ABSTRACT
Tm: cns1s of 1882 in Paris, which Wllll the crisis of the Union Generale and its tributaries, reads like a financial nightmare, and hllll formed the basis of Zola's novel," L'Argent," It was a. clever and a taking notion that tho Catholics should establish a great banking and promoting enterprise of their own, supported loy the wealth of the rich devotees of Holy :Mother Church and the accumula.ti<>nS of the religious bodies, wherewith to meet the ungodly and the scoffer, the Jew, the worldling, the freethinker, and rout them even in the temple of 1\Iammon their god. And the man who, if he did not conceive, at any rate executed tbis brilliant project with, for a time, amazing success, was, of course, !Ill little troubled with religious prejudices as he was affected by moral scruples. If ever there was an astounding effort in the way of financial balloonery successfully made and its speedy collapse rendered certain from the commencement, this of the Union Generale was that one. It lastd four years, from 1878 to 1882. Had the head o£ the enterprise been honest, it is possible that the foundation might have been laid for a gigantic business. As it was, these four years witnessed the rise and fall of a gigantic fraud.
