Paris in the Year 2000

by Tony Moilin

  Metropolitan carriages are of two types. Some, very simple, provided with solid benches and running no risk of being damaged, always occupy the rear of the train. They are designed for ill-clad individuals or those carrying large parcels. The other carriages, placed at the front, are much more luxurious. Suspended on four springs, upholstered in rich fabrics, ornamented with trimmings and softly furnished, they receive all the passengers whose costumes are in harmony with that sumptuousness. However, the price of these luxurious carriages is no higher than that of the others, and any individual who is dressed in a manner not liable to cause any deterioration is at liberty to go into them.

  The price of tickets is very modest—only ten centimes, regardless of the distance traveled. As one can go anywhere by making a single connection, even the longest journey never costs more than twenty centimes. For a further five centimes, you can board the little omnibuses that wait at every station and conduct you rapidly to the very place to which you want to go.

  The railways that have just been described are designed exclusively for passengers. As for merchandise, that circulates via the subterranean railways established in the basements of model houses—railways that ramify throughout the interior of Paris and on which a truly incredible volume of transportation takes place.

  Thanks to that double circulation of trains, one aerial and the other subterranean, not a single collision occurs, and the city is furrowed night and day in every direction by countless trains, which pass at high speed beside or above one another, and cross paths perpetually, without ever being able to crash into one another.

  Paris is not the only city to have been endowed with railways; similar systems were established in all the larger cities of the provinces situated on a major route. The networks there are, of course, much less complicated than the one in the capital, reduced to one or two lines serving the station and the principal quarters, designed to transport both goods and passengers.

  6. The Aspect of the Gallery-Streets

  As soon as the gallery-streets had been pierced, the Government took care to decorate them and to bring them into harmony with their various functions.

  The broadest and best-situated among them were decorated tastefully and furnished sumptuously. The walls and ceilings were covered with decorative paint, rare marble, gilt, bas-reliefs, mirrors and pictures. The windows were fitted with magnificent hangings and curtains embroidered with marvelous designs; chairs, armchairs and decorative sofas, perfectly stuffed and covered with rich fabrics, offered comfortable seats to weary pedestrians. Finally, artistic items of furniture—antique dressers, sideboards, shelves covered with works of art, statues in marble and bronze, vases containing natural flowers, aquaria filled with live fish and aviaries populated by rare birds—completed the decoration of those gallery-streets, which are illuminated after dusk by thousands of gilded candelabras and crystal chandeliers.

  The Government wanted the streets belonging to the people of Paris to surpass in magnificence the reception-rooms of the most powerful sovereigns, and artists, to whom they had given carte blanche, ingeniously gathering all the splendors of civilization in a restricted space, realized marvels in which the most unexpected richness was always allied with elegance and good taste.

  As for the gallery-streets that were less favorably situated, they were decorated and furnished much more modestly. The majority of them were devoted to commerce and transformed into retail establishments. Everywhere, their walls were covered by the varied display of all the products of industry. This resulted in a kind of decoration that, although not as opulent as that of the salon-streets, nevertheless charmed the eye, and, thanks to its daily renewal, never wearied the curiosity of passers-by. By virtue of this utilitarian employment of galleries, pedestrians circulated continually in the midst of shops and, without deviating from their route, could buy all the objects that tempted them and of which they had need.

  In the early morning, the gallery-streets are surrendered to service personnel, who let in air, carefully sweep, dust, wipe and polish all the furniture, maintaining the most scrupulous tidiness everywhere. Afterwards, according to the season, the windows are either closed or left open, fires are lit or blinds drawn, in order to have a mild and even temperature at all times. For their part, the shop-managers clean up their premises, get out their merchandise, arrange their displays and prepare to receive visits from the public.

  Between nine and ten o’clock all the cleaning work is completed and the passers-by, previously sparse, begin to circulate in greater numbers. Entry to the galleries is strictly forbidden to any person who is dirty or carrying large burdens; it is also forbidden to smoke there or to spit. There is rarely any need to remind people of these prohibitions, however; everyone understands that the streets, which are, in essence, fine shops and magnificent salons, would deteriorate very rapidly if people were permitted to spit everywhere and sit down on silk furniture in damp or soiled clothing.

  In the afternoon, the crowds become larger and women in elegant costumes begin to appear. Everywhere, there is nothing to be seen but hurried individuals going about their urgent business, buyers examining the displays of shops and asking to inspect merchandise, and inquisitive individuals standing in front of paintings and taking inventory of the myriad curiosities accumulated in showcases—with which no idler, however experienced, can boast of being fully acquainted, and in which, when passing the same places, one always discovers new details that had escaped previous examinations, reawakening a curiosity always satisfied and never sated.

  But it is in the evenings, above all, that the gallery-streets present an extraordinary animation, of which no description can give even an approximate idea. The entire population that is working by day in factories, offices and shops, comes together in the gallery-streets, especially in the salon-streets lighted à giorno by thousands of chandeliers.

