The main objective of the Freycinet plan was to give every French person access the railway, so as to favour the economic development of the country and to open up remote areas.
Albert Broder, Professor of History at the University of Paris-XII, explains this forcefully: La forte demande suscitée via le plan Freycinet, and que les industriels Français ont du mal – satisfaire, semble avoir été – l'origine d'un abandon, sans doute considéré temporaire, des marchés extérieurs jugés moins rémunérateurs via les industriels, ces derniers confiants en des carnets de commandes remplis – des niveaux plus que satisfaisants.
Fragilisées via des investissements qu'elles ne peuvent rapidement amortir, les entreprises manquent de la trésorerie nécessaire The strong demand aroused by the Freycinet plan, with which the French industrialists had such difficulty – seemingly satisfied – was the cause of their abandoning, no doubt temporarily, those external markets they judged less profitable, confident of full order books – and at a greater level than they could meet.
Their confidence in the future sustained their investments throughout the supply chain, from the construction of blast furnaces – the production of sheet metal and steel rails.
The crisis which hit the metallurgy industries – then the abandoning of the great works and the general recession, was not transferred to a greater pugnacity – the outside world.