The merchant was forced to add to his ordinary profit a sum sufficient
to cover probable or possible fluctuations in value, and while prices
of products thus went higher, the wages of labor, owing to the number
of workmen who were thrown out of employment, went lower.

But these evils, though great, were small compared to those far more
deep-seated signs of disease which now showed themselves throughout
the country. One of these was the _obliteration of thrift_ from the
minds of the French people. The French are naturally thrifty; but,
with such masses of money and with such uncertainty as to its future
value, the ordinary motives for saving and care diminished, And a
loose luxury spread throughout the country. A still worse outgrowth
was the increase of speculation and gambling. With the plethora of
paper currency in 1791 appeared the first evidences of that cancerous
disease which always follows large issues of irredeemable currency,--a
disease more permanently injurious to a nation than war, pestilence or
famine. For at the great metropolitan centers grew a luxurious,
speculative, stock-gambling body, which, like a malignant tumor,
absorbed into itself the strength of the nation and sent out its
cancerous fibres to the remotest hamlets. At these city centers
abundant wealth seemed to be piled up: in the country at, large there
grew a dislike of steady labor and a contempt for moderate gains and
simple living. In a pamphlet published in May, 1791, we see how, in
regard to this also, public opinion was blinded. The author calls
attention to the increase of gambling in values of all sorts in these
words: "What shall I say of the stock-jobbing, as frightful as it is
scandalous, which goes on in Paris under the very eyes of our
legislators,--a most terrible evil, yet, under the present
circumstances,--necessary?" The author also speaks of these
stock-gamblers as using the most insidious means to influence public