1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fix, Théodore

FIX, THÉODORE (1800–1846), French journalist and economist, was born at Soleure in Switzerland in 1800. His father was a French physician whose ancestors had been expatriated by the revocation of the edict of Nantes. At first a land surveyor, he in 1830 became connected with the Bulletin universal des sciences, to which he contributed most of the geographical articles. In 1833 he founded the Revue mensuelle d’économie politique, which he edited during the three years of its existence. He then became engaged in journalistic work, till his essay on L’Association des douanes allemandes won him a prize from the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 1840, and also procured him work on the report on the progress of sciences since the Revolution, which the Institute was preparing. A few months before his death he published Observations sur les classes ouvrières, in which he argued against all attempts to regulate artificially the rate of wages, and attributed the condition of the working classes to their own thriftlessness and intemperance. He died suddenly at Paris on the 31st of July 1846.