Henceforth,
French shoemakers must work only for us, and each must deliver to us,
under penalty, so many pairs of shoes per decade.[13] -- But, the
civil service is no less important than the military service, and to
feed the people is as urgent as it is to defend them. Hence we put
"in requisition all who have anything to do with handling,
transporting or selling provisions and articles of prime
necessity,"[14] especially combustibles and food -- wood-choppers,
carters, raftsmen, millers, reapers, threshers, wine-growers, movers,
field-hands, "country people" of every kind and degree. Their hands
belong to us: we make them bestir themselves and work under the
penalty of fine and imprisonment. There shall be no idlers,
especially in crop time: we take the entire population of a commune or
canton into the fields, comprising "the lazy of both sexes;"[15]
willingly or not, they shall do the harvesting under our eyes, banded
together in fields belonging to others as well as in their own, and
they shall put the sheaves indiscriminately into the public granary.
But in labor all hangs together, from the initial undertaking to the
final result, from the raw material to the most finished production,
from the great manufacturer down to the pettiest jobber; grasping the
first link of the chain involves grasping the last one.
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