"Without belonging to public service": charities, the state, and civil society in Third Republic Bordeaux, 1870-1914.

Addressing the 1872 annual meeting of the General Council of the Societe pour l'extinction de la mendicite dans Bordeaux, the vicomte Charles de Pelleport-Burete, the association's secretary, proudly characterized the Societe as "part of that ensemble of Bordelais institutions that, without belonging to public service properly speaking . . . has a permanent goal of public utility that recommends it to the protection of the state, whose tasks it seconds and sometimes completes."(1) In these few words, Pelleport-Burete captured the very essence of Bordelais poor relief. Between 1870 and 1914 benevolent associations carved an enduring niche for themselves in Bordeaux's solution to the social question. And few knew this better than Charles de Pelleport-Burete. During his long lifetime, he embodied the traits of an activist elite that devoted much of its time and energy to civic life. In an official capacity, he served the new regime as a monarchist senator for the Gironde, mayor of the city, and administrator of both the municipal hospitals and the city's public relief centers. In addition, he donated hours, money, and effort to numerous charitable organizations, from the Societe above to the (Euvre du refuge des enfants abandonnes ou delaisses de la Gironde, from the Societe de charite maternelle to the Office central de la charite bordelaise. Even his last minutes were spent in service to private charity in Bordeaux: he collapsed and died at the age of 72 while presiding over a meeting of the Societe de Secours aux blesses militaires.(2) Together with colleagues like the Jewish shipping merchant Alexandre Leon, the Protestant negociant Charles Cazalet, and the republican cheese merchant Alfred Daney, Pelleport-Burete helped to create and maintain a strong core of public and private institutions that lay at the heart of poor relief in Bordeaux.

Perhaps because of its local nature, this system of assistance has largely escaped the attention of most historians. As a result, they have failed to analyze the many private charities that dotted the urban landscapes of France, and the benefactors who supported them, as representatives of both a thriving system of relief and a vibrant associational life. While this article offers correctives to interpretations that have underestimated the extent of social welfare in late-nineteenth-century France, its primary focus is on the interaction of these charities and the municipality as an aspect of voluntary organization and a reflection of an active civil society. In Bordeaux and elsewhere, a broad range of societies and leagues flourished throughout the nineteenth century.(3) The 1876 Annuaire general du commerce et de l'industrie de la Gironde, for example, listed for Bordeaux alone over twenty cercles, or clubs, twelve Masonic lodges, and seventeen literary and scientific associations. By 1913, the number of cercles and Masonic lodges had fallen to seventeen and ten respectively, but the number of literary and scientific societies had grown to fifty. Moreover, a host of new associations, including more than forty-five sports clubs and thirty musical societies, now supplemented these lodges and cercles.(4) As early as 1892, a list compiled for the prefect carried the names of over 235 charities, sports clubs, musical societies, cercles, and other associations located in Bordeaux alone, over seventy percent of which had been founded after 1870.(5) Other French cities witnessed a similar growth in this public form of sociability. Between 1870 and 1901, for example, the 13,000 citizens of Annecy created over seventy-five associations, averaging more than two new associations each year.(6)

As part of this lively associational life, charities have a particular relevance to the history of Third Republic France, for voluntary organizations are central to both the prevailing interpretation of the regime's failure and a recent critique of that argument. The belief that French men and women were reluctant to join clubs and societies constitutes an essential aspect of Stanley Hoffmann's "stalemate society," a now paradigmatic description of the republic.(7) For Hoffmann, the associations that could have offered France a means of creating strong links between the citizenry and the state, links that might have engendered loyalty and raised the possibility of change within the existing system, were missing. Without them, the state remained unable to incorporate a growing working class into the union of bourgeois and peasants at the heart of the "Republican synthesis."(8) Instead, the state, the ultimate symbol of public authority, assumed the mantle of sole legitimate mediator among individual citizens.(9) Recently, however, Philip Nord has challenged this view of both associational life and French civil society.(10) Nord posits the centrality of associations in constructing a strong republican political culture in the 1860s and 1870s by stirring the rebirth of civil society during the final years of the empire and the first decade of the new republic. Despite imperial attempts either to destroy or control autonomous public life, Nord argues, associations as diverse as the Protestant Consistory and the Paris Bar nurtured civil society and saved it from state dominance. In the process, they imbued public life with republican sentiments. Far from the weak associational life Hoffmann depicts, Nord's Third Republic was a regime in which the "state pulled back from civil society, [while] citizens pushed into new spaces. . . . The Third Republic was a democratic regime that sprang from and then nurtured a resurrected civil society. It rested on solid institutional and associational foundations."(11)

While Nord's insightful analysis brings new vigor to the study of public life and civic culture in nineteenth-century France, he leaves much of associational life during the Third Republic unexamined. His study ends as the fledgling regime achieved more secure footing. Moreover, his argument overemphasizes the state's retreat from civil society; freedom of association became law only in 1901. A significant aspect of the history of associational life, the state, and civil society in Third Republic France thus remains unclear: the interaction of associations and the state. This essay explores the world of Bordelais charities between 1870 and 1914 as a means of assessing that relationship. Charities in particular, although not organized interest groups, reveal much about civil society and the state. They unite people for a very public common purpose and frequently place them into direct contact with public authority. As the first section demonstrates, this was especially true in Third Republic Bordeaux and throughout urban France, where charities represented one half of a partnership with public assistance. This alliance arose from an interdependent relationship between public officials, who relied upon charities for public services, and charities, which depended upon the state for authorization and the financial rewards it offered. The basis and operation of this interdependence is the object of the analysis that follows, an examination that separates the interaction of public officials and benefactors into three categories: state authorization and legal status, which highlight the legal context of cooperation; the functions charities performed, which reveal the very real sense of public obligation that motivated charitable activity; and the financial ties between charities and the state, which emphasize the public recognition of the vital part private charities played in Bordelais social welfare. The partnership of public assistance and private charity evident in this discussion depicts a system of poor relief peopled with an activist elite who welcomed cooperation with the state, a portrait that defies traditional characterizations of French social welfare, the state, and civil society. The final section applies these lessons to broader interpretations of Third Republic France, demonstrating the limitations of those that over-emphasize the Jacobin state as the overlord of a weak civil society while tempering those that underestimate the role of the state in shaping civic activity and culture.

Poor Relief in Urban France

For the most part, scholars of French social welfare have overlooked the dynamic nature of urban charity during the late nineteenth century because their studies have been rooted in the search for the legislative and institutional trappings of the modern welfare state.(12) The history of poor relief, those programs devised to aid all needy French men and women, has fallen by the wayside - the programs judged inefficient and anachronistic remnants of the early modern period.(13) Instead, historians have focused primarily on only two issues: the failure of social insurance schemes and, more recently, French innovation in maternal and pronatal welfare.(14) Consequently, they have perpetuated the general perception that the French did little to assist their less fortunate compatriots. Even the maternal and pronatal programs of recent attention appear as exceptions in a persistently backward French nation.

At first glance, such views may seem warranted, for innovations in public assistance were piecemeal and rested on the solid foundation of tradition. As late as 1887, Dr. Paul Dupuy, member of Bordeaux's municipal council, summarized the sparse nature of French poor relief in these terms: "in our country, the poor man . . . has neither legal . . . nor administrative recourse. . . . In fact, except for the mentally retarded and children, communes have nothing but a sort of moral obligation to assistance."(15) While the ancien regime and the Revolution of 1789 had each bequeathed various laws and institutions, the basis for public assistance remained vague and insecure.(16) By 1914, this had changed dramatically. The needy in France now had distinct rights to assistance. The law of 14 July 1893 established free medical treatment for all indigent French citizens and the law of 15 July 1905 decreed pensions to the poor who were unable to work due to age or infirmity. At the center of these reforms, however, was the concept of municipal obligation. The law guaranteed assistance, but made municipal officials responsible for organizing and funding the lion's share of relief.(17) In Third Republic France assistance remained neither centrally organized nor comprehensively allocated.

Lack of direction and support from Paris did not leave officials in urban France paralyzed, however. Even before reforms in 1893 and 1905, local leaders in Bordeaux, for example, demonstrated significant initiative. In 1871, municipal officials instituted a pension system that accommodated eight hundred elderly indigents by 1905. Later, in 1879, the city added a new nighttime emergency medical service to its traditional stable of relief institutions - the hospitals, hospices, Bureau de bienfaisance, and Depot de mendicite that comprised the legacy of ancien regime and revolutionary relief. Shortly thereafter, in 1880, administrators of the Bureau de bienfaisance unveiled a reorganized medical division that earned glowing reports from national inspectors. A home birth program for indigent mothers rounded out this service in 1885. Of course, these new programs placed a greater burden on city finances. Between 1870 and 1914, Bordeaux's public assistance budget grew from 700,133 francs to 2,241,183 francs, a jump of over 220 percent. Municipal officials split this increase almost evenly; nationally mandated programs accounted for approximately half of the 1914 budget, with the remainder allocated for strictly municipal relief. (18)

These programs represented only part of Bordeaux's system of poor relief; the cornerstone of aid rested on a partnership of public assistance and private charity. The Sisters of Charity toiled in most municipal relief centers, while a private association, the Societe pour l'extinction de la mendicite dans Bordeaux, funded and operated the Depot de mendicite, a public institution. Moreover, an ever-growing number of benevolent societies met demands that public officials acknowledged but could not fill. That Bordelais assistance should rely heavily upon private charity is not surprising. Left to bear the brunt of the burden, city officials turned increasingly to private charities to cope with the throngs of needy men, women, and children who gathered daily at the municipal Bureau de bienfaisance. Men like Charles de Pelleport-Burete heeded that call. While the city's population grew by approximately 35% between 1870 and 1914, the number of charities increased by nearly twice that rate.(19) By 1914, Bordeaux boasted of over 115 benevolent associations, two-thirds more than the approximately 70 charities that had existed in 1870.(20) In fact, as early as 1890, the number of benevolent societies had grown so high that it prompted the founder of one new charity to declare:

"What," they said, "you want to found a new charity! But it's raining charities in Bordeaux . . . where it often rains! You forget that only yesterday we inaugurated the hospitalite de nuit! Are you not solicited daily to assist the daycare centers, the Societe protectrice de l'enfance, the Bureau de bienfaisance, the Depot de mendicite, the Red Cross, ex-convicts, the blind, the elderly! Have you forgotten the lotteries, the fairs, the charity sales . . . ? It is crazy to write a new item on the charity budgets of your fellow citizens."(21)

Yet this proposed charity, established in the first year of a decade that witnessed the creation of at least fifteen other charities, succeeded in Bordeaux. By the outbreak of the First World War, public and private resources in Bordeaux provided emergency ambulance service, pensions to the poor, free medical care for the indigent, orphanages, and temporary lodging for the destitute, to list only a few of the city's poor relief options.

