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13.: Protection, or the Three Municipal Magistrates
PUBLISHING HISTORY:
Original title: “La Protection ou les trois échevins.”
Place and date of first publication: No date given. First published in book form.
First French edition as book or pamphlet: Economic Sophisms (Second Series) (1848). First and Second Series were combined in one edition in 1851. Also published as “La Protection ou les trois échevins. Démonstration en quatre [215] tableaux,” in L’Annuaire de l’économie politique et de la statistique (1847), pp. 266–70.
Location in Paillottet’s edition of OC: Vol. 4. Sophismes économiques. Petits pamphlets I, pp. 229–41.
Previous translations: 1st American ed., 1848; 1st British ed., 1873; FEE ed., 1964.
A staged argument in four scenes.
Scene 1
(The scene takes place in the townhouse of Pierre, a municipal magistrate. The window gives a view of a beautiful park; three people are sitting around a table near a good fire.)
Pierre:
I say! A fire is very welcome when the Inner Man is satisfied! You must agree that it is very pleasant. But, alas! How many honest people, like the King of Yvetot, for lack of wood, blow on their fingers.
What unfortunate creatures! Heaven has inspired a charitable thought in me. Do you see these beautiful trees? I want to cut them down and distribute the wood to the poor.
Paul and Jean:
What! Free of charge?
Pierre:
Not exactly. My good works would soon be over if I dissipated my assets in this way. I estimate that my park is worth twenty thousand livres; by cutting it down I will get even more.
Paul:
You are wrong. Your wood left standing is worth more than neighboring forests because it provides more services than they can provide. If it is cut down, like its neighbors it will just be good for heating and will be worth not a denier more for each load.
Pierre:
Ha, ha! Mr. Theoretician, you have forgotten that I am a practical man. I thought that my reputation as a speculator was well enough established to protect me against being accused of stupidity. Do you think I am going to pass the time selling my wood at the low prices charged for wood floated down the Seine?
Paul:
You will have to.
Pierre:
What a naive person you are! And suppose I prevent the wood floated down the river from reaching Paris?
Paul:
That would change the picture. But how will you manage this?
Pierre:
This is the whole secret. You know that wood floated down the river pays ten sous per load on entry. Tomorrow, I will persuade the Municipal Magistrates to raise this duty to 100, 200, or even 300 livres, high enough to ensure that not a single log comes through. Well, do you follow me? If the good people do not want to die of cold, they will have to come to my yard. People will fight to have my wood; I will sell it for its weight in gold, and this well-organized charity will enable me to do other good works.
Paul:
Good heavens! What a fine scheme! It makes me think of another in the same vein.
Jean:
Let us see, what is it? Is philanthropy also concerned?
Paul:
What did you think of this butter from Normandy?
Jean:
It is excellent!
Paul:
Ah ha! It seemed all right just now, but do you not find that it sticks in your throat? I want to make better butter in Paris. I will have four or five hundred cows; I will distribute milk, butter, and cheese to the poor.
Pierre and Paul:
What! Free of charge?
Paul:
Bah! Let us always highlight charity! It has such a pretty face that even its mask is an excellent passport. I will give my butter to the people, and the people will give me their money. Is this known as selling?
Jean:
No, according to the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, but call it what you like, you will ruin yourself. Can Paris compete with Normandy in raising cows?
Paul:
I will have the saving on transport in my favor.
Jean:
So be it. But even if they pay for transport, the Normans are in a position to beat the Parisians.
Paul:
Do you call it beating someone to deliver goods to him at low prices?
Jean:
That is the accepted term. It is still true that you, for your part, will be beaten.
Paul:
Yes, like Don Quixote. The blows will fall upon Sancho. Jean, my friend, you are forgetting city tolls.
Jean:
City tolls! What have they to do with your butter?
Paul:
Right from tomorrow, I will claim protection; I will persuade the commune to prohibit butter from Normandy and Brittany. People will have to go without or buy mine, and at my price.
Jean:
By all that is holy, sirs, I find your philanthropy fascinating.
People learn to howl with the wolves, said someone.
My mind is made up. It will not be said that I am an unworthy Municipal Magistrate. Pierre, this crackling fire has inflamed your soul: Paul, this butter has loosened up the springs of your mind; well then, I also feel that this salted pork is stimulating my intelligence. Tomorrow, I will vote for the exclusion of pigs, alive or dead, and get it voted for too. Once this is done, I will build superb sties in the center of Paris, for the disgusting animal that is forbidden to Jews.
