Building the tunnel: Louis Favre, labour and the strike of Göschenen

The contract of 7 August 1872

The great tunnel between Göschenen and Airolo was the critical work of the whole enterprise, which the company let as a single lump-sum contract. On 7 August 1872 it awarded the construction of the tunnel to the Geneva contractor Louis Favre.¹ Favre, born in 1826 at Chêne-Bourg near Geneva, was a carpenter's son who had trained himself as an engineer through practical work in France and had built railway works there and in Switzerland.² After a tender period of only six weeks the company had received seven offers. Favre, who had never built a tunnel longer than 1,000 metres, undercut his strongest competitor, the Società Italiana di Lavori Pubblici led by Severino Grattoni, one of the builders of the Mont Cenis tunnel, and promised to finish the work in eight years.³

The contract was severe. Favre undertook to complete the tunnel within eight years from 1 October 1872. For every day by which he finished earlier he was to receive a bonus of CHF 5,000. For every day of delay he owed a penalty of CHF 5,000 during the first six months and CHF 10,000 during the following six months. If the delay exceeded one year, the company could retain his security deposit and take the work out of his hands.⁴ Favre also had to provide a security deposit of CHF 8 million, a sum far beyond the means of a contractor of his size.⁵ The contract transferred almost the whole geological and financial risk of the tunnel to the contractor. That allocation suited the company and its financiers, who wanted a fixed price for the most uncertain part of the project, but it exposed the contractor to ruin if the rock proved worse than expected.

Work, technology and conditions underground

Work began on 1 October 1872 under Favre's contract, from both portals at once.⁶ The tunnel was driven with pneumatic drilling machines and with dynamite, which had been patented only a few years before. Water-driven compressors produced the compressed air, which was stored in cooled reservoirs. On the Airolo side the Tremola stream proved an unreliable source because its flow changed with the seasons, and water was drawn instead from the more distant Ticino. Its length was about 15 kilometres (15,003 metres according to the engineering literature), its summit at about 1,155 metres above sea level. From the start it was built for double track.⁷ Progress depended on the rock. Granite and gneiss allowed rapid advance, while zones of decomposed rock and water inflows, especially on the southern side, required timbering and later masonry lining and slowed the work for months.

The conditions in the tunnel were extreme. The tunnel geologist Stapff measured rock temperatures of up to 30.7 degrees Celsius, and the air in places reached 33 and later 40 degrees. The air was saturated with dust from drilling, fumes from dynamite and the smoke of oil lamps, because the ventilation provided by the compressed air was insufficient. Thousands of workers, at the peak up to 1,645 at Göschenen and 1,302 at Airolo, most of them Italians from the poor rural areas of Piedmont and Lombardy, worked in shifts around the clock. In the villages of Göschenen and Airolo they lived in overcrowded lodgings that speculators let at high prices and bought their food at company or private canteens that charged what the market would bear.⁸ An intestinal parasite, the hookworm (Ankylostoma duodenale), spread among the miners and caused severe anaemia. In 1880 the Turin parasitologist Edoardo Perroncito identified the parasite as the cause of the anaemia of the tunnel workers, and the investigations of the Gotthard epidemic brought major advances in the knowledge of the aetiology, epidemiology and treatment of the disease.⁹

Notes

1. Charles Andreae, Hundert Jahre Schweizerischer Tunnelbau, Neujahrsblatt der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich 1948, https://ngzh.ch/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Neujahrsblatt_NGZH_1948.pdf: "Am 7. August 1872 wurde die Erstellung des Gotthardtunnels an den Genfer Unternehmer Louis FAVRE vergeben." ↩
2. Wikipedia, "Louis Favre (engineer)", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Favre_(engineer) (consulted as a last resort), for his birth on 26 January 1826 at Chêne-Bourg, his training as a carpenter and his self-taught engineering education. ↩
3. Wikipedia (de), "Gotthardtunnel", https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthardtunnel (used as a last resort): "Nach einer äusserst kurzen Eingabefrist von sechs Wochen trafen sieben Offerten ein"; on the Società Italiana di Lavori Pubblici under Severino Grattoni as the strongest competitor and on Favre, "der bisher keinen Tunnel gebaut hatte, der länger war als 1000 Meter". ↩
4. Federal Court, judgment of 12 August 1881, Entreprise du grand tunnel du Gothard v. Compagnie du chemin de fer du Gothard, BGE 7 I 191, summary at https://app.omnilex.ai/it/sources/court-decision/ch-bge--7-i-191/bge-7-i-191, quoting the contract of 7 August 1872: "La Compagnie du Gothard payera 5000 fr. de prime à L. Favre pour chaque jour de gagné", with penalties of CHF 5,000 a day for the first six months and CHF 10,000 for the following six months, and the forfeiture of the deposit after one year of delay. ↩
5. Wikipedia (de), "Gotthardtunnel" (as above): Favre "hinterlegte eine Kaution von 8 Millionen Franken". The assessment of the sum in relation to Favre's means is the author's. ↩
6. H. Etter (as above): construction began on 1 October 1872 under Favre's contract; BGE 7 I 191 (as above), for the eight-year period running from 1 October 1872. ↩
7. Andreae, Hundert Jahre Schweizerischer Tunnelbau (as above), for the length of 15,003 metres, the double track, the summit at 1,154.6 metres above sea level and the improved compressed-air drilling machines ("ebenfalls Druckluftmaschinen") and the use of dynamite; Wikipedia (en), "Gotthard Rail Tunnel", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Rail_Tunnel (used as a last resort), for the water-driven compressors, the cooled reservoirs and the Tremola and the Ticino. ↩
8. Hansjürg Zumstein, "Ein Geheimbericht entlarvte die Ausbeutung am Gotthard", SRF, 9 December 2016, https://www.srf.ch/kultur/gotthard/ein-geheimbericht-entlarvte-die-ausbeutung-am-gotthard, on the dust, explosive gases and foul air, and on the housing in speculative hands; Andreae (as above), for Stapff's measurements ("die höchste Gesteinstemperatur 30,7° C"); Wikipedia (de), "Gotthardtunnel" (as above), for the air temperatures ("stellenweise auf 33 °C, später auf 40 °C") and the workforce ("In Göschenen arbeiteten maximal 1645, in Airolo 1302 Arbeiter, vorwiegend Italiener aus den armen ländlichen Gegenden des Piemont und der Lombardei"). ↩
9. Wikipedia (en), "Edoardo Perroncito", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edoardo_Perroncito (used as a last resort): "in 1880 he determined that hookworm was the cause of anemia being suffered by workmen building the St. Gotthard railway tunnel"; Wikipedia (en), "Gotthard Rail Tunnel" (as above), on the epidemic of Ancylostoma duodenale and the "major advances in parasitology". ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.