DIMINUTION OF CAPITAL
The Mining Agency is diminishing its capital. The shareholders are invited to present themselves to withdraw their funds.
GOLDSTEIN & CO. BANK
Report on the affairs of the Bank, once subject to disastrous liquidation, for the former shareholders and bond-holders. Recall of funds. 345 millions to be distributed. Distribution to everyone possessing entitlements, without formality. Restitution to provincial shareholders by mail.
At the foot of the statue to the right of the staircase, the wide-eyed Laforcade father and grandfather were reading this extraordinary advice over the heads of a group of people who were taking notes.
“Incredible! Incredible!” said a gentleman, shrugging his shoulders as he read each poster.
“Deplorable,” murmured another, in a low voice.
“It’s scandalous! No one would ever have thought of such things in the good times. The Bourse is doomed!”
“I beg your pardon, Monsieur, but you’re preventing me from reading,” said father Laforcade, irritated by the movements of a neighbor who was so excited that he had almost put an elbow in his eye.
“I beg your pardon—it’s indignation! It’s all too much for me! Sad, Monsieur, very sad. No more business! There’s nothing now but failed enterprises coming back… Sad, very sad!”
“Sad? On the contrary!” cried father Laforcade. “I see nothing but the re-depositing of funds thought lost, unexpected returns of capital for people once ruined by these failed businesses…”
“That depends on the viewpoint from which you’re looking at things...”
“From the right side, of course! I’m putting myself in the shoes of the poor former shareholders…”
“Toodle-de-toot! I see things differently, Monsieur! Business is no longer possible, with these new ways of doing things. It’s the final crash, this time—the supreme crash, the crash of crashes! Open any of the financial newspapers, read through it and assess the situation. Oh, that’s pretty. Here’s a bulletin: Increased withdrawal! Market anemic, collapsed; affairs suspended; reactionary movement; falling rents… It’s too violent, this reactionary movement, this going backwards!”
“Backwards?” murmured grandfather Laforcade, “An excellent avant-garde journal.”
“Don’t give me that—an evil rag, dangerous utopias… Look at my Gazette de la Bourse et de la Banque. Not one new advertisement, not the smallest issue. On the contra—look here, on the contrary! ‘General Meeting of the Immovable Stocks and Bank of Bare Proprietors: Account of the results of the last 35 exercises…’ Frauds, Embezzlements, etc. And as regards industry, see here: ‘Industrial review: All the reports of industrial societies and all our correspondents are in agreement in observing that results for the last quarter will fully realize, if they do not actually surpass, the most pessimistic forecasts.’ What do you think of that? Hang on… ‘There is no need to search hard for the causes of this industrial crisis…’ You see, industrial crisis, financial crisis, commercial crisis—all the crises at the same time! ‘In addition to an exaggerated overproduction that was not in accord with the economic conditions of our time, we also see industry equipped on such a colossal scale, in so complicated a manner, that the efficient functioning of enormous agglomerations of factories is becoming impossible. Too much large and delicate machinery. Reason dictates the abandonment of this peril-fraught system. We have seen the various systems for the mechanical utilization of electricity fall gradually into disuse, and their patents abandoned, following more or less complete ruinations…’ ”
“Very good,” said father Laforcade.
“Hmm! Hmm!” said the gentleman, as he continued his reading… Steam already has its detractors…”
“Excellent! Excellent!” cried the grandfather. “I’m one of them!”
“The employment of steam may have it advantages,” said a neighbor, “but it won’t last—we’ll find something better, you’ll see.”
“What do you think of stage-coaches, my dear Monsieur?”
“Despite my appearance,” said the gentleman—who did indeed seem very young—“I became acquainted, when I was old, with automobiles—a horror, an unbelievably horror, and a folly! Always hurling themselves about at meteoric speeds—there was nothing faster except cannonballs!—as if they had St. Vitus’s Dance, with a noise like clattering saucepans and an odor of petrol… and the crashes!”
