred Léon Gérault-Richard often spoke in Carmaux during the strike.[23] Jean Jaurès, Duc-Quercy and Eugène Baudin said the strike was an attempt to guarantee the political liberties of Carmaux voters. Paul Lafargue of the French Workers' Party saw it as part of the wider "political and economic battle against the bourgeoisie".[26]

On 18 October 1892 Millerand and Baudin attacked Reille in the Chamber of Deputies, accusing him of prolonging the strike to punish the workers by starvation. Millerand moved that the government should seize the mines. In response, Reille finally agreed to arbitration.[27] The prime minister, Émile Loubet, agreed to act as arbitrator. His decision was announced on 26 October. Calvignac would be reemployed, and given leave of absence for his term as mayor. All strikers would be reinstated apart from those convicted of rioting. The company manager Humblot would retain his position.[24] Calvignac was one of the workers' delegates in the arbitration procedure.[21]

Georges Clemenceau and others objected in the grounds that the decision was too favorable to the company. Clemenceau went to Carmaux and arranged a compromise where Humblot would be moved to another mine and the convicted strikers would be released and given work.[24] The compromise decision was issued on 30 October 1892.[27] This was accepted by the miners, who returned to work on 3 November 1892.[24]

The events of the strike inspired the anarchist Émile Henry to violence.[28] On 8 November 1892 he placed a bomb at the offices of the Carmaux Mining Company in Paris. The bomb killed five police officers after it was discovered and transported to a police station.[15] The Illustrated American called the bomb incident "another example of to what lengths the French workingmen, and indeed the workingmen of other countries, will go, when they make preposterous demands of their employers and are denied them."[29] Solages had resigned his seat as a deputy on 14 October 1892, and in January 1893 Jaurès won the resulting by-election on the Marxist Parti ouvrier français platform.[30] The miners' union was dissolved by the authorities in 1898, and a new union was formed in April 1899.[21]