While much work remains to be done on assistance elsewhere, it seems unlikely that Bordeaux was exceptional. The concerns that prompted the Bordelais to devise a public/private system of assistance were not unknown in France's other cities. Caught in the same vice of central state inertia and the need to maintain both birth rates and social order, elites in large urban centers followed a course similar to that trod by their Bordelais colleagues throughout the nineteenth century.(22) In Aix-en-Provence, for example, the Bureau de bienfaisance worked alongside associations like the (Euvre des dames de charite, the Conference de la Societe de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, and the local Masonic lodges.(23) Throughout France during the Third Republic private charity blossomed, giving rise in 1889 to a series of national and international congresses that united public officials and private benefactors in their common struggle against poverty.(24) The Bordelais not only reflected this national trend, but they also learned from it by drawing on the experiences of other cities in constructing their own system. In 1904, Bordeaux's Bureau de bienfaisance refused to bankroll a series of Jardins ouvriers, or workers' gardens, because no other city except Nancy had a similar publicly-funded program. Workers gardens' in Sedan, Nantes, Arras, Dijon, and Lyon had only private resources.(25) In short, while Bordeaux was not without its particularities, such as the presence of an important and powerful Protestant, republican minority, the city's local, public/private system of poor relief, which relied heavily upon private associations, mirrored assistance in most of the hexagon's urban centers.(26)

Charities, State Authorization, and Legal Status

If benefactors could securely cement their charities into the edifice of Bordelais poor relief, they could not do so solely according to their own designs. French law dictated numerous opportunities for state intervention into the realm of private organizations. Despite frequent legal fluctuations, most associations depended upon state authorization well into the twentieth century. Indeed, before 1901, freedom of association was a glaring omission in the pantheon of French legislation. Any group of more than twenty people who wished to meet regularly to achieve a common, non-profit goal was at the mercy of the state, which could grant and revoke authorization at its will and exercise complete powers of surveillance.(27) The 1901 Law on Associations that granted freedom of association to all French citizens primarily offered cosmetic adjustments. For most voluntary organizations, little changed; the new law granted freedom of association only to those groups that did not require a separate legal status extending the rights to collect dues and own property. These latter prerogatives still resulted only from state sanction.(28) In addition, French law offered charities an important means of safeguarding solvency: the declaration of public utility (utilite publique). Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Minister of the Interior could grant the designation "public utility" if requested by the association, seconded by the prefect and municipal council, and voted upon favorably by the government. Associations of public utility had the right to own bonds and property and, with government approval, to accept large donations and bequests.(29) Like authorization, the benefits of a public utility designation came at a price, namely the increased potential for state intervention and the subsequent loss of autonomy. In effect, charities, like most associations, continued to depend upon the bounty of public officials who retained extensive powers of oversight. To assess the relationship between charities and the state, then, one must begin with the process of authorization and the legal regime under which associations functioned. What emerges is a statutory framework that bolstered interdependence: benefactors, and their societies, were neither free agents in an expansive civil society nor helpless pawns of an over-powering state.

The direct and indirect controls French law afforded the state, as well as the financial rewards of authorization and public utility, are well documented in the formative years of the (Euvre bordelaise de l'hospitalite de nuit. Founded in 1888, the (Euvre operated Bordeaux's Asile de nuit, a shelter where men without means could spend up to three nights free of charge. The demand for such an establishment came to light first in 1885, when an auxiliary bureau of the Bureau de bienfaisance appealed to the Bureau's administrative commission to create a hostel for transients and newcomers. The administrative commission demurred, however, because neither it nor the city could afford the approximately 50,000 francs for initial foundation expenses. Alfred Daney, speaking as mayor and president of the Bureau, explained that current finances limited the maximum the proposed Asile could expect from public sources to an annual subsidy from the city and a plot of land from the Bureau. The Asile's supporters would have to form a private association and raise the necessary funds through a subscription. In short, the Asile de nuit would have to be one more example of the public/private partnership in Bordelais assistance.(30)

The following year a generous donation of 60,000 francs from Mme. Albert Brandenburg, widow of a former mayor of Bordeaux, obviated the need for a subscription, but placed supporters of the Asile in an ambiguous position.(31) Since the association necessary to creating the Asile still did not exist, the donation fell to the Bureau de bienfaisance, as did the task of creating the Asile. Some, like Alexandre Leon, vice-president of the administrative commission, insisted that the Bureau de bienfaisance should play an important role in organizing and operating the new establishment. Others, especially members of the municipal council serving on the administrative commission, argued that close supervision from public officials would give the Asile the appearance of a public institution with little need for private donations. Neither the city nor the Bureau, they argued, could afford such misconceptions.(32) A consensus slowly emerged, although Leon persisted in his opposition to a completely independent institution - a position that bordered on petulance - and on March 10, 1888 the administrative committee for the new (Euvre bordelaise de l'hospitalite de nuit officially convened for the first time.(33) Under the leadership of Charles Gaden, republican municipal councilor and hospital administrator, the new committee included members of the auxiliary branches of the Bureau de bienfaisance, representatives of the city, and a broad range of Bordeaux's charitable elite, including that scion of Bordelais charity, the vicomte Charles de Pelleport-Burete.(34)

This inauspicious beginning did not bode well for the new charity, which encountered its first problem with legal status less than two months later. In April the prefect acknowledged receipt of a letter notifying him that a new charitable establishment was under construction in his jurisdiction, but he reminded the Bureau de bienfaisance that the (Euvre bordelaise de l'hospitalite de nuit in and of itself had no legal existence. Consequently, he wrote, it remained a subsidiary of the Bureau and could make no financial decisions of its own. Only state authorization could alter this. Soon afterwards, he informed the (Euvre's administrative committee that the statutes they had sent him did not require government approval: without authorization or public utility, the (Euvre was "nothing but an annex of the Bureau de bienfaisance."(35) The new establishment simply required internal regulations that did not demand prefectoral sanction. Unwilling to accept this status, and the possibility of renewed interference from Leon, the (Euvre's administrative committee decided to seek both authorization and public utility, making the Asile completely independent of the Bureau de bienfaisance.(36)

No sooner had they come to this decision than they found themselves embroiled in a controversy over land ownership. In fact, before they even formulated their request, the prefect informed them that the Minister of the Interior would demand assurance of their durability, that is, the (Euvre would have to make provisions to own the land upon which the Asile stood in the event of the "public utility" designation. Still smarting from his defeat, Leon convinced his colleagues at the Bureau de bienfaisance, the legal proprietor, that the best solution was to cede use of the land to the (Euvre as long as it operated the Asile. Although the prefect insisted that this would result in the application's rejection, the administrative committee had no choice but to accept the offer of use in perpetuity, for the prefect could not force his opinion on the Bureau de bienfaisance and Leon could not be swayed.(37) Thus, after acquiring municipal sanction, the (Euvre officially requested a declaration of public utility on March 22, 1891 as owners of the Asile but not the plot of land upon which it had been built. Ultimately, the long arm of Paris settled the dispute: the Ministry of the Interior formally"asked" the Bureau de bienfaisance to abandon its title in favor of the (Euvre. The Ministry required this and some minor alterations in the (Euvre's statutes before it ruled on their request. Faced with this veiled ultimatum, Leon and the Bureau ceded, and on April 31, 1892, a presidential decree declared the (Euvre bordelaise de l'hospitalite de nuit an association of public utility.(38)

If the declaration of public utility unexpectedly offered the (Euvre a means of asserting its independence from the Bureau de bienfaisance, it also provided more customary benefits like the right to accept gifts and bequests. Even before it had earned this right, the (Euvre had again become the object of Mme. Brandenburg's largesse. Once more, however, her generosity became entangled in the bureaucracy of the Bureau de bienfaisance. When Mme. Brandenburg died in 1892 she left 100,000 francs to the Bureau de bienfaisance stipulating that it go to the creation of a new Asile or to a recently organized charity that benefited morally abandoned children, the (Euvre du refuge des enfants abandonnes ou delaisses de la Gironde.(39) Although the government made no mention of these wishes in their decree allowing the Bureau to accept this vast sum, the Bureau's administrative commission assumed that the Interior Ministry had remained mute on the matter because neither charity was an association of public utility at the time. In a more characteristic posture of equanimity and cooperation, Leon and his colleagues therefore decided to hold the money until each had attained that status.(40) On August 20, 1892, the (Euvre, now an association of public utility, received its share of this bequest, 50,000 francs.(41) Public utility further enabled the (Euvre to turn that money to the purchase of more land and the construction of a new Asile for women, which opened in the late 1890s.

Of course, winning Leon's grudging but eventually sincere cooperation did not end state influence over the (Euvre and its Asile. The purchase of land for the new women's hostel, for example, required prefectoral approval. Moreover, the right to accept donations and bequests remained contingent on government sanction. In some instances, this dependency made it politically impossible for a charity like the Asile to accept a bequest. In 1894, the (Euvre refused one such bequest because it stipulated that Catholic Sisters staff the new women's Asile. Recognizing the difficulties this might provoke with a republican government, the administrative committee chose to decline it.(42) The state's power also extended to the right of inspection. Charities that ran institutions like the Asile de nuit frequently inserted clauses in their statutes that allowed the prefect, the Minister of the Interior, and their designees the right to inspect both their financial records and their properties should questions arise.

