THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLEmanagers, they virtually controlled the operations of the Bank,
leaving the more colourful public figures, like Jules le Chevalier
and Ramon de la Sagra, their positions as figureheads of the
organisation.
Once the Bank had been established, Proudhon was occupied
from early morning until late at night with one or other of the
various concerns in which he saw some hope o f improving the
conditions o f his fellows, and he entered into his many activities
with a Gargantuan enthusiasm. ‘The three months of January,
February and March, 1849, during which the principle o f free
credit, if not applied and developed, was at least formulated con
cretely and thrown into the public consciousness by the People’s
Bank, were the finest time of my life,’ he recollected.
Before the Bank’s affairs were wound up, the membership had
reached 27,000, consisting partly of working men in associations
and partly of individual craftsmen. The receipts in cash, slightly
less than 18,000 francs, seem hardly commensurate with so many
supporters, and, since, according to its statutes, the Bank could
not enter upon business until its paid-up capital amounted to
50,000 francs, it was in fact never more than a project in search o f
finances; apart from the intrinsic interest of the idea, its chief
importance lies in the fact that it aroused a fairly numerous support
among those very sections of the populace, who, in the hard
months after June, had not the means to give it anything ap
proaching an economically sound footing.
10
It seems likely that, like so many other efforts to change the
situation of the working class by stimulating its own efforts, the
People’s Bank would have failed in any case from lack of initial
financial support. But its end was hastened by other circumstances
in Proudhon’s life, incidental to his activities as an opposition
journalist.
Towards the end of January, 1849, friction developed between
the conservative republicans, who dominated the Assembly, and
the President, with his dictatorial ambitions. Proudhon, who had
already said on the 22nd December, ‘democracy and socialism
have no greater enemy than Bonaparte,’ entered spiritedly into
the struggle, in the hope that the Assembly might be provoked