First Tableau.
[The scene is in the hotel of Alderman Pierre. The window looks out on a fine park; three persons are seated near a good fire.]
Pierre. Upon my word, a fire is very comfortable when the stomach is satisfied. It must be agreed that it is a pleasant thing. But, alas! how many worthy people like the King of Yvetot,
"Blow on their fingers for want of wood."
Unhappy creatures, Heaven inspires me with a charitable thought. You see these fine trees. I will cut them down and distribute the wood among the poor.
Paul and Jean. What! gratis?
Pierre. Not exactly. There would soon be an end of my good works if I scattered my property thus. I think that my park is worth twenty thousand livres; by cutting it down I shall get much more for it.
Paul. A mistake. Your wood as it stands is worth more than that in the neighboring forests, for it renders services which that cannot give. When cut down it will, like that, be good for burning only, and will not be worth a sou more per cord.
Pierre. Oh! Mr. Theorist, you forget that I am a practical man. I supposed that my reputation as a speculator was well enough established to put me above any charge of stupidity. Do you think that I shall amuse myself by selling my wood at the price of other wood?
Paul. You must.
Pierre. Simpleton!—Suppose I prevent the bringing of any wood to Paris?
Paul. That will alter the case. But how will you manage it?
Pierre. This is the whole secret. You know that wood pays an entrance duty of ten sous per cord. To-morrow I will induce the Aldermen to raise this duty to one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred livres, so high as to keep out every fagot. Well, do you see? If the good people do not want to die of cold, they must come to my wood-yard. They will fight for my wood; I shall sell it for its weight in gold, and this well-regulated deed of charity will enable me to do others of the same sort.
Paul. This is a fine idea, and it suggests an equally good one to me.
Jean. Well, what is it?
Paul. How do you find this Normandy butter?
Jean. Excellent.
Paul. Well, it seemed passable a moment ago. But do you not think it is a little strong? I want to make a better article at Paris. I will have four or five hundred cows, and I will distribute milk, butter and cheese to the poor people.
Pierre and Jean. What! as a charity?
Paul. Bah, let us always put charity in the foreground. It is such a fine thing that its counterfeit even is an excellent card. I will give my butter to the people and they will give me their money. Is that called selling?
Jean. No, according to the Bourgeois Gentilhomme; but call it what you please, you ruin yourself. Can Paris compete with Normandy in raising cows?
Paul. I shall save the cost of transportation.
Jean. Very well; but the Normans are able to beat the Parisians, even if they do have to pay for transportation.
Paul. Do you call it beating any one to furnish him things at a low price?
Jean. It is the time-honored word. You will always be beaten.
Paul. Yes; like Don Quixote. The blows will fall on Sancho. Jean, my friend, you forgot the octroi.
Jean. The octroi! What has that to do with your butter?
Paul. To-morrow I will demand protection, and I will induce the Council to prohibit the butter of Normandy and Brittany. The people must do without butter, or buy mine, and that at my price, too.
Jean. Gentlemen, your philanthropy carries me along with it. "In time one learns to howl with the wolves." It shall not be said that I am an unworthy Alderman. Pierre, this sparkling fire has illumined your soul; Paul, this butter has given an impulse to your understanding, and I perceive that this piece of salt pork stimulates my intelligence. To-morrow I will vote myself, and make others vote, for the exclusion of hogs, dead or alive; this done, I will build superb stock-yards in the middle of Paris "for the unclean animal forbidden to the Hebrews." I will become swineherd and pork-seller, and we shall see how the good people of Lutetia can help getting their food at my shop.
Pierre. Gently, my friends; if you thus run up the price of butter and salt meat, you diminish the profit which I expected from my wood.
Paul. Nor is my speculation so wonderful, if you ruin me with your fuel and your hams.
Jean. What shall I gain by making you pay an extra price for my sausages, if you overcharge me for pastry and fagots?
