DISRAELI DOCUMENTS
L’École Technique was the house magazine of the Syndicat du Personnel des Écoles Publiques d’Enseignement Technique de France et des Colonies (the Trades Union of Workers at the Public Technical Schools of France and its Colonies). As you might expect of mild-mannered school teachers, this union was a member of the ‘Amsterdam International’, a Social Democrat (rather than radical Marxist) group, dedicated to civilised, democratic, reform rather than oh-so-tastelessly-violent, revolution.
It is not uncharacteristic that Albert Raimond of Cyclo should support a moderately left-wing union by placing adverts in its magazine. On the one hand he was a capitalist factory owner but, on the other hand, he was an active anti-Nazi and, during the Second World War was imprisoned for supporting the French Resistance. The Cyclo advert appears on page 7 of the magazine. An article on the very next page, page 8, gives you a flavour of the times. It starts: “Mussolini has ‘fascised’ the unions, Dollfuss has ‘corporatised’ them and Hitler has destroyed them...” and continues with a warning about the real and growing threat of fascism in France.
In terms of derailleurs (surely more important than the great movements of 20th century politics) the advert shows that both the 4 speed version of the Le Cyclo derailleur and the Cyclo Witmy were already available in 1934.
(Source gallica.bnf.fr/ Bibliothèque nationale de France)