THE GLOVERS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
“Lo, the old order changeth!”
How the glove craft of Grenoble spontaneously sprang up, took firm root
and grew until it controlled, to a great degree, the fortunes of that
city, has been shown in the foregoing brief summary of events. The many
phases of life with which glove-making was bound up in mediæval days,
its social and economic importance to the community and its pre-eminence
among the early industries, cannot have failed to be apparent. From
about 1600 the chief city of the Dauphiné underwent an astonishingly
rapid development.
But, if the seventeenth century was little short of phenomenal in glove
history, glove-making in Grenoble was not fated to become one of the
leading enterprises of the world without a struggle. The hundred years
that followed were at once the most sterile and the most fecund in the
annals of the trade—and, for that matter, the same is equally true of
the eighteenth century as regards its bearing upon the destinies of
Europe. Destructive of immediate results and of contemporary prosperity,
this era which endured the birth throes of modern states and the
upheavals of the Revolution, was, nevertheless, big with prophetic good.
And it is to the everlasting honor of the glovers of Grenoble that they
bore their part in this vast social and political movement, which
temporarily threatened death to their personal interests, with their
eyes fixed, not upon gain, but upon those high ideals and principles to
which their faith clung, even in the midst of business paralysis and
social chaos.
While the flame of the Revolution did not break forth until nearly the
close of the century, the spirit of modernity and unrest attacked the
French people fully a hundred years before the fall of the Bastille. In
Grenoble the transition from the old order to the new was anticipated as
early as 1691, in response to a proclamation of the king that the
business of the country be taxed to refill the royal treasury.
After the brilliant victories of his early reign, Louis XIV. had
suffered severe reverses. He was gravely in need of money to repair the
military organization. New resources must somehow be found, and that
immediately. The only adequate answer which presented itself took the
form of taxation imposed upon the business interests of the realm. The
glovers of Grenoble, accordingly, in 1691, organized themselves into the
_Corporation des Gantiers_, or Corporation of Glovers, to determine how
heavily their industry should be taxed in support of the régime. While
they felt loyally obliged to contribute all they were able to the king’s
cause, by the very act of their organizing and by virtue of the funds
they furnished, they became masters at home, respected by the monarch,
independent and self-governing. Their sacrifice of money to the
government had, in the same hour, bought them their freedom in all that
pertained to their local affairs.
The importance of this initial association for an economic purpose
scarcely can be overestimated. The Corporation later proved the unit of
strength which was to render the glovers, as a body, invincible through
the endless chain of vicissitudes, political, moral and industrial,
which all but swept away, in the next hundred years, the totality of
progress gained in the seventeenth century. In 1590 Grenoble had not
10,000 inhabitants. In 1692 Vauban values the population at 33,000.
During the seventeenth century, then, its numbers had more than tripled,
and this must needs strike one as the more remarkable inasmuch as city
life in that epoch was little developed. Such growth, as we have seen,
went hand in hand with the evolution of its industries. In 1692, Vauban
wrote:
“The city contains a very numerous bourgeoisie, and is filled with a
high quality of artisans which furnish a great variety of products to
the largest part of the province. Its increase has been such that it
actually is bursting out of its new ramparts. The city has dire need of
expansion; all ranks of people demand it irresistibly.”
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.
The Corporation of Glovers, however, suffered meanwhile from the growing
restlessness and vague ambitions of its workers. The old regulations
were gradually and inevitably giving way before the awakening
consciousness of a new race of wage-earners, grown almost morbidly
distrustful of vested authority. The Dauphiné was afflicted with the bad
example of many of its aristocrats. The nobility was indeed unworthy of
its rank. The pervading restiveness and insubordination of the working
class sprang out of a deep, instinctive resentment against the
prevailing order. Of course, the first point of friction lay between the
apprentices and the masters.
Though the severities of apprenticeship were modified, the former good
faith between these two was irretrievably lost. Fear of foreign
competition faded into insignificance before this intimate situation—the
suspicious attitude toward one another of masters and workmen. Such was
bound to be the price of a last, furious assault upon the mouldering
ramparts of long-decayed feudalism.
The master glovers, on their side, shared in the social discontent, and
participated in the long drawn-out struggle between the aristocracy and
the bourgeoisie to determine which of these should predominate in the
local tribunals. The glovers of Grenoble contended that they, as an
organized body of people, no longer merely having a trade, but enjoying
also a social position encroaching on the importance of the man of the
robe, the magistrate and the attorney, should have the largest voice in
the making of the laws. Their product, they argued, was bringing money
into France from England, Germany, Switzerland, and other northern
countries, where more than one-half of their gloves were sold. In 1775,
it is stated, out of 100,000 dozen pairs of gloves made in Grenoble,
60,000 were on commission for the foreigner. Naturally enough these
manufacturers and merchants felt that over an idle, and even vicious,
aristocracy, their opinions and practical needs should lead in shaping
public legislation.
Further, bitter contention involved the business men of Grenoble with
the lawyers of that city, for the latter persisted in looking down upon
plain citizens not bred in their profession, and in excluding them from
public affairs. In 1789 all glovers were shut out of the city council.
In view of the fact that they “gave work daily to more than eight
thousand persons, and thus enabled to live one-third of the population
of Grenoble,” the glovers resented bitterly this deliberate indignity
from “les hommes du robe.” It only fired them the more to throw
themselves into the great conflict ahead; to prove that, even if they
could not discourse so eloquently upon public matters as those who had
insulted them, “at least they knew how to talk less, act more, and give
all they possessed” to the cause of justice.
Thus, with the greatest crisis, perhaps, of modern times approaching,
the glovers found themselves, workmen and masters alike, drawn almost
before they knew it, into the very heart of the maelstrom. Industry
itself was at a standstill. Nay, it was slipping backward; for in the
midst of such internal suppression of terrible passions, such scorching
hatreds, and ideals to set the world on fire, what footing could there
be for the arts of peace?
And then the black cloud burst. Grenoble was drained of men whom the
actual eruption of the Revolution forced to flee its walls. It was
emptied of soldiers departing for the centre of action. The Revolution
put out of business many of those following religious vocations, whose
offices now were enlisted in grimmer callings; it wiped out of existence
the gentlemen of leisure. There had been many of these latter in the
beautiful, old city of the Dauphiné.
And who was there left to wear gloves, in all the length and breadth of
France? What was to become, in such an hour, of an industry which
addressed itself to the pleasure-loving rich, and to the privileged
classes? The rich? There were no more rich. Privilege—the title, the
robe, the gown? Lost off in the wild scurry of fugitives! In the
appalling reaction, such a harmless mark of elegance as the glove,
became, so to speak, branded with horror. To be seen in gloves in those
days was to be marked for a criminal against mankind; to be suspected of
being a Royalist, a lover of the king, a Judas to the People.
So we have the spectacle of the glovers, “plain men of business,”
throwing over every material advantage, to hurl themselves and all they
possessed into the French Revolution. “The Revolution!” cries M. Xavier
Roux in his invaluable book, _The Glovers of Grenoble_, published for
private circulation in that city in 1887, “they themselves desired it.
They sacrificed to it their money and their effort.” Again he says:
“It would seem as though, in their eyes, there were no longer practical
‘interests’; there were only _ideas_. Never, perhaps, as then, has a
whole people forgotten its industry, it business relations, and suffered
itself to be moved by principle alone.”
And yet one spectacle more remains—the silent factories on the Isère.
For the first time since the founding of its main industry and source of
prosperity in the past, we behold the paradox of a gloveless Grenoble!