Yet to overemphasize the state's role would be misleading. Charities employed a number of strategies to avoid or soften government regulations. The administrative committee of the Asile de nuit, for example, used the designation of utilite publique as a means of asserting its independence from the Bureau de bienfaisance once and for all. It also sought the assistance of the prefect in establishing ownership of the land it occupied. The founders of the (Euvre du refuge des enfants abandonnes ou delaisses de la Gironde (OREAG) were even cleverer. In order to buy an estate for their boys' home in 1890, before the law allowed authorized associations to own property, the jurists who founded OREAG created a small nominally independent corporation to buy the estate and rent it to the charity. This corporation started with 125 shares bearing 4% interest. OREAG owned twenty-four shares in 1890 and continued to buy shares as the years passed. Seven years later, the charity, which had achieved utilite publique status in 1892, purchased the remaining shares and became sole owner of the estate.(43) In addition, associations could often escape close government supervision. Thus, in 1914, the prefect of the Gironde complained to the Minister of the Interior that two associations of public utility in Bordeaux, the Societe Ste Cecile and the Academie des Sciences, Belles Lettres et Arts de Bordeaux, had refused to modify their statutes in accordance with the Law of July 1 - thirteen years after its implementation! The Minister replied that he could do little to enforce compliance. Only if or when these organizations sought government approval for such actions as accepting bequests or selling property, he wrote, could the state step in and demand modifications before granting approval.(44)

As these cases demonstrate, the existence in French law of state licensing for all associations before 1901 placed charities under substantial government oversight, a situation that persisted even after authorization. Subsequent modifications to administration and statutes required government sanction, while legislation regulating donations and bequests permitted public officials to decide whether an association could benefit from private generosity. For most charities, these controls continued even after French law guaranteed freedom of association in 1901. Financial benefits - like the rights to own property, collect dues, and accept donations and bequests - made authorization and public utility virtually indispensable. Yet government authority had limits. There were myriad ways of softening state supervision and regulation. Nevertheless, associational law in France established an environment in which interdependence between public officials and private benefactors might flourish: the former acknowledged needs that charity could meet, while the latter sought the financial benefits that legal status bestowed. All charities felt the obligation to cooperate with public officials. Indeed, such sentiments of obligation exerted a strong influence on Bordelais charities, shaping their approach to public service and the tasks they chose to perform.

Charitable Functions and the State

Given the structure of French poor relief, it would have been difficult for charities to avoid fulfilling public policy functions. As the designation "public utility" acknowledged, in a setting where public officials recognized few obligations and poverty thrived, charities could not help but perform public services. Bordeaux's benevolent societies went beyond this, however. In an atmosphere of friendly interdependence, benefactors enthusiastically sought opportunities to serve the municipality - not just the poor - and willingly took their cues from beleaguered city administrators. In general, these associations accepted three types of policy roles. Most charities belonged to the first group, assisting the state by simply alleviating the pressing demands placed upon public assistance budgets. Public officials relied upon these private associations to perform public duties it could not afford. Some benevolent societies, however, moved beyond this role and became essential elements of public assistance itself, replacing public programs the state subsequently suppressed. Finally, a third category of charities was fundamental to the successful enforcement of various laws such as those against mendicancy and delinquency. In short, while laws established a framework for interdependence, it thrived in an elite culture that stressed cooperation and public duty.

Charities that belonged to the first category were an indispensable part of Bordelais poor relief throughout the first half of the Third Republic, especially as newly legislated programs like medical assistance and pensions for the elderly and infirm indigent commanded a greater portion of the communal budget after 1893. As a result, public officials might recognize a need, but deferred to private charity, much as they had in the 1885 creation of Bordeaux's Asile de nuit. The 1904 foundation of Bordeaux's network of workers' gardens (Jardins ouvriers), for example, proceeded along familiar lines. On February 18, 1904 Charles Cazalet, member of an auxiliary bureau of the Bureau de bienfaisance, submitted a report to his fellow members detailing the benefits of establishing a workers' garden in Bordeaux. This plan called upon the Bureau de bienfaisance to create and fund a series of gardens rented at low cost to needy families. Upon inspection, however, the Bureau's administrative commission rejected the proposal, acknowledging the need and utility of such a program, but noting also that, except in Nancy, other workers' gardens in France were "founded by private initiative and maintained by groups independent of public administration."(45) If Bordeaux were to take its place among the other major cities of France in this respect, it would have to be the work of private charity.(46) Cazalet was not deterred. Using his connections as a member of Bordeaux's business and charitable elite (he was an influential negociant and General Secretary of the (Euvre bordelaise des bains-douches a bon march, an association that operated inexpensive public bathhouses), he turned to the Societe bordelaise des habitations a bon marche for assistance. This association accepted the program of workers' gardens as a natural by-product of their principal goal of subsidizing low-cost housing for workers. Of course, the fact that Cazalet and his brother Benjamin sat on the administrative council of this association bolstered the argument for this extension. The first network of ten gardens opened in 1905, offering low-rent plots to families having anywhere from three to nine children. Its success was mirrored in the subsequent networks established in the following three years. In the eyes of administrators and contributors, these gardens fulfilled the useful goal of supplying inexpensive fresh vegetables to needy families while "distanc[ing] fathers from cabarets."(47) At the same time they reduced the burden on public assistance by choosing families listed on the rolls of the Bureau de bienfaisance.

The history of vacation daycare centers for school-aged children offers another example of associations filling an acknowledged gap in municipal assistance. It also places an exact figure on the amount of money the city could save in its support of charity. In 1895 the city attempted to create its own centers but found it too expensive at 300 francs per school. Working-class families were left with no services for their school-aged children during vacations until 1907, when a private association, the Groupe de peres de famille des Chartrons, sponsored new daycare services for neighborhood schools. A few years later, however, this association and a similar one established in another neighborhood, the Groupe laique des garderies scolaires de La Bastide, began to run up deficits. Having recognized the need for such centers as early as 1895, the municipal council had no difficulty in justifying an annual subsidy for these associations and voted 125 francs to each in 1911.(48) Municipal officials thereby secured a necessary task at less than half the original cost.

In some cases, private associations did more than simply fill the gaps in municipal relief and ease the burdens placed on public assistance; some replaced bureaucrats entirely. From its creation in 1892, for example, the Office central de la charite bordelaise fitted exactly the role public officials desired for private charity. Like most charities, the Office central was born of a perceived need; it differed only in the active role the city first took in its formation. When, in 1891, the mayor of Bordeaux summoned representatives from each of the charities in his jurisdiction, they applauded his desire to imitate Paris and establish a central clearinghouse to investigate all supplicants and thereby prevent abuse of both public and private assistance. They insisted, however, that the central office be a municipal establishment. The mayor and the city council disagreed. With the assistance of the vicomte Charles de Pelleport-Burete, the municipality created the private Office central in 1892. Though the Office central enjoyed its own statutes and administration, from its very beginning it allied itself closely to public assistance. It benefited from an one-time installation subsidy of 2,000 francs, it established its headquarters in the same city-owned building that housed the Bureau de bienfaisance, and it had full use of the records of the Bureau which ran its own investigative operation.(49) Moreover, the mayor's office, which benefited from these services free of charge, made frequent use of the Office central, requesting files on almost 750 individuals in 1894.(50) Here was a perfect example of public/private cooperation in matters of poor relief. Despite such intimate connections, city officials did not want the Office central to become a municipal service. Rather, the city sought to lessen the burden on its budget by eradicating fraud. In addition, municipal officials saw in the Office central the opportunity to expand the role of private initiative in poor relief. In suggesting the initial subsidy, for example, the municipal councilor Hughes-Julien Jouffre referred to the new association as "a center of all the diverse efforts united in the common goal of easing misery . . . [It] will be able to exist independently, founding new institutions where needed and existing without recourse to the city budget."(51) Such hopes remained vague, however, as the Office central continued the more traditional function of filling a need that public officials recognized but could not or would not address.

The Office central moved beyond this general capacity in 1899 when it took over the investigative service previously operated by the Bureau de bienfaisance. Before this date the Office central had performed a similar function for the municipality, scrutinizing the needy who sought assistance directly from the mayor's office, but it had never replaced a municipal bureaucracy. In this manner, it was more like the Asile de nuit and the Jardins ouvriers than a departure from the norm. The substitution of the Office central for a pre-existing public service in 1899 pushed the policy function of this charitable association beyond merely reducing the budget in a general sense, however. Like most bureaucracies, the Bureau resisted any reduction in its power. It was forced to relinquish its investigative role after it requested an additional municipal subsidy to cover one of its many budgetary deficits. In return, the city demanded certain economies and began negotiations with the Office central. Thus, in 1899 the Office central added to its normal tasks the investigation of all supplicants to the Bureau de bienfaisance. The municipality acknowledged this service by instituting a 3,000-franc annual subsidy for the Office central and reduced its funding for the Bureau by the same amount. In the end, the Bureau saved a mere 500 francs annually, for it had normally budgeted approximately 3,500 francs for its investigation office.(52)

Perhaps the most striking evidence of interdependence between public officials and associations arises from the set of organizations that performed tasks essential to the proper and smooth functioning of French law. The Association des dames de Bordeaux pour l'oeuvre du relevement moral, for example, rendered a valuable service to Bordelais law enforcement officials. Founded in 1890, this association had always had close dealings with the law; it ran a halfway house for women recently released from prison. Members visited Bordeaux's prisons regularly in search of women who - in their eyes - needed assistance upon release. From the very beginning, however, its members, the Protestant elite of Bordeaux, had hoped to broaden its scope by aiding female minors and unwed mothers, adding prevention to the initial goal of moral redemption. Law enforcement officials were only too happy to see this new charity established, and adapted its goals and institutions to their needs. In 1903, the public prosecutor's office in Bordeaux asked the administrative committee if the state could place juvenile girls in their home. They thereby "hoped to save [these delinquent girls] from a dangerous term in prison," which would only harden them and lead them to commit more crimes once released. The committee readily accepted and became yet another private association that performed a public policy function.(53)

