France 1 39 



State without payment. But the House of Deputies would not 

 endorse the project, which was accordingly shelved. 



In the autumn of 1889 the second term came to an end, and 

 the State, which had opened some twenty-five additional pro- 

 vincial exchanges since 1884, decided to assume possession of 

 the concessionary's system in the terms of the licence. This it 

 did on September i, 1889, eight days before the concession had 

 expired, but not without friction. The Societe Generate des 

 Telephones had conceived the impression that the Government 

 did not intend to treat it fairly, and not unnaturally objected to 

 give up possession before its concession had expired. It asked 

 that the amount to be given for the property should be at least 

 fixed, if not paid, before possession was yielded ; pointed out 

 that the leases of the various switch-rooms belonged to it, and 

 that there was nothing in the concession compelling it to part 

 with leases or anything beyond the plant and instruments. This 

 ingenious contention that the Societe had sold the kernel but 

 not the shell, and that the State must take the former, if it wanted 

 it, without touching the latter was, however, treated with scant 

 consideration, for on the date named a Sunday a State 

 engineer, attended by a commissary of police, took possession of 

 each of the Society's exchanges, in spite of protests by the officers 

 in charge, who declared they submitted only to main force. At 

 each switch-room a sheriff's officer was in attendance, who 

 served writs on the Government engineers as soon as they had 

 taken possession, in which damages for breaches of concession 

 were claimed and protests against confiscation set forth. It was 

 stated that the Government had appointed their own arbitrators 

 to fix the amount due to the Societe, and had refused to admit 

 any representative of the latter, while the Press expressed a 

 conviction that the haste to take possession was due to the 

 Government's anxiety to have the telephone system under its 

 control during the approaching general election. Whether this 

 was so or not, is not material ; the Cromwellian coup was success- 

 ful, and thenceforward the French telephones belonged to the 

 State. Since then the atmosphere of the law courts has been 

 heavy with rumours of claims and counter-claims, in which 

 millions figure as freely as do units in the transactions of ordinary 



