442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that the money was kept in town. To go from hand to hand, from 

 hand to hand, and then from hand to hand again, as in the endless 

 round of the fairy tale — that is what money is for. Factories 

 sprang up as if by magic, and down the long white highways 

 multitudes of the crushed and down-trodden of other cities were 

 seen tramping along to share the prosperity of Issoire. Five hun- 

 dred soldiers in red and blue uniforms had taken the place of the 

 dozen gendarmes, the dome of the church was gilded anew, and 

 the poet wrote a sonnet in which Issoire was compared to the 

 island of Calypso, and the mayor to Ulysses. 



But the weather was never so pleasant that nobody had the 

 rheumatism. Never was country so happy that the grumblers all 

 kept still. There were some complainers even at Issoire. Those 

 who lived on incomes and endowments said that with the rise of 

 prices it was every day harder to make both ends meet. One 

 wealthy man who wore Clermont-made boots, and had furnished 

 his sons with private tutors, and saddle-horses and gold watches, 

 now found it almost beyond his means to keep them in ordinary 

 clothing. But he soon removed to Clermont, and others of the 

 same sort went with him. With them, too, went the widows and 

 orphans who lived on endowments, and the old soldiers who had 

 government pensions. 



But the mayor said : " Let them go ; it is a good riddance. 

 They belong to the non-producing class, a class that hangs like a 

 millstone on the neck of labor.'' 



But, in spite of all adverse influences, many people from Issoire 

 visited Clermont in fine weather for pleasure or for trade. It was 

 pleasant to wander about the larger town, the home of their an- 

 cestors, to be a part in the bustle of its streets, and to breathe its 

 metropolitan air. There were better opera-houses there and pict- 

 ure-galleries, and there was a special charm in the shops where 

 prices far below those at Issoire were ostentatiously fixed on 

 elaborately displayed wares. And so — almost before the owner 

 knew it — many an Issoire wagon was loaded down with cheap 

 goods from Clermont. But, although the octroi was paid at the 

 city gates, the real purpose of the octroi was evaded. The money, 

 in the first place, was spent outside the city. Worse than this, the 

 octroi, instead of being paid by the agents of the Clermont mer- 

 chants — as the law intended — was collected, as the mayor of Is- 

 soire now said, " off our own people." For, if the octroi is to be 

 collected in this way, " off our own people," it would be just as 

 easy and a good deal cheaper and fairer to collect the tax in the 

 usual way, in direct proportion to the value of each man's income 

 or capital. 



Another ordinance was clearly necessary. The wagon-maker 

 at Issoire had long since gone out of the business. The prices of 



