Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/470

454 of the men from Jonas, who were now the only laborers employed in Issoire. But this was objected to in several quarters, especially by the followers of the workman Jacques, who did not like to trust the Equitable Societies to make such a division.

The schoolmaster wanted it divided among the school-children pro rata in proportion to their raggedness. This was favored by almost every one, because it would benefit the laboring-man and help on the clothing-trade; but the politicians objected to giving money to the poor, because such giving tends simply to enervate. The very fact that a man is poor shows that he is not fitted to take care of money. Some wanted the city wall built up so high that no one could see out of the town, and then to have the top so beset with broken bottles that no one could climb over. A few of the extreme devotees of the Issoire idea wanted the surplus devoted to destroying the roads to Clermont, that all danger from the flood of cheap goods with which that city stood always ready to overwhelm Issoire would be removed forever. One of the Council even wished to use it for the permanent closing of all the city gates, for, as he said, "if we are good citizens we will have nothing to do with abroad."

But the private secretary of the mayor remarked that altogether too much had been said of this matter of surplus revenue. "It is a good deal easier," he remarked, sagely, "to manage a surplus than a deficit." Then the mayor said: "It is much better to have too much money than too little. That is what constitutes prosperity. I wouldn't mind having a little surplus myself." Then the Council laughed, and each one thought of what he could do with his share of the surplus, while they discussed some plans which looked toward an equitable distribution of it in places where it would do the most good.

The workman Jacques, who was now a member of the Council, and who had been selected as the opposition candidate for mayor, rose and said: "This octroi stuff is all bosh. It is a tax to make things higher, and it comes out of our pockets. That is why we are so poor. The mayor says that it is collected from the Clermont merchants. The mayor lies. What does a Clermont merchant care whether we pay him ten francs for a pair of boots outside the city gates, or twenty francs inside, after he has paid ten francs toll? It is all the same to him. He loses nothing either way, except that our ridiculous laws have lost him a good customer for his woolen goods, and we have lost a good customer for our wines and wheat. If I can save ten francs by buying my boots at Clermont, have I not a right to save it, and whose business is it if I do? The octroi is putting into the city treasury every year fifty thousand francs more than the city has any honest use for, and the whole town will go into bankruptcy if this