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Abstract
Charles Eugène Bedaux is best known by social scientists for his labour organisation method. This method was a great success with companies during the interwar years, thus enabling its author to set up a multinational business consultancy. The Bedaux method was, however, violently contested by employees and their unions, who organised many strikes to protest against it. Some of those who knew Bedaux, however, claimed that his method was in reality merely one part of a larger system, a simple component working towards a broader and more generous vision of society (known in French as équivalisme). His project was inspired by the Utopian Socialists of the last century, intended to provide a solution to the widespread disorder experienced by industrial societies during the interwar period. This paper explores the credibility of this project from two perspectives: a critical examination of his biographies and investigations conducted in the places where experiments in ‘equivalism’ were supposedly undertaken.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to gratefully thank the Association Francophone de Comptabilité for the grant which was given in order to enable this paper to be translated. We are also grateful for their comments to the referees and to participants at the following conferences: 11th World Congress of Accounting Historians, Nantes, 2006; 18th Annual Accounting, Business & Financial History Conference, Cardiff Business School, 2006; and 12th journées d'Histoire de la Comptabilité et du Management, Lille, 2007.
Notes
Practically, the only accessible archives concerning Bedaux are those held by the US Minister of Justice. Regarding his professional career, archives located at the Business Office of INCUCON Management Consultants Ltd in West Sussex, England, have been used by Littler Citation(1982) and Kreis Citation(1990). Other archives – both personal and professional – can be consulted: those held by the heirs of his second wife (Fern Bedaux): his two nieces (Elizabeth Hanley and Aletha Hext Martin in England) and above all, in France, heirs of Herbert Bigelow, Fern's estate manager and confident, and the heirs of Gaston Bedaux, Bedaux's brother, living in France. However, these archives are private and extremely difficult to access due to the great age of those concerned.
There are many witness reports given by workers in factories using the Bedaux method (Anonymous Citation1936; Kreis Citation1992; Geerkens Citation2005). The interest of this particular factory is that Bedaux implemented his equivalism here (see below).
A film directed by George Ungar in 1995 entitled ‘The Champagne Safari’ is a documentary on the expedition of Bedaux in Alaska and of his life using data from the book written by Christy Citation(1984).
Entitled ‘Equivalism’, ‘Equivalism II’ and ‘Equivalism III’ respectively.
In a letter addressed to his uncle Gaston Bedaux and Marcel Grolleau dated 30 November 1976 (private archives), Bedaux's son, Charles Emile, claimed to have met Janet Flanner following the publication of her articles. She confided in him that they were written on the demand of the US Justice Department, whose archives were accessed, including the manuscript by Charles Emile on equivalism. In this same letter, Charles Emile accused her of attributing the BEX to his father instead of to himself.
Bedaux's family holds to the belief that he committed suicide because he felt that, if he were put on trial before the end of the war, he would not be able to defend himself without endangering the lives of his wife, family and workers who had stayed behind in occupied France. He was much in love with his wife, unable to bear their separation due to his imprisonment, and committed suicide on St. Valentine's Day.
Less than 3% of the entire text, found on page 41 in the second article.
The Brook Farm experiment involved setting up a commune based on the model of the Utopian Socialist Charles Fourier (1772–1837), and lasted from 1841 to 1847. The tone of her writing gives the impression that Flanner simply recorded the enthusiastic intentions of Bedaux without really believing them herself.
To clearly underline the differences with his brother Gaston, Flanner (1945, 6 October, 43), qualifies the latter as follows: ‘highly educated, respectable, stay-at-home, state functionary brother Gaston’.
The text is preceded by the following words: ‘This is an introduction by Charles Emile Bedaux to the theory of Equivalism which he had been developing since the talks with his father at El Biar in 1943, and which he has explained elsewhere in book length’.
According to George Woodcock: http://www.abcbookworld.com
The château was also the scene, in 1937, of the marriage ceremony of the recently abdicated king of England, Edward VIII, and his twice divorced American bride.
See, for example, the paper delivered by Eric Geerkens at the 127th National Congress of Historical and Scientific Societies (Nancy, 16 April 2002), entitled ‘The implementation of the Bedaux system in Belgian industry in the 1930s’. For applications of the system in Britain and in the USA, see also Kreis Citation(1992) and Downs (1995). For applications in France, see Kourchid (Citation1991, Citation1994).
According to Christy Citation(1984) he might have become part of the troubled Paris nightlife.
According to Henry (Citation1993, 38), Morrini was American, whereas Kreis Citation(1992) says he had Italian nationality.
Harrington Emerson was himself a disciple of Taylor before becoming his adversary. He is, amongst other works, the author of Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages (1909) and The Twelve Principles of Efficiency (1912).
Duez was an Arts et Métiers engineer who had set himself up as a consultant. Bedaux and Duez had been schoolmates. He later became his brother-in-law and set up the first Bedaux company in France.
According to Kreis (Citation1992, 161), this is a practical manual in which we can see the influence of Taylor and Emerson.
