The Labor enquirer., 1886-03-27
was failure. and it was against this i'm.

Il .
potent syste m of government, whose
machinery crushed the people instead OF
aiding them, that there was a revolt.
And if the people are the government
(which republic is credited with pre-
supposing) then they had the right to
protest against the usurpation Of their
powers by unscrupulous governors.
But '4S was more crv for bread than
a protest against existing institutions.
| The people were out of work, and con-
sequently without the means of exist
ence. Hunger makes men reckless, and
they count not the cost of step which
| at other times they would see was dan
gerous-as we'll to themselves as to the
object of their attack. Have YOU ever
stood upon the Threshold of the poor
mans hovel? Have you seen him drag
his weary limbs toward that miser ,ble
place he calls home for the hundredth
night after spending the whole day in
hopeless, fruitless; search for work ?
Have you watched his face and read his
heart as he stood upon the dingy portal
and gazed in upon the jaded, annotated,
wrecked figure of her whom at the altar
he had pledged to provide for and keep
from harm and suffering; the
ragged, peaked faced, pitiable, little
chill lren. who, huddled together like
frightened little birds, looked up as the
fathers footstep was heard at the door
aud the wretched faces asked the ques-,
tion the lips had grown weary Of repeat
ing-"Have you brought US ANYTHING,
father?" II you have looked upon this
picture you know the secret of the ori-
gin of ill-timed, poorly equipped re-
volts, against organized, armed and
well-fed Greed and Tyranny.
But 1 started to tell you of the two ia
NOUS barricadas of 48. The one
blocked up the entrance to the Fau-
bourg St. Antoine, the other of the Fau-
bourg du Temple. The barricade of st.
Antoine was three stories high and 700
feet long: it barred from one corner to
another the great combined mouth of
three streets, it rose like a cyclcoean
wall at the back of the formidable square
which had witnessed similar scene BE-
fore. Behind this mother barricade
were nineteen smaller ones lnterspersed
at convenient distances up the three
streets which end in the Faubourg.
Victor Hugo has said that in gazing on
the barricades of St. Antoine, you felt
the agonizing suffering that had reached
the extreme stage in which misery de-
sired catastrophe. OF what was it
made2 With that door, that grating,
that awning, that chimney. that broken
stove, that cracked stew pan. 1t was a
collaboration of paving stones, beams,
iron bars, planks, broken ndows,
anseated chairs, cabbage-stalks. rags,
tatters, lamentations and curses. Tt was
terrible; it was the destitute extremity
of the hungry and barefoot. 1t was
worthy to he erected upon the spot from
whence had been swept the Bastile.
The barricada of St.iAntoine made
weapon of everything to VIII ch it could,
lay it's hands. All that civil war can
throw at the head of Society came from
it. Among the muskets which defended
this redoubt were several blunderbu ses,
which discharged stones, bones, coat but
tons, castors from chamber furniture,
and anything convenient that could be
crammed down their sweled throats.
At certain moments when challenging
the army the barricade was covered
with a crowd and tempest; it had a
pricklY crest of guns, sabres, sticks, axes,
pixies and bayonets, and from az el'-
vated point a mighty red flag fnttered
in the breeze. The cries of command,
the songs of attack, the rolling of the
drum, the sobs of women, and the wild
laughter of men diving of starvation
could be heard there. The spirit Of Rev
olution covered with terrible halo the
summit where the voice of the people,
which is like the voice of God, was
growing; the mysterious grandeur of a
Sinai was here. Soldiers, accustomed to
the sternest visions Of war gazed with
anxious eyes at this species of wild
beast redout, which was a boar through
its bristling and a mountain through its
enormity. But the barricade of the
Faubourg St. Antoine fell, as its prede-
cessors and successors fell. Could
broken sticks, though hurled with des
peration, stand against militaryism per
fected2 But it%fell with crash that
shook the whole civilized world and a
sound which rcverberates and awakens
to hope the dislnherited in 1885,
The barricade OF the Faubourg du
Temple was built of paw stones alone
without cement or mortar but so neatly
we're the stones put in place and so sym.
metrically was thewhole structure put
together, that one Of the officers of the
soldiers upon seeing it was heard to ex'
claim: "My God it is built of china p
This barricade was defended by only
eighty men and for three days it held
out against the fierce attacks of TO- 900 Of
the best drilled soldiery the world ever
knew. On the fourth day the soldiers
resorted to a cowardly tactic used by
them before and the barricade was