One of the factors contributing to dear living was the raising of the import duty on wheat from fers 85 to frs 50 as a protection to the French growers, and a queer incident has come to light in this connection, The head of a large milling firm at Saint Louis clu Rhone, near Marseilles, has appeared before an magistrate at Arles to answer a charge of defrauding the revenue, Part of a cargo of wheat consigned to his firm was put through the Customs at Marseilles on the morning of May 24, just before the higher duty took effect, and a suggestion, which he emphatically denied, was made by the prosecution, to the effect that he received information from somebody "in the know" to clear his wheat at once.
He replied that everyone knew about the impending increase in the duty, and that he merely took action as a business man to be on the safe side, head of the Marseilles Customs, says that on the evening of May 23 he was informed by a telegram in cipher that M. Chéron, the Finance Minister, had brought in a Bill, for immediate consideration, outering the wheat duty, and that the text of the decree specifying the details of the increase would be telegraphed in the evening, so that it could be put into force next morning. This telegram was duly transmitted and was brought to M.
Pommereuil's official residence late at night, but though the messer rang repeatedly no one heard him and he took the telegram a It was redelivered next morning and M. Pommercuil immediately sent it to the Customs office, where was posted up, thus becoming effective, at 9 o'clock, an hour after the office opened. In the meantime severa! consignments of wheat were put through at the old rate, and the revenue lost several hundred thousand francs. The only: consolation is that M. Pommereuil and Jis household had a good night's rest,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.