  All the women who are still young and pretty stroll there in ball-gowns and satin slippers, their heads decked in flowers, their arms and shoulders bare. They claim that that kind of costume is extremely economical and costs them less than any other form of dress. Their cavaliers are also in very gracious evening suits, which have nothing in common with the cramped frock-coats and stovepipe hats of the old regime. As for old and unpretentious people, their costume is simpler without constituting a stain in the midst of that elegant society.

  The evening is thus spent strolling in the street, chatting and laughing with one another about the countless curiosities displayed before the eyes, unless one prefers to go to the theater, a café, a concert-hall or some other place of pleasure.

  As the night advances, however, the strollers becomes rarer; everyone goes home; at midnight, the chandeliers are extinguished, save for a few conserved gas-jets, and the only citizens to be seen are those emerging from spectacles and returning to their homes, where they go to sleep with the consciousness that the Social Republic is the best of governments.

  II. THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR

  1. Industry

  How to organize workers, to ensure each of them a job and a fair wage: such was the problem that the Funders of the Social Republic had the glory of posing and resolving. By virtue of their concern, Industry, Commerce, Agriculture, Salaries and Unemployment were the object of important decrees that substituted a better state of affairs for the old order of things and became the fundamental charter of the new Society.

  With regard to Industry, while leaving scope for individual initiative, it was necessary to furnish instruments of labor and give it all the facilities desirable for the purchase of its raw materials, the sale of its products and the improvement of its equipment.

  This is what the Government did.

  On the one hand, it organized Commerce (see the following section) and thus made all raw materials available at an extremely low price, simultaneously ensuring manufacturers numerous and regular orders and prompt payment for their work.

  On the other hand, it organized Credit and
founded a National Bank, whose mission was to lend to Industry and Agriculture and thus favor the development of public wealth.

  This National Bank occupies the same site as the old Banque de France. It is one of the most important institutions of the Social Republic. It is designed to lend money to all the manufacturers who need it, and anyone, rich or poor, can obtain credit from it. Thus, any worker who wants to work for himself, any associations of workers that wants to set up a business, and any employer who wants to improve his equipment and increase his production, can obtain aid and protection from the Government, and has only to apply to the National Bank to obtain the necessary loans.

  The Bank, of course, does not give its money to just anyone, and only lends its funds to those who present a material or moral guarantee of reimbursement. In fact, the sums advanced by the bank belong to the Nation and are merely a deposit confided to the Government. Now, if the latter lent money to everyone, without doing any research, it would often not be repaid and would be rightly accused of squandering public wealth and mismanaging the country’s affairs.

  The loans made by the Bank bring in a monthly interest, which is not very considerable, not being at all usurious while nevertheless constituting an important resource for the Treasury. All the sums formerly appropriated by bankers, shareholders, usurers and credit brokers now go into the Nation’s coffers, which employs the to pay for public expenses.

  Not only does the National Bank advance money to all honest workers and manufacturers, but—in which respect it differs from all the banks of the old regime—it never asks to be reimbursed so long as the interest on the sums advanced is paid regularly. The manufacturer who borrows money can therefore invest in necessary expenses—for example, buying a machine or erecting a building. The State will give him all the time necessary to pay off the debt, and no one will come, after three months, to demand a capital that he can no longer return because the capital no longer exists, having been transformed into an instrument of labor.

  Heavy Industry.

  Heavy industry is that which requires the collaboration of numerous workers and cannot be undertaken appropriately without the employment of a great deal of equipment and considerable capital. Examples are building railways, the transport of goods, the fitting out of ships, mines, quarries, blast-furnaces, gas-plants, refineries, mills, etc.—in a word, all the establishments in which anything is manufactured on a large scale and in which costly machinery is employed, operated by numerous workers.

  In the Social Republic, all of this heavy industry has been taken out of private hands, and it is the State that takes charge of managing it and furnishing it with the necessary capital. When the Socialists came to power, the majority of these large industrial establishments were already exploited with the aid of simple employees appointed and paid by Companies of shareholders. More often than not, therefore, the Government only had to let things remain as they were, and merely substitute itself for the shareholders that were expropriated and paid in annual incomes. In the same way as for the houses of Paris, that expropriation was very fruitful for the Treasury, thanks to the income tax that reduced excessively large fortunes to honest proportions and pitilessly raked off everything that exceeded the maximum of twelve thousand francs.

  That expropriation of industrial Companies had another advantage, almost as great. That was cutting short all the markets and all the speculations that were made on the shares of Companies as on other stocks. In the last years of the old regime that speculation in shares had attained incredible proportions; it had become a frightful gambling game of ups and downs, an essentially immoral and disastrous game that enriched a few tricksters while ruining a multitude of poor dupes.

