450 THU POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



permit no increase of wages at present. Next day the doors of 

 the factories were closed, and each workman received his pay in 

 full, and his discharge. 



For a week the factories were empty and silent. The Con- 

 fidence Society was not idle, however, for a trusty messenger had 

 been sent at once to the village of Jonas. He offered four francs 

 a day to the Jonas men if they would come over to work in Issoire. 

 Now, Jonas is a queer little town, built all around the brow of an 

 old volcano. I doubt if there is another like it on earth. The top 

 of the hill is made of hard lava, below which is a belt of ashes, 

 very old and packed solid, but as easy to cut as cheese. Long ago 

 the ancient Gauls burrowed into this hill and filled it with their 

 habitations. These appear like gigantic swallows' nests when you 

 look at the hill from below. One of the largest of these houses is 

 used as a church, and its lava walls are rudely frescoed over in 

 imitation of the big church at Issoire. Only very poor people live 

 in Jonas now, people who can not pay much rent, and who do not 

 mind the absence of fire in the winter. And the Jonas men were 

 glad to come over to Issoire for four francs a day, to take up the 

 work which the pampered laborers of Issoire had refused. 



The coming of the Jonas men was a great surprise in Issoire, 

 and gave rise to much hard feeling. The workmen who were 

 idle met them with eggs and cabbages, and some of them even 

 carried bricks. But the gendarmes were on the side of the Con- 

 fidence Society, and they protected the new men from any serious 

 harm. So the mob followed sulkily in the rear, shouting " Rats ! 

 rats ! " It sounded like " Rah, rah ! " for this is the French way 

 of saying " rats." 



Winter was now approaching, and the discharged boot-makers 

 of Issoire found their condition daily more and more unpleasant. 

 They had an association among themselves called the " Chevaliers 

 of Industry." The big Jacques was master-workman, and they 

 met in the cafe of the Lion d'Or to discuss matters of common 

 interest. They had a good deal to say of the power of organized 

 labor, the encroachments of capital, and maintained that the value 

 of all things is due solely to the labor which is put upon it. The 

 so-called raw material, land, air, water, grass, cowhide, shoe-pegs, 

 all these are God's bounty to men. No one should arrogate these 

 to himself, and all should be as free as air. All else in value labor 

 has given. Capital, the interloper, has unjustly taken the lion's 

 share, and left a pittance to labor. What capital has thus taken 

 is ours, for we have made it. Then the speaker referred to the 

 snug little capital which the President of the Confidence Society 

 had laid away in his strong-box, and which shone out through his 

 plate-glass windows and made itself felt in every smirk of his self- 

 satisfied face. Another speaker said that the thief of labor was 



