60 THE WORLD'S MEAT FUTURE 



arms fighting for a crust. The peasants said they would sooner 

 eat their oats themselves than sell them at the price fixed by 

 the Government. The law fixing prices was called the law of 

 the maximum. Professor Sybel, in his famous history of the 

 Revolution, says : " There was great distress all through 

 Prance owing to the Government putting a fixed price on 

 corn " (wheat). " Owing to the law of the maximum, all goods 

 began to avoid the market." " The law of the maximum first 

 frightened the goods from the market and then paralysed 

 production." " The law of the maximum had the effect of 

 impeding trade and preventing the regular supply of goods to 

 the people." Then the professor goes on to say : " The case 

 was not so bad in most of the departments with regard to 

 meat, as with bread, because the law of the maximum had for- 

 got to fix a tariff for live cattle, and the peasants had, there- 

 fore, slaughtered as few beasts as possible in Robespierre's time, 

 and now brought to market and sold as much meat as was 

 wanted at good prices." " There was plenty of meat obtain- 

 able, because the law of the maximum did not apply to cattle." 

 Less than five years of this interference with trade on the part 

 of the Government brought the people to such a state of desti- 

 tution and misery that at last they awoke to the folly of trying 

 to override natural economic laws ; and the National Assembly 

 swept the whole of this legislation from the statute book. 

 Then business began immediately to revive. The celebrated 

 economist, Henry Dunning Macleod, in dealing with this ques- 

 tion, says : " Does not everyone know that a high price of 

 corn is the way to attract corn where it is deficient, and a low 

 price the way to repel it from where it is already too abun- 

 dant ? " Then he goes on to say : " There is a period during 

 which sales are difficult or impracticable ; when the prices are 

 at the maximum the buyer refuses to submit to them ; and 

 when they are at a minimum the seller refuses to submit to 

 them." Macleod declares that supply and demand are the 

 cause of value. This, of course, is where there is free competi- 

 tion. 



The Federal Government will do well to pause before at- 

 tempting to fix arbitrary prices for beef and mutton. There 

 are few farmers who do not combine grazing to some extent 



