Historique de quelques syndicats professionnels — L’Officiel du cycle, 1 October 1955, the Dealers’ Unions of Nièvre, Seine-Maritime and Moselle

From L’Officiel du cycle, du motocycle et du camping, 1 October 1955, N° 20, the paper’s special number before the Salon du Cycle at the Porte de Versailles, pages 149, 151 and 153: ‘En dépouillant les Archives’: ‘Historique de quelques syndicats professionnels’, histories of the vélocistes-motocistes unions of the Vendée and of Nantes and the Loire-Inférieure, with a portrait of M. Pasquier. The title, headings, captions and lists are transcribed as printed; the text is summarized in Ebykr’s words, and the page images carry it in full.

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En dépouillant les Archives

HISTORIQUE DE QUELQUES
SYNDICATS PROFESSIONNELS

[Ebykr summary; the article’s text is not reproduced. The introduction says that a number of historical monographs follow on the corporate groupings of the Vélocistes-Motocistes attached to the F.N.V.M., and that similar notices will be devoted in coming issues to other regional bodies among the most active.]

SYNDICAT DES VÉLOCISTES ET MOTOCISTES
DE LA VENDÉE

[Ebykr summary. The first steps toward a union in the Vendée go back to June 1906. The efforts then of M. L’HÉRISSON, president of the departmental Section of the Deux-Sèvres, and of M. CIBRON at Chaillé-les-Marais bore fruit only much later, since the federal archives show no trace before the creation of a Chambre syndicale in 1929 for the arrondissement of Les Sables-d’Olonne. The Vendée union was constituted only after the last war, under the impulse of the motorcycle dealers of Les Sables, with M. POTHAIN as president. For several years it has been run by M. PASQUIER of Mouilleron-en-Pareds and brings together almost all the Vendée Vélocistes and Motocistes. The present committee is given as follows.]

président d’honneur — M. Lucien POTHAIN
président — M. PASQUIER
vice-président — M. PIVETEAU
secrétaire — M. MOUSSET
trésorier — M. BULTEAU

[Ebykr summary, continued. M. Paul PASQUIER, the dynamic president, has been settled in the Vendée since 1928, when he took over the business his own father had set up in 1898. Every Motociste of the Vendée knows he can find aid and advice with him at Mouilleron-en-Pareds. The Vendée union has distinguished itself in recent years in the field of apprenticeship.]

★

SYNDICAT DES VÉLOCISTES ET MOTOCISTES
DE NANTES ET DE LOIRE-INFÉRIEURE

[Ebykr summary. The SYNDICAT DES NÉGOCIANTS EN CYCLE ET EN AUTOMOBILE DE NANTES ET DE LOIRE-INFÉRIEURE was founded on 28 March 1905, without any particular intervention of a national body being reported. Its president was its founder, M. BERTHEAU, who was established at 27, rue de Strasbourg; the secretary was then M. GAUTIER, himself established rue des Hauts-Pavés. On 21 September 1906, at the request presented by M. Félix LAINÉ in the name of the Syndicat Général, the Syndicat des Négociants decided to join as a section of that grouping. The names of the participants of the time are listed as follows, as printed:]

MM. CHOBLET, PINON, BARON, GERVAIS, UNDERBERG, BITTON, MERCERON, MÉTAYER, CHEREAU, DAVID, DOUAULT TROUVÉ, MONAT, NAYROLLES, GAUTIER, ROBINET, PABOIS, SUAZEREAU.

