Le Figaro
- M. Poincaré's Two Phases
- THE UNIVERSITIES REOPEN
- Parakeets Too
Le Figaro's front page of 7 November 1926 led with Lucien Romier's editorial on Raymond Poincaré's answer to members of the Chamber's finance committee: his monetary policy would come in two phases, first the recovery of the franc and only then its stabilization. Achille Mestre, writing on the reopening of the faculties, portrayed a generation of students shaped by the war, impatient to live on their own and uneasy about leaning on fathers' allowances that hard times had cut. Régis Gignoux took a small advertisement offering cash for parakeets, collected at home, and imagined the buyer arriving with his cage. He wrote that rising prices and the falling pound had never before put such torture on lonely women, old couples, bachelors and widowers.
Translation
M. Poincaré's Two Phases
Answering questions from certain members of the Chamber's finance committee, M. Poincaré defined his monetary policy as comprising two phases: first recovery, then stabilization.
THE UNIVERSITIES REOPEN
They want to live, and quickly. Their personality, matured by the universal suffering amid which they grew up, is impatient, proud, stubborn, courageous. To many of them it seems that the allowance from their fathers, often much reduced by necessity, burns their fingers.
Parakeets Too
"Now" is underlined twice, "cash" is repeated twice. It was enough to write just once "will collect parakeets at your home." We picture the buyer who comes in with his cage and carries off... Rising prices and the fall of the pound had not yet imposed such torture on ladies and on women living alone, on old couples, even on old bachelors or widowers, for one can be a man and cherish parakeets.
Context
What 'redressement' meant in autumn 1926
Romier reported Poincaré's two-phase formula a little over three months into his government. President Gaston Doumergue had called Poincaré to form a national-union cabinet on 21 July 1926, when the pound had climbed to a record 235 francs. Writing in Foreign Affairs in 1928, J. A. M. de Sanchez put the low point at nearly 250 francs to the pound, one-tenth of the franc's prewar value. In this setting, the first phase, redressement, meant restoring confidence in the state's finances and letting the franc regain value. Under Poincaré, tax receipts rose while consumer prices tended to fall, partly because the franc was revalued. By the time Le Figaro printed his statement in November, that recovery was well under way. The question raised by the headline was when the first phase would give way to the second, and at what level.
How the stabilization phase arrived, and where it ended
The second phase came within weeks of this page. Sanchez recorded that the franc doubled in value between 23 July and 20 December 1926 and was then held stable de facto. He explained that de facto stabilization was decided in December 1926 so as not to prolong and deepen the deflation that followed the franc's rapid rise. Émile Moreau, governor of the Banque de France from 1926, led the Bank's work on stabilizing the Poincaré franc and strongly favored a de facto devaluation. Poincaré also wanted to avoid Churchill's mistake of restoring sterling at its 1914 level. The legal settlement came in June 1928, when the franc was fixed at 65.5 milligrams of gold, 900/1000 fine, or roughly 125 francs to the pound. Le Figaro's editorial therefore captures the policy at a point when the pace of recovery and the final rate were still open.
Students, shrinking allowances and new housing in Paris
Mestre's claim that fathers' allowances had been 'much reduced by necessity' describes the student mood, but it fits the monetary record. A franc worth one-tenth of its prewar value by mid-1926 cut the purchasing power of any family income fixed in francs. Paris was beginning to answer the housing side of the problem. The industrialist Émile Deutsch de la Meurthe gave 10 million francs to build a residence for 350 French students. That first residence of the Cité universitaire, the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe with its seven pavilions, opened in 1925, so it was still new when Mestre wrote in November 1926. The picture of a generation impatient to live on its own is Mestre's observation, not a measured trend.
Why a falling pound could hurt French households
Gignoux pairs rising prices with 'the fall of the pound' as twin pressures on modest households. In July 1926 the pound stood at a record 235 francs; by December the franc had doubled in value, so sterling fell steeply in francs through the autumn in which this column appeared. For a French reader, the pound's fall was the mirror image of Poincaré's recovery, not a foreign misfortune. Sanchez noted that the adjustment was not painless: in the months after de facto stabilization France saw unemployment, more bankruptcies and a temporary drop in tax receipts. The column's link between the exchange rate and the forced sale of household pets is the writer's own ironic observation. The excerpt does not say who placed the advertisement or where the parakeets were going.
Original
Les deux phases de M. Poincaré
Répondant aux questions de certains membres de la commission des finances de la Chambre, M. Poincaré a défini sa politique monétaire comme devant comprendre deux phases: d'abord le redressement, ensuite la stabilisation.
LA RENTRÉE DES FACULTÉS
Vite ils veulent vivre. Leur personnalité, mûrie par la douleur universelle parmi laquelle ils ont grandi, est impatiente, fière, obstinée, courageuse. Il semble à nombre d'entre eux que les subsides paternels, souvent bien réduits par la nécessité, leur brûlent les doigts.
Les perruches aussi
Maintenant est souligné deux fois, argent comptant est répété deux fois. Il a suffi d'écrire une seule fois chercher perruches à domicile. Nous imaginons l'acheteur qui entre avec sa cage et emporte... La hausse des prix et la baisse de la livre n'avaient pas encore imposé pareille torture aux dames et aux filles seules, aux vieux ménages, même aux vieux garçons ou aux veufs, car on peut être homme et chérir les perruches.