“Ah!” said father Laforcade, who was still reading the posters. “This is what I was looking for! Finally, I’ll get a few funds back, and I won’t be sorry…”
“What’s that?” said the grandfather, adjusting his spectacles.
“There!”
GRÜNBERG BANK—LIQUIDATION
Meeting of holders of…Credit…Loans…Account, etc… Macedonian loans, Central Bank.
Money will be paid out in Paris, Rue…. and in all the subsidiary branches in the provinces, from the 18th of next month, at 10 a.m.
“How many Central Bank bonds have you got?” the grandfather asked, excitedly.
“Only six, unfortunately, subscribed at 450, if I remember rightly. They were worth 22.50 18 months afterwards.
“And in Macedonians?”
“Fifteen thousand.”
“Perfect, my son, perfect!”
The grandfather was interrupted in these congratulations by a slight scuffle; the gentleman who had been moaning about the industrial crisis a short while before had just been grabbed by the collar by a newcomer.
“If I’m not mistaken, you’re Corbier, the broker who disappeared with 50,000 francs of mine and tidy sums from many others.”
“I’m Monsieur Corbier, but that’s no reason to harass me.”
“No reason? Swindler! Thief! You’ll be tried and sent to prison!”
In less than a minute, a crowd attracted by the raised vices had surrounded the little group gathered under the notices. The Bourse had finally heard a little of the racket of its golden days!
“No fuss, gentlemen, no fuss!” said a fat man, trying to calm the complainant, who had clung so bitterly to the memory of his loss. “Come on—so much noise for such a little thing! Fifty thousand! A pittance! It can be sorted out, I’m sure. Everything is getting sorted out today, as you know full well!”
“That’s why I came,” moaned the gentleman, whose adversary was still holding him brutally by the cravat.
“No fuss—Monsieur Corbier has the money, that I know. I’m sure of it. No need to get the police involved in such a petty settlement… There’d be statements and formalities. I’m dead set against statements and formalities, myself…”
Two peace officers, draw out of their somnolence by the noise of the altercation, were indeed making their way through the crowd.
“If he has the money…” said the complainant, somewhat mollified.
“Certainly—I’ll give you your 50,000 francs, there’s nothing more to be said...”
“Evidently, evidently,” said a few members of the audience, nodding their heads approvingly. “It’s a belated settlement of an old difference, but it’s a settlement. On sees such things all the time nowadays…”
“Good, good—that’s understood, then…”
The two officers had arrived in the middle of the group.
“What’s going on? Come on, gentlemen—what’s going on?”
“Nothing at all. Two friends that have met up again, a little effusively, such as one sees all the time nowadays, that’s all! Move on! Come on, my dear Corbier, settle up with the gentleman, since, I presume, that’s what you’ve come for…”
“Thank you, Monsieur Grünberg, I did come back for that, as you said. Such an old matter…” The stockbroker sighed.
“Don’t moan—there are others in the same situation, and worse, my friend, and worse! Myself included… Am I on a bed of roses?”
“That’s true—you too?”
“Me—that’s another thing entirely. You know that old story—concluded, s
ettled, exhausted, I presumed. I retired from business to my little estate in Seine-et-Marne, after the settlement…”
“I know, I know… Six months, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, six months at Poissy for a few slight irregularities. It was Poissy in those days… Well, my friend, do you know…?”
“Well?”
“Well, here I am in the new era… Machine going backwards, rejuvenating us, eh? But really too… You’ve come back from Brussels yourself, you can liquidate and be free, with me it’s a different matter, and much worse!”
“How so?”
“I’ve liquidated too, cracked, crumbled, gone under. I’m ruined, they’ve ruined me, cut my throat! I’ve been disemboweled, my friend! General liquidation, all my lovely businesses one after another. I’ve liquidated everything, more than everything. I’ve liquidated my estate in Seine-et-Marne and I’m going back into Poissy! I have to serve my six months again, my friend, my six months! I’m paying twice over. That’s why I told you that you were wrong to complain, and that your fate is enviable by comparison with mine. O youth, you’ve cost me dear! Everything has begun again, and here I am back where I was then! Ruined, and six months in Poissy on top! And when I’m out again, to attempt to launch a Central Bank! Get away with you!”
