11 PROTECTION; OR, THE THREE CITY ALDERMEN DEMONSTRATION IN FOUR TABLEAUX

SCENE I—House of Master Peter

Window looking out on a fine park.—Three gentlemen seated near a good fire.

PETER: Bravo! Nothing like a good fire after a good dinner. It does feel so comfortable. But alas! how many honest folks, like the Rio d’Yvetot,

Soufflent, faute de bois
Dans leurs doigts.

Miserable creatures! A charitable thought has just come into my head. You see these fine trees; I am about to fell them, and distribute the timber among the poor.

PAUL and JOHN: What! gratis?

PETER: Not exactly. My good works would soon have an end were I to dissipate my fortune. I estimate my park as worth £1,000. By cutting down the trees I shall pocket much more.

PAUL: Wrong. Your wood as it stands is worth more than that of the neighboring forests, for it renders services that they cannot render. When cut down it will be only good for firewood, like any other, and will not bring a penny more the load.

PETER: Oh! oh! Mr. Theorist, you forget that I am a practical man. My reputation as a speculator is sufficiently well established, I believe, to prevent me from being taken for an idiot. Do you imagine I am going to amuse myself by selling my timber at the price of float-wood?

PAUL: It would seem so.

PETER: Simpleton! And what if I can hinder floatwood from being brought into Paris?

PAUL: That alters the case. But how can you manage it?

PETER: Here is the whole secret. You know that float-wood on entering the city pays 5d. the load. Tomorrow I induce the commune to raise the duty to £4, £8, £12—in short, sufficiently high to prevent the entry of a single log. Now, do you follow me? If the good people are not to die of cold they have no alternative but to come to my woodyard. They will bid against each other for my wood, and I will sell it for a high price; and this act of charity, successfully carried out, will put me in a situation to do other acts of charity.

PAUL: A fine invention, truly! It suggests to me another of the same kind.

JOHN: And what is that? Is philanthropy to be again brought into play?

PAUL: How do you like this Normandy butter?

JOHN: Excellent.

PAUL: Hitherto I have thought it passable. But do you not think it is a little strong? I could make better butter in Paris. I shall have four or five hundred cows, and distribute milk, butter and cheese among the poor.

PETER and JOHN: What! in charity?

PAUL: Bah! let us put charity always in the foreground. It is so fine a figure that its very mask is a good passport. I shall give my butter to the people, and they will give me their money. Is that what is called selling?

JOHN: No; not according to the Bourgeois Gentilhomme. But call it what you please, you will ruin yourself. How can Paris ever compete with Normandy in dairy produce?

PAUL: I shall be able to save the cost of carriage.

JOHN: Be it so. Still, while paying that cost, the Normans can beat the Parisians.

PAUL: To give a man something at a lower price—is that what you call beating him?

JOHN: It is the usual phrase; and you will always find yourself beaten.

PAUL.: Yes, as Don Quixote was beaten. The blows will fall upon Sancho. John, my friend, you forget the town dues.

JOHN: The town dues! What have they to do with your butter?

PAUL: To-morrow I shall demand protection, and induce the commune to prohibit butter being brought into Paris from Normandy and Brittany. The people must then either dispense with it, or purchase mine, and at my own price, too.

JOHN: Upon my honor, gentlemen, your philanthropy has quite made a convert of me.

“On apprend a hurler, dit l’autre, avec les loups.”

My mind is made up. It shall not be said that I am an unworthy alderman. Peter, this sparkling fire has inflamed your soul. Paul, this butter has lubricated the springs of your intelligence. I, too, feel stimulated by this piece of salted pork; and tomorrow I shall vote, and cause to be voted, the exclusion of swine, dead or alive. That done, I shall construct superb sheds in the heart of Paris.

“Pour l’animal immonde aux Hebreux defendu.”

I shall become a pig-driver and pork-butcher. Let us see how the good people of Paris can avoid coming to provide themselves at my shop.

PETER: Softly, my good friends; if you enhance the price of butter and salt meat to such an extent you cut down beforehand the profit I expect from my wood.

PAUL: And my speculation will be no longer so wondrously profitable if I am overcharged for my firewood and bacon.

JOHN: And I, what shall I gain by overcharging you for my sausages if you overcharge me for my faggots and bread and butter?

