Paris in the Twentieth Century Read Free Page A

His taste in poetry, at any rate, is odd even for mid- nineteenth
century. When his friend admonishes "Your verses must celebrate the
wonders of industry, " Michel is firm: "Never. " Yet industry's
wonders and its commonplaces inspired Walt Whitman to sing snow shoes,
rainproof coats, and the Brooklyn Bridge, "the latest dates, discoveries,
inventions, societies, authors old and new... " Before too long, Carl
Sandburg praised (ah, woe!) Chicago: "grocer of the world, maker of tools,
champion of railroads, carrier of the nation's freight. " What can one
expect of Americans when even Parisiennes, Verne ruefully admits, are becoming
Americanized? Yet everything can fuel the inspiration of an artist. The
writings of Jules Verne are proof of this. Michel seems to ignore it.
    Perhaps
Verne's fascination with science was only secondhand. We know that at Amiens,
where the university today bears his name, one of his own prize- giving
speeches was devoted to a ringing denunciation of the bicycle; and that when,
in 1894, Hetzel telephoned him at his club (his Amiens home lacked the
newfangled contraption), Jules Verne, by now an elderly gentleman, took some
time before he found which end of the receiver to put to his ear. He would be
shocked to learn that in Chiapas, Mexico, the rebel Zapatista leader,
Sub-Commandant Marcos, whom many French intellectuals admire, behaves like a
high tech Robin Hood connected to the Internet and accessible by dialing 3615
Zapata (Le Monde, June 29, 1996). Captain Nemo,
take note.
    Paris,
1996

Paris in the Twentieth Century

Chapter I:          The Academic Credit Union
    On
August 13, 1960, a portion of the Parisian populace headed for the many Metro
stations from which various local trains would take them to what had once been
the Champ-de-Mars. It was Prize Day at the Academic Credit Union, the vast
institution of public education, and over this solemn ceremony His Excellency
the Minister of Improvements of the City of Paris was to preside.
    The
Academic Credit Union and the age's industrial aims were in perfect harmony:
what the previous century called Progress had undergone enormous developments.
Monopoly, that ne plus ultra of perfection, held the entire country within its
talons; unions were founded, organized, the unexpected results of their
proliferation would certainly have amazed our fathers.
    Money
had never been in short supply, though it was briefly frozen when the State
nationalized the railroads; indeed there was an abundance of capital, and of
capitalists as well, all seeking financial enterprises or industrial deals.
    Hence,
we shall not be surprised by what would have astonished a nineteenth-century
Parisian and, among other wonders, by the creation of the Academic Credit
Union, which had functioned successfully for over thirty years, under the
financial leadership of Baron de Vercampin.
    By dint
of multiplying university branches, lycées, primary and secondary schools,
Christian seminaries, cramming establishments, as well as the various asylums
and orphanages, some sort of instruction had filtered down to the lowest
layers of the social order. If no one read any longer, at least everyone could
read, could even write. There was no ambitious artisan's son, no alienated
farm boy, who failed to lay claim to an administrative position; the civil service
developed in every possible way, shape, and form; we shall see, later on, what
legions of employees the government controlled, and with what military
precision.
    For now,
we need merely report how the means of education necessarily increased with the
number of those to be educated. During the nineteenth century, had not
construction firms, investment companies, and government-controlled corporations
been devised when it became desirable to remake a new France, and a new Paris?
    Now,
construction and instruction are one and the same for businessmen, education
being merely a somewhat less solid form of edification.
    Such was
the