INTRODUCTION

During the period of the July Monarchy the French working class was neither sociologically nor ideologically homogeneous (Magraw, 1983, p. 105). Workers in individual towns and specific industries had different grievances. Disparities in conditions led to varying responses and these responses were, in turn, informed by the economic and social histories of those communities. Magraw has pointed to the different political traditions of workers in Marseilles, Toulouse and Paris. Just as there was a geography of working-class politics and protests, likewise there were variations in the response of the middle classes to issues involving les classes inférieurs, les ouvriers, cette classe intéressante or le peuple (Magraw, 1983, p. 92). The most important issues of middle-class concern were the living conditions and morality of the working class, the increase in their numbers and political activity, as well as the effect of migration from the countryside on each of these problems. The response of the middle classes to these issues was set against the background of the development of industrial production in some parts of France, especially in the areas of Paris, Lille, Lyons and Rouen. This was accompanied in places by the emergence of worker organization through the mutual aid societies and in some cases by worker protest, such as that in Lyons (Bezucha, 1974), Limoges (Merriman, 1985) and Paris (Chevalier, 1973), or in smaller towns, such as Carmaux and Lodève, dominated by traditional handicraft industries (Scott, 1974; Johnson, 1992; McPhee, 1992, p. 140). But perhaps the most important backdrop was the development of philosophical thought and social theory which increasingly infused middle-class and working-class beliefs and actions. Important influences were the ideas of Saint Simon, Fourier, Proudhon and Louis Blanc. Informed by a rationalism based on advances in scientific knowledge, society was represented as an organism in which each group had a role to play in maintaining overall harmony. Ideas of the exact nature of each group's role varied and the working classes were cast variously as ignorant and immoral, to be controlled and reformed by the philanthropy of the middle classes, or as the true producers of the nation's wealth and thus entitled to full civil and political rights.