The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-02-24
HUNGER AND REVOLUTION.

Senator Borah's reference in the Senate to the French revolution when he compared the rioting which was taking place in New York to the incidents of the French revolu- tion is significant enough, for at the bottom of that revolution was the spur of hunger-desperate hunger. On the one hand waste. reckless profusion. debauched squanderin9, and on the other gaunt starVatlon In March and April l7S9, the ma iority of the provincial governors re- ported riotings and pillagings. and the first conflict which took place i'll Paris was the Reveillon affair be- cause a paper manufacturer of that name who employed three hundred operatives declared that the work jngman can live on black bread and lentils: wheat is not for the likes of him etc.. In an attack upon his plant twelve soldiers were killed and eigthy wounded and on the peo- pie Slue two II hIilul GU hiiiN' "'iN three hundred wounded. The hun- ger impulse is to be noted running through the tangled skein of events in the French revolution req thread always unmistakable. "The people no longer read the papers mourned the Queen in letter October 3l. 1791 to Fersen. They are only interested in the dearness of bread and in the decrees". Bread, says the historian, that they might carry on the revolution, and the de- crees against the priests and eml- gres which the King refused to sanction.
 Speculation in the price of wheat had once been the privilege of the king and Septcuil had practiced it for the profit of Louis XVI, but the middle classes took it over after the Convention and outdid the royal gambling.
 Robespierre took up the economic views Of the enrages when he de- dared in Convention "The food ne ressary for the people is as sacred as life itself. All that is necessary to preserve life is property common to the whole of society. It IS only what is in excess of this that may become private property. and may be given up to the industrial actlV- itieS of the traders.
 One of the most extended struggles throughout the momentous wears ol the French revolution was the eco homie struggle over the toGc 'iues- r5on. Unfortunately there was so much of the dramatic and 50 iruch ot the terrible and the tragic that this driving impulse has been wholly overlooked except among the m'HV careful historians. The idea Of hX- ing the price of foodstuffs when was opposed by the Montagnards as well as the Girondins and when they said was "impolitic, unpractl- cal and dangerous Gun n-Amerlcan they would say here), finally won the day and on September 29 l793, the Convention decided to flX the maximum price for things of hrst and second necessity meat cattle for the market. lard, butter, sweet oil, fish, vinegar, etc.
 Carlyle who loved the dramatic Tn history and whose sympathetic and betimes rather humorous irony forcibly depicts conditions when the maximum law was being agitated Think also that the private san .sculotte has not his difficulties il time of dearth, Bread, according tt the peoples friend, may be some .'six sous per pound, a days wages some fifteen; and grim winter here. How the poor man continues living. and so seldom starves; by miracle. Happily in these days he can enlist. and have himself shot by uhe Austrians in an unusually satls Yactory manner; for the rights O man. But Commandant Santerre in this so strengthened condition O the flour market, and state Of equal ity and liberty. proposes, througl ,he newspapers, two remedies or least palliatives. First, that al classes of men shall live two day a week on potatoes; then secon' that every man should hang his dog Hereby as the commandant thinks xhe saving which indeed he com putes to so many sacks. would b very considerable. Cheerfuller in ventive form of stupidity than Com