THE OCTROI AT ISSOIRE. 447 



wliat the laborer saved, not by what he could buy with his wages. 

 " Every workingman/' said he, " as statistics show, saves thirty 

 per cent of his wages. In Clermont, therefore, the laborer lays up 

 one franc per day, or three hundred francs per year. In Issoire, 

 he lays up one franc fifty per day, or four hundred and fifty francs 

 per year, a difference of one half in favor of the workman at Is- 

 soire as compared with the pauper labor of Clermont." 



The workman Jacques read this aloud in the bar-room of the 

 Lion d'Or, and pondered over it a good deal, for the logic was 

 irrefutable, and yet after all these years he had not four hundred 

 and fifty francs which he could call his own. 



The mayor made a speech to the workingmen, congratulating 

 them on his re-election, and assuring them that " for them and 

 for them alone the octroi was brought to Issoire. It was the pride 

 of Issoire that its workingmen were princes and not paupers. If 

 they paid high prices for articles of necessity, it was only that 

 they might get higher prices in return. You sell more than you 

 buy, and what you sell, the strength of your own right arms, costs 

 you nothing, and, when it is sold, is as much yours as it was be- 

 fore. It is God's bounty to the workingman. If these industries 

 which the octroi has built up around you are left unprotected, 

 you too would be left without defense. In the natural competi- 

 tion of trade, the rich grow richer and the poor poorer. Without 

 the octroi we should behold here as at Clermont the spectacle of 

 the chariot- wheels of Dives throwing dust into the eyes of Laza- 

 rus. But here in Issoire, Lazarus is, so to speak, already in Abra- 

 ham's bosom. The workingmen of Issoire have no truer friend 

 than Issoire's mayor, and to cherish their interests is the dream 

 by day and by night of Issoire's Common Council." 



But we must return to the boot-trade, on which the octroi was 

 first established. The history of that industry is the history of 

 all the others, for in one way or another all experienced the same 

 changes and conditions. 



The profits were large at first, and very soon the Issoire Citi- 

 zens' Foot-wear Manufacturing Association had no longer a mo- 

 nopoly in boots and shoes. The original concern still retained the 

 city contract for supplying boots to the laboring-men, but the oth- 

 ers found the general trade no less profitable. 



But soon an unexpected decline in boot consumption took place. 

 People perversely wore their old boots, which had long passed the 

 season of presentability. The children went barefooted or shuf- 

 fled around in sabots. Even worse, many parents bought for their 

 children a new kind of copper-toed shoe, which was made in Cler- 

 mont — a shoe that could never wear out at all ; one of the worst 

 possible things for the shoe-trade in any country ! 



When it was found that boots and shoes enough to last for five 