[Ebykr summary, continued. Again under the impulse of M. Félix LAINÉ, the Syndicat resumed a large part of its activities in September 1924, after an eclipse of six years. Many professionals nevertheless wanted two autonomous unions, one for the Automobile and one for the Cycle; the efforts of M. Max ANTOINE in May 1925 and of M. BONVALLOT in August of the same year proved vain. On 16 December 1925 the “Auto” and “Cycle” branches of the Syndicat met at the café de l’Europe: M. DAGASSAN was named president for the Auto, M. CASSARD vice-president representing the Cycle, M. VINCENT treasurer representing the commissionnaires, M. GUEDON secretary and M. COUSIN assistant secretary. Three sections were decided on, for the Cycle, the Automobile and the Commissionnaires (the article adds an exclamation mark in brackets). On 28 May 1926 M. ROBINET took the presidency of the Automobile section and M. AUMON that of the Commissionnaires. In January 1927 the Syndicat was presided over by M. AUDUSSEAU and the Cycle section by M. GUEDON. At the same time the Chambre Syndicale des Agents du Cycle et de l’Automobile of the Guérande peninsula was constituted, seated at the mairie of La Baule under M. GALY. In May 1927 the Syndicat decided to create a Salon de l’Automobile at Nantes for all members of the grouping. On 20 September 1928 M. GASSARD was designated president of the vélociste section in place of M. BARRET. In 1929 the Syndicat had only two sections, motorist and vélociste, and new statutes were filed in April 1929 under the title Syndicat des Vélocistes et Motoristes de Nantes et de la Loire-Inférieure. The archives show considerable activity of the vélociste section for the professionals of the trade. In 1936, at the head of the Syndicat specialized in Cycle and Motorcycle (the word Motociste in the title having replaced Motoriste), stands M. RINEAU (François), who has not stopped working for the grouping and is still president. M. RINEAU has been in business for himself since 1924 and owns on the place of Nantes one of the finest cycle and motorcycle agencies of the département; he is helped by M. REBOUD, an active propagandist in the service of the profession. Saint-Nazaire, whose Syndicat also had a long history as the archives show, has become a section of the Syndicat of the Loire-Inférieure, which pursues its own activity while keeping close contact with the grouping of Nantes. The article continues on the next page.]

[A full magazine page of text and one photograph. A small italic heading “En dépouillant les Archives” runs across the top right above a thin rule, with the large title “HISTORIQUE DE QUELQUES SYNDICATS PROFESSIONNELS” in heavy roman capitals over two lines and an italic introduction beneath. The body is set in two columns of sans-serif type, with bold sans-serif capital subheadings and a small black star as a break. In the left column a halftone photograph, a half-length portrait of a man seen in profile facing left, dark hair and a dark jacket against a dark background, sits at the left with the text wrapped around its right side; no caption is printed. No firm name, address or artist signature appears.]

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[Ebykr summary; the article’s text is not reproduced. The left column, which opens without a heading in this image, continues the history of the Nivernais union. To trace this very old grouping one must go back to the creation of the Nevers section of the Syndicat Général des Agents de Cycle et de Motocycles (the future Vélocistes et Motocistes), on 29 July 1906 at the café Bussy, place du Lycée, in Nevers. The name found most often in the first correspondence is M. DUPEROUX, the first correspondent of M. Félix LAINÉ for the creation of the Section; much later come MM. VINCENT, place des Récollets, Nevers, and PIGOURY, place de la Préfecture, and BESSE d’ASSIGNY. In 1925 M. APPERT, a mechanic at Cosne, created the Syndicat des Agents de Cycle de Cosne, which had only a very short career. On practically 24 April 1926, with the help of the Syndicat Général, the Syndicat du Cycle, de l’Automobile et des Industries s’y rattachant was formed, with M. JACOB, garage owner, as president, M. Ernest LAURENT as secretary and M. PLANTARD as assistant secretary; the Bureau also included MM. BIGOURY and BOURDIAU. For its Cycle branch it belonged to the Fédération des Vélocistes. In 1929 M. NANDROT presided, followed by M. GUILLEMAIN of Échon. A few years later, when the automobile trade had regrouped in an autonomous organization, the Syndicat des Agents de Cycle et de Motocycle du Nivernais was reconstituted under the presidency of M. PLANTARD, with M. DESCHARRIÈRE as secretary general, and it enjoyed a fine career and considerable activity for the trade in the Nivernais. The present committee is given below.]

