[23] As the government, accordingly, has proclaimed their
speculations "crimes," it is going to interdict their trade and
substitute itself for them.[24] - But this substitution only increases
the penury still more; in vain do the towns force collections, tax
their rich men, raise money on loan, and burden themselves beyond
their resources;[25] they only make the matter worse. When the
municipality of Paris expends twelve thousand francs a day for the
sale of flour at a low price in the markets, it keeps away the flour-
dealers, who cannot deliver flour at such low figures; the result is
that there is not flour enough in the market for the six hundred
thousand mouths in Paris; when it expends seventy-five thousand francs
daily to indemnify the bakers, it attracts the outside population,
which rushes into Paris to get bread cheap, and for the seven hundred
thousand mouths of Paris and the suburbs combined, the bakers have not
an adequate supply. Whoever comes late finds the shop empty;
consequently, everybody tries to get there earlier and earlier, at
dawn, before daybreak, and then five or six hours before daybreak. in
February, 1793, long lines of people are already waiting at the
bakers' door, these lines growing longer and longer in April, while in
June they are enormously long.
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