Unlike the Association des dames, the founders of the (Euvre du refuge des enfants abandonnes ou delaisses de la Gironde (OREAG) did not wait for public officials to seek them out. The magistrates who founded this association already had a precise policy role in mind. In July 1889, the French National Assembly broke with centuries of Roman law and instituted a limitation on paternal authority. By law, public officials could now use the courts to remove children morally and physically endangered by their parents. Unfortunately, throughout most of France, judges who removed these children from their homes had only one alternative: sending them to juvenile correction centers. The administrators of OREAG proposed a different solution, at least for the children of the Gironde. Under the guidance of Fernand Marin, a respected Bordelais judge, a group of jurists gathered before passage of the 1889 law and began planning. Shortly afterwards, on March 18, 1889, they announced their formation and issued an appeal for funds. This new charity defined its goal as the placement and rehabilitation of children either removed from their homes by the courts or placed under supervision by parents or guardians. Similar to the Association des dames, OREAG hoped to prevent such children from becoming hardened criminals after extended stays in correctional institutions. They hoped "to make of these unhappy souls, who are the seedbed of prisons, honest farmers, disciplined soldiers, [and] industrious workers."(54) Although officially housed in Bordeaux's Palais de justice, by 1897 OREAG had two agricultural estates for boys and an extensive rural placement network for both girls and boys.(55) Statistics from the first years of operation bear out the central role OREAG played in both public assistance and law enforcement. Between 1890 and 1895, thirty-four percent of the boys sent to OREAG's estates had been placed there after running afoul of the law. Twenty-five percent were abandoned children. Moreover, sixteen percent of the children housed by OREAG stayed at the expense of the association, while public assistance assumed the costs for seventeen percent of them.(56) Besides an annual subsidy of 2,000 francs, the city of Bordeaux paid OREAG 1,000 francs in 1895 to house a number of abandoned children.(57) OREAG thus provided an alternative to prisons for delinquent boys and an institution where public officials could house abandoned children.

No associations could claim a closer relationship to public assistance and law enforcement than the Societe pour l'extinction de la mendicite dans Bordeaux (SEMB), however. Indeed, this association offers a perfect example of how public and private combined in nineteenth-century poor relief. According to article 274 of the French penal code, vagrancy was illegal only in areas where a Depot de mendicite or comparable institution existed. Yet the central state provided no means for building such establishments. In 1827, then, a group of Bordelais notables, including the prefect and the mayor, founded the SEMB with the goal of creating a new Depot de mendicite.(58) They wanted an institution where convicted beggars could find shelter, clothing, and food while earning a few sous before complete reintegration into society. Within a year, this group of local elite had raised over 300,000 francs, rented a compound, and earned official recognition as Bordeaux's Depot de mendicite. One year later, in 1828, the city purchased the property on which the Depot stood and freely offered it to the SEMB as long as the association operated the institution. The SEMB thus joined the ranks of other private charities upon which much of Bordelais social welfare rested.(59)

As the concept of poverty loosened its moorings in criminality and confinement during the century, so the SEMB gradually shifted its focus from able-bodied beggars and indigents to the infirm entitled to public relief. More often than not, however, this transformation occurred at the instigation of public officials. On November 22, 1890, for example, Justin de Selves, prefect of the Gironde, convened a Special Commission on Mendicancy, which asked the SEMB to organize a new section for the infirm - "the most deserving category of the disinherited."(60) After careful consideration, the administrators rejected a planned separate building as too costly and proposed two rooms set aside and specially equipped for the infirm. Despite a statutory prohibition of the infirm, the SEMB demanded only that the city and the department bankroll the 16,000 franc installation, and that both pay a per diem rate of 1 Fr. 20 for each resident.(61) The three parties then signed a convention on September 8, 1891 and the new quartier des infirms opened it doors on April 1, 1892.

This quartier represented a drastic shift in the SEMB's acknowledged function. In 1883, for example, Charles de Pelleport-Burete, by then the Societe's vice-president, had argued that

the Depot de mendicite, as indicated in its founding statement, is neither a hospice nor a hospital. It is a temporary refuge for indigents who, unable to work, would be forced to beg to survive. Their prolonged presence in the establishment would alter the goal of this institution, and, if it became the rule, would make it impossible for the city to repress mendicancy.(62)

As for the infirm, they were "a forced exception that we should avoid whenever possible."(63) By 1892, however, Pelleport-Burete was skirting the distinction. In labeling the quartier des infirm, a "Waiting Room for the Public Hospices," he clearly aimed to appease both those who objected to moving beyond the association's statutes and those who argued that this small space was not enough. "One might find that . . . [our] quartier does not have the capacities of Bordeaux's public hospices; we know, but in order to remain within our traditions, it had to be so."(64) Finally, by 1895, the transformation was complete, and Pelleport-Burete made no effort to hide the motives behind it: service to the city and the department.

[Y]our Societe, straying from its first rule, has extended the limits of its charity, and today you hospitalize annually in your establishment an average of 215 indigents who, without your sage foresight, would fall into mendicancy. We must not regret this touching infraction of your first statutes, for the good that you accomplish in very economical conditions, for the sake of the public hospices, and, consequently, the municipal budget, is considerable.(65)

This devotion to public service and cooperation fueled the changes in the Depot's structure in 1892, and encouraged public officials to push for further modifications, even as they altered the institution beyond recognition. By 1912, the SEMB's facilities had become an integral part of public assistance in Bordeaux, offering up to 174 beds for infirm pensioners granted state aid under the auspices of the 1905 law on assistance.

In sum, Bordelais charitable associations like OREAG and the SEMB fulfilled a wide range of public policy functions in the nineteenth century, roles that broadened after poverty began to arouse greater concern in the 1880s and 1890s.(66) Thus, while charities depended upon the state for authorization, public officials relied upon the services private charities furnished. Indeed, they readily turned to associations. Members of the Bureau de bienfaisance, for example, included among their many tasks the "larger and more noble mission [of] encouraging the development of diverse charities that fill the gaps in public assistance."(67) As a whole, the benefactors of Bordeaux considered this call for help and responded enthusiastically. Most organizations, like the Asile de nuit, the Jardins ouvriers, and the vacation daycare centers, performed the more general service of aiding those who might otherwise overburden the city's public assistance budget and offering types of aid previously unavailable. Others, like the Office central, performed an important task upon which municipal officials relied. Finally, associations like the Association de dames, OREAG, and the SEMB made possible the proper functioning of French law. Without these associations and the institutions they administered, both Bordeaux and the Gironde would have had fewer options for dealing with the problems of wayward girls, morally abandoned children, convicted beggars, and the new categories of French citizens guaranteed assistance under the 1893 and 1905 poor relief reforms. As a more detailed examination of the financial ties that bound the state and private charities demonstrates, public officials were willing to pay for these options.

Charity Financing and Public Authority

Between 1870 and 1914, Bordelais benevolent societies possessed three possibilities for public funding: grants, contracts, and subsidies. And, like the process of legal authorization, funding issues placed charities into the purview of any of the three layers of French government: the central state, the department, and the municipality. One principle bound these disparate elements together, however. With public funding, officials and benefactors implicitly and explicitly acknowledged the indispensable role charities played in public assistance. As a result, they also recognized the state's dependence upon private associations.

The grant, a one-time payment typically allocated for a specific purpose, was the most common financial link between charities and the central state. These often substantial sums originated from the pari mutuel, a special fund created in 1891.(68) That year, when the National Assembly passed new legislation organizing the increasingly popular sport of horse racing, it taxed the proceeds from betting. The law instructed authorized racing associations to set aside two percent of the total receipts for the benefit of local charities. A committee, comprising principally bureaucrats from the Ministries of the Interior and Agriculture, collected these sums and then allocated portions upon application.(69) The Asile de nuit, for example, requested and received 50,000 francs toward the construction of the new women's hostel in 1894.(70) The SEMB similarly benefited from the pari mutuel, although it received merely half of the 60,000 it requested for renovations in 1898.(71) Although these grants offered a considerable amount of money, they remained extraordinary in nature. Few charities could consider them a reliable source of revenue.

Contracts with public officials, on the other hand, figured prominently in the annual budgets of a number of Bordelais charities. In fact, public assistance administrators commonly contracted with private institutions. The National Assembly itself acknowledged this custom when they legislated assistance to the mentally retarded in 1838. This law required departments either to found public facilities or to contract with private institutions for the care of these persons.(72) In the Gironde, the department also used contracts to deal with such institutions as the Depot de mendicite in Bordeaux, which reserved fifty beds for individuals placed there by the prefect's office. These experiences, in fact, fed a desire to delegate even more responsibilities to private associations through negotiated settlements. Before the outbreak of war in 1914, the departmental Conseil general was considering a plan to meet the obligations of the 1893 law on medical assistance for the indigent by paying the membership dues to mutual aid societies.(73) Although the declaration of war truncated these prolonged deliberations, the plan to meet the obligations of public assistance through private associations speaks to the traditional nature of French poor relief. Confronted by national reforms that only added obligations to already strapped departmental and communal resources, officials in the Gironde and Bordeaux sought to lighten their burden in a time-tested manner; they turned to private associations.

