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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: that a phrase can bring to bear against rebellious lucre, against the
miserly proprietor squatting in the recesses of his country lair?--
listen to one of these great ambassadors of Parisian industry as he
revolves and works and sucks like an intelligent piston of the steam-
engine called Speculation.
"Monsieur," said a wise political economist, the director-cashier-
manager and secretary-general of a celebrated fire-insurance company,
"out of every five hundred thousand francs of policies to be renewed
in the provinces, not more than fifty thousand are paid up
voluntarily. The other four hundred and fifty thousand are got in by
the activity of our agents, who go about among those who are in
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