Paris would still be a village, with twelve or fifteen hundred inhabitants.

But it was not thus.

Each one, except those whom you still keep away, came to make money in this market, and that is precisely what has built it up.
It has been a long series of collisions for the enemies of competition, and from one collision after another, Paris has become a city of a million inhabitants.

The general prosperity has gained by this, doubtless, but have the shoemakers and tailors, individually, lost anything by it?
For you, this is the question.

As competitors came, you said: The price of boots will fail.