ABSTRACT
The Decazeville strike of 1886 revealed to a shocked French nation that the newspaper serial world of Germinal to which they had been introduced a year earlier had a real-life counterpart. Decazeville strikers murdered the ascetic company engineer Jules Watrin, who had masterminded company efforts to control local commerce. In Decazeville the Societe nouvelle des houilleres et fonderies de l’Aveyron (SNHFA) attempted to create a community in its own image, beginning with the name. Decazeville's workers were introduced to national politics as the result of a breakdown in company authority, not of grassroots politicization of the community. In 1878 the workers and shopkeepers of Decazeville voted in their first republican town government. The SNHFA management took a step in this direction during the mid 1880s by placing top managerial personnel at the head of a large, previously independent co-operative store in Decazeville.
