Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/468

452 It is hard to fight against monopolies. The men were condemned. The black flag was raised in the Golden Lion. A good deal was said, but nothing further was done, by organized labor toward taking possession of its own.

A new election was at hand, and the mayor's party issued a call to the workingmen to rally to his support.

"All who believe in the grandeur and glory of France, in the ten commandments, in the theory that the sun is the real center of the solar system, and in the Issoire idea of a perpetual octroi for the defense and development of home interests and the elevation of home labor, who would reduce city taxes and prevent the accumulation of money not needed for city uses, by the perpetuation and extension of the octroi; who are opposed to all schemes tending to dethrone this policy and to reduce Issoire's laborers to the level of the underpaid and oppressed workers of Clermont and Jonas—are called to join in the re-election of Mayor de Rougeâtre and of his supporters in the Common Council."

The mayor spoke from the steps of the Hôtel de Ville in defense of the octroi, on the success of which agency he justly based his claim for re-election.

He showed how the octroi had changed Issoire from a dull and peaceful agricultural village with few industries, and those only the ones for which the town possessed special advantages, into a microcosm in which a little of everything was made and sold. Issoire was no longer a town where nothing happened, and in which the procession of grain-wagons, the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, wearied the eye and the ear with their ceaseless monotony. It was a city in which the clashing of interests and the fluctuation of prices made every one anxious for the morrow's sun to rise that he might see what would happen next. He spoke of the promising infant, the industry of boot-making, which had always stood in the fore-front of Issoire's development. He touched lightly on the late labor difficulties, as a mere incident in the city's progress, "a spark struck out from the clashing of great interests as from flint and steel." "Different directions may produce such," said he, unconsciously quoting from an earlier economist, "nay, different velocities in the same direction," Then he spoke of the value of the octroi to the workingman and of the charmed life he leads at Issoire. He repeated all the arguments drawn from the prices of boots and the prices of labor which the schoolmaster had written out for him, and everything went on beautifully till near the close, when the master-workman Jacques rose to ask a question.

"How is it," said he, "if the lot of the workingman is so pleasant in Issoire, that there is not a single workingman from Issoire in one of the factories in this city? How is it that the mills are