Word: c
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Poujade himself was barely keeping alive. "If I paid my taxes, I would have gone broke," Poujade insists. "I had to pay out more than I made. It was the same thing for everybody in Saint-Céré and all over France. We could only keep going by fraud...
...Revolt. One day in July 1953, a local blacksmith and municipal councilor named Georges Fregeac got a tax notice: contrôle (inspection of his books) next day. Twenty-six other shopkeepers and artisans of Saint-Céré got the same notice. Blacksmith Fregeac was behind in his taxes, of course, and he could not pay. Hurriedly, he summoned his fellow councilors to an emergency meeting in a café. Early next morning, two inspectors faced a hostile crowd of some 300 shopkeepers in slippers and aprons. "Get out of here," yelled the mob. The inspectors left. Pierre...
After two years of selling books as a traveling salesman, Poujade leased a twelve-foot shop on Saint-Céré's main street and opened a book and stationery store. While Pierre's mother minded their four children, Yvette tended shop and Poujade peddled books on his route in an ancient Renault. He got a taxi license, drove summer tourists on sightseeing trips, conducted guided tours for summer visitors. As a Gaullist, he was elected to the town's 24-man municipal council...
Poujade had not started the revolt of Saint-Céré, or even organized it. But Poujade swiftly exploited and expanded it into a national force. He took off in his car, scoured the depressed countryside with his new doctrine of discontent. He ignored his business and forgot to sell his books. He transformed Saint-Céré's refusal to pay taxes into a patriotic duty. In cafés and village squares, Poujade cried: "We must refuse to pay tribute to a corrupt system which breaks our backs while sparing the giant profiteers...
...Economic Council of the Republic. Poujade refused. Belatedly the government brought suit against him for "organization of collective refusal to pay taxes." With this authority, detectives rummaged through Poujade's files, ransacked his offices, tapped his phones, even searched his mother's house in Saint-Céré. Faure hoped to turn up some hidden and sinister backers of Poujade, but the detectives turned up nothing. The government lacked the resolution to press its case before election in the face of 1,000,000 maddened shopkeepers...