436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it was enacted by the Common Council of Issoire that " whosoever 

 brings a pair of new boots into Issoire shall be compelled to pay 

 ten francs/' which was the cost of a pair of boots at Clermont. 

 The purpose of this order was not to raise money, but to have 

 boots made at Issoire, that the wearing out of these necessary ar- 

 ticles should not wear out, at the same time, the wealth of the 

 town. 



" People will have boots," the mayor said ; " they can not afford 

 to bring them in from Clermont, and so they will make them at 

 Issoire, and all the boot-money will remain at home. It is as 

 though, so far as the city is concerned, Issoire gets her boots for 

 nothing. To be sure, Clermont has a good water-power, and her 

 nearness to the mountains makes the price of hides and tan-bark 

 lower, but this has nothing to do with the question. Natural ad- 

 vantages amount to nothing when artificial advantages can be 

 given by a mere stroke of the pen. The laws of political economy 

 are not of universal application. Depend upon the octroi to make 

 all things equal." 



A new boot-factory was now built at Issoire, and boots were 

 offered for sale at twenty francs a pair. The cost of boots at Cler- 

 mont was ten francs, and the octroi charges at the city gate 

 amounted to ten francs more. Buying at twenty francs would 

 save the purchaser a trip to Clermont and back, and, as trade 

 is apt to flow in the direction of least resistance, after a little 

 the Issoire boot industry became fairly established. There was 

 some grumbling at high prices. Some of the laboring classes went 

 barefooted, while the doctor and the schoolmaster put their chil- 

 dren into wooden shoes, or sabots, such as peasant children wear. 

 But the mayor and the Common Council took shares in the new 

 factory, and, being members of the company, they got their boots 

 at the old rate, besides having a part in the large dividends which 

 the business soon began to yield. Employment was given to more 

 workmen, who came over from Clermont ; the hum of machinery 

 took the place of the creaking of farm-wagons, the rich began to 

 grow richer, the poor went barefooted, and the people of mod- 

 erate means felt able to run into debt because they lived in a pro- 

 gressive town. The wives of the members of the Common Council 

 bought diamonds, and the members presented the mayor with a 

 gold-headed cane. Soon other boot-factories, were started, and 

 still others, though, strangely enough, the more boots were pro- 

 duced, the more barefooted children were seen in the streets. 



By and by the tanners decided that they too must ask for help 

 from the octroi. It was as bad, they said, for the factories to send 

 to Clermont for leather as for the merchants to send for boots. 

 In either case, the money went out of the town, and was gone for- 

 ever. So the octroi was levied on leather as well as on boots. 