Municipal officials, too, contracted with private institutions, the vast majority of which were establishments like OREAG that housed abandoned and orphaned children.(74) The municipal budget referred to these agreements as bourses, or scholarships. Reminiscent more of contracts than subsidies, public officials earmarked these bourses for specific purposes such as the care and education of select individuals. In 1870, the city offered only seven bourses to two institutions: an orphanage for boys and a home for deaf and mute women (see Table 1). That figure grew tenfold between 1870 and 1905. Municipal budget cuts and the closure of a small number of institutions reduced the number of bourses to sixty-two by 1914, but the overall allocation remained more than ten times the amount voted forty-four years earlier. Thus, while the city's population grew approximately thirty-four percent between 1870 and 1914, and the number of those assisted by the Bureau de bienfaisance increased over twenty-eight percent during the same period, the population receiving bourses and the amount allocated for this purpose rose by 785 percent and 968 percent respectively.(75) These figures highlight, once again, the indispensable place of private charity in municipal relief, for the city's dependence on benevolent societies did not merely keep pace with population growth, it overwhelmingly surpassed it.

The amount allocated for these bourses pales in comparison, however, to the public funds spent on subsidies to private charities. Unlike contracts and grants, subsidies seldom carried provisions for specific purposes. In addition, with rare exceptions, public officials awarded this assistance annually. Subsidies from the central state and the department were relatively rare in Bordeaux, however. Officials at both levels of government apparently recognized the impossibility of subsidizing the increasing number of charities and so chose to spend on a limited few. The departmental administration of the Gironde, for example, primarily subsidized only those institutions that accepted people from throughout the department. In 1870, thirteen associations and institutions of this type shared 8,476 francs.(76) Many of these institutions established themselves outside of Bordeaux, however, like the agricultural orphanage in Gradignan, one of the few institutions to receive a departmental subsidy from 1870 to 1914. Consequently, few Bordelais charities benefited from the department's annual budget. This pattern began to change only in the 1890s when departmental spending on public assistance in general increased. The number of subsidized associations jumped dramatically by 1914 to over forty-five, while the amount of money spent correspondingly increased from the original 8,476 francs to 38,490 francs.(77) Even then, however, subsidies went to associations - like OREAG and the Asile de nuit - that benefited the entire department rather then just the municipality.(78)

Table 1

Municipal Bourses in Bordeaux 1870 - 1914

Year       Number of      Number of     Total Spent
         Institutions      Bourses      on Bourses
                                        (in francs)

1870           2              7            1,600
1875           3             18            2,700
1880           3             19            3,100
1885           4             22            3,850
1890           4             22            3,850
1895           4             23            4,000
1900           5             33            9,700
1905          13             72           20,000
1909          12             67           16,700
1914          10             62           17,100

Source: Budgets primitifs, 1870-1914

Subsidies assumed far greater weight at the municipal level. They constituted a central element of public/private partnership in Bordeaux's system of poor relief. Although the Bureau de bienfaisance received frequent requests for these subsidies, the most any association could expect from this agency was the use of a relief distribution center to distribute private aid. The municipal council was thus the only public body in Bordeaux that consistently offered such aid. Already in 1870, the city's budget for public assistance listed ten charities receiving annual subsidies totaling 11,300 francs.(79) This sum grew steadily until the 1880s, and then spiked dramatically upwards: from 22,650 francs in 1885 to 34,250 francs in 1890 (an increase of over fifty percent [see Table 2]). Between 1885 and 1900, the number of subsidized associations and the total amount of subsidies continued their rise until they approximately doubled. Although these figures began to dip after 1900, with the sum of subsidies falling nine percent by 1914, such reductions resulted from a general municipal belt-tightening, and not from a flagging commitment to charity. Between 1909 and 1914 the amount of subsidies rebounded. Like the bourses, the increase in municipal subsidies between 1870 and 1914 easily outstripped population growth. Within these forty-four years, the amount of subsidies and their number rose 310 percent and 230 percent respectively, while the population grew by only thirty-four percent. Although inferior to similar growth in bourses during the first half of the Third Republic, subsidies commanded greater sums in the city's assistance budget and touched more associations.

Table 2

Subsidized Charitable Associations in Bordeaux 1870-1914

Year            Number of Subsidized      Total Amount of Municipal
                    Associations                  Subsidies
                                                 (in francs)

1870                     10                         11,300
1875                     13                         17,500
1880                     20                         21,300
1885                     21                         22,650
1890                     28                         34,250
1895                     33                         39,800
1900                     39                         50,900
1905                     35                         46,090
1909                     35                         42,670
1914                     33                         46,100

Source: Budgets primitifs, 1870-1914

The significance of these financial ties stem more from the notions that framed them than from their actual amounts, however. Indeed, public funding of private institutions and charities in Bordeaux never represented more than ten percent of the municipal budget on public assistance; in 1914 private relief organizations collected over 83,000 francs from municipal coffers, but this was less than four percent of the overall 2.2 million-franc public assistance budget.(80) Nevertheless, these figures indicate both the range of poor relief options in Bordeaux and the continuing importance of private charity in municipal assistance. Moreover, public officials frequently employed funding explicitly to recognize that role, linking subsidies and contracts to services received, not to a lofty ideal of public good. Providing public moneys to benevolent societies was in fact part of a strategy to decrease public spending. As early as 1871, when a municipal commission addressing the problem of child beggars declared, "[w]e believe that in the present circumstances, we should renounce old errors [of turning to public officials for social needs] and ask only private initiative for the funds needed to create a refuge for these poor children," public officials highlighted the cost-saving features of private charity.(81) Later, as the histories of the Asile de nuit, Jardins ouvriers, and Office central demonstrate, municipal officials tempered this broad hands-off stance by offering limited public funds to foster private charity, for they recognized that subsidizing these associations was far less expensive than creating and operating new public assistance programs. As the municipal councilor, future depute, and mayor, Charles Gruet claimed in 1891, "[o]f course, in order to survive, these diverse charities solicit the city for a small place in its budget, but for that small sacrifice from the municipal coffers, what results are achieved!"(82) More often than not, the public policy function of charities convinced the municipal council to part with those minor sums of city resources.

The service a charity provided thus figured prominently in most requests for subsidies, for as the number of benevolent societies rose and competition for municipal funds increased, their founders had to marshal strong arguments for public funding. Thus, when, in 1908, Charles Cazalet, president of the administrative commission of the Creche de La Bastide, requested an extraordinary 6,000-franc subsidy to complete construction on a new site, he underscored the importance of this work.

Is it possible that the city of Bordeaux, which will benefit from a model creche that assures the population of a sizable neighborhood advantage already demonstrated by experience, that gives mothers an absolute calm and permits them to concentrate on their work with the assurance that their dear children will not suffer while they are at the workshop, the store, or the factory; is it possible that the city does not provide such a thing its most generous encouragements?

Such arguments resonated with like-minded municipal councilors who pinned subsidies to useful tasks. The letter from Cazalet, for example, prompted one councilor to note "the nature of the services provided by creches and the noble goal they pursue."(83) Predictably, the council voted overwhelmingly to grant this 6,000-franc subsidy, adding it to the considerable sum the city already spent for the jobs it purchased, and reinforcing the ties that bound private charity and public assistance.

Of course, for individual charities, municipal subsidies could become enormously important. Perhaps nothing demonstrates this better than the brief history of the Societe des ambulances urbaines. Founded in 1890, the Societe des ambulances urbaines operated a network of thirty-one emergency care centers in the working districts of Bordeaux by 1913. In little more than twenty years it assisted almost 200,000 injured people free of charge, prompting one municipal councilor to refer to the "inestimable service [it] provides the working population of our city."(84) This service had earned the Societe an annual subsidy of 3,000 francs in 1893, which the city increased to 3,500 in 1897, and finally to 6,000 in 1912. During its most successful years, the Societe des ambulances urbaines distributed bonuses to the police officers who had been most helpful in assisting the Societe. After 1900, however, the Societe began to experience severe financial problems.(85) Between 1906 and 1910 its revenue decreased by over 17,000 francs while its clientele continued to increase. In 1911 the city helped settle an impending budget crisis with a 2,000-franc supplementary subsidy, but it was not enough to rescue the charity. Forced to take further action by the threat of closure and a petition of 1,500 signatures from workers who relied upon the Societe, the city officially recognized the importance of this virtually bankrupt private charity by municipalizing the service in 1913. The Societe signed over its assets - furniture and instruments worth approximately 10,000 francs - and the city assumed its debts of 3,500 francs. In its decision, the municipal council acknowledged that this charity had suffered from a decline in private donations, "due perhaps to the many charities created everyday."(86) In short, the Societe had fallen victim to the same vigor in private charity that had created it in 1890. On January 1, 1914 the city thus assumed a new obligation, using the 6,000 franc subsidy to supply a service for which it had previously spent only 3,500 francs.(87) In essence, the history of the Societe des ambulances urbaines illustrates how the city could become so reliant upon a private charity that it eventually had to accept unwanted expenses.

Few charities developed such strong dependencies upon public funding as the Societe des ambulances urbaines, however; that is why the partnership of public assistance and private charity prospered during the first half of the Third Republic. Yet the experiences of the Societe do underscore one of the foundations of interdependence in Bordelais poor relief: a relationship steeped in the language of service and cost-saving. Public officials saved money by supporting private organizations that not only survived on a combination of limited state funds and private donations, but also offered vital services to city residents. It was their ability to emphasize these advantages that permitted Bordelais charities to benefit so successfully from all levels of public financing.

Charities and the State: Constructing a Middle Ground

As the history of Bordelais poor relief indicates, charities in Bordeaux were neither independent actors in an autonomous civil society, nor hapless extensions of state agents. Rather, the history of relations between Bordelais charities and the various representatives of public authority centers on interdependence. Charities, like all associations before 1901, required state authorization. Even after the freedom of association granted on July 1, 1901, the benefits of state sanction and the further classification of "public utility" convinced many benevolent societies to submit to government controls. At the same time, many associations also discovered means of escaping this oversight or turning it to their advantage. Within this legal framework, a spirit of cooperation and public obligation prevailed as many benevolent societies increasingly played important public policy roles in municipal and departmental administration. These functions ranged from reducing budgets for public assistance to providing institutions necessary to effective law enforcement. Finally, a host of grants, contracts, and subsidies reinforced these public functions as all levels of French government conceded increasing amounts of money between 1870 and 1914 in order to purchase the services private charities offered. In short, once vetted by the state, charities assumed a prominent place in municipal poor relief, a position from which they frequently fulfilled needs at the behest of public officials and earned admiration and subsidies in return.