président — M. DESCHARRIÈRES
vice-présidents — M. SAUVAGET et M. VOISIN
secrétaire — M. MERLE
trésoriers — M. LARICHE et M. OZAMON

[Ebykr summary, continued. M. DESCHARRIÈRES, an active unionist trusted by all his colleagues, began in the automobile trade at 16, then improved himself in the various branches of mechanics, became a fitter-toolmaker and stayed so until August 1914. After three years of war he was assigned to the Delage works at Courbevoie, and after the armistice returned to his native area to take a foreman’s post in a factory at Nevers. In 1922 he set up as a small mechanic-craftsman and specialized in cycles. In 1945 the confidence of the Nivernais artisans placed him at the Chambre des Métiers, where he was president during 1949. He created apprenticeship courses in the département, in class or by correspondence, and was named by the Minister of National Education as departmental councillor for technical education. For his services in technical education and at the Chambre des Métiers he was given the rank of officier d’Académie, then officier du Mérite artisanal, then in 1954 officier de l’Instruction publique. M. DESCHARRIÈRES and M. PLANTARD were among the most active supporters of the single federation of Vélocistes and Motocistes, whose reorganization he had asked for with insistence in 1938. Since the death of its president M. PLANTARD the Syndicat des Agents de Cycle et de Motocycle de la Région Nivernaise has lost none of its dynamism and interventions for the trade, and in the present year it has joined the single Fédération seated avenue de la Grande Armée.]

[Ebykr summary, the Seine-Maritime unions (right column, opening without a heading in this image). The Syndicat des Agents de Cycle et de la Moto du Havre et de la Région goes back to 7 June 1906, when the departmental section of the Syndicat Général des Agents de Cycle was constituted. The archives hold the convocation letters sent by M. Félix LAINÉ for the important meeting from which unionism spread through the département, held at the brasserie Paul, 10, rue aux Sources, in Rouen. The section was organized under the presidency of M. Henri DRANCE, whose shop was at 33, avenue Pasteur and workshop at 4, rue d’Harcourt, with a bureau whose names are worth recalling as pioneers of the Rouen unionism. They are given as printed:]

Ce sont MM. MÉNAGE, de Rouen, vice-président ; BURTON, du Havre, vice-président ; BERNARD, de Rouen, trésorier ; DUMENIL, de Rouen, secrétaire ; MM. HARDIER, de Saint-Saëns ; LHERNAULT, de Neufchâtel ; HERVÉ, d’Yvetot ; MEYER, de Diepp
LHERNAULT, de Neufchâtel ; HERVÉ, d’Yvetot ; MEYER, de Dieppe ; ROUEN, de Fécamp ; TELLIERS, d’Eu ; VÉRET, d’Elbeuf, membres du Comité.

[Ebykr summary, continued. Many interventions from 1906 fill the minutes of the meetings, in particular on the activity of wholesalers and cooperatives, the fight against price cutting, the setting of tariffs and rest by rota, and unpacking as well, questions that unhappily have never ceased to be on the agenda; the profession suffers from chronic ills. For the record, in 1913 M. DRANCE was still president, M. G. LAINÉ vice-president, M. LECLERC of Rouen treasurer and M. POST of Rouen secretary. Sections were created at that time under the presidency of M. RORET for Dieppe, LOURSEL for Darnétal, CAPRIOLO for Caudebec-en-Caux, MICHEL for Duclair, and DELAUNE for Sassetot-le-Mauconduit and Valmont. On exactly 23 April 1926 the section broke up and, under the activity of M. Gustave NOTHIAS, a union called the Groupement des Agents du Cycle de Dieppe et des environs was constituted at Dieppe, seated at 16, rue Lemoine; the founding president M. NOTHIAS was still its animator in 1951. At Rouen the old grouping became the Syndicat des Agents de Cycle et de Motocycle de Rouen et de la région, seated at 9, rue Verte, with president-animator M. LEROUX, who stayed president more than fifteen years and was replaced by M. LAURENT; it then became the Syndicat des Agents et des Artisans en cycles et motocycles, seated at 3, boulevard de la Marne, Rouen. The Le Havre region also organized a union on the initiative of M. COUDYSER, both its founder and president. All three unions belonged from their origin to the Fédération des Agents de Cycle founded in 1926, which is the present Fédération Nationale des Vélocistes et Motocistes. In 1936 the Le Havre bureau was composed as follows.]

