“Once the condemned editor was out of the way,” says a writer familiar with the administration of this curious journal, “it was as if no condemnation had intervened. There was somewhere on the _trimard_ in France or abroad an anarchist who owed to the state two years of Ste. Pélagie and a 3,000-franc fine,[18] but the journal was not touched. _Le Père Peinard_ remained unassailable....
“From the number and the gravity of the sentences imposed it would seem that the _Père Peinard_ must have experienced great difficulty in the recruitment of its editors or that it must have paid them enormous salaries. Quite the reverse. The fanaticism of the anarchists was such that they vied with each other in imploring of Pouget the favour of a chance to be condemned. At any given moment several were impatiently awaiting their turn. Never did the _Père Peinard_ pay one of its editors. Never did it even allow him a free subscription. The editor of the _Père Peinard_ was a special type, a volunteer of the assize court, who went to the prison as water goes to the river, and who pushed his disinterestedness to the point of buying his own paper—two sous out of his pocket—every Sunday.”
Under the present laws it would be more difficult for so saucy and reckless a sheet as the _Père Peinard_ to keep up its laughter over the discomfiture of the authorities; that is, if it were printed in France.
To-day a paper of this sort, to appear here with anything like an approach to regularity, would have to be printed in some foreign town that is tolerant towards anarchists, and smuggled through the mails inside of other journals or in covers with unsuspicious titles. This propaganda at long range is too expensive to be carried on in a wholesale fashion. It has its periods of favour, however, and is never totally neglected. Apropos of unsuspicious cover titles, it is on record that the journal _L’Internationale_, which used to be printed in the French colony of London, regaled the prying eyes of the French post-office employees and the police with such more than reputable inscriptions as these: _Mandement de S. E. le Cardinal Manning_, _Petit Traité de Géographie_, _Rapport sur la Question du Tunnel Sous-Marin_, _Contes Traduits de Dickens_, _Lettres d’un Pasteur sur la Sainte Bible_.