L' Austerite

For two hours last week the French, who regard austerity as something that uniquely suits the English temperament, heard some bad news about their own economy.

In a cool, monotonous voice, new Premier Edgar Faure painted a gloomy picture for the Assembly. Production has greatly increased since 1945, but, said Faure, "this improvement is insufficient to allow simultaneously building, modernizing, fighting the Indo-Chinese war, rearming and improving the standard of living."

In 13 months France's trade balance with the European Payments Union skidded from a favorable $212 million to an unfavorable $292 million, and a $560 million budget deficit is in sight for 1952. With a side glance at Britain's "Rab" Butler (TIME, Feb. 11), Faure pleaded: "The Finance Minister or Prime Minister . . has a right to speak a similar language to that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer." Faure's temporary remedies sounded like Butler's: fewer dollar imports, tax relief for exports, reduced travel allowances.

As Faure well knew, France is on a gaudy whirl. Its cost of living, already high, has jumped 23% in the past year. Heat and light are up 42%. Last week the Paris Opera raised its prices 17% and Parisian cab fare jumped 20%. Ministers worried whether tourists would come to so expensive a country. The French themselves worried about the spreading gap between wages and prices.

Beset by demands from the left for an escalator wage bill and denunciations from the right for daring to consider it, Faure staked his three-week-old government on a characteristic Gallic compromise--an escalator with a built-in landing. If the cost of living jumps more than 5%, the government would have one month to try to bring it down, before being forced to raise wages. On a procedural question, Faure won by 17 votes. But nobody cried Vive l'Austerite.

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