sible by the work of scholars under the direction of the Commission de Recherche et de Publication des Documents relatifs à la Vie Économique de la Révolution. So extensive is the documentary material on the subject in the local archives of France, communal as well as departmental, that the individual student, unaided by the results of such co-operative labors, could hardly hope to obtain a comprehensive view of the problem. This is especially true of the American student, whose visits to French archives can only be occasional. The purpose of the present note is to call attention to some of the new material and to indicate a few of the interesting questions suggested by its study.
The volumes published by the Commission, so far as they are concerned with the question of food and other necessaries of life, contain more material upon the supply of wheat and its distribution than upon what was called the Maximum général, established by the law of September 29, 1793, and modified by subsequent legislation. This is in consequence of the wise policy of the Commission in organizing carefully the study of one field before undertaking work upon another. In order that the researches of the collaborating scholars may be most successful, and their publications edited on a plan reasonably uniform, the Commission usually issues a pamphlet of instructions or a manual containing the important laws, regulations, and administrative circulars bearing on the subject. Such was M. Pierre Caron's Le Commerce des Céréales, published in 1907, which was the introduction to the series on Les Subsistances.[1] In 1913 M. Caron was authorized to prepare a similar volume on the Maximum général, but its publication has apparently been delayed by the war. As a consequence the series which it was intended to introduce is also delayed.
This does not mean that no documents for the study of pricemaking in general have been made available by the work of the Commission. The volumes on the grain supply incidentally contain much on the broader subject. For example, the records of the Committee of Subsistence of Toulouse show that while it was mainly busied with questions of wheat and bread it was anxious also to secure supplies of meat, oil, soap, and candles. The volumes
- ↑ The most important volumes of this series are Les Procès-Verbaux des Comités d'Agriculture et de Commerce de la Constituante, de la Législative, et de la Convention (ed. F. Gerbaux and Ch. Schmidt, 4 vols.); Ch. Lorain, Les Subsistances en Céréales dans le District de Chaumont (Haute-Marne), 2 vols.; J. Adler, Le Comité des Subsistances de Toulouse; G. Lefebvre, Documents relatifs à l'Histoire des Subsistances dans le District de Bergues (Nord), vol. I. Of the last work a second volume is to appear, unless its completion has been prevented by the devastation of that part of France.