This unexpected portrait of urban poor relief challenges a number of long-cherished interpretations of Third Republic France. First, French officials were not as complacent over poverty as previously believed. Alongside the maternal and pronatal programs that have received so much attention lately, politicians and benefactors vigorously supported and extended a more traditional system of assistance that rested heavily upon private charities. Second, the spirit of collaboration and teamwork that permeated the partnership of public assistance and private benevolent societies could function only if other, overtly political divisions were cast aside. Men like the Catholic monarchist Pelleport-Burete found common cause with both the Protestant republican Alfred Daney and the Jewish administrator Alexandre Leon. Historians have placed far too much emphasis on the animosities that enlivened political life during the Third Republic, while ignoring such compromises.(88) Finally, municipal officials were not at the mercy of Parisian dictates. The legendary centralization of the French state did not paralyze urban politicians.(89) Indeed, the Bordelais demonstrated significant initiative in organizing and operating their system of poor relief, which included free medical assistance to the indigent more than a decade before such care became law.

The lessons to be gleaned from Bordeaux move far beyond the realm of social welfare, however, and into historical treatments of French civic culture. Charities were but one manifestation of a surge in associations during the late nineteenth century, a result of the resurrected civil society Philip Nord has recently analyzed. Yet his claim that "the state made a measured retreat from the public domain" after republicans acceded to power in the 1870s fails to account for the partnership of public officials and private benefactors at the heart of Bordelais poor relief. Instead, republicans used the apparatus of the state to reinforce interdependence. French officials refused to relinquish completely their traditional regulatory stance by retaining the obligation to register with government agents if an association demanded a "civil personality," which permitted the group to collect dues and own property. Moreover, imbued with a sense of obligation to the state as well as the poor, many associations, like the SEMB, willingly accepted the opportunity to work with public officials. While the dynamics of this relationship thus modifies Nord's conclusions, it also indicates the shortcomings of Hoffmann's "stalemate society" thesis, which he based on a perceived weakness in associational life. Associations existed, they simply served a different function from the one he and many American political scientists predicted. They were not cradles of democracy that ushered new citizens into an open political arena where the state might be criticized and reformed.(90) Rather, associational life in Third Republic France was reminiscent of what Pierre Rosanvallon has labeled "neo-corporatism."(91) Recently, Rosanvallon employed this term in a study of the French state to describe a group of official consultative bodies created during the Third Republic. Attached to the executive branch, these consultative bodies, or consells superieurs, united various public officials and private citizens in an effort to propose reforms and steer them through the labyrinthine parliamentary process. The Conseil superieur de l'assistance publique, for example, joined sixty men, from parliamentarians to prominent physicians, in a goal of "illuminating the administration on all questions of assistance and thrift" by "linking diverse deliberative competencies and the executive."(92) During the early years of the Third Republic, governments created similar conseils in such important realms as national defense and education, and their number would later grow to include agriculture, commerce, fine arts, and labor. Rosanvallon argues that these conseils bridged the gaps between the state and civil society in a "practical compromise between the French doctrine of sovereignty," which sanctioned only elective forms of the general will, and "the imperatives of a government based upon social movements."(93) What Rosanvallon describes at the national level was perhaps even more pervasive in the cities, for that was where the real pressure to cope with need was more keenly felt. Thus, the consultative functions of the national conseils superieurs became the more extensive service provision functions of local charities. By instituting a system of poor relief that saddled obligation on municipalities, French legislators ensured that charitable associations would prosper in Third Republic France; no city could afford to forego their assistance.

If Bordelais charities are any indication, then, French benevolent societies occupied a middle ground between vigorous independence and state manipulation and control.(94) This sphere of interdependence rested on certain traits in French politics and society. Among these were a growing recognition of the need for social services - more often than not spurred by fears of degeneration and falling birth rates - and a political elite unwilling to extend state obligations into the larger arena of social welfare - which bred a host of municipal officials who enthusiastically supported charitable individuals and groups. This created the atmosphere necessary to the partnership of public officials and private benefactors. Perhaps most important to this middle ground, however, was an activist bourgeoisie willing, and sometimes eager, to work with the state. Men like Pelleport-Burete of the SEMB and Office central, Charles Cazalet of the Jardins ouvriers, Charles Gaden of the Asile de nuit, and Fernand Marin of OREAG subsumed their political differences under a language of service to both the poor and the municipality. It was the combination of these factors after 1870 that formed a middle ground between the state and society, a set of institutional arrangements at the national and local levels that highlighted the bourgeois nature of the Republic by underscoring the public and private avenues for bourgeois participation in policy formation and implementation. This intermediary sphere offered the Republic an essential means for bridging ideological disputes and forging the social and political institutions necessary to the regime's survival.(95)

The existence of this middle ground raises a series of questions and possibilities for further study by offering a possible framework for interpreting subsequent events and policies. While its institutional and social bases have fluctuated, the cooperation of public officials and associations has remained a fact of French political life since the early years of the Third Republic. Thus, as expected, French social welfare continued to evolve in the twentieth century with considerable participation from private associations.(96) With time, government officials saw the usefulness of extending this system beyond questions of social provisioning to include broader economic concerns. By the 1950s, the rapport between associations and public officials spread from economic planification to the advocacy groups that continue to work with state agents in education and social welfare.(97) In fact, former Prime Minister Alain Juppes plan for urban revitalization included an effort to forge a "new partnership" between government and associations.(98) This broad outline does not tell us how this middle ground matured, however, nor the different forms it adopted. In Bordeaux, for example, it developed first from the partnership of elite benefactors and municipal officials. Elsewhere it may have begun with a strong working-class component. Similarly, we know too little of the factors that fostered cooperation and the various arenas in which it held sway. The history of colonization, for example, seems to parallel that of poor relief, providing an arena where political differences might be eclipsed by a common goal.(99) Finally, a vibrant associational life opens numerous opportunities for comparative studies with those societies, like the United States and Great Britain, where the prominent role of associations has been long acknowledged.(100) It seems clear, in any event, that increased awareness of charity in the early years of the Republic offers a new approach for understanding much of subsequent French history. Over time the resulting partnership of associations and public officials has expanded and shifted, but it has remained an integral part of civil society and the French concept of governing.

Department of History Danville, KY 40422

ENDNOTES

I would like to thank the directors of the Societe pour l'extinction de la mendicite dans Bordeaux for allowing me access to their archives and to Mary Lindemann, Katherine Lynch, Peter Steams, and the anonymous readers of the Journal of Social History for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. Thanks, also, to Herrick Chapman, Rachel Fuchs, and Michael Miller for their ongoing assistance.

1. Extrait du registre des proces verbaux du conseil general du Depot de mendicite de Bordeaux (hereafter, Proces verbaux, SEMB), 1872 Archives de l'Asile Terre-Negre (hereafter, AATN). The emphasis is in the original.

2. See the brief entry for Pelleport-Burete in the biographical dictionary by Jean Guerin and Bernard Guerin, Des hommes et des activites autour d'un demi-siecle (Bordeaux, 1957), 553.

3. On associational life in nineteenth-century France see Elinor Accampo, Industrialization, Family Life, and Class Relations: Saint Chamond, 1815-1914 (Berkeley, 1989), 141-208; Maurice Agulhon, Le cercle dans la France bourgeoise (1810-1848): Etude d'une mutation de socialibilite (Paris, 1977); idem, The Republic in the Village, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York, 1982), especially 124-150; Pierre Arnaud, "Dividing and Uniting: Sports Societies and Nationalism, 1870-1914," in Nationhood and Nationalism in France, ed. Robert Tombs (London, 1991), 182-194; Maurice Crubellier, with Maurice Agulhon, "Les Citadins et leurs cultures," in L'histoire de la France urbaine, ed. Georges Duby, vol. 4, La ville de l'age industriel: le cycle haussmanien, ed. Maurice Agulhon (Paris, 1983); Benoit Lecoq, "Les cercle parisiens au debut de la Troisieme Republique: de l'apogee au declin," Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 32 (1985): 591-616; idem, "Les societes de gymnastique et de tir dans la France republicaine (1870-1914)," Revue historique 276 (1986): 157-166; and John M. Merriman, The Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century (New York, 1985), 150.

4. Edouard Lagrell, Annuaire general du commerce et de l'industrie de la Gironde (Bordeaux, 1876), 274-282 and 307-308; Charles Lesfargues, Annuaire de la Gironde: 1914 (Bordeaux, 1913), 203-208, 216-238.

5. Archives departementales de la Gironde (hereafter ADG) 4 M 391.

6. Bernard Barraque, Les associations a Annecy sous la Illeme Reublique (Annecy, 1981), 20, 56. John Merriman notes similar growth in Limoges. Merriman, The Red City, 140-141.

7. Stanley Hoffmann, "Paradoxes of the French Political Community," in In Search of France, Hoffmann, et. al. (New York, 1963), 1-18. Hoffmann's analysis rests on three facets of French society: a weak associational life, an inability to adapt to the social impact of industrialization, and a peculiar style of authority that combined France's revolutionary tradition with a preference for mediation from a higher authority. The result was a nation that accepted a gradual shift to industrialism, but only as it could be accommodated to the preexisting order, and a political culture founded upon a precarious balance between the government as guarantor of individual rights and a possible encroacher upon those same rights.

8. On the alliance-building approach to understanding the formation of the Third Republic, see Hoffmann, "Paradoxes;" Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford, 1976); and Sanford Elwitt, The Making of the Third Republic (Baton Rouge, 1975).