I will make myself a swineherd and pork butcher. Let us see how the good people of Lutecium will avoid coming to buy from my shop.
Pierre:
Not so fast, Sirs! If you make butter and salted meat so expensive, you will eat into the profit I am expecting from my wood.
Paul:
Heavens! My speculation will not be so marvelous any more if you hold me for ransom with your logs and hams.
Jean:
And what will I gain from making you pay over the odds for my sausages if you make me do likewise for my bread and fa gggots of wood?
Pierre:
Well, I declare! Are we going to quarrel about this? Let us rather join forces. Let us give each other mutual concessions. Besides, it is not good to listen only to the base voice of self-interest; humanity is there, should we not ensure that the people are heated?
Paul:
That is true. And people need butter to spread on their bread.
Jean:
Without doubt. And they need bacon to put in their stew.
In Chorus:
Charity to the fore! Long live philanthropy! Tomorrow! Tomorrow! We will make an assault on city tolls.
Pierre:
Ah, I was forgetting. Just a word, and this is essential. My friends, in this century of selfishness, the world is mistrustful and the purest intentions are often misinterpreted. Paul, plead in favor of wood; Jean, defend butter; and for my part, I will devote myself to local pigs. It is a good thing to anticipate nasty suspicions.
Paul and Jean (leaving):
Goodness! There is a clever man!
Scene 2
The Council of Municipal Magistrates
Paul:
My dear colleagues, every day, piles of wood come into Paris, which causes piles of cash to leave. At this rate we will all be ruined in three years, and what will become of the poor? (Cheers!) Let us prohibit foreign wood. I am not speaking for myself, since all the wood I possess would not make a toothpick. I am therefore perfectly disinterested in this matter. (Hear! Hear!) But here is Pierre, who has a stand of trees; he will ensure heating for our fellow citizens who will no longer have to depend on the charcoal makers of the Yonne. Have you ever thought of the danger we run of dying of cold if the owners of foreign forests took it into their heads not to send wood to Paris? Let us therefore prohibit their wood. In this way, we will prevent our cash from running out, create a logging industry, and create a new source of work and pay for our workers. (Applause)
Jean:
I support this proposal, which is so philanthropic and, above all, so disinterested, as the honorable gentleman who has just spoken himself has said. It is time we stopped this insolent laissez passer, which has brought unfettered competition into our market, with the result that there is no province reasonably endowed for whatever form of production it may be, that is not coming to flood us and sell it to us at rock-bottom prices, thus destroying jobs in Paris. It is up to the State to make production conditions level through wisely weighted duties, to allow only those goods that are more expensive than in Paris to enter and thus protect us from an unequal conflict. How, for example, do people want us to be able to produce milk and butter in Paris when faced with Brittany and Normandy? Just think, Sirs, that Bretons have cheaper land, hay closer to hand, and labor at more advantageous rates. Does common sense not tell us that we have to make opportunity more equal through a city toll set at a protective rate? I request that duty on milk and butter should be raised to 1,000 percent and more if necessary. People’s breakfast will be slightly more expensive, but how their earnings will rise! We will see barns and dairies being built, butter churns increasing in number, and new industries being established. It is not that there is the slightest self-interest in my proposal. I am not a cowherd, nor do I want to be. I am moved merely by the desire to be useful to the working classes. (Movement of approval)
Pierre:
I am happy to see in this assembly Statesmen that are so pure, so enlightened, and so devoted to the interests of the people. (Cheers!) I admire their selflessness and cannot do better than to follow such noble examples. I support their motion and add one to prohibit pigs from Poitou. It is not that I wish to become a swineherd or pork butcher; in this case my conscience would make it my duty to abstain. But is it not shameful, Sirs, that we should pay tribute to these peasants from Poitou who have the audacity to come into our own market and take work that we could be doing ourselves and who, after swamping us with sausages and hams, perhaps take nothing in return? In any case, who tells us that the balance of trade is not in their favor and that we are not obliged to pay them a remainder in cash? Is it not clear that, if industry from Poitou was transferred to Paris, it would create guaranteed openings for Parisian jobs? And then, Sirs, is it not highly possible, as M. Lestiboudois said so well, that we are buying salted meat from Poitou not with our income but with our capital? Where is this going to lead us? Let us therefore not allow avid, greedy, and perfidious rivals to come here and sell goods cheaply, making it impossible for us to make them ourselves. Municipal Magistrates, Paris has given us its trust, and we should justify this. The people are without work; it is up to us to create it, and if salted meat costs them slightly more, we would at least be conscious of the fact that we have sacrificed our interests in favor of those of the masses, just as any good municipal magistrate ought to do. (Thunderous applause)
A Voice:
I hear a great deal being said about the poor, but on the pretext of giving them work, people begin by taking away from them what is worth more even than work: wood, butter, and soup.
