Late on the night of March 10, Zola urgently requested an audience with Furina.
The old man’s face was pale, his hands trembling like leaves in the wind:
“Madam President, this is a carefully calculated conspiracy.”
“They know our gold reserves are not substantial, and if they continue this run, in a few days we will have to stop redemptions!”
“By then, panic will engulf all of France like an avalanche!”
Furina made a prompt decision:
“Stop gold redemptions.
Protect the remaining reserves.
At the same time, immediately legislate a ban on gold hoarding and mandate the registration of large gold holdings.”
On March 11, the Bank of France announced the suspension of gold redemption services.
This decision was like lighting a powder keg.
After news of the suspension spread, panic spread rapidly.
Ordinary people did not understand the government’s plight; they only saw that the bank had “closed its doors.”
Worse, those reactionaries seized this opportunity to spread rumors in the streets, cafes, and factory gates of Paris:
“Why won’t the Bank of France let you withdraw your money?
Because this money has already been pocketed by Furina!”
“He gave your money to those idlers and mobs!”
“His New policy is a scam; now the bank is bankrupt, and your savings have gone down the drain!”
Panic spread like wildfire.
Coupled with the massive social changes over the past few months, social instability had already intensified.
Even though Furina’s government had tried its best to stabilize employment and redistribute assets, the damage caused by the Lockout Alliance remained immense.
Even though Furina had allowed workers to take over factories and punished or arrested the “initiators of the Lockout Alliance” who hindered social production.
Worker unemployment was tolerable; after all, the Public Works Revitalization Agency could re-recruit them to participate in road construction, bridge building, and canal digging.
But the unemployment of a large number of petty citizens was very dangerous—those small vendors, clerks, and family workshop owners.
They had neither the organizational power of workers nor the land of farmers as a retreat; once unemployed, it meant the whole family would starve.
Now that the bank had suspended withdrawal services, they couldn’t even grasp the last straw of hope.
On the morning of March 12, a riot broke out outside a branch of the National Bank in the 10th District of Paris.
Thousands of petty citizens and unemployed people gathered at the bank entrance, some shouting “Give us back our savings,” and some began to charge the bank gates, the wooden door panels groaning under the impact.
More dangerous was that some remnants of the Conservative Party mixed into the crowd, inciting violence:
“Storm the bank!
Take back your money!
Furina stole your hard-earned money!”
The situation was critical to the extreme.
Furina stood by the window of the presidential office, watching the thick smoke in the distance—the bonfires lit during clashes between police and rioters—black columns of smoke rising and obscuring the sun.
He knew that if the situation could not be stabilized today, all of France would fall into chaos tomorrow, and he and the government he led would inevitably collapse, with all reforms going down the drain.
“We must do three things,” Furina turned and said to Clemenceau and Zola, his voice terrifyingly calm, like a block of ice.
“First, immediately legislate to prohibit any individual or business from hoarding gold, and forcibly repurchase the gold held by those capitalists who exchanged it on a large scale; those who disobey will face up to ten years in prison; second, use France’s state assets as collateral to print one billion new francs to stabilize the market; third, in two days, have carriages loaded with banknotes enter every branch of the National Bank, to be used for the public to exchange—no, to be used for the public to deposit.”
“Print one billion?” Zola gasped, his glasses almost slipping off.
“This will cause inflation…
currency devaluation…”
“Because this money is not a handout; it is used to replace the deposits in the hands of the public.”
“As long as confidence is restored, this money will flow back to the bank and enter the reproduction cycle.”
“The problem now is a drying up of liquidity, not a surplus of currency.”
“What we need is to make money flow, not lie in the vault and get moldy.”
He paused, a flash of exhaustion in his eyes, but it was quickly replaced by perseverance:
“However, all of the above are just delaying tactics.
The most important thing is to restore the people’s confidence.”
“Without confidence, even if we ship over ten billion, people will choose to hide it at home instead of depositing it in the bank.”
That evening, Furina did not return to the presidential palace.
He went to the home of Louis Martin, a metallurgical worker in the 10th District of Paris, to prepare to deliver his most important speech.
Martin was the worker who worked near the riot scene.
His home was a cramped apartment on the sixth floor of a dilapidated building, with no elevator, and most of the light bulbs in the stairwell were broken.
The room was crowded with neighbors: Martin’s wife, Marie, a woman whose face was sallow due to long-term malnutrition; two neighbor’s children, twelve-year-old Grandpa Pierre and nine-year-old Sophie, whose father had been drinking after losing his job in the lockout and hadn’t been home for three days; an unemployed baker, Jean Cole, whose shop was looted yesterday; and an old widow, Mrs.
Agnes, whose three hundred francs could not be withdrawn—that was her husband’s funeral expenses and her pension.
The fire in the fireplace was burning brightly, emitting a warm glow that dispelled the chill of March, but the room was still filled with a kind of oppressive anxiety.
Furina was wearing simple home clothes, no top hat, no makeup, just like a neighbor who had just gotten off work, sitting in a rocking chair.
In front of him was a crude microphone connected to a newly built radio tower on the outskirts of Paris, which Clemenceau had urgently mobilized resources to build.
He looked at these ordinary, exhausted, but still living faces in front of him, and a strong emotion surged in his heart.
These people were the backbone of France, the forgotten majority.
He thought of the days he struggled in the slums when he was fourteen, and he thought of Grandpa Grandpa Pierre clutching his hand before he died.
He took a deep breath and began his “fireside chat.”
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