A PENSIONER OF “L’ASSISTANCE PUBLIQUE.”
A PENSIONER OF “L’ASSISTANCE PUBLIQUE.”
The droit des pauvres, as the impost in question is called, has often been protested against by the Paris managers, though in taking a theatre they know perfectly well what liabilities they incur. It is not the manager who is taxed for the support of the poor, but the people who go to his theatre, and who, paying money for their own amusement, are presumably able to spare a trifle towards the maintenance of the starving poor. The droit des pauvres dates from 1699, in which year Louis XIV. declared that a sixth part of all theatrical receipts should be made over to the general hospitals. The managers did not fail to protest; on which it was explained to them that the poor-tax was an impost levied on the spectator, not on the manager. The manager[{336}] might, of course, have replied that to increase the price of theatre tickets was to diminish his chances of having a full house. The tax was all the same, maintained. At the time of the Revolution, when, on the 14th of August, 1789, all privileges were abolished, the right of the poor to a portion of all theatrical receipts was suppressed. It was re-established, however, the year afterwards, when it was laid down by law that one décime (two sous) in every franc should for the benefit of the poor be charged on each theatre ticket; and this regulation was renewed from year to year until, by an imperial decree of the year 1809, the proportion to be levied was fixed permanently at one-tenth. This harmless, beneficial tithe continued to be paid until the year 1864, when the Paris theatres were, for the first time, empowered to play whatever suited them, without any of the ancient restrictions which accorded to one theatre the exclusive right of playing grand opera, to another that of playing comic opera or opera with spoken dialogue, to a third tragedy of the classical pattern, and so on. In the vestibule of the theatres there were formerly two pay-places—one for seats in the theatre, the other for the[{337}] poor-tax. In the early part of the century, the tariff at the entrance to the Comédie Française set forth the prices of admission in the following terms: “First boxes, 6 francs 60 centimes: 6 francs for the theatre, 60 centimes for the poor; pit, 2 francs 20 centimes: 2 francs for the theatre, 20 centimes for the poor.” No one at that time thought of protesting against this sumptuary impost. Then, to facilitate matters and to save theatre-goers the trouble of making payments first at one window, then at another, the two payments were combined in one. Before many years had passed, managers easily persuaded themselves that it was they who, out of their own pockets, paid the theatrical poor-tax. Some of them demanded that the impost should be levied not on receipts, but on profits; and one director, on becoming bankrupt, said to his creditors as he submitted to them his accounts of profit and loss: “I owe you 300,000 francs. If I had not been forced to give 400,000 francs to the poor, you would have been paid in full, and I should have had 100,000 to the good.”
Putting together the receipts from all sources which come into the hands of the Public Aid Department, the entire sum amounts to some fourteen or fifteen million francs. This is far from sufficient, since the expenditure in aiding and relieving the indigent and the sick is reckoned at some twenty-five millions of francs. The deficit is made up by the city of Paris, which contributes some eleven million or twelve million francs a year from its own resources.