président — M. COUDYSER
vice-présidents — MM. LEFRANÇOIS et MAUCONDUIT
secrétaire — M. COLBOC
trésorier — M. A. LEBOUCHER, de Bléville

[Ebykr summary, continued. From that time a Commission de la moto was constituted to examine separately all the problems caused by that kind of vehicle. M. COUDYSER constantly sat on the national committees, organizations and federations that followed one another, and directs an important house at Le Havre. He is one of the oldest professionals, his entry into the cycle and motorcycle trade dating from 15 November 1910, and he took over in 1886 the Maison Tissandier, so that he directs the oldest cycle and motorcycle house in Normandy. M. COUDYSER organized various local institutions (the Caisse de Prévoyance was created in February 1950; the sentence runs on into the next page).]

[A full magazine page of text and one photograph, continuing an article from the previous page, with the printed page number 151 at the lower right. The text is set in two columns of small justified sans-serif type with no headings in this image. In the left column a small halftone photograph, a half-length portrait of a man in a dark suit and tie, hair combed back, facing slightly to the left against a plain mid-gray ground, sits at the left with the committee paragraph wrapped beside it; no caption is printed. The left edge of the page falls into the binding, where a few letters at the start of the left-column lines are shaded or lost. No firm name, address or artist signature appears.]

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[Ebykr summary; the article’s text is not reproduced. The opening paragraph at the head of the left column ends the Le Havre section: the institutions in which all its members take part (including the Caisse de Secours des Vélocistes du Havre et de l’arrondissement) and the role M. COUDYSER’s union has played at national level, notably during the war within the Comités d’organisation, then for the unity of the zone nord and zone sud Fédérations and for the rallying of all the trade’s union organizations into a single federation.]

★

SYNDICAT DES VÉLOCISTES ET MOTOCISTES
DE LA MOSELLE

[Ebykr summary. The Moselle union was created more than twenty-five years ago under the presidency of M. HOCQUARD, with the title SYNDICAT DÉPARTEMENTAL DES VÉLOCISTES ET MOTOCISTES and as its seat an apartment at 12, rue des Clercs, in Metz. It already belonged to the Fédération des Vélocistes, then to the one that succeeded it in 1935. In 1945 the cycle mechanics formed themselves into a corporation of local law under the presidency of M. Léon SIBOUR; in 1947 the Corporation des Mécaniciens du Cycle took the name Syndicat des Vélocistes et Motocistes de la Moselle. It is through the diligence of M. Camille HOCQUARD, an officer of the Légion d’honneur, that the union of all cycle and motorcycle professionals in the département was achieved; he modestly accepted the post of vice-president of the Metz union because his duties as commissaire général of the Foire-Exposition de Metz and of the Salon du Cycle, held each spring, did not allow him to give a head of the grouping all the activity needed. The union has belonged to the Fédération Nationale des Vélocistes et Motocistes (F.N.V.M.) since 1950, and M. Léon SIBOUR was offered, at the realization of federal unity, a seat on the Comité de direction; he is also a board member of the Fédération des Petites et Moyennes Entreprises and a member of the committee of the cycling and motorcycling society « la Pédale Mosellane ». He heads a business created in 1914, which he acquired from his own employer in 1933, and he is the instigator of a « Mécanique Cycle » section at the Centre d’apprentissage, working since October 1954, where young people spend two years of theory and practice and a third in training in the workshop of a cycle and motorcycle professional. Behind its president and the members of its Comité directeur the Moselle union is one of the most active groupings of the Corporation.]

