CHAPTER V.
JOSEPH PRUDHOMME, THE JOG-TROT MIDDLE-CLASS FRENCHMAN.
Joseph Prudhomme, whom the Anglo-Saxon people are fond of representing as a fighting cock, sighing constantly after glory and conquest, is a modest proprietor, peaceful, home-loving, steady-going, whom his mother calls "petit," and his wife leads by the nose.
Glory and conquests! he has had enough of all that: it is peace that he asks for at the top of his voice. Like his social inferior, Jacques Bonhomme, the only conquest that he hankers after, is the conquest of that independence which is assured by a safe investment at three or three and a half per cent.
Joseph is not wealthy, but he is rich, rich like most of us, not in that which he possesses, but in that which he knows how to do without. He is rich, because the little he has got is always safe and stable.
It is stability in fortunes and the proper distribution of wealth over a nation which constitute real riches, and that is why France, who has now more than six millions of contented landed proprietors, is probably, in the proper sense of the word, the richest nation in the world.
Joseph is by no means a great speculator. Economical and industrious, he quickly goes on his sober way, until he has amassed the snug little sum that will allow him to live at his ease.
To have from one to two thousand dollars a year, such is his aim. As soon as he has attained it, he knocks off work and takes life easily, devoting his time to his wife and family.
Economy is the very genius of France. The peasant buys a bit of land; the working classes put something in the savings bank, which, at the present moment, has more than $450,000,000 in its coffers. The middle classes buy government securities. Very few people speculate.
In France, everybody runs after comfort, but few run after wealth. When an American has a million, he must have two, and then ten. He forgets that he can possess one million, but cannot possess ten, without losing his peace of mind and happiness. The Frenchman wants comfort; he wants enough to establish his children, educate his boys, portion his daughters, and spend his old days in quietness. He wants no more. In France, we have no Jay Goulds. If a Suez Canal was made, it did not owe its existence to a few capitalists, but to hundreds and thousands of workers who brought their savings.