Beyond Paris

Last March while receiving Leland Stowe, the New York Herald Tribune's Paris correspondent, at the White House, President Roosevelt leaned back in his chair, flicked an ash from his cigaret and remarked that Paris was not France and that it was a pity the U. S. public did not hear more about the doings and opinions of the French provinces. A platitude when it comes from the President of the U. S. often sounds like a command. Correspondent Stowe went back to Paris and climbed into a car to tour the chief cities and provinces of France, asking as many questions of as many people as he could. Last week his reports reached the readers of the Herald Tribune, including President Roosevelt. Highlights:

Lyons, a city as big as Milwaukee, is centre of the French silk and rayon industry. Its mills are operating at 60% of capacity; dozens of firms have failed; thousands are out of work. Comparatively few, however, are on the dole. Explained President Morel-Journel of the Lyons Chamber of Commerce:

"Most of our silk mills are small and in the suburbs. Because they are in the suburbs the workers own their individual homes nearby. They have enough garden space to raise their own vegetables and they can even go home for lunch. . . . Now, when they lose their jobs, they simply stay at home, raise more garden truck and spend their savings as frugally as possible."

Having made 18 trips to the U. S., M. Morel-Journel added:

"In America you have thickly populated centres, but France is rural and her city populations are not important. Our country dwellers can support themselves to a remarkable degree."

Burgundy. Wine growers were less cheerful. In the first three months of 1934 the district has exported $385,000 worth of Burgundies to the U. S. This was described as "a good little push," but vintners were depressed by the fact that high tariffs everywhere had crippled their export trade. Wine exports to Poland, for example, have fallen in a few years from 20,000,000 francs to 850,000 francs per year. Albert Rodier, partner in a small but choice vintner's firm at Nuits St. George, expressed the typical opinion of the small capitalist:

''A government is like a house of commerce. What France needs is a patron, a boss. Our corporations and syndicates should be represented in the government. The republic is jolie but it must be rectified and modernized. . . . We need someone with an iron hand like they have in Germany. Doumergue is a good fellow but after all he's a parliamentarian too. . . . The riots didn't last long enough in February."

Marseilles. The toughest city west of Suez is ardently, definitely Socialist and will take no dictatorship from Paris. Despite the Government's best efforts, export trade with the colonies, life blood of the port, has slumped. A local irk is the fact that, of all the Marseillais on the dole, a large proportion are jobless Italians and Rumanians. Nationality has nothing to do with the qualifications for French unemployment relief. A dismissed wage earner or salaried worker who has practiced one calling for six months, has been a resident of one city for three months, can collect up to 50% of what he earned when last employed. The average dole for an unemployed single man is seven francs a day (46-c-). If he is married he can collect four francs more, and 3.50 francs for each child under 16. Fecund Italians do well under this system.

One thing the Stavisky investigations have done is to uncover the hideous corruption of Marseilles' local politics. Ballot boxes are regularly stuffed with names from undertakers' lists. The city is as gangster-ridden as Chicago. Its Capone, a sly ruffian named Paul Carbone, alias Venture, was arrested and accused of complicity in the Dijon murder of Judge Albert Prince. Boss of Marseilles is a one-eyed Corsican Deputy named Simon Sabiani--just Simon to most of Marseilles.

Toulouse. Centre of the rich wheat growing plains of southern France, this city, like Marseilles, is definitely Socialist in sympathy. In a population of 200,000 there are only 250 accredited Royalists in Toulouse. Fascist-inspired riots in Paris will have no effect in Toulouse but it will be a different matter if the Socialists take to the streets in retaliation.

Bordeaux was a British city for 300 years. Its cathedral is perpendicular English Gothic. The Plantaganet lion is still on the city shield and a certain amount of British phlegm remains in the Bordelais temperament. Its shipping is crippled. Repeal has had practically no effect in relieving its wine industry. Before the War Germany bought 16 times as much Bordeaux wine as the U. S. High tariffs have cut U. S. Repeal imports far below expectations, and the German market has completely disappeared. Yet the Bordelais are not ready to revolt. Should there be elections tomorrow their chief interest would be reduction in the French tariffs and quotas that have proved to be a boomerang to French trade.

Strasbourg. Though there are more German-speaking than French-speaking Alsatians, Alsace today is more solidly French in sympathy than it was at the time of the Armistice. There are three reasons: 1) Nationalist and pro-French agitation before the War kept Germany from developing Rhine traffic at Strasbourg; under the French booming Strasbourg now ships over 5,000,000 tons of freight a year. 2) Under Germany Strasbourg breweries and Alsatian wines were practically unknown because of Bavarian and Rheingau competition: contrariwise. Strasbourg beer is now the best in France and her ten breweries pay dividends of 20% to 30%. 3) Adolf Hitler. Strasbourg's prosperity does not entirely cover the province. Wool-weaving, cotton-spinning Mulhouse is as badly off as any of the cities of the South, and in no other province is the break between Socialist workmen and Fascist merchants and manufacturers more obvious. Correspondent Stowe talked to one Paul Bourson, who said:

"You have before you an Alsatian and a Frenchman who has passed through German schools, through the German army, through a German university and a German prison. Alors, my German education is complete! . . . We don't love the Germans but we have always respected them. We love France, but we want her to be respected. ... In the old days no smoking was allowed in postoffices, and cigars had to be left in the entrance hall, but today you can go to the postoffice with your pipe in your mouth. ... In those days a deputy would call on the prefect of police with his hat in his hand, while today the subprefect meets the deputy at the railroad station and carries his bag. We Alsatians don't like that. It puts politics above the machinery of the state. . . .

"Wholesale assassination isn't the French method as it has been with Mussolini and Hitler, but perhaps we needed it for eight days. Make no mistake about it. We won't go to the Place de la Concorde with our hands in our pockets the next time."

Lille, Calais, Valenciennes and the other manufacturing towns between the English Channel and the Belgian frontier have been more deeply hit by Depression than any other part of France. Their mills are empty and their tempers short. Factories are being dismantled, foreign workmen deported and the local Press is gagged against publishing any accounts of labor troubles.

Conclusions. His tour finished. Correspondent Stowe decided that politically, economically and emotionally France stands where the U. S. did in 1932. There will be no revolution if and only if the universally admired Gaston Doumergue can stay in power and force real reform on the Chamber of Deputies. Fear of another war is seriously hampering the recovery of French industry. Frenchmen are hoarding coin because they fear that war will close the banks, destroy industries.

"If the hard times in France deepen and are prolonged for another year or two, as there is plenty of unhappy evidence to indicate, then profound political changes can scarcely fail to result. The French people as a whole are psychologically unprepared to endure a long depression without vigorous reactions in one direction or another. . . . Frenchmen are harassed, perplexed and ill at ease and as yet they see no real gleam of light pointing a way out of the depression. They are divided amongst themselves but that division is too even to indicate an easy solution. . . . Even so the French system is basically more sound and capable of reattaining equilibrium with a minimum of disturbance than that of any other important capitalistic country in the world. . . ."

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