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After two years of selling books as a traveling salesman, Poujade leased a twelve-foot shop on Saint-Céré's main street and opened a book and stationery store. While Pierre's mother minded their four children, Yvette tended shop and Poujade peddled books on his route in an ancient Renault. He got a taxi license, drove summer tourists on sightseeing trips, conducted guided tours for summer visitors. As a Gaullist, he was elected to the town's 24-man municipal council in 1953.
But Poujade himself was barely keeping alive. "If I paid my taxes, I would have gone broke," Poujade insists. "I had to pay out more than I made. It was the same thing for everybody in Saint-Céré and all over France. We could only keep going by fraud."
The Revolt. One day in July 1953, a local blacksmith and municipal councilor named Georges Fregeac got a tax notice: contrôle (inspection of his books) next day. Twenty-six other shopkeepers and artisans of Saint-Céré got the same notice. Blacksmith Fregeac was behind in his taxes, of course, and he could not pay. Hurriedly, he summoned his fellow councilors to an emergency meeting in a café. Early next morning, two inspectors faced a hostile crowd of some 300 shopkeepers in slippers and aprons. "Get out of here," yelled the mob. The inspectors left. Pierre Poujade had found his cause. Poujade wrote later: "It was David against Goliath. It was justice against the inquisition. It was liberty on the march. It was the pure French tradition."
Poujade had not started the revolt of Saint-Céré, or even organized it. But Poujade swiftly exploited and expanded it into a national force. He took off in his car, scoured the depressed countryside with his new doctrine of discontent. He ignored his business and forgot to sell his books. He transformed Saint-Céré's refusal to pay taxes into a patriotic duty. In cafés and village squares, Poujade cried: "We must refuse to pay tribute to a corrupt system which breaks our backs while sparing the giant profiteers who are pillaging France. Only by united resistance can we force them to reform the rotten regime which now threatens France with ruin."
Warning Bells. For 1,000 francs ($3) a year dues, Poujade offered cash benefits in the form of taxes unpaid, coupled with a mutual insurance system to prevent reprisals because of mob action against inspectors. "I talked until my throat was so sore that I was spitting blood," says Poujade. In its first year, Poujade's Union for the Defense of Shopkeepers and Artisans (UDCA) organized 500 ''oppositions" to tax collectors, recruited priests to ring church bells as warnings of inspectors approaching. When delinquent taxpayers were seized, Poujade packed the auctions to buy back their belongings for next to nothing (1¢ for a sofa, ½¢ for a radio). Sometimes Poujadists roughed up tax inspectors to discourage their zeal. Soon Poujade could boast: "In 70 departments, we are the bosses."