Pierre, Paul, and Jean:
Let us vote! Let us vote! Down with Utopians, theoreticians, and those who speak in generalities! Let us vote! Let us vote! (The three proposals are approved.)
Scene 3
Twenty years later
The Son:
Father, you must decide, we have to leave Paris. We can no longer live here. Jobs are scarce and everything is expensive.
The Father:
My child, you do not know how much it costs to abandon the place where we were born.
The Son:
What is worst of all is to die of hunger.
The Father:
Go, my son, and find a more hospitable land. For my part, I will not leave the grave in which your mother, brothers, and sisters have been laid to rest. I am longing to find in it at last the peace at their side that has been refused me in this town of desolation.
The Son:
Take courage, good father, we will find work away from home, in Poitou, Normandy, or in Brittany. It is said that all the industries of Paris are being gradually transferred to these far-off regions.
The Father:
It is only natural. As they can no longer sell us wood and foodstuffs, they have ceased to produce anything over their own needs; whatever time and capital they have available, they devote to making themselves the things we used to supply them with in former times.
The Son:
In the same way that in Paris, people have ceased to make fine furniture and clothing in order to plant trees and raise pigs and cows. Although I am very young, I have seen huge warehouses, sumptuous districts, and the banks of the Seine so full of life now invaded by fields and thickets.
The Father:
While the provinces are becoming covered with towns, Paris is turning into a rural area. What a frightful turnaround! And it needed only three misled municipal magistrates, assisted by public ignorance, to bring this terrible calamity down on us.
The Son:
Tell me the story, Father.
The Father:
It is very simple. On the pretext of setting up three new industries in Paris and thus supplying jobs for workers, these men had the importing of wood, butter, and meat prohibited. They claimed for themselves the right to supply these to their fellow citizens. These objects first rose to an exorbitant price. Nobody earned enough to buy them, and the small number of those who were able to obtain them spent all their resources on them and were unable to buy anything else. For this reason, all forms of industry shut down at the same time, all the quicker since the provinces no longer provided any markets. Destitution, death, and emigration began to rob Paris of its people.
The Son:
And when will this stop?
The Father:
When Paris has become a forest and prairie.
The Son:
The three Municipal Magistrates must have made huge fortunes?
The Father:
Initially, they made huge profits, but in the long run they were overcome by the general destitution.
The Son:
How is that possible?
The Father:
Do you see this ruin? It was once a magnificent townhouse surrounded by a fine park. If Paris had continued to progress, Master Pierre would have obtained more rent for it than its capital value is now worth.
The Son:
How can this be, since he now has no competition?
The Father:
Competition to sell has disappeared, but competition to buy is also disappearing with every passing day and will continue to disappear until Paris is open country and Master Pierre’s thickets have no greater value than an equal area of thicket in the Forest of Bondy. This is how monopoly, like any form of injustice, carries within itself the seed of its own punishment.
The Son:
This does not seem very clear to me, but what is incontrovertible is the decadence of Paris. Is there no way of overturning this iniquitous measure that Pierre and his colleagues caused to be adopted twenty years ago?
The Father:
I will tell you my secret. I am remaining in Paris for this; I will call upon the people to help me. It will be up to them to restore the city tolls to their original level, to remove from them the disastrous principle that has been grafted onto them and which has vegetated like a parasitic fungus.
The Son:
You should achieve success right from the very first day!
The Father:
Now, hold on! On the contrary, this work is difficult and laborious. Pierre, Paul, and Jean understand each other perfectly. They are ready to do anything rather than allow wood, butter, and meat to enter Paris. They have the people themselves on their side, as they clearly see the work given to them by the three protected industries; the people know how much work these industries are giving to woodcutters and cowherds, but they cannot have as accurate an idea of the production that would develop in the fresh air of freedom.
