[1] Mimerel was a tall man at 1.92 metres (6 ft 4 in) with powerful shoulders, grey-eyed, highly intelligent, and dominating.

[4] Just before the July Revolution of 1830 the Prefect of the Nord identified Mimerel and his brother, a justice of the peace, as "leaders of the hostile party" in Roubaix.

As late as the fall of 1832 Mimerel, as President of the Consultative Chamber of Arts and Manufactures of Roubaix, was opposed to the seizure of foreign wool by customs, because "it would be against the spirit and needs of the century, which both demand new commercial freedoms rather than new constraints."

"[9] He fiercely defended industrial liberty within France and opposed repeal of protection against foreign goods.

[11] In his 1840 Tableau Louis-René Villermé described child labor conditions in the textile industry as "too terrible to be endured".

[11] In 1841 the work of Villermé, the report of Alexandre Loiset on insanitary housing in Lille and the intervention of Villeneuve-Bargemont led to a law regulating child labour.

[12] The Comité pour la Défense du Travail National was founded in 1842 in an effort to coordinate the protectionist manufacturers' lobbies.

[5] He influenced the lobbies to stress self-sufficiency rather than rivalry with foreigners, and to subsidize the mainstream press to promote protectionism.

He argued that "if foreign labour cannot access our market, workers, rare in relation to the number of machines, will receive constant and high salaries for a long time."

He also blamed economists and socialists for spreading "moral poverty" rather than "real destitution", where raised expectations caused the workers to see a satisfactory condition as unbearable.

... not that we want to impose limits on the instruction of the people, but we would prefer whatever restores to the individual a sense of contentment with his position in society and encourages him to improve it by means of orderliness and work, rather than ideas which lead him to ruin himself in pointless complaints and in unrealistic projects.

[18] The ADTN brought together the four major employers associations: coal mines, eastern industrialists, metallurgists and machine makers.

[19] The association's council in 1847 included Antoine Odier (President), Auguste Mimerel (Vice-President), Joseph Périer (Treasurer) and Louis-Martin Lebeuf (Secretary).

[4] He succeeded in excluding foreign products from the Exposition des produits de l'industrie française of 1849.

[19] Arguing against the treaty, Mimerel pointed out that if France had been dependent on English coal she would have been vulnerable to an embargo during the Franco-Austrian War of 1859.

Auguste Mimerel resigned and the association disintegrated, leaving the great employers' federations to go their own ways.

[26] At the start of 1869 Gustave Masure published articles in the republican Progrès du Nord that attacked Mimerel.

Mimerel had completely changed his position, and said, "It is no exaggeration to say that French industry will not perish, In the midst of our trials discouragement never entered our hearts."