GARD. SILKS AND COCOONS. 8 Commercial letters from 1859 to 1 - Lot 553

GARD. SILKS AND COCOONS. 8 Commercial letters from 1859 to 1872, written from LASSALLE (Gard) and ANDUZE (Gard) and ST JEAN-DU-GARD, on the Trade in Silkworms, Silks and Cocoons and Andrinoples and workers' conditions - Purchase of cocoons from China, Spain, Syria, Smyrna for Mr ATGER-GALOFFRE Spinner in Anduze + Letter signed by Louis BOUDON, Filatures de Soies Grèges, in St-Jean-du-Gard April 24, 1872, to Messieurs les petits-fils de BONNET et Cie in LYON. 2 pages in-4°: "For a long time now, there has been a general slackening in our regions, among the workers and especially among the factory supervisors. We have here and in the surrounding area several bosses without energy who put up with everything and are no longer the masters in their own homes. The foremen and supervisors are now the mainstay of our streets, leading a dissipated lifestyle, and yet are beginning to say that they don't earn enough to spend the night in cafés, gambling and often with their own workers in libation. We have never put up with such behavior in our house... Since February, we had managed to raise the morale of all our staff a little. The day before yesterday ... my relative Mr. Gaillard, Director and interested party in the St-André factory, had a public altercation with a father concerning his daughter... I told this employee to vacate the premises immediately... On my return, I called a meeting of our employees here, and told them that from now on we would be twice as strict... In Uzès, everything is going better, but we need to exercise the strictest surveillance, especially with regard to morals. To this end, our manager exercises constant vigilance, even at night. If, as in most factories, we let our staff off the hook, the job would no longer be tenable...". + etc.