PETER: Very well, don’t let us quarrel. Let us rather put our heads together and make reciprocal concessions. Moreover, it is not good to consult one’s self-interest exclusively—we must exercise humanity, and see that the people do not lack fuel.

PAUL: Very right; and it is proper that the people should have butter to their bread.

JOHN: Undoubtedly; and a bit of bacon for the pot.

ALL: Three cheers for charity; three cheers for philanthropy; and tomorrow we take the town dues by assault.

PETER: Ah! I forgot. One word more; it is essential. My good friends, in this age of selfishness the world is distrustful, and the purest intentions are often misunderstood. Paul, you take the part of pleading for the wood; John will do the same for the butter; and I shall devote myself to the home-bred pig. It is necessary to prevent malignant suspicions.

PAUL and JOHN (leaving): Upon my word, that is a clever fellow.

SCENE II—Council Chamber

PAUL: My dear colleagues, every day there are brought to Paris great masses of firewood, which drain away large sums of money. At this rate, we shall all be ruined in three years, and what will become of the poorer classes? (Cheers.) We must prohibit foreign timber. I don’t speak for myself, for all the wood I possess would not make a toothpick. In what I mean to say, then, I am entirely free from any personal interest or bias. (Hear, hear.) But here is my friend Peter, who possesses a park, and he will guarantee an adequate supply of fuel to our fellow citizens, who will no longer be dependent on the charcoal-burners of the Yonne. Have you ever turned your attention to the risk we run of dying of cold if the proprietors of forests abroad should take it into their heads to send no more firewood to Paris? Let us put a prohibition, then, on the bringing in of wood. By this means we shall put a stop to the draining away of our money, create an independent interest charged with supplying the city with firewood, and open up to workmen a new source of employment and remuneration. (Cheers.)

JOHN: I support the proposal of my honorable friend, the preceding speaker, which is at once so philanthropic, and, as he himself has explained, so entirely disinterested. It is indeed high time that we should put an end to this insolent laissez passer, which has brought immoderate competition into our markets, and to such an extent that there is no province that possesses any special facility for providing us with a product, be it what it may, that does not immediately inundate us, undersell us, and bring ruin on the Parisian workman. It is the duty of Government to equalize the conditions of production by duties wisely adapted to each case, so as not to allow to enter from without anything that is not dearer than in Paris, and so relieve us from an unequal struggle. How, for example, can we possibly produce milk and butter in Paris, with Brittany and Normandy at our door? Remember, gentlemen, that the agriculturists of Brittany have cheaper land, a more abundant supply of hay, and manual labor on more advantageous terms. Does not common sense tell us that we must equalize the conditions by a protective town tariff? I demand that the duty on milk and butter should be raised by 1,000 percent, and still higher if necessary. The workman’s breakfast will cost a little more, but see to what extent his wages will be raised! We shall see rising around us cow-barns, dairies, and barrel churns, and the foundations laid of new sources of industry. Not that I have any interest in this proposition. I am not a rancher, nor have I any wish to be so. The sole motive that actuates me is a wish to be useful to the working classes. (Applause.)

PETER: I am delighted to see in this assembly statesmen so pure, so enlightened, and so devoted to the best interests of the people. (Cheers.) I admire their disinterestedness, and I cannot do better than imitate the noble example which has been set me. I give their motions my support, and I shall only add another, for prohibiting the entry into Paris of the pigs of Poitou. I have no desire, I assure you, to become a pig-driver or a pork-butcher. In that case I should have made it a matter of conscience to be silent. But is it not shameful, gentlemen, that we should be the tributaries of the peasants of Poitou, who have the audacity to come into our own market and take possession of a branch of industry that we ourselves have the means of carrying on? And who, after having inundated us with their hams and sausages, take perhaps nothing from us in return? At all events, who will tell us that the balance of trade is not in their favor, and that we are not obliged to pay them a tribute in hard cash? Is it not evident that if the industry of Poitou were transplanted to Paris it would open up a steady demand for Parisian labor? And then gentlemen, is it not very possible, as M. Lestiboudois has so well remarked that we may be buying the salt pork of Poitou, not with our incomes, but with our capital? Where will that land us? Let us not suffer, then, that rivals who are at once avaricious, greedy, and perfidious, should come here to undersell us, and put it out of our power to provide ourselves with the same commodities. Gentlemen, Paris has reposed in you her confidence; it is for you to justify that confidence. The people are without employment; it is for you to create employment for them; and if salt pork shall cost them a somewhat higher price, we have, at least, the consciousness of having sacrificed our own interests to those of the masses, as every good magistrate ought to do. (Loud and long-continued cheers.)

