The Limits of Economic Dirigisme and Collusion

Abstract

Within a few weeks of the invention of the electric telegraph in 1837, the French government banned its use by the public. Thirteen years later, the government relented under pressure from French industrialists, who had observed the effect on British and American firms of this new method of doing business, and permitted it to be used, under strict conditions. The rapporteur who presented to parliament the bill permitting private use of the telegraph indicated how useful the device had become to the state itself:

Telegraphy has become the most powerful tool at the disposal of our government. [It makes it possible] to foresee and control (diriger) great events before the masses have heard of them and become alarmed by them… and to avoid upheavals, protect the frontiers, and give administrative and diplomatic reports the urgent attention of the authorities [de la volonté dirigeante — literally ‘of the guiding will’].¹