Leon Harmel: Entrepreneur as Catholic Social Reformer (review)

The figure of Léon Harmel (1829-1915), much noted as it is, is here seen not only as a model of paternalism, creating and sustaining a "Christian factory" in his wool-processing business, or as the champion of workers' rights and social justice, under the impact of Rerum Novarum. These attributes are confirmed, but his broader religious and political undertakings come into their own as well. Thebiography becomes a veritable "life and times" and as such can be recommended not only to the specialist but to a much wider range of interested students and readers.

The late author (see ante, LXXXIX [October, 2003], 832) delves into previously researched areas, but also enriches them with the fruits of her archival labors in France and the Vatican. This is particularly the case for the Vatican connection with another Leo, Pope Leo XIII. Léon Harmel organized working men's pilgrimages to "the prisoner of the Vatican" in 1885, 1887, and 1889, and in the year of Rerum Novarum, 1891. They were initially public-relations successes, favorable both to the image of workers and of the pope. As the 1891 pilgrimage was pouring into Rome, however, a controversy erupted that resulted in its cancellation. A seminarian traveling along with the workers' pilgrimage wrote "Vive le pape!" in the guest register of the Pantheon, an incident that soon occupied front pages and diplomats of Italy and France.

By a similarly careful narration of contextual developments of the 1890's, Coffey delineates with great clarity the shift in Harmel's social Catholicism fromemployers to workers, from a Christian corporatism to a Christian democracy. This also deepens our knowledge of Harmel's contribution to the Christian social movement in France. Sometimes, to be sure, it may be the case that readers could be misled to think that Harmel's influence was greater or more direct than it was. Thus one may question in what sense his annual "social weeks" forseminarians, formally inaugurated in 1892, were the start of the Semaines sociales series that commenced in Lyon in 1904. Or that in organizing a workshop for factory chaplains at his plant near Reims in 1891, he was out to create "in essence an army of worker-priests" (pp. 220-223). But these are mere cavils.

Harmel lived through the pontificate of Leo XIII's successor, Pius X (1903-1914), but without the rapport he enjoyed with Leo. The emphasis in Coffey's work is on the Leonine years, understandably, and she was not able to consult Vatican archival materials from later on. There remains thus at least one intriguing story to be researched with the aid of such materials, what Émile Poulat hascalled "the last battle of Pius X's pontificate" (Rivista di storia della chiesain Italia, 25 [1971], 83-107). Coffey alludes to the April, 1914, visit of Harmel to Pius X on page 207, "to defend his worker syndicates, then under threat by conservative Catholics." But that is all. Coffey's fruitful method of presenting the relevant background to the controversies Harmel was involved in would be well applied also to this, his last service to the cause of Christian workers' rights.