212 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 
work which the pampered laborers of Issoire had 
refused. 
The coming of the Jonas men was a great sur- 
prise 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 Confidence 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 way the French peasantry pronounce the word 
which we call “ rats.” 
Winter was now approaching, and the discharged 
boot-makers of Issoire found their condition daily 
more and more unpleasant. They had an associa- 
tion among themselves called the “Chevaliers of 
Industry.” The big Jacques was master-workman, 
and they met in the café of the Lion d’Or to dis- 
cuss 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 