C.E Bedaux was in Northern African when the Americans arrived on the 8 December 1942. He was working on a big pipeline project which would have allowed the transportation of peanut oil, which Occupied France needed desperately, from the Niger to Algeria. The Niger and Algeria were French colonies at this time and still under the power of the Vichy Government.
El-Biar is on the outskirts of Algiers.
Our description of the Bedaux method is based on first-hand accounts given by engineers who used the method (see, among others, Anonymous Citation1936) and the literature dealing with it, in particular Laloux Citation(1950).
See Bedaux (Citation1928, Citation1932).
According to Kreis (Citation1990, 271), no traces of this famous curve linking effort and fatigue (and, therefore, rest) have been found, even though this curve was central to his system.
Such as, for example, the TMM (Time Measurement Method).
Quote taken from an abstract published at http://www.cths.fr/4DACTION/http://www_con_communic/882
Agreement between the government and the unions after the strikes of 1936. These agreements included the introduction of paid holidays (two weeks) and a working week limited to 40 hours.
The law of 10 July 1934 regulated the awarding of engineering diplomas.
The ‘Union sacrée’ was a consolidating movement which united the French of all beliefs (both political and religious) during the hardship of the First World War.
Henry Le Chatelier, polytechnique-educated and founder of the Revue de la métallurgie, was, from 1906, the unrelenting disseminator of Taylorism, and translated and published most of Taylor's writings. We may also cite Charles de Fréminville, educated at the prestigious Ecole Centrale, and Georges de Ram, an engineer with Renault.
Socialist minister for armament during the First World War.
For a presentation of the different systems of remuneration, see Danty-Lafrance Citation(1957), Mottez Citation(1966) and Shimmin Citation(1959).
Smith and Boyns Citation(2005) describe the Bedaux system as a ‘bastardised’ version of Taylorism, favoured in Britain because it could be easily bolted on to existing organisational structures without requiring the need for large expenditure on making changes thereto.
The idea proposed by Bedaux of regulating the economy through the banks, which is simply an illustration of the predominance of talent over social origin, can also be found in Saint Simon. According to the latter, the banks have to play an essential role in the economy by organising the system for sharing the means of production. They grant loans to factory owners on the grounds that they have the ability to generate a profit from them.
This can be found in Fourrier and in Proudhon, in the form of a right to work.
Owen, for example, imposed a paid training time on his workers at New Lanark during their working hours.
According to Christy (Citation1984, 19) on arriving in the US in 1906, Bedaux was acquainted with the anarchist movements helping to distribute their publications. This was when he read Marx, Engels, Thorsten and Proudhon.
As Bedaux himself did not publish anything on this subject, we only know this term through the biography written by his brother Gaston and the manuscript of Bedaux's son (Charles Émile).
Ex-chairman of the Reichsbank, then Minister of the Economy of the Nazi government. He fell into disgrace for criticising Nazi policy towards the Jews.
The idea of a small community reflects a tradition with all Utopists: the phalanstery of Charles Fourier counted 1600 people and Robert Owen left in 1825 for New Harmony (Indiana, USA) with 800 people (Harrison Citation1969). Another experiment also deserves to be mentioned, on account of its great impact in the USA, where Fourier's ideas had been introduced in 1840: Brook Farm or ‘the Port-Royal of American transcendentalism’ (Desroche Citation1975). Ten or so families were part of this community, but insufficient farming know-how and resources, philosophical dissention and the fire of the phalanstery in March 1846 put end to this project. This experiment was likely to be known to Bedaux, whose second wife (Fern) was an American from the liberal society of the east coast.
‘The old marshal can repeat your words and reformulate them without having understood anything’ is what Bedaux was supposed to have said (quoted in Flanner 1945, 6 October, 41).
Not rented from an Englishwoman as it is often said in his biographies.
The French Bedaux company had developed 30 factors (physical fitness, environment, education, experience, ability, talent, risk, responsibility, etc.) on the basis of which they built a scale of qualification of human activity for all types of professional people; doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers, company owners, etc. Each engineer was allotted two or three of these, and charts and graphs were produced for each factor, enabling the factor to be measured.
Research engineers of the National Institute of the Agronomic Research (INRA) have been unable to scientifically prove this idea of Bedaux. Although oil has been exploited at Parentis, some 80 km from Roquefort, various prospecting activities conducted in Roquefort have yielded nothing.
At present, over 60 years after this happened and over 20 years after the company closed down, the Bedaux system still remains a taboo subject for many. Although the system was implemented for a very short time, it generated such friction amongst the employees that the scars have still not healed.
Many French workers, among the most highly skilled, were forced to go to work in Germany.
In fact, this method, imported by ‘foreigners’, was in complete opposition to the paternalist management system used in paper mills and employed with a rural labour force. The system was abandoned after just a few years.
Dossier in the newspaper Le Monde Initiatives, no. 17, published in March 2003, pages 1 and 12.
The Croisière blanche (July–October 1934) was the fourth car rally organised by André Citroën, instigated by Bedaux following the success of the Croisière noire and the Croisière jaune. Bedaux ran with five latest model Citroën-Kégresse to cross north-west Canada from Edmonton. The expedition was a failure.