FOR AND AGAINST

It shouldn't surprise us if these days we find a hint of dab in our peas; and if carrots smell of herring. It's only natural.
We have just learned, in fact, that between March 16th and 21st, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, the catch was so abundant that they were reduced to making fertilizer from the good fresh fish, which they paid four francs for a hundred kilos and then threw into the bowels of the earth, the nourishing and well-nourished earth...
Thus, the fish campaign has finally borne fruit... The fields themselves, the cabbage fields and the turnip fields, are eating whiting. Let's hope they don't develop a taste for lobster and turbot, otherwise it will become very difficult to feed them...
The Minister of Commerce, recently questioned about this little affair (the fish for fattening was selling for four francs per hundred kilos, two centimes per pound!!!), informed Mr. Laniel, MP, that, from now on, "measures were being considered" to prevent similar occurrences from recurring in the future. From now on, before fattening the fields, they will think in high places about fattening the consumers a little, when fish in Boulogne is worth four sous per ten pounds!... That's an official and pleasant promise. Meanwhile, I wanted to know at what price, at Les Halles, where not all consumers have the leisure to go shopping, ordinary fish was sold during that period in March when, in Boulogne, the fish market was no longer finding buyers except at four francs per hundred kilos...
Well! At Les Halles, there was also a drop in fish prices... Only this drop was, in truth, much less noticeable than in Boulogne... It was a drop of about forty percent compared to the high prices of early March when fish was significantly on the rise... And pollock was still worth four francs per kilo, as was whiting... These prices already seemed favorable and reasonable to us... We didn't know the prices in Boulogne!...

Another time, when in Boulogne, fish is worth two centimes per pound, we must hope that, thanks to the telephone, the telegraph, and wireless, we will eventually find out!

Maurice PRAX