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Pour comprendre la manière dont un entrepreneur gère ses affaires, il faut saisir comment il vit et se représente le monde qui l’entoure et, plus particulièrement, la conjoncture économique qui se dessine jour après jour. Alors que la crise économique change la donne, un industriel de Lille, Jules-Émile Scrive-Loyer, tient quotidiennement son journal personnel où il relate toutes les conversations qui lui permettent d’obtenir l’information nécessaire à la bonne conduite de ses affaires. Revers et succès de ses concurrents locaux, investissements réalisés ici ou là, gestion de la main-d’œuvre et politique salariale: ses curiosités sont celles de tout patron soucieux de bonne gestion. Mais l’image de la situation économique qu’elles lui renvoient est opaque au point de le conforter dans une attitude fort prudente: l’avenir de la toile de lin est tellement incertain qu’il lui semble urgent de ne rien entreprendre. Ses hésitations et son inertie ne sont probablement pas sans signification à l’échelle d’un monde de l’industrie en partie fragilisé par la sévérité de la crise économique qui secoue, fin XIXe siècle, l’Europe occidentale

To understand how an entrepreneur manages his business, it is necessary to understand how he/she lives and how he/she views the world that surrounds him/her, and more particularly, the economic situation that takes shape day after day.While the economic crisis has changed the context,an industrialist from Lille,JulesÉmile Scrive-Loyer, has been keeping on reporting in his daily diary the conversations that allowed him to obtain the appropriate information for the prosperity of his business. Setbacks and successes of his local rivals,investments made here and there,management of the wokforce and wage policy:these curious practices were common to all heads of business who were eager to be good managers. But the image the economic situation sent back to them was so impenetrable that it reinforced their cautiousness: the future of the linen cloth was so uncertain that it seemeed urgent not to do anything about it. Possibly, the linen industry’s hesitations and apathy were not meaningless with regard to a world of industry, which was partly weakened by the gravity of the economic crisis that shook western Europe in the late nineteenth century.