452 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It is hard to figlit against monopolies. The men were con- 

 demned. The black flag was raised in the Golden Lion. A good 

 deal was said, but nothing further was done, by organized labor 

 toward taking possession of its own. 



A new election was at hand, and the mayor's party issued a call 

 to the workingmen to rally to his support. 



" All who believe in the grandeur and glory of France, in the 

 ten commandments, in the theory that the sun is the real center 

 of the solar system, and in the Issoire idea of a perpetual octroi 

 for the defense and development of home interests and the eleva- 

 tion of home labor, who would reduce city taxes and prevent the 

 accumulation of money not needed for city uses, by the perpetua- 

 tion and extension of the octroi ; who are ojDposed to all schemes 

 tending to dethrone this policy and to reduce Issoire's laborers to 

 the level of the underpaid and oppressed workers of Clermont and 

 Jonas — are called to join in the re-election of Mayor de Rougeatre 

 and of his supporters in the Common Council." 



The mayor spoke from the steps of the Hotel de Ville in de- 

 fense of the octroi, on the success of which agency he justly based 

 his claim for re-election. 



He showed how the octroi had changed Issoire from a dull and 

 peaceful agricultural village with few industries, and those only 

 the ones for which the town possessed special advantages, into a 

 microcosm in which a little of everything was made and sold. Is- 

 soire was no longer a town where nothing hajjpened, and in which 

 the procession of grain-wagons, the same yesterday, to-day, and 

 to-morrow, wearied the eye and the ear with their ceaseless mo- 

 notony. It was a city in which the clashing of interests and the 

 fluctuation of prices made every one anxious for the morrow's sun 

 to rise that he might see what would happen next. He spoke of 

 the promising infant, the industry of boot-making, which had al- 

 ways stood in the fore-front of Issoire's development. He touched 

 lightly on the late labor difficulties, as a mere incident in the city's 

 progress, " a spark struck out from the clashing of great interests 

 as from flint and steel." " Different directions may produce such," 

 said he, unconsciously quoting from an earlier economist, " nay, 

 different velocities in the same direction," Then he spoke of the 

 value of the octroi to the workingman and of the charmed life 

 he leads at Issoire. He repeated all the arguments drawn from 

 the prices of boots and the prices of labor which the schoolmaster 

 had written out for him, and everything went on beautifully till 

 near the close, when the master-workman Jacques rose to ask a 

 question. 



" How is it," said he, " if the lot of the workingman is so pleas- 

 ant in Issoire, that there is not a single workingman from Issoire 

 in one of the factories in this city ? How is it that the mills are 



