446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cheaper for them to buy their home products in another city, to 

 pay carriage both ways, and to pay the octroi at the city gates, 

 than it was to send across the street in Issoire for the same article. 

 Freedom from competition at Issoire enabled the quarry-owners 

 to fix their own prices at home, and thus to broaden the slender 

 margin of profits which came from outside trade. This peculiar 

 condition reached its climax when one of Beltran's wagons from 

 Clermont left Issoire with a load of millstones, while, next day, 

 the same wagon, without unloading, carried the same millstones 

 back to be used in the mills of the Issoire General Company of 

 Flour and Meal ! The schoolmaster was ecstatic over the stimulus 

 thus given to several industries at once. It was like killing many 

 birds with one stone. But the Issoire Association for the Home 

 Production of Millstones was not satisfied with Clermont compe- 

 tition, even in this peculiar form, and an increase in the octroi 

 soon put further importations out of the question. 



There were also some curious omissions in the list, in spite of 

 its length and complexity. An old woman, Widow Besoin, who 

 lived near the Cantal gate, had five speckled Dominick hens, of 

 which she was very fond. These hens were to her a source of 

 profit as well as pleasure. She came to the mayor with the com- 

 plaint that her neighbor. Farmer Bois-rouge, who lived just out- 

 side the city gate, brought in the eggs of his chickens free, and 

 sold them at prices far below those she was compelled to charge 

 for the eggs of her hens. The Bois-rouge chickens roamed over 

 the whole farm and lived on grasshoppers and gleanings, while 

 hers were fed on grain which had passed the octroi. It seems 

 that the schoolmaster, in making up the octroi list, in arranging 

 the o's had neglected to look for words beginning with " oe," and 

 so had omitted the word " oeuf," which is the French for " egg." 

 So the Council was called together, a rate for " oeuf s " was agreed 

 upon, and Widow Besoin's Dominick hens were free from the 

 pauper competition of the chickens of Farmer Bois-rouge. 



But the action of the octroi was, on the whole, as I have said, 

 extremely beneficial. It filled the treasury again, and it stimu- 

 lated a large number of infant industries, which had previously 

 been unable to compete with established industries in surround- 

 ing towns, on account of the high prices of raw materials, and 

 especially of labor, at Issoire. It is true that workman Jacques 

 and some of the other laborers complained that these high wages 

 were high in name only. In Clermont, men worked for three 

 francs a day, but these three francs would buy twelve yards of 

 calico or ten pounds of sugar, while the five francs received in 

 Issoire would buy but ten yards of calico or eight pounds of su- 

 gar. But the schoolmaster wrote another letter to the " Gazette," 

 showing that the question of wages was solved by an estimate of 



