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by Joan L. Coffey (Author)
Léon Harmel is a penetrating study of the French industrialist who from 1870 to 1914 advanced social Catholic and Christian democratic movements by improving factory conditions and empowering workers. Joan Coffey's fascinating new book represents the first major study of Léon Harmel in English.
Harmel's model factory at Val-des-Bois demonstrated that mutual accord and respect were possible between labor and management. Harmel turned his profitable spinning mill into a Christian corporation. His ethical business practices captured the attention of Pope Leo XIII and inspired his encyclical Rerum Novarum. Harmel also encouraged his workers to make pilgrimages to Rome. The collaboration of Pope Leo XIII and Léon Harmel laid the foundation of enterprises that collectively became known as Christian democracy.
Drawing on extensive archival sources, including the Vatican Archives, Joan Coffey's work skillfully analyzes the personal relationship between Pope Leo XIII and Léon Harmel. Léon Harmel also offers a timely reminder of the power of personal ethics and provides a refreshing antidote to today's business climate.
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It is to the credit of his biographer that [Coffey] turns to the best sources so as to give us an exact account of a man of action who engaged in the debates of his time and devoted himself to those undertakings that he knew he could see through. --Journal of Markets and Morality
"Leon Harmel makes a major contribution to understanding the Catholic social tradition by documenting his significant influence on Catholic social teaching. [W]e can be grateful for the legacy of [Joan Coffey's] impressive scholarship. Coffey has produced an impressive intellectual biography of Leon Harmel." --Cistercian Studies Quarterly "This model of careful scholarship and felicitous style deserves to be read by all students of modern French history. Essential." --Choice "Joan Coffey's book on Leon Harmel is a remarkable achievement in a number of ways. It provides a credible portrait of a French industrialist, turning the flat, cardboard caricature of the 'industrial bourgeoisie' into something both singular and complex. It enriches labor history and social history by wedding them with cultural history. It also reminds us that the tensions between corporate culture and employee autonomy are not of recent invention." --Raymond Jonas, author of France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart "Coffey does a masterful job of situating Leon Harmel--his life, his work, his ideology--in the context of French political and social turmoil in the last third of the nineteenth century. Coffey's extraordinary synthesis of scholarly works on social, gender, and labor history is as impressive as her original archival research, making this book an important resource for any historian of France or of social issues. Beautifully written, it is also a great pleasure to read." --Elinor Accampo, University of Southern California Joan L. Coffey (1926-2013) was associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas.Author Biography
Joan L. Coffey is associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University.