“But that’s it,” said father Laforcade, interrupting the stream of lamentations. “The Central Bank—is that you, Monsieur Grünberg!”
“It’s me,” said Grünberg, piteously. “A pretty scheme—one of my best ideas… A great success! You remember! I had lots of other afterwards, and the experience allowed me to avoid the little pitfalls…”
“Yes, yes,” said Corbier. “It was cleverly managed!”
“If it hadn’t been for the envious, everything would have gone smoothly, even better results and no six months, but the envious are always there…”
“Then it’s real,” father Laforcade said. “Everyone will get their money back?”
“From 10 a.m. tomorrow,” Grünberg groaned, “I’ll be reduced to beggary.”
“Nice!” said grandfather Laforcade, with a ferocious expression. “A great pleasure, gentlemen… Let’s get going, to the Grünberg bank!”
CHAPTER XI
Following the Crisis: The Opposite of an Issue
The father and son left the group of stockbrokers, where the discussion continued, some continuing their lamentations over the crisis, others, by contrast, rejoicing in the unexpected consequences of the new march of time. The Grünberg Bank’s offices filled a superb building, luxuriously furnished in an eye-catchingly gaudy fashion, in a street just off the boulevard. The entire façade, was plastered with pink posters from top to bottom, around the large door and the windows, which bore the words:
MONEY GIVEN OUT
in enormous letters, above a long list of businesses whose names alone recalled the days of a continuous stream of share issues, the launching of Companies and Societies of all kinds for the construction, mining, cornering, organization and exploitation of everything possible of every kind, from the most improbable in their enormity to the most baroque: the days when funds were raised for the excavation of a tunnel through the Moon, building tramway lines to the Marquesas, founding a company to display advertisements on the pyramids of Egypt, or building an Opera House on the shore of Newfoundland. Facing it, moreover, was another house similarly plastered with posters of the same sort. Those were primarily concerned with railways of local—or, rather, electoral—interest, virtually abandoned, and businesses that had collapsed in consequence of unexpected modifications in industrial practices. Those too were back at their point of departure.
Under the peristyle of the Grünberg Bank, the Laforcades found a queue of shareholders waiting impatiently for their turn to go to the cash-desk. As in the old days of share issues, there were representatives of all the social classes there, with a particular prominence of small landlords and modest tradesmen—stout fellows who had toiled all their lives, prudently setting aside the greatest possible proportion of the rewards of their labor in order to support, no less prudently, innumerable brilliant business proposals outlined so temptingly in their prospectuses…
It was thus that vast lordly estates were built, with historic châteaux bought from the ruined descendants of expropriated aristocratic families, with princely hunting-grounds in jealously-guarded forests. It was thus that sumptuous town houses in fine quarters were acquired, and magnificent villas with carefully tended grounds in suburban holiday resorts, and installations on elegant beaches streaming with wealth and social advantages extracted from Holy Thrift—the thrift of others, at any rate. But all that was ancient history now, and the New Era saw the counterparts of all these things. After the flux of wealth came the reflux. Now that everyone, by courtesy of the providential decree of the Supreme Clockmaker, as Montarcy put it, was going backwards with the entire mechanism of the universe and returning to his beginning, the ingenious inventors of all these marvelous and productive businesses were heading back to the days of their innocent youth, as starving clerks or needy menial workers in one industry or another.
The good shareholders, in returning to the old trap, experienced no sympathy for the fate of these gentlemen. All joyful, laughing and joking, they crowded against the barriers, pushing forward to arrive more quickly before the white-faced cashiers—who, instead of majestically gathering in stacks of gold coins and bundles of banknotes with delicate gestures of their fingertips, as before, were dolorously occupied in extracting gold and notes from open safes reminiscent of gaping and screaming mouths.
