Henri de Peyerimhoff was a French senior civil servant and then a lobbyist for the coal industry and president of several mining companies. He came from the minor aristocracy of Alsace and was son of a magistrate. At an early age he was made a senior administrator in the Council of State. He became bored with this work, resigned and became head of the colliery owner's association, whose interests he defended against other industries, the unions and the government. He became vice-president of the National Economic Council, and used that position to express his generally conservative views on social and industrial issues. He was in favour of paternalism and industrial cartels, and against state intervention.

Édouard Louis Julien-Laferrière was a French lawyer and authority in administrative law who held various senior administrative positions during the French Third Republic. He wrote a treatise on administrative law that defined the basis for modern French administrative law. He was appointed Governor-General of Algeria during a crisis in 1898, and established an elected advisory assembly with little real power. He encouraged southward expansion into the Sahara.