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Education was often seen by the elites in the nineteenth century as a solution to the threat of social upheaval. Behind the call for worker education, workers were not always associated with its implementation because the initiative can be part of a paternalistic system. With the case of the Société d’enseignement mutuel des travailleurs de Roubaix, an ephemeral and contested initiative born in the last months of the Second Empire, it is therefore necessary to understand the educational project of its founder, a spinning-mill owner who admired the institutions created in Mulhouse and the young Ligue de l’enseignement. The implementation of the project reveals the controversy of the instruction of workers and the strength of the political antagonism, but also the local freedom to maneuver.