9. For a classic treatment of French attitudes toward authority, see Michel Crozier, The Stalled Society, trans. Rupert Sawyer (New York, 1973).

10. Philip Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA, 1995).

11. Nord, Republican Moment, 252-253.

12. For an excellent review of this literature, see Philip Nord, "The Welfare State in France, 1870-1914," French Historical Studies 18 (Spring 1994): 820-838.

13. For exceptions to this see Douglas Ashford, The Emergence of Welfare States (Oxford, 1986); John H. Weiss, "Origins of the French Welfare State: Poor Relief in the Third Republic, 1871-1914," French Historical Studies 13 (Spring 1983): 47-78; and Timothy B. Smith, "Public Assistance and Labor Supply in Nineteenth-Century Lyon," Journal of Modern History 68 (March 1996): 1-30.

14. Sanford Elwitt, The Third Republic Defended: Bourgeois Reform in France, 1880-1914 (Baton Rouge, 1986); Henri Hatzfeld, Du Pauperisme a la securite sociale, 1850-1940 (Nancy, 1989); Allan Mitchell, The Divided Path: The German Influence on Social Reform in France after 1870 (Chapel Hill, 1991); and Judith E Stone, The Search for Social Peace: Reform Legislation in France, 1890-1914 (Albany, 1985) fall roughly into the first category, while scholars in the second group are well represented by the essays in Elinor Accampo, Rachel G. Fuchs, and Mary Lynn Stewart, eds, Gender and the Politics of Social Reform in France, 1870-1914 (Baltimore, 1995).

15. Proces-verbaux du Consell municipal de Bordeaux, 23 decembre 1887.

16. On assistance in ancien regime and revolutionary France see Thomas McStay Adams, Bureaucrats and Beggars: French Social Policy in the Age of the Enlightenment (New York, 1990); Cissie Fairchilds, Poverty and Charity in Aix-en-Provence (Baltimore, 1976); Alan Forrest, The French Revolution and the Poor (New York, 1981); Colin Jones, Charity and Bienfaisance: The Treatment of the Poor in the Montpelier Region, 1740-1814 (New York, 1982); and Isser Woloch, The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820 (New York, 1994), 237-296.

17. On the question of obligation and public assistance in Third Republic France, see Steven M. Beaudoin, "Mixing Public and Private: Poor Relief in Third Republic France," Paper presented at the AHA Annual Meeting, Atlanta, 1996; Hatzfeld, Du Pauperisme a la securite sociale, 33-101; and Mitchell, The Divided Path, 1-23.

18. For more on Bordelais public assistance, see Steven M. Beaudoin, "'A Neutral Terrain': Public Assistance, Private Charity, and the State in Third Republic Bordeaux, 1870-1914," (Ph.D. diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 1996), especially chapters two and three.

19. For more extensive population figures, see Pierre Guillaume, La population de Bordeaux au XIX siecle: Essai d'histoire sociale (Paris, 1972).

20. France charitable et prevoyante: Tables des ceuvres et institutions du departement de la Gironde (Paris, 1912), a copy of which is in the ADG 3 X 6.

21. Fernand Marin, speaking at the Assemblee generale of 14 mars 1890 for the newly founded OEvre du refuge des enfants abandonnes ou delaisses de la Gironde, cited in Pierre Guillaume, Un siecle d'histoire de l'enfance inadaptee: L'O.R.E.A.G., 1889-1989 (Paris, 1989), 11. For more on OREAG, see below.

22. For discussions of municipal assistance and charities and their role in nineteenthcentury poor relief, see Accampo, Industrialization, Family Life, and Class Relations; Suzanne Carret-Parcellier "Remarques sur les conditions de l'action sociale a Marseille au seuil du XIXe siecle;" Eliane Richard, "Contribution a l'etude de la prehistoire du service social: Bienfaisance et Charite a Marseille entre 1850 et 1880;" and Jacqueline Felician, "Remarques sur l'action sociale a Marseille au debut du XXe siecle," all in Colloque sur l'histoire de la Securite sociale. Actes du 106e Congres national des Societes savantes, Perpignan, 14 et 15 avril 1981 (Paris, 1982), 265-312; Rachel G. Fuchs, Poor and Pregnant in Paris: Strategies for Survival in the Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick, 1992); Roger Price, "Poor Relief and Social Crisis in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France," European Studies Review 13 (1983): 423-454; and Smith, "Public Assistance and Labor Supply."

23. Price, "Poor Relief and Social Crisis," 423-454.

24. In the words of one historian, "Starting in mid-century, the demarcations between private charity and public welfare became less noticeable, and by the end of the century private and public assistance cannot easily be separated." Fuchs, Poor and Pregnant in Paris, 101.

25. For more on these Jardins see below.

26. Only after more work on urban relief is accomplished and placed into the proper context of mutual aid societies, maternal welfare, and limited social insurance programs will it be profitable to return to the question of assessing French social welfare.

27. Authorization compelled associations to furnish a declaration of purpose; a list of officers, including occupation and addresses; and two copies of the statutes. Furthermore, approved clubs and societies had to register any changes in officers and statutes at the prefect's office.

28. Note, however, that the law offered two new benefits to licensed associations. First, it regularized their status and removed the threat of arbitrary closure. The new law clearly stipulated that only the courts could dissolve associations. Furthermore, approved charities now had the right to own property, although the state restricted ownership to property necessary to the functioning of the association. In short, the new law granted authorized associations a "civil personality" that allowed them to exist juridically in much the same way that a joint stock company has a legal existence separate from the individuals who own stock. Ferdinand Dreyfus, "Le nouveau regime legal des associations de bienfaisance," Revue philanthropique 9 (1901): 401-413; Genvieve Poujol, "La dynamique des associations: la genese de l'Association Catholique de la Jeunesse Francaise, la Ligue de l'Enseignement, les Unions Chretiennes de Jeunes Gens (1844-1905)" (These de doctorat, Universite de Paris, 1978), 30-33. For the text of the Law of July 1, 1901 and the reglement detailing its enforcement see Societe Internationale pour I etude des questions d'assistance, Legislation francaise en rigueur sur l'assistance et la bienfaisance: Recueil de textes (Paris, 1903), 236-249.

29. Note that the right to own property had existed for associations of public utility before the 1901 legislation granted the same privilege to all licensed clubs. Note also that the Law of February 4, 1901 forbade charities from accepting donations or bequests that restricted how the gift should be used. Dreyfus, "Nouveau regime, 406; Societe internationale pour l'etude des questions d'assistance, Legislation francaise, 235-236, 240-241.

30. Deliberations de la commission administrative du Bureau de bienfaisance de Bordeaux (hereafter, Deliberations, Bureau de bienfaisance), 5 August 1885, Archives du Bureau d'Aide sociale (hereafter, ABAS); Deliberations du comite d'administration, (Euvre bordelaise de l'hospitalite de nuit (hereafter, Deliberations, Asile de nuit), 12 March 1888 (ABAS).

31. Upon receiving notification of this donation, the municipal council contributed 10,000 francs to the formation of a proper endowment for the new institution, thus following through on their promise to support private initiative in this endeavor. Compte-rendu de l' administration du Bureau de bienfaisance de Bordeaux (hereafter, Compte-rendu, Bureau de bienfaisance), 1885 (ABAS).

32. Deliberations, Bureau de bienfaisance, 24 October 1887, 5 March 1888, and 2 July 1888 (ABAS).

33. To avoid confusion with the administrative "commission" of the Bureau de bienfaisance, please note that the administrative organ of the (Euvre bordelais de l'hospitalite de nuit is the administrative "committee."

34. Deliberations, Bureau de bienfaisance, 10 March 1888 (ABAS); Deliberations, Asile de nuit, 10 March 1888 (ABAS).

35. Deliberations, Asile de nuit, 23 October 1888 (ABAS).

36. Deliberations, Asile de nuit, 5 April and 23 October 1888 (ABAS).

37. Deliberations, Bureau de bienfaisance, 19 May 1890 (ABAS); Deliberations, Asile de nuit, 7 December 1889 and 30 May 1890 (ABAS).

38. Deliberations, Bureau de bienfaisance, 30 June 1890 and 21 September 1891 (ABAS); Deliberations, Asile de nuit, 9 January, 10 April, 9 October 1891 and 31 March 1892 (ABAS).

39. In 1889 the National Assembly granted state officials and the courts the right to remove children from the parents in cases of "moral abandonment," those whose parents state officials deemed unfit. For more on this legislation see Sylvia Schafer, "Children in 'Moral Danger' and the Politics of Parenthood in Third Republic France, 1870-1914," (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California Berkeley, 1992).

40. Deliberations, Bureau de bienfaisance, 25 January 1892 (ABAS).

41. Deliberations, Bureau de bienfaisance, 11 July 1892 (ABAS).

42. Deliberations, Asile de nuit, 12 January 1894 (ABAS). For more on the impact of anticlericalism on the shape of Bordelais poor relief, see Beaudoin," 'A Neutral Terrain,'" particularly chapter five.

43. Pierre Guillaume, Un siecle d'histoire de l'enfance inadaptee: L'OREAG, 1889-1989 (Paris, 1989), 17-18.

44. The Societe Ste Cecile and the Academie each claimed exemption because they had acquired public utility before 1901. ADG 4 M 391.

45. Archives municipales de Bordeaux (hereafter AMB) 1500 Q 1; Deliberations, Bureau de bienfaisance, 14 March 1904 (ABAS).

46. These other cities included Sedan, where the program originated in 1889, Nantes (1897), Arras (1897), Dijon (1898), Nancy (1900), and Lyon (1901). Proces verbaux du conseil municipal de Bordeaux (hereafter, Proces verbaux, Consell municipal), 26 April 1906.

47. These words were written by Charles Cazalet in a 1908 letter to the mayor of Bordeaux, but they reflected similar remarks made in a 1906 article in l'Economist francais by Emile Cheysson, Inspecteur general des Ponts et Chausses, and an important figure in French poor relief. AMB 1500 Q 1. For more on Cheysson, see Elwitt, The Third Republic Defended.

48. Proces verbaux, Consell municipal, 20 February 1911.

49. Proces verbaux, Consell municipal, 8 March 1892; AMB 280 Q 1.

50. These were individuals who sought assistance directly from the municipality and not its public institutions. AMB 280 Q 1.

51. Proces verbaux, Consell municipal, 8 March 1892.

52. In its own calculations, the Office central insisted that the Bureau de bienfaisance saved much more. It claimed that with salaries and work time, the Bureau spent 5,260 francs annually. Deliberations, Bureau de bienfaisance, 10 January 1898 and 14 March 1898 (ABAS); Compte-rendu, Bureau de bienfaisance, 1898 (ABAS); AMB 280 Q 1.

53. Patronage des prisonnitres liberees et relevement moral, Rapport Moral, 1904 (Archives de la Fondation Marie de Luze).

54. Written in an appeal for funds published in 1889, cited in Pierre Guillaume, OREAG, 14.

55. AMB 288 Q 2; Guillaume, OREAG, 11 - 49.

56. Guillaume, OREAG, 45-46. Note, while OREAG took, in principle, only abandoned children and those removed from their homes, it made frequent exceptions. Between 1890 and 1895, 28% of the children housed by OREAG were paid for by sponsors and parents.

57. Budget primitif de la ville de Bordeaux pendant l'annee 1895 (hereafter Budget primitif followed by the year).

58. France's network of Depots de mendicite, first introduced during the eighteenth century, housed convicted beggars. Bordeaux's Depot had closed during the Revolution. On the Depots, see Thomas McStay Adams, Bureaucrats and Beggars; William J. Olejniczak, "The Royal Campaign in France against Beggary and Vagrancy during the Eighteenth Century in the Generalite of Champagne (Ph.D. diss., Du University, 1983), and Robert Schwartz, Policing the Poor in Eighteenth-Century France (Chapel Hill, 1988).

59. Although the SEMB was a private association with the power to enact its own statutes and regulations, as the overseer of a public institution it surrendered substantial authority to public officials, including inmate population control, representation on governing councils, and fiscal oversight. For more on the conflicts this arrangement could spark, see Beaudoin, "'A Neutral Terrain,'" especially chapter five.

60. Pelleport-Burete himself had used these same words during the meeting of this special commission, of which he was a participant. Proces verbaux, SEMB, 1891 (AATN).

61. In addition, they insisted upon the right to return the infirm to public care if municipal or departmental officials imposed new conditions upon the Societe.

62. Proces verbaux, SEMB, 1883 (AATN).

63. Proces verbaux, SEMB, 1884 (AATN). Emphasis in the original.

64. Proces verbaux, SEMB, 1892 (AATN).

65. Proces verbaux, SEMB, 1895 (AATN).

66. Nadine Dada's Bibliographie pour servir a l'histoire de la securite sociale, de l' assistance et de la mutualite en France, de 1789 a nos jours 3 vols. (Bordeaux, 1980-1987) is an excellent source for the large number of tracts and studies on poverty and assistance penned during the first half of the Third Republic. Indeed, this bibliography is evidence of the increasing attention this topic attracted as the nineteenth century drew to a close. Just why the French became more concerned about such issues remains a topic of debate among historians. For an excellent review of this debate, see Nord, "The Welfare State in France." For a discussion of these concerns in Bordeaux, which are beyond the scope of this essay, see Beaudoin, "'A Neutral Terrain,'" especially chapter three.

67. Deliberations, Bureau de bienfaisance, 11 July 1904 (ABAS).

68. Only a handful of associations like OREAG and the Association des dames de Bordeaux pour l'oeuvre du relevement moral received an annual subsidy from the Ministry of the Interior.

69. For the text of the 1891 law and the reglement concerning its implementation, see Societe internationale pour l'etude des questions d'assistance, Legislation francaise, 125-130. An 1895 modification to the law earmarked one third of this sum for hospital construction in an effort to implement successfully the 1893 law on free medical assistance for the indigent. For more on horse racing and its popularity, see Charles Rearick, Pleasures of the Belle Epoque (New Haven, 1985) and Eugen Weber, France: Fin de Siecle (Cambridge, MA, 1986).

70. Although the government notified them first of a grant of 40,000 francs, despite the request for 50,000 francs, lobbying on the part of Charles Gruet, depute, resulted in a subsequent allocation of another 10,000 francs. Deliberations, Asile de nuit, 24 November 1894 and 7 March 1896 (ABAS).

71. Proces verbaux, SEMB, 1897 and 1898 (AATN).

72. Of course, the law also placed such private establishments under government inspection. For the text of this law and the regulations on its implementation see Societe internationale pour l'etude des questions d'assistance, Legislation francaise, 17 - 47.

73. ADG 4 X 28.

74. An interesting exception was the contract signed between the city and the Depot de mendicite in 1874. See Beaudoin, "'A Neutral Terrain,'" chapter five.

75. For more on the number of those assisted by the Bureau de bienfaisance, see Beaudoin, "'A Neutral Terrain,'" chapters two and three.

76. ADG 3 N 145.

77. ADG 3 N 229. On increased spending for public assistance, see Beaudoin, "'A Neutral Terrain, chapters two and three.

78. Moreover, the amounts were relatively small. The two Asiles de nuit in Bordeaux only received 1000 francs from the 1914 departmental budget, a quarter of the municipal subsidy. ADG 3 N 229; Budget primitif, 1914.

79. Note that these figures represent only municipal subsidies and not bourses and the contracted amount agreed upon with the SEMB.

80. Budget primitif, 1914.

81. Proces verbaux, Conseil municipal, 20 November 1871. While this idea of "old errors" of turning to public officials for social needs may seem absurd given the history of public assistance in nineteenth-century France, this commission operated within the limited context of child welfare, where the state's role was considerably larger than in other areas of relief. Still, this rhetorical device ignores the continued importance of private charity in assisting mothers and infants.

82. Proces verbaux, Conseil municipal, 4 August 1891.

83. Proces verbaux, Conseil municipal, 6 March 1908.

84. Proces verbaux, Conseil municipal, 5 December 1913.

85. See, for example, the sums mentioned in Proces verbaux, Conseil municipal, 8 May 1894, 1 March 1895, and 28 April 1896.

86. Proces verbaux, Conseil municipal, 5 December 1913.

87. Budgets primitifs, 1893-1914; Proces verbaux, Conseil municipal, 5 December 1911, 5 December 1913, and 30 January 1914.

88. For classic textbook treatments of this political divisiveness, see David Thomson, Democracy in France since 1870, 5th edition (New York, 1969) and Gordon Wright, France in Modern Times, 4th edition (New York, 1987).

89. Since Alexis de Tocqueville first remarked upon its long history in L'ancien regime et la Revolution (ed. J.-P. Mayer [Paris, 1967], 98-152), scholars have frequently depended on centralization to characterize the French state. Judith Stone, for example, goes so far as to claim that "[g]iven the extreme weakness of all local political institutions, even the most parochial issues could only be resolved in Paris. Either those issues were ignored or they were debated in the national legislature." Stone, The Search for Social Peace, 10.

90. For a classic example of this interpretation of associational life, see Gabriel Almond and Sydney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Boston, 1963; reprint, Newbury Park, 1989). Such notions are also mirrored in Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA, 1989).

91. Pierre Rosanvallon, L'Etat en France de 1789 a nos jours (Paris, 1990).

92. Rosanvallon, L'Etat, 116-117. On this conseil, see also Mitchell, The Divided Path, 70-71.

93. Rosanvallon, L'Etat, 117.

94. In his work on American social welfare, Lester Salamon has noted a similar development, which he labels "third party government": "Far from the bureaucratic monolith pictured in conventional theories, the welfare state in the American context makes use of a variety of third parties to carry out governmental functions. The result is an elaborate system of 'third-party government' in which government shares a substantial degree of its discretion over the spending of public funds and the exercise of public authority with third-party implementers." Lester M. Salamon, Partners in Public Service: Government and Nonprofit Relations in the Modern Welfare State (Baltimore, 1995), 41. Of course, none of these "third parties" requires authorization as French charities do.

95. For a more detailed treatment of this middle ground and its relevance to governing in Third Republic France, see Beaudoin, "'A Neutral Terrain.'"

96. On associations and the further development of French social welfare see, for example, Susan Pedersen, Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914-1945 (New York, 1993) and Herrick Chapman, "French Democracy and the Welfare State," in The Social Construction of Democracy, 1870-1990, eds. George Reid Andrews and Herrick Chapman (New York, 1995).

97. On business associations and state planning see, for example, William James Adams, Restructuring the French Economy: Government and the Rise of Market Competition since World War II (Washington, D.C., 1989) and Richard Vinen, Bourgeois Politics in France, 1945-1951 (New York, 1995), 58-81. On associations and contemporary social welfare, see Viviane Mizrahi-Tchernonog, "Building Welfare Systems through Local Associations in France," in Government and the Third Sector: Emerging Relationships in Welfare States, eds. Benjamin Gidron, Ralph M. Kramer, and Lester M. Salamon (San Francisco, 1992).

98. Le Monde, 19 January 1996, 8.

99. On colonialism, see William B. Cohen, Rulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa (Stanford, 1971).

100. The list of works on associational life in these two nations is extensive. Examples include John S. Gilkeson, Middle-Class Providence, 1820-1940 (Princeton, 1986); Nancy Hewitt, Women's Activism and Social Change: Rochester, 1822-1872 (Ithaca, 1986); Jane Lewis, The Voluntary Sector, the State and Social Work in Britain: The Charity Organisation Society/Family Welfare Association since 1869 (Brookfield, VT, 1995); and the essays in E M. L. Thompson, ed., The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950, vol. 3, Social Agencies and Institutions (New York, 1990).