Compagnie minière de Carmaux

Documents in the archives of Albi record that in 1245 the tolls on the Tarn bridge included one denier per donkey-load of coal.

At that time the coal was collected along the Cérou river, where the coal is very close to the surface.

The local people made surface excavations, which they called "caves".

From the start of the 16th century they dug pits, but these were not very deep since the water table was close to the surface.

Random and unregulated coal mining was undertaken by the landowners until the 18th century.

By then coal was starting to be widely used in Europe.

On 14 January 1744 a regulation was issued by the council of state that prohibited operating a mine without first obtaining a concession.

The regulation confirmed that the king had full ownership of the subsoil of France, and that the mine operators were responsible for safety and for the working conditions of miners.

Early years

In 1749 Gabriel de Solages became involved in mining.

He had followed a military career until 1749, when his brother, the marquis de Carmaux, gave him the rights to the coal mines he owned in the area.

Gabriel was intelligent and energetic.

At this time industry was developing in France and was looking for coal as an alternative to increasingly scarce wood.

In 1752 Gabriel de Solages received a concession for mining within a radius on one league around his Blaye château.

The mining rights would remain in the Solages family until they were nationalized in 1947.

In 1754 Gabriel installed a glass bottle factory near his château fueled by the coal.

Gabriel de Solages invited Flemish miners to work his mines, but also employed local people.

Until 1914 miners were mostly recruited from local peasantry. Typically the eldest son in a family would inherit the farm, while the younger sons would receive money which they would use to buy a small plot to grow vegetables while working in the mines.

Solages was able to operate without competition, and was not forced to close the mines in 1789 when the French Revolution began.

At that time he was employing 100 workers.

He was arrested in 1793 and his mines were placed under sequestration.

A decree by the Committee of Public Safety of 24 Frimaire year III (13 December 1794) restored the lands and defined the limits of the 8,800 hectares (22,000 acres) concession.

The concession was renewed by his son François-Gabriel de Solages on 27 Pluviôse year IX (16 février 1801).

The limits remained unchanged into the 20th century.

Under Napoleon, in 1810 mining concessions became perpetual properties that could be sold and inherited.

In 1810 the de Solages family established the Compagnie des Mines et Verreries de Carmaux to exploit the mines and glassworks.

There was a boom in demand for coal to fuel metal foundries for the manufacture of weapons during the Napoleonic Wars.

There were 100 miners at that time, of whom half worked underground, but they still had to work the land to support themselves.

The first steam engine was introduced in 1811.

In the first half of the 19th century 20,000 to 30,000 tons of coal per year were extracted.

There were 189 miners in 1822 and 270 in 1832.

Their wages and working conditions slowly improved, but technical progress was slow.

The coal basin was isolated, and road transport was expensive and unreliable.

Oak timber used to support the sides and roofs of the galleries was found to decay quickly from dry rot.

An experiment with acacia wood reported in 1836 found it was much more durable in the same situation, unaffected after four years except at the sap-wood surface.

1892 strike

Jean Jaurès played a leading role in the Carmaux miners strike of 1892, and the glass workers strike that followed in 1895.

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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

The strike of the Carmaux miners in 1892 had national impact.

The Quarterly Register of Current History reported that the strike had surpassed all other labor movements of the quarter in interest.

Collections were organized to support the miners, whose determination, solidarity and discipline was widely admired by ordinary people.

The politicians Duc-Quercy, Pierre Baudin, Alexandre Millerand, René Viviani, and Alfred Léon Gérault-Richard often spoke in Carmaux during the strike.

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".

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.

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.

Calvignac was one of the workers' delegates in the arbitration procedure.

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.

The compromise decision was issued on 30 October 1892.

This was accepted by the miners, who returned to work on 3 November 1892.