François Barthélemy Arlès-Dufour (3 June 1797 – 21 January 1872) was a French silk merchant and leading exponent of Saint-Simonianism.

Later he joined a silk company based in Leipzig, Germany, married into the owners' family and was placed in charge of its Lyon operations.

[1] His father joined the army as a private soldier and had risen to the rank of battalion commander by the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

François received little schooling as a child, but after his father retired gained some education at the Lycée Impérial à Paris.

His father died in 1811 and two years later his mother, who was illiterate, was forced to withdraw François Arlès from school due to lack of money.

Also that year he visited the silk trading house in Leipzig of Dufour frères, a family that had emigrated from France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

François Arlès tried to teach himself better French, and also learned German and English and studied the new discipline of political economy.

Arlès-Dufour also established cordial relations with British political and business leaders such as John Bright and Richard Cobden.

The company opened branches in Zürich, Saint-Étienne, Paris, Basel, Krefeld, Marseille, London and New York City.

Rondot helped him make contact with the Scottish firm Jardine Matheson of Hong Kong, a leader in the Far East silk trade.

[1] As early as 1822 Arlès wrote, "The greatest and most conclusive step, and that which our state of civilization imperiously requires, is the abolition of customs and obstacles, which make communication and exchange between people difficult or impossible."

In articles in 1832 and 1833 in L’Écho de la Fabrique Arlès-Dufour wrote on subjects such as industry in Lyon, tariffs, cooperation with England and a progressive income tax.

[1] Arlès-Dufour believed in free competition, productive work, huge manufacturing enterprises and a strong sense of social solidarity.

In the early days of the French Second Republic in April 1848 he launched an appeal to the workers of La Croix-Rousse saying, "It is almost twenty years since ...

I called for an age of association of everyone, rich and the poor, manufacturer and the worker, by organization of labour, classification by vocation and the compensation according to work."

[2] In 1833 Enfantin led a party of 20 French technicians to Egypt to undertake new surveys and put new life into the Suez Canal and Nile Barrage projects.

He met Ferdinand de Lesseps, at the time Vice-Consul for France in Egypt, and was presented to the Khedive Muhammad Ali, who approved the barrage but not the canal.

[4] In his 1834 Un mot sur les fabriques étrangères Arlès-Dufour applauded the Suez Canal project, which would soon bring Paris as close to Calcutta as to Saint Petersburg.

[5] In 1846 Enfantin and Arlès-Dufour created the Société d'Études du Canal de Suez, with French, English and German sections.

[7] The Suez project was revived in 1854 when Sa'id Pasha came to power in Egypt and heard and approved de Lesseps' proposal in November 1854.

[8] Lesseps wrote warm and enthusiastic letters to Arlès-Dufour when his project began to prosper at the end of 1854 and the start of 1855.

The first shareholders included Arlès-Dufour and other Saint-Simonians such as Paulin Talabot, Enfantin and Michel Chevalier, a close advisor to Napoleon III.

[2] Arlès-Dufour was hostile to the monarchy of the Bourbon Restoration, and during the July Revolution of 1830 served in the National Guard and was temporarily deputy mayor.

He exerted a strong liberal influence, and gained a considerable reputation for his frank statements about the policies of successive governments.

However, there remained strong opposition to free trade in France, and it was not until 1860 that the Emperor imposed a treaty of commerce with England by a "customs coup".

Richard Cobden, who signed the treaty on behalf of Britain, wrote a personal note to him thanking him for the role he had played in the conclusion of the agreement.

[1] Arlès-Dufour gave his support to Julie-Victoire Daubié in her efforts to become the first woman to obtain a Bachelor's degree in France.

[3] He was one of the adjudicators in 1859 for a prize that Daubié won for her essay La Femme pauvre au XIX siècle (Women and Poverty in the Nineteenth Century).

[2] Arlès-Dufour and Désiré Girardon, professor at the Martinière college, founded the École Centrale lyonnaise pour l'Industrie et le Commerce in 1857.