CLEMENT ARMAND

See also:

• CLEMENT ARMAND FALLILRES (1841– )

FALLILRES (1841– )  , president of the French republic, was born at Mezin in the department of Lot-et-Garonne, where his father was clerk of the peace . He studied law and became an advocate at Nerac, beginning his public career there as municipal councillor (1868), afterwards mayor (1871), and as councillor-general of the department of Lot-et-Garonne (1871) . Being an ardent Republican, he lost this position in May 1873 upon the fall of Thiers, but in February 1876 was elected deputy for Nerac . In the chamber he sat with the Republican Left, signed the protestation of the 18th of May 1877, and was re-elected in October by his constituency . In 188o he became under-secretary of state in the department of the interior in the Jules Ferry ministry (May 188o to November 1881) . From the 7th of August 1882 to the loth of February 1883 he was minister of the interior, and for a month (from the 29th of January 1883) was premier . His ministry had to face the question of the expulsion of the pretenders to the throne of France, owing to the proclamation by Prince Jerome Napoleon (January 1883), and M . Fallieres, who was ill at the time, was not able to face the storm of opposition, and resigned when the senate rejected his project . In the following November, how-ever, he was chosen as minister of public instruction by Jules Ferry, and carried out various reforms in the school system . He resigned with the ministry in March 1885 . Again becoming minister of the interior in the Rouvier cabinet in May 1887, he exchanged his portfolio in December for that of justice . He returned to the ministry of the interior in February 1889, and finally took the department of justice from March 1890 to February 1892 .

In

June 1890 his department (Lot-et-Garonne) elected him to the senate by 417 votes to 23 . There M . Fallieres remained somewhat apart from party struggles, although maintaining his influence among the Republicans . In March 1899 he was elected president of the senate, and retained that position until January 1906, when he was chosen by a union of the groups of the Left in both chambers as candidate for the presidency of the republic . He was elected on the first ballot by 449 votes againt 371 for his opponent, Paul Doumer . FALL-LINE, in American geology, a line marking the junction between the hard rocks of the Appalachian Mountains and the softer deposits of the coastal plain . The pre-Cambrian and metamorphic rocks of the mountain mass form a continuous ledge parallel to the east coast, where they are subject to denudation and form a series of " falls " and rapids in the river courses all along this line . The relief of the land below the falls is very slight, and this low country rarely rises to a height of 200 ft., so that the rivers are navigable up to the falls, while the falls themselves are a valuable source of power . A line of cities may be traced upon the map whose position will thus be readily understood in relation to the economic importance of the fall-line . They are Trenton on the Delaware, Philadelphia on the Schuylkill, Georgetown on the Potomac, Richmond on the James, and Augusta on the Savannah . It will be readily understood that the softer and more recent rocks of the coastal plain have been more easily washed away, while the harder rocks of the mountains, owing to differential denudation, are left standing high above them, and that the trend of the edge of this great lenticularmass of ancient rock is roughly parallel to that of the Appalachian system .