"For the first few days after my basket-maker had set up his business,I never went past his shop but my heart beat somewhat faster.And when I saw the newly-built house,with the green-painted shutters,the vine beside the doorway,and the bench and bundles of osiers before it;when I saw a tidy,neatly-dressed woman within it,nursing a plump,pink and white baby among the workmen,who were singing merrily and busily plaiting their wicker-work under the superintendence of a man who but lately had looked so pinched and pale,but now had an atmosphere of prosperity about him;when I saw all this,I confess that I could not forego the pleasure of turning basket-maker for a moment,of going into the shop to hear how things went with them,and of giving myself up to a feeling of content that I cannot express in words,for I had all their happiness as well as my own to make me glad.All my hopes became centered on this house,where the man dwelt who had been the first to put a steady faith in me.Like the basket-maker's wife,clasping her first nursling to her breast,did not Ialready fondly cherish the hopes of the future of this poor district?
"I had to do so many things at once,"he went on,"I came into collision with other people's notions,and met with violent opposition,fomented by the ignorant mayor to whose office I had succeeded,and whose influence had dwindled away as mine increased.Idetermined to make him my deputy and a confederate in my schemes of benevolence.Yes,in the first place,I endeavored to instil enlightened ideas into the densest of all heads.Through his self-love and cupidity I gained a hold upon my man.During six months as we dined together,I took him deeply into my confidence about my projected improvements.Many people would think this intimacy one of the most painful inflictions in the course of my task;but was he not a tool of the most valuable kind?Woe to him who despises his axe,or flings it carelessly aside!Would it not have been very inconsistent,moreover,if I,who wished to improve a district,had shrunk back at the thought of improving one man in it?
"A road was our first and most pressing need in bringing about a better state of things.If we could obtain permission from the Municipal Council to make a hard road,so as to put us in communication with the highway to Grenoble,the deputy-mayor would be the first gainer by it;for instead of dragging his timber over rough tracks at a great expense,a good road through the canton would enable him to transport it more easily,and to engage in a traffic on a large scale,in all kinds of wood,that would bring in money--not a miserable six hundred francs a year,but handsome sums which would mean a certain fortune for him some day.Convinced at last,he became my proselytizer.
"Through the whole of one winter the ex-mayor got into the way of explaining to our citizens that a good road for wheeled traffic would be a source of wealth to the whole country round,for it would enable every one to do a trade with Grenoble;he held forth on this head at the tavern while drinking with his intimates.When the Municipal Council had authorized the making of the road,I went to the prefect and obtained some money from the charitable funds at the disposal of the department,in order to pay for the hire of carts,for the Commune was unable to undertake the transport of road metal for lack of wheeled conveyances.The ignorant began to murmur against me,and to say that I wanted to bring the days of the corvee back again;this made me anxious to finish this important work,that they might speedily appreciate its benefits.With this end in view,every Sunday during my first year of office I drew the whole population of the township,willing or unwilling,up on to the mountain,where I myself had traced out on a hard bottom the road between our village and the highway to Grenoble.Materials for making it were fortunately to be had in plenty along the site.
"The tedious enterprise called for a great deal of patience on my part.Some who were ignorant of the law would refuse at times to give their contribution of labor;others again,who had not bread to eat,really could not afford to lose a day.Corn had to be distributed among these last,and the others must be soothed with friendly words.
Yet by the time we had finished two-thirds of the road,which in all is about two leagues in length,the people had so thoroughly recognized its advantages that the remaining third was accomplished with a spirit that surprised me.I added to the future wealth of the Commune by planting a double row of poplars along the ditch on either side of the way.The trees are already almost worth a fortune,and they make our road look like a king's highway.It is almost always dry,by reason of its position,and it was so well made that the annual cost of maintaining it is a bare two hundred francs.I must show it to you,for you cannot have seen it;you must have come by the picturesque way along the valley bottom,a road which the people decided to make for themselves three years later,so as to connect the various farms that were made there at that time.In three years ideas had rooted themselves in the common sense of this township,hitherto so lacking in intelligence that a passing traveler would perhaps have thought it hopeless to attempt to instil them.But to continue.
"The establishment of the basket-maker was an example set before these poverty-stricken folk that they might profit by it.And if the road was to be a direct cause of the future wealth of the canton,all the primary forms of industry must be stimulated,or these two germs of a better state of things would come to nothing.My own work went forward by slow degrees,as I helped my osier farmer and wicker-worker and saw to the making of the road.
"I had two horses,and the timber merchant,the deputy-mayor,had three.He could only have them shod whenever he went over to Grenoble,so I induced a farrier to take up his abode here,and undertook to find him plenty of work.On the same day I met with a discharged soldier,who had nothing but his pension of a hundred francs,and was sufficiently perplexed about his future.He could read and write,so Iengaged him as secretary to the mayor;as it happened,I was lucky enough to find a wife for him,and his dreams of happiness were fulfilled.
"Both of these new families needed houses,as well as the basket-maker and twenty-two others from the cretin village,soon afterwards twelve more households were established in the place.The workers in each of these families were at once producers and consumers.They were masons,carpenters,joiners,slaters,blacksmiths,and glaziers;and there was work enough to last them for a long time,for had they not their own houses to build when they had finished those for other people?
Seventy,in fact,were build in the Commune during my second year of office.One form of production demands another.The additions to the population of the township had created fresh wants,hitherto unknown among these dwellers in poverty.The wants gave rise to industries,and industries to trade,and the gains of trade raised the standard of comfort,which in its turn gave them practical ideas.
"The various workmen wished to buy their bread ready baked,so we came to have a baker.Buckwheat could no longer be the food of a population which,awakened from its lethargy,had become essentially active.They lived on buckwheat when I first came among them,and I wished to effect a change to rye,or a mixture of rye and wheat in the first instance,and finally to see a loaf of white bread even in the poorest household.Intellectual progress,to my thinking,was entirely dependent on a general improvement in the conditions of life.The presence of a butcher in the district says as much for its intelligence as for its wealth.The worker feeds himself,and a man who feeds himself thinks.I had made a very careful study of the soil,for I foresaw a time when it would be necessary to grow wheat.I was sure of launching the place in a very prosperous agricultural career,and of doubling the population,when once it had begun to work.And now the time had come.
"M.Gravier,of Grenoble,owned a great deal of land in the commune,which brought him in no rent,but which might be turned into corn-growing land.He is the head of a department in the Prefecture,as you know.It was a kindness for his own countryside quite as much as my earnest entreaties that won him over.He had very benevolently yielded to my importunities on former occasions,and I succeeded in making it clear to him that in so doing he had wrought unconsciously for his own benefit.After several days spent in pleadings,consultation,and talk,the matter was thrashed out.I undertook to guarantee him against all risks in the undertaking,from which his wife,a woman of no imagination,sought to frighten him.He agreed to build four farmhouses with a hundred acres of land attached to each,and promised to advance the sums required to pay for clearing the ground,for seeds,ploughing gear,and cattle,and for making occupation roads.
"I myself also started two farms,quite as much for the sake of bringing my waste land into cultivation as with a view to giving an object-lesson in the use of modern methods in agriculture.In six weeks'time the population of the town increased to three hundred people.Homes for several families must be built on the six farms;there was a vast quantity of land to be broken up;the work called for laborers.Wheelwrights,drainmakers,journeymen,and laborers of all kinds flocked in.The road to Grenoble was covered with carts that came and went.All the countryside was astir.The circulation of money had made every one anxious to earn it,apathy had ceased,the place had awakened.
"The story of M.Gravier,one of those who did so much for this canton,can be concluded in a few words.In spite of cautious misgivings,not unnatural in a man occupying an official position in a provincial town,he advanced more than forty thousand francs,on the faith of my promises,without knowing whether he should ever see them back again.To-day every one of his farms is let for a thousand francs.His tenants have thriven so well that each of them owns at least a hundred acres,three hundred sheep,twenty cows,ten oxen,and five horses,and employs more than twenty persons.
"But to resume.Our farms were ready by the end of the fourth year.
Our wheat harvest seemed miraculous to the people in the district,heavy as the first crop off the land ought to be.How often during that year I trembled for the success of my work!Rain or drought might spoil everything by diminishing the belief in me that was already felt.When we began to grow wheat,it necessitated the mill that you have seen,which brings me in about five hundred francs a year.So the peasants say that 'there is luck about me'(that is the way they put it),and believe in me as they believe in their relics.These new undertakings--the farms,the mill,the plantations,and the roads--have given employment to all the various kinds of workers whom I had called in.Although the buildings fully represent the value of the sixty thousand francs of capital,which we sunk in the district,the outlay was more than returned to us by the profits on the sales which the consumers occasioned.I never ceased my efforts to put vigor into this industrial life which was just beginning.A nurseryman took my advice and came to settle in the place,and I preached wholesome doctrine to the poor concerning the planting of fruit trees,in order that some day they should obtain a monopoly of the sale of fruit in Grenoble.
"'You take your cheeses there as it is,'I used to tell them,'why not take poultry,eggs,vegetables,game,hay and straw,and so forth?'All my counsels were a source of fortune;it was a question of who should follow them first.A number of little businesses were started;they went on at first but slowly,but from day to day their progress became more rapid;and now sixty carts full of the various products of the district set out every Monday for Grenoble,and there is more buckwheat grown for poultry food than they used to sow for human consumption.The trade in timber grew to be so considerable that it was subdivided,and since the fourth year of our industrial era,we have had dealers in firewood,squared timber,planks,bark,and later on,in charcoal.In the end four new sawmills were set up,to turn out the planks and beams of timber.
"When the ex-mayor had acquired a few business notions,he felt the necessity of learning to read and write.He compared the prices that were asked for wood in various neighborhoods,and found such differences in his favor,that he secured new customers in one place after another,and now a third of the trade in the department passes through his hands.There has been such a sudden increase in our traffic that we find constant work for three wagon-builders and two harness-makers,each of them employing three hands at least.Lastly,the quantity of ironware that we use is so large that an agricultural implement and tool-maker has removed into the town,and is very well satisfied with the result.
"The desire of gain develops a spirit of ambition,which has ever since impelled our workers to extend their field from the township to the canton,and from the canton to the department,so as to increase their profits by increasing their sales.I had only to say a word to point out new openings to them,and their own sense did the rest.Four years had been sufficient to change the face of the township.When Ihad come through it first,I did not catch the slightest sound;but in less than five years from that time,there was life and bustle everywhere.The gay songs,the shrill or murmuring sounds made by the tools in the workshops rang pleasantly in my ears.I watched the comings and goings of a busy population congregated in the clean and wholesome new town,where plenty of trees had been planted.Every one of them seemed conscious of a happy lot,every face shone with the content that comes through a life of useful toil.
"I look upon these five years as the first epoch of prosperity in the history of our town,"the doctor went on after a pause."During that time I have prepared the ground and sowed the seed in men's minds as well as in the land.Henceforward industrial progress could not be stayed,the population was bound to go forward.A second epoch was about to begin.This little world very soon desired to be better clad.
A shoemaker came,and with him a haberdasher,a tailor,and a hatter.
This dawn of luxury brought us a butcher and a grocer,and a midwife,who became very necessary to me,for I lost a great deal of time over maternity cases.The stubbed wastes yielded excellent harvests,and the superior quality of our agricultural produce was maintained through the increased supply of manure.My enterprise could now develop itself;everything followed on quite naturally.
"When the houses had been rendered wholesome,and their inmates gradually persuaded to feed and clothe themselves better,I wanted the dumb animals to feel the benefit of these beginnings of civilization.
All the excellence of cattle,whether as a race or as individuals,and,in consequence,the quality of the milk and meat,depends upon the care that is expended upon them.I took the sanitation of cowsheds for the text of my sermons.I showed them how an animal that is properly housed and well cared for is more profitable than a lean neglected beast,and the comparison wrought a gradual change for the better in the lot of the cattle in the Commune.Not one of them was ill treated.The cows and oxen were rubbed down as in Switzerland and Auvergne.Sheep-folds,stables,byres,dairies,and barns were rebuilt after the pattern of the roomy,well-ventilated,and consequently healthy steadings that M.Gravier and I had constructed.Our tenants became my apostles.They made rapid converts of unbelievers,demonstrating the soundness of my doctrines by their prompt results.Ilent money to those who needed it,giving the preference to hardworking poor people,because they served as an example.Any unsound or sickly cattle or beasts of poor quality were quickly disposed of by my advice,and replaced by fine specimens.In this way our dairy produce came,in time,to command higher prices in the market than that sent by other communes.We had splendid herds,and as a consequence,capital leather.
"This step forward was of great importance,and in this wise.In rural economy nothing can be regarded as trifling.Our hides used to fetch scarcely anything,and the leather we made was of little value,but when once our leather and hides were improved,tanneries were easily established along the waterside.We became tanners,and business rapidly increased.
"Wine,properly speaking,had been hitherto unknown;a thin,sour beverage like verjuice had been their only drink,but now wineshops were established to supply a natural demand.The oldest tavern was enlarged and transformed into an inn,which furnished mules to pilgrims to the Grand Chartreuse who began to come our way,and after two years there was just enough business for two innkeepers.
"The justice of the peace died just as our second prosperous epoch began,and luckily for us,his successor had formerly been a notary in Grenoble who had lost most of his fortune by a bad speculation,though enough of it yet remained to cause him to be looked upon in the village as a wealthy man.It was M.Gravier who induced him to settle among us.He built himself a comfortable house and helped me by uniting his efforts to mine.He also laid out a farm,and broke up and cleaned some of the waste land,and at this moment he has three chalets up above on the mountain side.He has a large family.He dismissed the old registrar and the clerk,and in their place installed better-educated men,who worked far harder,moreover,than their predecessors had done.One of the heads of these two new households started a distillery of potato-spirit,and the other was a wool-washer;each combined these occupations with his official work,and in this way two valuable industries were created among us.
"Now that the Commune had some revenues of its own,no opposition was raised in any quarter when they were spent on building a town-hall,with a free school for elementary education in the building and accommodation for a teacher.For this important post I had selected a poor priest who had taken the oath,and had therefore been cast out by the department,and who at last found a refuge among us for his old age.The schoolmistress is a very worthy woman who had lost all that she had,and was in great distress.We made up a nice little sum for her,and she has just opened a boarding-school for girls to which the wealthy farmers hereabouts are beginning to send their daughters.
"If so far,sir,I have been entitled to tell you the story of my own doings as the chronicle of this little spot of earth,I have reached the point where M.Janvier,the new parson,began to divide the work of regeneration with me.He has been a second Fenelon,unknown beyond the narrow limits of a country parish,and by some secret of his own has infused a spirit of brotherliness and of charity among these folk that has made them almost like one large family.M.Dufau,the justice of the peace,was a late comer,but he in an equal degree deserves the gratitude of the people here.
"I will put the whole position before you in figures that will make it clearer than any words of mine.At this moment the Commune owns two hundred acres of woodland,and a hundred and sixty acres of meadow.
Without running up the rates,we give a hundred crowns to supplement the cure's stipend,we pay two hundred francs to the rural policeman,and as much again to the schoolmaster and schoolmistress.The maintenance of the roads costs us five hundred francs,while necessary repairs to the townhall,the parsonage,and the church,with some few other expenses,also amount to a similar sum.In fifteen years'time there will be a thousand francs worth of wood to fell for every hundred francs'worth cut now,and the taxes will not cost the inhabitants a penny.This Commune is bound to become one of the richest in France.But perhaps I am taxing your patience,sir?"said Benassis,suddenly discovering that his companion wore such a pensive expression that it seemed as though his attention was wandering.
"No!no!"answered the commandant.
"Our trade,handicrafts,and agriculture so far only supplied the needs of the district,"the doctor went on."At a certain point our prosperity came to a standstill.I wanted a post-office,and sellers of tobacco,stationery,powder and shot.The receiver of taxes had hitherto preferred to live elsewhere,but now I succeeded in persuading him to take up his abode in the town,holding out as inducements the pleasantness of the place and of the new society.As time and place permitted I had succeeded in producing a supply of everything for which I had first created a need,in attracting families of hardworking people into the district,and in implanting a desire to own land in them all.So by degrees,as they saved a little money,the waste land began to be broken up;spade husbandry and small holdings increased;so did the value of property on the mountain.
"Those struggling folk who,when I knew them first,used to walk over to Grenoble carrying their few cheeses for sale,now made the journey comfortably in a cart,and took fruit,eggs,chickens and turkeys,and before they were aware of it,everyone was a little richer.Even those who came off worst had a garden at any rate,and grew early vegetables and fruit.It became the children's work to watch the cattle in the fields,and at last it was found to be a waste of time to bake bread at home.Here were signs of prosperity!
"But if this place was to be a permanent forge of industry,fuel must be constantly added to the fire.The town had not as yet a renascent industry which could maintain this commercial process,an industry which should make great transactions,a warehouse,and a market necessary.It is not enough that a country should lose none of the money that forms its capital;you will not increase its prosperity by more or less ingenious devices for causing this amount to circulate,by means of production and consumption,through the greatest possible number of hands.That is not where your problem lies.When a country is fully developed and its production keeps pace with its consumption,if private wealth is to increase as well as the wealth of the community at large,there must be exchanges with other communities,which will keep a balance on the right side of the balance-sheet.This thought has let states with a limited territorial basis like Tyre,Carthage,Venice,Holland,and England,for instance,to secure the carrying trade.I cast about for some such notion as this to apply to our little world,so as to inaugurate a third commercial epoch.Our town is so much like any other,that our prosperity was scarcely visible to a passing stranger;it was only for me that it was astonishing.The folk had come together by degrees;they themselves were a part of the change,and could not judge of its effects as a whole.
"Seven years had gone by when I met with two strangers,the real benefactors of the place,which perhaps some day they will transform into a large town.One of them is a Tyrolese,an exceedingly clever fellow,who makes rough shoes for country people's wear,and boots for people of fashion in Grenoble as no one can make them,not even in Paris itself.He was a poor strolling musician,who,singing and working,had made his way through Italy;one of those busy Germans who fashion the tools of their own work,and make the instrument that they play upon.When he came to the town he asked if any one wanted a pair of shoes.They sent him to me,and I gave him an order for two pairs of boots,for which he made his own lasts.The foreigner's skill surprised me.He gave accurate and consistent answers to the questions I put,and his face and manner confirmed the good opinion I had formed of him.I suggested that he should settle in the place,undertaking to assist him in business in every way that I could;in fact,I put a fairly large sum of money at his disposal.He accepted my offer.I had my own ideas in this.The quality of our leather had improved;and why should we not use it ourselves,and before very long make our own shoes at moderate prices?
"It was the basket-maker's business over again on a larger scale.
Chance had put an exceedingly clever hard-working man in my way,and he must be retained so that a steady and profitable trade might be given to the place.There is a constant demand for foot-gear,and a very slight difference in price is felt at once by the purchaser.
"This was my reasoning,sir,and fortunately events have justified it.
At this time we have five tanyards,each of which has its bark-mill.
They take all the hides produced in the department itself,and even draw part of their supply from Provence;and yet the Tyrolese uses more leather than they can produce,and has forty work-people in his employ!
"I happened on the other man after a fashion no whit less strange,but you might find the story tedious.He is just an ordinary peasant,who discovered a cheaper way of making the great broad-brimmed hats that are worn in this part of the world.He sells them in other cantons,and even sends them into Switzerland and Savoy.So long as the quality and the low prices can be maintained,here are two inexhaustible sources of wealth for the canton,which suggested to my mind the idea of establishing three fairs in the year.The prefect,amazed at our industrial progress,lent his aid in obtaining the royal ordinance which authorized them,and last year we held our three fairs.They are known as far as Savoy as the Shoe Fair and the Hat Fair.
"The head clerk of a notary in Grenoble heard of these changes.He was poor,but he was a well-educated,hardworking young fellow,and Mlle.
Gravier was engaged to be married to him.He went to Paris to ask for an authorization to establish himself here as a notary,and his request was granted.As he had not to pay for his appointment,he could afford to build a house in the market square of the new town,opposite the house of the justice of the peace.We have a market once a week,and a considerable amount of business is transacted in corn and cattle.