A VOICE: I have heard much talk of the poor; but under pretext of affording them employment you begin by depriving them of what is worth more than employment itself—namely, butter, firewood, and meat.

PETER, PAUL and JOHN: Vote, vote! Down with Utopian dreamers, theorists, generalizers! Vote, vote! (The three motions are carried.)

SCENE III—Twenty Years Afterwards

SON: Father, make up your mind; we must leave Paris. Nobody can any longer live here—no work, and everything dear.

FATHER: You don’t know, my son, how much it costs one to leave the place where he was born.

SON: The worst thing of all is to perish from want.

FATHER: Go you, then, and search for a more hospitable country. For myself, I will not leave the place where are the graves of your mother, and of your brothers and sisters. I long to obtain with them that repose which has been denied me in this city of desolation.

SON: Courage, father; we shall find employment somewhere else—in Poitou, or Normandy, or Brittany. It is said that all the manufactures of Paris are being removed by degrees to these distant provinces.

FATHER: And naturally so. Not being able to sell firewood and provisions, the people of these provinces have ceased to produce them beyond what their own wants call for. The time and capital at their disposal are devoted to making for themselves those articles with which we were accustomed formerly to furnish them.

SON: Just as at Paris they have given up making pretty dresses and furniture, and betaken themselves to the planting of trees and the rearing of pigs and cows. Although still young, I have lived to see vast warehouses, sumptuous parts of the city, and quays once teeming with life and animation on the banks of the Seine turned into meadows and copses.

FATHER: While towns are spread over the provinces, Paris is turned into country. What a deplorable revolution! And this terrible calamity has been brought upon us by three magistrates, backed by public ignorance.

SON: Pray tell me the history of this change.

FATHER: It is short and simple. Under pretext of planting in Paris three new branches of industry, and by this means giving employment to the working classes, these men got the commune to prohibit the entry into Paris of firewood, butter and meat. They claimed for themselves the right of providing for their fellow-citizens. These commodities rose at first to exorbitant prices. No one earned enough to procure them, and the limited number of those who could procure them spent all their income on them, and had no longer the means of buying anything else. A check was thus given at once to all other industries, and all the more quickly that the provinces no longer afforded a market. Poverty, death, and emigration then began to depopulate Paris.

SON: And when is this to stop?

FATHER: When Paris has become a forest and a prairie.

SON: The three magistrates must have made a large fortune.

FATHER: At first they realized enormous profits, but at length they fell into the common poverty.

SON: How did that happen?

FATHER: Look at that ruin. That was a magnificent mansion-house surrounded with a beautiful park. If Paris had continued to progress, Master Peter would have realized more rent than his entire capital now amounts to.

SON: How can that be, seeing he has got rid of competition?

FATHER: Competition in selling has disappeared, but competition in buying is also disappearing, and will continue every day to disappear more and more until Paris becomes a bare field, and until the copses of Master Peter have no more value than the copses of an equal extent of land in the Forest of Bondy. It is thus that monopoly, like every other system of injustice, carries in itself its own punishment.

SON: That appears to me not very clear, but the decadence of Paris is an incontestable fact. Is there no means, then, of counteracting this iniquitous measure that Peter and his colleagues got adopted twenty years ago?

FATHER: I am going to tell you a secret. I remain in Paris on purpose. I shall call in the people to my assistance. It rests with them to replace the town dues on their ancient basis, and repeal that fatal principle that was engrafted on them, and that still vegetates there like a parasitical fungus.

SON: You will succeed in this at once.

FATHER: On the contrary, the work will be difficult and laborious. Peter, Paul and John understand one another marvelously. They will do anything rather than allow firewood, butter, and butchers’ meat to enter Paris. They have on their side the people, who see clearly the employment that these three protected branches of industry afford, who know well to how many ranchers and wood-merchants they give employment, but who have by no means the same exact idea of the labor that would be developed in the grand air of liberty.

SON: If that is all, you will soon enlighten them.