The Son:
If that is all that is needed, you will enlighten them.
The Father:
Child, at your age, you have no doubts about anything. If I express my thoughts in writing, the people will not read me, since there are not enough hours in the day for them to eke out their unfortunate existence. If I speak out, the Municipal Magistrates will seal my lips. The people will therefore remain disastrously misled for a long time. The political parties who base their hopes on people’s passions will spend less time dissipating their misconceptions than exploiting them. I will thus have to confront simultaneously those currently in power, the people, and the political parties. Oh! I see a terrible storm ready to break on the head of anyone bold enough to rise up against such deep-rooted iniquity in the country.
The Son:
You will have justice and truth on your side.
The Father:
And they will have force and slander on theirs. If only I were young! But age and suffering have sapped my strength.
The Son:
Very well, Father. Devote the strength left to you to serving the country. Begin the work of emancipation and leave me as an inheritance the duty to complete it.
Scene 4
Popular Unrest
Jacques Bonhomme:
People of Paris! Let us demand a reform of the city tolls! Let their original function be restored. Let each citizen be free to buy wood, butter, and meat wherever he pleases!
The People:
Long live freedom!
Pierre:
People of Paris! Do not be swayed by these words! What use is the freedom to buy if you lack the means? And how will you obtain the means if you lack work? Can Paris produce wood as cheaply as the Forest of Bondy? Meat at as low a price as Poitou? Butter in as favorable conditions as Normandy? If you open the door wide to these rival products, what will become of the cowherds, woodcutters, and pork butchers? They cannot do without protection.
The People:
Long live protection!
Jacques:
Protection! Are you the workers being protected? Are you not being made to compete against one another? Let the sellers of wood in turn suffer from competition! They have no right to increase the price of their wood by law unless they also raise rates of pay by law. Are you no longer a nation that loves equality?
The People:
Long live equality!
Pierre:
Do not listen to this revolutionary! It is true that we have increased the price of wood, meat, and butter, but this is in order to be able to pay good wages to the workers. We are motivated by charity.
The People:
Long live charity!
Jacques:
Use city tolls, if you can, to raise wages but not to make products more expensive. The people of Paris are not asking for charity, but justice!
The People:
Long live justice!
Pierre:
It is precisely the high prices of products that will produce higher wages as a result of the ricochet or flow-on effect!
The People:
Long live high prices!
Jacques:
If butter is expensive, it is not because you are paying the workers high wages. It is not even because you are making huge profits; it is just because Paris is ill-suited to this industry and because you have wanted things to be produced in town that ought to be produced in the country and things in the country that ought to be produced in town. The people do not have more work; they merely do other work. They do not have higher pay; they merely no longer buy things as cheaply.
The People:
Long live low prices!
Pierre:
You are being swayed by the fine words of this man! Let us put the question in simple terms. Is it not true that if we allow butter, wood, and meat to enter, we will be swamped by them? We would perish from a surfeit! There is therefore no other way of protecting ourselves from this different form of invasion than to shut our door to it and, in order to maintain the price of products, to produce a scarcity of them artificially.
A Few Scattered Voices:
Long live scarcity!
Jacques:
Let us set the question out in all its truth! We can share out among all the people of Paris only what there is in Paris. If there is less wood, meat, and butter, each person’s share will be smaller. Now there will be less if we keep these out than if we let them in. People of Paris! Each person can be abundantly supplied only if there is general abundance.
The People:
Long live abundance!
Pierre:
Whatever this man says, he will not prove to you that it is in your interest to be subjected to unbridled competition.
The People:
Down with competition!
Jacques:
However eloquent this man is, he will not enable you to taste the sweetness of trade restrictions.
The People:
Down with trade restrictions!
Pierre:
For my part, I declare that if you deprive the poor cowherds and swineherds of their living, if you sacrifice them to theories, I will no longer guarantee public order. Workers, do not trust this man. He is an agent of perfidious Normandy and goes abroad to seek inspiration. He is a traitor and should be hanged. (The people are silent.)
Jacques:
People of Paris, all that I am saying today I said twenty years ago, when Pierre chose to exploit city tolls for his benefit and your loss. I am not, then, an agent of the people of Normandy. Hang me if you like, but that will not stop oppression from being oppression. Friends, it is neither Jacques nor Pierre who ought to be killed but freedom, if you are afraid of it, or trade restriction if it hurts you.
