page_title: Auguste Mimerel
section_title: July Monarchy (1830–48)
hierarchical_section_title: Auguste Mimerel / July Monarchy (1830–48)
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Auguste Pierre Rémi Mimerel, né le 1er juin 1786 à Amiens (Somme) et mort le 16 avril 1871 à Roubaix, est un industriel et homme politique français.
context_page_description: Auguste Mimerel was a French industrialist and politician.
  He was owner of a large cotton mill, and was active in industry associations.
  He supported the use of child labor, and was in favor of high tariffs to protect domestic industry.
  He became a deputy in the legislature in the short-lived French Second Republic, then a senator during the Second French Empire.
  In 1867 he was made a Count of the Empire.
context_section_description: After the July Revolution Mimerel retained liberal principles at first.
  As late as the fall of 1832 Mimerel, as President of the Consultative Chamber of Arts and Manufactures of Roubaix, was opposed to the seizure of foreign wool by customs, because "it would be against the spirit and needs of the century, which both demand new commercial freedoms rather than new constraints."
  During 1833–34 he became fully converted to protectionism.
  Mimerel was the most vocal of the industrialists during the commercial inquiry organized by Tanneguy Duchâtel in October–November 1834.
  He spoke as Mayor of Roubaix and Chamber of Commerce delegate for Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing.
  He said, "Lifting prohibition will compromise the existence of considerable numbers of French citizens."
  He fiercely defended industrial liberty within France and opposed repeal of protection against foreign goods.
  He said national producers must show solidarity, and there would be revolts by the workers if British goods were allowed in.
  Auguste Mimerel was mayor of Roubaix from 9 April 1834 to 7 July 1836.
  He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1834.
  He was General Councilor of Nord (1837), President of the Council (1839) and President of the General Council of Manufactures in Paris (1840).
  In 1835 Mimerel stated publicly that half of the workers in his cotton mill in Lille were children.
  They usually started work at the age of eight, often earlier, had the same hours as adults and had no schooling or protection of any form.
  He clearly thought that employment was better than limited schooling and long periods of idleness.
  In his 1840 Tableau Louis-René Villermé described child labor conditions in the textile industry as "too terrible to be endured".
  In 1841 the work of Villermé, the report of Alexandre Loiset on insanitary housing in Lille and the intervention of Villeneuve-Bargemont led to a law regulating child labour.
  The employers of Nord were particularly hostile to the bill, saying that although the children worked long hours their work was not tiring, and it was not possible to separate the work of adults and children.
  It was unjust to blame industrialists for working-class pauperism.
  In an open letter of 1841 entitled Pauperism, its increase attributed to industry in a host of writings, Mimerel pointed out that pauperism existed before the industrial revolution, and it was normal for it to be found among workers.
  He said that manufacturers showed humanity and charity by founding hospices and setting up canteens for their workers.
  The Comité pour la Défense du Travail National was founded in 1842 in an effort to coordinate the protectionist manufacturers' lobbies.
  Mimerel was the main mover.
  He influenced the lobbies to  stress self-sufficiency rather than rivalry with foreigners, and to subsidize the mainstream press to promote protectionism.
  In his Du paupérisme dans ses rapports avec l'industrie en France et en Angleterre (Lille, 1842) Mimerel tried to show that protection mostly favoured the workers rather than just a few privileged manufacturers.
  He noted that "the hideous wound of pauperism" was mostly found in British cities. 
  Britain depended on foreign markets as outlets for its cheap textiles, so was vulnerable to any downturns in these markets and had reduced its workers to a state of "abject destitution".
  He argued that "if foreign labour cannot access our market, workers, rare in relation to the number of machines, will receive constant and high salaries for a long time." 
  He also blamed economists and socialists for spreading "moral poverty" rather than "real destitution", where raised expectations caused the workers to see a satisfactory condition as unbearable.
  Du paupérisme portrayed Britain as an aristocratic society in which the privileged classes used the workers only as tools of production, in contrast to the more egalitarian society of France.
  In fact, at this time social legislation was more advanced in Britain and workers earned more than in France.
  Also, French exports were growing rapidly.
  However, there may be an elemen
caption: Mimerel as a senator
exif: {}