As each one passed before the cash-desk, he naturally filled in a certain number of petty forms at each of the windows—everything has to be done in an orderly manner—received the indicated sums, carefully counted and recounted—they had all become very suspicious—and did not leave until they had argued over and claimed the interest to which they were entitled.
“What will Grünberg do now?” a cashier was indiscreetly asked by a gentleman who remained at the window after withdrawing rather large sums—10,000 francs for a mining business, 800 francs for some trading agency, 20,000 francs in Macedonian Treasury Bonds, etc., etc.
“He’s holding his last big hunt tomorrow,” the cashier replied, “sending back his last medals, crosses, plaques and ribbons the day after.”
“And then?”
“The six months he got for his first business—the Central Bank, you know. After that, he’ll have to scrape by as he did before, with petty commissions and little deals. It will be very hard, very hard!”
Laforcade the father received a number at one window, signed a piece of paper at another, had it stamped at a third, handed it in, signed something else, and finally had only to wait for his name to be called at the cash-desk.
“Monsieur Laforcade?” a junior cashier eventually called.
“Here!”
“Present!”
Two voices had replied. As well as Monsieur Laforcade, a man in a smock and velvet trousers, holding a little boy by the hand, approached the window.
“Here!”
“Monsieur Laforcade!”
“Present!”
“Are there two of you? Wait…”
The cashier riffled through the receipts that had been handed to him. “Very well, there is Monsieur Charles Laforcade and Monsieur Etienne Laforcade. Shall we begin with Monsieur Charles Laforcade? How much?
“Six Central Bank at 450 each and 15,000 in Macedonian.”
“17,000.18 There! Monsieur Etienne Laforcade, how much?”
“One Central Bank bond,” replied the worker. “Just a little one.”
“450. There! Next!”
The Laforcades pocketed their money.
“It’s not as much as yours,” said Etienne, but it’s a great pleasure to receive it all the same. We put our entire life savings into that, and were cleaned out, ruined… A disaster for us! It was always impossible for us to make it up, you see, with the children and
being out of work. Finally, here it is!”
“So you’re named Laforcade, like us?” said the grandfather, looking at the workman. “Where are you from?”
“Angoulême.”
“Like us! Hang on! Etienne? Was your father Etienne Laforcade, a gardener?”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
“I knew your father and your grandfather—we were distant cousins, I believe.”
The man with the small bond was the worthy Etienne that we met at the beginning of this story, before the New Era: a poor old laborer worn out by poverty, troubles and disasters, employed as a manual worker in one of Robert Laforcade’s factories and, to complete his misfortune, struggling with a degenerate son, a drunkard son-in-law and citizen Prunet, spirit-merchant of the Amer Collectiviste and other poisoners of the body and soul.
The Laforcades chatted. Etienne told them about his strokes of bad luck, his hard life in terrible Paris, and his gradual disillusionment. They discovered that in his old age, worn out by his labor, he had been the humble employee of a distant and unknown cousin. The grandfather wanted to take him to dinner at the house, and urged him to come, but Etienne refused, only promising to pay his rich cousins a visit after work some day in the near future.
“You’ll understand, Monsieur, that my wife is waiting impatiently for my return, with news of our recovered savings… I don’t want to make her wait too soon, so I’ll take the boy home. Who would have believed that this little lad would give us so much trouble when he grew up, and cause the wife and me so much grief! Since the great day, he’s gone back gradually to what he was, leaving behind the absinthe merchants and all the exploiters that empty your head of all healthy ideas in order to fill it with their vitriolic lies. I know what it is—I’ve had a taste. Now there’s only rosy cheeks—he’s a well-behaved lad that his mother can spoil without any danger, thanks to the new system! And his sister, who had so much unhappiness, so many bad days to pass before, is also rid of it—she’s a brave and bonny lass again, without a care in the world, who spends all the holy day singing and gossiping. With our own young days coming back, there’s the consolation, Monsieur Laforcade, there it is! See you soon!”
The Clock of the Centuries Page 14