The People:
Let us hang nobody and emancipate everybody!//
PUBLISHING HISTORY:
Original title: “La Protection ou les trois échevins.”
Place and date of first publication: No date given. First published in book form.
First French edition as book or pamphlet: Economic Sophisms (Second Series) (1848). First and Second Series were combined in one edition in 1851. Also published as “La Protection ou les trois échevins. Démonstration en quatre [215] tableaux,” in L’Annuaire de l’économie politique et de la statistique (1847), pp. 266–70.
Location in Paillottet’s edition of OC: Vol. 4. Sophismes économiques. Petits pamphlets I, pp. 229–41.
Previous translations: 1st American ed., 1848; 1st British ed., 1873; FEE ed., 1964.
A staged argument in four scenes.
Scene 1
(The scene takes place in the townhouse of Pierre, a municipal magistrate. The window gives a view of a beautiful park; three people are sitting around a table near a good fire.)
Pierre:
I say! A fire is very welcome when the Inner Man is satisfied! You must agree that it is very pleasant. But, alas! How many honest people, like the King of Yvetot, for lack of wood, blow on their fingers.
What unfortunate creatures! Heaven has inspired a charitable thought in me. Do you see these beautiful trees? I want to cut them down and distribute the wood to the poor.
Paul and Jean:
What! Free of charge?
Pierre:
Not exactly. My good works would soon be over if I dissipated my assets in this way. I estimate that my park is worth twenty thousand livres; by cutting it down I will get even more.
Paul:
You are wrong. Your wood left standing is worth more than neighboring forests because it provides more services than they can provide. If it is cut down, like its neighbors it will just be good for heating and will be worth not a denier more for each load.
Pierre:
Ha, ha! Mr. Theoretician, you have forgotten that I am a practical man. I thought that my reputation as a speculator was well enough established to protect me against being accused of stupidity. Do you think I am going to pass the time selling my wood at the low prices charged for wood floated down the Seine?
Paul:
You will have to.
Pierre:
What a naive person you are! And suppose I prevent the wood floated down the river from reaching Paris?
Paul:
That would change the picture. But how will you manage this?
Pierre:
This is the whole secret. You know that wood floated down the river pays ten sous per load on entry. Tomorrow, I will persuade the Municipal Magistrates to raise this duty to 100, 200, or even 300 livres, high enough to ensure that not a single log comes through. Well, do you follow me? If the good people do not want to die of cold, they will have to come to my yard. People will fight to have my wood; I will sell it for its weight in gold, and this well-organized charity will enable me to do other good works.
Paul:
Good heavens! What a fine scheme! It makes me think of another in the same vein.
Jean:
Let us see, what is it? Is philanthropy also concerned?
Paul:
What did you think of this butter from Normandy?
Jean:
It is excellent!
Paul:
Ah ha! It seemed all right just now, but do you not find that it sticks in your throat? I want to make better butter in Paris. I will have four or five hundred cows; I will distribute milk, butter, and cheese to the poor.
Pierre and Paul:
What! Free of charge?
Paul:
Bah! Let us always highlight charity! It has such a pretty face that even its mask is an excellent passport. I will give my butter to the people, and the people will give me their money. Is this known as selling?
Jean:
No, according to the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, but call it what you like, you will ruin yourself. Can Paris compete with Normandy in raising cows?
Paul:
I will have the saving on transport in my favor.
Jean:
So be it. But even if they pay for transport, the Normans are in a position to beat the Parisians.
Paul:
Do you call it beating someone to deliver goods to him at low prices?
Jean:
That is the accepted term. It is still true that you, for your part, will be beaten.
Paul:
Yes, like Don Quixote. The blows will fall upon Sancho. Jean, my friend, you are forgetting city tolls.
Jean:
City tolls! What have they to do with your butter?
Paul:
Right from tomorrow, I will claim protection; I will persuade the commune to prohibit butter from Normandy and Brittany. People will have to go without or buy mine, and at my price.
Jean:
By all that is holy, sirs, I find your philanthropy fascinating.
People learn to howl with the wolves, said someone.
My mind is made up. It will not be said that I am an unworthy Municipal Magistrate. Pierre, this crackling fire has inflamed your soul: Paul, this butter has loosened up the springs of your mind; well then, I also feel that this salted pork is stimulating my intelligence. Tomorrow, I will vote for the exclusion of pigs, alive or dead, and get it voted for too. Once this is done, I will build superb sties in the center of Paris, for the disgusting animal that is forbidden to Jews.
