The Savant and the State: Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France

Appendix B: Exchange Rates and Incomes in Nineteenth-Century France

a p p e n d i x b Exchange Rates and Incomes in Nineteenth-Century France Exchange Rates Exchange rates between the French franc and other major currencies changed little during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Approximate equivalents are as follows: Great Britain Pound worth 25 francs German Empire (from 1870) Mark worth 1.2 francs United States Dollar worth 5.4 francs Incomes During the First Empire, the practice of cumul allowed a few leading savants to achieve very high incomes. The cases of Claude-Louis Berthollet and Pierre-Simon Laplace, each of whom had an annual income in excess of 100,000 francs in 1814, were exceptional (see chapter 1). But, even as a younger member of the elite community of Parisian science, the chemist Louis-Jacques Thenard was able to accumulate a total of over 17,000 francs in 1811, mainly through the chairs he held at the Collège de France (6,000 francs p.a.) and the Sorbonne (4,500 francs). An even more striking case is that of Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, whose income exceeded 40,000 francs in the 1830s and 50,000 francs in the 1840s, thanks not only to his academic appointments but also to a judicious engagement in industrial activities and consultancy that I discuss in chapter 1. Generally, however, professors had to live on far less, in most cases on the income from a single chair. A typical salary of between 4,000 and 5,000 francs in a provincial faculty in the 1840s (rather more in Paris) allowed for a comfortable but far from elegant lifestyle. And even the rector of an academy, with responsibility for several departments, earned no more than 6,000 to 7,200 francs, significantly less than senior tax collectors or the prefect of all but the smallest departments. Salaries in secondary education were less, rarely more than 3,000 francs for a senior professor in a Parisian lycée and between half and two-thirds of that in the provinces. The pay of teachers in primary schools was lower still. Many of them earned no more than 500 francs, corresponding broadly to the income of an unskilled workingman, although the amount increased significantly about the midcentury and was often augmented by the benefit of accommodation in the school and income from private lessons and other paid work. As Minister of Public Instruction between 1863 and 1869, Victor Duruy made a determined effort to increase salaries at all levels. By the end of the Second Empire, professors in the provincial faculties of science had basic salaries of 4,000 francs, in addition to which they received a traitement éventuel of up to 2,400 francs drawn from fees from examining. The eighteen chair- 292 Appendix B holders at the Sorbonne were better paid, with basic salaries of 7,500 francs (equal to that of a professor at the Collège de France or the Muséum d’histoire naturelle) and a supplementary traitement éventuel for examining that could rise to almost 4,000 francs. The salaries of senior educational administrators were generally higher than those of serving professors and other teachers, though often not significantly so. The salary of an inspector-general of higher education, for example , was 12,000 francs, while rectors earned between 10,000 and 15,000 francs, depending on the size of their academy. While such incomes compared “at least respectably” (in George Weisz’s words) with those of other professional groups, they lagged well behind the salaries for top positions in the state administration. Under the Third Republic, professorial salaries in the faculties of science, as in other faculties, continued to grow. On the eve of the First World War, they stood at between 12,000 and 15,000 francs at the Sorbonne and between 6,000 and 12,000 francs in the provinces. The incomes of lycée professors increased also, although they were always lower than those in higher education: in 1913, they were between 6,000 and 9,500 francs for an agrégé teaching in Paris and between 4,200 and 6,700 francs in the provinces, in both cases roughly the amounts earned by maîtres de conf érences and other junior teaching staff in the faculties. Sources: Statistique 1865–68 and Statistique 1876. Antoine Prost, Histoire de l’enseignement en France 1800–1967 (Paris, 1968), 356–60, and the table on p. 372. George Weisz, The Emergence of Modern Universities in...