František Ladislav Chleborad

František Ladislav Chleborad (1899)

František Ladislav Chleborad (born November 14, 1839 in Habry , † July 20, 1911 Saint Petersburg ) was a Czech labor leader and representative of self-help groups.

biography

After graduating from high school in the Old Town in Prague , Chleborad studied law and economics, at the same time he worked as an educator for Count Desfours -Walderode. In 1867 he went on a study trip to Western Europe, in which he observed and examined the living conditions of the workers and the work of the local cooperatives. On his return he wrote some brochures about his experiences and what he called the medicine against poverty: the self-sufficiency organizations of the workers. He drafted statutes for self-sufficiency associations for workers and initiated their establishment in 1868. On March 1, 1868, he was elected chairman of the Prague Oul Association. His main interest in the following years was the establishment of further associations in the cities of Bohemia, of which three hundred were founded in the following years. Soon, however, an opposition arose against him within the club, led by J. Bavorský. He represented the group of workers who saw the future in the trade union movement in the struggle against companies and the participation of workers in political life. The resistance to Chleborad was strengthened by his negative personal characteristics such as impatience or steadfastness. As early as the fall of 1869, Chleborad had to resign from his board function. After marrying a wealthy bourgeoisie, he became one of the co-founders of the Slávie bank , which insured workers against sickness and old age, and for a time became the bank's general manager. The promising self-help group project suffered a major setback in the stock market crash in 1873 .

He tried to find a job at Prague University as a professor. His request was prevented by the intervention of German professors. After numerous legal disputes over the assets of the cooperatives, Chleborad withdrew, left Prague and worked as a lawyer in various places. Due to further lawsuits and the loss of speculation when buying a property in Slovakia , he left Bohemia entirely in 1888 and moved to Russia . Among other things, he worked there as a consultant in the Ministry of Finance.

Chleborad was one of the first Czech economists and pioneers of workers' cooperatives. As the first in Bohemia, he tried to look at the economic situation from a macroeconomic point of view. Professor František Vencovský said of him: “He was a patriot who was concerned with the economic rise of the nation, especially the working class. And at the same time he was a pioneer in the introduction of economic knowledge into broad social consciousness. One can say that in the field of economic enlightenment he was a national enlightener, like other enlighteners in the areas of language and culture. "

Works

Chleborad wrote a number of publications and monographs on various topics of economics and the labor movement. His most important work was Soustava národního hospodářství politického (System of Political Economics), in which he explains the economic development from the past to the present, brings the views of different schools closer and explains the economic vocabulary. He published his work and successes in numerous papers that he launched, including Oul , Dělník (worker), Včela (bee).

Web links

• Literature and other media by and about František Ladislav Chleborad in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic