It was a sad blow to Henry and me, who thought our calling was a
torch-bearer of civilization. Indeed, one may digress and say that
we found the whole estate of the press in France rather disenchanting.
For advertising is not regarded as entirely "ethical" in France.
The big stores sometimes do not advertise at all; because people
look with the same suspicion on advertising drygoods and clothing
merchants as we in America look upon advertising lawyers and doctors.
So newspapers too often have to sell their editorial opinions, and
the press has small influence in France, compared with the influence
of the press in what we call the Anglo-Saxon countries.

But in that French village of twenty-five thousand people without
a newspaper we found a civilization that compared favourably with
the civilization in any American town. While the tire was going on
it developed that a cog had slipped in the transgression of the
car--or something of the sort, so we were laid up for an hour,
and we piled out of our seats and took in the town. We found four
good bookstores there--rather larger than our bookstores at home.
We found two or three big co-operative stores largely patronized
by industrial workers and farmers, and they were better stores by
half than any cooperative stores we had seen in America. For with
us the co-operative store is generally a sad failure. Our farmers
talk big about cooperation, but they sneak around and patronize
the stores that offer the best bargains, and our industrial workers
haven't begun to realize how co-operative buying will help them. We
found no big stores, in the American sense, but we found many bright,
well-kept shops. In electrical supplies we found the show windows
up to the American average, which is high indeed; but in plumbing
there was a sag. We discovered that the town had comparatively few
sewers. The big, white-tiled bathroom with its carload of modern