I will make myself a swineherd and pork butcher. Let us see how the good people of Lutecium will avoid coming to buy from my shop.
Pierre:
Not so fast, Sirs! If you make butter and salted meat so expensive, you will eat into the profit I am expecting from my wood.
Paul:
Heavens! My speculation will not be so marvelous any more if you hold me for ransom with your logs and hams.
Jean:
And what will I gain from making you pay over the odds for my sausages if you make me do likewise for my bread and fa gggots of wood?
Pierre:
Well, I declare! Are we going to quarrel about this? Let us rather join forces. Let us give each other mutual concessions. Besides, it is not good to listen only to the base voice of self-interest; humanity is there, should we not ensure that the people are heated?
Paul:
That is true. And people need butter to spread on their bread.
Jean:
Without doubt. And they need bacon to put in their stew.
In Chorus:
Charity to the fore! Long live philanthropy! Tomorrow! Tomorrow! We will make an assault on city tolls.
Pierre:
Ah, I was forgetting. Just a word, and this is essential. My friends, in this century of selfishness, the world is mistrustful and the purest intentions are often misinterpreted. Paul, plead in favor of wood; Jean, defend butter; and for my part, I will devote myself to local pigs. It is a good thing to anticipate nasty suspicions.
Paul and Jean (leaving):
Goodness! There is a clever man!
Scene 2
The Council of Municipal Magistrates
Paul:
My dear colleagues, every day, piles of wood come into Paris, which causes piles of cash to leave. At this rate we will all be ruined in three years, and what will become of the poor? (Cheers!) Let us prohibit foreign wood. I am not speaking for myself, since all the wood I possess would not make a toothpick. I am therefore perfectly disinterested in this matter. (Hear! Hear!) But here is Pierre, who has a stand of trees; he will ensure heating for our fellow citizens who will no longer have to depend on the charcoal makers of the Yonne. Have you ever thought of the danger we run of dying of cold if the owners of foreign forests took it into their heads not to send wood to Paris? Let us therefore prohibit their wood. In this way, we will prevent our cash from running out, create a logging industry, and create a new source of work and pay for our workers. (Applause)
Jean:
I support this proposal, which is so philanthropic and, above all, so disinterested, as the honorable gentleman who has just spoken himself has said. It is time we stopped this insolent laissez passer, which has brought unfettered competition into our market, with the result that there is no province reasonably endowed for whatever form of production it may be, that is not coming to flood us and sell it to us at rock-bottom prices, thus destroying jobs in Paris. It is up to the State to make production conditions level through wisely weighted duties, to allow only those goods that are more expensive than in Paris to enter and thus protect us from an unequal conflict. How, for example, do people want us to be able to produce milk and butter in Paris when faced with Brittany and Normandy? Just think, Sirs, that Bretons have cheaper land, hay closer to hand, and labor at more advantageous rates. Does common sense not tell us that we have to make opportunity more equal through a city toll set at a protective rate? I request that duty on milk and butter should be raised to 1,000 percent and more if necessary. People’s breakfast will be slightly more expensive, but how their earnings will rise! We will see barns and dairies being built, butter churns increasing in number, and new industries being established. It is not that there is the slightest self-interest in my proposal. I am not a cowherd, nor do I want to be. I am moved merely by the desire to be useful to the working classes. (Movement of approval)
Pierre:
I am happy to see in this assembly Statesmen that are so pure, so enlightened, and so devoted to the interests of the people. (Cheers!) I admire their selflessness and cannot do better than to follow such noble examples. I support their motion and add one to prohibit pigs from Poitou. It is not that I wish to become a swineherd or pork butcher; in this case my conscience would make it my duty to abstain. But is it not shameful, Sirs, that we should pay tribute to these peasants from Poitou who have the audacity to come into our own market and take work that we could be doing ourselves and who, after swamping us with sausages and hams, perhaps take nothing in return? In any case, who tells us that the balance of trade is not in their favor and that we are not obliged to pay them a remainder in cash? Is it not clear that, if industry from Poitou was transferred to Paris, it would create guaranteed openings for Parisian jobs? And then, Sirs, is it not highly possible, as M. Lestiboudois said so well, that we are buying salted meat from Poitou not with our income but with our capital? Where is this going to lead us? Let us therefore not allow avid, greedy, and perfidious rivals to come here and sell goods cheaply, making it impossible for us to make them ourselves. Municipal Magistrates, Paris has given us its trust, and we should justify this. The people are without work; it is up to us to create it, and if salted meat costs them slightly more, we would at least be conscious of the fact that we have sacrificed our interests in favor of those of the masses, just as any good municipal magistrate ought to do. (Thunderous applause)
A Voice:
I hear a great deal being said about the poor, but on the pretext of giving them work, people begin by taking away from them what is worth more even than work: wood, butter, and soup.
