By How does Paris get fed? Frédéric Bastiat famously explained in Economic Sophisms (1845) how market exchange reliably provisioned the (then) million people of Paris with agricultural produce from the countryside that they were able to enjoy “peaceful slumbers…not disturbed for a single instant….”
In stark contrast, Bastiat predicted that there would be “much suffering within the walls of Paris — poverty, despair, perhaps starvation…” if a presumptuous minister decided to replace the market with their own decision-making for what “should be produced, transported, exchanged and consumed….”
We can appreciate Bastiat’s observation about the miraculous functioning of the market even more when we look at a time when Paris actually went hungry.
France’s Experiment in Forced Provisioning
Leading up to the French Revolution in 1789, France found itself in a precarious fiscal position. It had accumulated crippling debt from the Seven Years’ War and its support for the American colonies during their War of Independence. This heavy debt burden left the kingdom woefully unprepared to withstand the economic shocks that followed.
Economic shock came in the form of the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland in 1783, which contributed to climatic disruptions and poor harvests in France in the years that followed. These problems were compounded by a severe hailstorm in 1788 that devastated crops and livestock, raising prices, especially for bread, which was the main staple at the time. Increased demand for grain to support the military and its draft animals, when France declared war on Austria in 1792 (followed by war with Great Britain), pushed prices even higher. When France implemented a draft that drew agricultural workers into the military and then began requisitioning agricultural horses and wagons, the supply of grain was further reduced.
Henry Bourne, writing a two-part article in the Journal of Political Economy in 1919 about this era, notes that in the fall of 1792, “One of the longest and most important debates [of the National Convention] was upon the best method of insuring a supply of bread at a reasonable price.” This was a problem that especially loomed over the major city of Paris. Bourne argues that the threat of starvation fueled not only the French Revolution, but the mob mentality and interventionism that followed. As Bourne writes, “People, in a panic because they do not know where next week’s bread, meat, and coal are to be found, are not likely to apply the rules of evidence to every rumor.” The French clamored for state intervention on the “fixed idea that dearness and scarcity were the result of speculation” rather than underlying economic conditions.
Transporting grain became a risky enterprise as mobs sprang up to seize it, further decreasing the supply of grain to Paris. To add insult to injury, the transportation of grain to major cities was further suppressed by inflation, which made the issued assignats unappealing to country farmers.
The National Convention and the Paris Commune turned to “a series of ventures in price-fixing and food control” to solve the problem. Bourne notes that “price-fixing became one of the characteristic features of the Reign of Terror.” In 1793, the National Convention imposed a maximum price, or what economists today call a price ceiling, on grain. In a futile attempt to warn of the potential consequences, Pierre Vergniaud, who later that year was executed under the accusation of the radical Jacobin Maximilien Robespierre, urged that “If you destroy commerce, you decree famine.”
French attempts to deny the economic reality reflected by market prices, by attempting to suppress them, resulted in severe shortages and long lines.
“The scheme not only failed to encourage the farmer, it threatened him with ruin,” Bourne noted. “His expenses for tools, draft animals, and wages were steadily rising, but his profits were cut down, with the prospect of further losses every succeeding month.”
But politically savvy politicians blamed these disappointing outcomes on greed and used them to justify further interventions backed by the threat of imprisonment and death. The National Convention created a Commission of Subsistence and Provisioning to be the “Food Director” of France. Swarms of officials were commissioned to survey farmers’ inventories and fields in an attempt to enable government officials to redirect grain to where it was needed. Rules were issued detailing the precise percentage of bran that millers could extract and even dictated the one type of bread that would be allowed. A bread card rationing system was created but was abused as families failed to report the death of family members to continue receiving the same allotment. Bourne reports that in 1794, rations fell to a single pound of bread for each laborer and three-fourths of a pound for others, and that “it was practically impossible to obtain meat, butter, eggs, oil, and other articles of food commonly regarded as necessary,” as price ceilings were extended to these items as well.
Officials attempted to appeal to the higher motives of the people, telling them that they were “brothers and that they should help” even if it meant turning over the grain needed for their family, for storage for future use, or even the seed necessary to plant the next year’s crop. This proved insufficient, however, so the officials eventually turned to force.
Bourne writes that “An attempt was made to provide for Paris by compelling every farmer to furnish within twenty-four hours sixteen bushels of wheat for each hide of land.” French dragoons were soon released upon the countryside to “scour the country” for food and to arrest any suspected hoarders. As Bourne notes, “merchants were thrown into prison upon the accusation of the first intriguer who shouted out his suspicions at a popular society. The local revolutionary committees acted as judges without appeal. To escape a similar fate the other merchants hastened to dispose of their merchandise and did not restock.”
If a farmer had grain in the field but no laborers to gather it, laborers were drafted by local authorities. Millers and bakers in Paris were drafted and forbidden from abandoning their work without sufficient notice. Eventually, the National Convention even attempted to extend maximum price laws to the wages of laborers as well.
Despite the substantial and systematic efforts of the National Convention and the boards of the separate departments of France, Parisians and much of the rest of France, went hungry under government control. In Cahors, people “were so poorly fed that they were falling in the street from sheer weakness.” In Nord, “grain of every sort disappeared from the markets…” The people of Paris would stand “with famished eyes” for hours in line “only to be told when their turn came that nothing was left.” As Bourne concludes, “If the maximum laws were meant to save the common people from want and wretchedness, they failed.”
Bastiat’s Market-Fed Paris
It is unclear whether Bastiat, when writing in the 1840s about the remarkable way in which free markets coordinated the efforts of countless individuals to feed Paris every day, was implicitly contrasting this outcome with the French Revolution’s earlier rejection of market exchange. He almost certainly knew that revolutionary France had experienced severe food shortages and government price controls, making the contrast between the two episodes striking even if he did not intend it.
As Bastiat stressed, government officials could not replace the information and incentives provided by market prices. Orders, price controls, requisitions, forced sales, and even forced labor failed to feed Paris. When the National Convention tried to do so, it produced exactly the outcome Bastiat had predicted more than half a century later: not peaceful slumbers, but long lines, empty markets, and widespread hunger. Notably, these outcomes began to recede as the Commission was abandoned and markets were restored.