Perdiguier, Agricol

(1805-1875)

   worker, political figure

   Born in Morières-les-Avignon, Agricol Perdiguier, known also as Avignonnais la Vertu, was a master carpenter who, as a journeyman, had worked throughout France. He recorded his experiences in Mémoires d'un compagnon (1854), a valuable document describing the daily life of French workers in the first half of the 19th century, shortly before the beginning of the industrial era. A committed pacifist, he tried to reconcile the two "duties" (to self and to society) that he believed were in a perpetual, and sometimes armed, conflict. In 1839, he opened in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine in Paris a public school for workers and published his Livre du compagnonnage, and fought for the rights of the societies of craftsmen and journeymen (compagnonnages). Elected deputy for the department of Seine in 1848, he had to flee to Switzerland after the coup d'état of December 2, 1851. Perdiguier had support for his ideas from george sand and LOUIS BLANC.