The Awakening of Class Consciousness

In the textile mills of Lille and Roubaix, the coal mines of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, and the metalworks of the Loire, a new class was being forged in the furnaces of industrial capitalism. These workers, uprooted from rural communities and traditional crafts, faced conditions that would shock modern sensibilities. Sixteen-hour days were common. Child labor began as young as six. Industrial accidents maimed and killed with regularity. Housing consisted of cramped, unsanitary barracks where entire families shared single rooms.

Marie Dumoulin, a textile worker in Lille, left a rare first-hand account from 1885: "We enter the factory before dawn and leave after dark. In winter, we never see the sun. The noise of the machines is so loud that we communicate by gestures. Many of us lose our hearing before we turn forty. The cotton dust fills our lungs—we call it the white death. But what choice do we have? The countryside offers only starvation."

Yet from this suffering emerged solidarity. Workers who had been strangers, often from different regions speaking different dialects, discovered common interests. The factory floor became a school of collective action. When one worker was fired arbitrarily or injured without compensation, others recognized their shared vulnerability. The old paternalistic relationships of rural France, where landowners knew their laborers personally, gave way to impersonal industrial relations where workers were merely factors of production.

This transformation of consciousness—from individual to collective identity—occurred gradually and unevenly. Skilled workers, who maintained some bargaining power through their expertise, often resisted alliance with unskilled laborers. Regional differences mattered: workers from France's periphery, especially Bretons and Corsicans, faced discrimination and were often used as strikebreakers. Women workers, paid half what men earned for the same work, struggled for recognition within male-dominated labor organizations.