FATHER: At your age, my son, one doubts of nothing. If I write, the people will not read; for, to support their miserable existence, they have no spare time at their disposal. If I speak, the aldermen will shut my mouth. The people, therefore, will long remain under their fatal mistake. Political parties, whose hopes are founded on popular passions, will set themselves, not to dissipate their prejudices, but to make use of them. I shall have to combat at one and the same time the powerful men of the day, the people, and the political parties. In truth, I see a frightful storm ready to burst over the head of the bold man who shall venture to protest against an iniquity so deeply rooted in this country.

SON: You will have truth and justice on your side.

FATHER: And they will have force and calumny on theirs. Were I but young again; but age and suffering have exhausted my strength!

SON: Very well, father; what strength remains to you, devote it to the service of the country. Begin this work of enfranchisement, and leave to me the task of finishing it.

SCENE IV—The Agitation

JACQUES BONHOMME: Parisians, let us insist upon a reform of the town duties; let us demand that they be instantly put back to what they were. Let every citizen be FREE to buy his firewood, butter, and butchers’ meat where he sees fit.

THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Liberty!

PETER: Parisians, don’t allow yourselves to be seduced by that word, liberty. What good can result from liberty to purchase if you want the means, and how can you have the means if you are out of employment? Can Paris produce firewood as cheaply as the Forest of Bondy? Meat as cheaply as Poitou? Butter as cheaply as Normandy? If you open your gates freely to these rival products, what will become of the ranchers, woodcutters, and pork-butchers? They cannot dispense with protection.

THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Protection!

JACQUES BONHOMME: Protection! But who protects you workmen? Do you not compete with one another? Let the wood-merchants, then, be subject to competition in their turn. They ought not to have right by law to raise the price of firewood, unless the rate of wages is also raised by law. Are you no longer in love with equality?

THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Equality!

PETER: Don’t listen to these agitators. We have, it is true, raised the price of firewood, butchers’ meat, and butter; but we have done so for the express purpose of being enabled to give good wages to the workmen. We are actuated by motives of charity.

THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Charity!

JACQUES BONHOMME: Cause the rate of wages to be raised by the town dues, if you can, or cease to use them to raise the prices of commodities. We Parisians ask for no charity—we demand justice.

THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Justice!

PETER: It is precisely the high price of commodities that will lead, indirectly, to a rise of wages.

THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Dearness!

JACQUES BONHOMME: If butter is dear, it is not because you pay high wages to the workmen, it is not even because you make exorbitant profits; it is solely because Paris is ill-adapted for that branch of industry; it is because you have wished to make in the town what should be made in the country, and in the country what should be made in the town. The people have not more employment—only they have employment of a different kind. They have no higher wages; while they can no longer buy commodities as cheaply as formerly.

THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Cheapness!

PETER: This man seduces you with fine words. Let us place the question before you in all its simplicity. Is it, or is it not true, that if we admit firewood, meat, and butter freely or at a lower duty, our markets will be inundated? Believe me there is no other means of preserving ourselves from this new species of invasion but to keep the door shut, and to maintain the prices of commodities by rendering them artificially scarce.

A VERY FEW VOICES IN THE CROWD: Hurrah for Scarcity!

JACQUES BONHOMME: Let us bring the question to the simple test of truth. You cannot divide among the people of Paris commodities that are not in Paris. If there be less meat, less firewood, less butter, the share falling to each will be smaller. Now there must be less if we prohibit what should be allowed to enter the city. Parisians, abundance for each of you can be secured only by general abundance.

THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Abundance!

PETER: It is in vain that this man tries to persuade you that it is your interest to be subjected to unbridled competition.

THE PEOPLE: Down with Competition!

JACQUES BONHOMME: It is in vain that this man tries to make you fall in love with restriction.

THE PEOPLE: Down with Restriction!

PETER: I declare, for my own part, if you deprive the poor ranchers and pig-drivers of their daily bread, if you sacrifice them to theories, I can no longer be answerable for public order. Workmen, distrust that man. He is the agent of perfidious Normandy, and is prompted by the foreigner. He is a traitor, and ought to be hanged!

(The people preserve silence.)

JACQUES BONHOMME: Parisians, what I have told you today, I told you twenty years ago, when Peter set himself to work the town dues for his own profit and to your detriment. I am not, then, an agent of Normandy. Hang me, if you will, but that will not make oppression anything else than oppression. Friends, it is neither Jacques nor Peter that you must kill, but liberty if you fear it, or restriction if it does you harm.

THE PEOPLE: Hang nobody, and set everybody free.