  The Government hastened to put an end to all that shady dealing. The Bourse, the principal location of the shameful traffic in stocks and shares, was closed and demolished. In its place a square was constructed in which a stream could be seen running over a gilded bed, seemingly flowing with liquid gold, although it was only clear water—a faithful image of all the speculations that had ruined so many gamblers by offering them the hope of a chimerical fortune.

  When the Administration took charge of managing heavy industry, many people believed that it was taking on a task that was too burdensome and that it would be impossible to have such complex and considerable interests run by employees. They predicted that Industry and Commerce would immediately come to a halt, and that within a fortnight, France would be prey to the most frightful poverty. The former speculators at the Bourse were particularly inconsolable. Since they could no longer bet on its ups and downs, they were seen everywhere crying that it was the end of civilization and that humankind, approaching its imminent doom, was about to fall back into primitive barbarity.

  That sinister prediction was not realized. Far from it; never had France been so rich and prosperous than it has been since the day when the Government put itself at the head of national labor and imprinted it with a vigorous impulsion. By virtue of its care, roads, canals and railways have been constructed in regions that still lacked them; the price of transport by land and sea has been considerably diminished for both goods and passengers. Far from collapsing in the hands of the Administration, all the mines, construction yards and factories have grown considerably under its direction, and deliver their various products in larger quantities and at lower prices than before. Finally, all the workers employed by the State earn their living comfortably; all those who work for themselves or for small manufacturers similarly participate in the general prosperity, and far from cursing the Social Republic, are all ready to shed their blood to defend it.

  2. Commerce

  Among the Republicans of the year 2000, Commerce is strictly forbidden to private individuals, and it is the Government that takes charge of selling, by way of its employees, all the products of light industry and all those that emerge from its own establishments.

  Mention has already been made of the wholesale and retails storage facilities installed on the ground floor and in the gallery-streets of model houses. All these shops are run by employees of the State and the considerable profits that result from sales go into the Treasury and are directed to public expenditure.

  Let us note here that in the Socialist State, the Government handles all commerce and sells everything, but, except for the products of the national factories, it does not manufacture anything itself, leaving that care to individual initiative. Thus, to cite one example, in a restaurant, the employees paid wages by the State are limited to serving the public and keeping the till and the books, but the restaurateur—which is to say, the person who provisions and supervises the kitchen, is not an employee but a manufacturer in his own right, and quite independent, from whom the Administration buys his products in order to sell them to consumers.

  It is the same for all other kinds of commerce; the State sells bread, wine, vegetables, clothes, ironmongery, etc., but it does not manufacture any of these things and always limits itself to serving as an intermediary between the customer and the producer. Selling a product made by someone else is not very difficult; waged employees can easily be charged with that task and carry it out very adequately.

  As soon as the Authority had made known its intention to suppress the liberty of Commerce, however, and direct all sales through its employees, a formidable clamor rose up among businessmen and shopkeepers. They said that the liberty of transactions was absolutely indispensable to the prosperity of France and that to allow everything to be sold by the State would be to deliver the country to the corrosive canker of functionarism and bring down terrible catastrophes upon the Nation. Furthermore, they signed an extremely threatening collective petition in which they claimed the liberty of Commerce very energetically, and declared themselves ready to do anything if it were not granted to them.

  On reading this petition, the Socialist Government was very perplexed and was wondering anxiously how it would be able to disarm that formidable opposition, when, that same even
ing, fortunately, it received a multitude of letters that reassured it completely. They were from signatories of the petition, expressing their regret at having signed it; they affirmed that their signatures had been obtained by surprise in a moment of unreflective enthusiasm, and they all concluded their epistles by requesting to be included in the ranks of the State employees responsible in future for carrying out all sales.

  Very glad to have got away with it so cheaply, the Government met the majority of those requests favorably and assumed the duty of organizing Commerce.

  It began by expropriating the merchandise of the former businessmen, who were reimbursed with annual incomes; then, all the retail establishments were installed in the gallery-streets that had just been pierced, while ground floors were reserved for wholesalers. Naturally, all these shops were divided equitably between the various quarters, and care was taken to maintain a strict proportion between supply and demand, in order to avoid any over-employment.

  Remarkably enough—which proved all the advantages of the system of organization—ten new well-provisioned shops were able replace more than five hundred smaller ones, and the customers, far from being injured by that centralization of sales, acquired a greater variety of stock therein and, more importantly, a considerable reduction in prices.

  Selling everything in immense quantities, the Administration was content with a small profit on each item of between three and five per cent, and that slender profit not only covered all expenses by brought in enormous sums every year and thus became the most productive and least burdensome of taxes. So, of all the socialist reforms, the one that put Commerce in the hands of the State was one of the most fecund, and immediately realized the low cost of living that so many Governments have promised the People without ever being able to deliver it.