Around the Weft and the Warp: The Transformations of Auxiliary Trades in Lyon Silk Manufacturing in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

By focusing on the men and women who carried out tasks auxiliary to weavingWeaving, this chapter seeks to highlight the mechanisms governing the very complex division of laborLabordivision of labor that characterized the LyonTeillard et Cie (Lyon) silk industrySilksilk industry. The production chain and the social relations at work within it are at the heart of the analysis, with the aim of identifying continuities and discontinuities over the long term. Although the production process remained manual throughout the period of interest, there were considerable technological changesTechnological changes between the beginning of the eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth century. Traditional sources such as almanacs, surveys, guild archives and tax censuses, supplemented by sources on labor litigation, were used to identify recurrent practices. The chapter starts by outlining the activities and auxiliary tradesAuxiliary Trades of the weaving industry of the time in LyonTeillard et Cie (Lyon) then focuses more specifically on the division of laborLabordivision of labor within the production process. The economic and social relations structuring the industry resulted in work patterns that varied according to the trades and tasks. The analysis then looks at conflicts and attempts at regulation within guilds under the Ancien Régime and the institutions of the collective silk manufacture in the period that followed. Disputes over remuneration, debts and contracts reveal relationships of subordination, but also forms of autonomy and agencyAgency acted by the industry’s “subalterns” and “auxiliaries".