Jules Leroux

French anarchist co-opertivist activist.

Leroux decided in 1901, with two comrades, to found a worker’s shoemaking. For a year, the day ended in the workshop, they worked four hours in the evening, in an attic, to make shoes to build up the stock that would allow them to start. All their savings were used to purchase the necessary raw material and they had great difficulty in finding stinging workers who would agree to work for them.

At the beginning of 1902 they opened a modest shop, 25, rue des Orfèvres in Amiens. The first clients were the Cooperative Union (Consumer Society) created in 1892 and some members of primary and secondary education. The Union, in the same year, granted a loan in guarantee from which it became the owner of the equipment it rented to the Corderry.

In 1906, the Corderry settled, 15, rue des Majots. It was then called “Cooperative Society of Production with socialist bases” and thus distributed the “profits”: 25% to the Caisse de Secours; 15% to the Cooperative Societies in proportion to their purchases; 20% to cooperative propaganda; 15% to the purchase of an immovable; 25% to the reserve.

In 1910, when it had thirty-three workers, the Workers’ Cordornity was taken over by the Gros Cooperatives’ Store. The war of 1914 forced him to close; but it resumed its activity after the armistice.

Jules Leroux had never stopped working and animating it, except the interruption of the war.

According to M. Dommanget (cf. La Chevalerie du Travail, op. cit., p. 317), Leroux was reportedly elected, in July 1898, Deputy Secretary of the Order of the Knights of Labour, F. Pelloutier being General Secretary.