Le Président L. SIBOUR

★

SYNDICAT DU COMMERCE DE L’AUTOMOBILE
ET DU CYCLE ET DES INDUSTRIES CONNEXES
DE L’ORANIE
CHAMBRE SYNDICALE DU CYCLE ET DE LA MOTO
AU MAROC

[Ebykr summary. The history of the oldest groupings of the Vélocistes-Motocistes corporation cannot be recalled without evoking two groupings of overseas France that are particularly active. The first is the SYNDICAT DU COMMERCE DE L’AUTOMOBILE ET DU CYCLE ET DES INDUSTRIES CONNEXES DE L’ORANIE. On 16 February 1916 ten merchants of the city of Oran, whose trade related to the automobile, met in constituent general assembly to form the « Syndicat de l’Industrie automobile de l’Oranie »; on 24 February of the same year the statutes were drawn up and adopted, stating that the main aim was « s’occuper de tout ce qui peut servir au développement et à la défense du commerce et des industries se rapportant à l’automobile ». As results came in, membership grew every year and cycle traders soon joined, so that it became the « Syndicat de l’Industrie et du Commerce de l’Automobile et du Cycle et des Industries Connexes de l’Oranie ». The Syndicat reached its peak during the period of controlled economy caused by the hostilities of 1940-1946, and in 1946 it counted 597 members gathered under the benevolent presidency of M. RAVEL, director of the Établissements RENAULT. At the end of 1946 M. VAN HENTENRYK, a union man from the first hour, a member since 1919, treasurer and secretary general since 1938, was elected president and still directs its activities. In 1951 the Syndicat counted 300 members in ten groups representing the commercial and artisan activities of the two professions. Its activity now goes far beyond questions of the automobile and cycle trade alone; closely united by common interests with the unions of metalworking and of agricultural machinery, it is affiliated to the Fédération des Syndicats Commerciaux et Industriels de l’Oranie. Its Bureau is called on for opinions on labor legislation, wages, collective agreements, Sécurité sociale and tax questions, and is in contact with the workers’ unions C.G.T.-F.O. and C.F.T.C. Since its foundation, under the presidents LEVY, SERVIES, RAVEL and VAN HENTENRYK, its action has always been directed to the defense of its members’ interests, strongly supported by the Fédération Algérienne des Syndicats du Commerce et de l’Industrie Automobile et du Cycle d’Algérie, which groups the three departmental unions of Algeria.]

Le Président VAN HENTENRYK

[Ebykr summary, after a three-star break. The second grouping, of much more recent creation, is the CHAMBRE SYNDICALE DU CYCLE ET DE LA MOTO DU MAROC, constituted on 26 July 1952 by its present president M. BERGER. It followed an artisan association of the Cycle and the Moto created in 1941, which grouped all the trades of the Cycle and whose membership had passed 800. Both in that organization and in the Chambre Syndicale du Cycle et de la Moto, the Bureau worked tirelessly to improve the conditions of practice of their professions, in particular those of the importers of cycles and motorcycles. The Chambre Syndicale du Cycle et de la Moto du Maroc has belonged to the Fédération Nationale des Vélocistes et Motocistes since December 1953.]

[A full magazine page of text and two photographs, continuing an article from the previous page. The text is set in two columns of small sans-serif type with bold sans-serif capital subheadings, small black stars as section breaks and a small cluster of three asterisks before the last section. At the left, set into the Moselle section, a halftone portrait of a heavy-set bald man in a dark jacket and tie facing the viewer with a serious look, captioned in italic roman type underneath: “Le Président L. SIBOUR”. At the right, set into the Oranie section, a halftone portrait of a man with short dark hair in a dark suit, shirt and patterned tie, facing the viewer, captioned in italic spaced capitals underneath: “Le Président VAN HENTENRYK”. The left edge of the page runs into the binding shadow. No firm name, address or artist signature appears.]