Moutier

Moutier-Grandval is a District near Delémont in the Bernese Jura region of Switzerland

Moutier was primarily an agricultural district until the 1850s. It is a low valley not a high plateau with poor soil and interminable winters like the Franches-Montagnes. The land offered agricultural and cultural resources unlike Saignelégier, Noirmont, or Les Bois, and was able to support a good quality of life for resident farmers through the 19th century. There was no watchmaking in the Birse valley until the 1850s, though 400 inhabitants lived there, and the villages upstream were purely agricultural.

Around 1820 or 1830 Isaac Schaffter of La Dozerce made watches with matching wheels as well as weight-powered pendulum clocks. Mr. Mérillat also operated a watch business in Moutier employing two or three workers before 1850.

Watchmaking in Moutier began with the opening of the "Grande Fabrique" built on the banks of the Birse river at the western end of the village. This spot had previously housed various industries but the new factory erected in 1851 and 1852 housed about a hundred workers in one central building focused on roughing and finishing of watch movements. Because the cost of living was cheap, the work was simple and low-skilled, but this allowed the town to grow to about 1000 at this time.

The Moutier factory grew, producing cylinder escapements and pinions, and the building was enlarged. The factory began to produce complete watches, first key-wound and then crown-wound, between 1865 and 1870. At this point the Moutier company employed 500 workers and delivered 40,000 watches a year. By this time the population of the village of Moutier was 1,946. More specialized workshops were added in Moutier during this period, including a workshop for the manufacture of dials and another for gilding.

In 1888 the population had risen over 2,100 and the "Grande Fabrique du Nord" was built, which employed 700 to 800 workers by the end of the century. Other factories for roughing and finishing, assortments, case manufacturing, nickel-plating, gold-plating, oxidizing, engraving, enamelling, and so on were also built.

Two factors contributed to the rise of the watch industry in Moutier at that time: The construction of the Delémont-Bienne railway between 1874 and 1877 and the 1895 installation of electric power and light. The village was home to 2,583 people in 1896, 3,094 in 1900, 4,182 in 1910, and over 4,500 in 1915. By this time the watch industry employed about 750 people, plus about 100 workers from outside who traveled to the town to work.

• Junker & Mettetal