Pierre, Paul, and Jean:
Let us vote! Let us vote! Down with Utopians, theoreticians, and those who speak in generalities! Let us vote! Let us vote! (The three proposals are approved.)
Scene 3
Twenty years later
The Son:
Father, you must decide, we have to leave Paris. We can no longer live here. Jobs are scarce and everything is expensive.
The Father:
My child, you do not know how much it costs to abandon the place where we were born.
The Son:
What is worst of all is to die of hunger.
The Father:
Go, my son, and find a more hospitable land. For my part, I will not leave the grave in which your mother, brothers, and sisters have been laid to rest. I am longing to find in it at last the peace at their side that has been refused me in this town of desolation.
The Son:
Take courage, good father, we will find work away from home, in Poitou, Normandy, or in Brittany. It is said that all the industries of Paris are being gradually transferred to these far-off regions.
The Father:
It is only natural. As they can no longer sell us wood and foodstuffs, they have ceased to produce anything over their own needs; whatever time and capital they have available, they devote to making themselves the things we used to supply them with in former times.
The Son:
In the same way that in Paris, people have ceased to make fine furniture and clothing in order to plant trees and raise pigs and cows. Although I am very young, I have seen huge warehouses, sumptuous districts, and the banks of the Seine so full of life now invaded by fields and thickets.
The Father:
While the provinces are becoming covered with towns, Paris is turning into a rural area. What a frightful turnaround! And it needed only three misled municipal magistrates, assisted by public ignorance, to bring this terrible calamity down on us.
The Son:
Tell me the story, Father.
The Father:
It is very simple. On the pretext of setting up three new industries in Paris and thus supplying jobs for workers, these men had the importing of wood, butter, and meat prohibited. They claimed for themselves the right to supply these to their fellow citizens. These objects first rose to an exorbitant price. Nobody earned enough to buy them, and the small number of those who were able to obtain them spent all their resources on them and were unable to buy anything else. For this reason, all forms of industry shut down at the same time, all the quicker since the provinces no longer provided any markets. Destitution, death, and emigration began to rob Paris of its people.
The Son:
And when will this stop?
The Father:
When Paris has become a forest and prairie.
The Son:
The three Municipal Magistrates must have made huge fortunes?
The Father:
Initially, they made huge profits, but in the long run they were overcome by the general destitution.
The Son:
How is that possible?
The Father:
Do you see this ruin? It was once a magnificent townhouse surrounded by a fine park. If Paris had continued to progress, Master Pierre would have obtained more rent for it than its capital value is now worth.
The Son:
How can this be, since he now has no competition?
The Father:
Competition to sell has disappeared, but competition to buy is also disappearing with every passing day and will continue to disappear until Paris is open country and Master Pierre’s thickets have no greater value than an equal area of thicket in the Forest of Bondy. This is how monopoly, like any form of injustice, carries within itself the seed of its own punishment.
The Son:
This does not seem very clear to me, but what is incontrovertible is the decadence of Paris. Is there no way of overturning this iniquitous measure that Pierre and his colleagues caused to be adopted twenty years ago?
The Father:
I will tell you my secret. I am remaining in Paris for this; I will call upon the people to help me. It will be up to them to restore the city tolls to their original level, to remove from them the disastrous principle that has been grafted onto them and which has vegetated like a parasitic fungus.
The Son:
You should achieve success right from the very first day!
The Father:
Now, hold on! On the contrary, this work is difficult and laborious. Pierre, Paul, and Jean understand each other perfectly. They are ready to do anything rather than allow wood, butter, and meat to enter Paris. They have the people themselves on their side, as they clearly see the work given to them by the three protected industries; the people know how much work these industries are giving to woodcutters and cowherds, but they cannot have as accurate an idea of the production that would develop in the fresh air of freedom.
The Son:
If that is all that is needed, you will enlighten them.
