3-028-419 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Strike at the Creuzot [sic] Ironworks: workmen resisting the strike, 1870. 'The strike among the workmen, ten or eleven thousand in number, employed in the great iron-foundry and machine-factory of Messrs. Schneider and Company, at Creuzot [ie Le Creusot], in Burgundy, was happily brought to an end in the middle of last week...It has been mentioned that the occasion of the dispute which led to the strike the week before last was not any question relating to the rate of wages or to the hours or methods of work, but one concerning the management of the savings bank...The dispute provoked angry words, and menaces or insults addressed to the proprietors, who thereupon dismissed Assy [one of the workers' leaders who was supposedly in correspondence with the trade-unionist associations of Paris] and several other men from their employment. This caused a general strike...our Illustration, from a sketch by a French correspondent who personally witnessed the fact, shows the scene which took place in the forge-shed, when some of the men who wished to go on with their work armed themselves with their tongs, and prepared to attack those who kept them from the forges. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.