Pierre. Do you not see that we are getting into a quarrel? Let us rather unite. Let us make reciprocal concessions. Besides, it is not well to listen only to miserable self-interest. Humanity is concerned, and must not the warming of the people be secured?
Paul. That it is true, and people must have butter to spread on their bread.
Jean. Certainly. And they must have a bit of pork for their soup.
All Together. Forward, charity! Long live philanthropy! To-morrow, to-morrow, we will take the octroi by assault.
Pierre. Ah, I forgot. One word more which is important. My friends, in this selfish age people are suspicious, and the purest intentions are often misconstrued. Paul, you plead for wood; Jean, defend butter; and I will devote myself to domestic swine. It is best to head off invidious suspicions. Paul and Jean (leaving). Upon my word, what a clever fellow!
SECOND TABLEAU.
The Common Council.
Paul. My dear colleagues, every day great quantities of wood come into Paris, and draw out of it large sums of money. If this goes on, we shall all be ruined in three years, and what will become of the poor people? [Bravo.] Let us prohibit foreign wood. I am not speaking for myself, for you could not make a tooth-pick out of all the wood I own. I am, therefore, perfectly disinterested. [Good, good.] But here is Pierre, who has a park, and he will keep our fellow-citizens from freezing. They will no longer be in a state of dependence on the charcoal dealers of the Yonne. Have you ever thought of the risk we run of dying of cold, if the proprietors of these foreign forests should take it into their heads not to bring any more wood to Paris? Let us, therefore, prohibit wood. By this means we shall stop the drain of specie, we shall start the wood-chopping business, and open to our workmen a new source of labor and wages. [Applause.]
Jean. I second the motion of the Honorable member—a proposition so philanthropic and so disinterested, as he remarked. It is time that we should stop this intolerable freedom of entry, which has brought a ruinous competition upon our market, so that there is not a province tolerably well situated for producing some one article which does not inundate us with it, sell it to us at a low price, and depress Parisian labor. It is the business of the State to equalize the conditions of production by wisely graduated duties; to allow the entrance from without of whatever is dearer there than at Paris, and thus relieve us from an unequal contest. How, for instance, can they expect us to make milk and butter in Paris as against Brittany and Normandy? Think, gentlemen; the Bretons have land cheaper, feed more convenient, and labor more abundant. Does not common sense say that the conditions must be equalized by a protecting duty? I ask that the duty on milk and butter be raised to a thousand per cent., and more, if necessary. The breakfasts of the people will cost a little more, but wages will rise! We shall see the building of stables and dairies, a good trade in churns, and the foundation of new industries laid. I, myself, have not the least interest in this plan. I am not a cowherd, nor do I desire to become one. I am moved by the single desire to be useful to the laboring classes. [Expressions of approbation.]
Pierre. I am happy to see in this assembly statesmen so pure, enlightened, and devoted to the interests of the people. [Cheers.] I admire their self-denial, and cannot do better than follow such noble examples. I support their motion, and I also make one to exclude Poitou hogs. It is not that I want to become a swineherd or pork dealer, in which case my conscience would forbid my making this motion; but is it not shameful, gentlemen, that we should be paying tribute to these poor Poitevin peasants who have the audacity to come into our own market, take possession of a business that we could have carried on ourselves, and, after having inundated us with sausages and hams, take from us, perhaps, nothing in return? Anyhow, who says that the balance of trade is not in their favor, and that we are not compelled to pay them a tribute in money? Is it not plain that if this Poitevin industry were planted in Paris, it would open new fields to Parisian labor? Moreover, gentlemen, is it not very likely, as Mr. Lestiboudois said, that we buy these Poitevin salted meats, not with our income, but our capital? Where will this land us? Let us not allow greedy, avaricious and perfidious rivals to come here and sell things cheaply, thus making it impossible for us to produce them ourselves. Aldermen, Paris has given us its confidence, and we must show ourselves worthy of it. The people are without labor, and we must create it, and if salted meat costs them a little more, we shall, at least, have the consciousness that we have sacrificed our interests to those of the masses, as every good Alderman ought to do. [Thunders of applause.]