The Father:
Child, at your age, you have no doubts about anything. If I express my thoughts in writing, the people will not read me, since there are not enough hours in the day for them to eke out their unfortunate existence. If I speak out, the Municipal Magistrates will seal my lips. The people will therefore remain disastrously misled for a long time. The political parties who base their hopes on people’s passions will spend less time dissipating their misconceptions than exploiting them. I will thus have to confront simultaneously those currently in power, the people, and the political parties. Oh! I see a terrible storm ready to break on the head of anyone bold enough to rise up against such deep-rooted iniquity in the country.
The Son:
You will have justice and truth on your side.
The Father:
And they will have force and slander on theirs. If only I were young! But age and suffering have sapped my strength.
The Son:
Very well, Father. Devote the strength left to you to serving the country. Begin the work of emancipation and leave me as an inheritance the duty to complete it.
Scene 4
Popular Unrest
Jacques Bonhomme:
People of Paris! Let us demand a reform of the city tolls! Let their original function be restored. Let each citizen be free to buy wood, butter, and meat wherever he pleases!
The People:
Long live freedom!
Pierre:
People of Paris! Do not be swayed by these words! What use is the freedom to buy if you lack the means? And how will you obtain the means if you lack work? Can Paris produce wood as cheaply as the Forest of Bondy? Meat at as low a price as Poitou? Butter in as favorable conditions as Normandy? If you open the door wide to these rival products, what will become of the cowherds, woodcutters, and pork butchers? They cannot do without protection.
The People:
Long live protection!
Jacques:
Protection! Are you the workers being protected? Are you not being made to compete against one another? Let the sellers of wood in turn suffer from competition! They have no right to increase the price of their wood by law unless they also raise rates of pay by law. Are you no longer a nation that loves equality?
The People:
Long live equality!
Pierre:
Do not listen to this revolutionary! It is true that we have increased the price of wood, meat, and butter, but this is in order to be able to pay good wages to the workers. We are motivated by charity.
The People:
Long live charity!
Jacques:
Use city tolls, if you can, to raise wages but not to make products more expensive. The people of Paris are not asking for charity, but justice!
The People:
Long live justice!
Pierre:
It is precisely the high prices of products that will produce higher wages as a result of the ricochet or flow-on effect!
The People:
Long live high prices!
Jacques:
If butter is expensive, it is not because you are paying the workers high wages. It is not even because you are making huge profits; it is just because Paris is ill-suited to this industry and because you have wanted things to be produced in town that ought to be produced in the country and things in the country that ought to be produced in town. The people do not have more work; they merely do other work. They do not have higher pay; they merely no longer buy things as cheaply.
The People:
Long live low prices!
Pierre:
You are being swayed by the fine words of this man! Let us put the question in simple terms. Is it not true that if we allow butter, wood, and meat to enter, we will be swamped by them? We would perish from a surfeit! There is therefore no other way of protecting ourselves from this different form of invasion than to shut our door to it and, in order to maintain the price of products, to produce a scarcity of them artificially.
A Few Scattered Voices:
Long live scarcity!
Jacques:
Let us set the question out in all its truth! We can share out among all the people of Paris only what there is in Paris. If there is less wood, meat, and butter, each person’s share will be smaller. Now there will be less if we keep these out than if we let them in. People of Paris! Each person can be abundantly supplied only if there is general abundance.
The People:
Long live abundance!
Pierre:
Whatever this man says, he will not prove to you that it is in your interest to be subjected to unbridled competition.
The People:
Down with competition!
Jacques:
However eloquent this man is, he will not enable you to taste the sweetness of trade restrictions.
The People:
Down with trade restrictions!
Pierre:
For my part, I declare that if you deprive the poor cowherds and swineherds of their living, if you sacrifice them to theories, I will no longer guarantee public order. Workers, do not trust this man. He is an agent of perfidious Normandy and goes abroad to seek inspiration. He is a traitor and should be hanged. (The people are silent.)
Jacques:
People of Paris, all that I am saying today I said twenty years ago, when Pierre chose to exploit city tolls for his benefit and your loss. I am not, then, an agent of the people of Normandy. Hang me if you like, but that will not stop oppression from being oppression. Friends, it is neither Jacques nor Pierre who ought to be killed but freedom, if you are afraid of it, or trade restriction if it hurts you.
The People:
Let us hang nobody and emancipate everybody!//