PROFITEERS IN FRANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 January 1921, Page 12

PROFITEERS IN FRANCE.

FINES AND IMPRISONMENT. Speculators and profiteers are receiving short shrift when brought before Judge Richard in Paris, writes a French correspondent. He is sending so many plunderers to prison and finding them at the same time that dealers of all kinds are becoming anxious. Merchants and manufacturers have met and passed a resolution protesting against what they call the “abuses” committed by justice in the repression of speculation. Judge Richard is not likely to be influenced. “You say you are selling at a loss,” he told speculators in sugar. “Now, you bought this sugar from the Y.M.C.A. and sold it to confectioners, who made sweets with it. If you like you can speculate in silk stockings and jewels, whiejj are not articles of prime necessity, but not with sugar.” The judge informed speculators that indirectly they were the cause of the death of children, for infant mortality was increasing because there was so much sugar that it was given to cattle: to-day babies and old and sick people were deprived of it because it was too dear. One of the accused brought before the judge for speculation in rum was a negro. In 1915 he was earning 7 francs a day by working on vessels at Marseilles, and paying 45 francs a month for a room. The idea occurred to him, as it has occurred to thousands of other people, to go into the food trade. By dealing in rum he could do better than as a laborer in ships. The negro has done amazingly well. To-day he pays 7000 francs a year for his fiat, in which he put 50,000 francs worth of furniture; ne owns two motor-cars, keeps three servants, find has a villa at Saint Genevieve, of which place he is the Mayor. .Having got on so well by his deals in rum, the negro aspires to Parliamentary honor and is a candidate at the Senatorial elections at Guadeloupe, of which country he is a native. He has made a profit of 45 per cent, on 15 casks of rum, and he has been fined 5000 francs. Justice has not yet done with the negro. Next month he will have to appear before the Court on a charge of concealing Jiig war profits.