A Voice. I hear much said of the poor people; but, under the pretext of giving them labor, you begin by taking away from them that which is worth more than labor itself—wood, butter, and soup.
Pierre, Paul and Jean. Vote, vote. Away with your theorists and generalizers! Let us vote. [The three motions are carried.]
THIRD TABLEAU.
Twenty Years After.
Son. Father, decide; we must leave Paris. Work is slack, and everything is dear.
Father. My son, you do not know how hard it is to leave the place where we were born.
Son. The worst of all things is to die there of misery.
Father. Go, my son, and seek a more hospitable country. For myself, I will not leave the grave where your mother, sisters and brothers lie. I am eager to find, at last, near them, the rest which is denied me in this city of desolation.
Son. Courage, dear father, we will find work elsewhere—in Poitou, Normandy or Brittany. They say that the industry of Paris is gradually transferring itself to those distant countries.
Father. It is very natural. Unable to sell us wood and food, they stopped producing more than they needed for themselves, and they devoted their spare time and capital to making those things which we formerly furnished them.
Son. Just as at Paris, they quit making handsome furniture and fine clothes, in order to plant trees, and raise hogs and cows. Though quite young, I have seen vast storehouses, sumptuous buildings, and quays thronged with life on those banks of the Seine which are now given up to meadows and forests.
Father. While the provinces are filling up with cities, Paris becomes country. What a frightful revolution! Three mistaken Aldermen, aided by public ignorance, have brought down on us this terrible calamity.
Son. Tell me this story, my father.
Father. It is very simple. Under the pretext of establishing three new trades at Paris, and of thus supplying labor to the workmen, these men secured the prohibition of wood, butter, and meats. They assumed the right of supplying their fellow-citizens with them. These articles rose immediately to an exorbitant price. Nobody made enough to buy them, and the few who could procure them by using up all they made were unable to buy anything else; consequently all branches of industry stopped at once—all the more so because the provinces no longer offered a market. Misery, death, and emigration began to depopulate Paris.
Son. When will this stop?
Father. When Paris has become a meadow and a forest.
Son. The three Aldermen must have made a great fortune.
Father. At first they made immense profits, but at length they were involved in the common misery.
Son. How was that possible?
Father. You see this ruin; it was a magnificent house, surrounded by a fine park. If Paris had kept on advancing, Master Pierre would have got more rent from it annually than the whole thing is now worth to him.
Son. How can that be, since he got rid of competition?
Father. Competition in selling has disappeared; but competition in buying also disappears every day, and will keep on disappearing until Paris is an open field, and Master Pierre's woodland will be worth no more than an equal number of acres in the forest of Bondy. Thus, a monopoly, like every species of injustice, brings its own punishment upon itself.
Son. This does not seem very plain to me, but the decay of Paris is undeniable. Is there, then, no means of repealing this unjust measure that Pierre and his colleagues adopted twenty years ago?
Father. I will confide my secret to you. I will remain at Paris for this purpose; I will call the people to my aid. It depends on them whether they will replace the octroi on its old basis, and dismiss from it this fatal principle, which is grafted on it, and has grown there like a parasite fungus.
Son. You ought to succeed on the very first day.
Father. No; on the contrary, the work is a difficult and laborious one. Pierre, Paul and Jean understand one another perfectly. They are ready to do anything rather than allow the entrance of wood, butter and meat into Paris. They even have on their side the people, who clearly see the labor which these three protected branches of business give, who know how many wood-choppers and cow-drivers it gives employment to, but who cannot obtain so clear an idea of the labor that would spring up in the free air of liberty.
Son. If this is all that is needed, you will enlighten them.
Father. My child, at your age, one doubts at nothing. If I wrote, the people would not read; for all their time is occupied in supporting a wretched existence. If I speak, the Aldermen will shut my mouth. The people will, therefore, remain long in their fatal error; political parties, which build their hopes on their passions, attempt to play upon their prejudices, rather than to dispel them. I shall then have to deal with the powers that be—the people and the parties. I see that a storm will burst on the head of the audacious person who dares to rise against an iniquity which is so firmly rooted in the country.
