PRST STD US POSTAGE PAID BOISE, ID PERMIT 411
12720 HILLCREST RD. STE. 615 | DALLAS, TX 75230 214-932-1288 | ARMSTRONGLAWYER.COM
INSIDE
1
Expanding, Evolving, and Embracing New Opportunities
2
Crime and Cavities
Tips to Keep Phones out of Teen Drivers' Hands
3
The Key to Strengthening Your Injury Claim
We Value Your Referrals
One-Pot Chicken Noodle Soup
4
Remembering the Great French Mustache Strike
Workers usually go on strike to improve wages and working conditions. Leave it to the French to mount a historic strike for the right to grow a mustache. A full mustache was a prestigious mark of men’s social class in Europe in the early 20th century. Policemen were required to grow them to project authority and masculinity. Waiters rebelled when restaurant owners forced servers to shave their faces clean as a sign of their lower-class social status. During the dinner hour on April 17, 1907, an estimated 500 servers stopped dishing food, took off their aprons, and walked out, clustering on the street as diners looked on. The waiters also demanded a share of diners’ tips and the right to take one day off a week. They had support in Parliament, where one socialist deputy proposed a bill to outlaw mustache bans (which also applied to domestic servants and priests). The deputy called the restaurants’ mustache rule “grotesque and humiliating.” After 16 days, restaurant owners caved to servers’ mustache demands and implemented a fairer pay structure. The waiters, however, lost their bid for one day off each week.
The French have long been famously quick to stage work stoppages. At 112 days on average, the country leads the industrialized West in days lost to strikes each year. The nation’s strike culture is linked to its history of revolt, including the 1789 French Revolution. Withholding one’s labor is a constitutional right in France, whether you are a union member or not. And the mustache had long been a mark of status in Europe. Centuries earlier, Germany only permitted soldiers who had distinguished themselves in battle to grow mustaches. In France, the military requirement to wear mustaches became so strict that soldiers who couldn’t grow one had to wear a fake mustache. No wonder the French waiters took their facial hair so seriously. Being required to shave relegated them to the domestic servant class. As one French newspaper of the time declared, the waiters’ victory secured the right “to finally show that they are men, free men … who can wear at their ease this symbol of the all-powerful male, the mustache. Oh! The beautiful independence!”
4
Published by Newsletter Pro | NewsletterPro.com
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator