nds would gain by establishing within our borders the cheapness
so essential to enable us to carry on victoriously the industrial
warfare with foreign countries,--a struggle as deadly as that of arms.

But the destruction of an abuse of this kind would not return to modern
philanthropists the glory and the advantages of a crusade against the
empty nutshells of the penitentiary and negrophobia; consequently, the
interloping profits of these _bankers of merchandise_ will continue to
weigh heavily both on producers and consumers. In France--keen-witted
land!--it is thought that to simplify is to destroy. The Revolution of
1789 is still a terror.

We see, by the industrial energy displayed in a land where Nature is a
godmother, what progress agriculture might make if capital would go into
partnership with the soil, which is not so thankless in Champagne as it
is in Scotland, where capital has done wonders. The day when agriculture
will have conquered the unfertile portion of those departments, and
industry has seconded capital on the Champagne chalk, the prosperity
of that region will triple itself. Into that land, now without luxury,
where homes are barren, English comfort will penetrate, money will
obtain that rapid circulation which is the half of wealth, and is
already beginning in several of the inert portions of our country.
Writers, administrators, the Church from its pulpit, the Press in its
columns, all to whom chance has given power to influence the masses,
should say and resay this truth,--to hoard is a social crime. The
deliberate hoarding of a province arrests industrial life, and injures
the health of a nation.

Thus the little town of Arcis, without much means of transition, doomed
apparently to the most complete immobility, is, relatively, a rich town
abounding in capital slowly amassed by its trade in hosiery.

Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage was the Alexander, or, if you will, the
Attila of this business. And here follow the means by which this
honorable merchant had acquired his supremacy over cotton.

The last remaining child of farmers named Beauvisage, tenants of the
splendid farm of Bellache, a dependency of the Gondreville estate, his
parents made, in 1811, a great sacrifice in order to buy a substitute
and save their only child from conscription. After that, in 1813, the
mother Beauvisage, having become a widow, saved her son once more
from enrolment in the Gardes, thanks to the influence of the Com