Son. You will have justice and truth on your side.
Father. And they will have force and calumny. If I were only young! But age and suffering have exhausted my strength.
Son. Well, father, devote all that you have left to the service of the country. Begin this work of emancipation, and leave to me for an inheritance the task of finishing it.
FOURTH TABLEAU.
The Agitation.
Jacques Bonhomme. Parisians, let us demand the reform of the octroi; let it be put back to what it was. Let every citizen be FREE to buy wood, butter and meat where it seems good to him.
The People. Hurrah for LIBERTY!
Pierre. Parisians, do not allow yourselves to be seduced by these words. Of what avail is the freedom of purchasing, if you have not the means? and how can you have the means, if labor is wanting? Can Paris produce wood as cheaply as the forest of Bondy, or meat at as low price as Poitou, or butter as easily as Normandy? If you open the doors to these rival products, what will become of the wood cutters, pork dealers, and cattle drivers? They cannot do without protection.
The People.. Hurrah for PROTECTION!
Jacques. Protection! But do they protect you, workmen? Do not you compete with one another? Let the wood dealers then suffer competition in their turn. They have no right to raise the price of their wood by law, unless they, also, by law, raise wages. Do you not still love equality?
The People. Hurrah for EQUALITY!
Pierre. Do not listen to this factious fellow. We have raised the price of wood, meat, and butter, it is true; but it is in order that we may give good wages to the workmen. We are moved by charity.
The People. Hurrah for CHARITY!
Jacques. Use the octroi, if you can, to raise wages, or do not use it to raise the price of commodities. The Parisians do not ask for charity, but justice.
The People. Hurrah for JUSTICE!
Pierre. It is precisely the dearness of products which will, by reflex action, raise wages.
The People. Hurrah for DEARNESS!
Jacques. If butter is dear, it is not because you pay workmen well; it is not even that you may make great profits; it is only because Paris is ill situated for this business, and because you desired that they should do in the city what ought to be done in the country, and in the country what was done in the city. The people have no more labor, only they labor at something else. They get no more wages, but they do not buy things as cheaply.
The People. Hurrah for CHEAPNESS!
Pierre. This person seduces you with his fine words. Let us state the question plainly. Is it not true that if we admit butter, wood, and meat, we shall be inundated with them, and die of a plethora? There is, then, no other way in which we can preserve ourselves from this new inundation, than to shut the door, and we can keep up the price of things only by causing scarcity artificially.
A Very Few Voices. Hurrah for SCARCITY!
Jacques. Let us state the question as it is. Among all the Parisians we can divide only what is in Paris; the less wood, butter and meat there is, the smaller each one's share will be. There will be less if we exclude than if we admit. Parisians, individual abundance can exist only where there is general abundance.
The People. Hurrah for ABUNDANCE!
Pierre. No matter what this man says, he cannot prove to you that it is to your interest to submit to unbridled competition.
The People. Down with COMPETITION!
Jacques. Despite all this man's declamation, he cannot make you enjoy the sweets of restriction.
The People. Down with RESTRICTION!
Pierre. I declare to you that if the poor dealers in cattle and hogs are deprived of their livelihood, if they are sacrificed to theories, I will not be answerable for public order. Workmen, distrust this man. He is an agent of perfidious Normandy; he is under the pay of foreigners. He is a traitor, and must be hanged. [The people keep silent.]
Jacques. Parisians, all that I say now, I said to you twenty years ago, when it occurred to Pierre to use the octroi for his gain and your loss. I am not an agent of Normandy. Hang me if you will, but this will not prevent oppression from being oppression. Friends, you must kill neither Jacques nor Pierre, but liberty if it frightens you, or restriction if it hurts you.
The People. Let us hang nobody, but let us emancipate everybody.