union) were for a long time remarkable for their brutality. Before 1840 there were constant brawls, often ending in bloodshed, between groups with different rites. Martin Saint Léon, in his book on the compagnonnage, gives extracts from really barbarous songs.[1] Initiation into the lodge was accompanied by the severest tests; young men were treated as if they were pariahs in the "Devoirs de Jacques et de Subise":[2] "Compagnons (carpenters) have been known," says Perdiguier, "to call themselves the Scourge of the Foxes (candidates for admission), the Terror of the Foxes. … In the provinces, a 'fox' rarely works in the towns; he is hunted back, as they say, into the brushwood."[3] There were many secessions when the tyranny of the companions came into opposition with the more liberal habits which prevailed in society. When the workers were no longer in need of protection, especially for the purpose of finding work, they were no longer so willing to submit to the demands which had formerly seemed to be of little consequence in comparison with the advantages of the compagnonnage. The struggle for work more than once brought candidates into opposition with companions who wished to reserve certain privileges.[4] We might find still other reasons to explain
- ↑ Martin Saint-Léon, Le Compagnonnage, pp. 115, 125, 270–273, 277–278.
- ↑ Each trade possessed often several rival associations of workmen, which often engaged each other in bloody combats. Each association was called a Devoir. What was intended by de Jacques and de Subise has long been forgotten. They are traditional words indicating the rules, and so by extension, the associations which follow these rules.
- ↑ Martin Saint-Léon, op. cit. p. 97. Cf. pp. 91–92, p. 107.
- ↑ In 1823, the companion joiners claimed La Rochelle as theirs, a town which they had for a long time neglected as being of too little importance; they had previously only stopped at Nantes and Bordeaux (Martin Saint-Léon, op. cit. p. 103). L'Union des travailleurs du tour de France was formed in 1830 to 1832 as a rival organisation to the
workman was received there and the older men found him work. The compagnonnages are now in a state of decay.
